PRESENTING THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT - THE WORLD'S MOST BAFFLING BOOK

Voynich Manuscript, p. 32, depicting unrecognisable plant forms (public domain) NB - please click on each picture in this article (and also in all of my other blog articles) to obtain an enlarged view.

Amid the vast store of knowledge contained within Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is a unique manuscript lavishly illustrated with colour paintings of strange plants and astronomical/astrological symbols, not to mention a varied selection of what its researchers refer to as 'nymphs' (i.e. nude women). The only problem is that the ornate script of the text in this very remarkable book is written in a wholly unknown language that has withstood all attempts in modern times to decipher it.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 170, including fold-out sections (public domain)

This baffling tome (which is over 200 pages long – though some pages are missing - and also includes several fold-out, multi-part pages) is known as the Voynich Manuscript. It is named after New York-based Polish book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in 1912 from the library of the Villa Mondragone, a former Jesuit college in the commune of Frascati, central Italy. Accompanying the manuscript when he purchased it was a letter dated 1666, written to the famous Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (died 1680) by his former tutor, the eminent Bohemian doctor/scientist Johannes Marcus Marci (died 1667). In his letter, Marci claimed that the manuscript's author had been identified as Roger Bacon, a 13^th-Century Franciscan friar who was  also an outstanding English proto-scientist/alchemist, by one of the manuscript's most illustrious previous owners - the Holy Roman Emperor and Bavarian king Rudolf II (died 1612). In 2009, however, precise internal carbon-14-dating of its vellum by researchers from the University of Arizona revealed that it had actually been created two centuries later, some time between 1404 and 1458, probably originating in northern Italy during the Renaissance.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 158 - multi-page representations of inexplicable astronomical and/or astrological symbols (public domain)

Rudolf II passed the manuscript to Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz (died 1622), who presided over the emperor's botanical gardens, from whom it somehow found its way into the ownership of Georg Baresch, a Prague alchemist. Unable to decode its contents, in 1639 Baresch sent samples of it to Kircher, in the hope that this acclaimed scholar and code-breaker could succeed where he had failed, but there is no record of any results obtained by Kircher, though he did seek, unsuccessfully, to purchase the manuscript from Baresch. Following Baresch's death in 1662, however, it was acquired by Marci, who did pass it on to Kircher – but what happened to it then, and, indeed, for the next two centuries, is unknown. However, in or around the 1870s, along with Kircher's collected correspondence from a lifetime of scholarly research and writings, the manuscript found its way into the personal libraries of the faculty of the Collegio Romano (which is now the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome), and thence to the Villa Mondragone, where in 1912 it was seen and purchased by Voynich.

After purchasing it, Voynich made copies of this puzzling manuscript available to many of the world's leading code-breakers, including British and American teams previously and subsequently employed in cipher interpretation during the two World Wars, as well as ancient language researchers - but all to no avail. Not only is the language resolutely incomprehensible, most of the illustrated species of flower do not even exist! In fact, many seem to be chimerical, combining portions from several totally separate species (e.g. the flowers of one species combined with the roots of a second species and the leaves of a third). Indeed, as noted by Gerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill in their comprehensive investigative book The Voynich Manuscript (2004), it is as if even the very illustrations themselves have been encrypted – and perhaps they have!

Voynich Manuscript, p. 66, depicting some additional unidentifiable plants  (public domain)

Voynich died in 1930, after which the manuscript passed to his widow, Ethel Lilian, and when she died in 1960, she bequeathed it to her good friend Anne Nill, who in turn sold it the following year to antique book dealer Hans P. Kraus. However, Kraus's attempts even to market it (let alone translate it) ended in such disappointment that in 1969 he donated the exasperating tome to Yale University, where it still resides to this day, officially catalogued there as Beinecke MS 408.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 24 (public domain)

But who was the author of this most extraordinary of tomes, and how did it come into the possession of Rudolf II? These questions frame a mystery just as sizeable, a controversy just as considerable, as the nature of this manuscript's contents. Voynich thought it likely that the person who sold the manuscript to Rudolf II was none other than esteemed English mathematician, scholar, and mage John Dee (1527-1608). However, his belief stemmed from Marci's mistaken claim that the manuscript had once been owned by Roger Bacon (Voynich was aware that Dee had possessed a notable collection of Bacon's manuscripts), but Marci's claim was of course discounted almost half a century after Voynich's death by the radiocarbon-dating results that placed the manuscript's creation two centuries after Bacon had died. So Bacon had never owned it, nor could he have authored it – a popular theory prior to the radiocarbon tests.

