Watchman on the Wall

Announcer: Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and swrc.com. God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things. Micah Van Huss is back, continuing his fascinating look inside the pages of his brand-new book, *Mythologies Decoded: Echoes of the Bible*.

This October, we're bringing three conferences together for one unforgettable weekend in Bristol, Virginia. It's Prophecy in the News Live, October 22nd through the 24th. We begin Thursday with apologetics, a full day devoted to defending the Christian faith and discovering why we can confidently trust the truth of God's Word.

Friday, the focus turns to Bible prophecy: the rapture, Israel, the coming kingdom of God, and what scripture tells us about the days ahead. Then Saturday, explore the mysteries of the Bible: angels and the unseen realm, ancient mythologies, biblical giants, and mysteries you may have never heard discussed.

We're bringing together Josh Davis, Micah Van Huss, Dr. Kenneth Hill, Greg Patten, Mac Dominick, Mark Linstedt, Larry Stam, Tyler Gilreath, and more. It's October 22nd through the 24th at the Delta Hotel in Bristol, Virginia. You need to register now. Seating is limited. The conference is just weeks away, and we don't want you to miss it. Make your plans, invite a friend, and reserve your seats today. Go to swrc.com right now and register for Prophecy in the News Live in Bristol. That's swrc.com. Register today.

Friends, what happened in the ancient world before and after the flood? Could those events explain some of humanity's oldest and strangest legends? We continue our fascinating conversation with Micah Van Huss, author of *Mythologies Decoded: Echoes of the Bible*. Let's get back to the conversation with today's host, John Ruez, and author Micah Van Huss.

John Ruez: Hello friends, and welcome again to Watchman on the Wall. We're so happy to have you with us today as we continue our discussion with author Micah Van Huss and his brand-new book, *Mythologies Decoded*. We certainly would encourage you to grab a copy just as soon as you can because you will be absolutely fascinated with it. Call 1-800-652-1144 or visit the website at swrc.com and get your copy of *Mythologies Decoded*.

In our previous session, we had talked a little bit about a number of very interesting figures, and one we wanted to be sure and pick up with today was Prometheus and especially the Watcher pattern. How do you connect these things?

Micah Van Huss: Prometheus in mythology rebels against the heavenly order and gives mankind divine fire and powerful knowledge. As we've talked about the Watcher tradition plenty of times, the Watcher tradition also connects the rebellious heavenly beings with the knowledge of weapons, metalworking, sorcery, astrology, and all kinds of forbidden knowledge.

Even in Revelation 21:17, the teaching of the cubit measurements to mankind is mentioned. Prometheus fits two figures from non-canonical writing. One of them mentioned in the Bible is Azazel. Shemyaza is not directly mentioned in the Bible itself but in non-canonical writings as the leader of the Watchers. Azazel is one of the leaders of the Watchers found in Leviticus 16. Yes, Prometheus brings divine fire, steals it from the gods, and gives it to humans because he has some favor towards humans and teaches them knowledge.

John Ruez: Do those five ages that you've mentioned there actually have quite a bit in common with the Bible?

Micah Van Huss: We're talking about Hesiod's five ages of mankind. That is Chapter 4, Mythology of Mankind. Hesiod describes mankind moving from a golden age into worse and more violent ages. Five of them end in a troubled iron age. That is similar to the biblical pattern of Eden, the fall, growing violence, and judgment. The big difference in the mythological five ages of mankind and scripture is that scripture doesn't end in decline; it points toward the restoration under Jesus Christ.

John Ruez: Then a very familiar name that we'd like to at least mention—no, we're not talking about a box—do you think that there's truth to the fact that Pandora is the Greek version of Eve?

Micah Van Huss: I do believe that she is an echo of Eve. There are real similarities. Now, Pandora is not simply the Greek version of Eve. Both stories involve a woman, a broken boundary, and suffering entering humanity and the human experience. Pandora is created by the gods as a punishment for humans, while Eve is created by God as a good companion for Adam.

The similarities come from a shared memory, but the theology is very different between Eve and Pandora. For those that don't know the story of Pandora and her box, which is a jar in the original recording, the gods give her to mankind supposedly as a gift, but her jar is full of something and she's told never to open it.

