Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
These eight verses serve as a link passage after the diversion from the "family history" into genealogical tables; the tale needs to get back to the "family history", but there are some other pieces of "history" (mythological tales which are now being presented as history by the compilers of the Tanach) that need inclusion, and the Redactor also required a moral purpose for every aspect of the tale. Because the next part of the "family history" has no Beney Yisra-El connections whatsoever (in truth neither Adam and Chava nor Kayin and Havel were Beney Yisra-El stories either, but there were sufficient geographical and tribal references to be able to absorb them), it was also necessary to create a literary sense of ancientness to the Flood story, so that it could find its way out of mythological time and into chronological time, and thus be fitted into the "family history". But the reality of the Tanach is that, having answered the primary question "how did the world come into being?", and the follow-up, "how did humans in particular come into being and become what we are now?", we now need to answer the questions "how does the sun rise in the east, and travel across the sky to set in the west?", and "where do rainbows come from?"; set it in the context of distant ancestral memories of the melting of the glaciers at the end of the Ice Age, and the story of No'ach is the consequence.
But first, a very different question: "if the gods created all humans as one family, why are there so many genetic variations?"
Sedra Bere'shit ends at 6:8, where Eleh Toldot No'ach is clearly the start of a new scroll. Verses 5-8 are late additions, for the purposes of the link when these otherwise separate pieces were presented as a single book.
6:1 VA YEHI KI HECHEL HA ADAM LAROV AL PENEY HA ADAMAH U VANOT YALDU LAHEM
Sedra Bere'shit ends at 6:8, where Eleh Toldot No'ach is clearly the start of a new scroll. Verses 5-8 are late additions, for the purposes of the link when these otherwise separate pieces were presented as a single book.
6:1 VA YEHI KI HECHEL HA ADAM LAROV AL PENEY HA ADAMAH U VANOT YALDU LAHEM
וַיְהִי כִּי הֵחֵל הָאָדָם לָרֹב עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה וּבָנוֹת יֻלְּדוּ לָהֶם
KJ (King James translation): And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
BN (BibleNet translation): And so it came to pass, when Humankind began to multiply and to spread out across the surface of the Earth, and daughters were born to them...
HA ADAM (האדם): From LAHEM (להם/ masculine plural) we are obliged to read HA ADAM in the plural and definitely not as any particular individual. Overall I would suggest we forget entirely about a man named Adam who had a wife named Chavah or Eve - nice story, but not from this book! To find out more, start investigating the post-Ezraic Midrashim (Sanhedrin iv:5 and viii:4-9, Genesis Rabba viii and xi, Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer xi, Targum Yer. Gen. iii:7 (I have left the last in its shorthand form, aware that it is meaningless to non-yeshivah buchers; click the link and you will find the full name of what are the earliest Aramaic translations of, and commentaries on the Bible), which suggest very clearly that the Adam and Chavah/Eve story began there, possibly through Babylonian equivalents picked up in exile, possibly through misreading given credence and then credibility by other legends incorporated into this one.
VANOT: Why the mentioning of daughters, alone, and not, as in all the previous genealogies, of "sons and daughters"? It enables us again to see that this is an anthology of unconnected tales, given a false continuity; this verse might actually make sense at the end of the Eden tale, even at the end of the Kayin-Havel tale, because Kayin and Shet are going to find wives, and none are yet in existence. But here, after the genealogical tables, in a world that is now replete with second and third cousins, sometimes several times removed from any hint of the marriage being incestuous, it is simply an incongruous statement.
6:2 VA YIR'U VENEY HA ELOHIM ET BENOT HA ADAM KI TOVOT HENAH VA YIKCHU LAHEM NASHIM MI KOL ASHER BACHARU
6:2 VA YIR'U VENEY HA ELOHIM ET BENOT HA ADAM KI TOVOT HENAH VA YIKCHU LAHEM NASHIM MI KOL ASHER BACHARU
וַיִּרְאוּ בְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים אֶת בְּנוֹת הָאָדָם כִּי טֹבֹת הֵנָּה וַיִּקְחוּ לָהֶם נָשִׁים מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר בָּחָרוּ
KJ: That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
BN: Then the sons of Ha Elohim saw that the daughters of men were good to look at; and they took them as wives, each according to his choice.
HA ELOHIM: The term is quite specific, "HA ELOHIM", with the definite article as a prefix; not hyphenated, and very clearly not ELOHIM but HA ELOHIM = the full pantheon of the gods. Elohim himself is not mentioned in these verses at any point; the text transitions from HA-ELOHIM to YHVH in verse 3.
VENEY HA ELOHIM (בני-האלהים): The "sons of Ha Elohim" are not the same as Adam = "Humankind", nor are they angels, or keruvim (cherubim), or other heavenly creatures; sons of god means demi-gods, a Beney Yisra-El equivalent of the Greek Titans. Philo, Josephus, and the author of the Book of Jubilees all concur that they were born from the union of mortal with divine partners, again as in the Greek. This adds weight to the conviction that the Kayin and Shet lists were also accounts of the Promethean progenitors of Homo Sapiens, and is further endorsed by the conceit that, in marrying mortal women, they simply took "whomsoever they chose" - an Olympian droit de seigneur!
