War in Heaven.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Conway, Moncure Daniel
He followed them, their weapons he broke up.
Broken they lay, and in great heaps they were captured.
A crowd of followers, full of astonishment,
Its remains lifted up, and on their shoulders hoisted.
And the eleven tribes pouring in after the battle
In great multitudes, coming to see,
Gazed at the monstrous serpent....
In the fragment just quoted we have the ‘flaming sword which turned every way’ (Gen. iii. 24). The seven distinct forms of evil are but faintly remembered in the seven thunderbolts taken by Bel: they are now all virtually gathered into the one form he combats, and are thus on their way to form the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse, where Michael replaces Bel.10 ‘The angels, her allies who had come to help her,’ are surely that ‘third part of the stars of heaven’ which the apocalyptic dragon’s tail drew to the earth in its fall (Rev. xii. 4). Bel’s dragon is also called a ‘Tempter.’
At length we reach the brief but clear account of the ‘Revolt in Heaven’ found in a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, and translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:11—
The Divine Being spoke three times, the commencement of a psalm.
The god of holy songs, Lord of religion and worship
seated a thousand singers and musicians: and established a choral band
who to his hymn were to respond in multitudes....
With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song spoiling, confusing, confounding his hymn of praise.
The god of the bright crown with a wish to summon his adherents sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead,
which to those rebel angels prohibited return
he stopped their service, and sent them to the gods who were his enemies.
In their room he created mankind.
The first who received life, dwelt along with him.
May he give them strength never to neglect his word,
following the serpent’s voice, whom his hands had made.
And may the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand that wicked thousand
who in the midst of his heavenly song had shouted evil blasphemies!
It will be observed that there were already hostile gods to whom these riotous angels were sent. It is clear that in both the Egyptian and Assyrian cosmogonies the upper gods had in their employ many ferocious monsters. Thus in the Book of Hades, Horus addresses a terrible serpent: ‘My Kheti, great fire, of which this flame in my eye is the emission, and of which my children guard the folds, open thy mouth, draw wide thy jaws, launch thy flame against the enemies of my father, burn their bodies, consume their souls!’12 Many such instances could be quoted. In this same book we find a great serpent, Saa-Set, ‘Guardian of the Earth.’ Each of the twelve pylons of Hades is surmounted by its serpent-guards—except one. What has become of that one? In the last inscription but one, quoted in full, it will be observed (third line from the last) that eleven (angel) tribes came in after Bel’s battle to inspect the slain dragon. The twelfth had revolted. These, we may suppose, had listened to ‘the serpent’s voice’ mentioned in the last fragment quoted.
We have thus distributed through these fragments all the elements which, from Egyptian and Assyrian sources gathered around the legend of the Serpent in Eden. The Tree of Knowledge and that of Life are not included, and I have given elsewhere my reasons for believing these to be importations from the ancient Aryan legend of the war between the Devas and Asuras for the immortalising Amrita.
In the last fragment quoted we have also a notable statement, that mankind were created to fill the places that had been occupied by the fallen angels. It is probable that this notion supplied the basis of a class of legends of which Lilith is type. She whose place Eve was created to fill was a serpent-woman, and the earliest mention of her is in the exorcism already quoted, found at Nineveh. In all probability she is but another form of Gula, the fallen Istar and Queen of Hades; in which case her conspiracy with the serpent Samaël would be the Darkness which was upon the face of Bahu, ‘the Deep,’ in the second verse of the Bible.
The Bible opens with the scene of the gods conquering the Dragon of Darkness with Light. There is a rabbinical legend, that when Light issued from under the throne of God, the Prince of Darkness asked the Creator wherefore he had brought Light into existence? God answered that it was in order that he might be driven back to his abode of darkness. The evil one asked that he might see that; and entering the stream of Light, he saw across time and the world, and beheld the face of the Messiah. Then he fell upon his face and cried, ‘This is he who shall lay low in ruin me and all the inhabitants of hell!’
What the Prince of Darkness saw was the vision of a race: beginning with the words (Gen. i. 3, 4), ‘God said, Let there be Light; and there was Light; and God saw the Light that it was good; and God divided between the Light and the Darkness;’ ending with Rev. xx. 1, 2, ‘And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’
Source notes
1 ‘Records of the Past,’ iii. p. 83. See also i. p. 135.
2 ‘Chaldean Genesis,’ by George Smith, p. 70.
3 Copied in ‘Chald. Gen.,’ p. 91. As to the connection of this design with the legend of Eden, see chap. vii. of this volume.
4 ‘Chaldean Genesis,’ pp. 62, 63.
5 Ib., 97.
6 ‘Records of the Past,’ ix. 141.
7 Anu was the ruler of the highest heaven. Meteors and lightnings are similarly considered in Hebrew poetry as the messengers of the Almighty. (Psalm civ. 4, ‘Who maketh his ministers a flaming fire,’ quoted in Heb. i. 7.)
8 Im, the god of the sky, sometimes called Rimmon (the Thunderer). He answers to the Jupiter Tonans of the Latins.
9 The abyss or ocean where the god Hea dwelt.
10 The late Mr. G. Smith says that the Chaldean dragon was seven-headed. ‘Chaldean Genesis,’ p. 100.
11 ‘Records of the Past,’ vii. 123.
12 ‘Records of the Past,’ x. 127.