“Incredible,” I said, gazing at the painting in what must have been obvious awe.
Dr. Seraphina began to laugh. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Our collections are immense. We’re building a network of libraries throughout the world-Oslo, Budapest, Barcelona-simply to house them. We are hoping to one day have a reading room in Asia. Such manuscripts remind us of the historical basis of our work. All of our efforts are rooted in these texts. We depend upon the written word. It is the light that created the universe and the light that guides us through it. Without the Word, we would not know from where we came or where we are going.”
“Is that why we are so interested in preserving these angelologies?” I asked. “They are guides to the future?”
“Without them we would be lost,” Seraphina said. “John said that in the Beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God. What he did not say is that in order to be meaningful the Word requires interpretation. That is our role.”
“Are we here to interpret our texts?” Gabriella asked lightly. “Or to protect them?”
Dr. Seraphina gazed at Gabriella with a cool, assessing eye. “What do you believe, Gabriella?”
“I believe that if we do not protect our traditions from those who would destroy them, soon there will be nothing left to interpret.”
“Ah, so you are a warrior, then,” Dr. Seraphina said, challenging Gabriella. “There are always those who would put on armor and go to battle. But the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.”
“In times like these,” Gabriella said, walking ahead, “one has no choice.”
We examined a number of objects in silence until we came to a thick book placed at the center of a table. Dr. Seraphina called Gabriella over, watching her intently, as if she were reading her gestures for something, although I could not say what.
“Is it a genealogy?” I asked, examining the rows of charts drafted upon the surface. “It is filled with human names.”
“Not all human,” Gabriella said, stepping closer to read the text. “There are Tzaphkiel and Sandalphon and Raziel.”
Squinting at the manuscript, I saw that she was correct: Angels were mixed into the human lines. “The names aren’t arranged in a vertical hierarchy of spheres and choirs, but in another kind of schema.”
“These diagrams are the speculative charts,” Dr. Seraphina said, a gravity to her voice that made me believe she had brought us through the maze of treasures so that we might at last come to this very place. “Over the course of time, we have had Jewish, Christian, and Muslim angelologists-all three religions reserve a central place in their cosmology for angels-and we have had more unusual scholars: Gnostics, Sufis, a number of representatives from Asian religions. As you might imagine, our agents’ works have deviated in crucial ways. The speculative angelologies are the work of a band of brilliant Jewish scholars from the seventeenth century who became engrossed in tracing the genealogies of Nephilistic families.”
I came from a traditional Catholic family and, having been educated in a strict fashion, knew very little about the doctrines of other religions. I did know, however, that my fellow students were from many different backgrounds. Gabriella, for example, was Jewish, and Dr. Seraphina-perhaps the most empirically minded and skeptical of all my teachers aside from her husband-claimed to be agnostic, to the chagrin of many of the professors. This, however, was the first time I fully understood the range of religious affiliations incorporated into the history and canon of our discipline.
Dr. Seraphina continued, “Our angelologists studied Jewish genealogies with great care. Historically, Jewish scholars kept meticulous genealogical records due to inheritance laws, but also because they understood the essential importance of tracing one’s history to the very root, so accounts can be cross-referenced and verified. When I was your age and intent upon researching the finer points of angelology, I studied Jewish genealogical practices. As a matter of fact, I recommend that all serious students learn these methods. They are marvelously precise.”
Dr. Seraphina turned the pages of the book, stopping before a beautifully drawn document framed in gold leaf. “This is a genealogy of Jesus’s family trees drawn in the twelfth century by one of our scholars. According to the Christian schema, Jesus was a direct descendant of Adam. Here we have Mary’s family tree, as it was written by Luke-Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, David.” Dr. Seraphina’s finger traced the line down the chart. “And here is the family history of Joseph written by Matthew-Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Zerubbabel, and so on.”
“Such genealogies are rather common, aren’t they?” Gabriella said. Clearly she had seen a hundred such genealogies. Since I’d had no previous exposure to such a text, my reaction could not have been more different.
“Of course,” Dr. Seraphina said, “there have been many genealogies tracing how bloodlines matched Old Testament prophecies-the promises made to Adam and Abraham and Judah and Jesse and David. This one, however, is a bit different.”
The names branched one to the next, creating a vast net of relations. I found it profoundly humbling to imagine how each name corresponded to a person who had lived and died, had worshipped and struggled, perhaps without ever knowing his or her purpose in the greater web of history.
Dr. Seraphina touched the page, her nail gleaming in the soft overhead light. Hundreds of names were written in colored inks, so many thin branches lifting from a slight stalk. “After the Flood, Noah’s son Shem founded the Semitic race. Jesus, of course, emerged from that line. Ham founded the races of Africa. Japheth-or, as you learned in Raphael’s lecture last week, the creature posing as Japheth-has been credited with the propagation of the European race, including the Nephilim. What Raphael did not emphasize in his lecture, and something I believe to be of great importance for more advanced students to understand, is that the genetic dispersion of humankind and Nephilim is much more complex than it first appears. Japheth went on to father many children with his human wife, resulting in an array of descendants. Some of these children were fully Nephilistic, some were hybrids. The children whom Japheth-the human Japheth, killed by the Nephilistic creature who posed as Japheth, that is-had fathered before his death were fully human. And so the descendants of Japheth were human, Nephilistic, and hybrid. Their intermarrying brought forth the population of Europe.”
“It is so complicated,” I said, trying to work out the various groups. “I can hardly sort through it.”
“Now you’ve hit upon the very reason for keeping these genealogical charts,” Dr. Seraphina said. “We would be in something of a mess without them.”
“I have read that a number of scholars believe that Japheth’s bloodline mixed with Shem’s,” Gabriella said, pointing to a branch of the speculative genealogy and isolating three names: Eber, Nathan, and Amon. “Here and here and here.”
I leaned in close to read the names. “How can they be sure?”
Gabriella smiled, something cruel in her manner, as if anticipating my question. “I believe there is documentation of some sort but in all truth they cannot be one hundred percent sure.”
“That is why this is called speculative angelology,” Dr. Seraphina said.
“But many scholars believe it,” Gabriella said. “It is a valid and ongoing part of angelological work.”
“Surely modern angelologists do not believe this,” I said, trying to hide my intense reaction to this information. My religious beliefs were strong even then, and such crude speculation about Christ’s paternity was not accepted doctrine. The chart, which only seconds before had seemed wonderful, now upset me a great deal. “The idea that Jesus had the blood of the Watchers is absurd.”