These "sons of Elohim" have never been mentioned before, and will never be mentioned again, so we can presume that they died out in the Flood, exactly as Neanderthals died out in the Ice Age. However, the Babylonians and others did have gods who could father children, so we can also presume that the tale has foreign origins which were either missed or ignored by the Yehudan redactors in their excisions. Graves suggests that it might originally have been BENEY HA EL, a reference to the Semitic Bull-God El, though why this should be he does not explain, nor what might be the significance. Otherwise it may be a case of two cultures/tribes/cults intermarrying, through priest and priestess or prophet/prophetess (common-man/common-woman marriage would not merit mentioning in a national history!), like the Dionysus-Apollo "marriage" at Delphi or the Lib-Lab pact.
Rappoport's detailed study of the Midrashim in this regard adds considerable weight to the proposition.
NASHIM (נשים): Gods likewise taking human, or at least semi-human wives, is also an entirely non-Beney Yisra-Elite concept. We are in the realm of Zeus and Leda, and can assume that, in the earliest versions, which is to say through the centuries of oral tradition before the Tanach was written down in the time of Ezra, these "women" were more "female creatures", something akin to the nymphs and mermaids of other cultures, and closely associated with the goddess. Unacceptable to the Ezraic Yehudim of course, and therefore reduced to this.
6:3 VA YOMER YHVH LO YADON RUCHI VA ADAM LE OLAM BE SHAGAM HU VASAR VE HAYU YAMAV ME'AH VE ESRIM SHANAH
6:3 VA YOMER YHVH LO YADON RUCHI VA ADAM LE OLAM BE SHAGAM HU VASAR VE HAYU YAMAV ME'AH VE ESRIM SHANAH
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה לֹא יָדוֹן רוּחִי בָאָדָם לְעֹלָם בְּשַׁגַּם הוּא בָשָׂר וְהָיוּ יָמָיו מֵאָה וְעֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה
KJ: And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
BN: And YHVH said, "The spirit shall not remain alive in Humankind eternally, because they too are made of flesh; therefore the span of life shall be a hundred and twenty years."
Which confirms what we have been suggesting from the outset, that YHVH is purely a means of explaining the natural workings of the universe, and the deity aspect purely metaphorical, a way of describing the "élan vital", the "spirit", the "universal pulse", the "thermodynamic", that electrical charge which can be monitored on a cardiograph, but when the line goes flat the doctors pronounce the body dead.
By whatever understanding, this is the formal introduction of death into the world. But surely death had already been introduced, at the end of the Eden story, when YHVH-Elohim realised that eating the fruit made humans akin to gods, and thereby endowed us with the capacity to live forever? A limit on the extent of life, then, which may not be the same thing - as we shall discover later on, the ancient world understood the Underworld as a place of death, but also as a place of regeneration, because bodies, human, flora and fauna, biodegrade into compost and thereby furnish continuing Creation: life may end in an individual human when death comes, but Life itself does not end, because the elements and molecules, so to speak, "resurrect". The concept of an evil Underworld, Dantesque and Miltonian, belongs to a later period, and is not part of Jewish epistemology.
Maximum age is given here as one hundred and twenty, where elsewhere (Psalm 90:10 is actually the only reference, and even it suggests that a healthy person might live to eighty) we are told it will be at seventy. Evidence yet again that the Tanach is not a single, continuous text, but an anthology artificially constructed out of dozens of different, often contradictory texts. And given that both Bavel (Babel) and No'ach (Noah) are tales out of Babylonia and Mesopotamia, we can also assume that 120 is an expression of the numerical system used in that part of the world - in the same way that the English use miles but the French kilometres (and actually the difference there is also about five eighths!)
LO YADON... LE OLAM (לא ידון רוחי באדם לעלם): The Niphal (passive) root of NADON (נדון) = "to judge"; from DUN (דון) = "to be low, depressed, inferior, rule, judge"; whence the names DAN and DINAH, and DAYAN = "a judge". The King James translation, on this occasion, is quite simply wrong.
Gesenius translates this as "my spirit (my superior and divine nature) shall not always be humbled in men". The use of LADON is definitely odd here, with its implication of judgement; an early paradigm for the Book of Life perhaps, now given a statute of limitations: "My spirit shall not go on judging every human being for ever..."
On the other hand both the Soncino and Hertz editions of the Chumash render it as "abide", implying that YHVH is indeed merely the life force (god as verb), and since Humankind is mortal the life force obviously cannot abide in Humankind for ever. Realising this, and aware that, as the world fills up, people living so long as Metu-Shalach (Methuselah) will overpopulate the globe rather quickly (requiring some cataclysm like a Flood to sort the problem out again), YHVH decides to ease the problem now by limiting the life-span of humans to 120 years.