Several other historical figures, including Marci himself, have been named as potential authors by various researchers, but none is convincing in this role. Moreover, some investigators have even deemed it possible that Voynich himself created the manuscript – i.e. a skilful modern-day forgery that someone with his specialised knowledge of antiquarian books and documents might have successfully accomplished. However, the very precise internal nature of the radiocarbon-dating would seem to invalidate this hypothesis.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 78, containing the famous, so-called 'nymphs in a bathtub' illustration (public domain)

As for what the Voynich Manuscript actually represents – once again, the theories are as diverse as they are diverting. Among the identities offered to explain it are that it represents an attempt to devise an artificial language; it is an extravagant hoax that has no meaning whatsoever; it is an example of spirit-mediated automatic writing; or it is an exceedingly peculiar herbal or pharmacopoeia. However, one of the very few persons to achieve even the slightest degree of success in exposing its secrets, Yale University's own Professor Robert S. Brumbaugh (author of The World's Most Mysterious Manuscript, 1977), considers it to be an alchemical work - such works are well known for their intricate symbolism and cryptic text. A few scribbled calculations in the manuscript's margins led him to formulating a code whereby he was able to decipher some of the names of those few illustrated plants in it that are recognisable species, and also certain stars. Aside from that, the text's contents continue to remain a complete mystery.

I too have speculated that it may conceivably be an elaborate alchemical treatise. The reason why such works were so fiendishly (but purposefully) impenetrable was so that only bona fide alchemists could translate them and discover the lore that they contained - thereby protecting them, and their alchemist readers, from persecution and obliteration by contemporary religious zealots who considered alchemy to be blasphemous and a dark art.

Bizarre plant-animal hybrids depicted in the Codex Seraphinianus (© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)

The hoax identity for the Voynich Manuscript is also intriguing, if only because there is at least one very relevant precedent in existence – the Codex Seraphinianus. Originally published in Italy by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981, this is another fascinating tome, consisting of two volumes each of 127 pages, which are packed throughout with gorgeous multicoloured illustrations of grotesque non-existent plants (and all manner of phantasmagorical animals too, as well as bizarre anatomies, food, and fashion) plus text written in an indecipherable language and unique script.

Miraculous mer-folk(?) from the Codex Seraphinianus (© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)

However, the origin of this ostensibly enigmatic work is not – and never has been - in dispute. It is the creation of Italian artist and designer Luigi Serafini, who expressly prepared it between 1976 and 1978 in order to demonstrate that a highly complex and very perplexing manuscript but one without any meaning to it whatsoever could indeed be produced.

Fabulous flora from the Codex Seraphinianus (© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)

Incidentally, if, like me, you are fascinated by spellbinding works such as this one, you will be pleased to learn that the Codex Seraphinianus is readily available to purchase (albeit at a not-inconsiderable price) here on Amazon's UK site and here on its USA site.

A scene from the weird wonderland depicted in the Codex Seraphinianus (© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)

The nature of the Voynich Manuscript text's language has attracted several different suggestions. As noted earlier, one such suggestion is that it constitutes an artificial, constructed language. Others include the possibility that it is an example of micrography (i.e. its meaning is concealed within the construction of each text character), or of steganography (i.e. its true message is hidden within another, outer message), or is a little-known natural language written in a manufactured alphabet. Alternatively, perhaps it is a more familiar language but which has been purposefully rendered obscure by mapping it through a cipher to the manuscript's alphabet. Or could it be a series of codes needing to be looked up in a codebook – but if so, where and what is this crucial codebook?

