#7 More Giants–Giants ch. 2
Show Notes
In this episode, Cody Urban joins the conversation to discuss Greek giants and how they interface with the biblical storyline. We talk about Titans, gods, demigods, Hercules, Prometheus, and the giant wars of the Greek myths.
Music: Baby Mandala by UKA Music Publishing
Podcast Transcript
00:00:09 - Anthony Delgado
This light momentary affliction is preparing an eternal weight of Lori for us beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the unseen, 2nd Corinthians 41718.In a post materialistic world filled with immense spiritual noise, we're here to uncover the ancient near eastern context to the Bible.To recover the truly mystical faith of our spiritual full fathers. Welcome to the Biblical Reanchantment podcast where we bridge the gap between the ancient Hebrew story and modern insights.I'm Anthony Delgado, your host for this journey into the often overlooked mystical dimensions of the Bible.
00:00:50 - Anthony Delgado
Here with me today is my good friend Cody Urban, who's gonna be helping us out here today with the podcast.
00:00:57 - Cody Urban
Howdy. Thanks for having me.
00:00:59 - Anthony Delgado
This is episode 6 titled More Giants. This episode, we're gonna talk first part about Greek giants and the ways that they interface with the biblical story line.And then in part 2, we're gonna look at some specific Greek giants and the implications that they have for the giant narrative.
00:01:19 - Cody Urban
Yeah. I'm so not an expert on any of this, and I'm glad to be on the podcast just because I'm an avid listener of yours.And I've, been a disciple of yours, went to Palmville Church for quite some time before moving up to Oregon and got to learn from you and learn a pretty different perspective on the Bible.That was also very much in line with the number of other podcasts that I was listening to and, you know, such as, the Naked Bible podcast.By the, late great doctor Michael Heiser, and I feel like I am the resident layman Trace Strickland And as he would introduce himself in every podcast and say, and you're the scholar, he's the scholar.
00:02:06 - Cody Urban
And so I've been listening to the biblical, you know, reenchantment podcast since you started it. And I have to listen to it more than once.Usually, you're blowing my mind with big concepts. I'm usually texting you questions afterward, and so I've been given the privilege of joining you and joining you on this journey.And then maybe I could actually ask a few questions or whatever I might possibly no. My little minuscule bit of knowledge in comparison.And, hopefully that can speak on behalf of all the other listeners who may be like, wait, what word is that? I don't I've never even heard of that concept.
00:02:47 - Cody Urban
That needs a whole podcast in itself. Right? So Here I am hopefully, representing that group.
00:02:53 - Anthony Delgado
Alright. Well, that sounds good.I think I think you might be cutting yourself a little short and stacking me a little bit high, but let's let's, Let's go ahead and, get to the podcast then.Alright.Part 1, let's take a look at some of the Greek giants, a little background on the giants in Greek mythology, the giants, in Greek gigantes, they were a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily in every way of superhuman size.
00:03:34 - Anthony Delgado
And maybe contrary to the biblical story line, Greek giants, don't all have the exact same origin. So we're gonna see the titans.We're gonna see the the Hicthoncrys, the 100 handers, and we're gonna talk about we're not gonna talk too much about cyclopies today. But there's the cyclopes.There are also a race of giants that come out of the earth. And so they're all different.They have different different story lines versus in the scriptures where we tend to see giants being the offspring of somehow human women with, with, with divine beings.
00:04:07 - Anthony Delgado
And so it's gonna be a little bit different.The word giant or gigantes might mean something like earthborn being that, they are all children of the Greek Primordial goddess Gaia, which is also the Greek word for Earth.And so this, they are Gaia born or Earth born.And, Hess it seems to lead us in that direction that there might be something to get Gantes, meaning something like Gaia born or earth born. Yeah.
00:04:36 - Anthony Delgado
So we're gonna take a little look into the giants. The first ones we want to talk about, actually.And Cody, if you'll take us in, is the is gonna be the titans.
00:04:45 - Cody Urban
I know a little bit about the titans, thanks to the wonderful Disney cartoon of Hercules. Right?And when you talk about earth, born, and you know, the the union between a divine being and a mortal being or earthbound being.I think one of the first people I can sitter or first characters that I think of is Hercules, and I grew up watching the Heaven Sorvo Hercules show.And the the the twin show of it, Zena. And so this is kinda some area that I I would always go, well, that's interesting.
00:05:17 - Cody Urban
I wasn't even a at the time. Not that I was believing Greek mythology, but I definitely wanted to look into it more.So I did do some research, And, this might help at least set some some of the stage, some of the groundwork for for understanding where we're talking about in Greek mythology.Where the titans were these powerful deities who ruled during the golden age, which was preceding the reign of the Olympian gods where those might be the ones we often think of such as Zeus and such.Right?
00:05:48 - Anthony Delgado
Right.
00:05:48 - Cody Urban
And these titans were the, as you said, the offspring of Gaia earth and uranus sky.And the most notable were Phronas Raya, Oceana, Hyperion, nymphony, famous, Chrys, Iapetus, and co use, and go figure they have to have complicated names, right? So Konis. Yeah.It's all Greek. Yeah. For sure. Bonus is actually mentioned in the Hercules show as the father of Zeus. And I'm like, that's neat.And so he was, the leader of the titans who overthrew his father and, uranus. With the help of his mother, Gaia, who resented uranus for imprisoning her other children.
00:06:38 - Cody Urban
So after seizing power from Eurnace, Cronos married his sister, Rhea, and with whom he fathered the Olympian gods that we're probably most familiar with, top big 3, Zeus Poseidon in Hades, as well as Hera, Demeter, and hestia.And, however, Cronos feared a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, right, history repeating itself, you know, as he overthrew his own dad.And so what he did, I mean, course, what you what would you do if you thought one of your kids were gonna over throw? You swallow them.
00:07:14 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. You eat them alive. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:19 - Cody Urban
So he ate them. He ate his kids except for Zeus who his mom, Raya, managed to hide and then later save.And so Zeus raised in secret eventually led a revolt against his dad Kronos.And with the aid of his siblings and the, cyclopies, which I'm guessing is the proper plural of cyclops.
00:07:44 - Anthony Delgado
Correct.
00:07:44 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Okay. Good. Because I always thought of it as cyclopses, and I'm like, that doesn't sound right.It's cyclopies, right, who, so the the cyclopies are working with, Zeus and They forged powerful weapons and Zeus waged war known as the ta ta ta ta ta taanomaki Yep.Against Kronos and the titans. And then after a fear struggle, Zeus and his allies emerged victorious banishing the titans to tartarus, the deepest part of the underworld.And then so the defeat of the titans the end of their dominion and the rise of the Olympian gods as the new new ruling pantheon.
00:08:30 - Cody Urban
Zeus became the king of the gods ruling from Mount Olympus, Poseidon became the god of the seas, Hades, the god of the underworld, and that kind of becomes a sort of like triad, right, of these different realms that mankind mankind, you know, we occupy the land.
00:08:46 - Cody Urban
Yeah. The oceans are terrifying. Right? We don't we can't go to the sky, and the underworld is, oh, that's that's death and darkness.So, like, those those are kinda like those big tears of the cosmos that that and those are the big leaders of them, right? Zeus Poseidon in '80s.
00:09:02 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. You're definitely hitting on some of the Greek cosmology when you identify those key figures for sure.
00:09:08 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Yeah. Cool.So, despite the defeat, some titans were granted leniency leniency by Zeus permethius, another one we may have heard of, for example, a titan known for his cunning and his creation of humanity, was spared imprisonment in tartarus, although he faced eternal torment for his defiance of Zeus.
00:09:32 - Cody Urban
Atlas, another titan, was condemned to hold up the sky for eternity as punishment for his role in the Titanic Maki.
