Biblical Support for Greek/Roman "gods" and Mythological Creatures?

 

 Humanity has long been fascinated by creatures that are different than us. I'm not only talking about animals being different from humans, but there has always been an almost obscene interest in creatures that are different from humans and that at least appear to be more powerful than humans. This will have begun with angels and demons, but it has evolved to other areas of interest such as extraterrestrials as well. There have even been cults and religions that have been built around these creatures.

Some of the most well known of these creatures stem from Greek and Roman mythology. My family has the Narnia series of movies in which several of these creatures play prominent roles, in particular the faun, the centaur, the minotaur and the mermaid. These four will be my focus today, but this does not mean that the premise of this article cannot extend to other mythological creatures as well. The use of these creatures by C.S. Lewis adds a mythological feel to the story lines and enshrines the stories as entirely fictional. But were these creatures actually only fictional?

What fascinates me about the above listed creatures is the fact that they were purported to be half human and half animal. I am not overly familiar with mythological creatures as a whole, but it seems that these creatures may have had some type of "super-human" strength or endurance; not along the lines of Superman or Thor, but perhaps more along the lines of extra human endurance in running or fighting, or maybe in the way of an ability to jump higher or farther than humans, or greater strength to lift and throw heavier objects than humans. The oddity of their appearance and the additional abilities that they may have had would definitely make them something that could be seen as above humanity, which would explain why they exist in religious contexts and lore.

The stories and drawings of these creatures causes one to wonder how in the world they came to be. Why is it that the Greeks and the Romans revered these creatures? Where did the ideas for these creatures stem from? Were these simply depictions that came from peoples' imaginations? I don't think so. I think that at least many of these creatures actually existed at one time.

There is no mention anywhere in the Scriptures that God created these creatures, and my world view is based heavily on the Scriptures, so you may be wondering how this came to be my belief. Well, it is actually based on the bare bones description that we get from Scripture, plus I am filling in details from a non-Scriptural source, though it is referred to in the Bible. I am talking about the Genesis account of the world-wide flood with additional information from the Book of Enoch.

Let's start with Genesis 6. What the Bible tells us about the time immediately prior to the flood is that "the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence" (v.11). In Sunday School, children are taught that men were so evil and that they had so completely turned away from God that He had to destroy the earth and everything in it in order to start over with Noah and his family along with the animals that were saved on the ark. This is what many Christians will carry with them into their adulthood as the meaning of the words in Genesis. Very few will actually read the words for themselves and wonder at why things were written the way that they were, which is why most Christians have a childlike view of the Genesis flood. But let's do better; let's examine the words as they are written and consider what they may really be saying.

Starting with verse 11 we see that "the earth was corrupt in the sight of God". If man is the only creature that was stained by sin, then how could the whole earth be corrupt in God's sight? Keep in mind that God did not destroy only mankind; He destroyed all living creatures. Surely, if mankind was the only corrupted being, God could have sent a disease to take all of the unrighteous people out of the picture and He could have protected those who loved Him. This would have left all of the animals and the plants intact because they were presumably innocent and perfect, as He had made them.

But God did not spare the animals and the plants, they were included in the destruction. Is it possible that these were also somehow corrupted by what was occurring on the earth? I suspect that this is the case, at least as it pertains to the animals. In verse 12 of Genesis 6, we see that the thought of verse 11 is continued in that it says that, " God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth." Yet we know that Noah and his family were deemed as worthy to be saved from the destruction. According to the Sunday School lessons, this is because Noah loved God while the rest of the world rejected and hated God. This is not really the reason that the Bible gives us for Noah's preservation, but it takes careful reading to see it. 

We find the reason in verse nine of Genesis 6; "These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God." If it was that Noah walked with God, why is there a mention of Noah's generations? If I am walking with God, that does not mean that my kids and their kids, my generations, will also walk with God. In this case, I actually like the way that it is written in the King James Bible, where it says that, "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." There are three things here; Noah was a just man, meaning that he was good in all that he did; Noah walked with God, indicating that there was a relationship with God; and Noah was "perfect in his generations". I believe that the overall context of Genesis indicates to us that this means that the blood line of Noah's family had not been corrupted. This is not some type of Zionist tripe; the nation of Israel was nowhere near coming to existence yet, but Genesis and Enoch tell us a story that indicates that the fallen angels had a goal to corrupt humanity's very DNA. Let's look back just a little bit further in Genesis 6 to better understand how Noah's blood line had not been corrupted in contrast to the apparent corruption of the rest of the world.

If we go all the way to the first paragraph of Genesis 6, we see that the "sons of God" (v.2) saw that the "daughters of man" were beautiful and that they took the women as wives for themselves. The "sons of God" refers to angelic beings and the "daughters of man" refers to human women. If the reference was about men marrying women, the men would have been referred to as the "sons of man", in the same way that the women were referred, and this would not be anomalous in order to be specifically mentioned. Since it is specifically mentioned, we need to take note of it and understand it as it was meant to be understood.

