Episode 148 - Creatures Of The Curtain

Dragons are one of those topics people either laugh off or obsess over, but we take them seriously as a theological and historical problem: why do dragon accounts appear on nearly every continent with such similar descriptions, and why does the Bible itself insist on dragon language from Genesis to Revelation? We begin a new series on the boundary between fey and non-fey creatures and argue that modern categories often shrink reality until the sources stop making sense.

We use the tabernacle as a “map” of creation: the highest heaven, the broader heavens and earth, and the curtain that marks a boundary. That curtain becomes our key image for liminal beings, the creatures that do not sit neatly in either the purely heavenly or the straightforwardly earthly. From there we move to dragons as a classic test case, exploring why fossil theories do not fully explain the overlap in global dragon traditions and why a Christian cosmic worldview has room for stranger inhabitants than modern materialism allows.

Then we go further: dragon rulers. Drawing on global church history, wider-canon texts received by many Christians, and Ethiopian imperial memory, we discuss a famous Ethiopian dragon ruler said to have governed for centuries, bringing prosperity while demanding worship and sacrifice. The story pushes a blunt question: would you accept wealth and stability if the price is your soul? We end by contrasting dragon tyranny with the kingship of Jesus, where the Father gives his only Son rather than demanding yours.

If this stretches your imagination, listen closely, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What do you think dragons reveal about power, worship and the shape of reality?

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

A New Series And Giraffes

Rev Dr PRB 0:00

Okay, welcome to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, as we are gonna begin a new series examining the boundary between fay creatures and non-fei creatures, and the complexity of that of understanding what category to place creatures in. And it's something which probably doesn't exercise modern taxonomists the way that it perhaps should, or the way that earlier scholars were more engaged with this issue, because as I've said on this podcast in the past, I'm still not totally convinced that there really are giraffes whenever I see pictures of them, or even the on a couple of occasions where I've seen them, or I kind of thought I was seeing them, live once at London Zoo, and then another time at another kind of zoo thing. To me, I can't quite believe that that is a physically real creature. It just doesn't seem plausible to me. So even now I'm not totally convinced about giraffes, but I I there are many people who speak uh of them. Even some people have claimed to have seen them in their natural habitat. Now, that to me is too much. I can imagine that there are certain conditions in which they can be contained, like in a zoo or something, but the idea that they're just wandering around, I can't. Anyway, that's the problem of giraffes, it's one of my life problems. But there are many other examples of creatures that seem to border they're not clearly on one side of the border or another. And in this series, what we're gonna do is look at some that are often classified as fei, but not always, and others that are often classified as non-fei, but not always. Uh and I'll give you a heads up. One of the ones that I think is normally classified as non-fei, but is obviously a fei creature, is this one that is called I think it's called something. Well, even when I tell you the name of it, you'll realize it is obviously a fey creature. But we're gonna examine it in a future episode. It is literally, as I tell you the title of it, you'll you'll laugh and you'll say, that is not a physical creature, but it is called the duck billed platypus. So it's like obviously a chimera because it is the name of it is telling you that it's a mixture of different creatures, and it is in fact that. But we'll look at that one in more detail later, not in this episode. For now, we just want to establish the parameters and begin to look at one or two classic problem cases. So, just for those who are new to this, the the problem of fey creatures, it's a classification issue because in the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, Jesus' reality, the heavens and the earth, there are a huge number of creatures, only some of which are native to planet Earth in the sense of always physically visible and present

Defining Fey And Non-Fey

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on the earth. So we might say a cat or a dog, we go, that's a straightforwardly non-fake creature. But even then, when we talk about dogs, there are dog-headed humans. And so even the even the dog becomes complicated, and you'll know from previous episodes we've looked at the dog-headed humans, and we may reference them in this series also. But there is that, but then let's go to the other extreme where we know that there are angels, many hundreds of millions of angels, that seem to be of a whole vast variety and type and size and prestige, and some that are near to the highest, the the very highest role around the divine thrones, and then there are others that seem to have more mundane tasks on earth, the management of rivers and trees and little nations, I suppose, even tiny nations may have one, and things like that. So there's all this category of angels that would normally we would say, well, they're not even fei, they are entirely heavenly creatures. So we've got creatures that we would say are entirely heavenly, then we have creatures that we would be comfortable to classify as as entirely earthly, and then there's a kind of hinterland between the two, liminal space that in which the fei creatures are classified in that space in between. And we think about, if we think about the tabernacle, I know we've covered this before, but I'm just renewing this in our minds. In the tabernacle structure, we have the innermost room, the holiest of holies, that represents the highest heaven. That's that cube-shaped room where you've got the Ark of the Covenant, where you've got the two angels beside the divine throne of the Ark of the Covenant. And just as a footnote, it's interesting that Philo,

