The Earliest Non-Angelic Interpretation of Genesis 6.1-4

The interpretation of the sons of God in Gen. 6.1-4 as angels dominates interpretation in pre-Christian and early Christian times. The Septuagint and 1 Enoch 6ff interpret it this way – possibly in the third century BC – as do many subsequent works and authors, including the pre-Christian Jewish works of Jubilees, the Damascus Document, and Philo, and the post-Christian  Josephus, 2 Baruch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, etc.

It is often contended that the first Jewish witnesses to a non-angelic interpretation are in Aquila’s and Symmachus’s translations of the passage into Greek, in the second century AD, or perhaps Philo’s interpretation in the first century AD. For example, here’s Robert C. Newman (Grace Theological Journal 5.1 (1984): 13-36):

The earliest extant examples of the nonsupernatural interpretations of Gen 6:2, 4 come from the 1^st century AD and thus are later than the earliest specimens of the supernatural interpretation.  Since all come centuries after Genesis was written, it is not possible to be sure which is the oldest.

The non-angelic (and non-divine) interpretation is often also declared to be a result of an anti-angelic bias following the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent reaction against various Jewish sects with their angelic speculations. For this reason, the non-angelic interpretation is considered a late novation. Thom Stark, in his recent book The Human Faces of God (p. 77), makes mention only of post-70 AD examples of the interpretation of Gen. 6.1-4 as involving human princes. 

As Christians continued to regard 1 Enoch as scripture until at least the third century AD, the angelic interpretation of Gen. 6.1-4 continued long after it was rejected in Rabbinic Judaism. Although Julius Africanus mentions the non-angelic interpretation in the early third century AD, it is Augustine who defends it in detail, in Book 15 of the City of God, in the early fifth century AD.

But often overlooked in these discussions is Sir. 16.7 – which appears in a section of Sirach (ca. 180 BC) dealing with God’s “historical” punishment of sinners (Sir. 16.5-10). The New Revised Standard Version renders it:

He did not forgive the ancient giants
who revolted in their might.

The words ”ancient giants” (γιγάντων τῶν ἀρχαίων) were only a Greek translation of Jesus ben Sirach’s original Hebrew, carried out by his grandson. The Hebrew (of both mss A and B) reads נסיכי קדם (“princes of old”).

What did Sirach mean by “princes of old” who revolted in their might? While “princes” could possibly refer to angelic princes (cf eg Dan 10.13), all the other examples in this list of ancient sinners are human: Korah and party (16.6), Sodom and Gomorrah (16.8), the Canaanites (16.9), and the exodus generation (16.10). So we might reasonably expect the same in 16.7. In addition, the words “in their might” (ב‍גבורת‍ם) clearly allude to the Gibborim of Gen. 6.4b, thus identifying the princes of old with those Gibborim or “men of renown” – again, mortal humans. In addition, the reference to “revolt” appears to identify the figures in Sir. 16.7 with ”the sons of God” in Gen. 6.2, 4 - as it is the sons of God who do the revolting in the biblical passage. Further, the term “sons of God” is most usually a term for human kings or princes, which may explain Jesus ben Sirach’s word choice here.

In conclusion, there is a good case for dating the non-angelic interpretation of Gen. 6.1-4 as early as the writing of Sirach (ca. 180 BC) - and for concluding that, far from a post-70 Jewish reactionary interpretation, the non-angelic interpretation could be as old as the angelic interpretations found in LXX and 1 Enoch.

נסיך:

Update: Jim Davila comments on this issue, and opines that Sir. 16.7 is limited to the giants, and that the “revolt” is also that of the giants (cf. Gen. 6.11) and not the sons of God. We both agree, I think, that Gen. 6.4 distinguishes the Nephilim=offspring=Gibborim=men of renown from the sons of God (allowing for the observation that there is some ambiguity in the verse, which has confused ancient and more modern commentators and interpreters). Be that as it may, I think that Sirach conflates the giants with the sons of God who did the revolting in Gen. 6.4, in his summary in Sir. 16.7. For if Sirach had been aware of Gen. 6.4′s distinction of the two groups of characters (Nephilim/Gibborim versus sons of God), would he not also have noticed that the former are spoken of only in positive terms (as ‘mighty men’ and having a [good? famed?] reputation) in Gen. 6.4, while the sons of God are spoken in implicitly negative terms (for ‘seeing’ that the daughters of man were ‘good’ and ‘taking’ them as they pleased: Gen. 6.2; cf. 3.6)? Yet Sirach simply alludes to the Gibborim as an example of the sinfulness of men in “history”. Therefore the better conclusion is that Sirach conflates the Gibborim with the sinful sons of God. Admittedly, it is difficult to be certain from such a short a reference as Sir. 16.7, so I am happy to leave this raised as a possibility.