00:09:43 - Anthony Delgado
Right.So what we're seeing here is that they're sort of the 1st creation of heaven and earth, which is you know, Gaia, the god, the god, and the goddess, your Uranus and Gaia, and they had kind of 3 groups actually of children.They first have the titans, then also the cyclopies, and later the 100 handers, which we'll we'll get to talk about one of the 100 handers or or the hectoncaries here in a little bit in part 2.There's a lot to be said about all of the different groups and a lot of literature written over time.
00:10:17 - Anthony Delgado
1 of things I wanna be clear about as we jump into talking about sort of this first creation is that, especially as we look at the titans, maybe these first giants is that they're not in every way going to parallel what we see in the biblical story line.
00:10:32 - Anthony Delgado
In the biblical story line, as we said, the goss, the the giants are gonna be half human, and only some of the giants are half human.And even the ones that are half human, some of them aren't actually giant, by our English definition of giant. And so there's just different things to look at there.But all of the different giants in some way are gonna be representative of chaos.And as as you're saying, like, this whole idea of of of vying for power and trying to overthrow whatever gods are in power over them, that's gonna be a theme.
00:11:03 - Anthony Delgado
And so as we, as we think about Tietanamaki, that's what we're really after is We're looking at, Kronos overthrowing his father.Men ultimately Zeus overthrowing Kronos and this progression in how the gods change throughout sort of the history of Greek literature.
00:11:26 - Cody Urban
Yeah. It always seems to feel like these other creation stories are filled with the world was created through violence and overthrowing the father. Right?And and it just seems like the further you go back, that's all it is.And but this one is another creation story where having an Earth, our mom and dad, where did they come from? I'm curious. Do we know?
00:11:57 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. So if we're in some way, you know, the Greeks are sonifying the concepts of heaven and earth.So they've got they've got some sort of philosophical thinking behind this where they're they're realizing that, you know, you plant a seed in the ground and it grows out of the earth.They're they're realizing that there is a source to things, in the earth.They're also identifying a source in the cosmos, in the heavens, or in the skies, that's that's uranus's purpose there.
00:12:24 - Anthony Delgado
And and they're sort of giving they're they're giving some kind of figure to, the spiritual beings that exist within their culture.And I think the biblical storyline would have it have us to believe that that these are potentially real spiritual beings, whether they're names sort of in sort of in the metaphysical spaces are Gaia and Uranus.That seems unlikely, but the idea that there are spiritual beings behind these characters of heaven and earth They seem that that seems to have some biblical warrant.Now Gaia and Uranus, you may not realize this, but they actually show up in the scriptures.
00:13:04 - Anthony Delgado
And so the first place that we're gonna see it actually is in the Greek version of the old testament, often called the septuagint, write in Genesis 11 that literally reads in the beginning made the god the Uranus and the Gaia.In other words, the beginning, god made the heaven and the earth. And that's how it reads in Greek.Now, obviously, we're most most protestant Christians are reading the a translation
00:13:32 - Cody Urban
English. Yeah.
00:13:33 - Anthony Delgado
From the Hebrew to the English. Oh, sure. Yeah.And we're not reading from the Greek to the English, but if you go to the Greek translation of the Hebrew, it's gonna say Gaia and Uranus there, urinary.And so and and and what we should also realize is that when we get to the new testament, The Bible of the New Testament authors is not the Hebrew.And maybe in some minority case, maybe Jesus was reading the Hebrew, maybe the author of the letter to the Hebrews, maybe he was reading some Hebrew.
00:14:03 - Anthony Delgado
But most of the Jewish people were actually working out of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the satuigant.So what's interesting and and what Luke, who by the way, is a native Greek speaker Luke is a gentile.And when he records in acts 17, 22, or 25, it's kinda interesting. Do you wanna read that for us, Cody?
00:14:22 - Cody Urban
Yeah. It says Paul stood in the middle of the areopagus and said, people of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect.For as I was passing through and observing the objects you of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed to an unknown god.Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the god who made the world and everything in it He is lord of Eurnace and Gaia, or Heaven and Earth.Does not live in shrines made by hands.
00:15:03 - Cody Urban
Neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.
00:15:14 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah.So they're so so they're notice that connection there where in the English, it says he is lord of Uranus and or, I'm sorry, he is lord of heaven and earth.Those Greek words for heaven and earth are again, just like in Genesis 11 and the their uranus and Gaia. And so that's really interesting.And notice how he conceives of them.
00:15:32 - Anthony Delgado
He's identifying this shrine to the unknown god as, and, and he's gonna, he's gonna place the god of the, you know, El, El, the the almighty.He's gonna place Yahweh or Christ, if you will, Jesus, as as being higher than even their heaven and earth gods, their Gaia and Uranus.And, I mean, this could have been horribly offensive to, to anybody who was, maybe, actually, was extremely religious. You know, it's really funny that he says they're extremely religious.Theriophagus wasn't really a place for that. It was more of a place for philosophy in spite of what they believed about the gods.
00:16:11 - Anthony Delgado
And so He kind of he kind of throws that out there though and says, look at all these gods you have. That's great. I know one that is higher.And so Paul conceives of not not just Zeus and Athena and, you know, and but but also of all of the titans and all of the all of the all of the other children, all the other giants of the first, you know, creation within the Greek world.And then also who they think are their primordial gods, right?They've looked up to they've they've gone up the ladder and they've identified ur uranus and Gaia as like their primordial uncreated gods, and he's saying, look, there's there's actually one that's higher.
00:16:54 - Anthony Delgado
And look, you even have him here. You're worshiping him as a just in case over here.But he's actually higher than all of your And that's really interesting because that's that's actually, the biblical story line in deuteronomy 32 is that the lord ascribed the sons of god who you'll know to be divine beings.He assigned them according to the nations after the distribution of the people at Babble, then dissented inheritance to the nations.He assigned those nations according to the number of the sons of god.
00:17:25 - Anthony Delgado
So there's 70 or 72 if you're in the septuagint There's 70 or 72 different nations that come out of Babble that each have their own small g god or so called god to use false words and Corinthians above, you know, that's supposed to rule over each of those nations.
00:17:42 - Anthony Delgado
And so again, I don't know what their names were per se, but but it seems likely to me that, yeah, that as the Greeks were figuring stuff out that these beings were like, yeah.Hey. You think that everything comes from heaven and earth, that's that's us. You know?
00:17:58 - Cody Urban
Mine are gonna can call me Zeus.
00:18:00 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. Right.
00:18:01 - Cody Urban
Call me
00:18:01 - Anthony Delgado
whatever you want. Right?Like,
00:18:03 - Cody Urban
North, they said you can call me Odin.
00:18:05 - Anthony Delgado
Right? Exactly. Exactly.So that, I mean, it definitely seems that the, apart from Yahweh, the, that the god's sign them are happy to take on whatever name, you know, whatever name.Like, whatever name people wanna give them, they care. They're more interested in the power they can wield. So they don't care about the name. They'll go by Zeus.They'll go by Odin. They'll go by artificial intelligence. They don't really care. You know? If if you want me to, you know, you know, if you wanna go there.
00:18:32 - Anthony Delgado
What is
00:18:32 - Cody Urban
This is a can of worms.
00:18:34 - Anthony Delgado
Yes. We're just gonna drop that and move on. So the, There there's lots to be said probably in the next episode about that.So, we'll we'll we'll leave that alone for now. So Let's talk about the giants though. So what do these primordial gods produce?Well, again, those giants aren't exactly in every way just like the biblical giants, but But the giants do on they do represent what what I would call an unnatural union between heaven and earth.So with within god's economy and the biblical context, the union via between heaven and earth had to do with Adam and Eve producing, you know, humankind in the garden and Genesis 1 and 2 and and flourishing and multiplying and filling the land and, and also the lord god himself living there in the garden with them being present.
00:19:29 - Anthony Delgado
And it's this perfect union of heaven and earth.And, we we should probably believe that there are spiritual beings that were a part of that as well that the heavens and and earth were coming together.The spiritual coming together with the physical or you could say the physical perfectly intertwined with the metaphysical that which exists alongside the meta alongside the physical.And so that's sort of like what was designed. And then spiritual beings, in this case, Guyana Uranus, they decide, Hey, we're gonna get involved in this.
