Abraham Allegiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 4) (35 page)

The cities [of Nimrod] mentioned in Gen 10:9-12 are given in a more or less chronological sequence. The list reads as a condensed resume of Mesopotamian history. Akkad, though still in use as a cult-center in the first millennium, had its
floruit
under the Sargonic dynasty. Kalhu had its heyday in the first half of the first millennium BCE
,
some fifteen hundred years later. If Nimrod is not a god, he must at least have enjoyed a divine longevity, his reign embracing both cities.
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Babel

The Tower of Babel incident is also an event that has a long history of as many interpretive possibilities as there are scholars.
The standard ancient interpretation was that Babel and its tower were simply the city of Babylon in mid-Mesopotamia that had been started, then stopped by the confusion of tongues, only to be reborn a thousand years later under Hammurabi’s predecessors.

Contrarily,
Anne Habermehl has argued that it was in the far northeastern part of Syria;
[xiv]
David Rohl argued that Babel was actually the oldest known city of Eridu in the southernmost region of Sumeria on the gulf, and its tower was the famous ziggurat called
Nunki
.
[xv]

Again, with so many different interpretations possible, spanning thousands of miles of geography, no one really knows. But I went with the traditional interpretation on this one because it was still a sensible option. Unfortunately, because the water table is so high in the modern region of the ruins of Babylon, we will never be able to excavate any layers of sediment below to discover its more ancient past.

Abraham

The picture of Abraham as a warrior fits very well with the warrior motif of
Chronicles of the Nephilim
. But even this is not as much fiction as it is Biblical fact because in Genesis 14 we read about Abram leading 318 warriors trained in his household on a rescue mission of his nephew Lot. Not only did he and his men, along with an unspecified group of allies from three friendly Amorite tribes, bring back the Sodomite captives and their booty, they overwhelmed a four-city coalition army that had just swept through Canaan wiping out giant clans. Abraham and his men were no mere pastoral shepherds. They were warriors.

Semiramis

Another tradition that shows up in ancient legends surrounding Nimrod and Babylon is that of Queen Semiramis. The most well known ancient reference to this queen of Babylon comes from the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who wrote of the mythical romance of Semiramis with King Ninus, around 2189 B.C.
[xvi]
Since Ninus was the reputed founder of Nineveh, it was a simple connection to be made with Nimrod who was the founder of Nineveh in the Bible.

Later in 18
53, Protestant minister Alexander Hislop expanded on the relationship of Nimrod and Semiramis in
The Two Babylons
. Hislop’s mythmaking became very influential though it was entirely fabricated by the writer to serve his anti-Catholic polemic.
[xvii]

The closest historical personage that can be said to be the source of the Semiramis legends was Queen Shammuramat of Assyria, who reigned with King Shamshi-Adad V around 824-811 B.C., and whose Neo-Assyrian empire included Babylonia. There was a legend that she had once been a brothel keeper in Uruk, thus her connection with Shamhat the harlot from
Gilgamesh Immortal
.

Arba

The giant king Arba makes his appearance in
Abraham Allegiant
. But this is not a character of the author’s imagination. There was a giant named Arba after whose name the city of Kiriath-Arba (later called Hebron) was named. He was of such significance to the author of Joshua, that he wrote of him, “Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim” (Joshua 14:15), and that “he was the father of Anak” (15:13). The Anakim were the giant descendants of the Nephilim who seemed to dominate southern Canaan when Israel arrived for conquest. Joshua’s campaign in the hill country was focused on eliminating these Anakim as mortal enemies (Joshua 11:21-22).

Since Arba was the father of the giant Anak who birthed the people devoted to destruction
much later in history, and since Abraham was said to live only two miles from the city founded by Arba (Gen 13:18; 23:2), it is not too much to speculate that Arba may have met Abraham, foreshadowing the providential rivalry these two people groups would have over that territory.

The Destroyer

“The Destroyer” is a translation of the Hebrew word used of the angel who entered the houses of the Egyptians and killed their first born as God’s last plague on the Hebrews’ oppressors (Ex 12:23). The
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
says of this peculiar angel,

“’Destroyer’ is the designation of a supernatural envoy from God assigned the task of annihilating large numbers of people, typically by means of a plague… there was originally a distinction between the angel of death who comes to an individual at the time appointed for him to die and the Destroyer who massacres entire populations with premature and violent deaths. Later traditions, however, fuse the two conceptions.
[xviii]

In 1 Chronicles 21:14-16 we see a poignant picture of God sending the Destroyer t
o wipe out Jerusalem with a plague, but changing his mind from the calamity. One wonders if this is not also what happened at Babel.

