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.”