00:20:03 - Anthony Delgado
We're gonna we're gonna create our own offspring. And and look what happens. They create these giants, these titans, what do these titans do?Will they go and they attack their father? Right? So it's this unnatural union that produces chaos.And then out of the titans come the Greek Pantheon that we know, you know, that we know from, like, the Herculean myths today, you know, and you get this pantheon, this this 3rd pantheon of gods in a sense, And what did they do?Well, they were, you know, Zeus, Zeus gets his lackeys and he and his, you know, bastard son, Hercules, and they go and they wage war against the titans. Right?
00:20:37 - Anthony Delgado
And it's this, it's this war. It's this c- utter chaos that stem stems out of this unnatural union between heaven and earth.And so kind of like saying like, well, we should probably we should leave that to god's economy, right? Yeah.
00:20:51 - Cody Urban
It's funny. I I would I would see that. And I even said something similar to that earlier. I mentioned Hercules being kind of like, okay. Cool.Is this the vine being Zeus?With a mortal woman, and they they make a giant, right, you know, a a man of renown, right, Hercules, but I've never thought of
00:21:09 - Anthony Delgado
Ibrahim in the Hebrew.
00:21:11 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Yeah. I I never thought of the titans as, could the titans be also the giants of the bible?
00:21:20 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. So it's not a one for 1.And, you know, if you look at the 100 handers who literally have a hundred arms, you know, and they're these and they are physically giant and they're and they're hideous and terrifying and they shake the earth and they and they they hurl large rocks and They're just ferocious warriors and then you've got the the cyclope.
00:21:41 - Anthony Delgado
So we're kind of similar that, you know, you kind of get these these myths. They're eaten sheep by the handful and like that.And just just these hideous beasts that Tariff strike terror in the parts of humankind and and the titans are maybe the most civilized and more like most like you might call, like, say, like, godlike of any of them.They seem the more, the less primitive, the more intelligent of the of heaven and earth's offspring.But but you have to remember they are still like an unnatural union, even if they're coming out of 2 so called gods, Gaia, and Eranas, they're still an unnatural union.
00:22:17 - Anthony Delgado
In the biblical economy, you might say there's something like if 2 divine beings had a child, but isn't that still isn't that still, like, outside the scope of what god has designed.And so it's not a one for 1. It doesn't really fit.We don't have a giant that came out of 2 we don't actually even really have a good biblical conception of 2 spiritual beings having a physical child.But the Greeks tends to always take divine things and make them instead of a blending of physical and metaphysical, They tend to take divine things and make them more physical.
00:22:56 - Anthony Delgado
And so that's why you get Zeus being, you know, or any of the gods for that matter.Having very physical characteristics very human in the way that he interacts in the world.So even though he has a supernatural power, he's still going around like a human, like and all of the all of them seem do seems to kind of be like that.It maybe is only Gaia and Uranus that in some of the early myths maybe have like a real sense of supernatural divinity about them and and what or what we call what we might call transcendence but they even become more and more infinite air, I'm sorry, imminent as the storylines go on.
00:23:37 - Anthony Delgado
So it's not really a a one for 1 in that. And I think the point is really in making this comparison is to demonstrate the patterning and ancient thought.The way that the way that all of the ancient people were thinking about heaven and earth coming together.And that's really, I think, the strength of looking at looking at the giants of the Greek world in light of the biblical context.
00:24:02 - Cody Urban
Squeeze that even even their idea of the the primordial, right, the the uranus and Gaia even they had no level of perfection to them. Right?Yes, they Zeus would sleep around.I mean, the guy was the the womanizer, and Harry was constantly upset with him for how many other, like, both divine and or mortal women that he would produce offspring with constantly And then, but but you rewind back.I'm looking at Eurydice, and it's like he was imprisoning his kids Right?
00:24:43 - Cody Urban
Because he's afraid that they're gonna overthrow him, and it's like constantly this fear of of having power and losing power makes me think of Halpatine and and Star Wars, but I I speak movie.That's one of my my languages. Right? So but anybody in power, their greatest fear is losing their power.And it just seems like even in this this Greek mindset, as far back as you go through history, everything is driven by this lust and drive for power and motivated by this fear of power.And so you've constantly got this this warfare this this Titanic, right, what it Yeah.
00:25:29 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. And that's what the Titanic is. Right. Well, we do in Christianity tends to call spiritual warfare.
00:25:36 - Cody Urban
Sure. Yeah.
00:25:36 - Anthony Delgado
It's kind of interesting is an ancient literature like Titanic Maki it, it provides an explanation for evil in the world in in similar ways is like Genesis 6.The way that the you know, the sons of god of Genesis 6 or the watchers, if we're gonna read Enoch, are the the way that they come down to like, do their will, right?Like, they, they can't do their will in heaven because god's there. So they come down here to do their will.And and and they effectively end up wreaking havoc on the earth.
00:26:12 - Anthony Delgado
But the results of the spiritual rebellion is actually that the thoughts and intentions of every man's heart is only evil always.And that's exactly what happens in the Greek myths that there's maybe you know, maybe more of a narcissism, even in the Greek myths, where the gods are like, yeah, humans over there, right?And unless one of them is really beautiful or whatever and catches the eye of, you know, Zeus or whoever, like, then you know, they don't really care too much about humans.Where in the biblical story line, they seem to care a little bit more about human humanity and maybe are jealous of what god has designed humanity for and they want a piece of that.
00:26:53 - Anthony Delgado
Maybe it's that type of thing.
00:26:55 - Cody Urban
Not to argue, but, I mean, it does say that they saw that the the Right. Minh or the the daughters of men were beautiful.
00:27:02 - Anthony Delgado
Right. There's more of a there's more of a an interaction between the spirit and humankind in the biblical storyline than there is in the Greek mythology.In the Greek mythology, it's more about like what the gods can get from the gods or what the titans can get from the gods.It's It's a spiritual warfare that's really focused on the spiritual war world a little bit more than, in the scriptures where it's focused on the spiritual warfare is actually focused in on the on the human world.
00:27:29 - Cody Urban
I see what you're saying. Yeah.It's like, who can who can sway the most hearts or worshipers or, you know, get people to do whatever the, you know, they're bidding. Right?
00:27:40 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. And and I think it's interesting what we see in the scriptures, right, with the gods against the gods. Sorry.I didn't mean to cut
00:27:47 - Cody Urban
you off. No. It's all good.
00:27:48 - Anthony Delgado
Is also something that we we do see shreds of in the Bible.Like, if you've ever wondered, like, how can how can Persia come in And in the name of the Persian gods, defeat Babylon, you know, defeat their armies, their gods, and take them under their, you know, the the new the new names of their gods, and they usually do some sort of meshing where they take the Babylonian gods, and they'll add them to their panty on and sometimes give them new names and things like that.
00:28:16 - Anthony Delgado
But they but they really do have like this.Our gods are better than your gods and this type of type of thinking where it is, even though it's physical war on the earth, it's also seen as spiritual war in heaven that you know, the gods of Persia were just stronger than the gods of Babylon, and therefore they won the wars.
00:28:35 - Anthony Delgado
Right? It's that sort of thinking more than it is like, god, very god against the fallen gods or against the evil gods.And, and I think this demonstrates how the almighty god, the god of the bible, is capable of reigning overall things. Created divine beings, right?The god the the gods that are spoken of lowercase g, the so called gods that are mentioned in the scripture, they're created beings. They are not timeless.They are not they're not like the invisible father of colossians 1. They're not like that. They're created beings. They are divine in the sense that they're metaphysical. They're spiritual.
00:29:19 - Anthony Delgado
And but the but they're limited in ways that the almighty is not.And so they you know, that may maybe answers some of the questions, like, how do we get from god appointing them to rule the nations in deuteronomy 32 to the psalmist in Psalm 82 pleading with god to judge them because they're ruling unjustly, right?