ME'AH VE ESRIM (מאה ועשרים): but YHVH Elohim had already abolished immortality at the end of the Eden story; see notes above.
BESHAGAM HU BASAR (בשגם הוא בשר): "for the reason that he too is made of flesh" appears to infer that YHVH is made of flesh; but we will be told repeatedly throughout the Tanach that this is not the case; and besides, we have already been told that ADAM was made of dust, MIN HA ADAMAH, in Genesis 3:19.
BE SHA GAM is an unusual grammatical construction, not repeated in the Tanach; BE = "in" or "at"; SHE is the normal short form of Asher (אשר) = "which" or "that", rendered here as SHA for different grammatical reasons; GAM = "also"; the three normally separate words are compressed into a single word, as though we were to say "inthatalso" in English.
6:4 HA NEPHILIM HAYU VA ARETS BA YAMIM HA HEM VE GAM ACHAREY CHEN ASHER YAVU BENEY HA ELOHIM EL BENOT HA ADAM VA YALDU LAHEM HEMA HA GIBORIM ASHER ME OLAM ANSHEY HA SHEM
By whatever understanding, this is the formal introduction of death into the world. But surely death had already been introduced, at the end of the Eden story, when YHVH-Elohim realised that eating the fruit made humans akin to gods, and thereby endowed us with the capacity to live forever? A limit on the extent of life, then, which may not be the same thing - as we shall discover later on, the ancient world understood the Underworld as a place of death, but also as a place of regeneration, because bodies, human, flora and fauna, biodegrade into compost and thereby furnish continuing Creation: life may end in an individual human when death comes, but Life itself does not end, because the elements and molecules, so to speak, "resurrect". The concept of an evil Underworld, Dantesque and Miltonian, belongs to a later period, and is not part of Jewish epistemology.
Maximum age is given here as one hundred and twenty, where elsewhere (Psalm 90:10 is actually the only reference, and even it suggests that a healthy person might live to eighty) we are told it will be at seventy. Evidence yet again that the Tanach is not a single, continuous text, but an anthology artificially constructed out of dozens of different, often contradictory texts. And given that both Bavel (Babel) and No'ach (Noah) are tales out of Babylonia and Mesopotamia, we can also assume that 120 is an expression of the numerical system used in that part of the world - in the same way that the English use miles but the French kilometres (and actually the difference there is also about five eighths!)
LO YADON... LE OLAM (לא ידון רוחי באדם לעלם): The Niphal (passive) root of NADON (נדון) = "to judge"; from DUN (דון) = "to be low, depressed, inferior, rule, judge"; whence the names DAN and DINAH, and DAYAN = "a judge". The King James translation, on this occasion, is quite simply wrong.
Gesenius translates this as "my spirit (my superior and divine nature) shall not always be humbled in men". The use of LADON is definitely odd here, with its implication of judgement; an early paradigm for the Book of Life perhaps, now given a statute of limitations: "My spirit shall not go on judging every human being for ever..."
On the other hand both the Soncino and Hertz editions of the Chumash render it as "abide", implying that YHVH is indeed merely the life force (god as verb), and since Humankind is mortal the life force obviously cannot abide in Humankind for ever. Realising this, and aware that, as the world fills up, people living so long as Metu-Shalach (Methuselah) will overpopulate the globe rather quickly (requiring some cataclysm like a Flood to sort the problem out again), YHVH decides to ease the problem now by limiting the life-span of humans to 120 years.
ME'AH VE ESRIM (מאה ועשרים): but YHVH Elohim had already abolished immortality at the end of the Eden story; see notes above.
BESHAGAM HU BASAR (בשגם הוא בשר): "for the reason that he too is made of flesh" appears to infer that YHVH is made of flesh; but we will be told repeatedly throughout the Tanach that this is not the case; and besides, we have already been told that ADAM was made of dust, MIN HA ADAMAH, in Genesis 3:19.
BE SHA GAM is an unusual grammatical construction, not repeated in the Tanach; BE = "in" or "at"; SHE is the normal short form of Asher (אשר) = "which" or "that", rendered here as SHA for different grammatical reasons; GAM = "also"; the three normally separate words are compressed into a single word, as though we were to say "inthatalso" in English.
6:4 HA NEPHILIM HAYU VA ARETS BA YAMIM HA HEM VE GAM ACHAREY CHEN ASHER YAVU BENEY HA ELOHIM EL BENOT HA ADAM VA YALDU LAHEM HEMA HA GIBORIM ASHER ME OLAM ANSHEY HA SHEM
הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וְגַם אַחֲרֵי כֵן אֲשֶׁר יָבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים אֶל בְּנוֹת הָאָדָם וְיָלְדוּ לָהֶם הֵמָּה הַגִּבֹּרִים אֲשֶׁר מֵעוֹלָם אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם
KJ: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
BN: The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of Ha Elohim went with the daughters of Humankind, and they bore children with them; these were the heroes of the ancient world, the family of Shem.
