Robert Schneider wrote:
> My comment on Jim Eisele's note is below.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Eisele" <jeisele@starpower.net>
> To: "Peter Ruest" <pruest@dplanet.ch>
> Cc: "Dick Fischer" <dickfischer@earthlink.net>; <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 9:04 AM
> Subject: Re: Brachiators On Our Family Tree?
>
> > Peter writes
> >
> > >Those outside of Israel were accountable according to the measure of
> > >their knowledge of God, as many historical biblical notes show.
> >
> > Then why worry about them?
> >
> > Dick writes about whether it is Biblical to believe humans existed before
> > Adam. Was Adam the first human? Or was he the first in Christ's line,
> > and Israel's line? I'd like to add Gen 6:2 to the evidence table
> >
> > "the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they
> took
> > wives
> > for themselves, whomever they chose."
> >
> > We already know that Adam was considered "the son of God" from Luke 3:38.
> > And
> > somewhere in the NT it talks about Christians becoming sons and daugters
> of
> > God.
> > So, being a son/daughter of God is a special position not granted to
> > everyone.
> >
> > So, in Gen 6:2 the sons of God would be Adam and his descendants - the
> > "special
> > ones." The daughters of men would be "ordinary" humans who didn't descend
> > from
> > Adam. Unless you want to get really creepy and say that "the sons of God"
> > are
> > angels.
> >
> > Jim
> >
>
> I do not think it is good exegesis to use NT expressions/phrases like sons
> and daughters of God, or the reference in Luke to Adam as "the son of God"
> as a way of interpreting the expression "sons of God" in Genesis. Actually,
> this approach is more eisegesis than exegesis, and it is putting the cart
> before the horse.
>
> Commentators like A. E. Speiser and Robert Alter, both excellent
> Hebraicists, note the patently mythological character of the strange
> fragment in Gen. 6:1-4. Alter suggests a relationship between the *elohim*
> ("sons of God/gods") in 6:2 and the use of the plural in Gen. 3:22, where
> God speaks of "us". It has been commonly interpreted that this is a
> reference to a heavenly court (and not necessarily to "angels," the common
> interpretation, since "God stands in the assembly of the gods"; see also Ps.
> 84, 86, 95, 96, 97. Hey, let's be literal.). It makes more sense to see
> these *elohim* as divine beings who mate with mortal women, the ordinary
> interpretation. A clue to its mythological character is in the fact that
> the offspring of these matings were the "Nephilim, the heroes of yore." The
> parallel with numerous such instances in Greek, Roman, and other mythologies
> would be evident to anyone familiar with these stories: gods mate with
> mortals and heroes are born (e.g., Herakles, Aeneas, Perseus).
>
> So, we have a mythological fragment that is used to introduce the story
> of the flood and have a connection with it. Whoever edited this portion of
> the text of Genesis has made that connection. I am puzzlied by this strange
> text, but see no need to resolve the matter. But I don't think it makes
> sense to interpret the "sons of God/gods" in 6:2 as "sons of Adam" and
> thereby specially privileged.
1) The idiom "sons of X" in biblical Hebrew often means (when it's not
obviously to be taken in the literal sense) "beings belonging to the class X".
Thus "the sons of the prophets" (e.g., II Kg.6:1) means simply "the prophets" or
sometimes more technically "members of the prophets' guild." (That's what Amos
(7:14) means when he says "I am not a prophet or one of the sons of the
prophets" (paralellism).
The "sons of God", bene elohim, is usually better translated "sons of
the gods" and means "godlike beings" - i.e., something like our concept of
angels. "Sons of the Adam" are "Adamlike beings" though they are also in this
case "descendants of Adam". I would guess (not being a philologist though I am
literally a son of one!) that the idiom originated with the literal sense and
then became more general.
2) Gen.6:1-4 is an example of what Brevard Childs called "broken myth", a
piece of pagan myth changed & used deliberately by the biblical writer to make a
theological point. In this case the point seems to be that divinity can't be
propagated biologically. Childs discusses this particular text in his _Myth and
Reality in the Old Testament_ (Alec R. Allenson, Naperville IL, 1960), pp.49-57.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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