Close-up of the Voynich Manuscript text's elegant but esoteric script (public domain)

On 20 February 2014, media articles around the world reported the claim by linguistics professor Stephen Bax that he had made a breakthrough in that he had successfully identified and deciphered various astronomical and botanical proper nouns (numbering 10 in total) within the manuscript's text, including the constellation Taurus, what appears to be the seven-member Pleiades star cluster, and 'kantairon' – a word seemingly alluding to the herb commonly known as centaury, popular in medieval times. However, it was stressed that Prof. Bax had not solved the entire mystery of the manuscript's meaning, but that he was reporting what he had uncovered so far in order to encourage others to investigate and help decode this centuries-old riddle.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 80 (public domain)

When I wrote the original, much shorter version of this account back in 1995, for inclusion in my forthcoming book The Unexplained, I wondered if Yale University had considered the idea of self-publishing the Voynich Manuscript, selling it in their bookshops and any others willing to stock it, and announcing in a blaze of media publicity that a handsome prize would be given to anyone who succeeded in deciphering the manuscript and made their methods available for independent scrutiny. (In 2005, a facsimile edition was indeed published, with an introduction in French.)

Having said that, perhaps it is no bad thing that the radiocarbon-dating tests have demonstrated that this mystifying manuscript is not the work of Roger Bacon. After all, bearing in mind his fame in accurately predicting all manner of major scientific inventions and principles many centuries before they were formally conceived, who knows, this extraordinary manuscript might contain secrets best left undiscovered, even in this modern-day age.

But now that we live in the world of the internet and already have immediate online access to an ever-expanding, near-limitless corpus of knowledge, such concerns are of little avail. Indeed, among this incalculable quantity of online data is none other than the Voynich Manuscript itself – because a complete high-resolution scan of it can be freely accessed and downloaded here directly from Yale University, and also here  from the U.S. Archives.

Voynich Manuscript, p. 176 (public domain)

So if you enjoy cryptology – the study and application of codes and code-breaking techniques – why not visit this virtual Voynich tome right now, and who knows? Perhaps you may be the one to prise forth at long last its abstruse, opaque secrets from its beautifully-illustrated and elegantly-scripted but currently still-bemusing pages.

This present Eclectarium post article of mine is a much-expanded and updated version of my original account of the Voynich manuscript that appeared in my book The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries (Carlton: London, 1996).

And finally - I just can't resist: here's one last, gloriously-inexplicable illustration from the totally splendiferous Codex Seraphinianus, a copy of which will definitely be added to my library very shortly!

Unique, mesmerising, arcane - welcome to the surreal, spectacular world of the Codex Seraphinianus (© Luigi Serafini/Franco Maria Ricci)

ShukerNature: REMEMBERING MY MOTHER

ShukerNature: REMEMBERING MY MOTHER: Mom, wearing the beautiful protea-decorated coat that she purchased in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2008 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

SHERLOCK HOLMES VS THE SPECKLED BAND AND THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA

My Sherlock Holmes toby jug confronts the Giant Rat of Sumatra! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

When I first opened my Eclectarium, I promised that it would include some Sherlockian exhibits, and I am nothing if not a man of my word.

So now, courtesy of my ShukerNature blog, I have great pleasure in presenting not one but two of the great fictional detective's most daunting foes of the zoological kind. Click here to face the creeping terror that is the dreaded Speckled Band; and click here to encounter the mysterious – and monstrous – Giant Rat of Sumatra.

Artistic representation of the Speckled Band's likely appearance (© Tim Morris)

MY TOP TEN MOST ECCENTRIC FESTIVALS IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND

The straw bear of Whittlesey, 2008 (Kev747/Wikipedia)

What do dwyle flunking, goat crowning, straw bears dancing, a village packed full of human-sized faceless scarecrows, and fireball flinging all have in common? They all feature in some of the most bizarre, eccentric festivals held annually in various parts of the British Isles. I recently penned an article that presented my personal top ten examples, which has just been published by Enterprise Magazine and can be accessed online here. So if you're looking for something out of the ordinary to visit and perhaps even participate in this year, be sure to check it out!