HA NEPHILIM (הנפילים): From the root NAPHAL (נפל)= "to fall", for which reason some modern scholars have read this, usually in the wake of Milton, to mean "those who rebelled and were expelled from Heaven", falling with Lucifer into the bottomless perdition of having to study "Paradise Lost" in school. However, as all that is later Christian and not early Beney Yisra-El mythology, we can safely ignore it here.
This is, again, the Beney Yisra-El equivalent of Titans, and all Titan stories around the world appear to be a way of dealing with primordial Humankind, whether Neanderthal or merely troglodyte, or possibly even a primitive sense that there were other quasi-human creatures who once existed, but became extinct, and quite possibly before the melting of the Ice Age which is implicit in the tale of the Flood.
In Chaldean NIPHLA means "the giant in the sky", i.e. Orion, the most easily seen of all the constellations, known as "the hunter" and identified with Nimrod (properly Nimrud) in Genesis 10:8-10, where he is a son of (Mesopotamian rather than Ethiopian) Kush, a great-grandson of No'ach, "a mighty one on the Earth" and "a mighty hunter before YHVH" (an interesting exercise for a middle school or senior school class: try to work out which of the twelve tribes equates to which of the constellations; Yehudah as Leo and Dan as Libra are straightforward; what about the others? Shim'on and Levi as Gemini, the twins? Lots of clues in Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33, the former Ya'akov's horoscopal divinations (though Ya'akov complicates this, by himself being the shepherd of Aries, the ram), the latter Mosheh's. Click here for a cheat-sheet).
Numbers 13:33 likewise describes the Nephilim as giants. We can therefore regard the Nephilim as primordial Babylonians, the legend here equivalent to those of the founding Greek heroes such as Prometheus and Epimetheus. Unlike the other cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East, where the Titans disappear with the Flood (Deucalion, Gilgamesh, etc) the Titan myths and legends of the Beney Yisra-El were later officially excised from the cult but never from the consciousness, perhaps because they were never fully removed from the scriptures. Giant legends recur, for example, with the Pelishtim (Philistine) invaders in the Book of Samuel (1:17:4), and some were still alive, at least according to ten of the twelve spies sent into Kena'an by Mosheh (Numbers 13:33), at Chevron (Hebron) no less (see below).
The idea of fallen angels does not belong here, but the fact that they are here, immediately after the Beney Ha Elohim, cannot be purely coincidental; both, after all, are human-like creatures, but yet not human. The Beney Ha Elohim may have been minor members of the pantheon, or simply demi-gods; the Nephilim are pre-human rather than super-human. But it does infer that the ithyphallic Adam of the second version of Creation was a Titan and not a human, as Chavah was a goddess, deepening our sense of the Frazer myth being the case there, despite recent scholarly attempts to debunk Frazer. Does it mean the same for Kayin, Havel, No'ach too? As we shall see later, there is a very convincing case to be made that all the patriarchs and matriarchs were originally gods and goddesses, reduced by the Redactor, or earlier, in order to invent a narrative history for what was now a people; exactly as Christianity reduced the pagan gods of Europe to saints in order to absorb them.
Other names for the Nephilim are:
Emim (אמם), or Eymim - they are spelled with an additional Yud (אימם) in Genesis 14:5. The name is used to mean "terrors" in Psalm 88:16, though it is also used to mean "idols" in Jeremiah 50:38 (and with a splendid play on sounds between EYMIM and MEYMIM). They are named in Deuteronomy 2:11 as the ancient people who inhabited the city of Ar (Ar in verse 9 just means "city", and has nothing to do with Ur of the Chaldees, Ur Kasdim, Av-Ram's city of origins, which was 1000 miles to the east; from the context, this was a city of Mo-Av by that name): "the Emim [no yud] dwelt therein aforetime, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim".
Repha'im (רפאים)= "healers". Genesis 14:5 locates them in Ashterot Karnayim, where Chedar la Omer (כְּדָרְלָעֹמֶר) defeats them, alongside the Zuzim (זוזים) of Cham and the Eymim in Shaveh Kiryatayim; the Zuzim, who are not mentioned anywhere else, may in fact be an error for the Zamzumim (see below). 2 Samuel 16 calls them Yelidey Ha Rapha (ילידי הרפה), and likewise reckons they were Kena'anites living east of the river Yarden (Jordan); however, Repha'im is spelled with an aleph (א), connecting it to the root-word for "healing", and the name of the angel Rapha-El (רפאל), whereas Ha Rapha is without the aleph. Rapha-El should properly have two alephs, one for the "healing" root and one for the god-root (רפא-אל) which may suggest that the error is in the angel and not the tribe. Deuteronomy 3:11 has Og king of Bashan as the last surviving remnant of the Repha'im. Isaiah 17:5 prophecies the fall of Yisra-El, saying that it will be "as when someone gleans ears in the valley of Repha'im". The ears being those of the corn, not the humans. However Joshua 12:4 finds another of their remnant living in the territory of the Pelishtim (Philistines), which may be the cause of the later belief that the "giant" Gol-Yat (Goliath), and therefore the Pelishtim in general, were Repha'im, which they were not. Surviving Repha'im are also noted in Joshua 17:15.
