Unfiltered Fridays: All Your Genesis Commentaries Are 8-Track Tapes

We’ve all heard the old saying that certain things get better with age—wine, cheese, common sense. Anyone who’s watched Antiques Roadshow also knows that the longer you have something that there’s a demand for—real estate, investments, fine art, a popular car—the more value it will accrue. Unfortunately, the reverse is true for many of the most popular tools for biblical study. They’re often more like memory and tech gear—they get worse with age and perhaps become totally obsolete.

Commentaries are one of the tools that don’t get better with the passage of time. The reasons are pretty simple. Biblical scholars are like experts in any field. They keep thinking and researching. The data of biblical studies increase and improve. Archaeology produces more discoveries of relevance. Computer technology makes ancient language analysis more thorough (and faster). Information becomes more accessible and searchable. It’s no exaggeration to say that what scholars had access to 100 years ago is literally a fraction of what’s available to you today using only a smart phone. In terms of what previous generations were capable of analyzing in a lifetime we can surpass with a few hours of effort.

I work for the world’s leading Bible software company, so I’m used to the staggering realities of the modern world for biblical studies. But the truth I’m talking about today was brought home to me in a direct way only in the last year. My book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, devotes a lot of space to a lot of weird passages. One of the strangest is Genesis 6:1–4, the episode in the days of Noah where the “sons of God” (called “Watchers” in Jewish literature between the testaments) transgress the boundary between heaven and earth in an illicit relationship with the “daughters of humankind.” The act produced the Nephilim, who are the forebears of the giant clans encountered by Moses and Joshua (Num. 13:32–33).

There have been many attempts to strip this passage of its supernatural elements to make it palatable to modern Bible students. Since this sort of material has been my academic focus for the past 15 years, I can tell you that all such attempts have significant flaws of exegesis and logical coherence. But the greatest flaw is that any view that humanizes the sons of God and denies the unusual nature of the Nephilim invariably violates the passage’s original context and polemic meaning.

Prior to 2010, that assertion may have been contestable. That is no longer the case. Recent scholarly work on the Mesopotamian epic literature associated with events before and after the great flood have produced clear, unambiguous, point-for-point parallels to what we read in Genesis 6:1–4. Those parallels demonstrate with no uncertainty that this biblical passage was specifically written to denigrate Mesopotamian ideas of the superiority of their gods and culture.

In the Mesopotamian material, the divine beings who lived at the time of the flood were called apkallu. They cohabited with human women, producing a new generation of apkallu who were not only divine-human hybrids, but also giants. Mesopotamian religion saw these generations of apkallu as great sages. Their survival via human women before the annihilation of the flood preserved preflood divine knowledge that had been taught to men. This knowledge was preserved in Babylon, which explained (to the Mesopotamian cultures) why their culture was superior to all others. Rather than deny the supernatural context of the Mesopotamian material, Genesis hits it head-on. The apkallu were not saviors. They were undeserving rivals to Yahweh of Israel that deserved to die. After the flood the post-flood giant apkallu became enemies of God’s people, the Israelites. Whether we realize it or not, Genesis 6:1–4 is the first salvo in the long war against Yahweh and his people. This strange passage that modern readers keep at arm’s length has hooks into other biblical passages, including the New Testament.

The new research I speak of is the result of thorough reexamination of the Sumerian and Akkadian flood epics. That result was skillfully culled by cuneiform scholar Amar Annus in a 2010 article: “On the Origin of Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha vol. 19:4 (2010): 277–320. Annus’ article is the most current study on the Mesopotamian apkallu available anywhere in any form. It supersedes all preceding work on this subject.((Such as J. C. Greenfield, “Apkallu,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999) and Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Counterparts of the Biblical Nepilim in E.W. Conrad and E.G. Newing (eds.), Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays and Poems in Honor of Francis I. Andersen’s Sixtieth Birthday July 28, 1985 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns): 39-44.)) It deals a death blow to any nonsupernatural interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4.

What this means is that every commentary on Genesis you’ve come to trust can no longer be trusted on this passage, because it was written before this new, ground-breaking research. They’re like 8-track cassettes—obsolete. The good news is that my book The Unseen Realm, interacts with this new research at length. And there are a lot of issues like this one that it brings up-to-date. If you care about interpreting the Bible in its original context—including the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers—you need to read The Unseen Realm, available now from Lexham Press.