WHEN MY GREAT-AUNT SENT A FEATHERED MESSENGER TO SAY GOODBYE

Edith Griffin with her great-nephew, Dr Karl Shuker, aged 7 months (Dr Karl Shuker)

Until now, my Eclectarium has remained closed throughout the present year, and this is why. Quite simply, 2013 has been the worst year of my life. It began with the deterioration in health of my dear mother, Mary Doreen Shuker, and continued with her passing away on Easter Monday, aged 92. She was my only family and the best person I shall ever know, and I shall miss her more than I can ever hope to convey in words every day for the rest of my life. I know that my mother took immense pride in my writings, so I am re-opening the Eclectarium today with a post that not only features her but is also dedicated to her. Thank you, little Mom, for your love, support, and faith in me throughout your life – may I be worthy of you throughout the remainder of mine. This is for you, Mom, with all my love, always.

According to traditional English folk-belief, birds will come to tell a person when a relative is about to die. However, not everyone is convinced that it is just folklore. The following remarkable incident involved members of my own family.

During the late 1960s, Miss Edith Griffin, my very elderly great-aunt, suffered a severe stroke from which there was no hope of recovery. Each day, her niece, my mother Mary Shuker, visited her at her home, which she shared with my maternal grandparents (one of whom was her younger sister Mrs Gertrude Timmins, whose recollection of a shower of frog rain can be accessed here on my ShukerNature blog).

My grandmother, Gertrude Timmins (1894-1994), with my Jack Russell terrier, Patch (Dr Karl Shuker)

Back at our own house one night, after having spent the day with my great-aunt, my mother was unable to sleep, and lay awake in bed for some time. Suddenly, she heard a bird land on her windowsill and begin chirping loudly, even though it was now approximately 2 am the next morning and totally dark outside.

This continued for quite a time before the bird eventually flew away, leaving my mother feeling very ill at ease by this strange, unexpected visitation. So much so, in fact, that she called in at my grandmother's house just a few hours later, earlier than normal - where she learnt that my great-aunt had passed away, at around 2 am that morning.

Just a coincidence?

My mother, Mary Doreen Shuker (1921-2013), visiting the Royal Palaces in Bangkok, Thailand, with me during 2005 (Dr Karl Shuker)

UPDATE - 13 December 2013

Today I received an email from an American friend containing details of an extraordinary event from his own life that so closely mirrors the incident featuring my mother and my great-aunt described by me above that I am including it here as follows. Because of its very personal nature, however, I am not publicly releasing any details concerning my friend's identity, but I have retained them on file.

"On the day my mother passed away she had been in Hospice care for three days although she was not expected to make for 48 hours. Our whole family had come to her bedside on that first day. We had a family prayer time, my uncle Derrell (mom's youngest brother) an ordained Baptist minister led the prayer. After the first day it was my sister and brother-in-law and my wife and myself that took turns spending the night those last three nights. I returned home that morning after spending the night there and was trying to unwind a little before returning. I had just sat down in our living room when a small wren flew up under our porch and landed momentarily on the screen of our front window looking in at me. The minute after it flew away I received a phone call from my sister telling me mom had just passed away. I believe to this day that was a sign from heaven."

And perhaps it was.  In the words of the much-loved hymn composed by William Cowper:

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plans His footsteps in the sea,

and rides upon the storm.

 

THE NEPHILIM - A BIBLICAL MYSTERY OF GIANT PROPORTIONS

Like many others of my generation, I first learnt of the term 'Nephilim' via the superb English gothic rock group Fields of the Nephilim, formed in the mid-1980s, but when I began to investigate the origin of their unusual name I soon realised that there was far more to the Nephilim than I'd ever suspected.

Fields of the Nephilim - a superb English gothic rock band formed in the 1980s

Sometimes termed 'the sons of God', and said to have mated with 'the daughters of Man', who - or what - were the Nephilim, and were they truly one and the same as the sons of God? One of the most mystifying passages of the Bible appears in the Book of Genesis (6: 1-4), and reads in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) as follows:

   When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose.

   Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years."

   The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

As will be seen, several different identities have been offered during centuries of profound theological controversy and discussion regarding the Nephilim and the sons of God.

Before we can entertain any thoughts concerning these identities, however, it is important to examine the origin and meaning of this problematical Genesis passage (hereafter referred to for convenience as the Nephilim Passage).