The Tabernacle And The Curtain

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before the New Testament, sees that as a Trinitarian thing, where there's the God with his two angels who are part of it's seated on the divine throne, and that he sees that as a Trinitarian reference. But nevertheless, it's a even if we just say it's the father surrounded by symbolically many angels and so on, and that cube, the form of the highest heaven, and then there's an outer room and and an outer courtyard, which represents this other parts of creation, were the rest of the heavens and the earth and so on. And you've got there then this kind of twofold distinction, but there's a curtain that separates that heaven, the highest heaven, from the rest of creation. And the curtain is installed at a secondary stage of this m creating this multimedia model of the universe. And so the curtain then represents this kind of boundary between let's just simplify it for the moment and say there's a the heavens, the heavenly and the earthly, and then there's a curtain that separates the heavenly and the earthly. And so we would want to talk about the fee creatures belonging to the curtain. And so we in this series, I've actually entitled all my notes on it, Creatures of the Curtain. And we're wanting to investigate on what side of the curtain perhaps do they fall, or are they strictly caught in the curtain itself and the difficulties of classifying that? So that's where we are with this, and we're gonna see where we can go. I'm joy I'm joined by PJ from the Global Church History Project, who uh finds many stories and references to these things in global church history, and as we kick it off, I think what we want to start with is is just the the the old chestnut really of dragons. Dragons are extremely difficult

Why Start With Dragons

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to explain if you don't believe in them, because they occur in almost on almost I think on every continent, in almost every significant culture, from the Americas to Australia, different Asian countries and cultures have these stories, India, China, Middle East, Africa, Europe, all have extensive sometimes dragon stories, and the descriptions, the physical descriptions of dragons, are some sufficiently overlapping that they do seem to all be talking about what is obviously the same category of creature. They're not like it's not like some say, oh, I saw a dragon and it had like ducks' feet and arms and you know were swinging about in trees or something like that. Because then you'd be like, Whoa, that doesn't sound at all like a dragon. What actually you get is all these descriptions are like a huge lizard, cre like serpent thing, sometimes with wings, but kind of it's always a serpentine creature that's large, beautiful, impressive, usually gifted with speech, usually fire breathing, and all everyone in the world seems to know that they're talking about the same creature, and sometimes it's considered as only evil, sometimes it has like other qualities, wisdom and aesthetic taste and things like that. But nevertheless, everyone seems to be talking about exactly the same creature, the overlap is enormous in the stories. So, how is that explicable? Now, some people say it's because it's a memory of dinosaurs. Well, that is possible if you're a strong creationist who believes that humans lived simultaneously with dinosaurs. You could offer that explanation to a degree, though I don't know many people who think dinosaurs were fire-breathing and capable of speech and so on. But nevertheless, at least that would be the beginning of an explanation if you believe that humans lived simultaneously with dinosaurs. But under the standard narrative, that isn't an option at all. And others say, well, people saw fossils of dinosaurs and extrapolate from that dragon stories, but even then, how do they end up with such strong agreement about the reconstruction of what these things would have been like in practice? And they all end up with the sort of fire breathing and all these kind of elements to it. So it's a very, very difficult thing to explain if you don't have a sufficiently large view of cosmic reality that allows for creatures like dragons and griffins and uh duckbilled platypus and uh centaurs and uh man of war jellyfish cive creatures and things like all these all the strange creatures. So you have to have a space for all these. So let's begin with the dragon, because it's it's right in a way, it's right at the beginning of the Bible where Satan takes the form, either is a dragon or takes the form of a dragon, whichever of those you want. And we know that's the case because the book of Revelation literally clarifies that the s that ancient serpent is a dragon. So even if some people are resistant to that and say, no, no, it's just a snake, no, Revelation goes, no, no, that was a dragon. It's and and as there are these descriptions of the great dragon in Job and so on. So in the Bible, the dragon, dragon's a reference, there's no question about that. But what about other than the Bible? Now, I'm gonna ask PJ to begin with an a story of a dragon, and this takes us right into the nate like when you when we re think about Tolkien, and he has a kind of drag a dragon like Smaug as an example, but he has earlier dragons, but it's a classic feature of that kind of fantasy literature, where a dragon, in that case, like

