The Legends of History

According to the Book of Enoch, 200 angels descended upon the earth to corrupt mankind. 20 angels are named as 'chief angels' or 'chief Watchers' and it is these angels that we'll be exploring in today's episode.

Whilst the traditional bible mostly keeps us in the dark about the character of Satan, another text that came to massively influence Christian thought shows us that Satan was more than just a villainous, sinful being that worked in opposition to God... he was a father. Whilst his two children are never mentioned in scripture, Paradise Lost reveals to us two characters that are as deadly as they ar...

If Adam and Eve were the first and only people on the earth, then who was it that Cain was so afraid of? In this episode, we'll be exploring some ideas throughout theology that seek to explain who these people were, whether Adam and Eve were really alone and how there may have been another race of humans created before or alongside them.

Many readers of the bible will know of the tale of Cain and Abel. But if we were to consult the Jewish legends that existed outside of the bible, we'd find some very interesting, perhaps even outlandish ideas that make Cain out to be so much worse...

Today we're looking at the Tower of Babel, a legend in the bible that shows the pitfalls of man's ambition. The Genesis account leads us to believe that this tower resulted in man's langauge being confused and seeing to the scattering of humanity across the globe. Other Jewish legends however provide even more details; that this tower was more of a ladder to heaven, a means by which ma...

Today we're looking at what life in Sodom & Gomorrah - two of the bible's most sinful cities - actually looked like. The traditional Genesis account leads us to believe that sexual deviancy was the root of their corruption, but if we dive deeper into the bible and consider extra-cannonical texts, we learn that life in Sodom and Gomorrah was even worse than one might orginally think.

Considering the state of the world right now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the demon ‘Leraie’, or ‘Leraikha’ hasn’t only been summoned from the depths of hell, but has actually been living on the earth amongst us… rent-free, might I add. Unlike the previous demons; multiheaded monsters, old men riding crocodiles and untameable horses, the demon Leraie appears not only in a more recognisable...

King James was a coward. Well, that’s according to the work of author Donald Tyson, who argues that cowardice and weakness was a part of the king’s nature. This was a man who preferred to lean on the arm of an attendant to walk, who sobbed ‘like a child’ to his captors and did very little to prevent the execution of his mother Mary Queen of Scots by order of Elizabeth I, although I suppose you cou...

A Jewish legend I’ve come across though appears to entertain the idea that what if we weren’t the first attempt? What if God had made a practice run of creating humanity? What if God had made drafts of mankind that he didn’t particularly like? What if there was a race before the human race… one that by the accounts from these Jewish legends, sound dreadfully unsettling.

The traditional Genesis tale explains that when Adam was still in the Garden of Eden, he was lacking a suitable companion. To the average reader, the biblical God is known to then create Eve by shaping her out of one Adam’s ribs in the second chapter of Genesis, and this is naturally presumed to be the first woman. However, some ancient scholars and rabbis took issue with this idea of Eve being th...

Solomon, the third king of Israel was no stranger to the dark arts or the occult. This was a king who had been blessed with divine wisdom after all and so it would make some sense that he would have some knowledge on that which was otherwise considered forbidden. By the turn of the Common Era, Solomon was associated with more than just a God given intellect, he was a master of magic, a forethinker...

Readers of Genesis will know there are some mainstay biblical tropes that for the sake of tradition and ‘sacredness’ are never seen to change. God creates the universe in six days, Adam is the first man, Eve is tempted by the serpent, both are kicked out of the Garden of Eden and forced to make a go of it on the then barren lands of the Earth. These are some of the cornerstones of the early Genesi...

After Adam and Eve transgress and are exiled from the Garden of Eden, the biblical account portrays the couple as exhibiting model behaviour. They aren’t shown to succumb to temptation, they aren’t seen to demonstrate any sort of corruption and they aren’t lured away by the likes of Satan, giving us the impression that they had learned their lesson. Considering there really aren’t any noteworthy d...

