Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and I am here today with Anthony Delgado, and if you don't know who he is yet, I think you will be hearing more and more about him and from him, because he's doing some fantastic work that I am really excited about.
[00:00:31] He's already got a book about 1st Enoch out that you can go and pick up, and he's got an upcoming book about the gospel. And of course, we love books about the gospel. Welcome, Anthony. I'll give you a chance to introduce yourself for a moment before we dig into our topic today.
[00:00:48] Anthony Delgado: Thanks, Carey. It's a joy to be here with you today.
[00:00:51] So I'm a pastor of a church, Palmdale Church in Southern California, and I've been a pastor for almost two decades now and been teaching and involved in Christian leadership and ministry in various capacities and studied Christian reason and did my master's degree Knox Theological Seminary, studying Bible theology, apologetics second temple literature, all of that.
[00:01:17] I'm married, two kids, love the outdoors, all of that type of stuff. pretty typical lifestyle, but I love biblical theology and all the things that you're about on your podcast, which is why I think I'm on the show today. as you mentioned, I have a book out that came out last year based on first Enoch, it's called the watchers and the holy ones.
[00:01:39] it's sort of a evangelical primer on First Enoch, really just covering the Book of the Watchers, the first portion of it, and trying to introduce some of the second temple literature, sort of, for lack of a better word, in a safe fashion to an evangelical audience in a way that makes it palatable and help people understand what it is and how it interfaces with, the protestant tradition why it's important to our study of the scriptures and in the protestant traditions. This year probably right around the time that this podcast drops Is the gospel bigger than you think a biblical theological approach to the gospel is gonna be released So yeah, that should be out any day now So, that's what I'm about.
[00:02:22] Carey Griffel: And I think today what we're going to be talking about is going to kind of intersect both of those books together in a way. At least that's my hope for the conversation. And part of why I'm so happy to have you on today is especially in short notice, so I'm really grateful for that, because currently what's on my mind right now is material from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And what I'm especially interested in is how those illuminate the Bible, because, of course, this is a biblical theology podcast, and we're all about context here.
[00:02:55] And so the Dead Sea Scrolls are this massive cache of second temple literature that's invaluable to how we can understand both the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. And so one of those books that's been circling around biblical theology places that's been really popular is first Enoch. And some of that has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I think a lot of the conversation around that is where we're talking about how it connects to the Old Testament and kind of how it goes into the New Testament. But I think there's a lot more we can say about that intersection right there. So really excited about having this conversation with you today.
[00:03:40] Anthony Delgado: Yeah, really excited to have it as well. I love the idea of Biblical theology as a look at the scriptures as a whole. I'm a huge fan of GK Bealee's work And I recently finished what I think is sort of his magnum opus I think it's the last work of this size that we're going to see from GK Bealee and it's His biblical theology of the New Testament based on the Old Testament.
[00:04:03] And I was surprised how many times he quoted first Enoch in that work. In most of his older works, many great biblical theologies of a long term fan of G. K. Bealee. You don't get as many references to first Enoch or the second temple literature. But it's just awesome as more and more of the Dead Sea Scrolls material has come out more and more Second Temple scholarship has become available.
[00:04:29] How much more So many of the serious, second temple scholars, biblical theological scholars, how much more they have really seen the value of this work. And so really excited to see where that goes in our own studies and where it goes in scholarship. So
[00:04:49] Carey Griffel: It's funny that you mentioned GK Beale and that work, because I just posted about it in my Facebook group because I came across that work in audible and I'm like, Whoa, this is over 44 hours. So , this is a good deal for one audible credit. Anyone interested in picking that up through audible, it's a really good book. . it's amazing they would even put that in Audible.
[00:05:12] Anthony Delgado: I listened to it, I have it in print for, you know, bedside reading and I have it in my logos because you almost need it in all three places and in all three ways to make it functional. You have to use it as a reference work, or it's not really something you can consume in audio form and really use it functionally.
[00:05:32] Carey Griffel: Right. To get the most out of it, to look at the references and to see all of those key things that he's pointing out.
[00:05:40] All right. So let's just jump into the context of the time between the testaments, right? So we have the time of the exile. That's when we have the finished Old Testament canon. We could probably say now, we'll probably talk a little bit about what that means and how we can look at it at the time. But there were clearly scriptures and books that were being preserved in a very particular way, right? they had many of the copies of Genesis, for instance, in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of the copies of Isaiah, pretty much every copy of the Old Testament that we have, we have a copy of it in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
[00:06:21] And so that shows that we have this line of transmission that's already happening at the time, but then there's other texts in addition to that. There's a lot of other texts in addition to that, and one of those is 1st Enoch. But before we get into that explicitly, I want to kind of talk about the exile, and what is your opinion on how they were seeing that at the time of Jesus?
[00:06:45] Were they still in exile? Were they out of exile? What do you think the situation there was?
[00:06:52] Anthony Delgado: You know, it's hard to say exactly to what degree the Jews of the second temple period consider themselves still in exile. Certainly the ones living in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem in the promised land, I think they saw themselves out of exile, but the new Testament writers and some of the second temple works we're still, I think, keenly aware that maybe to Say it this way, that all Israel had not returned from exile.
[00:07:23] So there was like maybe to borrow some New Testament Theological language, they had almost an already not yet understanding of their return from exile. And so you have to ask this question like who actually came out of exile? It's related to the question of who were the Judaites or who were the Jews and before the exile, the exile happened in two primary phases, the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.
[00:07:51] And as the Northern Kingdom was taken into exile, the vast majority of them were assimilated into the cultures that took them into the various other kingdoms. Not all of them actually fully left. For example, many of the Ephraimites stayed in sort of what in the New Testament times would have been Samaria, the region of Samaria. But the Assyrians actually moved in with them and inter mingled with them, mixed with the people. And they became the Samaritans that were not purely Israelites. And so they mixed with people, even though , they didn't fully leave the land. And so they weren't purely Israelites. And that kind of became the case that basically all of the Northern tribe lost their ethnic identity as an Israelite.