Dragons In Scripture And Revelation

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gets rid of everybody and takes over an old settlement or a or a city or place. But sometimes in that cut in these stories, the dragon rules over an empire or a nation as a tyrant, and that you we would go, whoa, why would a dragon do that if it was just a beast? If it was a mere animal, that's it totally implausible for a mere animal to be exercising administrative rule over a large complex empire and managing the people and exacting demands upon them and having presumably diplomatic strategies and things like that. But we're gonna think here about an example of one of the great dragon rulers, and first uh PJ, first of all, is this a genre? The con first of all, set us up with that. The concept of dragon rulers and dragon emperors and things. Many people, it's possible, may not even be familiar with the concept of the of the dragon rulers that have been present throughout human history. Why don't you just first of all introduce us to the concept of dragon rulers? Well, I think for lots of parts of the world, like until very recently, until like the the communist takeovers of like Vietnam and Cambodia and China and other places, the idea of a dragon ruler and dragons being part of administration was just part of the cause. So that's even into the 20th century. That the idea that an emperor has to at least communicate with dragons, at least be within the usual order of dragons, is very normal

Dragon Rulers In Global History

Rev Dr PRB 14:53

for the like the majority of the population. Well, when you think about South and East Asia, that can that can be like at times the majority of the world population. And that and we literally know that, for example, isn't there one of the pharaohs that was widely considered to have a dragon as a companion? And that kind of thing is common, isn't it? To have that an emperor either has dragons in their employ or even has them as like a companion or a pet or something. Yeah, absolutely. So that's uh Pharaoh Philadelphus who translated or commissioned the translation that was the Septuagint. He's so he he's got incredible stories about him, he's an amazing person. And you know, he's often been depicted very saintly because of this Septuagint thing, and if you read some of that uh stuff, some of the stuff he says and everything, he's an incredible person, and so yeah, he he was able to tame a dragon, but as you say, not the only one, and to co-administrate with a dragon. I mean, some people say I think Cyrus did so as well. Cyrus was another had another dragon alliance, yes. Yeah. Inherited, I think, because he and then like Daniel kills that dragon in the in the story. So that's the story of Bell and the Dragon, which is part of what some of us would call the Apocrypha, but other people regard as mainstream scripture. I think the Ethiopians certainly do don't they? Yeah, Ethiopians, Catholics, Orthodox. So, you know, again, like a majority. So when we're thinking about if we're in a tradition, so like if you're in the West, as I said, you might not be used to dragons being a part of the administration, but if you're in the East Asia or even parts of South Asia, you're this is part of the course. But again, if you think about global Christianity, the majority will just have in in the Bible a story of a dragon who's part of the administration that becomes tyrannical and has to be killed. So this is again like I say, for the around the globe, this is very normal stuff. Normal stuff. And didn't you say you were telling me that in even the story of the apostles they encounter dragon rulers problems? Yeah, and there's a whole city that's very close. So often you'll just have one dragon, like sort of dragon kind, often like having fingers and a lot of pies, so there'll be like one dragon representative, uh you know, in one place or another. But Philip encounters a whole city that's just g governed by dragons, and then what one this is in the Acts of Philip that was translated quite recently by uh Francois Bouvon, I think. So you can read that, you can order it. I think it's quite cheap, but you know, maybe if it's run out of print, I don't know. But in the end, that there's a whole city of them, but then you see in all these other ones, they encounter all these dragons and they talk about genealogy. And if dragons have legs and feet, it seems they're not descended from the devil. But of course, the devil is a dragon who's condemned to not have feet. So that's one way you can tell the sort of genealogy quite quickly of dragons. But that there is that that like uh it seems as if one sort of one that's on the other side of the curtain will then have children who are sort of in the curtain, and then eventually you get very mundane snakes and stuff who often still claim descent from this, and so then Philip will be able to ask what appears to be just a normal snake, but is in fact part of this family genealogy. And it and is it the case that as it as the genealogy goes on they descend from heavenly to earthly then? It seems as a general rule, uh what one big exception the the Bible does mention basilisks being able to spawn wivens. So in that case, you've got a a terrestrial being that then fathers a heavenly or fei. Yeah. Yeah, one that would like flies around, so literally at least makes it sometimes to the second heaven, you know. But that's interesting because that flags up what we're really exploring in this series. The difficulty of categorizing too neatly, because we might like I was just assuming the flow must be heavenly through Fey to Earth, and you're saying, no, but there are occasions where earthly moves up to Fey and so on. That's important. So the the we we may look at some of these stories as we go on, but uh it's important for us to flag up like the concept that there are dragon rulers throughout history, throughout the world, and even up into the 20th century, many maybe even most of the world was aware of this and expected it to be a feature. And of course, even now today, you still have the memory of this in Western culture because the idea is dragons could take upon themselves human form, and that there's I've heard like conspiracy theories that look at leaders of even modern Western things as lizard people, which presumably they're saying that, possibly not realizing that that is all part of the dragon ruler tradition. Yeah, and that if you have something that looks a bit more like a mundane dragon, it might just be a lower down in the sort of genealogical hierarchy. Yeah, I'm not sure I buy all this lizard ruler thing in the West, the way the Western do it, because sometimes it's it's you know tied into things that you know, like spaceships and things, and all and I I I mean that that's that's something I I I can't believe that. It's not quite yeah, it's it's not as plausible as the dragonocracy. Yeah, I mean the dragonocracy, the dragonocracy is well is well documented, whereas this lizard people thing. Anyway, leave that for now. Let's go to a clearly documented example of a dragon ruler, and it's very well documented and very well held. And it's one of the most famous examples, I think, of a dragon ruler, certainly in church history. And it occurs sometime between Noah and the time of Solomon, and it's the Ethiopian Empire, one of the truly greatest empires in world history. And the I think it was the great-grandson of Noah, and maybe he's called Aksamawi, I think, or what's one of the names given to him. And after he passes, that's when I think the dragon ruler arrives. Do you want to tell us about this guy and and how long he reigned for, and what some of the difficulties of living under his rule? Yeah, so you've got he he goes by a few names, because even in one lifetime, people often accumulate a number of names. But he's often called Awe or Winaba or Araway or you know, the very various

