One of the most explicit incursions of Greek mythology in the NT is the reference to Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4. Here we read that "God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness (sirois zophou), reserved for judgment". The allusion is to the angels that intermarried with human women, as the parallel text in Jude makes clear: "Angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6). In my recent thread on the Nephilim and the Rephaim (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx), I indicated that the legend of the Titans was broadly related to the Canaanite and Hebrew myths of the Nephilim and Rephaim, but here in 2 Peter we see more recent Hellenistic influence on Jewish legend.
According to Hesiod and other Greek writers, the Titans were the wicked offspring of Ouranius and Gaia ("Heaven" and "Earth") who initially had sovereignty over the cosmos but whom Zeus and the Olympian gods defeated and consigned to eternal bondage in the prison called Tartarus in the netherworld. Iliad 8:13-16 describes Tartarus as a bottomless pit located below Hades, a distinction reminiscent of Hades and the abyss of Revelation. The Jewish Hellenistic traditions that 2 Peter is dependent on equates the angels that sinned with the Titans and their place of bondage as Tartarus. As I showed in an earlier thread (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/64432/993359/post.ashx#993359), 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are explicitly dependent on the first-century B.C. apocalypse 1 Enoch which elaborated considerably on the fallen angel traditions. Enochian allusions run throughout the two Christian passages in the NT.
2 Peter 2:4: " For God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment."1 Enoch 10:4-6: " Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....He covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment."
1 Enoch 10:11-12 : "Bind Semjaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded."
1 Enoch 20:1-2: "And these are the names of the holy angels who watch [over the angels]: Uriel, one of the holy angels, for he is over the world and Tartarus."
Jude 6: " And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day."1 Enoch 12:4: "Go and make known to the Watchers of heaven who have abandoned the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women."
1 Enoch 15:3, 7: "For what reason have you abandoned the high, holy, and eternal heaven; and slept with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of the people....I did not make wives for you for the proper dwelling place of spiritual beings of heaven is heaven."
1 Enoch 10:4-6: " Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....He covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment."
1 Enoch 10:11-12: "Bind Semjaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded.
1 Enoch is dependent, in turn, on the Greek Tartarus traditions. For instance, 1 Enoch 18:11 refers to the Watchers' prison as khasma mega "great chasm" which is exactly the description Hesiod uses for the prison of the Titans (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 729, 742, 806). There are many other close verbal parallels between the description of Tartarus in the Theogony and the chasm-prison of the angels in 1 Enoch 18:11, 21:7-11 (= Theogony 717-819). Finally, 2 Peter 2:4 decribes Tartarus as "pits of darkness" (sirois zophou), and the parallel text in Jude 6 refers to angels "under darkness" (hupo zophon). The same word occurs in 1 Enoch 17:2 referring to the netherworld as a "place of darkness" (zophode topos), and zophos "gloom, darkness" also designates Tartarus in Hesiod (Theogony, 729), who refers to the Titans "under the misty darkness" (hupo zopho eeroenti), a phrase strikingly similar to that in Jude 6. We also encounter zophos used in phrases like "gloom of the world below" and "nether darkness" in Odyssey 11.57, 155; 20.356; Illiad 15.191; 21.56; Asechylus Pers. 839. In Odyssey 20.356, Erebos is located "beneath" (hupo) the "darkness" (zophos).
The curious Jewish addition to the Greek Titan tradition is that the angel Uriel is in charge of Tartarus. But this element is in itself dependent on Near East mythology. In 1 Enoch 18:11 and 19:1-2 (also 21:1-9), Uriel serves as the interpreting angel for the prison(s) of the angels and in Sibylline Oracle 2:228 it is Uriel who leads the Titans and the giants (offspring of the Watchers) out of Hades to judgment:
"Bodies of humans, made solid in heavenly manner, breathing and set in motion, will be raised on a single day. Then Uriel, the great angel, will break the gigantic bolts, of unyielding and unbreakable steel, of the gates of Hades, not forged of metal; he will throw them wide open and will lead all the mournful forms to judgment, especially those of ancient phantoms, Titans and the Giants and such as the Flood destroyed" (Sibylline Oracle 2:225-232)
The figure of Uriel is also reminiscent of the angel "having the key to the abyss and a great chain in his hand" who binds Satan and presumably releases him after the millenium (Revelation 20:1-3). The connection of an angel of light (Uriel = "Fire" or "Light of God") with judgment of those in the netherworld is probably dependent on the Near Eastern tradition of the sun-god having judgment over those in the nether regions. The Sumerian Two Elegies, for instance, speaks of the sun-god's role as an infernal judge: "Utu, the great lord of the underworld, after changing the place of darkness to light, will render your judgment". In Akkadian tradition the sun-god Shamash is also portrayed as the arbiter of decisions:
"Illuminator of all, the whole of heaven, who makes light the darkness for mankind above and below, Shamash illuminator of all .... The careful judge who gives just verdicts, controls the government, lives like a prince" (Shamash Hymn, COS 1.117 1-3, 101-102)
After traveling through the netherworld at night, Shamash was believed to decide fates at Duku in the eastern horizon, just prior to his rising between the peaks of Mount Mashu. One may also observe the western entrance to the netherworld in the Sumerian myth Inanna's Descent. Inanna, also known as Ishtar and Venus, surprises the gatekeeper of the "land of no return". Instead of going to the "place of sunrise" where she would rise as the morning star Venus, she has instead come to the "land of no return" in the west, where Utu enters into the underworld. Also in the Baal Cycle, Anat asks the sun-god Shapsh to lift her brother Baal's corpse in the realm of Mot. Shapsh, traveling daily west to east, has access to the netherworld and recovers Baal's body.
There is one other connection to Akkadian myth in the legend of Tartarus and Uriel in 1 Enoch. In 1 Enoch 18:11-12 we learn that the Watcher's chasm is in proximity to a desrt place of sorts, and Azazel is represented as being cast into a chasm located in the desert in Dudael (1 Enoch 10:4). This is not an isolated tradition; according to the Targum Ps.-Jonathan, Beth-hadure (byt hdwr') is the rocky place where the goat for Azazel is led (cf. Leviticus 16:21) and Beth Hadudu (byt chdwdw) is described as a rocky wilderness in m. Yoma 6:8. Since Hebrew chdr means "sharp, pointed," the Targum form possibly reflects world play (note also the similarity between "d" and "r" in Hebrew/Aramaic). The original Greek form of the name (Dadouel) in 1 Enoch (and possibly the m. Yoma form) suggests a derivation from Aramaic dd' "breast". According to Milik, this etymology is also reflected in the Dendayn of 1 Enoch 60:8 where Behemoth is said to dwell. The Similitudes of 1 Enoch characterize Dendayn as a desert which cannot be seen but which lies east of the garden where the chosen and righteous dwell. The etymology of "breast" evokes the "two breasts" imagery of Akkadian and Sumerian cosmology relating to Mount Mashu, the mountain which twin peaks which oversees the setting and rising of the sun, located in both the east and west at the point of sunrise and sunset. Both Dendayn and Mount Mashu may also bear some connection to sdy known from the theophanic epithet El Shaddai. Shaddai has been associated with Ugaritic tdw or tdy "breast, mountain", which in turn is related to Akkadian shadu. We therefore find within the Enochian corpus a number of traditions about the holding place of the angels, connected to Greek Tartarus, which is also related to Akkadian and Near Eastern beliefs about the entrance and exit of the netherworld at the twin mountains at the extremity of the world, in a chasm located in an infernal desert presided over by the sun-god.