Living immortal with a jar that you're told not to open, the reaction is to open it up. Sure enough, when she opens the jar, all kinds of evil spill out on mankind and on the earth. That, of course, is kind of an echo of Eve taking the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Pandora, of course, closes her jar at the last moment, but then she learns that the last thing left in the jar was hope. She couldn't let it out because she had already let out too much stuff. It's a fascinating story.

John Ruez: What do you think about the factor or the possibility that Lilith might have been Adam's first wife?

Micah Van Huss: There are mythological stories that Lilith was the first wife of Adam. No, the scripture never mentions her as Adam's wife, though it's a fascinating theory and the mythological tale is a little entertaining regarding how men and women don't get along. I don't think she was Adam's first wife, but Lilith does actually appear in the original Hebrew text.

The King James translates her as a screech owl, a night demon dwelling in the ruins of the desert at night. She is, by name, mentioned in the Hebrew, so people can dismiss Lilith, but she actually is mentioned by name.

John Ruez: What happened spiritually at Babel?

Micah Van Huss: We know the story of the Tower of Babel when the people, likely led by Nimrod, come together to make a name for themselves in direct opposition to what God told mankind to do, which was spread throughout the earth and multiply. A few hundred years likely after Noah's Ark, we know that the languages were separated because God came down and confounded the languages.

There was much more than just the language barrier. God divorced the nations right after the Tower of Babel as a judgment. This is the point in history where Jews and Gentiles are separated. This is the point in history where God chooses Israel as His chosen nation. Israel's not a nation yet, but Deuteronomy 32:8 and 9 says that He chose Jacob as the lot of His inheritance. That's Israel.

The question becomes, if there are roughly 70 nations and God chooses one, what happens to the other 69 nations? As we talked about at length in my last book, *Angels Eternal*, and some in this book, *Mythologies Decoded*, God judged the nations by placing fallen angels in charge of the other nations.

We see this in scripture: the Prince of Persia in Daniel Chapter 10, the Prince of Greece in Daniel Chapter 10, and the princes who are judged in Psalm 82. The gods who are judged—and again, when we say gods, we're talking lowercase gods, fallen angels. Spiritually at Babel, that's when God judged the nations by putting spiritual entities in charge of them.

As with all of the curses that God puts on mankind—the curse of death, the judgment of the flood—He doesn't do it without a hope of redemption and hope for the future. God says in Psalm 82:8 that He will bring all nations back to Himself. In fact, in Revelation 11:15, it says that all the kingdoms of this earth will become Jesus Christ's.

We see when Satan takes Jesus on top of the temple and offers all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus that the kingdoms of the world, other than Israel, belong to Satan right now. Satan is the prince of those kingdoms, and he had the power to give them to Jesus. He said Jesus needs to bow down to him, and Jesus said not on my terms but on the Father's terms. Jesus did not worship Satan on top of the temple in Matthew 4. We see these kingdoms of the world, and that is spiritually what happened after Babel.

John Ruez: Do you believe that the Tower of Babel was a portal, and also, just exactly how far up do you think they managed to get?

Micah Van Huss: The idea that the Tower of Babel is a portal is a fascinating theory. The idea was that Nimrod and his people were trying to open a portal into Tartarus from Greek mythology where the Watchers were chained before the flood. The idea that the Tower of Babel was a summoning portal to try to get them there is a fascinating theory.

I don't believe that it is correct, but it could be. Mac Dominick talks a little bit about that in his books, *Shadows of Evil* and *Cosmic Conflict*. It's a fascinating theory. As far as the height of the Tower of Babel, the idea that the Tower of Babel could have been a portal does have some credence because I believe that ziggurats, pyramids, and the false high places built were possibly places for the gods to enter the realm of men or where the men tried to make contact with the gods.

That's Chapter 6 from my last book, *Angels Eternal: Gateways of the Gods*. There is the idea that at the top of the Tower of Babel, it was a portal for the gods to come through, whether or not the fallen angels from before the flood, I don't know. It's a fascinating theory.

As far as the height, I think the Tower of Babel was likely a ziggurat, not necessarily infinitely into the sky but a high place to worship and sacrifice to the gods and commune with the gods. We see that all through scripture, even with Yahweh Himself. The majority of times when God comes into our realm, it is on top of a high mountain: Mount Sinai, the transfiguration where Jesus was glorified.