00:29:40 - Anthony Delgado
And they become so wicked. And so maybe that explains how they got there that they're they're just not capable of being god like god is god.And so they don't have this intrinsic holiness that god himself has.
00:29:53 - Cody Urban
Do you ever play risk? So I kinda kinda feel like, what is this?It's a
00:29:57 - Anthony Delgado
bit long and drawn out from but, you know,
00:30:00 - Cody Urban
that's one of my favorite board games, but it it's like you gotta commit for a day. Yeah.I would always joke with my brother or friends and be like, hey. Let's play a quick game of risk because there's no such thing.But I I wonder in in the picture I'm seeing in this this situation that I think I did not grow up seeing in the Bible, and I know a lot of Christians who didn't.We wouldn't read about, you know, spiritual beings and there's this kind of like spiritual beings governing people groups and such, but it almost would I would almost see it as, say, you're playing risk and you are the the red, pieces on the board.
00:30:42 - Cody Urban
Right? You're you're you're controlling them.And if those pieces had some sort of idea of consciousness and just think, well, We're going to war over here again and who's stronger and and okay.The they their god is, Cody. He's the one rule in the blue.And, here's this god Anthony's rule in the red, and it's just kind of this constant like, oh, I guess that that got stronger.
00:31:10 - Cody Urban
He rolls better dice, you know, and,
00:31:13 - Anthony Delgado
that's a really interesting illustration. Yeah.
00:31:15 - Cody Urban
Yeah.Because I'm I I think with just this constant this constant warfare, but as as you were saying, none of them were fit to rule as god is god, as Yahweh is god.And in that in that illustration, I go, well, if we're playing risk and that the pieces are just pawns, you know what I mean?And they feel like just pawns because we're the ones pulling the strings. Yet we are beholden to, a far, like, a superior being.
00:31:41 - Anthony Delgado
I mean, the unknown god. Right?
00:31:43 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what did we compare to the eternal almighty yahweh god? You know, I'm just a vapor in the wind.I mean, I'm just, you know, a wave tossed the ocean as the song says. And so it's like, that's I think probably what Paul's trying to say.And and I think what is ultimately being said here is that there's this the spiritual warfare is that It's it's like us playing a game of risk and we're trying to duke it out, but, truly, there is one who is the one who is Well, it's got it's got with me and say he is who he is or he will be, who will be.
00:32:19 - Cody Urban
You know, he's the one that transcends all of it.
00:32:22 - Anthony Delgado
Right.And so that's where we get and, I don't know, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself in the notes, but that's where we get when we talk start talking about spiritual war I suppose we should get back to talking about giants, but as we talk about spiritual war where it's like in the old testament, we tends to get, like, this idea that, like, Israel is god's people.
00:32:41 - Anthony Delgado
They're his portion. We're told in multiple places in the Old Testament.And so he rules over his people Israel But then there's all these other nations that aren't just at war with Yahweh god, but they're at war with each other.And then as we get to the new testament, we start to see some organization coming under the character of the devil where it instead of being like all of these different fallen angels, now it's devil in his angels is the phrase we get in the new testament.
00:33:08 - Anthony Delgado
And he's got some sort of either perceived or merited authority over them of some kind, where now they're warring together, not over all of the individual nations of the earth, but we start to get this idea of the of the world or the kingdoms of the of the kingdom of the world and it becomes the kingdom of god against the kingdom of the world instead of the the nation of Israel against all of the other individual nations.
00:33:33 - Anthony Delgado
I don't know if that makes sense, but you start to get this more organized war in the new testament.And so, where it's kinda like in the old testament times, you could kind of be like, well, any of the gods, whatever, you know, they're all you know, and you follow this when you follow that when you can believe in all the gods.And now it's it's like you kind of get an understanding of how we've come to some sense of monotheism, although I'm not sure I agree with every implication of what that word means, but we get some sense of monotheism where it's like, No.I we definitely will not worship any god, but Yahweh or or or Jesus, right?
00:34:10 - Anthony Delgado
And so that So the the all the all these other ones, they're not individually warring against the kingdom of god, but but maybe collectively.So there is another war in script in in in the Greek mythologies that's worth talking about maybe more so than Titanic Maki Cody, tell us, we're gonna get back to talking about giants.Tell us a little bit about gigantomaki and what that means.
00:34:32 - Cody Urban
Gigantomaki, another maki. All these mockies. It was a legendary battle between Olympian Gods and the Jagontes, right, the or the gigantes. I know there's multiple pronunciations.And you told me to speak with eviction, and I just can't. I'm so sorry. I'm messing up how to pronounce it.Anyway, the the the the gigantes are I feel like I'm starting to sound Spanish or some. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
00:35:02 - Anthony Delgado
It sounds like I mean, it does.I mean
00:35:04 - Cody Urban
Yeah. I guess, yeah, because it would come from more of like a romance type of thing. Anyway, they're monstrous beings.I think you mentioned that, right, earlier that they all these arms and or just one eye or, you know, that type of stuff. Right?
00:35:17 - Anthony Delgado
Well, so these are different. That, you know, the the cyclopies, the 100 handers, the titans. Purely divine because they're the children of Gaia and Yaronis.The gigantes of the gigantomaki story. These guys are they they're they actually they do in a sense come out of Gaia. They come out of the earth.But there is something to there's something different there's something different.They they aren't born of Gaia and uranus in a more traditional sense, but they're born out of the earth from the blood of Uranus.
00:35:57 - Anthony Delgado
So when I I think it's when, like, when he was killed, you know, or when he when he is bled in the Titanic Maki, for his blood comes into the earth and produces these giants is actually kind of similar to this is more similar to what we're getting in the Bible when we talk about this unnatural union between heaven and earth between the gods and the know, it's a spilling a it's a spilling of spiritual semen, I guess, not a spilling of blood, but upon the earth, the peep the people of the earth that produces the giant.
00:36:29 - Anthony Delgado
So you're starting to get a little bit of a closer connection.
00:36:32 - Cody Urban
I see. I see. Okay. And so these guys were driven by a desire to overthrow the Olympians Mhmm.And seize control of the cosmos and they waged war against the gods in a Titanic struggle known as, gigantomaki among the most prominent gigantas was uh-uh Alseonius.A colossal giant said to be invincible within his homeland. And during the gigantomachy, Alcyonius clashed with the hero, heracles, not hercules, heracles. I think they're half brothers.And they who cleverly, haircley's cleverly managed to drag Alcyonius drag him outside his territory where, you know, he was super powered. Right?
00:37:24 - Cody Urban
And so once Alcyonius was removed from his homeland, He lost his invincibility and was subsequently slain by heracles.There's another one, another formidable giant named, or fiery again, often regarded as the king of the gigantes.And he was towering in size and strength probably the most giant y of them all. And, porphyry porphyry on, led the assault on the gods challenging their authority.However, his arrogance proved to be his downfall when Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods struck him down with a thunderbolt. Well, I'll yeah. Right.
00:38:05 - Cody Urban
I mean, that's kind of how he's always been
00:38:09 - Anthony Delgado
Per trade, man.
00:38:10 - Cody Urban
Per trade. Yeah.You know, it's
00:38:12 - Anthony Delgado
Bartune or
00:38:13 - Cody Urban
statute and whatnot. And, anyway, strikes him down with a lightning bolt while heracles delivers the the finishing blow.And then we've got pol polylibidus known as also for his immense stature and his ferocity also played a significant role in the, Gigantomachy.In a fierce battle, he confronted Poseidon, the god of the seas.And in a display of divine power Poseidon broke off part of the island of Kos Kos, and hurled it at Polybodies, ultimately defeating the giant and ending his threat.
00:38:53 - Cody Urban
And then, lastly, we have Enceladus, who was another one of these giants who stood out for also his immense size and strength.And during this this war, enceladus clashed with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and hefestus the god of fire and craftsmanship.And with Zeus's Thunderbolts joining the fray, the god's buried Enceladus under the weight of Mount Aetna where he lay imprisoned for eternity. So yeah. I'm sorry.