Notwithstanding the tradition that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), most modern-day biblical scholars believe, as noted by N.H. Snaith in The Century Bible (1967), that this quintet is a compilation of at least five different sources. The earliest is the Jehovist (Yahwist) document (designated as J), dating back to c.850 BC, of southern origin, and split by later scholars into J¹ and J². Next is the Elohist document (E), dating back to c.750 BC, of northern origin, and combined in c.700 BC with J to yield the JE document. They are the documents most relevant to the subject of the Nephilim.

In addition, there are numerous different translations of these, which means that the Nephilim Passage has appeared in a variety of forms, thereby yielding all manner of interpretations and speculation as to its precise meaning. For instance, in The Anchor Bible: Genesis (1964), E.A. Speiser offers the following version of verse 4:

It was then that the Nephilim appeared on earth - as well as later - after the divine beings [sons of God] had united with human daughters. Those were the heroes of old, men of renown.

In contrast to the earlier-quoted RSV version, which sets the Nephilim entirely apart from the sons of God, the Anchor Bible's wording indicates that the Nephilim were the offspring resulting from unions between the sons of God and mortal women. Indeed, according to George A. Buttrick et al., writing in The Interpreter's Bible (1972), verse 2 originally concluded with some such sentence as: "and they conceived and bare the Nephilim". Also, 'sons of God' and 'divine beings' as featured in versions of the Nephilim Passage are translations of the Hebrew Elohim, i.e. they have their own name, distinct from 'Nephilim'.

Yet Raymond E. Fowler notes in his book The Watchers (1991) that 'Nephilim' literally translates as the 'fallen-down-ones'. This indicates that these entities fell from the sky and were therefore celestial - in turn suggesting that they were one and the same as the sons of God.

So which, if any, of these three mutually-exclusive scenarios is the correct one?

Another weighty issue upon which to ponder is the precise moral significance of the Nephilim Passage. Were the unions between the sons of God and mortal women judged by the authors of Genesis to be normal or abnormal, good or bad?

Some scholars, such as Frank E. Gaebelein, editing The Expositor's Bible Commentary (1990), consider the Nephilim Passage to be nothing more than a summary of the previous chapter (fifth) of Genesis, thus merely reminding the reader that the offspring of Adam had greatly increased in number, had married, and had continued to have children, i.e. that it was nothing unusual. In contrast, many scholars down through the ages have considered this passage to be an introduction to the account of the Great Flood - deeming the union of divine and human beings to be sinful, and the Flood to be God's punishment for this sin.

Yet another area of contention, and one that is closely linked with the previous one, is verse 3's statement that man's days "...shall be a hundred and twenty years". Does this mean that hereafter man's lifespan will be limited to 120 years? (Prior to the Nephilim Passage, Genesis had contained details of humans living to ages far in excess of this.) Adherents of this viewpoint suggest that a 120-year age limit was imposed by God to ensure that children resulting from matings between the divine beings and human women did not inherit eternal life from their fathers. Or, as assumed by Luther, Calvin, and the Scofield Bible, is 120 years a period of reprieve, granted by God to humanity before the onset of the Flood? The attractiveness of this second option is that, unlike the first, it does not conflict with post-diluvial records in Genesis of people living far beyond 120 years of age.

As can be appreciated from the above selection of examples, the identities on offer for the Nephilim are greatly influenced by the range of interpretations for this passage's meaning.

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH...

Perhaps the most familiar identity proposed for the Nephilim is that they were a race of giants. Indeed, in the Septuagint (the 3rd-2nd Century BC Greek translation of the Old Testament produced in Egypt) and also in the Authorised King James Version of the Bible (KJV), the word 'Nephilim' is replaced by 'giants'. This yields the oft-quoted phrase: "There were giants in the earth in those days".

The giant identity is substantiated to a degree by the second (and only other) RSV biblical mention of the Nephilim by this name - in the Book of Numbers (13: 33):

And there [in Canaan] we [the Israelites] saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.

The Nephilim mentioned in this passage from Numbers (hereafter referred to as the Second Nephilim Passage) comprised a tribe of pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan in the hill country (especially Hebron) west of the Jordan. Known as the Anakim, they were descended from a great warrior called Anak, whose father, Arba, was the greatest of them all. They had been sighted by twelve Israelite spies, who were struck with terror at the awesome spectacle of this people. And certainly, the Second Nephilim Passage makes it clear that these Nephilim were of great size, but it also poses a very sizeable problem.

