CHAPTER 6

v. 6:1-4: Sons of God and daughters of men: Many Fathers in the first 4 centuries thought angels had bodies, and so these lines meant real children of angels: St. Justin, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine. St. Justin thought Psalm 78.25 meant that angels have food in heaven: "men ate the bread of angels". He even added, that the offspring were demons Now God could not create beings evil from the start. But Justin was fond of Plato, who spoke of daimones, beings intermediate between the secondary gods and the great God on the one hand, and humans. Later Platonists even spoke of good and bad daimones (cf. Augustine, City of God 9. 19 Then Julius Africanus proposed they were children of Seth. But today we consider it a fragment, within the mythic genre spoken of by John Paul II, which the inspired writer used, without asserting its truth, to show the decline of the race leading to the deluge. On Feb. 13, 1905 the Pontifical Biblical Commission said we may consider the possibility of implicit citations if there are solid reasons, and if it does not contradict the Church. Our case meets those standards. Cf. EB 160 and 181-86.

6.3: The age of man will be 120 years. We do not know if that is the general limit of life span for humans, or is it the time before the flood?

The deluge: There were even some libraries found in ancient times. There was one in the Temple of Nabu at Nineveh at least since the time of Sargon II (721-05 BC). But the greatest was that of King Assurbanipal (668-626? B.C. ), the last great king of Assyria, who sent scribes out to copy tablets, including works from the Sumerians and Akkadians. Nearly 30,000 texts have been excavated. The King wrote: "I read the beautiful clay tablets from Sumer and the obscure Akkadian writing which is hard to master. I had my joy in the reading of inscriptions on stone from the time before the flood." (Cited from Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past, Princeton, 1974, pp. 216-17). (There is a king list from Sumer, which gives 8 kings before the flood, with a total reign of 241,200 years: cf. Finegan, pp. 29-30, 36.)

In our earlier treatment of the Documentary theory we answered the problems about two accounts of the deluge.

Could there have been any dependence on Mesopotamian stories? The Epic of Gilgamesh (cf. edition by A. Heidel) has on tablet 11 a story of a flood remarkably similar even in many details. But the Babylonian account is polytheistic, and the gods cause the flood out of mere caprice. Then they flee up to the battlements of heaven in fear of it. At the end when Utnapistim, the Babyonian Noah, came out of the ark and offered a sacrifice, the gods "swarmed like flies around it" They had not had anything to eat for a long time: sacrifices were food for the gods, not the external expression of interior obedience to God: Cf. Isaiah 29.13.

Could the inspired writer have made use of an ancient story, after purifying it of polytheism? In general such things are possible, as we have seen. Or both could have had a common source. But we know now thanks to high-resolution photos taken from our satellite that the ark is indeed physically there, far up on Mt. Ararat. I learned this from a highly-placed officer at the Pentagon, who has himself seen the photos. He added that our army sent a ground expedition to the ark, walked about in it, saw the stalls for animals, and measured it, finding the same dimensions as in Genesis. At some times the ark is covered all over with snow.

Was the flood geographically universal? Genesis speaks of covering the land, eretz. It could be the land known to the writer. And Ararat is far lower than Mt. Everest is at present.

Was the flood anthropologically universal? A few commentators have tried to say no. They point to some odd names mentioned in Genesis 14.5, and also Dt 2.20-21 and Num. 13.33 The odd names were strange: rephaim, enaqim, zuzim and emim. The reasoning was that since the names in the tables of nations were not complete, these names were of a prediluvian people. It is true the lists are stylized according to seven, and not complete. But that does not leave room for some surviving within the flood area.