Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (34 page)

It was hell that came.

Mikael and the Destroyer led the Meat Puppet monstrosity into the center of the city where the riot of blinded Sodomites had occurred.

The occult spell that Ashtart had used was loosening its grip on the creature as it stumbled into the open square near Lot’s old home.

But the angels were not running away. They were drawing everyone to the epicenter of their plan.

As they reached their destination, they turned and faced the Meat Puppet and the few stragglers still stumbling around in the aftermath of the blinding. They were crying for mercy. Their eyes had been burned out of their sockets and they were flailing for anything to grab onto for security.

Mikael and the Destroyer stood in the center of the yard. Mikael looked up and prayed, “El Shaddai, God Almighty, the Most High God, El Elyon, possessor of the heavens and earth, bring down your wrath!”

With that prayer, the Destroyer lifted his massive sword and plunged it into the ground all the way up to the hilt.

The earth trembled and shook.

The Meat Puppet lost its footing and fell to the ground.

Up above, a large storm cloud had gathered. Thunder cracked the sky.

The Sodomites were circling the angels.

But suddenly, a light from heaven burned down upon the two angels and they were gone, taken away.

All along the Valley of Siddim, the long gigantic rift began to spasm. Large fractures opened in the crust. Massive amounts of heat and gas escaped into the air.

The land was rolling like a tsunami wave of earth.

Up above, lightning now joined the thunder in the black heap of cumulus storm clouds.

Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were at the very epicenter of the catastrophic conflagration. Their buildings crumbled in the wake. The sounds of a population in chaos could be heard in each city as their citizens sought refuge and could find none.

The storm front created a pressurized system that caused a huge uprush of wind from the ground to the sky.

Outside the city, the bitumen pits were exploding with black pitch spewing out like a field of small gushing volcanoes of black vomit. The earth was in upheaval. It was belching forth gasses, solids, and liquids into the sky. The hurricane like winds sucked the volatile materials up into the whirlwinds high above the entire valley.

And then the lightning struck.

A massive display of multiple lightning strikes painted the sky with a frightening brush that lit the combustible elements in the whirlwind.

The effect was a rainstorm of fire and brimstone from heaven that engulfed the four cities of the plain in a furnace of sulfurous flames.

Nothing survived.

Ado had made it back to the city gates by the time it had all started. She was turned into a pillar of salt. Everything was turned to salt and embers.

But the finale was yet to come.

One last seismic convulsion ripped through the plain and the entire valley dropped three hundred feet in five seconds. It was like the earth had been sucked downward.

The sudden surface change created a runoff of the Salt Sea that now rushed in to fill the newly lowered plain. A wall of water washed over the cities of the plain, putting out the fires and burying the inhabitants and their ruins under a blanket of salt water. A new shoreline washed up all the way to the town of Zoar where Lot had stayed.

Black steam billowed and mixed with the smoke of the burning bitumen.

The plans of Ba’al and Ashtart had been thwarted. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, were now under the deadly brine waters of the Salt Sea.

Thirty miles away at Mamre, Abraham stood in awe of the huge black pillars of smoke that poured into the sky like the smoke of a furnace. The cities of the plain were gone from the face of the earth, buried in the judgment of El Shaddai.

Lot had been so traumatized by the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah that he took his daughters up out of Zoar and lived in a cave in the hills away from all human contact.

It caused his daughters to fret that they would never be in the presence of civilization again and become two old unmarried maids. So they acted out of desperation to preserve their family seed in honor of their mother.

One evening, they got their father drunk, which was not hard to do, since he had lapsed into depression from his lifetime of failure to honor his god El Shaddai.

The eldest, Ishtar, then slept with him to get pregnant. Because Lot had been so inebriated, he had no recollection of the incestuous deed, just a phantom memory of having a shameful dream that made him even more depressed.

The second evening, the daughters got him drunk again and Gaia, the youngest slept with him and got pregnant as well.