Ethiopia’s Four Hundred Year Dragon

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you know, very Variations of that. Because the Ethiopian Empire holds many languages in it, even to this day, despite the you know attempts to centralize that it's always a very ethnically and linguistically diverse empire. It's huge. So he's known by many names, but he's very clearly the same person across all this. All these different cultures that will have totally different mythologies and ideas and all of this will are all united on the belief, the certainty, that they were governed by our weight for 400 years. That they, you know, from uh time of, you know, shortly after Noah, or maybe around the time of Abraham to the time of uh Solomon, you know, that you have this guy who who governs and he because the thing about dragons, it's similar to demons in that they can do incredible things. Because people often wonder, like, oh, why why do people invite demons in the Bible? And you get in the book of Acts, you get that one demon that's able to predict the future, and he he makes someone very rich by doing this. It does seem like our way is able to turn Ethiopia into a very rich and prosperous place, and he's able to spread the borders of it very far. Because there's things when you look at this Sheban Commonwealth, uh or Sabean Commonwealth, it's often called, that stretched from like Oman all the way to at least Mozambique. Because when people went to Mozambique, they were like, This place seems like it's right in the middle of this sort of power, like it's a huge empire, like bigger than the Roman Empire, and population-wise, way bigger. And it seems like our way sort of uh lays the foundations for this. He does sort of he's quite powerful, but then you know. But let's just pause on that for a second, to just to think about that, just for you, the listener. Just just like face that for a second. Like imagine if. Now I'm not gonna name who is the current prime minister of this country because I imagine it ch in this country it changes every sort of two or three weeks, or seems to, but it's a very rapidly revolving thing, and we and may be changing all the time. But whoever it is, that you may or may not like who is the current occupier, or and they seem to be in ever ever more unpopular these days, and people hate them. So and and they're and they do no one seems to be able to deliver anything good for the nation. The nation then it seems to be in constant terminal decline, kind of thing. Now imagine if, say, someone said, actually, there is we can actually be ruled by a Dragon Emperor who will

The Temptation Of Prosperity

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not what you you know will take power for hundreds of years, but under the rule of this Dragon Emperor, this nation will become extremely wealthy, all the kind of infrastructure problems will be solved, there will be, you know, great wealth and power and influence in the world, huge opportunities for the nation, it'll be culturally powerful, you know, people with great ability will be raised to prominence and given wisdom and insight, but you won't have any, you know, no more democracy, no more uh like neoliberalism and all that sort of thing. But great power, great money, great influence, tremendous cultural improvements, great infrastructure improvements, all of this. Would you accept that? Would you accept that? See, I I believe that if such a thing was really offered, I think most people would accept that. But there was a cost, wasn't there, towards having our way ruling? Even so we brought a lot of good to the table from a earthly point of view, from just terms of earthly money and power and influence and culture and civilization. Amazing, but there was a cost. What about that sort of side of it? Yeah, so we it did demand worship, like we see with so many of the most powerful and prosperous rulers in the Bible. This is a common thing, and you get a whole cult of personality in modern places, like as we thought about places that were successors to places with dragon administration. Lots of those are communists now, and they have that that cult of personality as a part of the administration. That seems to be they they uh maybe in a sense inherit that because this our way did demand worship and he managed to get it very sort of so it wasn't just like surface level, like people had to just sort of have a little picture of him around. It managed to really affect the psyche of people. So, as we said, he only managed to rule for 400 years, and dragons can of course live much longer than that, but even in the 13th century AD, so we're talking like maybe 2,000 years or more after he

