Joshua Valiant (Chronicles of the Nephilim)
Page 1
Other books by the Author
Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom
and Discernment (InterVarsity Press)
Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination (InterVarsity Press)
Myth Became Fact: Storytelling, Imagination
& Apologetics in the Bible
Chronicles of the Nephilim
Noah Primeval
Enoch Primordial
Gilgamesh Immortal
Abraham Allegiant
Joshua Valiant
Caleb Vigilant
David Ascendant
Jesus Triumphant
When Giants Were Upon the Earth:
The Watchers, Nephilim, & the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed
For more information and products by the author,
see the back pages of this book or go to:
www.ChroniclesOfTheNephilim.com
www.godawa.com
Joshua Valiant
Chronicles of the Nephilim
Book Five By Brian Godawa
Copyright ©2013 Brian Godawa
All rights reserved.
Embedded Pictures Publishing
Los Angeles, California
310.948.0224
www.embeddedpictures.com
The Tabernacle and The Israelite Encampment. Logos Bible Software. www.logos.com
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.
Dedicated to
all those who have struggled
with the moral implications
of the law of herem
in the Wars of Yahweh
and the conquest of Canaan.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to my Rahab, Kimberly. And to Michael Gavlak for his valuable story feedback, and his Caleb friendship (Or really, his Joshua friendship since I’m the old man). Thanks to Don Enevoldsen and Blake Samuels for their story feedback and encouragement. Shari Risoff, my sister-in-law did a wonderful job of editing these two volumes.
Thank you, Yahweh Elohim.
Note to the Reader
For those who are new to the series and have not read previous volumes, there is much imagination in this novel and its companion volume, Caleb Vigilant, that may freak out some Bible believers who are unfamiliar with the ancient Near Eastern worldview and mindset within which the writers of Scripture themselves lived and wrote.
Within these pages one will read of fantasy creatures like Leviathan the sea dragon of chaos, satyrs with the torso of men and the lower legs of a goat, and other phantasmagorical images. It may shock the reader to discover that all these monsters are mentioned in the Bible in one form or another, often with reference to the paganism of Canaan.
When the Biblical writers engage in this kind of referencing, they are often using well known images and myths of their day to attack with polemical force. Thus, the satyrs that pagans worship are considered goat demons (Lev. 17:7; 2Chron. 11:15; Deut. 32:17). What I decided to do was to literalize the metaphors and bring these demonic creatures to life in all their spiritual imagination, thus embedding historical story with theological meaning. This is just what the Bible writers did when describing Yahweh crushing the heads of Leviathan when Moses crossed the Red Sea (Psa. 74:12-17), or describing the destruction of a nation in terms of the collapse of the universe (Judg. 5:19-20; Isa. 13:10; 24:1-23). So I have shown the actual activity of Yahweh through his angels fighting the sea dragon to putting down evil, as well as the true demonic reality behind pagan religion.
In this sense, the Chronicles are not an attempt to reimagine history but rather to imbue it with theological meaning. But despite this use of imagination, everything that occurs in the novels, every monster, every fictional character, is based on real Biblical and ancient historical and mythological research. If the reader has difficulty fully embracing this before reading, perhaps it would be helpful to read the Appendices I have at the back of each novel first before reading the novel. In those Appendices I reveal a bit of the research into the ancient Near Eastern worldview that goes behind the fiction.
I have made up far less material than you may realize.
In these novels you will also see angels that are very physical beings (with extra-physical and preternatural abilities) who fight with swords and cannot fly. It is important to remember that the modern notion of angels as immaterial spirit beings who fly with wings is a medieval construct and not a Biblical description.
In the Bible, angels may mysteriously appear and disappear, but they never have wings, they are not depicted as flying, and they are very physical creatures who eat food (Gen. 18:8), can have sex with humans (Gen. 6:1-4), and sometimes have swords as weapons (Josh. 5:13). Their flesh is a different kind of flesh than human flesh, but it is physical (1Cor. 15:39-40). I would contend that my view is actually closer to the Biblical picture than the conventional wisdom of winged spirit beings without physicality.
Another element of the storyline is a certain reality to the pagan gods of the world. They exist as supernatural beings with divine powers. But they are not actual gods as the pagans understand them, but rather demonic fallen “Watchers” or “Sons of God” from Yahweh’s heavenly host, who are masquerading as gods in order to draw worship away from Yahweh. This too is not entirely manufactured on my part, but rather an application of Biblical verses that hint at the demonic reality behind Canaanite deities.