[00:08:43] And this would be true if you were to, you know, meet somebody today that, you know, says that they're Jewish, and you ask them what tribe they're from. a lot of them won't know, but many of them will tell you, yeah, I'm actually from the tribe of Judah or I'm from the tribe of Benjamin, or I'm from the tribe of Levi, some of them will know what tribe they're actually from. and I think that's pretty brilliant actually, when they do know that, that they've maintained those genealogies back thousands of years. And that's pretty cool.
[00:09:11] But what you'll notice is that you'll pretty much never, if ever, meet somebody that's like, Oh yeah, I'm from the tribe of Reuben or I'm from the tribe of Gad. And it's for this reason that the people mixed with the other nations, they lost their ethnic identity. And so I think we get some explanation for sort of what God's plan is for the return from the exile, believe it or not, in the New Testament in Romans 11.
[00:09:38] And if you were to look at verses 11 through 24, You get this narrative about the Gentiles being grafted into ethnic Israel, and that's an important narrative because remember we were just tracing the history of the Northern kingdoms and the Northern kingdoms that were, when they were taken into exile, they were mixed into the people of the nations, in other words, into the Gentile nations.
[00:10:05] And so now the Gentile nations are being grafted back into Israel. And the way that The apostle Paul envisions that happening is through the progression of the gospel, that as the great commission goes forward into all the world, that is the gathering of the nations. Into Israel so that the Israelites, the lost tribes, you could say of Israel, are being gathered back into the one people of God. And so this is the way that the people of God come back together. The Israelites come back together is through the great commission. It's the restoration of the single people of God.
[00:10:41] And then in verse 25 and 26, and I'm actually going to read this one. The apostle Paul writes, lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers, a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.... you'll recognize that as a promise that even Christ says that we're waiting for this fulfillment for the promise of the second advent of Christ, that the gospel has to go to the ends of the earth, right?
[00:11:06] He says, and in this way, all Israel will be saved, that there is something about this fullness of the Gentiles coming in, that the gospel going to the ends of the earth is the way that all Israel is saved. And so there is something about all Israel being saved, the fullness of the Gentiles, the expansion of the gospel that is sort of the culmination of the people of God coming back together to be one people again.
[00:11:35] So I guess that's sort of my answer to, did the Israelites see themselves as returning from exile? Well, certainly sort of, but even the Apostle Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a real Jew, he understood that it really was only the Southern kingdom, the Judahites, which would have included the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Benjamin, controversially, potentially a handful of Danites and then some of the Levites, whoever, whatever Levites were living in the Southern Kingdom would have been included in that. Some of them would have returned from exile and Babylon, Persia, but not the rest of them. And so it's only through the great commission that we think, Oh, given to the church, but no, actually it's the single people of God. The restoration of the single people of God and the culmination of the return of the people of God from exile. That is sort of what the expectation is eternally in the second coming of Christ.
[00:12:38] Carey Griffel: That is explained so very well. And thank you for going into all of that because these are the kinds of things I've also been talking about elsewhere. Well, they're not really that Common to be thought of in this way for Christians, because we've taken this idea of Jew and Israel being the exact same thing, like, just the same term in different terms. And then we lose that narrative of the restored Israel still needing to come in, which I think is that eschatological hope.
[00:13:11] Anthony Delgado: That's so true that, And it's kind of funny that we do that and nobody teaches us to do that, but we tend to read Israelite in the old Testament. And then all of a sudden we get to the new Testament and we're just like, Oh, Jew, that's the Israelites in the new Testament. And somehow it's just one of those things that we implicitly learn to do is just to say, Oh, they're the same thing.
[00:13:31] And they are the same thing, but they're not the same thing. And I think it's similar to another assumption that we make where we think that and this is probably more a mistake of just reading the Bible in English, that when we read the old Testament and we read Israelites, and then we read the new Testament and we read church, that we create a separation between the Testaments because the people of God in the old Testament is the Israelites and the people of God in the new Testament is the church.
[00:13:57] And we tend to create a separation there. And that separation makes us lose certain narratives like this exile narrative, where all of a sudden verses like Romans 11 just make no sense because what on earth would the Gentile church have to do with, you know, returning Israelites from exile. And it just becomes confusing.
[00:14:16] Something that we probably just want to pass over and leave that to the scholars and, you know, the pastors and the Bible geeks, and we don't want to think too much about, but really when we put the testaments together, we read that second temple literature that bridges the gaps. We start to understand, no, there's actually really one people of God.
[00:14:35] There's really one story to the Bible.
[00:14:37] Carey Griffel: Yes, and I love how you brought out that it was kind of like the already but not yet. So as Christians, if we get into that kind of eschatology of the already but not yet, we have Christ reigning. We have Christ victorious, but we do not have the culmination of all things yet.
[00:14:56] That's not a new thing. That was already something that the Jews around Jesus were kind of already thinking. We are already back from exile, but not yet, because this is just the remnant. We don't have the fulfillment of all of the promises yet. We do have the remnant, and we're, you know, probably doing pretty well, at least depending upon the different sectarian ideas and groups and things that you had going on thinking about things, but there was that expectation of the Messiah, or at least some sort of messianic hope for it. Even if not everyone thought about a specific Messiah.
[00:15:37] Anthony Delgado: Sure, and they didn't all necessarily think about the Messiah in the same way. For them, Messiah meant, you know, Messiah, the word just means anointed one.
[00:15:46] And so for some, that just meant that they were waiting for a Messiah. an anointed one, and certainly Matthew Bates does a great job in several of his books, but I think Salvation by Allegiance alone, probably his pinnacle work, although he has another one coming out in March that I think is going to be a must read.
[00:16:03] But you know, discussing this idea that Messiah necessarily must mean the and I think this is really interesting and so, you know, there's differences. It's not like every Jew believed the same thing, that there different groups. And so you see this in the New Testament shadows of it, at least that you've got like the zealots, for example, and the zealots definitely were looking for a human king to rule over Israel. That was huge for them. And so a zealot definitely wanted a human King to sit on the throne in Israel.
[00:16:38] And I think a good example of the zealots would have been the two criminals on the cross that hung with Jesus, you know, that were crucified with Jesus. I want to return to that narrative here in just a second.