00:39:28 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. Right. So the point of clarification there, hairicle is is actually the Greek name for Hercules.We get Hercules in English when you translate the Greek to the Latin and then the Latin to the English, then you get hercules. So heracles, hercules, same same dude.So yeah, so hercules is involved in story, and we'll talk more about Hercules in a little bit.But historically, this myth of the gigantamaki I think I think it might reflect sort of the triumph of these new and imported gods.
00:40:04 - Anthony Delgado
I think about what's going on in in the world. Like in the Greek world. They're always you've always you've got all these battles going on.People moving, you know, moving forces here and there.And the Greek world is growing and expanding And as is common in all ancient cultures of the world, they're gonna attribute that to their gods.And so if the Greek empire is growing, then they wanna elevate this new pantheon of god's under Zeus.
00:40:33 - Anthony Delgado
They wanna elevate them as being the they're they're real rulers, they're rulers now.And so it gives you a source story for this mythology where the as as the Greek culture expands by warfare, that's how they they expanded in the ancient world, then the the gods are actually getting getting the credit for that.And so we're gonna get rid of those old gods. We're gonna get rid of Gaia and Uranus. We're gonna get rid of all of their kids.And all of that nonsense.
00:41:03 - Anthony Delgado
And even as these giants raise up to to fight against the the gods that are new gods, our new Pantheon, Zeus is gonna bring in some some some giants of his own, if you will, and, and he's gonna triumph over them.And so for the Greeks, I think the gigantomaki really represented And this is kind of interesting.It it represented a victory for order over chaos because that this sort of does begin a progression sort of just throughout history where as the Greek nation grows, it they have to have more infrastructure.They can't be tribal people of just, you know, warring, you know, cities and city states against each other.
00:41:51 - Anthony Delgado
They now have to have more organization And so with this organization and this hierarchy of the gods comes a hierarchy of power within the Greek world.And so they kind of go hand in hand together, and until, you know, the Greek, the Greeks give give way to the to the Romans and you know, and and the Roman Empire obviously has some very strict ideas about how the world ought to be ordered.And so you start to see order over chaos becoming a theme, alongside the mythologies.And I think this is where one of the one of the ways, like, people go Well, Greek moves aren't real. And it's like, oh, they're real.
00:42:31 - Anthony Delgado
They they may not be historical in every sense. But the Greek myths are real, you know.And maybe a little bit off topic, but this is part of CS Lewis coming to faith is, you know, he's a professor of ancient literature, and he's realizing how real the mythologies of the ancient cultures are and how they speak into the nature of humankind, and he's starting to read them very literarily.
00:42:59 - Anthony Delgado
And it's not until he's challenged by 2 two friends of his, one of them being Tolkien to to read the Bible Why don't you look at the Bible that way?Why don't you see the stories of the Bible as speaking into who you are as a human that that the myth, the mythos of the Bible comes alive for him he starts to understand who prices in reality.And so that's kind of what we see playing out here in the gigantomachi is that these giants who are ultimate being defeated, they represent chaos and that chaos is being conquered by order.And there's obvious biblical connections, I think, there, that if we go back to the original, you know, introduction of the giants in Genesis 6, that the the giants are k or are they are personified chaos.
00:43:45 - Anthony Delgado
It's what they are. They're the original chaos monsters of the scriptures. And that's their goal is to cause chaos.And I think probably the best way that I can help maybe just an average listener to understand the chaos of the giants throughout the scriptures is to compare them to the demons of the new testament.If you read If you read the book of Enoch, you'll find out that the 2nd temple Jews at least the author of 1st Enoch seemed to have believed that the spirit, the disembodied spirits of the giants, So you go and you kill a biblical giant.Well, his spirit is divine. And so the spirit can't be treated the same way as a human spirit. It doesn't just go into the earth.
00:44:32 - Anthony Delgado
And so it gets loosed upon the earth.And that's what throughout the old testament are in certain translations called Shades, or in the new testament, they tend to be called demons, especially, especially in the gospel accounts at acts.They're called demons, and they're these chaos They don't they don't really have a purpose. They don't really have an ordering to anything that they're doing.They're just they're just causing chaos in the world. And that's their and that's their purpose. And so that's what these giants are.
00:45:01 - Anthony Delgado
They they don't have the intelligent that maybe they have some intelligence, but they don't have They're just bloodthirsty chaos monsters, not sort of the organized thinking giants like the tie titans.And yeah. And so I think so I think that brings us there. Yeah. We see that in the flood narratives.It's like the the flood was about bringing order over the chaos.So it's cleansing not just the giants from the earth, but it's cleansing all of the, the, the chaos that's been wrought in the human heart So that's that's that's the starting over.
00:45:35 - Anthony Delgado
It's the reset of the garden.We see it in the concept conquest narratives and Joshua for all of the for all of the controversy of, you know, and the accusations of genocide and all of that, foundational to the to the conquest narratives are the presence of the giants.The conquest narratives really are about getting rid of giant clands and clands that have giant leaders or nephilim leaders or anakin leaders.We've talked about those, those in the last episode.
00:46:07 - Anthony Delgado
Getting them out of the promised land so that god's people, can can live under the order that the kingdom of god brings.And then finally, I mean, you see this in a million places throughout the scriptures, but then finally, as we wrap up wrap up part 1, we see the giants as these chaos monsters coming back into play in some of the beast dragon chaos imagery in the book of Revelation, And the ultimate, final cleansing that comes in, you know, Revelation 1920 and the destruction of the earth and in the and in the coming down of the new heaven and new earth, which is really interesting.
00:46:47 - Anthony Delgado
The new in, in, in Greek, it's the new Gaia and the new Yaronis, right, that come down.But, but Christ brings down this perfected physical metaphysical union, that that becomes the eternal kingdom of god upon air.
00:47:03 - Cody Urban
That's done right. Right. The union done the way it should be.
00:47:07 - Anthony Delgado
Right. The garden put the paradise, the garden back the way it should have been. If if if sin and rebellion never entered into the world.And so with that, let's go ahead and wrap up part 1 and then, and then we'll we'll be back to talk about some of the demigod heroes and the giant heroes of the Greek myths in relation to the biblical world view in a few moments.Alright. Welcome back to part 2. We're gonna talk about some of the demigod heroes and some of the other heroes of the giant world in the Greek world.The most obvious to me, and he's not really, I don't know, often considered a giant, but it's Hercules.
00:47:52 - Anthony Delgado
And if you think about sort of the nepholim in the biblical story line there, the off spring of divinity and humanity.And so that's what the nephilim are, and that's precisely what Hercules is. He's probably the most celebrated Hebrew or, I'm sorry, HERO Hebrew. He's not a Hebrew.He's the most celebrated hero in Greek mythology.
00:48:17 - Cody Urban
And yet he's like Goliath. Right?
00:48:19 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he is. If you really think about it, he's like Goliath. Like, but it but it depends on from what perspective, right?Because if you're Phyllestine, Goliath is your hero.
00:48:30 - Cody Urban
Yeah. That's a good point.
00:48:30 - Anthony Delgado
But if you're in Israelite, he's a chaos monster.And so why, why would, you know, so if you are just thinking back what we talked about in the last, last part, right?So if you're a Greek and you're now a experiencing this growth of the Greco world, the Greek world, and and you're attributing that to this Pantheon of gods.And Zeus has this child with a human woman, even if it drives haramad, but he has this child and, and he becomes this great hero then, I mean, why not, right?
00:49:03 - Anthony Delgado
Why not, why not see Hercules as as as the hero what maybe a contributing character or contributing force and the prosperity of your nation. Right?
00:49:13 - Cody Urban
Yeah. No. That makes sense.
00:49:15 - Anthony Delgado
And I'm sure that every nation that the Greeks were conquering saw Hercules exactly like David Sogoliath. Right?
