Dick Fischer wrote:
> 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?
I note that you don't even try to engage the argument itself
but think that
you can dismiss it simply by calling it "liberal" - a label I won't bother to
debate since it has nothing to do with the subtance of the issue. Why don't we
look at the text & its context rather than try to dismiss arguments with lame
putdowns?
As to Luther, I suggest that you actually look at his
Lectures on Genesis.
There you'll see that he interprets the sexual relationships between
"the sons of
God" and "the daughters of men" as between those who had "the promise of the
blessed seed" and the Cainites, and their offspring as "giants" -
i.e., "those who
arrogate to themselves power." (In the Lutherbibel _nephilim_ is translated
_Tyrannen_.) Luther certainly believed in the reality of devils but in his
lectures he specifically rejects the idea that the "sons of God" are
"demon-lechers." In fact what he is doing is demythologizing the passage even
further than the biblical writer did. Of course Luther was a
notorious "liberal"!
In reality, Luther was a brilliant 16th century theologian,
but even the
most conservative Lutheran theologians don't feel required to accept all of his
biblical interpretations & theological views. His fundamental
theological insights
were great & I adhere to them but he also believed a lot of things that we know
today just aren't true. He was, among other things, a YEC - like
almost everybody
else then. There was no compelling scientific evidence to show that
the earth was
much older than a few thousand years. It's as wrong to think that Luther would
have insisted on a young earth if he lived today as to think that Newton would
insist on absolute space & time.
It looks to as if one thing you missed in seminary is what's happened in
theology over the past 400 years.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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