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(PRE 22) the Story of the Fallen Angels and Their Cohabitation With

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(PRE 22) the Story of the Fallen Angels and Their Cohabitation With CHAPTER SIX THE MYTH OF THE FALLEN ANGELS (PRE 22) From the high neighbouring Hills, which was thir Seat, Down to the Plain descended: by thir guise Just men1 they seemd, and all thir study bent To worship God aright, and know his works Not hid, nor those things lost which might preserve Freedom and Peace to men: they on the Plain Long had not walkt, when from the Tents behold A Beavie of fair Women, richly gay In Gems and wanton dress; to the Harp they sung Soft amorous Ditties, and in dance came on: The Men though grave, ey’d them, and let thir eyes Rove without rein, till in the amorous Net Fast caught, they lik’d, and each his liking chose; (John Milton, Paradise Lost, XI. 585–87) The story of the Fallen Angels and their cohabitation with the “daugh- ters of man/Adam (benot ha-Adam)” is a direct continuation of the Eden myth in PRE, for the angels are the very same ones who were led by Samael in rebellion against Adam. As a punishment for their col- lusion in ‘the Fall of Man’: “God cast Samael and his entourage from their holy place in Heaven [ ]” (PRE 14). The women, half-breed descendants of Eve and Samael through Cain, play the role of the seducers this time, and become the progenitors of giants, called the Nephilim (based on Gen. 6:4). In this analysis of the first half of Chapter 22 in PRE, I will demonstrate the phenonmenon of the “return of the repressed,” where the mythic content latent in the biblical text is given full nar- rative form in the midrash. In contrast to the classic rabbinic sources (namely Gen. Rab.), our midrash goes where “angels fear to tread,” by interpreting bneiʾelohim as angelic beings. I will trace PRE back to 1 Milton, in his presentation of the story, seems to identify the males as aristocracy or nobles (“just men”) rather than angels, following the interpretation of Gen. Rab. 26:5, which understands bneiʾelohim as sons of nobles or judges [ ]. See the discussion that follows. 110 chapter six the Pseudepigraphic sources of the Second Temple Period, and show that our author uniquely sets up a continuity between this story and the narrative in the Garden of Eden. In the end, I will make a link to the Eschaton, or redemptive time, through the role of the Scapegoat offering – sent out to Samael/Azazel, bound hand-and-foot in the Bad- Lands for his role in ‘the Fall of Man’. In the biblical account (chapter 6 of Genesis), two separate stories are told: the first a relic of an ancient mythological saga concerned with the relations between the bnei ha-ʾelohim (lit. “the sons of God,” divine beings), and benot ha-adam (lit. “the daughters of man/Adam”) (6:1–4),2 and the second concerned with the corruption of the people before the Flood and the selection of Noah as the new progenitor of humankind (vv. 5–22). Enigmas in the Biblical Source – Genesis 6:1–4 In the biblical account, it is the bneiʾelohim who are entranced by the women first: When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings [lit. “the sons of God,” bnei ha-ʾelohim] saw how beau- tiful the daughters of men [lit. “daughters of the man/Adam,” benot ha- Adam] were and took wives from among those that pleased them. – The Lord said, “My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years.” – It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth – when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. (Gen. 6:1–4, NJPS trans.). This passage points to the blurring of boundaries between the heavenly and the earthly realms by means of the sexual union between these 2 The term bnei ha-ʾelohim [ ], the divine beings, in the biblical text (Gen. 4:2) is set up in contrast to benot ha-adam [ ], the daughters of man (i.e. mortal beings). The classic rabbinic interpretations attempt to repress the idea that they were angels, basing their reading ofʾelohim as a reference to judges (cf. Exod. 21:6, 21:7–8, 27; 1 Sam. 14:17, 20, and 19:28). However, the expression bneiʾelohim in the Hebrew Bible unambiguously refers to divine beings (cf. Ps. 29:1, 89:7 as , and in Job 1:6 and 2:1 as , and 38:7 as ). In another passage in Psalms, the termʾelohim is used synonymously with bnei ‘elyon, sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6); vv. 6–7, there, reads as a terse paraphrase of the myth on the Fallen Angels (see the discussion in ch. 4, and footnote 46 there)..
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