There is something to the high places, and it is a fascinating study. As far as the height of the Tower of Babel, there are plenty of mythological accounts that say it was built so that mankind could go up to slay God, reach the skies, and slay the God that judged the earth with the flood. Some of them talk about the axes that they brought to cut through the firmament, the great dome overhead, to get to God. I think it was likely a ziggurat and had a limited height.

John Ruez: I think that it has always been a source of fascination to me that we're accustomed to what we've termed skyscrapers in our world and our time, but I wondered exactly what the capacity was. I'm not doubting that they had more than we know at the time, but their capacity probably didn't exist to take it on up as far as many people think.

Micah Van Huss: Probably not.

John Ruez: It would have been as they viewed it, as they saw it, that they were reaching for that portal. As we're looking at that—high places and portals—compare and contrast the Tower of Babel and Jacob's Ladder.

Micah Van Huss: Jacob's Ladder is a fascinating story where Jacob had the dream of the ladder and angels descending in and out of heaven. Obviously, it was a dimensional portal between heaven and earth even though it was a dream. Babel is mankind trying to build their own way upward and force their way into heaven.

At Bethel, when Jacob has the dream of his ladder, Jacob doesn't work to make that connection between heaven and earth. God reveals the true gate from above. Jesus later shows that He is the real connection between heaven and earth. Access to God is received through Jesus Christ, not by human achievement.

This is visited in that chapter, Mythology of Mankind, but we will also come back to the bridge between heaven and earth in the seventh chapter, The World Tree. We study a lot of Norse mythology, Yggdrasil the world tree and the Bifrost bridge. If you remember from the Thor movie, the rainbow bridge is the bridge that connects Asgard with Midgard, connecting heaven with the realm of men. We'll come back to that a little bit later, but as we just stated, Jesus Christ is the true bridge between heaven and earth.

John Ruez: Micah, how widespread do you think are the traditions that are brought about by the catastrophe of the great flood?

Micah Van Huss: Very wide. In fact, of our connections to the mythological world, the flood has the most references and is the most evident. That's Chapter 5 of the book. In my second book, *The Earth As It Was*, it was all about the flood of Noah and the things that were going on. Here in *Mythologies Decoded*, Chapter 5, we revisit the flood, the evidences of the flood, and the mythological tellings of the flood.

The flood traditions show up all over the world: in the ancient Near East, Greece, India, Northern Europe, Asia, and even here in the Americas. Many include a divine warning, a chosen survivor, and many of them include a vessel that preserved life, a mountain landing where the vessel came to rest, and even some of these mythological tellings of the flood include animals that were carried onto that great boat to survive. The details between these accounts change, but the basic pattern of a global flood, of a world-destroying flood, shows up.

John Ruez: Are there any particular similarities in survivors told in mythology or described in mythology as opposed to the real great flood?

Micah Van Huss: We're talking about Noah and even his wife, whom the Bible does not name, but the Book of Jasher names her as Naamah. Whether the Book of Jasher is correct or not, it is an account we have. Naamah would be his wife. According to that one, Noah didn't marry her until he was 500.

I don't think it's the Book of Jasher, but I do remember hearing that Noah thought because of the judgment it wasn't worth having children because the earth was coming to an end. I don't think that's the Book of Jasher, but anyway, he was 500 before he decided to get married.

We have all kinds of flood survivors: Utnapishtim from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis and Ziusudra, Deucalion, and Fravra in Greece mythology. In India, Noah's wife is Manu. In Norse mythology, he's Bergelmir. These stories are different from Genesis, but they're very similar in a lot of ways, and they do preserve the memory of the watery judgment and the survivor.

John Ruez: Do you think that they actually do some proving on their own with a connection to biblical story?

Micah Van Huss: Not on their own. As a whole, they are evidence. The idea that over 670 different cultures tell of a global flood and a survivor—and many of them talk about a wooden vessel or a chest that he floated on and landed on a mountain—these are obviously echoes of the true story of Noah.

