The Portent

by Michael S. Heiser

  He turned to Kamran. “The Colonel is going to use the heavens, isn’t he? He’s going to use some astronomical event as part of his plan—all that stuff about a real but false Jesus showing up. That’s your point.”

  Kamran nodded.

  “Kamran?” It was Malcolm. The young man nodded in his direction. “You can see ahead in time—astronomical time. Are these signs of Jesus’ arrival the first time around? Will they ever all repeat? Do you think that’s what the Colonel is going to use to dupe people?”

  “Yes … and yes.”

  Brian heard a few gasps.

  “But there’s no clear indication in the New Testament that the second coming will have the same set of signs,” Brian pressed.

  “Brian,” Melissa replied, shaking her head, “what would the Colonel say to that?”

  Brian closed his eyes tightly, realizing his mistake. “He’d say it doesn’t matter. He’d say the only thing that matters is what people will expect … and believe.”

  “But what’s the connection to Genesis 6?” Neff spoke up. “We’ve all listened to the recording by now. He kept going back to using that passage for his homemade myth. Unless all these signs in the sky dovetail with that somehow, I can’t see him being interested in this.”

  “But he’s the one who quoted Isaiah 40,” Melissa protested. “He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t see a connection.”

  “True, but what is it?”

  “Dr. Scott,” the mechanical voice cut into the discussion. Brian looked at Kamran. “Do you know what day in the Jewish calendar corresponded to September 11, 3 BC?”

  Brian shrugged and looked around the room. “I haven’t the slightest idea. But after all this, I’m sure it will mean something.”

  “Yes, it means something … perhaps everything.”

  Brian gazed at the young man’s earnest face. Brian could see that what he knew frightened him. “Go ahead.”

  “The date was the birthday of the world … a date that Jewish tradition considered the birthday of Noah.”

  Brian lowered his head, his mind racing through line after line of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts he’d translated and studied over the years. The full force of the mute prodigy’s words crashed into his mind. “Are you serious? Tishri 1?”

  Kamran nodded.

  57

  There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

  —Aldous Huxley

  “I do not understand,” Nili broke in, a look of confusion on her face. “Tishri 1—it is Rosh Hashanah. But what does this have to do with the flood and these other things?”

  “You’d better explain to everyone first that there’s more than one Jewish new year date,” Brian said to Kamran, still trying to process the implications of Kamran’s revelation.

  “Yes, there are four new year beginnings in Israel,” Nili noted.

  “Four?” Fern asked. “I’m confused already.”

  “There are four. America has this, too.”

  “You mean like when a fiscal year begins and ends, or a school year begins and ends, versus the solar year—they can all have different beginning and ending points,” Neff observed.

  “Correct. In Israel there are four, but two are especially important. The first month of the calendar that follows astronomy—specifically the months or new moons—is Nisan. So the first day of Nisan is the beginning of the new set of month cycles for the Hebrew calendar year. In the Bible, God set Nisan as the first month for Israel because it is the month that our people were set free from Egypt by the hand of Moses.”

  “Nili is referring to the first two verses of Exodus 12,” Brian explained. “Nisan was the month of Passover, which was first instituted in connection with the last plague, the death of the firstborn, and the subsequent exodus from Egypt.”

  “But Nisan 1 is not Rosh Hashanah—which in English means ‘the first day of the year,’ ” Nili continued. “Rosh Hashanah is Tishri 1.”

  Brian could see there was still confusion on most of their faces. “Before Moses instituted Nisan as the first month for the new community of Israel that came out of Egypt, the Hebrew people already had a calendar—an agricultural one, like most ancient societies. Since that calendar pre-dated the Mosaic calendar, the rabbis regarded it as the original calendar of the world, going back to Genesis.”

  “Yes, Tishri was the first month of that original calendar,” Nili picked up on the thought. “But in the more recent Mosaic calendar, Tishri became the seventh month of the year since Nisan was made the first month after the exodus. God did not change the order of the months; He changed the starting point of the year, making Nisan the beginning. It commemorated Israel’s new beginning.”