00:49:24 - Cody Urban
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on who's telling the story. Right.
00:49:28 - Anthony Delgado
And it really does. And so Yeah. So let's look at Hercules story. I mean, so he's, he's obviously this ridiculously strong, but basically human looking demigod, if you will.He's a so he's in a sense a giant, at least in his strength.But you know, Hera doesn't like him because he's sort of the bastard son of Zeus by, you know, a mortal woman.And so the as the story goes, he's driven mad, you know, in a moment of of just lunacy, he unknowingly killed his own wife and children.
00:50:06 - Anthony Delgado
And so then he goes on this, like, labor of penance. And this is kind of interesting, actually.Where he goes on these these, basically, 12 journeys to try to go and pay pennants for this horrible evil that he's done.And noticed this doesn't exactly show up in the Disney version of the story.
00:50:25 - Cody Urban
But Oh, no. He fights the hydra, and he fights those monsters, but he Right. He goes to do that. A hero.
00:50:31 - Anthony Delgado
But it, you know, but he doesn't kill his family. Right? You know, that part's a little bit missing from the story.
00:50:38 - Cody Urban
As Disney tends to do with a lot of myths and legends and such.So
00:50:42 - Anthony Delgado
Well, and you want kids to watch it. Right? So Right. You know?So Hercules, kind of through these trials demonstrates his his his indomitable spirit and heroic prowess and earns his place among the greatest heroes of Greek mythology, and and ultimately sort of becomes a full god, coming up to Mount Olympus.So, you know, so in the gigantalmonteke, which we mentioned, he becomes like Zeus's hero.And that's really what what allows Hercules to, you know, that entrance into Mount Olympus where he gets to be a full god now instead of instead of a giant or a demigod, you know, kind of condemned to the earth.
00:51:25 - Anthony Delgado
And so her Achilles really is, kind of like anephaline in that sense.What what kind of bothers me about her Achilles and and where because because you might go, Well, how does how does this any any of this matter for our Christian faith?Like, isn't it more about, like, how Christ forget, you know, Christ's death on the cross? Is the atoning work?You know, the redemption of sins to bring us back into the family of god and and all of that.
00:51:52 - Anthony Delgado
And it's like, yeah, this matters because it tells us how even primordial or not primordial, primitive religions were thinking about atonement. And so, Hercules, really does.He atones for his own sins.And so even in these ancient myths, there is a sense in which forgiveness of sins is necessary but he doesn't exactly in the way that the authors of the scriptures forbid us to do it.We we don't go about working real hard and trying to earn forgiveness of sense, right? It's just not how it works. Biblical atonement is by Christ's blood.
00:52:30 - Anthony Delgado
And it's, and it's attributed to us according to faith. It's, it's, it's not, it's not something that we earn or merit. In any way.But it's something that comes in and erratically changes us, and it redeems us.And so in the in sort of the hercules myth, his efforts to be redeemed result in his redemption.And so then hercules becomes this hero, on the other side of this redemption.
00:52:57 - Anthony Delgado
But we're supposed to see Christ as the hero that radically alters us so that we experience redemption, and then we live the good life.And so it's completely reordering things and it's taking the hero label off of yourself as your own redeemer and putting it on to Christ who ultimately is the only one who can who could, who could bear our redemption.Like, really and truly, even if Hercules is, a real nephilim it's just not possible, for him to warrant his own redemption. So Yeah.
00:53:32 - Cody Urban
Amen. Everything you said about Jesus, I have heard some cynical voices try to compare Jesus to Hercules and, you know, say yahweh with Mary Yeah. With, Alkmini.You know, Hercules goes and does heroic deeds. The the murder of his family not being just put that aside.
00:54:02 - Anthony Delgado
Always wondering where Joseph went. You know, it's like, you know, it's terrible, jokes. Right.
00:54:07 - Cody Urban
But Jesus goes and does hero deeds, right, and he's he defeats the sea and walks upon it. He he heals. He defeats demons.And then is ultimately elevated into, you know, the seat by the father, right, right hand of the father. He goes up into heaven. As Hercules rises to Mount Olympus.So I guess there's a question in there somewhere.
00:54:32 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. But if you are trying to synthesize ancient religions, then that's then that's exactly how you would do it.But there is something about, and you know, you I mentioned this in the last episode.You can Google, and you'll find all kinds of good stuff on Reddit is Jesus and Nethelene.Because there is something about the incarnation, but, but the New Testament authors go to extensive effort to say that what is happening in the incarnation is not the same thing that was happening in Genesis 6 that the gods that that Jesus is not some you know, is not Yahweh coming down to procreate with a human woman in order to create an unnatural union.
00:55:13 - Anthony Delgado
Jesus actually is the personified union of paradise.It's it's it's god impurity, coming to be with humankind, not god in sort of this bastard relationship that Zeus has with, with with his human you know, mistress.
00:55:34 - Cody Urban
And so That's interesting because we were talking earlier about how revelation ends with this this more right pure union between heaven and earth.And Jesus is that, right, in in many ways. He's both human and god.He's he's from above, but he's born of below as opposed to these nephilim which were done outside of the purview, right, of god's design.
00:56:02 - Anthony Delgado
Right. Well, and and Jesus is often equated with, Jesus is often equated with the people of god sort of as the people of god.So most obviously, in the old testament we read out of Egypt, I called my son, and the prophets, that's that's a reference to the nation of Israel as god's son coming out of Egypt out of Egypt.I called my son.That's quoted in the new testament to refer to Jesus when he had fled to Egypt with Mary and Joseph, and then it was safe to come back to to the nation of Israel, and then he comes back.
00:56:41 - Anthony Delgado
And so out of Egypt, I've called my son. And so e so Israel is god's son, and yet Jesus is god's son.And in many parallels, Jesus is god's perfect son. He's his, He is his righteous and perfect son.And that even plays into some of Paul's thinking in the new testament when he starts to call Jesus the head of the body, the church.So that the assembly of god's people, whether you wanna say that's spiritually Israel, you know, depending on your covenant perspective on that, is that that Jesus is the head.
00:57:13 - Anthony Delgado
And so he is he is the church and he is Israel, and he is god's eternal kingdom, and yet he is Jesus.And so there's there's always that interplay everywhere in in the scriptures. And so, yeah, I think we're definitely right to see it that way.I did wanna point to something else in the Hercules story in the in the Giganticmaki, Hercules, which I do wanna point out, this is giants fighting against giants in a sort of within the biblical robe view, they're both on natural unions, just of a different type.
00:57:50 - Anthony Delgado
But Hercules is deified. He's he he he experiences Theosys, the becoming godlike, according to his own power and virtue.And so Jesus says in John 146, I am the way and the truth in the life, and no one comes to the father, but through me.And so I'm not trying to say that Zeus is God, the father.I'm certainly not trying to say that, but you don't ascend to the heavens according to your own power, according to your own prowess, your own virtue.
00:58:26 - Anthony Delgado
That's actually something that has to be, that has to be done, and, and, and the apostle Paul says, the work that God began in the beginning, He will complete that to the end, that this work of becoming purely virtuous, this glorification that happens in the Christian lives, that's something that god does, not something that do.
00:58:44 - Anthony Delgado
And so I think that the herculean myths are really important for that reason to, to create that parallel for us. So there's another giant. Now he's a titan.
00:59:01 - Cody Urban
But there's
00:59:02 - Anthony Delgado
an Prometheus. Yeah. And there's a really interesting story here. So I'm just gonna say in the short way.So on one hand, Prometheus is, so he he's a lot there's an incredible parallels here between Genesis 12 and the Prometheus myth, Prometheus is one of the titans, so he's not got almighty creator and yet he's somehow tasked with this, to shape out of clay, humankind and to breathe life into them.