Even in the Chinese, in my book *The Earth As It Was*, we studied the Chinese symbolism. Chinese is kind of a pictograph language where some of the words are drawn as pictures. The ancient symbol for boat, the Chinese symbol, is split up into three symbols: vessel, eight, and mouths. Eight people on a vessel is the ancient Chinese symbol for a boat.

There's all kinds of fascinating things. By themselves, these pagan flood stories don't prove Noah's flood, but they are strong supporting evidence of a shared ancient memory. Because the nations came from Noah's family and later they scattered at Babel, we would expect them to carry different versions of the story, but nonetheless, echoes of the same story.

John Ruez: Do you believe that the actual location or the actual relics of Noah's famous ark have been found?

Micah Van Huss: I think it's possible. I think the question is more specifically about the site of Noah's Ark, which I think the Durupınar site in eastern Turkey on the Iran border is the most likely site of Noah's Ark. It's a fascinating site. There's a boat-shaped impression in the mudflow. It's a national park in Turkey. They've got a visitor's center and everything.

The dimensions of that boat that we can see—the first photograph was taken by a Turkish Air Force pilot in 1958, I believe—it looks like a boat and the dimensions are exactly the same as the Egyptian Royal Cubit measurements of the ark given in the Bible.

Above the Durupınar site, there are giant cliffs, and this becomes fascinating because in the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh himself becomes obsessed with immortality. It's said that the only person that has obtained immortality is Utnapishtim, the survivor of the flood, which would be Noah. Gilgamesh goes to look for Utnapishtim to find out how to gain immortality. He does find Utnapishtim along the walls of heaven.

You look at those cliffs at the Durupınar site, these massive stone walls, and those could easily be the walls of heaven from the Epic of Gilgamesh mythological story. According to some of the ancient writings—I think Josephus is one of them—the first settlement after Noah's flood was Mesha-Naxuan. In fact, in Genesis Chapter 10, the Table of Nations, Mashu, I believe, is the name of one of the settlements, one of the first settlements that Noah's sons founded.

Mesha means "to be drawn out of water," and that's very similar to Moses—Moshe—to be drawn out of water. I do believe that the first settlement after the flood was likely down the mountain from the ark. It was said that the wood and tar from the ark was harvested to be able to build that settlement.

That's the Durupınar site. You also asked about evidences and relics or things. There are stories—Josephus is a number of them—that talk about people taking wood from the ark for thousands of years as amulets to ward off evil spirits and different things.

In fact, there are two connections in scripture that don't mention the ark directly, but Sennacherib was murdered in his temple worshipping Nisroch, his god, by his two sons. If you remember that story from scripture, they split open his stomach with their sword, and his bowels spilled out. That's how he died.

It says his two sons fled to Armenia. The Jewish Talmud talks about how Nisroch, his god, the one he was worshipping when he died, was actually a wooden idol carved out of a piece of Noah's Ark that he and his family had traveled to Armenia, which is the region of Ararat, in their lifetime. Those are some connections.

There's one other fascinating one. Is it Esther whose Mordecai is her uncle? When Haman comes to kill Mordecai, they say to hang him on a beam that's 75 feet tall. Where do you get a beam of wood that's 75 feet tall? Well, again according to the Jewish Talmud, Haman's son was the ruler of the province where Noah's Ark was. That's where you get a 75-foot-tall beam, from Noah's Ark. There are some stories in scripture that are kind of hinting at Noah's Ark, though they don't specifically come out and say the boat itself.

John Ruez: Do you think that the Sumerian King List and the Babylonian world contribute considerably to the understanding of mythology and how some of this has developed over time?

Micah Van Huss: The Sumerian King List is a clay cuneiform tablet. All four sides are carved on it, and it's got a list of kings from before the flood of Noah and a list of kings from after the great flood. That shows how the ancient world remembered the event of the flood through those kings.

The Babylonian world map is fascinating. It's the Imago Mundi tablet. The best video on the Imago Mundi is by Irving Finkel. He's a curator at the British Museum, and he's an awesome guy. Basically, we have this clay cuneiform tablet, maybe the size of a softball.

When you find these tablets and these things, they're in pieces all over the ground. Usually, you get the big ones, you take all the pieces that are around it, and you put them in the same container or categorize them in containers and put them on a shelf because you have thousands of these things to go through. It wasn't until very recently that they actually found one of the pieces of the Imago Mundi tablet, stuck it in, and realized it's pointing to the northeast. Of course, Mount Ararat and the Durupınar site are north-northeast of the cradle of civilization.

