Egyptian-Hebrew stream·The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)·Book I — Book of the Watchers·Chapter XV — Why the Watchers Sinned
Spirits ought not to mingle with flesh
The Lord addresses Enoch with the answer to the Watchers' petition: they were created spiritual and immortal; in begetting children of flesh they reversed the order — and from the dead bodies of the giants come the evil spirits that afflict the earth.
Source context
- Theme
- Divine rebuke of the Watchers and the ontological distinction between spiritual and earthly natures
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Second Temple Jewish angelologyChapter XV's insistence that angels, as spiritual beings, neither eat nor marry marks a formal boundary between purely spiritual hierarchies and embodied, procreative humanity — a distinction structurally congruent with the hierarchical stratification of beings found throughout Second Temple angelological literature.
- Neoplatonic ontologyThe text's division between immortal, immaterial angelic nature and mortal, matter-bound human nature shows cross-tradition congruence with the Neoplatonic scala naturae, which assigns distinct ontological registers to intellectual, psychic, and material levels of being.
- Zoroastrian cosmologyThe condemnation of the Watchers for abandoning a higher, luminous mode of existence to inhabit a lower, corruptible one shows cross-tradition congruence with Zoroastrian teaching on the corruption introduced when spiritual beings descend improperly into matter.
Chapter XV
CHAPTER XV.
1And He answered and said to me, and I heard His voice: 'Fear not, Enoch, thou righteous man and scribe of righteousness: approach hither and hear my voice. 2. And go, say to ⌈⌈the Watchers of heaven⌉⌉, who have sent thee to intercede ⌈⌈for them: "You should intercede"⌉⌉ for men, and not men for you: 3. Wherefore have ye left the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children of earth, and begotten giants (as your) sons? 4. And
though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten (children) with the blood of flesh, and, **as the children** of men, have lusted after flesh and blood as those ⌈also⌉ do who die and perish. 5. Therefore have I given them wives also that they might impregnate them, and beget children by them, that thus nothing might be wanting to them on earth. 6. But you were ⌈formerly⌉ spiritual, living the eternal life, and immortal for all generations of the world. 7. And therefore I have not appointed wives for you; for as for the spiritual ones of the heaven, in heaven is their dwelling. 8. And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. 9. 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. [10. As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for the spirits of the earth which were born upon the earth, on the earth shall be their dwelling.] 11. And the spirits of the giants **afflict**, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, ⌈but nevertheless hunger⌉ and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded ⌈from them⌉.
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