By the Gods!
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Doubting Thomas
Just a quick one for you today, mythfans. The picture above is one that I snapped personally on my recent trip to Paris, within Notre Dame cathedral (now that you know the source, the horrendous quality is explained; it’s dim in there, okay?).
Thomas was one of the apostles of Jesus of Nazareth according to the gospel of John in the New Testament. After Jesus’ death by crucifixion, he was believed to have resurrected and briefly returned to visit his buddies. Thomas, being a shrewd man, (by comparison) wasn’t willing to believe just anything. He decided to investigate the situation more closely by putting his fingers in Jesus’ wounds, taking their friendship to a new level.
Upon seeing that the wound was authentic, Thomas put his seal of approval on the resurrection.
What I personally like about this story is skepticism and scrutiny on the part of ol’ Tom. At least for a single moment, he’s one of the only guys willing to use his noggin and raise an eyebrow at the seemingly magical.
Enoch and the Watchers: Part Two
Even though the Watchers, with their angelic know-how, taught their human charges a great deal–-they showed them how to make weapons, cosmetics, mirrors, and to use sorcery—God couldn’t abide the existence of the Nephilim, fruit of those who’d betrayed his trust and fled from his service. Semyaza, the leader of the Watchers, earned a great deal of God’s wrath by being the principal tutor of humanity in ways that were beyond them at the time, and by inciting the Watchers to rebel in the first place.
God decided that the Watchers and the Nephilim had to be taken care of. With his buddy, Enoch, acting as chief administrator, he organized a worldwide flood, that would end all life on Earth, thus washing clean the perceived stain of the Nephilim with the rest of humanity. This was put into effect in the time of Noah, the great-grandson of Enoch, and from there the familiar deluge story of Genesis would kick in.
It’s a sad story, in a lot of ways. The great crime of the Watchers was caring too deeply for the humans, those they were charged to care for. The book sets the familiar tone of raising the idea of humanity, with all its faults, as the greatest gift that heaven could bestow; even the immortal, ancient, powerful angels envied the lives of humans, and for that envy, their children were washed away, and the Watchers themselves were bound in the valleys of the earth, to wait there until Judgment Day.
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