Babel Inheritance

Another key element of the storyline of
Chronicles of the Nephilim
is the allotment of nations to the sons of God as punishment for humanity’s rebellion. While I wrote a bit about this in the appendices of
Noah Primeval
,
Abraham Allegiant
is where this fascinating biblical theological legal concept takes place at the Tower of Babel incident.

A brief look at the original full text of the Tower of Babel
pericope in the Bible will help set the stage for a closer look at the theological ramifications of what it was all about.

Genesis 11:1–9

1
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2
And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3
And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
5
And the
Lord
came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6
And the
Lord
said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7
Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
8
So the
Lord
dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9
Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the
Lord
confused the language of all the earth. And from there the
Lord
dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

So we see that within a short time after the Flood, mankind had proven to be corrupt once again in seeking to unite in a headlong pursuit of self-deification. They decidedly used kiln-burned brick with bitumen for mortar most likely because of their memory of the Flood wiping away their mud brick buildings and temples. This waterproofing technique was the first expression of their devious attempt to circumvent God’s future judgment.

Then they seek to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.”
The Hebrew word for tower no doubt referred to the ziggurat temple-tower at the heart of every Mesopotamian city. To discover the idolatrous meaning of this reference, John Walton explains that the function of the ziggurats came from the names given to them:

For instance, the name of the ziggurat at Babylon,
Etemenanki
, means “temple of the foundation of heaven and earth.” One at Larsa means “temple that links heaven and earth.” Most significant is the name of the ziggurat at Sippar, “temple of the stairway to pure heaven.” The word translated “stairway” in this last example is used in the mythology as the means by which the messenger of the gods moved between heaven, earth, and the netherworld.
[xix]

So the temple-tower of Babylon was a religious incarnation of their attempt to
create a forbidden link between heaven and earth by building their own stairway to heaven for the gods, a violation of God’s monarchic authority.

Then
they seek to “make a name for themselves,” which is a common biblical and ancient Near Eastern idiom for greatness. By uniting together, their pride was so great that there would be no limit to their hubris. This blasphemous self-deification would be a real threat because, remember, mankind was God’s image, his representative ruler over creation. So, if man would unite in this kind of rebellion, imagine the evil that would result, an evil that might rival what happened before the Flood.

So the confusion of tongues and dispersion of mankind breaks apart the tyrannical potential of this global one world government.

We are told twice that God “dispersed them over the face of the earth” in order to stop the megalomaniacal and totalitarian potential of mankind unified in rebellion against God.

The seventy nations described in Genesis 10 are the resultant new boundaries
allotted to mankind that came from this Dispersion.

But this Dispersion is not the whole picture. There is something else that happens at this dividing of mankind, something spiritual and legal in the heavenly courtroom of God. God actually divides up the seventy nations and apportions them under the authority of the
Bene ha Elohim
, the sons of God, those divine beings that surround his heavenly throne.

Let’s take a look at some of the
Biblical passages that reveal this allotment of nations.

Deut. 32:8–9

When the Most High gave to the nations their
inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the
Lord
’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

In this passage, the Scripture refers to the “dividing of mankind,” which happened in the Dispersion at the Tower of Babel that we already looked at. God separated the nations by giving them different languages so they can no longer unite in blasphemous self-deification. And he divides up the borders of their dwelling. But he does so
according to the number of the sons of God
.

God
put the seventy divided nations under the authority of these sons of God to whom they were “allotted.” But he allotted the people of Jacob to himself as his heritage. The question then arises, what kind of authority do these sons of God have over the nations? Are they good or evil host of heaven? A look at other Biblical passages reveals that these sons of God are fallen beings and they are to become the false deities that own and rule over the pagan nations as Yahweh owns and rules over his people.

Deut. 4:19-20

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the
Lord
your
God has allotted to all the peoples
under the whole heaven. But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a
people of his own inheritance
, as you are this day.

Deut. 29:24-26

“All the nations will say, ‘
Why has the LORD done thus to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’ “Then men will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went and served other gods and worshiped them,
gods whom they have not known and whom He had not allotted to them
.

Here again, we see a description of the “allotment” of the host of heaven to the pagan nations along with the allotment of Israel to Yahweh as his inheritance. The gentile nations are allotted to the sons of God/heavenly host/false gods of the land, while Israel is allotted to Yahweh and Yahweh allotted to Israel.

But notice in this passage, there is an equivalency of the sun, moon and stars with the host of heaven, a term used interchangeably with the
Sons of God.
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The sun, moon, and stars were worshipped as gods, and Yahweh is saying that these gods are the ones allotted to the nations. So, this is not a holy host of heaven, but an unholy host of heaven. These sons of God are not in God’s heavenly court, they are evil fallen beings from that divine council.