  “So Rosh Hashanah is sort of the original new year’s date on the older calendar?” Clarise asked.

  “Yes,” Nili replied. “But to understand what Kamran is saying, you must know that the rabbis teach that Tishri 1 was also the day that marked the time when God finished creating the Garden of Eden by creating Adam and Eve. It was the first day of humanity in the world.”

  “Why would they think that?” Ward asked.

  “Because of the garden of Eden.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I will try to explain,” Nili replied. “Nisan—the first month of the astronomical calendar—corresponds to the early springtime in Israel. That’s April in the calendar used in America. Move seven months ahead to Tishri, the seventh month in that calendar, and you are then in the fall season—September in the American calendar. The fall season is the time of the fall food harvest in Israel. The book of Genesis says the Garden of Eden was created full of vegetation, including plants for food. And so the rabbis believed that since Eden was created full of plants for food, it must have been created at the fall harvest.”

  “And therefore,” Fern jumped back in, “the first fall month is Tishri, and the first day of Tishri is Tishri 1—and that day, by the rabbis’ logic, was the first day of the finished world.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Nili replied.

  “The link between the Genesis creation account and Tishri is what’s significant for understanding what Kamran told us,” Brian added, looking at him. “If Kamran has a Bible on his laptop, that would be helpful for explaining that—we can start in Genesis 7.”

  Kamran quickly brought up the book of Genesis on the screen. Brian took the cue.

  “The first thing to notice is that Genesis 7:6 says that Noah was 600 years old when the flood came upon the earth. Five verses later we find out that ‘in the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.’ Notice the verse refers to the second month—the month after Tishri in Jewish tradition. The rabbis reasoned from this wording that Noah was already 600 by the second month—meaning he had turned 600 in the previous month, the first month, the month of Tishri.”

  “Clever logic,” said Malone, stroking the handlebars of his mustache.

  “According to Genesis, the flood lasted a little over a year. The ending of the flood is important to this whole Tishri issue,” Brian continued. “In Genesis 8:13–14 we get some more detail about Noah’s age.”

  Brian began reading: “ ‘In the six hundred and first year, in the first month’—that would be Tishri—‘the first day of the month’—that would be Tishri 1—‘the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.’ ”

  He explained, “The reference to the 601st year in the verse would be Noah’s age, since earlier it said he was 600 when the flood started. Everyone follow?”

  “Then the math would suggest,” Ward reasoned, “that Noah had turned 601 sometime before the second month of year that saw the flood end.”

  “Right—and that would have been in Tishri. Early Jewish tradition took all thi
s to mean that Noah’s birthday was Tishri 1.”

  “So … a Jewish reader who took Revelation 12 as describing the birth of Jesus and who did the math would have Jesus and Noah sharing birthdays?” Neff reasoned.

  “Yes, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Brian said. “Tishri 1 was also the date that marked the beginning of a reign of a king of Judah—those kings in the line of David. Remember from Old Testament history that after Solomon died, the Israelite kingdom split into two smaller kingdoms—one in the north that went by the name Israel, and one in the south that called itself Judah. Kingship years in Judah were marked from Tishri to Tishri. The coronation for each new king was held on Tishri 1.”

  “So the birth of Jesus, as Kamran has plotted it out, was on the same day the king of Judah, the lion of Judah, the king from the line of David, began his rule,” Nili summarized.

  “That’s remarkable,” Melissa replied. “The timing is perfect, and the symbolism is unmistakable.”

  “The connection with Noah’s birthday naturally ties the symbolism to the great flood,” Brian added. “In the biblical passages we saw, Noah’s birthday would have been a sign—a portent—of the impending flood. And the next month—the second month of the calendar, when the flood actually began according to Genesis 7:6—would have been the time of the harvest. That’s part of what the Colonel must be angling for since it would connect the idea of aliens to Genesis 6 and the flood.”