00:59:34 - Anthony Delgado
And to give them, in other words, to, to give them some sort of sense of divinity that we would call life that sets them apart from the animals.And it's very similar to the way that Adam has created in the garden.And then further, Adam is set apart from the animals when the lord brings before Adam, all of the different animals of the garden, and he names them, and he sees, he makes this observation.Wait, these all have a mate and then and then he and then god gives him his own mate that is Eve, right?
01:00:03 - Anthony Delgado
And it's supposed to, like it's it's supposed to toy with the same the same motifs that are happening, by the way, not just in the greek myths, but all over the ancient world, something similar is happening that, the gods are bringing humankind somehow out of Gaia, out of the earth, and breathing a sense of spirit or life or divinity into them so that they're different than the rest of the created order.
01:00:30 - Cody Urban
Yeah.And I remember hearing I could be wrong, but I remember hearing that he it was tasked with making humans essentially just as better servants for for the Olympians, right, essentially like housekeepers in a way, right, that they're they're they're smarter and more capable than cows and sheep and whatnot.
01:00:53 - Cody Urban
But not by much.You know, they weren't esteemed highly, whereas in a biblical We're made in god's image and called a partner and rule over the the world with god to walk in the garden with god.It's such a very different
01:01:13 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. Yeah. There's this narcissism in all of the Greek gods. That that doesn't exist in the in the biblical worldview.Well, I mean, maybe it does exist in the gods of the nations, but it doesn't exist in Yahweh.You know, it it doesn't accord with, god loved the world in this way that he sent his only son, right?Like, that doesn't That's not a that's not something that you see in the Greek world, except in some ways, you do see it in Prometheus.
01:01:40 - Anthony Delgado
So Prometheus has a fascination with humankind.You could even say that he does have a love for humankind, at least in some sense, that, you know, so there's an interesting, again, it's an, you know, I love my Enoch.And so there's, there's an interesting Enoch connection where from there's a story about Prometheus. He goes up to Mount Olympus and he steals fire from the gods.That's sort of an origin story for where humans learned fire from.
01:02:08 - Anthony Delgado
And and so he steals it from Mount Olympus and he gives it to the people and then the people start to do all kinds of things with it so they can cook with it and they can they can make they can indicate the juvenile metallurgy with it and they start creating jewelry and they and they start creating weapons and all sorts of tools and things of that sort And so he's this benevolent gifter of, I don't know.
01:02:31 - Anthony Delgado
You could just say technology in a sense.
01:02:34 - Cody Urban
That Secret wisdom. Secret knowledge. Yeah.
01:02:37 - Anthony Delgado
Right. And that's actually something that the the the watchers, the sons of god are condemned for.In the book of Enoch that they come down and they teach parts of seduction and arts of war and all this stuff to humankind.And so you sort of get the same thing happening except on and when you read the Jewish literature, you know, it's not the Bible, but the the but Enoch is Jewish Second Temple Literature, you read the Jewish literature.Oh, Prometheus, you know, d doesn't go by that name in Enoch, but anyway, the Prometheus, what he's doing is an unnatural is an an an unnatural event.
01:03:16 - Anthony Delgado
You know, God hadn't given this knowledge to humankind yet and yet here they are teaching it, you know, and they're condemned for that in the book of Enoch.And so again, we should see Prometheus, we read him as, like, this good and benevolent, like, almost a Christ figure in the Greek mythology.
01:03:34 - Cody Urban
But really, he's the serpent.
01:03:36 - Anthony Delgado
He's, yeah, he's he's he's one he's like one of the watchers. He's like the serpent. He's he's there to to do what does not accord. That's an actually interesting.Do you wanna flesh that out? How is he?
01:03:46 - Cody Urban
Yeah. He's the serpents in that.I have often or not often, but there have been times that I've heard people try to I think this is actually in, the the the church of Satan, right, the people that actually worship the devil that he was trying to elevate humanity.He loves humanity and wants to lift us up and you eat of this forbidden fruit, and you will be like gods, right, or like like Elohim.And so it I mean, we I think we've had this conversation before.
01:04:21 - Cody Urban
I don't think it's been said on the podcast, you know, but the idea of, why is there the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place.Why is it later on through, like, say, proverbs and such why is it a good thing to be wise and discerning between what is good and bad? Right.Is it possible that like me as a parent at my house, I have car keys hanging up.And I told my five year old you cannot go and drive this car. The day you do it, you will die. Right?
01:04:57 - Cody Urban
There there will be if we
01:04:58 - Anthony Delgado
can get it moving, that's probably literally true. Yes.
01:05:01 - Cody Urban
If you can even reach the pedals, but if you but it yes. I I I am the one in charge.This is my realm, and I have these car keys.And one day, when you're ready, when you've walked with me, I will walk with you to use these car keys. Right?And you will learn to drive when it's time that I say, and I will guide you in this. And then along comes a neighbor who says, Hey, kid.
01:05:27 - Cody Urban
Don't you wanna drive a car like your mom and dad? Here. Let me take them for you and hand them to you and you get to be.Like your mom and dad, and then you go and crash the car. Right? And so Prometheus, it is painted in this this wonderful light.As like, yes, he's bestowing these things to to humanity, but it is very much like the serpent in the garden trying to tempt Yep.Adam and Eve into doing things that that were clearly not right, right, that got got fully said not to do.
01:05:58 - Anthony Delgado
I often call it the tree, you know, it's not a good tree, bad tree. It's Yeah. The tree, the good tree, and the not yet tree. Yeah. Right.It's a tree of life and the tree of eventual life or something like that. Like, like, I think the plan was always that as Yeah. Human kind grew up.And and I joke that, like, Adam and Eve probably didn't make it 3 days in the garden before they ate that fruit. You know?If if I understand human nature, that that's probably true.
01:06:29 - Anthony Delgado
And so, like, you know, I I think I think I think, yeah, I think you're spot on in your analysis with that.And and I think it's I think it's it's an important distinction to make that god wasn't, in every way, just testing them, but he wanted he wanted them he wanted them to wait.He wanted to mature and and grow them up.He wanted to be their teacher, and sort of the gods, if you will, the so called gods, they get in the they're getting in the way of that because they have their own agendas.
01:07:03 - Cody Urban
Yeah.You
01:07:04 - Anthony Delgado
know, in the new testament Paul uses the word demon in 2 different ways.One is the way that they're referred to most of the time in the gospels and acts. And that's the that's the spirits of the giants, the chaos monsters, right?They're that are and that's what we usually think of when we think about like demonic things.We're thinking about, you know, pentagrams and drinking blood and sacrificing animals and all kinds of gory, you know, and and orgies and gory disgusting stuff.
01:07:30 - Anthony Delgado
And what we think of when we think of the democracy. Well, Satan isn't really about that. You know, like he's he's on a whole another level.He's not trying to get people to act wicked and bad and awful. His disease is actually so much oh, it's so intricate his deceit is ego.His deceit is k how how why can't you know, like, god? Why can't you be like god? Why can't you have power like that?Why do you what do you need god for if you can be this? Weren't you created in his image? Wouldn't Can't you don't you want that for yourself?
01:08:06 - Anthony Delgado
Like, that's his deceit, and that still is deceit today.
01:08:09 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Yeah. They they always say the best lies are the ones that are laced with truth. You know? Oh, yeah. They're not 100% blatant lies.It's usually like there's enough truth there that then it's hard to separate them. You know?But if you
01:08:24 - Anthony Delgado
read it critically and, you know, this is probably off topic here, but, you know, I don't think Satan fell before the garden events.Like, Satan wasn't that's not when Satan was cast out of heaven. Revelation 12 was pretty pretty clear about when Satan was cast out of heaven.It was it was when he was swept down with a third of the angels, at the incarnation at the first advent of Christ.So what so so so what if you go back and with that in your mind and you read the garden narratives again, you'll notice if you read it critically that Satan doesn't actually lie.
