For many decades the Church of God has worked overtime to write about the significance of the Azazel goat in association with the Day of Atonement. United Church of God, COGWA and Living Church of God pay particular attention to the story.
The church has always associated the Azazel goat with the arch-deacon, Satan. That "teaching" apparently stems from
The Book of Enoch. Living Church of God teaches a belief from the book, yet they disfellowship people for reading the book. They use it to support their doctrine yet tell their plebe members that it a heretical book. What a pickle LCG is in!
Living Church of God fails to see that the Azazel Goat association with demons was the major premise in T
he Book of Enoch and its fallen angels. The very same book that the LCG went ballistic over after it was discovered that some LCG members were reading and discussing it.
The United Church of God, another splinter, aptly explains the symbolism Herbert Armstrong attached to the Day of Atonement through the lens of speculative prophecy, for which he was famous. Armstrong claimed that the scapegoat released in the wilderness pictured Satan being be bound and thrown in the bottomless pit, as described in Revelation 20. Removal of the devil would allow man to achieve "at-one-ment" with God, they say.
"This sending away into the desert is part of the reason for translating Azazel as scapegoat, or goat that escapes. But many scholars identify Azazel as the name of a demon inhabiting the wilderness," UCG explains. "It stands to reason that Azazel is one in stark contrast to the Lord—indeed, the ultimate enemy Satan the devil."
This explanation sounds good until you examine the context and timing of Leviticus versus the literature that names Azazel as a demon. The primary source scholars use to support the Azazel theory is the Book of Enoch. Scholars believe the Book of Enoch was written between the 300s B.C. and the first century A.D. because it includes late Aramaic names not present until that time period, according to The Expositor's Bible Commentary. It is likely that the Book of Enoch used Leviticus, which is believed to date to the 1440s B.C., as a source. Not vice-versa. The demon of the wilderness likely got its name from lore related to this ancient ritual, according to both Expositor's and the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon. The ritual did not borrow a name from a figure that appears in literature at least a thousand years later.
Further, the COGs have traditionally rejected non-canonical sources such as the Book of Enoch. In fact, the Living Church of God disfellowshipped members last year for reading and discussing the Book of Enoch. So the Azazel teaching puts the COGs in the precarious position of placing faith in a book that it tells its own members is heretical.