  Ward held up his hands. “Whoa—you just lost me, big time.”

  “Remember that Israel’s original calendar was agricultural,” Brian explained. “The night sky had a lot to do with how the ancients marked the seasons—and Genesis 1 tells us as much, that the objects in the sky were for times and seasons. Harvest time in Israel was marked astronomically by the rising of the stars of the Pleiades. That would mean that the rising of the Pleiades marked the coming of the flood. Anyone acquainted with UFO contactee stories knows the Pleiades are important in so-called alien messages.”

  “That’s for sure,” Malone added, shaking his head. “You don’t have to read very long before you run into stories from alien contactees that have the aliens saying they’re Pleiadians. It seems to be a common theme.”

  “It is,” said Brian, looking in Kamran’s direction, “and I’m sure Kamran is tracking on that—it’s got to be part of the strangeness he alluded to earlier.”

  Kamran nodded in agreement.

  Brian continued. “In the Hebrew Bible, the word for Pleiades is kima. It occurs three times, always in association with another word, kesil, which is the word for Orion.”

  “And in Greek mythology,” Melissa quickly connected the dots, “Orion is frequently associated with giants—since the constellation Orion was conceived of as a giant man, a hunter.”

  “Yep. And in one Targum—or Aramaic translation—of the book of Job found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, Orion is found in parallel to the word naphila—”

  “The Aramaic word behind Nephilim,” Malcolm said grimly. “I remember Andrew talking about that scroll. Man, who would’ve thought the birth of Jesus could be connected to Genesis 6?”

  “The Colonel,” Melissa said, frowning.

  “You know,” Brian said slowly, “there’s even more to it … in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew.”

  “How many layers does this have?” Madison asked. “I mean, this gets freakier by the minute.”

  “This is why God brought you all here,” Sabi said with conviction.

  The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a series of loud taps. Heads turned to Kamran, who hit his keyboard after he had everyone’s attention. “What is in the genealogy?”

  “Finally,” Brian said, grinning, “something you don’t know.”

  Kamran smiled and shrugged innocently.

  “It’s a little hard to explain briefly, but I’ll give it a shot. Why don’t you put Matthew 1 on the screen so everyone can follow.” Kamran did so.

  “To understand this,” Brian began, “you have to know the basics of the Watcher story—the Genesis 6 episode according to the book of 1 Enoch. In that story, the Watchers—Enoch’s title for the sons of God—left heaven, had sexual relations with human women, and then taught humanity forbidden skills and dark arts—things like astrology, use of cosmetics, learning to make instruments of war, divination, and other enchantments. The offspring of those unions in 1 Enoch were giants, and they were very violent, killing and even eating people. Eventually the giants were destroyed by the flood and by other angelic beings sent by God. When one of the giants died, its evil spirit, now disembodied, remained on the earth to plague and torment humans.”

  “Sounds like demons,” Malone noted.

  “That’s the point. Enoch gives us the Jewish explanation for where demons come from, something that isn’t discussed in the Bible. In 1 Enoch we get demons as a direct result of the sin of the Watchers. Clear so far?”

  Heads nodded.

  “Now, try to think of the Watcher story in terms of its specific negative plot elements: sexual transgression, some sort of illicit interaction with divine beings, unusual or detestable offspring that caused harm to humanity. Still clear?”

  “Sure,” answered Neff.

  “Good. With that in mind, we can get to Jesus’ genealogy. The issue with that revolves around the four women it. The presence of those four—all of them apparently Gentiles—has puzzled scholars for a long time, but I think there’s some messaging going on under the surface that’s pretty telling, especially after what we’ve seen here.”

  “Ruth and Bathsheba are two of them,” Clarise said, reading the screen.

  “Right.”

  “And Tamar and Rahab,” Madison finished the list, looking up at the text.

  “Right again. Now, believe it or not, each of those women have some element in their lives—at least how we know them from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition—that in some way telegraphs a reversal of the negative plot themes of the Watcher story.”