Zamzumim (זמזמים) = possibly "achievers", or "noise-makers". Deuteronomy 2:20 locates them in Amon, but notes that "that also is accounted a land of Repha'im: Repha'im dwelt therein aforetime; but the Amonites call them Zamzumim."
Anakim (ענקים) = "long-necked" or "wearers of necklaces" (cf Judges 8:26; Song of Songs 4:9; Proverbs 1:9), which suggests a genetic variation akin to the Masai of Kenya. One of the Nephilim named Arba is said to have built Kiryat-Arba, later Chevron (Hebron), and fathered Anak whose three sons, Sheshai, Achi-Man and Talmai, were later expelled by Yehoshua's comrade Kalev (Caleb) - see Judges 1:10. On the other hand Kiryat Arba probably recalls Anak + three sons (arba = "four"). Numbers 13:33 ff, Joshua 11:21. See also Jeremiah 47:5, where the Anakim, like the Repha'im, appear to have become confused with the Pelishtim.
Avim (עוים) = "devastators" or "serpents", presumably from their aboriginal habitation of the remote desert. Deuteronomy 2:23 has them "dwelling in villages as far [south] as Aza (Gaza)". Joshua 13:3 remarks on them in a parenthesis as being south of the Pelishtim (Philistines). Joshua 18:23 has Ha Avim as one of the families in the tribe of Bin-Yamin (Benjamin), which will become significant later when we explore the probability that Bin-Yamin was an Egyptian who became part of the Yisra-Elite confederacy, but never actually a Yisra-Elite by birth himself.
Giborim (גבורים) = "heroes". We should not do as Hertz does and confuse Nephilim with Giborim: giants with heroes; the former would include Shimshon (Samson) in their number, the latter King David's bodyguard (click here), and Nimrod, who is about to be mentioned.
The implications of this act of hybridisation are worth considering. If Elohim made Humankind in his own image, and evolution is unacceptable to the fundamentalist Creationist position, how do we explain the marriage of the demi-gods (Beney ha-Elohim) with the daughters of men - an act not far removed from Zeus fathering Minos on Europa? And how do we explain the existence - once, even if not now - of so many genetic variations? (Nor are these simply my questions: the original Biblical tales are all "mythological", which is to say, they are parables and fables created to answer precisely these questions).
ANSHEY HA SHEM (אנשי השם) = Men of Renown! Fra Roger Bacon, one of the greatest of the early English scientists (circa 1214 – circa 1292) was locked up by the church for many reasons connected with his scientific work, but mostly because he insisted that the study of the Bible, and that of his own Christianity, could not be done properly without a working knowledge of "Hebrew" (Yehudit), and thereby the capacity to read the Bible in its original language; he already knew Greek and Latin, so it was for the "Hebrew" original that he needed this skill. Bacon took himself to Oxenford, today's Oxford, which was then a predominantly Jewish town, famous for having three yeshivot, rabbinical seminaries to which learned Jews came from across Europe to study; Moyse's Hall, Jacob's Hall and Lumbard's Hall. It was the existence of these yeshivot that inspired the opening of Christian seminaries, and through them the founding of Oxford University, but sadly the study of "Hebrew" was not permitted at any English university for another seven hundred years, and though Bacon managed a few months with Moses ben Isaac, and even wrote a Hebrew Grammar, he spent rather more years in a Franciscan cell, prohibited from both "Hebrew" and science.
Why am I speaking of him here? In part, because I was seeking an opportunity to show Roger Bacon as a key source in the methodology of Bible Criticism and TheBibleNet - he would have approved and applauded a text that allowed anyone to read and understand the "Hebrew" in the original, and even, through the transliteration, without actually having the ability to read the original. In part because he counts amongst the Anshey Ha Shem, the "Men of Renown". In most part because the phrase "Men of Renown" is a perfect illustration of Bacon's conviction: a mistranslation resulting from a lack of understanding of the Yehudit; Anshey Ha Shem could indeed mean "Men of Renown", but only if "Shem" is understood metaphorically, and the use of metaphor in this manner does not come into any human literature until the 6th century BCE; so it cannot have meant this in the original, and must therefore have meant something else. One option is "Men of God", from the use of the term "Ha Shem" as a euphemism for YHVH-Elohim by those too superstitious to pronounce any of the known names for the Jewish god; but this only enters Judaism in the late mediaeval period, and only among certain sects in eastern Europe, so it cannot have been the original meaning either. In fact, what it meant in the original is "Semites", Anshey ha Shem as opposed to Anshey Ha Cham or Anshey Ha Yaphet - we are about to read their story, in that of No'ach and the Flood. The Semites.
