It is preferable to regard the whole passage, which, as has been said, is undoubtedly an extract from some very ancient source, as a relic of an early Hebrew legend. In this legend, the marriages of the angels with the daughters of men were considered to account for the generation of giants, and to explain their daring and insolent confidence, as well as their exceeding sinfulness.

The suggestion has been made that the early legend, from which the contents of these verses were borrowed, had no previous story of the Fall, and, accordingly, that the present narrative, in its full original form, may have been intended to account for the origin of evil, which was deemed to have arisen from the confusion of the angelic and the human races. In any case, it was not unnatural that later tradition derived from these verses the idea of the fall of the angels from their first estate.

We may observe that the passage opens abruptly, without any direct connexion with what has gone before, and that it is clearly marked off from what follows. The mention of the "Nephilim "1 contains a reference to a race not elsewhere so designated. But, presumably, the name had previously been mentioned in the narrative from which the section was derived. Otherwise it is difficult to account for its occurrence here without any word of explanation. While, of course, it is impossible to speak with 1 Ver. 4. See R.V. marg.

any degree of certainty, there is some probability in the view, that vers. 1-3 epitomise a parallel, or alternative, version of the Fall. The temptation here comes from beings of a higher race; the entrance of sin and death is ascribed to the abandonment by "the daughters of men" of the position which God had allotted to them. Here, as in chap. iii., the woman as the weaker vessel yields to the temptation, and is the cause of sin and death prevailing among mankind.

The purpose of the insertion of the passage is obvious. It is to illustrate, from the earliest traditions, the current belief as to the enormity of the wickedness that prevailed in the prehistoric centuries. It is, indeed, coloured by primitive mythology: nor is this any loss. We are enabled thereby to see the method of the compiler. For while, as a rule, in the early chapters of Genesis, the more distinctly mythological elements are removed from the narratives by the scrupulous care of the Israelite writers, traces of their original shape and colouring are occasionally to be seen. But, perhaps, nowhere else does this appear so distinctly as in this short section.

CHAPTER VII

THE STORY OF THE FLOOD

(vi. 9-ix. 17).

THIS narrative naturally excites more interest than any other of the early narratives in Genesis. The vividness of the description, the wonderful character of the overthrow, the touches of detail in the story, the similarity to other accounts of a cosmical Deluge preserved in the records of other nations, combine to attract to it universal attention.

On this account, probably, more has been said upon these chapters than upon any other section of the same length in the whole of Genesis. There is, therefore, the less need here to enter with minuteness into the account of the Flood. In the present chapter it will only be necessary to touch upon (1) the structure of the Biblical narrative, (2) the parallel to it presented in Assyro-Babylonian literature, (3) the historic character of the story; and then to supplement this treatment with a brief notice of the place occupied by the Flood in the religious teaching of Israel.

1. It is a fact now generally known, and universally recognised by all scholars, that the account of the Flood, preserved in the Book of Genesis, results from the combination of two slightly differing versions of the same story. The greater portion of the narrative has come down to us in the form in which it was preserved in the Priestly narrative. But large extracts from the Prophetic narrative, by the hand of the Jehovist, have also been retained, and their presence can be unmistakably recognised.

The two accounts are interwoven; but the distinctive features, both of their style and of their characteristic treatment, have enabled scholars to assign, with some confidence, the greater portion of the section, in its present literary state, to the one or the other document.

To the Priestly narrative are generally assigned chaps. vi. 9-22; vii. 6, 11, 13-16a, 18-21, 24; viii. 1, 2, 3-5, 13, 14-19; ix. 1-17.

Characteristic of its style is the use of the Divine title "Elohim," and of the Hebrew phrases for "after their kind," vi. 20, cf. i. 25; "male and female," vi. 19, cf. i. 27; "these are the generations," vi. 9, cf. x. 1; "in the selfsame day," vii. 13, cf. xvii. 23, 26; "establish. . . covenant," vi. 18, cf. ix. 9, 11, 17; “increase and multiply," viii. 17, cf. ix. 1, 7,

etc.

It is in this narrative that we find the precise mention of Noah's age (vii. 5, 11), the exact dimen

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sions of the ark (vi. 15, 16), the depth of the Flood (vii. 20), and the covenant with Noah (ix.).

To the Prophetic narrative is assigned the greater part of vii. 1-5, 7-9, 10, 12, 16, 17, 22, 23; viii. 2o, 3o, 6-12, 13', 20-22.

Characteristic of its style is the use of the Divine name Jehovah (Jahveh), the use of the phrase "the male and his female" in vii. 2 (literally "the man and his wife"), quite different from that used in vi. 19, the term "house" applied to the family of Noah in vii. 1, the incident of the raven and the dove, and the most marked anthropomorphisms which occur throughout the story.

How completely separate the two accounts are will appear to the simplest reader in chapter vii., where we have two successive mentions of Noah entering the ark with his family and the animals, i.e. 7-9, and 13-16. The two documents containing the narrative undoubtedly were in general agreement. But they differed in certain points of detail, which the compiler, faithfully extracting from his authorities, made no attempt at reconciling completely. They are points, however, which have probably caught the attention of many a student, and have seemed hard to understand. It is a matter for real gratitude on the part of Christian readers that criticism has been able so satisfactorily to dispose of many of the little knots that made the thread of our narrative, in some places, difficult to unravel.