[00:16:48] But then you have like the Sadducees, for example. And I think the Sadducees would have liked to see a human king, but the Sadducees would have been like the priesthood. The priesthood was primarily represented by Sadducees. And I think the Sadducees were happy as long as they could operate the temple. The Sadducees didn't recognize any of the scriptures except for Torah.
[00:17:09] And so as long as they could operate the temple. They weren't asking a lot of questions about the afterlife. They weren't recognizing the prophets. They weren't doing the same kind of work that like, let's say the scribes and the Pharisees were doing thinking about the afterlife, thinking about the future, thinking about eschatology they were really a here and now type of people. And so, you know, they would have liked to have a king because that would have secured their role among Israel, but it wasn't necessary. So they were happy enough under Rome because Rome was allowing them to do what they wanted to do, operating the temple well, until 70 AD anyway.
[00:17:47] Then you had the Pharisees, loved the prophets. The Pharisees saw in their Messiah, not just a human king, but they saw an eschatological king. They saw a king in heaven. A king that had a supernatural being, they say, they saw a king that was far greater than even Moses that had something supernatural about him, whether it was a human king that had achieved some sort of supernatural or more and, and this is where you start to see some of this come up in second Enoch, for example, but I don't necessarily want to get too much into that right here, but like you start to see some of this come up in second Enoch and then even very much more controversially, even though this happens well into second century and third Enoch in the later Jewish literature where you start to see men become divine and things like that, in some of this work.
[00:18:38] But you start to get this question of what does it mean to move into the afterlife in a divine sense, something like theosis. something like that, although in 3rd Enoch, it becomes far more divine and far less human.
[00:18:56] And so, you get these different sects that think about the Messiah in different ways. Well, let's return to the thief on the cross because I think what's really interesting there is what happens. Cause you've got these two guys that probably do both belong to the sect that we would call the zealots.
[00:19:11] These guys probably both did something really bad, like killed a Roman official or a centurion or something like that and got caught. these guys weren't stealing bread in the marketplace. That's not what landed you on a cross in Rome. They did something really bad and that challenged their submission to Roman authority.
[00:19:31] And so that's why they're on the cross. And these guys, it's obvious when you read the narrative, they know their Jewish Bible. these guys are real Jews. And the one guy is mocking Jesus. You can tell he does not think that, well, neither of them think that Jesus is about to sit down on the throne in Israel on earth.
[00:19:50] Cause he's about to die. Like everybody gets that. And that's why the one guy's mocking him. He's like, come on, you know, just get down and go to, you know, like, and so the one guy's mocking him, right? He doesn't think any of that's about to happen. But then what's really amazing is like the other guy is clearly influenced by the sort of the theology, the eschatology of the Pharisees, because the other guy says to him, and this is shocking because you don't see this really from the Jews anywhere else in the new Testament.
[00:20:15] He says, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And that's an absolutely shocking statement. Because he has this eschatology that he knows that when Jesus dies, that he steps into the eternal throne room of God and sits down on God's throne. I mean, and that is just amazing that somehow, cause, you know, Cause I, at least in my, the 66 books of the Bible that I have, when I open up my 66 book ESV or my CSB or whatever, I don't see any clear place in there that says, you know, especially in that old Testament, I do in the new Testament, but not in that old Testament that says that a Messiah is going to sit down on a throne in heaven, except for one pretty clear place in Daniel seven.
[00:21:05] But that looks like later than Jesus dying on the cross. So I don't know where he gets that from exactly. But he knows it. And that's where I think your question is coming from is like, where, where did he get that from? And I think he's getting it from a lot of the second temple literature, a lot of this stuff that connects the testaments, potentially from Enoch.
[00:21:30] Carey Griffel: Right. And so that's why we need to look at this literature, not just from the stance of, Oh, these have really weird stories. These explain something strange that I like. I mean, you know, okay, that's great. We should all be learning about the things that are like Dr. Heiser said, if something's weird, it's important. So absolutely. But the greater picture that we should be looking at is what is the story of the Bible? And the story of the Bible culminates in Jesus and the gospel. So that's, you know, I think there's a lot that we can get from these narratives that are going to point to that, not because they are canon, which as both you and I have said in different places, that's the wrong question to be asking. The question is what were the people thinking and how were they processing all of this information?
[00:22:24] Anthony Delgado: Yeah, yeah. Is it canon or not? Is really the wrong question.
[00:22:29] I taught on this topic in a couple of different churches after releasing my last book. and you know, it's interesting 'cause I was raised in a tradition that if I were to open up a paperback of first Enoch , you know, and say, Hey, have you seen this to, you know, in a church setting, people would've been like, oh, you can't read that.
[00:22:47] And you know, think I'd have broke out a Ouija board or something like that in the middle of a church group. And that kind of setting, you know. And at the last church I was teaching at, in fact, the pastor had told me, he goes, yeah, I had you come here to teach on this. Cause I trust you.
[00:23:01] You know, he's a good friend of mine and kind of a mentor of mine. He goes, but I kind of thought that way about this stuff before I knew you were interested in it. And he goes, so I wanted to see what you said, you know, And he actually had me come teach a small group, introduce a small group to the material.
[00:23:17] And I was like, Oh, that's kind of fun that you trusted me, you know, you trust me enough to do that. You know, it was pretty cool. So like but I had said, Hey, you know, to his small group, I said, Hey, who's read Francis Chan's crazy love, you know, and like two people raised their hand and I said, all right, but who's heard of it, you know, and like half the group raised their hand, you know, and maybe that's a dated book to, to have said, but I don't read a lot of pop Christian literature, so I couldn't think of anything else.
[00:23:40] But I go, well, okay, so you've heard of it. I go, you think it's a good idea. Is it okay to read that? And they're like, yeah, I go, okay. So if you go back 2000 years ago, I go, this is pop Christian literature. Like this is, you know, this is what everybody was reading. They didn't necessarily think of it as like every word of this is historical truth, but they thought of it as something That was true and helpful and good to read that commented on the truth of the scriptures.
[00:24:10] And we can see that because then it also bridges forward to inform New Testament theology. So it stands kind of in the gap in the middle. it works as sort of, I often call it Hebrew folklore. So when I'm preaching, if I say. You know, the book of first Enoch in a sermon, I get side eyes at best. And, you know, if I have a guest who knows what that is, I might have somebody storm out. But if I say, you know, in the Hebrew folklore, they had all these, you know, traditions and stories that they shared, you know, they had this story that said that there was these giants, you know, or whatever, you know, and then I can refer to it that way and people are like, Oh, that's really interesting. You know, and I can introduce people to the stories this way.