For eons, Satan has been portrayed as the model of wickedness. It was Satan who was cast down to the earth, Satan who was the corrupter of mankind, Satan who, otherwise coined as the ‘adversary’ to God, became the antithesis of all that was holy. Satan, as the devil, would become the archetype of sin itself - it was the devil that encouraged corruption, it was the devil that brought about calamity...

According to author Edith Hamilton, ‘The fairest in the world was Helen, the daughter of Zeus and Leda and the sister of Castor and Pollux. Such was the report of her beauty that not a young prince in Greece but wanted to marry her.’The way the poets speak of Helen, it’s true to say that when it came to her beauty, they had for themselves an impossible task. How did one describe the epitome of bea...

What would it take to become the most powerful person in the world? A bottomless pit of money, a substantial army with an exhaustive arsenal or maybe just a team of lawyers with no conscience? If none of those are an option for you then perhaps you might consider Beleth, a demon who will quite literally make you the most powerful person in the world, providing you’re able to flatter him, intimidat...

Chemosh. It’s one of those names the bible vilifies from its very onset. Naturally, it would do so. As one of the pagan gods that lured Solomon off the righteous path and one who openly received the offering of child sacrifice, you can see why Chemosh is held in such contempt. The bible has some choice words for him - he is ‘vile’, he is ‘detestable’, he is a deity who in spite of his relatively m...

Now you’ve probably heard the term thrown around quite a lot recently, with some misinterpreting Baal as a demon or as a deity that was built exclusively for the act of child sacrifice, but the worship of Baal is a little bit more complex. And yes, whilst child sacrifice was believed in some scholarly circles to be a form of Baal worship, this wasn’t the only practice - in fact, the more I look at...

When I’ve spoken about Moloch or Molek in the past, I’ve often referred to him as a deity - the likes of whom was worshipped by the neighbouring tribes of ancient Israel and by dissenters of the Israelite community themselves. The way Moloch is referred to in certain biblical passages makes it seem like there could be no other alternative....

The bible has its fair share of foreboding names, but two of them that seem to repeatedly stick out are Gog and Magog. These names are even now, met with some trepidation and fear amongst believers, who, depending on their interpretation of scripture, might view Gog and Magog as either specific, evil individuals, enemies of God’s and his chosen people or perhaps lands or territories that threatene...

The Old Testament God is often described as being pretty wrathful. This is a deity who drowns the entire world, who obliterates cities, who brings plague and pestilence to those who defy him in even the slightest of ways. Yet underneath this violent exterior, there are those who would say that this same God is full compassion and mercy. In fact, some would go as far as to say that when God deliver...

The biblical stories often present rivalries between women who, regardless of their position or status, seem to be keen to lock down a husband and produce him with heirs. Whether you look at Abraham’s wife Sarah, who ends up in a conflict with her handmaiden Hagar, or whether it’s the feud between the sisters Rachel and Leah, a man’s love interests could certainly cause him significant drama and h...

One of the biggest controversies I’ve seen in modern times surrounding Islam is the concept of the 72 virgins - those that according to some beliefs are rewarded to a Muslim upon his reaching of paradise. Whilst the Qur’an doesn’t actually ever mention 72 virgins, nor is there an explicit mention of any sexual gratification one might receive from them, various Hadith literature, these being report...

Much of the modern understanding of Moloch comes from the biblical accounts of Leviticus, both Books of Kings and the Book of Jeremiah, where Moloch is quite neatly established as a gruesome God of the Canaanites, who required the sacrifice of children. Throughout these accounts, God is seen to warn his people not to partake in such worship and that this practice was so despicable it could even be...

Whether the giants in the bible pertain to the likes of Goliath, who in some beliefs is a giant in the sense that he’s an exceptionally large human or whether the giants pertain to the likes of the Nephilim who were, in most circles, blood-thirsty monsters, certain believers will be under the impression that giants, whether human or not, did exist in ancient times. Therefore, in today’s episode, w...