Mythology

abnormal length of life because, by the time he wrote, this element of Babylonian mythology had been absorbed into the traditions of his own people. It has been conjectured [14] that the enormous numbers in the Sumerian king-lists may be the product of astrological speculation, a feature wholly absent from Hebrew thought until we come to the late apocalyptic literature. But the probable reason for the introduction of such numbers into the Priestly genealogy is that they are intended to correspond with the Priestly chronology which assigned a fixed number of years from the Creation to the foundation of . Solomon’s Temple, and divided this period into epochs, the first of which, from the Creation to the Flood, contained 1,656 years. In the Babylonian myth of the Flood the gods decided to destroy mankind for the rather absurd reason that they had become so noisy that they prevented the gods from sleeping at nights; [15] no moral cause for this arbitrary act entered the minds of the early myth-makers. But to the Hebrew writer the myth of the Flood, fixed in the traditions of his people, as various poetic and prophetic references show, had become an awful portent, the final catastrophe brought about by man’s rebellion against God. It has become an episode in the ’salvation-history’, because a remnant was spared to carry on the divine purpose of ultimate restoration. This is the reason why further mythical material is introduced as a prelude to the Flood myth, in order to show how completely corrupt mankind had become. In 6:I-4 we have a fragment of mythical material, originally unconnected with the myth of the Flood, but used by the Yahwist to explain the increasing lawlessness and violence of mankind which finally decided Yahweh to destroy the race. The myth of the union between divine and mortal beings, resulting in the birth of demi-gods or heroes, is found in the early Sumerian and Babylonian sources whose influence on Canaanite mythology appears in the Ugaritic texts. We have already observed its influence on the Hebrew myths of Creation, and Greek mythology bears witness to its wide diffusion at an early date. Behind the brief and probably intentionally obscure reference in 6:I-4, there lies a more widely known myth of a race of semi-divine beings who rebelled against the gods and were cast down into the underworld. The beings called Nephilim in verse 4, and rendered ‘giants’ in the Septuagint and Authorized Version, seem to have been regarded by the Yahwist as the offspring of the union between the ’sons of God’ and the daughters of men mentioned in verse I. The assembly of lesser gods so often referred to in Sumerian, Babylonian, and Ugaritic myths, has been transformed in Hebrew myth and poetry into the ’sons of God’ conceived of as a kind of heavenly council over which Yahweh presided. Compare, for instance, the scene in the first chapter of job, where the sons of God come to present themselves before Yahweh (Job 1:6). Traces of the myth are to be found in Num. 13:33 where the Nephilim are represented as the survivors of a race of giants whom the Hebrews found in Canaan when they came to settle there. Another possible reference occurs in Ezek. 32:27, where a slight emendation gives us an allusion to the Nephilim. In apocalyptic literature and in the New Testament (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6) the myth has been still further transformed into the myth of the fall of the angels, so splendidly portrayed by Milton. The fragment of the myth here preserved by the Yahwist was originally an aetiological myth

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