[00:24:57] And so, but that's kind of what it is, you know, is the people had these traditions and how they thought about these things, and that's what we mean when we refer to the Enochic literature, because if you look at the, you know, the book of giants, you know, first, second, third Enoch, and Jubilees and the other traditions that are out there, the more that you've got the smattering of these ideas, that's the Enochic literature, it's a broad swath of these types of ideas that all coincide, you know, they all work together.
[00:25:25] They were stories that people sat around and they told and they were the stories of the people. It was their folklore. And so you would expect that these stories would then inform the thinking of the people who wrote the New Testament because they were the stories of their people. And so that's why we see them informing, you know, well, I mean, darn near quoted in Jude, but highly informing first and second Peter.
[00:25:47] And you know, if Tim Steadman is right every book in the New Testament is informed by it. And so, you know, and I think he is right about that. So you know, that's where these books come in and is it canon or not isn't really exactly the right question.
[00:26:02] You know if I could say one other word about that idea of canon, in Protestant Christianity, We probably put slightly too much weight on that word canon anyway. I think it is helpful to know if you're a pastor, a priest, a minister of some kind, it's probably helpful to know which books you ought to be preaching from, which books you ought to be forming your liturgy from, like, what's canon, right? That's helpful to know.
[00:26:27] But you ought to be more thinking, when you're studying scripture, about a hierarchy of authority, because that's the way the ancients thought about it. So for example, if you were a Jew in the second temple period and you were reading a scroll and let's say it was prophecy and maybe it was Zechariah or whatever.
[00:26:49] And you're reading through this thing and you're having a discussion about what it means and you have a disagreement with some other rabbi. Well, the way you're going to settle that dispute is by appealing to Torah because Torah is higher in authority than the prophecy.
[00:27:03] Or maybe you're in one of the writings. you might appeal to the prophecy and if the prophecy isn't in clear because the prophecy being in higher authority than the writing, then maybe you'll appeal up to Torah because there's a hierarchy of authority.
[00:27:18] And so then if you're in the early church, the highest in authority would be the gospels second in authority would be the letters and third would be the apocalypse, the book of revelation.
[00:27:27] And so there's always a hierarchy. And so the second temple literature is maybe over the line of canon, less authoritative than the canon, but still more authoritative than let's say that midrash that the rabbi down the street recently published. And so not to say that midrash is garbage, that we shouldn't read it, but it falls on a spectrum of hierarchy.
[00:27:54] And so a lot of the second temple literature is that way. It's more authoritative than the stuff being produced in that day. And yet less authoritative than the things that we will refer to as scripture. And so if you're going to think in a system of hierarchy of authority, then that'll help us to understand these things in that way.
[00:28:12] And that's how the church thinks about, let's say the church fathers, that the church fathers who wrote closest to the times of Christ, they tend to be, especially the ones that are agreed upon in the councils, those church fathers tend to be held in higher authority than other church fathers.
[00:28:29] And yet still not scripture. And so if we'd start to think in a hierarchy of authority, then these things all start to seem less dangerous. And if they seem less dangerous, then all of a sudden they become far more valuable, and then our theology starts to grow and develop. I think
[00:28:46] Carey Griffel: That is an exceptionally helpful way to look at it.
[00:28:49] And I think that a lot of church traditions who do take a wider quote unquote, canon, they do think of these things in this way. Like, I don't think the Eastern Orthodox church, they don't use revelation in their liturgy. That doesn't mean that it's not authoritative in some sense. It just means it's not a book for liturgy.
[00:29:11] And yeah, so, you know, you're not going to pick up the book of Revelation and say, this is the number one thing I'm going to use as my understanding of who Jesus is. No, you have to understand him through his life and death and those stories are in the Gospels. So those stories are going to be the lens that you're going to look at everything else in.
[00:29:32] So like if you pick up the book of First Maccabees or something like that, what in that reflects what we see in our highest level of authority. What maybe doesn't, what might be suspect? And those are the things we can say, okay, maybe we don't need to believe those things particularly because they're not lining up in the same way that we see it revealed in that higher level of authority in Scripture.
[00:29:57] When you look into the Dead Sea Scrolls, you see that kind of thing. In fact, Recent episode I just put out about looking into the Dead Sea Scrolls literature and seeing how they actually repurposed the narrative of creation in liturgy itself. And so that liturgical scroll, they do have several copies of it.
[00:30:19] It was copied through hundreds of years, but they don't have nearly as many copies of that as they do of Genesis or Isaiah or something like that. And so you can look at those things and say, well, This is a valuable thing, but clearly there's a lens that they're using it from, and anything that deviates from that original lens is something that you're going to be really cautious with, and maybe not agree with, and maybe say this part isn't really something that we all have to agree on. That's not the thing that we're building our doctrine and dogma on.
[00:30:54] But let's just go right ahead into talking about First Enoch a little bit and acknowledge the fact that people like the giant stories and the things that kind of help explain the flood narrative and things like that. So, you know, there's First Enoch is a book you can read and say, okay, this is how they were viewing something like the flood narrative. This is some explanation for What they were seeing for evil in the world for things like that, right?
[00:31:23] Anthony Delgado: Yeah, I think I think you're right I think that's why a lot of people are attracted to first Enoch tells us some of the fantastic things That we want to know, you know, and gives us some explanation for some of the really fantastic things in the Bible.
[00:31:38] I think it's why I chose the section I did of First Enoch, you know, the book of the Watchers is all about well, the Watchers. Right. And so you do sort of have the key players there. There's 200, what we call watchers, they're divine beings, or, you know, in the new Testament times, they're kind of just generalized as angels and they're they come down and they intermarry, you could say, with the daughters of men and they have these giant offspring and they're probably the main players.
[00:32:09] These giants are these ravenous giants that are eating everything on the land. And at some point they become so ravenous and tyrannical, they begin to eat, even their humans and their, you know, in their clans you know, it's just, it's just this chaos. And , there becomes generation after generation a hierarchy of the giants.