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The Unseen Realm For more resources exploring the mysteries of the Old Testament, check out Dr. Heiser’s Mobile Ed course, OT 291 The Jewish Trinity: How the Old Testament Reveals the Christian Godhead.

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Michael S. Heiser
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19 comments
  • I think the reason people keep these passages at arms length is answered in your article here. If that passage is polemic written later as the Israelites became more and more aware of these ancient Mesopotamian tales……than how could Moses have met them in the desert?

    • I was wondering the same thing Hanan. Are the “giants” in Numbers the same as the pre-flood giants? If so this would have to.mean that the flood did not wipe off every “soulish” being on the face of the populated earth. Or it could mean that another set of rebellious spiritual beings (post flood) came down and cohabitated again with human females (which would also mean their DNA may live on today perhaps.) This also begs the question, are angels sexual beings? According to Jesus they are not…at least not those who are in heaven with God (as per Matt 22:30). Or maybe these “sons of God” (Gen 6:1-2) aren’t “angels” at all as we normally think of them ( e.g. seraphim and cherbim) but some other type of created spiritual beings who “left their first estate”(Jude 1:6).
      Lot’s to wonder about!
      We’ll have to read Dr. Heiser’s book. 😉

      • @Merrill – Actually, Jesus does NOT comment on whether angels are sexual beings. If you look at the parallel passage in Lk 20:34-36 you will find that the comparison to angels explicitly has to do with the fact that they cannot die. Within the context in both Matthew and Luke the issue is that death is a marriage contract limiter. Without death there can be no marriage. Yet to jump to the conclusion from this that angels are non-sexual because they do not marry to is make the same mistake as the Sadducees in assuming that eternity is just like now. Rather, Jesus is conspicuously silent regarding relationships in eternity whether for angels or humans. All we get is that it will not be as it is now.

        Also, you missed a third possibility – the use of the term nephilim for the giants in Numbers is one of comparison, with Moses knowing of the beings in Genesis 6 and using the same word to describe these later men because of their similarity. Not necessarily advocating this, but it is another interpretive possibility.

        @OP – the question now (and probably this is answered in your book) is whether viewing this as a polemic against Mesopotamian religion and literature means that you consider Moses’ recording of Genesis 6 to be a factual & truthful account or whether you consider it to simply be a polemic that reinterprets those other stories apart from a background of historical reality.

        • @ Tim:
          I agree with you. But I do find it curious that spiritual beings in Gen 6 were able to pro-create with human females. So it does leave me to wonder if the angels (or other intelligent, non-human, created beings) were made with the capacity to procreate…and not only amongst themselves but also (rightly or wrongly) with other species of sexual beings. It’s also interesting to note that of all the angelic like creatures that are mentioned in Scripture, ALL are male.

          Not jumping to conclusions on any of this, but it does get my mind wondering on several levels…

      • Actually, **Nephilim** are only mentioned in Gen.6:1-4 (prelude to the flood story) and Num.13:25-33. In this later account, the Hebrew spies told Moses that Canaan was full of Nephilim to dissuade him from attacking. Given that Nephilim were never mentioned again, we can assume the spies were lying, or at least greatly exaggerating the height of Canaanites.

        In other stories about Moses, David and others killing individual giants, the Hebrew word is **Rephaim**. This also referred to an mythological race of giants, but the only surviving Rephaim (according to the Bible) were these few individuals, the last of whom was King Og of Bashan.

    • “than how could Moses have met them in the desert?”
      You meant ‘then’, right? And who is the ‘them’ Moses is claimed to have met in the desert the, apkallu?

      Shitat Habechinot (“the aspect approach”) of Mordechai Breuer z”l, the theories of Roger Norman Whybray, and Richard Elliott Friedman have in modern times all attempted to address the issue of who wrote the Torah/Pentateuch unfortunately the average north american reader of the Bible translation are often unaware of Biblical studies.

      • >You meant ‘then’, right? And who is the ‘them’ Moses is claimed to have met in the desert the, apkallu?

        BKM, you are right. I mean’t “who were the Israelites afraid of when they went into Israel as spies?”

