As an anthropology major at Stanford University, I was fascinated by myths from the ancient world. I like to think that there’s a nugget of truth to stories that have been passed down to us through the ages. The mists of time may have altered the details, but even the most improbable tale could well be based on real people and real events.
A few years ago, while browsing a bookstore in Oxford, England, I came across a copy of R. H. Charles’s translation of The Book of Enoch, and could not resist purchasing it. The Book of Enoch is an ancient text, dating back to perhaps two centuries before the birth of Christ. Though it contains the history of an Old Testament patriarch, Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, the book was struck from Hebrew scripture and discredited as apocryphal by early Christian fathers. It vanished from history, and for centuries, the text was thought to be forever lost.
But it was not, in fact, lost. Hidden in various secret places, The Book of Enoch had survived. In the 1700s, intact copies of the text, translated from Greek, were discovered in Ethiopia. And in 1947, in a cave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, a Bedouin shepherd made a magnificent discovery: jars containing ancient scrolls. From that complex of caves emerged seven fragments of The Book of Enoch, written in Aramaic.
Within the pages of this long-lost text lies a mystery that continues to puzzle scholars. It is the story of The Watchers, fallen angels who had sexual congress with women, producing an unholy race that would forever plague mankind:
Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called.
These mixed-race creatures, also known as Nephilim, appear in yet another ancient text, The Book of Jubilees. Here, also, they are described as evil and malignant. According to Jubilees, most Nephilim were destroyed during Noah’s time, but God allowed one tenth of their number to survive as subjects of Satan. Through their line, evil would continue to afflict the earth.
Angels and women mating to produce hybrid monsters? This is a fantastical tale indeed, and some biblical scholars suggest quite reasonably that these matings were, in truth, simply forbidden marriages between different tribes. That the “angels” were men from the lofty line of Seth, and the women came from a much lowlier tribe, descended from Cain.
Still, as a novelist, I could not help thinking: What if the tale of The Watchers was not merely allegory but history? What if Nephilim were real, and their descendants are still among us, still wreaking havoc?
Throughout the history of mankind, certain people have committed acts of such appalling cruelty that one wonders if they are truly members of the human race, or if they are a violent subspecies, driven by different needs and instincts. If one believes what was written in Enoch and Jubilees, then the acts of real monsters such as mass slaughterers Pol Pot and Vlad the Impaler can be explained. Nephilim have simply co-existed alongside us, invisible predators among the prey. And when the opportunity arises, when society breaks down during wartime or civil chaos, when the force of laws cannot keep us safe, those predators come out to play.
Only then do we discover who they really are.
Evil has no easy explanation. Today, more than two thousand years after The Book of Enoch was written, we are no closer to understanding why evil exists. All we know is that it does.