[00:32:29] So you've got the giant giants. And then the nephilim that come out of them as they mix with other humans. And then out of them, they're called the Eliud. And they're kind of a third tier of giants. And I'm assuming we're supposed to read that as if they get smaller generation after generation in the text.
[00:32:47] Among the watchers there's, and I think this is an important thing to realize, you see this represented in the scriptures as well, that among the watchers, There's good watchers and bad watchers. the watchers show up in a number of places... where the watchers show up in the Bible, by the way, is in Daniel and the watchers and Daniel are good watchers.
[00:33:06] Watchers really just need to mean what they sound like: those who see. And where they're described in the Bible, they're not named and where they're named in the Bible, they're not really described, but where they're described, they're described with having all sorts of eyes. And they're often called seraphim or cherubim and you know, all it needs to mean is that symbolically they see everything or that they watch over, that they're overseeing angels. Or you could say judges because they watch over things. Perhaps that's why we equate them with the sons of God and Psalm 82, because they're overseeing judicial angels.
[00:33:44] So you've got these 200 watchers, that's what they're supposed to be, cosmic rulers of some kind, but they come down, and there's a hierarchy to them. There's Shemyaza, who's the leader, and then there's 10, sort of, chieftains under him. The most important of them is Azazel, And they all have names that are given and all together, there's 200 of them there being another, I don't know, 19 or 18 whatever, under each of the 10.
[00:34:09] And they come down and, and they have relations with Daughters of Men. And then they have regret. They know that they've done something that God does not allow. They knew that they were going to do that. Shemyaza even knowing that he was going to break God's law, has the forethought, Hey, if I go down and do this thing, these guys might all chicken out on me. So he makes a pact with them. He makes them basically sign a contract: Hey, if I go do this, you guys better agree to do this with me. So he makes a pact with them that they are also going to do that.
[00:34:37] And so they all go do it. And then they regret it. So they call on this guy, Enoch, who's righteous in God's eyes. And they ask him, Hey, will you go to Yahweh for us and plead? You know, beg him to let us kind of repent. This is where we get this question about angelic redemption from. And so Enoch goes to God and he doesn't even get to plead for them because God already knows why he's there. And he's like, yeah, it's not going to happen. And so he sends Enoch back and they're mad because God says no. And he doesn't allow them back into heaven. He condemns them to the earth.
[00:35:14] And so Azazel is the first to do this and he sets this pattern. he goes and he starts teaching secret knowledge to humans. And not only he, but many of the other watchers and also their giant offspring began to teach secret knowledge, arts of war, arts of seduction, all of these arts of sorcery and herbalism and all these things, destructive things. And so this is what happens on the earth. You start to get an explanation for Genesis 6, 5, how everything gets so bad on the earth. And in Genesis six, five before the destruction, and that's sort of the general thrust of the book of the Watchers. At least the first movement of it. And I think that's probably the real appeal to it. What people want to know immediately when they go to the book of Watchers is what is this Genesis six story? Why did God have to flood the earth and where Enoch really brings light to that narrative.
[00:36:12] Carey Griffel: Thank you very much for that little overview of the book of Enoch. I think that's really helpful to kind of set up the narrative and what we want to be looking at here. So now I want to look at how this connects to the idea of the Messiah in specific.
[00:36:31] Anthony Delgado: Yeah. So there's probably one way that it immediately does like in a New Testament sense. Thematically , There's a million ways that probably we don't have time to on the podcast. Like thematically, there's so many like eschatological realities that trace through like the Old Testament to the New Testament, but I think maybe one really great place is if we compare Daniel 7 Where you see the son of man come up to the ancient of days and you get that really important son of man language that connects to first Enoch and then into the new testament.
[00:37:11] So just a quick, quick thought on this real quick. You may have noticed in the new Testament that Jesus calls himself the son of man all the time and never refers to himself in the gospels as the son of God. And the disciples, they call him the son of God, and that doesn't ever seem to be controversial.
[00:37:30] And actually it's not controversial to call yourself the son of God because Moses referred to the Israelites as sons of God. And Moses just meant that Israelites were sons of God because they were the chosen people of God. And so that wasn't actually a controversial thing. But to call yourself the son of man was a reference to Daniel seven.
[00:37:52] And I think that's actually why it becomes controversial in Enoch, Enoch picks up on this theme. And because Enoch was popular literature of the second temple period, it's fresh in the minds of the Pharisees and the scribes and the religious leaders of Jesus day. And so when Jesus calls himself the son of man, which should just mean a human, the way that we read it as modern readers, it excites them and sounds like blasphemy.
[00:38:18] And here's why. Let's just read four verses of Enoch 46, one through four. There I saw one who had a head of days, and his head was white like wool, and with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man, and his face was full of graciousness like one of the holy angels. And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things concerning that son of man, who he was, And whence he was and why he went with the head of days. And he answered and said to me, this is the son of man who has righteousness. With him dwells righteousness and who reveals all the treasures of that which is hidden because the Lord of Spirits has chosen him and whose lot has the preeminence before the Lord of Spirits and uprightness forever. And this son of man whom you have seen shall rise up the kings and the mighty from their seats and the strong from their thrones and shall loosen the reins of the strong and break the sinners.
[00:39:18] So you've got this like heavenly king who judges the kings of the earth language. Actually it sounds a whole lot like Daniel 7 figure being called the son of man here in Enoch 46. And by the way, he shows up again in Enoch 48 and again in Enoch 69. And so you've got this figure called the son of man, who we find out is a Messiah figure because he, again, he's King. He has ruling power. And we already talked about that earlier that the Messiah is King.
[00:39:50] He's ruling power. And he's not just King of earth, but especially as like, you know, The Pharisees see him, he's king of heaven also. and certainly for us as Christians, we see him as king of heaven and earth. And so, yeah, that's who the son of man is. Enoch really picks up this motif that starts in Daniel seven, but carries it forward and reminds the second temple Jews of that.