Psalm 106:36-38
36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
Deuteronomy 32:16-17
16 They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger. 17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.
In Genesis 6:1-4 we read that these fallen Sons of Gods or Watchers came to earth and mated with human women as part of their corruption of creation. The fruit of that unholy forbidden union were the Nephilim, or giants of old. Though God destroyed this abomination with the Flood, the genetic corruption of the giants continued on into the seedline of Canaan, so that when Joshua entered Canaan, it was filled with giant clans who traced their descendants back to the Nephilim before the Flood (Num. 13:32-33). Some of these giant clans were the Rephaim, the Anakim, the Emim, and Zamzummim (Deut. 2:10-23) and others who show up in the Chronicles of the Nephilim.
Then a strange thing happened at the Tower of Babel incident. When God separated the nations in their rebellion, he placed them under the authority of the fallen Sons of God or Watchers. God allotted the territories of nations to those Watchers as their own property (Deut. 32:8-9). God gave them over to their abominations. But then, when Israel would enter into the land of Canaan to claim it for their own, God would disinherit those principalities and powers and give that land to Jacob, the Seed of Abraham.
I have already explained in more detail the Biblical proof of these elements in previous Chronicles, so if the reader wants to understand it more fully, I recommend starting with Noah Primeval and read the appendices and the novels from there.
Another element of Joshua Valiant and Caleb Vigilant that may cause some concern with religious believers in the Bible is my census of about six thousand warriors and seventy thousand Hebrews in the exodus. For those acquainted with the English translations, it seems that the Bible says there were six hundred thousand warriors and by implication
, about two and a half to three million Hebrews in the exodus (Num. 1:46). This is not an attempt to deny or change holy writ. The fact of the matter is that the consensus of both liberal and conservative scholarship is that the English translation of “six hundred thousand” warriors cannot possibly be literally accurate.
Most importantly, it would make the Bible contradict itself, because in Deuteronomy 7:1 and 7, God states that the seven nations of Canaan were “more numerous and mightier” than Israel, who were “the fewest of all peoples.” But in fact, during this time of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, there were less than one million inhabitants of Canaan.[1] That would make Israel more numerous and mightier by a figure of three times the whole of Canaan and as much as ten times the size of any singular people group. Secondly, if there were two and a half million Israelites, then the average Israelite mother would have had about one hundred children each. Worse yet, for the peoples of Canaan to be more numerous and mightier than two or three million Israelites, there would have to be over twenty million Canaanites in the land. That is demonstrably false by archeological and historical evidence.[2] God perform miracles, not contradictions and absurdities.
I do not have the room to explain the details here, but I have included on the ChroniclesoftheNephilim.com website under the “Links” page, several articles that address possible interpretations of the numbers that would affirm the meaning of the Bible. Scholar David Fouts presents a strong case for the numbers being symbolic, a common technique used throughout the entire Bible. But I have used J.W. Wenham’s thesis that the Hebrew word for thousand is ‘lep, which is a word that can mean military units of troops. Since Hebrew numbers were not numerical like ours, but words, the number “six hundred and three thousand” would actually translate as “six hundred and three military units” which would be more like six thousand troops in a population of about seventy thousand Israelites.
One last note of importance: The saga Chronicles of the Nephilim employs an ancient technique of changing names of both people and places from novel to novel and sometimes within the same novel. This peculiar technique was universally engaged in by all ancient Near Eastern writing including the Bible because in that world, names were not merely arbitrary sign references. Names reflected the essential purpose, meaning, or achievement of people or places. Thus, when people experienced significant changes in their lives, they might also change their name or the name of a location where it occurred. Or when one nation adopted another nation’s deity, it would give it their own name.
Even the God of the Bible uses different names for himself in different instances to communicate his different attributes. While this is not familiar to modern readers and can cause difficulty in keeping all the names and identities straight, I have chosen to employ that peculiar technique as a way of incarnating the ancient worldview and mindset. So reader be warned to watch names carefully and expect them to be changing on you even when you are not looking.
In the interest of aiding the reader in managing the name changes in the series up to this point, and including Joshua Valiant, I have included the following charts that illustrate some of the more significant name changes.