Worship Demands And Human Sacrifice

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was yeah, after he was deposed, there were still people who worshipped our way all throughout Ethiopia in various places. Saint Tekla, Hamanat, who was a great evangelist, found that he had to combat that in the 13th century AD. Yeah. So he he obviously, well, people found it very persuasive, very, you know, appealing and everything, part of it. And you know, if you haven't got your eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, you can imagine uh, you know, people just need something to worship. And today somehow we we've managed to just settle for worshiping celebrities and things, but you know, historically something you'd need something more, maybe a dragon who ruled for 400 years. Yeah, I mean, I think people in the past had slightly higher standards than you know, and they demanded something truly worth worthy of being a star in the firmament. Whereas we will we will tolerate almost anything like some of the shows at the moment that have what are called celebrities on. I'm uh staggered that they would have attracted such fame. Whereas like previous eras of the world were not so easily hoodwinked and required somebody or something truly worthy of fame in order to get it. But it said, Well, is it not that he required sacrifices? Yeah, so that is one one of the ways you do. So if you look at like cults and stuff, they often get you to at least give up part of your families, but then you know, much more sinister cults, not that any aren't sinister, but you in some of the worst ones, they might get you to kill people you love, this sort of thing. That does just secure in this is the person you love the most, you'll give up anything for this person, sort of thing. So he sort of did that. So there is a sort of logic to it, it's not just total madness, but yeah, he he does just eat. People have to give up their daughters as a sacrifice, you know. I think the numbers vary in in accounts, but it's a quite consistent feature of how many, and it's a yearly, I believe, a yearly sacrifice, and he would just eat uh the these young women uh whole, I think, you know, because he he was a huge, if you see the pictures of him, you know, he's like it's a castle to just sort of eat them whole. So again, that had this sort of purpose, and we can see that replicated, even in the modern day, some of these crazy sort of cults things will do that, but it's a way of just securing absolute loyalty, and and you you know, you see it in the again, some of these Old Testament rulers where they're they're worshipped, that happens. So he does that, and then if you think of a 400-year thing, it becomes quite oppressive when just when you know it builds up over time just the number of uh people he will have eaten. So the his rule though comes to an end because the father of the Queen of Sheba he destroys him, and there's all different accounts of this. Some have it that he used magic to do it and kind of cast fire spells to consume him, others have it that he used iron weapons, presumably that that that the dragon was vulnerable to these iron weapons, or whatever it was, whatever is the way that this wise man, an able man, who defeats them and takes power, and he's the father of the Queen of Sheba, and of course the Queen of Sheba goes to Solomon, and in Ethiopian history, church history and imperial history, out of the union with Solomon comes the whole Solomonic imperial line out of which

Overthrow And The Queen Of Sheba

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you know the great Ethiopian Empire that is lasts for thousands of years, comes that from that. So it's tied into Bible history because it's literally the father of the Queen of Sheba who overthrew the dragon emperor uh or dragon ruler, and then that brings it right into the stories we get in the Bible and why the Queen of Sheba arrives from Ethiopia with and what has driven her to do this, and what who what's her background, and what does she know, and why does she want Jesus to be the ruler of the of the of you know the cosmic? Why does she look for the the divine emperor, the Christ-centered cosmic civilization? Because she's experienced what it is to live under a different kind of ruler. So the the attraction of finding out about Christ the Lord as as this greater emperor. And Solomon, presumably at that stage, was still able to communicate at least something of Christ. And uh, someone who loves you so much, he would sacrifice his own child rather than demanding you sacrifice your child is obviously much more appealing. Wow, that's a great thought to end this episode, isn't it? That the dragon rulers demanded you give up your offspring, whereas the Father in Heaven, the great ruler overall, who has appointed Jesus to be the divine emperor, the way that he get he is worthy of being the divine emperor is to sacrifice to be to die himself for the sake of us. The Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.