The fruit of their incestuous intercourse would one day prove to be a thorn in the side of Abraham’s seed to come, as the firstborn bore a son and called him Moab. The younger one bore a son and called him Ben-ammi. These two would be the fathers of the Moabites and the Ammonites.

• • • • •

True to his word, El Shaddai did visit Sarah one year after the incident of laughing. This time, it was to oversee a birth. Sarah did conceive as El Shaddai promised and she bore a son for Abraham, whose name was Isaac. This time Sarah laughed with happiness instead of doubt and said, “God has made laughter for me. I have borne a son for Abraham in his old age.”

• • • • •

Somewhere out in the Negeb desert, not too far from the ruins of Kiriath-Arba, a young fifteen year old giant named Anak finished his fighting practice for the day and was sitting before a fire. His long muscular neck pulsated with rage as he listened to an old witch tell him again the story of his birth and the annihilation of his entire giant clan by the armies of Abraham who came from the oaks of Mamre.

One day,
he thought,
I will spawn a people and destroy the entire seed of this Abraham. And my seed will rule Canaan.

Chronicles of the Nephilim
continues with the next book,
Joshua Valiant.

There is a danger for any author who shares the research behind his fictionalized storytelling. If he reveals “what really happened” as different from his story, then readers may have their story spoiled much like a child who is told the true story behind Santa Claus. If he shares the choices he makes of which evidence he chose over others, then the magic and mystery is ruined for those who prefer their imagination to the “historic details.” But since I have established a kind of tradition by providing appendices in each of the books of the
Chronicles of the Nephilim
, I have decided to continue that dangerous tradition with the hopes of inspiring readers to go deeper in their study of the Bible than daily devotions and inspirational readings.

Retelling the story of the Tower of Babel and the life of Abraham is a particularly difficult task. The problem is that the further back in history one goes, the murkier are the waters, and anything in the fourth millennium B.C. Mesopotamia is complete guesswork. Biblically speaking, anything before the Davidic monarchy around 1000 B.C. is being increasingly contested by archaeological interpretations of the Near East.

The biblical scholarly consensus is that Abraham lived around 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia. But
the evidence for this is thin and largely anecdotal. The best that can be offered is that there are some customs discovered in second millennium archives like Ebla and Mari that are similar to some customs in the Patriarchal narratives. Famous Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen elucidates these similar customs such as treaty types, patriarchal proper names, patriarchal religion, slave prices, the use of camels, and other cultural customs.
[i]

But David Noel Freedman points out that such cultural connections are not very reliable in establishing dates because “The Middle Bronze pattern of social custom and practice survived basically unchanged for centuries in certain localities in the Near East.”
[ii]

Of all the events that occur in the Abraham narrative, none of them correspond with any known external historical or archaeological sources we have. This is not to say Abraham was made up, but merely to point out that scholars simply do not know for sure when Abraham’s story took place in history because they do not have corroboration.

With the release of
Centuries of Darkness
in 1991 by Peter James, a dirty little secret of historiography was let out of the bag: There is a period of several centuries of historical “darkness” at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the received historical chronology of the ancient world. James argued that this period of darkness was an artifact of improper chronological accounting of the texts. A chronological revolution was established that began to rewrite ancient world chronology with a three hundred year shift.

Much of ancient history is anchored in Egyptian
chronology that is notoriously ambiguous and imprecise and creates problems for all kinds of historical anchoring of events. Donovan Courville in the 1970s, and more recently David Rohl, has explored the Egyptian problems to offer a “New Chronology” of the ancient world that roots Biblical history in new contexts significantly different from the conventional chronology.
[iii]
They too have shaken up the establishment by uncovering the significant chronological problems of the conventional view.

