George Murphy wrote:
> Myths about gods & goddesses having affairs with humans & negetting or
>giving birth to "hybrid" divine-humans abound in many cultures - think of all
>the stories about Zeus & Leda, Europa &c & offspring like Hercules. Gen.6:1-4
>makes use of such a myth but not in undigested form. As we have it
>in Scripture
>it is "broken myth," a pagan myth modified to make a theological point in the
>service of the God of Israel. As used here it denies the popular notion found
>in those pagan myths that divinity is something that can be transmitted by
>biological means. & placed where it is in Genesis it represents the ultimate
>transgression of boundaries & breakdown in the ordering of creation that will
>bring on the flood.
>
> Later ideas about angels in the NT - e.g., that they "neither
>marry nor are
>given in marriage" - cannot be read back into the OT. They
>represent a further
>development.
>
> There are other examples of "broken myth" in the OT. (The term
>comes from
>Brevard Childs who discusses the idea & examples in _Myth and Reality
>in the Old
>Testament_.) E.g., Is.14:12-15 is based on a Canaanite myth about the revolt
>of the younger against the elder gods (cf. the Greek war of gods vs. titans),
>but is used here to speak of the doom of historical Babylon. It is most
>unfortunate that this & Gen.6:1-4 have been _re_mythologized by Christians and
>made into an elaborate Christian myth about the fall of Satan &c. But in fact
>the Bible contains at most little hints about any such prehistoric fall of
>angels. What most people think of as the biblical version of this story is in
>fact Milton's account in _Paradise Lost_.
>
> & any attempt to find some historical niche for Gen.6:1-4 & perhaps some
>historical evidence for the _nephilim_, the descendants of the "sons of the
>gods" and "the daughters on men," seems to me to be a _reductio ad
>absurdum_ of
>concordism.
Always nice to get a liberal perspective. I find it curious, though,
that a Lutheran theologian has so many views that are not generally
attributed to Martin Luther's own theology. Did I miss something in
seminary?
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orislol.com
ěThe Answer we should have known about 150 years agoî
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