[00:40:12] So that they have this fresh in their mind that this isn't some obscure idea that shows up in one chapter of Daniel, but it's something that's existing and being perpetuated in their folklore, This idea of the Messiah, the son of man who is going to reign from heaven not just In heaven, but even over the kings of the earth as one who is coming. and so you see this messianic expectation, not just of an earthly ruler, but of a heavenly ruler. And so that becomes an important part of second temple Jewish theology that becomes a part of Christian theology.
[00:40:49] Carey Griffel: that really helps to explain a lot of what we see as Jesus is referring to himself. It's confusing to us because, you know, I grew up and I was like, well, that just means he's human. And I think a lot of people still have that kind of idea. But when you have this other literature in your head and this is what they were thinking about when Jesus referred to himself, that becomes a whole lot spicier I guess
[00:41:14] Anthony Delgado: yeah, it's kind of funny how like son of God actually means man chosen by God and son of man means God Incarnate as man. The terms don't mean even remotely what they sound like they should mean at least not a theological level
[00:41:29] Carey Griffel: Right. Well, especially when we're reading here in plain English and we just want all of the terms to mean exactly what we want them to mean, what they seem like they should mean to us on a surface level.
[00:41:42] Now, like you've talked about the theme of the Messiah and how we can track so many different things that's one of the things I love to do the most is to see all of these themes because they do culminate in Jesus. That's why I love biblical theology because, you know, people are like, well, the Messiah came to save me from my sins.
[00:42:03] And I'm like, yes. Absolutely. But there's a whole lot more to this story and tracking the themes and the different ideas through scripture really broadens that perspective out and gives us a beautiful picture of what Jesus is and does as the Messiah.
[00:42:21] One of the ways that that's done is through things like the sacrificial system in the Old .Testament we have some really very particular ideas about what that usually means but again as a theme, When we're understanding what that is, it's a much broader picture than just boxing it into one little section over here and putting it on the shelf and saying, there, we understand that now.
[00:42:46] And, you know, recently I had Caleb Lewis on who was talking about the two goats motif that is very prevalent in scripture and that connects to the day of atonement. And so that's one of those things that I think is really essential to our mosaic of who Jesus is and who the Messiah is in this whole messianic expectation.
[00:43:09] Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I haven't caught that episode yet. So hopefully I don't overstep what he had to say about that. I've seen a couple of places where he's talked about the two goats motif. But I do think that the two goats of the day of atonement, both of them separately, and yet in some ways together both points to Jesus' work on the cross. And yet trace through the testaments.
[00:43:32] I want to talk about one of those goats if we can, in the day of atonement. So you've got the day of atonement in Leviticus which is just, I mean, just a pinnacle event for the Israelite community. This is the time of year when the Israelites sort of make right with God.
[00:43:50] I grew up in the church. And I remember, you know, it was sort of like a baptisty kind of evangelical church. So, you know, preachers always saying cute little things. And one of the cute little things that I remember being said was atonement means "at one ment," you know, and I found out that actually, that's how the word sort of etymologically came to be formed and, you know, and that's just way too cute for me. But anyway, I just was shocked to find that's actually what that meant. I thought that had to be purely coincidental and just a cute thing that preachers say, but it's actually true. it was a word formulated in English to explain this concept of atonement, being made at one with God. And that really, it is a word that is derived of the Judeo Christian concept of Coming back into one with God.
[00:44:44] And there's two ways on the Day of Atonement that that happens. The first goat that is sacrificed to deal with sins. We could talk about that in another day, probably to what degree everyone sees blood as a necessary element in payment for sins or it can be controversial, but the second one, I just find to be completely fascinating in the way that the narrative plays out. and to see this trace through the book of Enoch, I just think is absolutely fascinating.
[00:45:17] So on the day of atonement, there's a Second goat. this isn't the one that is sacrificed and the blood spilled out and poured on the altar. This is a second goat. And what happens with this goat, sometimes called the scapegoat and that's a description that is given to it based on what it does, because it escapes bringing with it the sins of the people.
[00:45:37] What I want to be clear here is, it is a goat that is offered to Azazel. But it's not Azazel who provides atonement. It is very clear, both in the Hebrew and in most English translations, that Yahweh provides atonement by placing atonement on the goat and then giving the goat for Azazel. And the grammar is very clear on that. That's actually Yahweh who provides atonement with this scapegoat.
[00:46:04] So the sins of the people are placed on the goat and then the goat is sent out into the wilderness. And you go, well, what the heck is that about? why would they do that? And there's all sorts of folklore that is attached to this. And we have to make some assumptions because the day of atonement, Leviticus was written far before the book of Enoch. So we have to assume that there are parts of the history that we don't don't have, and there are bits and pieces of mythologies that lead back into different mythologies of the world.
[00:46:35] And we could get into that and try to make assumptions about things that the Israelites perhaps might've believed based on parallel mythologies in neighboring cultures, but I'd rather not be too speculative. I'd rather say that maybe some of these early beliefs might have carried forward and are now reflected in what we have as First Enoch.
[00:46:58] And so here's what we have in First Enoch is that you've got this, Azazel, who's one of the chieftains. he's not the top guy. He's one of the chieftains though. And Azazel leads the fallen watchers to teach secret knowledge to the humans. I already addressed that. But he's the first one to do it and basically sets a pattern for the others to do it.
[00:47:17] And this leads to the widespread human wickedness that is addressed in Genesis 6. 5. how did the world get so bad that God flooded the earth? Azazel inspired that. He started teaching this and the world got really bad. Well, his punishment was that he was then bound in the wilderness of Dudael or in the desert of Dudael.
[00:47:42] Okay. So he's basically buried in a big pit in the desert where he can't escape, maybe it would be a literalistic way to think about that. So then on the day of atonement when they send, they put the sins on the goat, what symbolically we're supposed to understanding is happening is that in the first goat sacrifice where they shed the blood of the goat, They're doing something to deal with the consequence of sin, we're going to deal with what the blood accomplishes. And then in the second goat, they're dealing with the sinfulness itself. So they're taking the sin itself and sending it back to its source.
