The Spiritual Dilemma

Where does religion stop and spirituality begin?

The Chronicles of Enoch does receive many questions on this topic though, considering the source material and look of the series, that is hardly surprising.

Is it a religious work? Not necessarily; we do deal with some themes in common with a few of today's popular religions but we espouse the views of none of them. We share their viewpoint as certain characters see it; Jewish characters represent their religion, Christian characters theirs, atheists and agnostics, etc. theirs too. We chose to use the name The Creator quite intentionally because that could be any god, not just one.

Yes, we see uses of 'Allah', 'Hashem', YHWH, Yehovah, and so forth by characters but this is quite normal, people will invoke their god and we cannot ignore that.

But you have Lucifer, the angels, the Fall and even Jesus makes an appearance! you cry. Surely that ties you to the Judeochristian tradition!

Not really. Gilgamesh is present with strong intent, so are Conan and a number of others. Just because the stories are true does not mean that they are accurate.

It might surprise a few of you to know that I am an agnostic Christian. I have tried to find a - what would you call it? - meeting or church which I feel confortable in. I have tried Methodist, Southern Baptist, general Christian, Mormonism. I felt something, I enjoyed the community but there was always something missing or something added on that I didn't like. That is a topic for another day, though, or maybe we'll come back to it later. You know how my narrative style so we never know where we're going to end up.

The Bible & Books of Enoch

Obviously, the apocryphal and contested books of Enoch are our primary inspiration. They also led to our dominant confusion and line of enquiry. You see, as we investigated, we found that they were considered, for want of a better word canon in the Bible until somewhere around the 11th-13th century AD. At that time, it is rumoured (and written down by the monks who copied the Bible) that all copies were rounded up and taken or ordered to be burned. No explanation was given as to why.

Then, when a treasure trove of clay pots were discovered in caves near Qumran in 1947 (again that year eh, who said patterns don't happen?), efforts were made from certain circles to repress, damage, or discredit what was found within, including the only physical copies of our inspiration. In some recess of my researching mind a thought sparked 'if you repress it, it worries you' while another thought added 'unless that's what they want you to think'.

You see, I was thinking like Asmodeus already.