In more recent years, Gerald Aardsma, has offered the
biblical theory that the Exodus occurred in 2450 B.C.,
nearly one thousand years earlier
than the conventional dates of 1445 B.C. or 1225 B.C.
[iv]
This would place Abraham in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. instead of 2000 B.C. A radical reconsideration. But the reason why this is all so important is because the standard interpretation of Biblical archaeology is increasingly that the events of the Bible did not happen because they do not line up with the artifactual evidence of archaeology. There is simply no evidence of a crushing defeat of Egypt or the resultant wandering of the Jews in the desert around the traditional date of 1445 - 1400 B.C. (or the more critical late date of 1275 B.C.) There is no evidence of the cities of Ai or Jericho being inhabited, much less destroyed around the dates that biblical scholars say they must have happened. Aardsma shows that there is however archaeological evidence of all of the above occurring about one thousand years earlier than normally attested by Bible scholars. With a thousand year shift backwards, all the Biblical history falls into place with known external evidence.

I write this because in my fictionalized novel,
Abraham Allegiant
, I used the interpretation of ancient Jewish texts and legends as my paradigm to place Abraham back during the time of the Tower of Babel, an event that would be considered about a thousand years before Abraham under the conventional chronology. While this supposition is largely rejected now, it has a long venerable tradition in 2nd Temple Jewish literature and Talmudic interpretation and shows up in Ginzberg’s famous
Legends of the Jews
.
[v]
It is that interpretation that I found interesting enough to present within the pages of the novel because I have used these ancient Jewish sources throughout the entire series of
Chronicles of the Nephilim
to bring to life such characters as Enoch, Noah, Adam, Cain, the archangels Mikael, Gabriel and Uriel, and others.

The Book of Jasher

One of the dominant references I used in retelling this tale of Abraham and the Tower of Babel was the ancient
Book of
Jasher
.
Jasher
is said to be one of the historical sources used by the Bible writers for their own texts (Josh 10:13; 2Sam 1:18). The only copy we have of this text is a medieval manuscript that most believe is a forgery. But Bible researcher Ken Johnson has argued for its authenticity based on the caliber of its writing, its possible transmission, its inclusion of the Biblically quoted material, as well as other missing details. Johnson fearlessly confronts some of the strange things in the book as indications of why it is not Scripture, while maintaining it as a solid historical reference used by the Bible writers. He argues that it was one of the texts brought from Jerusalem to Spain at the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
[vi]

In the
Book of Jasher
, we read about the story of Nimrod building the Tower of Babel and hearing an astrological prophecy about the birth of Abram whose seed would rule over kings. Nimrod confronts Abram by throwing him in a furnace of fire, and Abram survives it by a miracle. It is also in this text that Amraphel, the king of Shinar who joined the four-nation confederation of Chedorlaomer that invaded Canaan, is explained as Nimrod under a new name.

What’s in a Name

The idea of individuals changing their names is nothing new in the ancient world. We know that Abram’s name which meant “exalted father” was changed to Abraham to mean “father of many nations” (Gen 17:5) based on the historical events of God’s covenant with him. Later in the Bible, Jacob (“usurper”) was changed to Israel (“struggles with God”) as the ancestor of the people of God. Even ancient gods changed names based on locales. Inanna of Sumer became Ishtar of Babylonia, and then Ashtart of Canaan. Ninurta of Sumer was probably the basis for Marduk of Babylon, and then Ba’al of Canaan.

While it is a cardinal rule not to change a character’s names in a
modern story in order to avoid confusion, I have utilized this technique of changing names and identities as a foundational element in the
Chronicles of the Nephilim
storyline in order to incarnate the living cultural zeitgeist of the ancient world. Names were more than mere shallow title references to a person; they were believed to incarnate the person’s very essence or identity, as well as mark significant moments in their lives.

Yahweh

Even God himself is referred to by many different names in Scripture. Critical scholars use this fact to concoct a conspiracy theory that these different names were different gods that Israel worshipped in their own pantheon. As years went by elitist Jewish religious leaders became more intolerant. They finally recorded their zealous monotheist demands to worship one God instead of the others, but somehow foolishly left the residue of polytheism in the text of the Bible by neglecting to edit out the names from their source texts.

Apart from the fact that there is not a single scrap of actual
historical or archeological evidence for this theorizing, it also reeks of modern imperialism by projecting stupidity onto the writers of some of the most intelligent and poetic literature in history. Such arrogance is easily dismissed when one studies the ancient cultural context of divine names as expressing character traits related to specific situations.