[00:48:24] So if the sin was introduced to humankind by Azazel, then we're taking the actual sin itself, the sinfulness, and sending it back to its source. And so in that, it becomes a statement of repentance. because when we come to God and we say we want forgiveness of sins, we want to become at one with you again. We want to be restored. We don't just want the forgiveness of sins up till that point so that we can then go back commit more sins and then have to come back to the day of atonement again. And, and then again, and again, and again, what we actually want, and we see this more clearly in New Testament theology, is that we actually want to be healed, not just forgiven for our sins, but to be healed from our sinfulness, right? That there actually should be some sort of transformation that takes place until the day of glorification, right? And so there should actually be something taking place to take away, not just the sin's wrath, but sinfulness. And that's what we actually see on the day of atonement. And the second goat is some sort of statement of repentance, where now this second goat is taking sin back to where it belongs.
[00:49:31] This happens to have a messianic form to it because Jesus then, in his sacrifice on the cross, you have something happening that has to do with atonement. His blood is shed on the cross. we can't deny that there is something to deal with his blood that reconciles us to God. That's obvious. Exactly what happens there differs theologian to theologian. But his blood is shed on the cross.
[00:49:55] And then he descends to the spirits in prison that were disobedient in the days of Noah. And he proclaims something to them. That's first Peter three, 19 through 20. It doesn't say exactly what he preached to them or proclaimed to them, but he descends to them.
[00:50:12] Now there's something symbolic happening there because we're also told that Jesus bore our sins on the cross. Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 24, that he carried our sins in his body on the cross. carried our sins where? This is imagery that points to the second goat of the day of atonement sacrifice.
[00:50:34] Jesus is this goat that takes the sin to Azazel. As much as he is the day of atonement blood sacrifice settling the blood guilt for sins. he is also the second goat that carries away our sinfulness. he is also the picture of our repentance so that in Jesus, we are not just forgiven our sins, but we are healed from our sinfulness.
[00:50:57] And this is where we start to see pictures of and I think this has such widespread ministry application. It's part of the reason I wrote my most recent book. The gospel is bigger than you think is that in contemporary evangelical churches, we just have too many people that are happy to receive sort of this abstract sense of forgiveness. I believe something about Jesus and therefore I have my get out of jail free card, but they're not actually experiencing enough life change to really stay connected to their faith Their faith isn't actually doing anything for their life. It's not keeping them connected to their faith, they're not growing in their faith. Their faith isn't inspiring godly living. It's not helping them in their marriage and their parenting and they're not growing in sanctification and godliness. And, it's functionally not working. And if faith isn't playing out in day to day life, is that faith?
[00:51:49] Well, you know, we could go ask James that, and I think he would have some difficult words for that situation. And so it's part of the reason I wrote the book. And so I have a whole chapter on the first goat and a whole chapter on the second goat because I think these are really, really important issues.
[00:52:06] And in the second one, I'm pointing to this idea of transformation through repentance, this idea that Jesus really has sent our sins to Azazel, you know, he went down to the spirits, to Azazel in the wilderness of Dudael, right? That he's taken our sins to the pit, to Azazel, to its source.
[00:52:29] And that we are empowered by the Holy Spirit in us not to have to go back down there and dig it back up. And that's something unique that we have. That's different than a self help book. That if you are in Christ, you are empowered. This isn't a work that you do by your own flesh.
[00:52:45] You are empowered by the spirit of God in you. You don't have to go after your sins anymore because of the power of God in you. And I think that's something that more Christians need to hear. And believe. So anyway, , that's me preaching here for a second. But , that's where I see this messianic theme of the day of atonement playing out and really having transformative effects.
[00:53:06] Carey Griffel: Yeah, it's so exciting to hear you talk about all of that because I'm hearing you talk. It's like, these are the things I've been talking about. These are the things I think Caleb Lewis has been talking about. These are the things that Dr. Heiser would talk about. All of these things are wrapped up in the work of the Messiah.
[00:53:24] And so, you know, the question is about. What about the spiritual realm and how did those relate? And sometimes we get a little bit too particular about, well, I want to know who Azazel is. Is he exactly the same as Satan? And is he exactly the same as the leader? Like, none of those questions are getting to the heart of who the Messiah is and what he's doing, right? So you have all of these different formulations of what's going on, you have what we have in scripture, right, like in the Torah, our highest level of authority in the Old Testament.
[00:54:03] Then you have something like First Enoch that's talking about the same center of the Torah in a more particular way, like in this storied way , with spiritual beings and with the idea of what's going on there in a particular way. And it's not that we have to like separate those and say that It's all fiction because I think the whole narrative of Scripture shows that there is that reality there. But again, are we bringing it back into what Jesus is doing and into what our lives are doing, right?
[00:54:39] And the whole idea of being in the New Covenant. And Paul says having Spiritual Torah, the real Torah written on our hearts, instead of us trying to check off the boxes in fulfilling the written Torah, it's the Torah in our hearts that is connecting us to the ability to have that repentance and to live better lives as disciples of Jesus.
[00:55:04] Anthony Delgado: Yeah. And I think that's ultimately what it is. I mean, if the spirit of God is the author of Torah then yeah, we indeed do have Torah written on our hearts.
[00:55:13] Carey Griffel: Yeah. And this connection to, exile, that's why I started with exile today in this conversation, was because this is the theme of Azazel. This is the theme of sending the sins out to the wilderness, because the wilderness is the place of exile and the people of God go into exile and they are supposed to go there to be changed, to be transformed, to have that repentance.
[00:55:40] They're not sent there and God says, well, forget about you. I'm just going to start again with someone else. No, it's not someone else he's starting with. It's the remnant that is going to be the eschatological hope and we as the church are part of that. To me, that's a more exciting eschatology direction of thinking then let's hope to have all of this end and be raptured away. How are we living our lives? And what is the church doing as part of the kingdom of God, which the kingdom of God is part of that eschatological hope?
[00:56:17] Anthony Delgado: Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the apostle Paul says that we are already seated with him in heavenly places. in some ways I want to say that we're not in exile, or at least some of us aren't, we're calling out to the elect in the world and I'm going to use that word the way the Bible uses it, whether any listener is a Calvinist or an Arminian, they can interpret it however they want.
[00:56:38] On one hand, I want to say that we are seated with him, that we're no longer in exile, but we're calling out to the elect in the world who are in exile. So that's one way to think about it. That we are yet and they are not yet.