According to Genesis, the only people who survived the Flood were Noah and his family. Yet if the Nephilim encountered by the Israelites were indeed bona fide Nephilim, i.e. descended via Anak and Arba from the same lineage as those mentioned in Genesis 6, this means that a race of giants had also survived the Flood - but how? Seeking to resolve this anomaly, some scholars, such as Speiser, suggest that the Anakim were not true Nephilim at all. Instead, they were merely giants (as described in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate in preference to Nephilim) who reminded the Israelites of the real, pre-diluvial Nephilim.

Also referred to as the Rephaim, the Anakim were known to the Moabites as the Emim, and to the Ammonites as the Zamzummim. Irrespective of their identity and names, however, and despite their huge size, the Anakim were ultimately overcome by the Israelites, led by Joshua, who drove them out of Hebron, Debir, and the hill country of Judah. A few seemingly lingered for a while in the Philistine regions of Ashdod, Gath, and Gaza.

'The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Man That They Were Fair', Daniel Chester (1923), in the Corcoran Gallery (sandstead.com) 

Returning to the original Nephilim, in Genesis: there is an etymological argument against identifying them as giants, because 'Nephilim' is distinct from the standard Hebrew term for giants, r^edupª’îm, which indicates that the Nephilim were something more than just giants.

Leading on from this is a recent, highly original idea, encapsulated in an online (Internet) research paper authored by John Denton in December 1996 (which can currently be accessed at http://www.ftech.net/~bric/rp.no38.html

Entitled 'Neanderthal=Nephilim?', Denton analysed the entertaining possibility that the Nephilim, whose biblical references date back around 4500 years, are synonymous with the Neanderthals. These hominids officially died out around 30,000 years ago but may well have lingered into more recent times, judging from folkloric and certain cryptozoological testimony, as well as recent palaeontological evidence.

Neanderthal skull (Dr Karl Shuker)

However, whereas the biblical account clearly describes the birth of Nephilim from matings between divine beings and mortal humans, new palaeontological and molecular researches have confirmed that the Neanderthals and modern humans are not descended one from the other, but are two wholly separate lineages that branched off from a common ancestor.

WHO - OR WHAT - WERE THE SONS OF GOD?

Today, the most popular theological views regarding the sons of God and the Nephilim are that they were one and the same, or that the Nephilim were giant monstrous progeny of the sons of God. But if either view is true, then who, or what, were the sons of God?

One popular idea is that they were pious men from the line of Seth, youngest brother of Cain, who were ultimately led astray by Cain's female descendants, or merely by unspecified immoral women. Alternatively, as suggested by Gaebelein, the Nephilim may simply be the ten great men of antiquity that had just been listed in Genesis (5: 3-32). However, there is etymological evidence to dispute both of these mortal, human-based interpretations.

According to Allen C. Myers, editing The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (1987), the term Elohim, from which 'sons of God' is derived, refers to gods in general, and is also the most frequent Old Testament name for God. Similarly, a term sometimes employed in relation to the sons of God is 'the Watchers'. Derived from the Aramaic ‘îr, it appears in the Book of Daniel too, where it is taken to mean an angel, a messenger, or an agent of Yahweh (the covenant name of the God of Israel). Thus, it seems highly unlikely that such well-defined, divine-specific terms would be used to describe mortal (albeit righteous or renowned) men.

ANGELS OR DEMI-GODS?

This in turn leads to the inevitable conclusion that the sons of God were indeed divine, immortal beings, rather than mortal men, and down through the ages two different identities of this nature have been considered. Some scholars have proposed that these entities were angels, i.e. mediators between God and men. Others have considered them to be demi-gods, not descended from God in the literal sense of the term 'sons', but belonging to a lesser hierarchy of deities, analogous to the stratification of deities in classical Greek mythology.

For many centuries, however, the concept that the sons of God were divine entities who had nonetheless liaised sexually with mortal women was viewed as scandalous, and was vigorously suppressed by the early Christian Church fathers. After all, as stated in the RSV version of Matthew (22: 30): "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven", thus emphasising the purity of angels.

