THe `sons of God' mentioned in genisis may actually have been the descendants of Cain, so I heard from a certain source.
The Sin of Sodom & Gomorrah in the Bible and Jewish Tradition
by Leolaia 18 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Narkissos
Badboy: the similar piece of fundamentalistic eisegesis (reading INTO the text whatever you want it to mean) I heard of featured the descendents of Seth as the "sons of God" and the (female) descendents of Cain as the "daughters of men"...
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badboy
Thanks 4 the correction,Narkisssos.
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Leolaia
The intepretation of "the sons of God" in Gen. 6 as referring to "angels" (as stated explicitly in the LXX rendering hoi angeloi tou theou, and the elaborated tales of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, and passed thence into Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 in the NT and also to Josephus) is probably closer to the original meaning than other interpretations. In the OT the expressions bene 'elohim, bene 'elim, and bene 'el (i.e. "sons of El") refer to lesser members of the divine order who make up the divine assembly or council in heaven, and who make up the "heavenly hosts" that Yahweh Sabaoth commands. The direct source of this usage is probably Canaanite mythology, where the council of heaven is made up of seventy sons begat by El and Asherah. Psalms 82:1 and 89:5-10 are closest to the traditional conception, and where the deities are referred to as "the assembly of El" ('dw 'l), "sons of Elyon" (in Canaanite mythology, an epithet of El is Elyon), "gods" ('lhym), "assembly of holy ones in heaven," and "sons of El" (bn 'l). Some have suggested that "gods" ('elohim) was the word that originally occurred in Gen. 6:1 (in a sense similar to Ps. 82:1) but the compiler of J or Genesis added the word bene "son of" to remove any hint of polytheism.
The legend that underlies Gen. 6:1-4, the interrmarriage of human women and the gods and their fantastic offspring (in Heb. gibbor, "mighty ones"), that the early inhabitants of the earth were men of gigantic stature and that marriages between gods and mortals were common in the heroic age, was well-known in the Near East. It underlay the Greek legends of the Titans and heroes (cf. Homer Illiad 5.302, Herodotus History 1.68, Virgil Aenid 12.900, Pliny HN, 7.73ff), the Phoenician legends of Sanchuniathon on intermarriages between deities and mortals (cf. Eusebius Praep. Ev. 1.10), and the Sumerian Gilgamesh legend. This myth however also functions as an etiological legend of the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan -- the Nephilim who according to Num. 13:33 were giants. This theme also occurs in Deuteronomy 1:28, 2:10-21, 9:2, Joshua 15:14, Amos 2:9, and other OT texts that conceptualize the original inhabitants of the land as giants. A late survival of this belief in giants as the primeval inhabitants of the land appears in the Quran, which refers to the 'Ad and Thamud (cf. Surat al-Araf, 74). Other names of these peoples in the Hextateuch include the Anakim, the Zuzim (or Zamzummim), the Rephaim, and many of these are mentioned in Gen. 14 as the inhabitants of Canaan in Abram's day. Note that for Gen. 6:1-4 to function as an etiological legend of the origin of the Nephilim, Rephaim, and similar peoples, this tradition originally knew nothing of the Flood of Noah, which would have destroyed the very ancestors of the giants in Joshua's day. The story of the Nephilim thus likely came from an early layer of J that preceded the inclusion of the Flood story (indicated also by the story of Nimrod in Gen. 10:8 who was described as the "first gibbor on the earth" but born after the Flood, and the story of Noah the vine-grower which depicts Noah's sons as juveniles and not the married men of the Flood story). Baruch 3:26-28 also cites Gen. 6:1-4 as referring to the Canaanite inhabitants of the land in the days of Joshua and David, and mentions God's decision in 1 Samuel 16:7: "In Israel were born the giants, famous to us from antiquity, immensely tall, expert in war; God's choice did not fall on these and they perished for lack of wisdom, perished in their own folly." The words "and even afterwards" in Gen. 6:4 appears to be a harmonizing gloss that implies that the Nephilim survived the Flood and remained in the land afterwards.
The case of the Rephaim is fascinating since they are mentioned in poetic texts as the "spirits of the dead" and the "denizens of Sheol" (cf. Job 26:5; Proverbs 9:18, 21:16, where the Rephaim gather around the injust in Sheol). In Isaiah 14:9, they are not just the shades of the dead but the ghosts of dead kings that will greet tyrants. This conception of the Rephaim also derives from pagan mythology. In Phoenician inscriptions, the Rephaim are the shades of the dead living in the underworld and in the Canaanite Ugarit texts, the Rephaim are a line of ancient mighty, dead kings. The description of the Nephilim as the "mighty of old, heroes of renown" in Gen. 6 comes very close to Canaanite conceptions of the Rephaim. One of these heroes of old was Danel, a legendary semi-divine king who played a significant role in the Aqhat legend. The memory of the Canaanite hero Danel remained strong in Israel and was alluded to several times by Ezekiel (cf. 14:12-20, 28:1-2). As later Jewish tradition reconceptualized the gods that intermarried with human women as fallen angels, the dead Rephaim in Sheol were also reconceptualized as not the spirits of mighty ancient kings in the underworld but the spirits of the angels themselves and of their unholy offspring chained in punishment in the darkness of the underworld. This development occurred in the Hellenistic period (and elaborated most clearly in 1 Enoch and restated in Jude 6) and likely drew from Greek myths of the Titans chained in Tartarus. 2 Peter 2:4 in fact makes the influence from Greek mythology explicit. Because of these developments, the ancient hero Danel became recast as a fallen angel in 1 Enoch 6:7, 69:2 (which also mentions a number of details from the Aqhat legend) or as the father-in-law of Enoch (Jubilees 4:17-21).