[00:56:54] Another way to think about it is that we are still in exile because it's very dynamic. Here's why I say that and I'll make sense eventually, I promise. if you were a Jew living in the second temple period, you would have understood yourself to be the remnant returns to the land.
[00:57:11] So yeah, you've returned from exile, but only ish, right? Because you still , have not inherited the full land promise. You are only the remnant. All of the tribes have not returned. And even if all the tribes had returned, all of the tribes have never been faithful. And even at that, all of the tribes are not even all of the tribes.
[00:57:32] If you just want to go and look at the lists of tribes across the scriptures, all of the tribes have never even been all of the tribes. And so that's a tricky bit of theological trivia there too. And so , what do you do with any of that? how do you ever get to the entirety of the elect people of God?
[00:57:50] And so it's always been a spectrum. When you talk about Jewish eschatology, the Jews just don't do eschatology like modern day systems. Modern day systems are like, this happens, then this happens and this happens and this happens. And that's not the way that Jewish eschatology was ever done.
[00:58:08] Jewish eschatology was always a growing towards, so there was a goal and a growing towards. And so it was never that any one thing would ever be completed Before another thing would be completed. It was always a growing in. If you actually go back to the garden, maybe this is the best illustration, to the dominion mandate. Maybe the dominion mandate is the best illustration for eschatology we get in scripture, because if you have Adam and Eve in the garden, what is garden eschatology? It's go have children and care for the garden so much that it expands until it covers the whole earth. That's the eschatology of the garden of Eden.
[00:58:52] And so that's actually Jewish eschatology, except that they also have a lot of undoing of the sinfulness of the world through their covenant with Yahweh that has to be done alongside of that. And so that actually probably ought to be, in fact, that is sort of my eschatology, but that ought to be the eschatology of the church.
[00:59:12] And I think that's one of the problems I think with modern day eschatology is that we are far too systemized in our thinking about eschatology. And we're always trying to put things into precise ordering in a way that not even the first century Christians were trying to do. They were thinking like second temple Jews and it was a process of unfolding, not of individual events.
[00:59:37] and so then if we were to think about this kind of growing in and enveloping the world with the people of God and the kingdom of God, which is more the way they were thinking about it, you can actually see that happening in the Second Temple literature if you want to go there.
[00:59:56] Carey Griffel: Garden eschatology. This is my new term now.
[01:00:00] I'm stealing this term. This is now my term because I don't like eschatology in the form of the systems. I think they are far too Western. I think they are trying to track things in a historical way that we are thinking about it. I don't think that's really embedded in the original context, which is why I like the already but not yet, because I do think that's a very biblical concept.
[01:00:24] It's very much what the Jews were thinking about in terms of the promises are going to be fulfilled, but every time I come to the idea of eschatology and trying to think about, what do I think about that? How do I see it in scripture? It's like the beginning connects with the end and the end connects with the beginning and it all meets up in the middle with Jesus.
[01:00:47] That's how I see it. And I think garden eschatology is a great way to put that because every time I go into Biblical studies or biblical theology proper in particular, the thing that I see over and over in all of the themes is how practical it is, how it feeds into a discipleship walk and how we're supposed to be living in life.
[01:01:12] And that is just the body of Christ. That's what we're supposed to do. That is the church, wrapped up in what Jesus did, in the purposes of creation, and its fulfillment and culmination in the end. So, that was really, really exciting to hear you bring all of that out.
[01:01:32] Let's go ahead and end with you telling us about your book and what we can expect in it and where we can find it and all of that good stuff to get people's whistles wet for it.
[01:01:45] Anthony Delgado: Well, thanks for having me on today, Carey. I appreciate the time to talk to your audience and share some different insights. If anybody wants to contact me, my website is Anthony Delgado. net. Pretty traditional spelling of those things. You can also email me, me, M E at Anthony Delgado. net. I try to answer most of my emails. That's my personal email. So. goes in my inbox with everything else and I'll see it. I do have a new book coming out. It's called The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think. And as I mentioned earlier, it's a biblical theological look at the gospel, tracing various motifs from the Old Testament through to the New Testament and tackling certainly not all of Christ's work but what I think are the major motifs of Christ's work through the testaments. And so you can find that very soon on Amazon and then shortly in other retailers.
[01:02:32] It'll drop in paperback first by mid August and then in weeks to come in ebook form Hardback and other retailers and eventually in audio book and all of that. So digital and all of that will be coming in weeks to come. If you wanted to go to anthonydelgado. net and click my books tab You can also find the book I released last year, the Watchers and the Holy Ones. And on the gospel is bigger than you think tab there, you can get on the watch list for the book release if so that you can be aware of when that comes out.
So that's that. And all my social media links are on my website as well. I'm pretty active on Facebook, Instagram, occasionally on X. And so love to connect with anybody, any way you can. Ask me questions. And I try to be active and available , to anybody who wants to connect.
So, yeah, thanks again Carey for having me on and appreciate your podcast and your insights keep up the great work. I appreciate you.
[01:03:33] Carey Griffel: Great. And thank you. Yes. So I will be posting links to your books in the show notes and you will also have your profile up on my website. So lots of places to find your work and connect with you and I hope and encourage a lot of people to do that. So thank you for coming on. I really appreciate the conversation and I always, always appreciate it when people have the gospel as their main focus.
I get that the weird things are compelling and there's really nothing wrong with being interested in those. We have that God given curiosity and there's a reason they spoke in such big terms. But too often I see people getting into the weird stuff and they forget about Jesus. It's like we forget to bring it back into the gospel. you know, people want to stay in the weird stuff instead of surfacing into the practicalness of what Jesus did.
So for those listening, please check out the upcoming book from Anthony, The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think: why a comprehensive gospel creates lasting kingdom impact.
So just that title right there tells you how this is going to speak into the church and be very important and insightful. And so as always, I hope you all enjoyed this conversation and I want to thank you all for listening, for sharing the episodes, for rating the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to those of you who donate through Patreon and PayPal. You guys absolutely rock.
And I appreciate those of you who also engage in discussion online, either on my Facebook group or through contacting me on my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com, which you can find blog posts whenever I remember to edit them and upload them at least, and guest profiles like the one Anthony will have. and also artwork if you're interested in that kind of thing. Thanks for joining me in this episode and I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
