JBL 106/1 (1987) 13-26 OF DEMIGODS AND THE DELUGE: TOWARD AN INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS 6:1-4 RONALD S. HENDEL Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 The interpretation of ancient mythology poses a number of thorny methodological problems. We are given only a text, or sometimes portions of a text, often heavily edited by scribal or editorial tradition. The context of a myth in the oral tradition may have been totally displaced by the literary composer, and various changes might have completely transformed elements of the oral tale. Ancient writers tended to conserve more than innovate, but exceptions are readily called to mind. The Old Babylonian author of the Gilgamesh epic must be credited with a good deal of literary creativity, as Jeffrey Tigay has recently emphasized.! The Yahwist, author of the oldest stratum of biblical narrative, is also to be credited with literary creativity and artistry.2 The fact that the Yahwistic myths of Genesis 2-11 come down to us in a self-conscious literary form has led some to despair of their interpretation as myths.° The stories have been overlaid with literary intention. The difference between myth in its oral form, as discussed by contem- porary anthropologists and folklorists, and myth that has been shaped and 1 J. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl- vania Press, 1982). 2 1 presume here the Yahwistic authorship of the narrative sections of Genesis 2-11, minus the Priestly sections of the Flood story. For recent controversies in source criticism, see especially the contributions by R. Rendtorff, R. N. Whybray, J. Van Seters, N. E. Wagner, G. E. Coats, H. H. Schmid, R. E. Clements, and G. J. Wenham in JSOT 3 (1977) 2-60; see also W. H. Schmidt, “A Plea for the Yahwist,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon, ed. T. Ishida (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1982) 55-73; and F. M. Cross, “The Epic ‘Traditions of Early Israel,” in The Poet and the Historian: Essays in Literary and Historical Biblical Criticism, ed. R. E. Friedman (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983) 13-39. On the artistic aspects of the Yahwistic work, see especially R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981); J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975); and M. Fishbane, Text and Texture (New York: Schocken Books, 1979) 17-62. 9 See the remarks of P. Ricoeur, “Structure et herméneutique,” and C. Lévi-Strauss, “Reponses & quelques questions,” in Esprit (Nov. 1963) 596-653, esp. 611-17 and 631-32, For a useful definition of “myth,” see A. Dundes (in Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984] 1): “A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came to be in their present form.” 1314 Journal of Biblical Literature transformed by ancient authors is a central problem that must be dealt with in any attempt at interpretation.‘ The written versus the oral, the Yahwistic work versus traditional mythology—these are the antinomies within which my discussion of Gen 6:14 will progress. Julius Wellhausen characterized Gen 6:1-4 as a “cracked erratic boulder” in its context in the early stories of Genesis.> Hermann Gunkel preferred to call it “a torso” or “a fragment.”¢ All are agreed that the story is strange and incomplete. Most scholars have supposed that the Yahwist is suppressing material that is even more mythological than the material retained.’ I find this last point hard to conceive: what could be more mythological than the sexual mingling of gods and mortals and the birth of semidivine offspring? Surely if the Yahwist were averse to myth as such he would simply have omitted Gen 6:1-4. That the Yahwist included it in the Primeval Cycle of Genesis 2-11* indicates that he did not find it objec- tionable and that it is indeed an authentic Israelite myth. The story is, however, somewhat disjointed in its Genesis context. The Yahwist retained the story in his composition, yet declined to present it in a full narrative form. Why the Yahwist composed the story as he did, where the story came from, and what happened between the oral and written stages will be the leading questions of my discussion. First, the text: (1) When mankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, + For recent work on the relationship between the biblical text and oral tradition see especially R, C. Culley, “Oral Tradition and the OT: Some Recent Discussion,” Semeia 5 (1976) 1-33, and references; idem, Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Narrative (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976) 1-68; Cross, “Epic Traditions,” 13-39; and H. N. Wallace, The Eden Narrative (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985), esp. chap. 2: “The Yahwistic Source and Its Oral Antecedents.” 