There is the further possibility that Sirach is not merely thinking of Gen. 6.1-4, but also a tradition of the rampaging giants of 1 Enoch 6ff which itself interprets Gen. 6.1-4, which would also explain why he says that the giants (not sons of God) are revolting. But recent studies by Wright and Argall have concluded that Sirach and the Enochic sages were usually writing in opposition to each other. This opposition fits with the emphasis on the humanity of the Nephilim/Gibborim/sons of God in Sir. 16.7, because their human sinfulness would be in opposition to the angelic rebellion in 1 Enoch 6. Moreover, Sirach refers to the Nephilim/Gibborim as “princes of old”, not “giants” – which suggests that he does not follow the Enochic tradition of giants who wreaked havoc on earth. Conclusions cannot be made firmly, but I find it interesting that Sirach makes nothing of any angelic element in Gen. 6.1-4, and that the use he makes of that passage is only as an example of human sinfulness.

Giants

I’m soooo over them.

How Zionists use Fictional Tales like David and Goliath to support Ethnic Cleansing

Vacy Vlazna’s article yesterday in The Palestine Chronicle explores the different ways in which biblical narratives are being used by the occupying Israeli forces and Zionists to carry out ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

See her complete article here: “Ethnic Cleansing in a Zionist Fairyland.”

… It is widely accepted that the Bible originated in the 7th Century BCE, 300 years after David and other historical aberrations encompass the palaces officially ascribed to Solomon in Megiddo which are dated long after Solomon’s time. Cities conquered by Joshua in the 14th century BCE were destroyed well before that era. Daniel Gavron comments  that “The story of Abraham’s journey from Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Sinai, and the conquest of Canaan, all these were apparently based on legends…” In 2004, Yuval Goren admitted he examined ” a seemingly endless line of fake biblical texts of various kinds. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such forgeries referring especially to the time of the First Temple. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the disciplines of biblical history and archaeology have been contaminated to such an extent that no unprovenanced written source seems to be reliable anymore.”

Proof of David’s existence rests on a piece of stone found at Tel Dan in  northern Galilee (not Jerusalem) inscribed with the words ‘Beit David’ which could mean House of ‘David’ or ‘Beloved’  but not King David conclusively as with the sherd found at Tel Safi with  the name ‘Goliath’  which “almost certainly did not belong to David’s Goliath, if it does say “Goliath” then it shows that there was such a personal name used in the region at approximately the correct chronological period.” The first ancient reference to an Israelite king is found in an 8th Century BCE Assyrian document recording “King Ahab of Israel sent 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers.”

Sumud (steadfastness) life and land are synonymous in the Palestinian soul. King David may be a myth but it is the modern indigenous Palestinians, outcasts in their own land, who stand alone with the stone of sumud in their hands daily facing off the militant aliyah hordes backed by the Zionist Goliaths of multi-billion dollar empires, by Christian Zionist offerings, by the servile US Congress, by a depraved UK and EU and by a contemptibly inadequate United Nations.