  “You’re kidding,” Clarise said in a dubious tone.

  “Really. It’s in there, but you can’t really see them all in English translation. Let’s take them chronologically and start with Tamar. Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of Jacob’s twelve sons. She’s infamous for having disguised herself as a prostitute to have sex with Judah in retaliation for him neglecting to arrange her marriage to his son, Shelah.”

  “Shelah was Judah’s third son,” Nili added. “The other two, Er and Onan, had a sexual relationship with Tamar. God killed them both.”

  “Right—that’s all in Genesis 38. When Judah wouldn’t give his third son to Tamar as a husband, she got revenge by tricking him into sleeping with her.”

  “What a mess.” Madison shook her head.

  “No doubt. The Tamar story is interesting for our sake for two reasons. Judah’s own wife—who died right before he unknowingly slept with Tamar—was a Canaanite named Shua. Remember that name—you’ll hear it again. Second, Tamar is also said to be a Canaanite—a Gentile—and is described in Hebrew as a qedeshah, a term most scholars consider a cultic prostitute. We know from the story that she really wasn’t a prostitute, but the term is important—a qedeshah was a woman who was thought to be in sexual union with divine beings.”

  “There it is—the Genesis 6 connection,” Nili said, fascinated by the point.

  “Yep. And some rabbis taught that angels intervened in the relationship between Judah and Tamar by preventing Judah from having her executed when he discovered she was pregnant outside marriage. He spared her when he learned he was the father.”

  “And when Tamar had the baby, his name was Perez,” Nili said, looking up at the screen. “He’s in the genealogy of Jesus, who shared Noah’s birthday … which foretold the demise of the Nephilim.”

  “That’s the point,” said Brian. “The circumstances of her story imitate a Genesis 6 element, but her story ends up counteracting the Genesis 6 incident in some way. The other thr
ee Gentile women in the line of Jesus follow suit.”

  “What about Rahab?” Ward asked, reading through the genealogy again.

  “Rahab was the Gentile prostitute Joshua’s two spies met when they went to Jericho. It’s kind of odd, but the spies are referred to as malakim in that story—the word for angels or, in that context, messengers.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s true—Joshua uses the term twice in Joshua 6. And it’s because of those two instances that later interpretations of the Joshua story in rabbinic tradition considered the spies angels. Since prostitutes in general were thought to use spells to seduce men, and since these two malakim show up at the prostitute’s house, some rabbis thought the story echoed Genesis 6. What’s also noteworthy is that Matthew has Rahab as the mother of Boaz—”

  “The Boaz of the Ruth story?” Fern asked, her expression betraying her disbelief.

  “Yes. It’s right in the genealogy in verse 5.”

  “I never noticed that before.”

  “It’s there, but what’s really strange is that Ruth 2:1 describes Boaz as a gibbor. That’s one of the words used to described the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4, and one of the words the Jewish Septuagint translators rendered gigantes—giants—in their Greek translation of the Old Testament.”

  “You don’t think Boaz was part Nephilim, do you?” asked Melissa.

  Brian shook his head. “Gibbor often just means ‘warrior’ with no connection to unusual height. It can also just mean ‘important man’ like it does with Boaz. The point is that the terms show up in these stories in connection with these women, who wind up in Jesus’ genealogy. Some scholars—and I agree—think these are clever literary devices the biblical writers used to telegraph spiritual significances to Jesus’ birth. What we’ve heard from Kamran tonight about connections between Noah and Jesus goes very well with that idea.”

  “The third woman is Ruth,” Brian continued, “who was a Moabitess, another Gentile. The rabbis thought that Ruth’s marriage proposal in Ruth 3 was illicit since she uncovered Boaz’s ‘feet’—a euphemistic expression often used in the Old Testament for a man’s genitals. They thought her behavior smacked of a prostitute’s behavior, so some Jewish writers in the period before Jesus and the apostles assumed Ruth must have done other things cultic prostitutes did, like casting spells over men.”