        Wasn’t it that fear of the giants what led to them being punished for 40 years in the desert? So if the story is just ANE polemic, how does that get explained?

  • Perhaps on this one point they may be obsolete, but I don’t agree with the assertion that it makes the entire commentary obsolete.

    • To that end, is Logos once again wanting us to buy more and more products? Commercialization is “of the world” or is it something we MUST adapt? When does all this needs for “reconstruction” ends? I am troubled by this.

    • Right David. I don’t think that’s what Dr. Heiser meant. Nevertheless, commentaries become, overall, obsolete with time because of new research in exegesis, grammar, syntax, archeology, geography, etc. Therefore, the point is that one cannot *rely* on older commentaries without considering the latest research. You can make use of it, but while realizing that the older it gets, the more obsolete it will be; especially on controversial passages.

  • “What this means is that every commentary on Genesis you’ve come to trust can no longer be trusted on this passage, because it was written before this new, ground-breaking research.”

    That’s a bit rich, Michael: grossly overstated, especially for an academic blog.

    I do appreciate the link you provided, and yes we need to engage with recent research. But there are some good arguments that could be mounted in response.

  • Since all that had breath, except Noah and his family, perished perished in the flood (Gen 7:21-23) how could this particular race of beings have survived to be a problem during the conquest? It is amazing how much light the Bible sheds on the commentaries.

  • Good afternoon, God bless you all:

    Very interesting. As far as a commentary being obsolete, it depends on the type it is and on the view it presents about the particular passage. Even if that particular passage’s interpretation may be out of synch with modern findings, the insights of other passages may still have valid information.

    The important question for me is: will Dr. Heiser’s book be available in L6?

    Blessings.

  • Well I don’t know but this
    “every commentary on Genesis you’ve come to trust can no longer be trusted on this passage”

    together with
    The good news is that my book The Unseen Realm….

    feels strange to me.

    On the other Hand: Your solution might be right…but it also might be wrong. It#s an interesting thought…but I still don’t through away my old Commentarys because of that.
    Sascha

  • Of course I agree with Michael. But Logos ought to take it to heart and week out all the old stuff from their libraries – like Matthew Henry’s commentary for examples, and any other biblical studies material that is free because it is out of copyright

  • If these Mesopotamian apkallu giants described in Gen 6 were not on the ark how did they become the enemy of Israel “After the flood . . .?” A universal flood destroyed all life except that on the ark as long as one interprets Genesis 7-8 as a universal and not a local flood. While the Bible does describe giants, such as Goliath, following the flood, these giants could not have been genetically connected to the antediluvian giants.

  • First, let me say at the outset that I have not read your book. However, let me also say that those who hold to a non-supernatural view of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4 do so for reasons that no amount of parallels in ancient pagan literature could negate. If those reasons are to be negated, it must be on other grounds.

    Secondly, though I may read your book at some point, and though I might even come to agree with your conclusions (although I would be a very hard sell), it does not follow that commentaries “don’t get better with the passage of time”.

    In fact, the very opposite is true. Quite often they do get better, 1) because the writers of the past were not wrestling with the same issues as we are in our time, and 2) because the Christian experience and spirituality of the older authors is often much deeper than that of the average Christian in later times (such as our own). For that reason, their insights into the word of God are to be treasured, not discarded. We need to be very careful to avoid what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”.

    Enthusiasm for one’s work is fine, but your blog post comes across as arrogant and offensive. Even though it’s “Unfiltered Friday”, a good “filter” of humility would have been a better approach.

  • The assertions regarding the perishability of old commentaries are shockingly inaccurate. In fact the reverse is true as doubt and infidelity regarding the scriptures increase within Christendom. Biblical scholars are less confident in the scriptures and in our ability to accurately interpret them, not more so. The argument also calls into question the perspicuity of scripture. It is as if God leaves the believers of certain ages in darkness regarding significant segments of the Word of God until knowledge may be gleaned from unbelievers for their clarification. Although it is true that ignorance and false doctrine may be found in commentaries of all ages, from medieval errors to Wellhausen and the New Perspective on Paul, the bible predicts that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

  • Your book sounds intriguing. Hope you publish both Logos and Kindle versions.

Written by Michael S. Heiser
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