The interpretation of "the sons of God" as the pious line of Seth dates back to Julius Africanus (AD 160-240) and became widely adopted by Church Fathers and later on by Luther and Calvin. Most scholars recognize that "daughters of men" cannot have a narrower reference in v. 2 than in v. 1 of Gen. 6, and that consequently "sons of God" cannot denote a section of mankind. This view also ignores the long, ancient line of tradition that the "angel" interpretation derives from.
Leolaia
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observador
Leolaia,
I didn't read your second article, but the first one is interesting! It's amazing how much we infer at times.
Thanks.
Observador.
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Narkissos
Brilliant synthesis Leolaia. I had forgotten how old the Cainite vs. Sethite interpretation was -- although I can still recall a well-known Calvinist professor blindly defending it!
Just two questions for the pleasure of reading more from you:
- Do you really think an addition of bene would remove any hint of polytheism?
- Do you still believe in "J"?
Narkissos
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Leolaia
Observador: Read the next article as well. The comment in Jude 7 referring to the "fornication of Sodom and Gomorrah" is not based on Genesis, which nowhere mentions such fornication, but instead is based on growing Jewish lore on what constituted the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even Jesus in the synoptic gospels had a different understanding of what the sin was.
Narkissos: You're right that there is still a "hint" in bene elohim. The use of elohim to refer to beings of the divine order in heaven (as opposed to the gods of other nations or capital-E elohim "God") was though quite marked and rare, confined mainly to the poetical works, I believe. As for the documentary hypothesis, I am aware of the problems of old-fashioned JEDP source analysis and so I hedged myself by referring to "the redactor of J or Genesis".....I have no doubt that Genesis drew on earlier sources but it is not clear whether these narrative units were always necessarily written documents. I think the analysis of Jesuine parables shows that stories of some moderate length (especially the story parables of Luke & Matthew, or the elaborate story parable of GThom 64) can be transmitted intact as units in oral tradition. I am quite convinced that the stylistic and linguistic differences between J and P material are genuine and that P material is later than that of J. It is also clear tho that the JEDP analysis fails to account for the complexities in the primeval saga of ch. 2-11 where two separate layers of tradition may be detected: the two antediluvian geneologies that are variants of each other, the evidence that the Flood story was a later addition, and the parallel "city" and "tower" stories that have been intertwined in the Tower of Babel narrative. If there was a J, one could speak of an earlier edition that lacked the Flood story, but the way traditions have been freely combined and dislocated suggests that (perhaps in a fashion similar to the Gospel of John) several written and/or oral sources were freely and creatively used and it is very difficult of not impossible to reconstruct any such earlier documents. The doublet between Gen. 19 and Judg. 19 may be one example of how an oral tradition may be differently adapted.
One thing I'm really fascinated with is how the composition of the Pentateuch + Joshua, Judges utilized traditions from diverse geographical locales in Israel and Judah and arranged them in a new linear order as part of the national epic -- which of course changed the original context of these traditions. As the narrative now stands, the Sojourn in Egypt and Exodus separate the patriarchical traditions in Genesis from the stories in Judges. Yet, the doublets between Gen. 19 and Judg. 19 and the doublets between the Shechem stories in Gen. 34 and Judg. 9 (which have ties also to the Abimelech story in Gen. 20) suggest to me that the patriarchical stories and the stories of the Judges belong to the same rough cultural/historical milieu, and that the real reason why the Middle Bronze Age is thought of by conservative scholars as the "Age of the Patriarchs" is because of the artificial order in which they are made to precede the Sojourn and Exodus. I think that is why the Abraham stories contain so many "anachronisms" (i.e. referring to Beersheba, the Philistines, etc.). The anachronisms are just the result of where the stories were located in the overall grand narrative; the original Abraham stories may well concerned a legendary early Iron Age figure associated with certain cultic sites. There are a few other enigmatic clues. 1 Chronicles 4:22 refers to two grandchildren of Judah named "Joash and Saraph who went to Moab to take wives before returning to Jerusalem. Events these are of long ago." This story is not otherwise narrated in the Bible but it is curious because this would have had to have been when Israel was in Egypt, if Joash and Saraph were indeed the grandchildren of Judah. Yet here they are presented as residents of Bethleham, in the very territory where the tribe of Judah was to later reside. This would suggest a tradition that knew nothing of the Sojourn and Exodus. Yet if we look at Ruth 1:1-3 we find a similar but different story about Ephrathites named Elimelech and his wife Naomi who left Bethlehem to live in Moab. So a story somehow projected into the age before the Exodus may in fact reflect Iron Age conditions and traditions.
Leolaia
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Narkissos
Thanks for your reply Leolaia. One thing I never thought of is the role of the (Deuteronomistic and later) megahistory in the very formation of the narrative doublets from earlier (oral or written) material. Sounds very promising.
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*lost*
bumping