Such a Temperamental Bunch

May 26, 2009, 8:30 am by dc-agape.

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Tales of the Patriarchs

Our illustrious editors are kind enough to let us know that this is a rewrite of the Bible.  The original author(s) of this Tractate “improved” upon the stories from the Book of Genesis.  This starts as a story of why YHWH destroyed humanity and all the other living creatures on the planet with the Flood.  I won’t give you the reason yet, but let’s just say it’s a spectacular example of the stupidest thing a supernatural being could ever do!  The first Patriarch in the story is Lamech, Noah’s father.  The Tractate then turns to Noah himself.  Noah’s sons are mentioned but only to describe how they spread across the world.  Abram is the last Patriarch of this tale.  From the use of the name “Abram” it can be foreseen that this tale ends before YHWH changes his name to Abraham.

The opening of our story is the reason that YHWH drowned the entire world in his anger with the Flood.  It is actually quite simple…YHWH bound fallen angels to earth.  That’s right, to get rid of the angels that YHWH did not like he sent them to earth in fleshly bodies…where the humans lived.  Well of course these fallen angels, called Watchers (or more familiar term…the Nephilim), intermingled with humans.  This show how either naive or stupid YHWH was.  What else would you expect evil angels to do except corrupt humanity?  Worse than that YHWH did not strip them of their heavenly knowledge, so the Watchers used this knowledge to their own benefit.  They also, being angels, must have been more intelligent, more hansom, and more powerful than the humans.  So the women, of the time, sleep with these supernatural beings!  This only produced more evil offspring and the whole world was corrupted by YHWH own action.  He sent the angels to earth, what else would he expect to happen?

Here enters our first Patriarch, Lamech.  In a fit of jealousy he demands that his wife prove that she had not sleep with one of the Nephilim.  She had just given birth to Noah.  Something about Noah was surprisingly different than a normal baby, and Lamech thought that Noah was a child of the Nephilim.  Here we learn that Noah’s mother’s name was Bitenosh.  Why she should have a name in this story and not the Bible is of great curiosity.  Reading the response of Bitenosh is much more racy than anything in today’s Word of God:

1QapGen Col.2 lines 9-10 She said, “Oh, my brother, my lord, remember my voluptuousness […] in the heat of lovemaking, and my ardent response. I am telling you the whole truth […]. 

Sorry about the brackets, this is the symbol for where the scrolls are beyond recovery and the words have been lost to eternity.  Let’s hope that the term “my brother” does not mean she married and had sex with her brother!  But if this section were in the Bible I bet more people would read that Book.  Bitenosh continues the discussion of Noah’s conception, guaranteeing that Lamech is truly the father of Noah. 

One oddity appears in this section.  The author(s) use numerous terminologies for men who are not human.  To being with, when Lamech is worried about who fathered Noah, they use the term Holy Ones or Nephilim.  But when Bitenosh defends herself, she uses the term Watcher and differentiates that from the Sons of Heaven.  So it would seem that there were two extra sources of sperm in the days before the Flood other than human.  I can see how the Holy Ones and the Sons of Heaven might be the same, but then the Nephilim and the Watchers might also be the same.  We know from the Book of Genesis that the Sons of Heaven/God did have sex with human women (Gen 6:1-2).  But from reading that section of the Book of Genesis it would seem that it was the offspring of the Sons of Heaven that were the Nephilim (Gen 6:4).  Why would the Sons of God/Heaven be evil?  Why would the children of that union be evil?  In fact verse four claims that the Nephilim were “heroes of old, men of renown”.  Nothing from the Book of Genesis would indicate that humanity had any reason to become evil.  Yet right after the part about the Nephilim the Book of Genesis declares that humanity had become evil (Gen 6:5-7).  Remember that only 10 generation of humans had been born by the time YHWH grew angry (Gen 5).  It is a good thing that Noah didn’t let his children forget how to please such a temperamental YHWH!

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Posted in Genesis Material, Tales of the Patriarchs, Dead Sea Scroll, Inerrancy - My Ass, Family Values?, Readings | Print | 7 Comments »