At this point the fragment ends and the first MAPHTIR (or MAFTIR if you prefer) occurs, the end of the first full scroll. It is not clear where the next four verses fit in, since the Yehudit clearly marks the beginning of the story of No'ach as the second Chapter of the Tanach, from verse 9. These may therefore be a coda to the first scroll or a prelude to the second scroll; more likely the end of the scroll was not intentional but merely convenient and these should have been the last part proper of scroll one.
6:5 VA YAR YHVH KI RABAH RA'AT HA ADAM BA ARETS VE CHOL YETSER MACHSHEVOT LIBO RAK RA KOL HA YOM
6:5 VA YAR YHVH KI RABAH RA'AT HA ADAM BA ARETS VE CHOL YETSER MACHSHEVOT LIBO RAK RA KOL HA YOM
וַיַּרְא יְהוָה כִּי רַבָּה רָעַת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ וְכָל יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ רַק רַע כָּל הַיּוֹם
KJ: And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
BN: And YHVH saw that the wickedness of Humankind was great on Earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only towards wickedness, all day long.
The conventional view in the ancient world, the polytheistic as well as the Jewish, and still the case in the Christian, that anything bad that happens is the consequence of sin, and this includes natural behaviours like famines, floods and volcanic eruptions, as well as human bad behaviour.
Again YHWH and Elohim are mixed up; this section till now has been either Elohim or Ha Elohim; further evidence that these are separate stories loosely seamed together.
Again compare the Gilgamesh story.
How does all this connect to verse 3?
RA'AT: As will become clear from the note on YETSER, below, translators need to be very cautious when they translate the words TOV and RA as "Good" and "Evil", which are dualistic constructs that have no place either in the ancient religion of the Beney Yisra-El, or in the 2000 years of modern Judaism. "Good" (upper case "G") and "Evil" (upper case "E"), especially in Christianity, reflect Zoroastrianism, and belong to much earlier superstitious paganisms in which spirits outside of the human being determine human actions as part of their on-going struggle for predominance: the god or gods in the heavens representing good-and-only-good versus the Devil or demons of the Hadean Underworld hell-bent on death and destruction. As such they are nouns; but in the Jewish world of Yetser ha Tov and Yetser ha Ra, "good" (lower case "g") and "bad" (lower case "b) are adjectives, descriptors of choices made by thinking (or all-too-often unthinking) human creatures.
YETSER (יצר): Creation, in the sense of "forming", "giving a foundation", is one of several verbs used for the multiple aspects of Creation; Yetser appears in Genesis 2:7 as the means of creating Man from the dust. However, this is clearly not its intention here.
Jewish theology posits an explanation for the existence of good and bad (not "Good and Evil") in two ways. The first suggests that Elohim HISTIR PANAV = "turns his face away", or "blinks for just an instant", and that this is long enough to allow bad things o take place - with emphasis on the word "allow", because Elohim is One, and so the world cannot be dualised into Good versus Evil. The second, which is not necessarily in opposition to the first, suggests that Humankind has been given free will (or acquired it by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), and can therefore choose whether to be good or bad. Humankind has an inherent inclination in both directions, and human life is the process of wrestling between these. Lovely philosophy. The terms for these good and bad inclinations are YETSER HA TOV (יצר הטוב) and YETSER HA RA (יצר הרע). Therefore the word YETSER should be translated as "inclination", not "imagination". For a deeper understanding of this concept, cf Genesis Rabbah 9:7, Avot d'Rabbi Nata, Berakhot 32a and especially Maimonides' commentary on Berakhot 9:5.
The same applies to Genesis 8:21, a parallel verse to this one in its reference to the reason behind the Flood; as we will see, it too is translated as "imagination" in most English versions, including Jewish ones. We can only assume, at least with Jewish commentators, that they are seeking to make a distinction between ante-diluvial and post-diluvial bad deeds of Humankind, as though the wickedness that YHVH decides to obliterate through the Flood is somehow not of the same order as the battle between the good and bad inclinations in Humankind that will come into being after the Flood. This is a matter of faith theology, and not the provenance of TheBibleNet.
But we also cannot ignore the fact that, if Elohim did indeed create men and women in his image, then a) he gave them a double-headed inclination and so he cannot blame them if they use both heads; and b) he must be made of the selfsame stuff, so it is hypocritical at best to denounce them for their actions. If destruction is the right solution to this error, would suicide not have been more honourable than Flood, and cost fewer lives? After all, in the end the mess that has been made of this Earth is as much the fault of Elohim as it is of Humankind. His was the failed Creation. His was the rush to do in seven days what might have been better achieved in seventy. His was the lack of intelligence in the design. But this is classical despotism, or senior management: when it goes well, I take the credit; when it goes badly, you get the blame.