5 J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (trans. J. S. Black and A. Menzies; Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1885) 317. © H. Gunkel, Genesis abersetzt und erkldrt (HKAT; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901) 59. 7 For example, B.S. Childs describes the story as “a foreign particle of pagan mythology” which the Israelite tradition has radically altered, “Even in the final stage the mutilated and half-digested particle struggles with independent life against the role to which it has been assigned within the Hebrew tradition” (Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (London: SCM, 1960] 54, 57). In this essay I will use the designation “Primeval Cycle” rather than the conventional terms "Primeval History” or Urgeschichte to refer to the narratives in the early part of Genesis. The stories of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, etc., cannot be called history in any legitimate sense of the word. The stories are properly myths: “sacred narrative[s) explaining how the world and man came to be in their present form.” The stories form a coherent cycle; hence, I submit that “Primeval Cycle” is more accurate and more appropriate than the conventional designations. See also Fishbane, Text and Texture, 17.Hendel: Of Demigods and the Deluge 15 (2) then the Sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives of them, from any whom they chose.® (3) And Yahweh said: “My spirit will not be strong!® in man forever, for indeed he is but flesh. His lifetime will be 120 years. (4) The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the Sons of God mated with the daugh- ters of men and they bore children for them: these were the warriors of old, the men of renown. The first issue that I will pursue is in many ways the most difficult: Where did the story come from? Scholars are divided in their responses. Some take the story to be an etiology of the Nephilim,!! who are to be * Note the syntax of the introductory sentence: temporal clause (wayht Ki...) followed by a parenthetical statement (dbdndt...) leading to the initial narrative sequence (wayyir’a ...). This syntactic structure is typical of the introductions to cosmological stories in Israelite and in Mesopotamian literature; see W. F. Albright, “Contributions to Biblical Archaeology and Philology,” JBL 43 (1924) 364-65; G. Castellino, “Les Origines de la civilisation selon les textes bibliques et les textes cuneiformes,” in Volume du Congres: Strasbourg, 1956 (VTSup 4; Leiden: Brill, 1957) 125-28; E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964) 12, 19. 0 I propose reading the unique verbal form ydd6n asa stative gal imperfect from the geminate root Vdnn (“to be strong’). K. Vollers first suggested this reading based on the Akkadian verb dananu (“Zur Erklirung des [11 Gen 6,3,” ZA 14 [1889] 349-56). The case is now clearer than it was in Vollers’s day. The root Vdnn appears twice in the Ugaritic texts, though, as with all Ugaritic etymologies, caution is warranted (CTA 12.2.59; 16.1.30). More important, and thus far overlooked, is the occurrence of the root Vdnn in the Israelite placename Dannah. Dannah is mentioned in Josh 15:49 as a town in the neighborhood of Debir in the Judean hill country. Although the site of Dannah has not been identified, itis clear from recent archaeological surveys that the Judean hill country was largely unpopulated in the Canaanite period (B. Mazar, “The Early Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country,” BASOR 241 [1981] 75-85.) The likelihood is, therefore, that Dannah was originally an Israelite settlement and that the name Dannth was a good Hebrew name. The meaning of the word is “stronghold” or “fortress,” cognate with the Akkadian dannatu. The root Vdnn occurs in Hebrew in a place-name and, I propose, in the verb yadén in Gen 6:3. I might add that there is no difficulty in reading the form yaddn as stative, since other similar geminate forms are attested in Hebrew with stative meanings, e.g. td'dz (Ps 89:14), also meaning “to be strong.” E. G. Kraeling, “The Significance and Origin of Gen 6:1-4,” JNES 6 (1947) 193-208; B. S. Childs, Myth and Reality, 49-57; O. Loretz, Schpfung und Mythos (Stuttgart: Katho- lisches Bibelwerk, 1968) 31-48; G. von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (trans. J. H. Marks; Philadelphia: Westminster 1968) 113-16; U. Cassuto, “The Episode of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,” in Biblical and Oriental Studies I (trans. 1. Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973) 17-28; H. Gese, “Der bewachte Lebensbaum und die Heroen,” in Wort und Geschichte (ed. H. Gese and H. P, Riger; AOAT 18; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1973) 83-85; R. Bartelmus, Heroentum in Israel und seiner Umwelt (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1979).