John Ruez: You made mention of Atlantis. Do you think that there might be some kind of a connection between Atlantis and the great flood?

Micah Van Huss: Absolutely. Secular history and secular science will say that if Atlantis was real, it was destroyed in the Younger Dryas climate catastrophe, which I think secular science says is the same as the great comet impact that killed all this stuff.

In a couple of my books, I have linked the Younger Dryas not to 11,500 years ago but to the flood, which according to my calculations on the Greek Septuagint, the flood would have been 5,200 years ago, about half the time of what secular science would say.

Yes, Atlantis was destroyed by water, but contrary to popular belief, the ancient mythologies never say Atlantis was under water. It was destroyed by earthquakes and water. In fact, Edfu, Egypt, where these writings were found, it says there was water, but it was only about knee-deep.

There was mud under the water, so ships could not sail to the destroyed city of Atlantis. It wasn't under water. There was about a foot of water because you could see the grass sticking out of the tops of the water, but ships couldn't get there. You've got to travel hundreds and hundreds of yards by foot in muddy quicksand, so no one could really get to the destroyed city of Atlantis after the destruction.

In my first book, *Ancient Cities and the Gods Who Built Them*, Chapter 1 on Atlantis, we talk about what I believe the most likely location of the city of Atlantis is, and that's the Eye of the Sahara. If you have access to the internet while you're listening right now, just Google "the Eye of the Sahara." It's also called the Richat Structure.

It's fascinating imagery. There's nothing like it, any other satellite imagery of Earth. It's the exact circular dimensions mentioned for the city of Atlantis. Looking at it from the top down, the city of Atlantis was land surrounded by water, surrounded by land, surrounded by water, surrounded by land, surrounded by water. Three rings of land, one dot in the center, and the water all around.

The Richat Structure, the Eye of the Sahara, looks fascinatingly a lot like what Atlantis is described as. On top of that, if you look at Northern Africa, the entire continent, you can tell that Africa was under water, a lot of water at some point in the past, and it bulged up. The water was pushed off of it.

You can see the salt left behind in the Western Sahara Desert and the water striations. You can see the bare bedrock where dirt has been dragged off that bedrock. Scientists agree that 6,000 years ago roughly, Northern Africa was a jungle. It wasn't a desert. It was a jungle and a lush archipelago.

Atlantis was described mostly as an archipelago, not necessarily surrounded by an ocean just to the south. If you look, there's all kinds of connections. It's not really what we're wholly getting into, but the Richat Structure is in the Atlas Mountains. Who was the first king of Atlantis? Poseidon's first son, Atlas. There's all kinds of connections: birth rate of twins in the world, elephants in Mauritania. There's all kinds of connections, but it's a fascinating study.

John Ruez: Friends, you can see that the connections are many, the information is vast, and it is indeed fascinating. We would encourage you to visit the website at swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144 again. That is swrc.com or 1-800-652-1144 and get yourself a copy of this wonderful new volume by Micah Van Huss, *Mythologies Decoded*. We thank you for being with us.

Announcer: Here's a fascinating question. Why do civilizations separated by oceans, languages, and centuries tell stories that sound strangely familiar? Stories of supernatural beings, giants and heroes, divine judgment, and again and again, a catastrophic flood. Coincidence?

Author Micah Van Huss goes searching for answers in his brand-new book, *Mythologies Decoded: Echoes of the Bible*. Micah explores Greek, Norse, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian traditions and compares their ancient memories with the authoritative account preserved in scripture. What emerges is fascinating. Perhaps some of it is evidence that humanity never completely forgot what happened.

If you enjoy digging beneath the surface of scripture and exploring biblical mysteries, *Mythologies Decoded* belongs in your library. Get your copy today at swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144. *Mythologies Decoded*, 1-800-652-1144. The past is still speaking. Are we listening?

Tomorrow we wrap up our time with Micah Van Huss and his outstanding new book, *Mythologies Decoded*. Be sure to tune in. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by you. To learn more, visit swrc.com.