MACHSHAVOT (מחשבת): from CHASHAV (חשב) = "to think, meditate". Note that thought, to the ancient Beney Yisra-El, was an attribute of the heart, or the gut, not the head; see next note, but also see Deuteronomy 6:5, the second line of the Shema, the central credo of Talmudic Judaism: וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ - VE AHAVTAH ET YHVH ELOHEYCHA BE CHOL LEVAVECHA U VE CHOL NAPHSHECHA U VE CHOL ME'ODECHA; "and you will love YHVH your god with all your heart..."; and even more, see the commentary to Leviticus 11:18, and specifically the word RACHAM.
LIBO (לבו): The LEV (לב) or heart is the root of rational thought, not the brain. This occurs frequently in the Tanach and should be watched for. English poetry reflects this conceit in John Donne's "naked, thinking heart", and modern psychology maintains the distinction through the dichotomy of objective knowledge and subjective knowledge.
6:6 VA YINACHEM YHVH KI ASAH ET HA ADAM BA ARETS VA YITATSEV EL LIBO
6:6 VA YINACHEM YHVH KI ASAH ET HA ADAM BA ARETS VA YITATSEV EL LIBO
וַיִּנָּחֶם יְהוָה כִּי עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ וַיִּתְעַצֵּב אֶל לִבּוֹ
KJ: And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
BN: And Elohim regretted that he had made Humankind on Earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
VA YINACHEM (וינחם): Is this the real source of the name No'ach (Noah)? Or simply a clever play on words? Highly ironic if it is. See the note to Genesis 5:29, where I have disputed the translation of LENACHEM as "comfort" (though the word does also mean "comfort" in some contexts). NACHAM (נחם) = "to lament, grieve"; also "to be avenged"; only in the PI'EL (intensive) form = "to comfort", whence the name MENACHEM. But at its root (and the Biblical authors are always thoroughly Joyceian in their choice of language) Nacham is a development of the two-letter root Nach (נח), from which No'ach gets his name. So is No'ach himself the symbol of Elohim's repentance, even before he puts the rainbow in the sky; not the "resting - LANU'ACH - on Mount Ararat" later, but the "grieving over Humankind" here? (There is also a third though rather remote possibility. No'ach was the son of Lamech, remember, who sang about the "vengeance" awaiting him for murdering a man and a child. Vengeance in Yehudit is NEKAMAH (נְקָמָה), not the identical root, but certainly an aural pun.) So we have both roots and meanings tied up in the motifs of the story; and it does also become clear that YHVH* is not destroying the world to punish Humankind, but as an artist might destroy a canvas that he knows has failed.
Note that I have avoided using the word "repent", which is a Christian concept, not a Jewish one. In Judaism, the processes of Selichah, Mechilah and Kaparah involve confession of error, but without punishment; before 70CE, it also included the making of sacrifices, but this ended when the Temple was destroyed.
* YHVH: Note that we have gone back to YHVH here; the only problem being that in our version it wasn't YHVH who made Humankind.
6:7 VA YOMER YHVH EMCHEH ET HA ADAM ASHER BARA'TI ME AL PENEY HA ADAMAH ME ADAM AD BEHEMAH AD REMES VE AD OPH HA SHAMAYIM KI NICHAMTI KI ASITIM
6:7 VA YOMER YHVH EMCHEH ET HA ADAM ASHER BARA'TI ME AL PENEY HA ADAMAH ME ADAM AD BEHEMAH AD REMES VE AD OPH HA SHAMAYIM KI NICHAMTI KI ASITIM
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶמְחֶה אֶת הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר בָּרָאתִי מֵעַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה מֵאָדָם עַד בְּהֵמָה עַד רֶמֶשׂ וְעַד עוֹף הַשָּׁמָיִם כִּי נִחַמְתִּי כִּי עֲשִׂיתִם
KJ: And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
BN: And YHVH said: "I will blot out human beings whom I have created from the face of the Earth; both human beings, and beasts, and creeping things, and the fowl of the air; for I regret that I made them."
Ancestral legend of the coming of the Ice Age and the miraculous survival of the human species?
Something seems to be missing here from the original Babylonian version, as though memory had faltered or the hearer hadn't quite heard it all correctly. If Humankind is bad, why does YHVH decide to get rid of everything? His motive is not logical. What after all have the animals done wrong? Have birds really been that wicked? Did other creatures (microbes, fruit flies, bacteria) also eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Do fish sin? Can monkeys be hypocritical and iguana commit crimes? Are there corrupt politicians amongst the octopodes and cheating capitalists among the rhinoceroi? All they actually do is live and copulate and die, don't they? And this they were specifically told to do at the time of Creation. No, the moral tone is a human superimposition, not a divine postulation! The theological moral, we have been told, is humanity's wickedness, but the story is not in the event about that. The key word is "regret" – NICHAMTI. This is about an artist who does not like his painting for some reason, and has a tantrum, and rips it up. Just a shame he didn't do a better job with the redraft.
Why does he suddenly start speaking in the first person, when he has used the "royal we" until now?