- Vacy Vlazna, “Ethnic Cleansing in a Zionist Fairyland”, The Palestine Chronicle, 10 February 2012

For earlier Remnant of Giants posts on the employment of biblical tales in modern religio-nationalist claims, see:

• “Dancing on “The Tomb of Caleb” – The Facts Under the Ground” (on the legendary tomb of an Israelite hero, at Hebron)
• “Goliath of Gath/Tel es-Safi in the News” and “Facts on the Ground at Tel es-Safi (“Gath”)” (on the archaeological dig at Tel es-Safi, misleadingly identified as “biblical Gath”)

Also of note is the upcoming ‘The Bible, Zionism and Palestine’ conference (24-26 May 2012), to be hosted by the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, “to explore the role of the bible in theology and politics in Israel and Palestine today”:

The Bible has played a fundamental role in the creation and existence of the modern state of Israel, and, some say, in the continued suffering of the Palestinian people. Today, the Hebrew Bible is used as an authoritative text to justify the placement of Israel’s borders, and to legitimise and even encourage the expulsion of Palestinians from the land. The New Testament has also been utilised by Christian Zionists who argue that the establishment of the state of Israel is God-ordained, and that its existence is necessary for enabling the second coming of Jesus.
- “The Bible, Zionism and Palestine” conference website

Fossilized Footprint of God Found! Evidence of Biblical Giants Discovered in South Africa!! Those Who Deny it have Western Enlightenment Presuppositions!!!

The Weekly World News, which in 1993 reported the discovery of the skull of Goliath complete with a stone embedded in its forehead, again has the scoop:

The giant foot print, discovered in rough granite,  is considered by many religious leaders to be The Footprint of God.   It is 4 feet long.  The location of this footprint has  been a deeply sacred, mystical and spiritual place among African knowledge keepers – and a well-guarded secrete.  A footprint that is 4 feet in length means that who or what left it behind must have been approximately 24 feet tall.

… Also discovered near the footprint are giant bones, crystal skulls, strange carvings and sculptures in forms that do not fit into the contemporary view of history and possibly offer evidence of other 15 foot tall giants in the prehistory on our planet.

- Tap Vann, “The Footprint of God”, Weekly World News, 10 February 2012

While the Weekly World News identifies the owner of the footprint as God, pioneer South African rapper Michael Tellinger has a different theory. Tellinger believes that the footprint was made 200,000,000 years ago by an ancient giant alien. In his book Slave Species of God (2005), Tellinger explains that the extraterrestrial giants were called Anunnaki - adapting Zecharia Sitchin’s adventurous theory of the origins of humankind.

To take up Craig Keener’s line of argument, those who deny the veracity of this traditional African knowledge about Giants are obviously blinded by their Western Enlightenment presuppositions … and they’re clearly racist too.

The Bible and Macrophilia: An Introduction to the Mungo World of Macrophilia

Giant Vore 2 – by Alterego

Gay porn site Nightcharm has an instructive guide to Macrophilia, “the intense sexual attraction to literal giants”:

Mammoths with unfettered desires and unyielding bodies! Behemoths breaking seams and busting asses! Grasping! Looming! Dwarfing! Crushing! Cyclopean troglodytes who crave the delicate pleasures that only man can provide! Your body — their plaything. Your world — their toy box!

Juggernauts conquering the globe! Inescapable! Insurmountable! Too big to handle! Too vast to deny!

You’ll satisfy their every whim … or die trying!

Every culture features a variation. The Norse had their factions of giants warring against the godly pantheon of Asgard. Greek mythology tells of the titan Atlas bearing the weight of the world upon his shoulders. In the Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh, the Cedar Forest — where dwell the gods — is guarded by the great ogre Humbaba.

One of the Bible’s central parables is the slaying of lumbering Goliath. American folklore has benevolent lumberjack Paul Bunyan civilizing the American frontier.

- Shawn Baker, “Land of The Giants!: The Mungo World of Macrophilia“, Nightcharm, 19 June 2011 
[caution: the article is accompanied by a number of photographs of erect and ejaculating penises, macrophilia, and rimming]

Baker also discusses some of the sub-genres in macrophilia, including “muscle-morphing” (portrayals of superhuman muscles), “Macro-Furryism” (involving huge anthropomorphized cartoon animals ), and various types of giants: “Rampagers” (who level cities and villages), ”Vores” (cannibalistic carnivores, that is), “Crushers” (who cater to the crossover foot fetish / macro- philia market), “Growers” (who either shrink to make the ordinary world appear gigantic, or grow to make themselves gigantic), “Masters” (who gather prisoners and make them submit to their filthy whims), and “Collectors” (who keep their little people as pets).

