Thoughtless for the Day

Every two or three years or so, I re-read the Bible and the Koran. Although it neither has the exciting narrative style of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the raw ferocity of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the poetic beauty of the Bhagavad Gita, nor the balls-to-the-wall comic insanity of the Book of Mormon, The Bible is still as captivating on my tenth read-through as I was on my first.

One of the many great qualities of the Bible (Yes, I'm being series. The Bible is a fascinating tale of a people's journey from a hunter-gather tribe to an agrarian society) is that it unapologetically jumps right into the high strangeness. Take, for example, Genesis 6:4 (which I believe takes place about five pages in to the King James version):

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The sons of whom did what to whose daughters???? No clear explanation is given. We hear about God's frisky lads and then the story just moves right along to Noah. It's as if you were to find a paragraph in a history book about how much George Washington's time-traveling cyborg son loved cake, and then the next paragraph was all about Valley Forge Forge.

So, who were the sons of God? I'm glad you asked. Here are four possibilities which I've ranked in what I believe to be from the least plausible explanation tot eh most plausible (Based on city mileage: your level of belief may vary) :

1) The sons of God were aliens - as in space aliens
OK. OK. I'm just tossing this one out there for the sake of argument. So please keep on reading and don't click over to the Decemberists' site to see if they're writing something cleverer (because they most likely are).

Yes, there are more than a few folks out there who see Genesis 6:4 as proof positive that ET got it on with Wilma Flintstone. There are, of course, three rather serious flaws with this theory. The first is that it implies that someone from an advanced civilization would be attracted to a dirty, smelly Bronze Age hippie chick. The second is that geneticists have yet to stumble across any group of people - or single individual - with Vulcan DNA. And the third argument against the Copulating Klingon Hypothesis is that it's completely batshit crazy.

2) The sons of God were fallen angels

I actually like this theory. Not because I find it even remotely plausible, but because it not only shows what natural story-tellers human beings are - being able to take a single sentence and construct a separate narrative around it - but because many Christians and Muslims believe this: in fact, this is the Koran's official position on the sons of God. The Koran explains that the purpose of the Great Flood was to wipe out the race of giants - the Nephilim - who were spawned by the angelic/human coupling.

If even you believe in angels - which I don't - this theory has both a scientific and theological holes in it. The scientific problem is the aforementioned DNA issue. Just as with the Raelians (yes, they're promoting "Intelligent Design"), no angelic haplotype has ever been identified.

From a theological perspective, the angels are described elsewhere in the Bible as genderless non-corporal beings. It's not clear why they would suddenly sprout genitals and pop off for a wild weekend in Cancun. And why use the term "sons of God"? Why not just say angels?

3) The sons of God were the descendants of Seth and the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain

This theory proposes that the sons of Adam and Eve's third son, Seth, copulated with the daughters of Adam and Eve's troubled middle child, Cain. While it eliminates the troublesome intervention of UFO's and over-sexed angels, there is a problem with this idea: why would the pairing of run-of-the-mill humans result in giants or "men of renown"?

4) The sons of God are actually the sons of Gods - plural

The actual Hebrew term applied to the sons of God is "beni ha-elohim", which translates as "sons of Gods". The same name - beni ha-elohim - is later used in the when the sons of God(s) again turn up in the Book of Job.

This theory holds that the words of Genesis 6:4 are a hold-over from an earlier time when the ancient Hebrews were polytheistic and accepted that the gods of the peoples who lived around them were just as real as their god and that these gods often fathered children with mortal women - just as the gods in classical mythology did, siring many of the heroes of the Greco-Roman world.

The biggest problem with this line of thinking is that some Biblical scholars will point out that the plural of God was often used by the ancient Hebrews as a term of respect. Still, if you consider passages such as "Thou shalt have no other gods before me", the polytheistic approach does have certain advantages over the other three.

It just isn't nearly as much fun.