The text that illustrates this most suitably is Exodus 6:3
-4 where God speaking to Moses says, “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Shaddai, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them.”

Unfortunately, English translations obscure the meaning of the text by painting over the Hebrew names with bastardized generic terms. Thus, Yahweh is translated as “the LORD,” and El Shaddai, as “God Almighty,” which drains them of their rich cultural context and meaning. And English translations further this offensive
activity by translating El Elyon as “God Most High,” and Elohim as “God,” and on and on. We have reduced the names of the living God to nameless generic references to a “supreme being.” This
de-naming
of Yahweh Elohim is more a reflection of the Greek impersonal “Prime Mover” than the Hebrew personal “Named One.”

But when one researches the meaning behind the original Hebrew words,
their truer fuller meaning comes to light. Elohim is revealed as a more generic plural reference to the Creator as all humankind can know through general revelation.
[vii]
El Elyon has a linguistic affinity to the Ugaritic “Elyon Ba’al” a name for the Most High God of Canaan, and therefore a polemical stance against him. Ba’al is not the Most High, the God of Israel is.
[viii]
El Shaddai, carries with it a possible derivation of “God of the mountain,” a common understanding of deities in the ancient Near East as revealed in power on mountains (Mount Sinai and Mount Zion are God’s locations of self-disclosure).
[ix]
Finally, Yahweh is the “eternally self-existent one” who is the unique covenantal name of Israel’s deity in opposition to the nations.
[x]

When Yahweh told Moses he revealed himself to the forefathers as El Shaddai, but not as Yahweh, he was saying that they only knew him in a limited sense that was not as full as he was about to reveal. The Mosaic revelation on Sinai would be a dramatic world changing self-disclosure of God’s unique character through his Law, a new revelation of God. This is what would separate them from the nations as a holy people of God’s own choosing.

In the section below on Babel Inheritance,
Deuteronomy 32:9 is shown to describe Yahweh as dividing the nations up at Babel and allotting the peoples under the authority of other gods, while keeping Israel as his own people. Yahweh would be the name he would use to mark the strong demarcation between his people and the people in slavery to other gods.

Gilgamesh

This ancient Near Eastern obsession with changing names was also why I made Gilgamesh change his name and identity into Nimrod. This was not mere fancy or fabrication. There are some scholars who believe that Gilgamesh was the person behind the Nimrod of the Bible. But again, because of its antiquity, there are as many theories of who Nimrod really was as there are scholars.

W
.H. Gispen listed just a few options of theories for the true historical identity of Nimrod by other scholars:

1.
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (2750 – 2600 B.C.)

2.
Ninurta, the Sumerian deity

3.
Marduk, the Babylonian deity

4.
Tikulti-Ninurta, king of Assyria (1242-1206 B.C.)

5.
Naram-Sin, king of Akkad (approx. 2300 B.C.)

6.
Sargon, king of Akkad (2350 – 2294 B.C.)
[xi]

7.
Enmerkar, king of Eridu in Sumer (approx. 2850 B.C.)
[xii]

As the reader can see, the theories are as widespread and diverse in their possibilities as a deity
or a king, with a space of about one thousand years difference of possible fulfillment. The conclusion is pretty clear: Nobody really knows who Nimrod
really was
, but the name of Nimrod was most likely a Hebrew play on words that demonized the leader, because Nimrod in Hebrew means “to revolt.” One hardly thinks a person would make his name with such negative connotations, since such kings often considered themselves like the gods.

Unless a king did so as a defiant gesture “in the face of” a deity he hated.
Thus the motivation behind the Nimrod of the
Chronicles
.

Scholars van
der Toorn and van der Horst suggest that Nimrod was most likely a deliberately distorted Hebrew version of Ninurta as the hunter god of Mesopotamia. They argue that the reign of Nimrod was most likely a symbolic synopsis of the history of Mesopotamia embodied in one character, a deity deliberately dethroned by the Jewish writer to a hunter king.