01:09:00 - Anthony Delgado
Yeah. He doesn't force them to do anything. He doesn't lie to them. He sort of allows them to go down a certain path.He deceives But that's not a whole lot different than what it seems like his role is in the book of Job sort of to to to test and to and and to see what humankind is about.So, like, like, yeah, I think, I think all things in their perspective, there's something far more sinister in that just like hairline of deceit, like, you know, and it shows up back in Hercules too, right?That, like, hey, you can, you can do this on your own. Did you know you can do this on your own? You don't need god for that. Right?
01:09:38 - Anthony Delgado
That's kind of the Hercules story, is that he was able to achieve this theosis all on his own, this divinity all on his own.And so that's what Prometheus is doing. He's you're right. He's the serpent in the garden saying, Hey, you can, you can do this on your own.You know, here have fire. Have have the means to make jewelry and weapons and the arts of war and seduction. You can go be great on your own.You don't need god for that. So it's kinda the similar. Now there's one last, because we're gonna wrap up soon.
01:10:08 - Anthony Delgado
One last, giant I wanna talk about just because he's fun. It's Bririas.And, he's also known as Aegion, And he was one of the heckatonqueries, one of those 100 handlers.So he's, 100 hands and 50 heads, and he's one of those o g sort of giants born to Yaronis and Gaia back in the beginning.And, he played significant role in the Titanic Maki with his 2 brothers and sort of got rewarded. I don't think this is a reward.
01:10:43 - Anthony Delgado
But Zeus appointed them to be the guardians of the underworld. They stand at the gates of tartarus, and so they kinda get to to determine.I think that's symbolic of who who comes in and out.And I think what's interesting with them is sort of a conversation about good versus evil giants within the Greek worldview.And so I just wanna end with this thought that is gonna, I think, lead us back to the gospel and the Christ that, you have the hundred handers now fighting with Zeus against the titans who are technically Byris's brothers.
01:11:29 - Anthony Delgado
So, the titans and the Hactoncrys are all Gaia and Uranus's children.So they're technically fighting against their brothers, but with, their father's grandchild, am I doing the math on this correct? Was Zeus right? To Yeah.He's fighting in their power struggle. And so it forces us to create categories of evil where we can have good chaos monsters and bad chaos monsters.And yet they're all chaos monsters.
01:12:03 - Cody Urban
Yeah. Right.
01:12:06 - Anthony Delgado
So I don't know if that strikes you as odd. But it definitely strikes me as odd.And yet, even as we look at the way that chaos unfolds as unfolding around the globe even today, Isn't that what we see?Like, like, if there's chaos monsters in the metaphysical places that are speaking chaos into the real world, then shouldn't we see that among the nations that that, you know, unrighteous powers, chaotic powers are warring against other unrighteous and chaotic powers.
01:12:43 - Cody Urban
And we might see one of them as a good chaos monster if we just happen to be on their team. Right?
01:12:51 - Anthony Delgado
Right.
01:12:52 - Cody Urban
Without getting political imagine if a president
01:12:55 - Anthony Delgado
Good luck.
01:12:56 - Cody Urban
Were a chaos monster, but He's, taking care of my country.
01:13:03 - Anthony Delgado
Right.
01:13:04 - Cody Urban
So I guess maybe he's a good chaos not, you know, the lesser of the evil or something like that, maybe.
01:13:11 - Anthony Delgado
Well, and I don't care who you, you know, what what party you affiliate with.You're going to it some point or if you affiliate with no party at all or whatever, right?Every president that we've ever had, at least in my life, has I don't know if this is historically accurate to say every president has had to do this, but at least in my life, as long as as the long as the United States has been involved in international affairs.
01:13:36 - Anthony Delgado
Whenever something significant happens in the world, the president is integrally involved in deciding what side the United States is on.
01:13:46 - Cody Urban
Yeah.
01:13:46 - Anthony Delgado
He's not the only voice in that.I realize that, but he's intimately involved in that decision And, you know, so you see presidents going and meeting with dignitaries and with, their presidents and rulers of other nations and stuff like that.And they're making decisions about who to align themselves with and sometimes that brings them under criticism.But they have to look at they're forced to look 2 chaos monsters and say which one is the good chaos monster and which one's the evil chaos monster And I think the hard thing for us is, especially as Christians, is this isn't this isn't our hope.
01:14:29 - Anthony Delgado
We you know, it's the kingdom of god versus the kingdom of the world.And if the kingdom of the world is at civil war with itself because chaos is fighting amongst itself, you know, as chaos does, you know, because it's never gonna be predictable.It's chaos. And by definition, it's not predictable.
01:14:47 - Cody Urban
And so
01:14:49 - Anthony Delgado
yeah.And so and whenever we see this stuff in the world, I guess I would just encourage my listeners, like, don't don't try to figure out which side is righteous because if it's not the kingdom of god, if it's not Christ and his righteousness, then you're just trying to figure out which chaos monster is the good chaos monster.
01:15:08 - Anthony Delgado
You're trying to figure out, am I gonna am I gonna side with the Hectonkers or the titans. And and that's crazy. I mean, it's crazy.It's a crazy decision to make. It's like no neither.And even if that means even if that means that I'm hung out to dry it, it's neither is the answer that we are fully on the side of Christ and the kingdom of god.I think, I think of Jesus, like, he was accused of casting out demons by the power of Satan.
01:15:36 - Cody Urban
Right. Yeah. That's true.
01:15:39 - Anthony Delgado
And it's interesting what he says.It's almost it's almost antithetical to what I just said because he actually says, well, you know, Ken Beelzebub cast out his own by the power of VLs, but he's like a house divided will never stand and all of that.Right?
01:15:53 - Cody Urban
That house won't stand.
01:15:55 - Anthony Delgado
Exactly. Right. That's literally what I was about to say. Sorry. That's actually exactly right. The house will not stand.And Jesus point was not that powers of evil are in every way unified.When he talks about the devil by the power of the devil casting out demons, he's talking about that higher use of sophisticated demons giving authority to cast out lower levels of demons.And it's like no no no why would they do that?
01:16:21 - Anthony Delgado
The low the, you know, these you know, these blood, these thirsty chaos monsters, they're they're contributing to the chaos of the world, the very chaos that on the higher tiers of the thing are con are are are contributing to the deceit.It's what it's what the devil is lying about having a solution to.And so, of course, he's not gonna cast them out by their power, but Jesus will cast them out by a greater power.That none of the chaos is dealt with apart from Christ and his kingdom.
01:16:51 - Anthony Delgado
That that's the ultimate resolution to all things in the book of Revelation is the coming together of all things under Bryst and his order.And and so, and so this may be my last point unless you wanna ask more impression is that's why when we get to revelation, to the end of the story, to Revelation 21, that the new heaven and the new earth came down, and the sea was no more.And you know what, you know, what the sea is symbolic of in the scriptures. Chaos. Chaos. Why is there no more sea? And, oh, and everybody's crying.I love the ocean and all of that. And it's like, no, no, you're missing.
01:17:24 - Cody Urban
Servers don't rejoice at all.
01:17:26 - Anthony Delgado
You're missing the point. There might be there might be an ocean in heaven.That's
01:17:30 - Cody Urban
Yeah.
01:17:31 - Anthony Delgado
Totally not the point.The point is that there will no longer be any chaos that all of the chaos that was instigated in by the Serpent and Genesis 3, by the by the, by the watchers in Genesis 6, by, by by the social rebellion that's in, you know, in and the calling down of the gods that happens at the tower of babble, like and and and all of it unfolds throughout human history because of that.
01:17:58 - Anthony Delgado
Jesus flipped it, and he puts it right. And it goes back to what the garden could have been.If Adam never ate the fruit, if the sons of god never came down to mix with the daughters of men, if Babble had never been built to elevate the ego of human civilization above the majesty of the almighty god.And so I think that's a good good spot to stop there.So So god bless you guys, and thank you everyone for listening to us, to us go on and on about Greek giants.
01:18:29 - Anthony Delgado
And I hope that you have learned maybe a new way to look at a story in the world and to see it through a biblical lens and to learn and to grow and to give glory to God through it.