Is all this moralising just a way of justifying the inclusion of the non-Beney Yisra-El creation story of No'ach?
6:8 VE NO'ACH MATS'A CHEN BE EYNEY YHVH
6:8 VE NO'ACH MATS'A CHEN BE EYNEY YHVH
וְנֹחַ מָצָא חֵן בְּעֵינֵי יְהוָה
KJ: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
BN: But No'ach found grace in the eyes of YHVH.
MATSA CHEN BE EYNEY (מצה חן בעיני): One of the great idioms of the book, and clearly a favourite of the scribes too, who use it regularly, especially in the Book of Judges! However, except for verse 9 which follows, it is not really clear what No'ach did to deserve YHVH's favour.
End of seventh fragment here, and with it the end of the first sedra, Bere'shit. It is best to read the previous fragment end as simple convenience for the end of the scroll. Note that the piece is divided into seven fragments for reading in synagogue, which might seem like a rather obvious thing, given that there are seven days in the week and so this allows a reading every day. Yes, but - the Torah isn't read every day, and never has been since it was first written down, by the Ezraic Redactor around 434 BCE. Ezra instituted market-days, Mondays and Thursdays, for the reading of the law, as well as Shabat, and this triplet remains in place for all denominations of Judaism to this day (though in reality not all synagogues have the numbers to fulfill it).
English chapter headings are a consequence of Christian translations and frequently break in the most illogical of places; especially on this occasion.
TOLDOT 1 (Genesis 5:1-6:8)
This is "The Book of the Generations of Adam" from the day that Elohim created Humankind in his own image. Male and female both he created, and he blessed them, and he called them Humankind. And the man named Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years when he fathered a child in his own image and likeness, and named the boy Shet. And Adam lived a hundred and eighty years after he had fathered Shet, and he fathered both sons and daughters. And the whole of Adam's life was nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
*
This is "The Book of the Generations of Adam" from the day that Elohim created Humankind in his own image. Male and female both he created, and he blessed them, and he called them Humankind. And the man named Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years when he fathered a child in his own image and likeness, and named the boy Shet. And Adam lived a hundred and eighty years after he had fathered Shet, and he fathered both sons and daughters. And the whole of Adam's life was nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
Shet lived a hundred and five years and fathered Enosh. And after fathering Enosh Shet lived eight hundred and seven years, and he fathered sons and daughters. And all the days of Shet's life were nine hundred and twelve years and he died.
Enosh was ninety when he fathered Keynan. And after fathering Keynan he lived eight hundred and fifteen years, and he fathered sons and daughters. And all the days of Enosh's life were nine hundred and five years, and he died.
And Keynan was seventy when he fathered Mahalal-El. And after fathering Mahalal-El Keynan lived eight hundred and forty years, and he fathered sons and daughters. And all the days of Keynan's life were nine hundred and ten years, and he died.
And Mahalal-El was sixty-five when he fathered Yared. And after fathering Yared Mahalal-El lived eight hundred and thirty years, and he fathered sons and daughters, and all the days of Mahalal-El's life were 895 years and he died.
And Yared was a hundred and sixty-two when he fathered Chanoch. And after fathering Chanoch Yarad lived eight hundred years, and he fathered sons and daughters, and all the days of Yarad were nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died.
And Chanoch was sixty-five when he fathered Metu-Shelach. And Chanoch walked with Elohim full three hundred years after fathering Metu-Shelach, and he fathered sons and daughters, and all the days of Chanoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Chanoch walked with Elohim, and then he was no more, for Elohim had taken him.
And Metu-Shelach lived a hundred and eighty-seven years and he fathered Lamech. And after fathering Lamech Metu-Shelach lived seven hundred and eighty-two years and he fathered sons and daughters, and all the days of Metu-Shelach were nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died.
And Lamech lived a hundred and eighty-two years and he fathered a son. And he called the boy No'ach, saying, "This will bring us comfort in our labouring and the toiling of our hands on the ground which YHVH has cursed". And after fathering No'ach Lemech lived five hundred and ninety-five years, and he fathered sons and daughters. And all the days of his life were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died.
And No'ach was five hundred years old when he fathered Shem, Cham and Yaphet. And it came to pass when Humankind began to increase on the Earth, and to father daughters, that the sons of the one called Ha-Elohim saw that the daughters of men were fair, and each chose for himself a wife.
Then YHVH said "My spirit shall not reside perpetually in Humankind, because he is also made of flesh. His years shall be limited to a hundred and twenty."
Giants walked the Earth in those days, and after then too, when the sons of Ha-Elohim went to the daughters of Man and fathered children on them, who became heroes and men of renown.
And YHVH saw that the evil of Man was great on Earth and that every one of his thoughts was bent towards evil. And YHVH regretted having made Man, and He was sorry to the bottom of his soul. And YHVH said, "I shall remove this creature Man whom I created from the face of the Earth; Man, and the cattle, and the reptiles, and the birds; I am sorry I ever made them." But No'ach found grace in YHVH's eyes.
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