As Baker surmises:

What lurks at the heart of this rara avis is the Power Principle. Be it becoming so lofty in stature that you can have your way with anyone in the palm of your own hand or succumbing to the ardor of a brobdingnagian brute who has the power to kill you if he so chooses, it’s unchecked bombastic force that unites Macrophiles across distances.

The Macrophile’s fantasies about Giants may be compared with, for example, Isaiah’s fantasy about Yahweh, in Isa. 40.22-23 - where Isaiah imagines himself as a mere grasshopper (the smallest kosher animal) in comparison with Yahweh’s cosmic enormity, and imagines the kings and rulers who exercise real power over him as being reduced to nothing.

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

The self-humility of the religious writer has the shape of a double fantasy. All power and gigantic stature is ascribed to his god Yahweh, and Yahweh’s might dissolves all real earthly power that stands against his servant, Isaiah. Thus, in the guise of self-emptying humility, the religious writer makes a fantastic transfer of power to his imaginary god. But the net result of the fantasy is that, in siding with Yahweh, Isaiah will become more powerful than his oppressors: it is the fantasy of absolute power in the guise of complete humility.

The Giants Take Out the Superbowl: The Memory of the Biblical Rephaim remains honored and intact! Good for the Economy!!

Ahmad Bradshaw's matchwinning assdown

This can only be good for the economy, says The Wall Street Journal, in an outpouring of logorrhea only rivalled by Craig Keener’s recent work on miracles. Although – and unless I’ve missed the possibility that Keener was making an elaborate joke in his two-volume flight of fancy - The WSJ may be a little more tongue-in-cheek:

The Giants’ victory will provide a much-needed boost to the nation’s economy…. On Tuesday, for the first time since the “Occupy” protesters were ousted from Zuccotti Park, thousands of members of the “99%” will descend on Lower Manhattan. But this time, instead of division and conflict, the gathering will foster unity as bankers, construction workers and busboys come together to celebrate a uniquely American story: the triumph of a less-talented younger brother over his more-talented brother’s more-talented arch-nemesis…. Imagine the economic ripples to come: Goldman Sachs executives, caught up in the jubilant celebration outside their offices, decide to forgive billions in underwater mortgages. Homeowners, relieved of their burdensome debts, hit the stores to buy up Ahmad Bradshaw bobbleheads and some of those tough, American-made Chryslers that Clint Eastwoodwas talking about at halftime. The ensuing manufacturing renaissance restores American competitiveness, while the sudden fuel-efficiency gains from all those new cars help drive down oil prices, putting still more money in Americans’ wallets. Washington politicians, inspired by New York’s example, end their partisan infighting and agree on sensible, comprehensive budget reform, leaving the U.S. on firmer financial footing. Europe, seeing the power of football, gives up soccer entirely and experiences a sudden surge in productivity that miraculously resolves the continent’s debt crisis. In short, the Giants’ victory ushers in an era of global prosperity. The grateful masses give the credit to Madonna, who boldly called for world peace at the end of her halftime performance. Eli Manning humbly lets her bask in the spotlight, his goofy grin giving no hint of his critical role ending poverty and conflict.

And for all the Gingas out there, here’s M.I.A’s salute for all the good work the US of A has been doing in the Middle East this past decade:

The Bible and Macrophilia: He Thong’s Goliath Art

Macrophilia artist He Thong has published a series portraying the biblical giant Goliath in various erotic poses. The series appears on He Thong’s New Zealand blog, He Thong’s Giant Studies: Historically and Scientifically Sound Macrophilia. As the 6th of February is New Zealand’s national holiday, Remnant of Giants considers that this fascinating New Zealand graphic artist deserves some larger exposure.

Remnant of Giants has previously compared the height of Goliath to that of an average Philistine. But He Thong makes the comparison from a different angle: “A well-built Goliath would have weighted [sic] the same as about five normal men.” While He Thong does not provide details of how he calculated this comparison, he does disclose that he bases Goliath’s size on the larger 6-and-a-half-cubit measure (given by the Masoretic Text, the Vulgate, and Symmachus).