Creator
Zaqiel
Azazel
Gadreel
Gilgamesh
Enoch Primordial
(Sumer)
Elohim
Utu
Inanna
__
__
Noah Primeval
(Sumer)
Elohim,
Yahweh
Utu
Inanna
__
__
Gilgamesh Immortal
(Sumer)
Elohim
Shamash
Ishtar
Ninurta
Gilgamesh
Abraham Allegiant
(Babylon)
El Shaddai
Shamash
Ishtar
Marduk
Nimrod
Abraham Allegiant
(Canaan)
El Elyon
Chemosh
Ashtart
Ba’al
Amraphel
Joshua Valiant
(Canaan)
Yahweh
Chemosh
Ashtart
Ashtoreth
Ba’al
__
Divine attribute
Creator
Almighty
Most High
Sun god
Goddess of sex & war
God of
vegetation & storm
A Nephilim
Creator God
Nachash
Giant Clans
Sons of God
The World Tree
Other Names
Yahweh Elohim
The Serpent
Nephilim
Bene ha Elohim
Mother Earth Goddess
Yahweh
The satan
Rephaim
Watchers
Great Goddess
Elohim
Mastema
Emim
Gods
Gaia
El Shaddai
A Seraphim
Caphtorim
Heavenly Host
Angel of Yahweh
Shining One
Zamzummim
(Zuzim)
Divine Council
Son of Man
Adversary
Anakim
Shining Ones
El Elyon
Avvim
Holy Ones
Horim
Anunnaki
True Heaven
Canaanite Pantheon
Mesopotamian
Heavens and Earth
Hierarchy
Yahweh Elohim
El
Yahweh Elohim’s throne
Angel of Yahweh
Ba’al (rises to primacy)
The waters above the heavens
Seraphim
Asherah (El’s wife)
The firmament
Cherubim
Anat (Ba’al’s sister)
The heavens
Sons of God
“Watchers”
Ashtart
Earth
Archangels
Dagon, Molech, Chemosh
The Abyss
Angels
Pillars of the earth
Sheol
Based on a true story.
And ancient traditions.
Deuteronomy 32:8-9
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
Jubilees 15:31-32
(There are) many nations and many people, and they all belong to him, but over all of them he caused spirits to rule so that they might lead them astray from following him. But over Israel he did not cause any angel or spirit to rule because he alone is their ruler and he will protect them.
Deuteronomy 3:11
For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length (13½ feet), and four cubits (6 feet) its breadth, according to the common cubit.
Numbers 21:27-29
Therefore the ballad singers say, “Come to Heshbon, let it be built; let the city of Sihon be established. Woe to you, O Moab! You are undone, O people of Chemosh! He has made his sons fugitives, and his daughters captives, to an Amorite king, Sihon.
Prologue
It was four hundred years after Abraham was promised the land of Canaan that his descendants, the children of Abraham, the Seed of Eve, left their bondage in exodus from Egypt to claim their promised allotment from Yahweh.
After four hundred years in the land of Canaan, the giant descendants of the Nephilim, the Seed of the Serpent,
had spread out upon that land. The Jordan River ran north and south, splitting the country in half. The Anakim dominated the Cisjordan, which included the desert hills and valleys east of the Jordan River. The Rephaim controlled the Transjordan, which included the fertile hills and valleys west of that same river. They were both called by the generic term Amorite, and they worshipped the pantheon of Canaanite gods led by Ba’al the most high, Ashtart, goddess of sex and war, Molech of the underworld, and other patron deities of the region.
The land of Canaan was filled with abomination. The iniquity of the Amorites was complete.
Chapter 1
A trickle of blood dribbled out of Joshua ben Nun’s nose. It did not flow down onto his chin, but rather up into his eyes and onto his forehead—because he was hanging upside down, along with his companion Caleb ben Jephunneh. Both of them had been beaten senseless and strung up in order to be skinned alive and eaten by a unit of ten giant Anakim warriors. The two had been ambushed when they were visiting the graves of their patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, near the caves of Machpelah, just outside the oaks of Mamre in Canaan. Their horses had been taken from them.
And now they were arguing upside down.
“I told you we should not stop,” hissed Joshua. “But you had to visit our forefather’s resting place for your own sense of importance.”
Caleb coughed back, “You are my truest friend, Joshua, but sometimes your arrogance is unbecoming.”