We all know what the next phase is between a man and his wife, so we know what is meant when we read that "the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they (the women) bore children to them (the angels)" (v.4b). This is procreation; this is sexual intercourse, between angelic beings and humans, the creation of half human, half spiritual beings through the corruption of the natural procreation process as designed by God. We have more context provided in the first part of verse 4 where it tells us that, "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward" (v.4a), and "Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown" (v.4c). It takes some research outside of the Bible to understand what the Nephilim were, but it turns out that they were giants, men (and women?) of unusual size and strength and bravery. They were men of renown. I present that these were the demigods of Greek and Roman mythology and that the "sons of God" were the gods of that same mythology who begat the demigods. Even the mythological stories include stories of gods procreating with humans to create these demigods. We just need to choose to believe what we are being told.

The Book of Enoch gives us more clarity on this, but I will not dive into the specifics of that in this article, as the focus is elsewhere. But we do need the Book of Enoch to learn that besides pursuing sexual relations with human women, the fallen angels that made wives of the humans also taught mankind things that they did not have the means to know otherwise, and they definitely did not have the wisdom to understand the consequences of such things. Enoch tells us that the angels taught things such as metallurgy, pharmacology (potentially for healing as well as for intoxication) warfare and potentially hybridization of God's creation, including different ways to violate God's sexual design. I believe that this is the origin of not only homosexuality and all other sexual deviations of humans with humans, but I also believe that this is the era in which sex with animals entered the human realm of abuses. 

I will interject here that there are those, myself included, who believe that Satan was at least in favour of all that was going on and that it may have actually been his design. The purpose of this would have been to undermine the fulfillment of God's own words that He spoke in the Garden of Eden before He cast everyone out of it. We read in Genesis 3:15 that a part of God's curse on the serpent was that, " I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is a prophecy about the coming of Jesus, the fact that He would die at the hands of man, but that through His death He would crush the head of Satan and sin and death. It is presumed that Satan understood enough to know that God's Son could not enter the realm of humanity through a corrupted bloodline, so he designed a way to corrupt all of humanity and thus make it impossible for Jesus to come to earth as a man through mankind and to still be perfect in every way.

So we can at least make the assumption that the fallen angels sought to contaminate the human gene pool in order to protect themselves. If we take the next logical step, is it not possible that the angels, in their corruptions of humanity and the gift of sexuality that God granted to humans, began to engage in bestiality as well? They had corrupted other parts of God's creation, so why should they stop at that, especially considering that angels cannot create as God creates, all they can do is to alter and corrupt what has already been created. And if the outcome of angels having sex with human women was that there were demigods of impressive size and strength, greater than that of the humans, is it not possible that the outcome of bestiality between angels and animals could be creatures of a mixture between animals and angels; appearing as part "human" and part animal, having extra-human strength and with the powers of human or angelic reasoning? 

Going further, is it not entirely possible that the humans that were alive at that time drew pictures depicting these creatures, pictures that could last through a flood and which would be found by future generations of people who could only understand these drawings as depictions of gods, and for whom stories would be developed to explain how these creatures came to be? It is also entirely plausible that Noah's son's told their kids of the strange creatures that existed before the flood, and the stories grew from there.

You see, God had to destroy all of the flesh that had already been corrupted by the fallen angels and their practices and knowledge; He couldn't allow any of that corruption to continue after He cleansed the world through the flood. So all the people who had embraced that knowledge and who wondered at the demigods in their midst had to be destroyed, even if their own bloodlines had not been corrupted, and all of the animals' bloodlines that had been corrupted would have had to have been destroyed as well in order to purify God's creation. 

There are two things that we should consider. The first is that God's sacrificial system required the sacrificial animal to be without blemish, for this reason God had to have perfect animal bloodlines after the flood, so all contaminated animals had to perish. But Could Noah have identified which animals had only pure bloodlines? No, he couldn't. That is why Noah was not responsible to gather the animals together. In verse 20 of Genesis 6 we read that God told Noah that,"two of every kind (of animal) will come to you to keep them alive". Further proof that God sent the animals can be seen in Genesis 7:9 where it says that, "there went into the ark to Noah" all of the animals, male and female, according to their kind. The animals were not herded into the ark by Noah, in which case they would have gone with Noah. No, the animals went into the ark to Noah. God instructed the animals that were still pure in the way that He had created them, and they arrived at the ark in time to enter it a week before the flood began (7:4).

The second thing to consider that that just like the sacrificial system indicated, the Lamb of God had to also be without blemish. There could be no corruption of the human part of Jesus' being as He was to be the Lamb of God. God had to put an end to the corrupted bloodlines of mankind as well, because just like Noah and the animals, humans would not necessarily be able to tell who had pure bloodlines over the centuries leading up to Christ's birth, so God had to step in to preserve that pure bloodline. God had to intervene to disrupt Satan's plans in order to preserve His own plans.

Considering all of that, isn't it plausible that the creatures that we refer to as being mythical may have actually existed at one time? As creative as human beings are, I don't know that I can accept that humanity created not only the stories about these half man, half animal beings, but that they even concocted their appearances on their own as well. I have come to believe that fauns, centaurs, minotaurs mermaids and any number of other mystical creatures did once truly exist, but that they were corruptions of God's creation and that He needed to cleanse the earth of them. Our modern sensitivities may not be open to considering this possibility, but history has existed long before modernity came to be, and we cannot change the past; we can only hope to learn from it.

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