The first of He Thong’s depictions of Goliath portrays the Philistine warrior among five average-sized Philistine soldiers, whose combined weight would have equalled Goliath’s own massive size. Goliath and the other five Philistines are depicted wearing thongs:

As demonstrated earlier by Remnant of Giants, Goliath’s fellow Philistines would have been little more than half the height of a 6-and-a-half-cubit Goliath. He Thong brings this size differential home by portraying the face of an average Philistine soldier in line with Goliath’s groin:

Or from the reverse angle:

 

The phenomenon of macrophilia certainly demonstrates how wrong Edmund Burke was, in Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful (pp. 157-58), when he opined, ”It is impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. When we let our imaginations loose in romance, the ideas we naturally annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice, and every thing horrid and abominable.” Burke’s conception of love was just a little narrow-minded, and Annie Lennox was later to offer a more sober corrective (“Some of them want to use you; some of them want to get used by you”). He Thong’s macrophiliac art is combined with depictions of Goliath gathering slaves from his enemies, slave submission, and bondage - a common related paraphilia among a significant sector of macrophiles.

Jeffrey Cohen, in his helpful book On Giants, comments on the way giants are always too big for any frame of reference, so that giants are paradoxically both humanity-writ-large and inhuman – viewable only in pieces, especially by concentrating, fetish-like, on certain body parts. The giant also confuses the subjecthood of the human viewer: by contrast with the giant’s great size, the giant miniaturises the human viewer; by association with the giant as super-human, the giant empowers and giganticizes the human viewer. This is seen in the fact that the giants of legend can be depicted both as foundational heroes or city-founders and also as a threat of chaos from the outside of civilisation. While some macrophiles identify only with the giant (the ‘macro’) or the tiny (the ‘micro’), others are content to swing between the two. Yet even among those who identify solely with one or the other, by transference the dominated will usually identify with the power of the dominator.

Thus, macrophilia offers an interesting insight into the dynamics of the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. There is an undeclared oscillating relationship between David and Goliath in the narrative: for in opposing the brazen, loud-mouthed, blasphemous Goliath, and posing as a humble servant of the Israelite god, David associates himself with an even bigger figure (Yahweh, the Israelite god) – and so with/as the greatest gibbor of all (cf. Deut. 9.1-3; 10.17).

Words of (Ray) Comfort, Dealing with Goliath VS. Julia Kristeva’s Severed Head

If you have a passion to reach the unsaved with the gospel, you are going to confront Goliath. This is the giant the Bible calls “the spirit of fear” that will come against you and taunt you the moment you decide to reach out to the lost…. The only way to overcome it is to do what David did. He slung Goliath a straight-forward mind-impressing message that he wasn’t going to be deterred, and then he cut of his head. That silenced his big and loud mouth.
- Ray Comfort, “Dealing With Goliath”, Words of Comfort, 1 February 2012

Ray Comfort, pop-apologist, banana scientist, and former resident of Christchurch, New Zealand, might be onto something here.

To represent the invisible (the anguish of death as well as the jouissance of thought’s triumph over it), wasn’t it necessary to begin by representing the loss of the visible (the loss of the bodily frame, the vigilant head, the ensconced genitals)? If the vision of our intimate thought really is the capital vision that humanity has produced of itself, doesn’t it have to be constructed precisely by passing through an obsession with the head as symbol of the thinking living being? Through a cult of the dead head, fixing the terror of sex and the beyond? Through a ritual of the skull, of beheading, of decapitation, which might be the preliminary condition for the representation of what allows us to stand up to the void that is none other than the ability to represent the life of the mind, psychological experience as the capacity for multiple representations?
- Julia Kristeva, The Severed Head: Capital Visions, Columbia UP, December 2011

David’s Secret Weapon

From I Waste So Much Time:

h/t: Pat McCullough’s student

Any Christian who wishes to mock Harold Camping for his “loony” beliefs also must do the same to Paul (and Jesus)

So says James A. Metzger in a new article for Bible and Interpretation:
“Why We Must Treat the Bible No Differently Than Any Other Book”
We have to agree. Remnant of Giants made the same point in a post from the very day that Camping said the world would end. Although, we called Jesus, not Paul, a loon.