tain, but it seems clear that many readers of the text would, and did, make the
form in the extant Ethiopic Enoch, Asael and Azazel were interchangeable,
ascribed to him, the ruin of the earth is placed squarely on his shoulders, and then he is helpfully isolated and cast away, defused as an active force of evil. Furin their gamble, implying that they are opposing forces, and the name Azazel may as a seed informing the development of Azazel as a proto-adversary, in being depicted as the one who is to blame for all evil and sin in the world. It is surprising, however, that Azazel would live on as a paragon of evil, compared to his fellow rebel angel, Shemihazah. Shemihazah reveals the magical and the occult to humankind, concretely and consciously crosses the barrier between heaven and earth, and is the leader of a whole cadre of race of violent and destructive creatures, and who introduces evil spirits into whole earth. In part, it may be that Azazel’s revelations took chronological primacy, as through revealing the art of cosmetics to women, it was Azazel’s actions that tainted the women who seduced Shemihaza and his angels down Part of it may also be inconsistent redaction, where a basic source criticism were socially and culturally visible in a way that Shemihazah’s were not. Shpast and left progenies of invisible spirits to terrorize the people, but Azazel was responsible for the rise of empires, warfare, lasciviousness, and imperial power. Azazel’s evil left vestiges in the everyday life of Second Temple Jews, and was found in the hands of the social other: the conquering army and the the para-
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