Even so, there were certain controversial documents that not only supported this heretical scenario but also provided details not present in Genesis. Furthermore, they had once been well known to theological scholars. These were the Books of Enoch.

THE ENOCHIAN REVELATIONS

Descended from Seth, Enoch was a son of Jared and the father of Methuselah. He spent his relatively short life (by pre-diluvial standards), spanning a mere 365 years, in spiritual communion with God, as a result of which he did not die but was taken physically by God to Heaven, where he beheld the indescribable wonders of the seven heavens.

Little is said of Enoch in the Bible, as the pseudoepigraphical work (i.e. claiming to be authored by a biblical figure) known as the Book of Enoch, Ethiopian Enoch, or '1 Enoch' was not included in either the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons. It was probably written by several different authors, and dates back to at least a century before the birth of Christ. Originally written in Aramaic, it was later translated into Greek and Latin, but was lost, seemingly irretrievably, by the 4th Century AD. In 1773, however, James Bruce, a Scottish explorer, returned home from Ethiopia with no less than three copies, all Ethiopic (Ge'ez) translations from Coptic monasteries, two of which are still retained in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Moreover, portions of this book's original Aramaic version have been discovered among the Dead Sea fragments in Qumran Cave 4.

There is also a Slavonic document variously termed the Slavonic Enoch, 2 Enoch, or 'The Book of the Secrets of Enoch'. This parallels the Ethiopian Enoch to some extent, and may have been written in Alexandria a couple of centuries after the latter was authored.

According to the Ethiopian Enoch, the sons of God were angels who became filled with lust and desire by the beauty of the daughters of men. Two hundred descended to earth on Mount Armon, led by Samyasa and also including Urakabrameel, Azibeel, Tamiel, Ramuel, Danel, Azkeel, Sarakuyal, Asael, Armers, and Batraal. Choosing wives from the daughters of men, they lived with them and eventually degenerated into unrestrained sexual abandon.

They also taught these mortal women secrets of sorcery, astronomy, cosmetics, and herbalism; and the women became pregnant by them, giving birth to immense giants, the Nephilim. So it was that magic, knowledge of the stars, moon, and planets, the sexual allure provided by cosmetics, and both the medical and hallucinogenic properties of plants became known to humanity; and numbers of semi-divine, half-breed giants walked the lands.

The profanation by the fallen angels of their divine arcane wisdom, which was ultimately harnessed to great evil by mankind, was so devastating that only a deluge, washing away humanity entirely from the face of the earth, could restore the equilibrium formerly existing between the immortal and mortal. Accordingly, God told Enoch to inform the fallen angels that He would show them no mercy, and would rid the world of their monstrous offspring. In response, they sent Enoch to Heaven to speak to God on their behalf, but to no avail. The fallen angels were duly imprisoned to await the Day of Judgement, and God sent the Great Flood to cleanse the world of sin, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family.

Inevitably, the Enochian documents were viewed with horror by the zealous early Christian Church fathers. Thus, once these manuscripts were lost (or deliberately hidden?), they and their successors were swift to sow doubt in the minds of future generations of scholars and worshippers as to whether such works had ever existed at all, thus facilitating their desire to deny any prospect of angelic fallibility. Indeed, so successful was their goal to eradicate the Enochian books from the minds of their acolytes that by the 4th Century AD, the scholar-monk St Jerome, author of the Vulgate, asserted that these works were truly apocryphal, never having existed in reality, only in rumour.

Notwithstanding this, sections of the Ethiopian Enoch were clearly alluded to in the Book of Jude (verses 14-15), possibly inspired a portion in the First Book of Peter (3: 19) too, and gained a whole new following after the rediscovery in 1773 by Bruce.

Like so much speculation arising from ancient documents, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that we shall ever uncover the truth concerning the Nephilim and the sons of God. Yet there are sufficient curiosities and anomalies associated with the Nephilim Passages to suggest that their words have indeed locked away a notable secret not deemed suitable by early religious figures to be made accessible to the masses. If only we could find the key...

Carl McCoy, from the gothic rock group Fields of the Nephilim

This Eclectarium blog post is excerpted and expanded from my book Mysteries of Planet Earth: An Encyclopedia of the Inexplicable (Carlton Books: London, 1999).