Stephen
Terry, Director
The Bible as History
Commentary
for the June 6, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and
also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and
had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown." Genesis 6:4,
NIV
The Bible and history can be a touchy subject. We
can possibly all agree that the Bible is narrative, carrying forward a grand
thesis from Genesis to Revelation that God favors a peculiar people who will,
in spite of adversity, emerge victorious when all is said and done. As such, it
more than equals the great heroic sagas of the past. It is filled with great
heroes and tragic ones, not unlike Wagner's romantic "Der Ring des Nibelungen,"
but with a much larger cast covering a greater period. While our hearts break
at Siegfried's betrayal and death, they also are broken by the murder of
innocent Abel, the betrayal of Samson by Delilah, and the murder of Uriah by
the adulterous King David. Were it myth, the Bible could compete easily with
the greatest myths of humanity, but Christians go further and insist that every
word, every story is factual and beyond question. This is perhaps not to be
unexpected, for historically many Christians were pagans before and held those
pagan myths to be as truthful as Christians do the biblical narrative. The
Bible contains examples of the strength of that former belief. When Paul
attempted to preach the gospel in Ephesus, he was challenged by a crowd of
worshipers of the goddess Artemis who were only calmed by a civil servant
reassuring them of the truth of their belief.[i]
Similarly, one may be able to picture modern Christians just as vehemently
opposing those who would offer an alternative to their perspective on belief.
A defense commonly offered by apologists is that since
some individuals mentioned in the Bible can also be identified as having
existed by means of archeology, the Bible itself must be taken as a
historically factual document. Superficially this may seem right, but it is not
necessarily a sustainable logical conclusion. It is like saying "The Birth of a
Nation," by D. W. Griffith is historically factual because some of the
characters existed. This film portrays innocent white women threatened by
lecherous blacks, former slaves, who think of nothing but debauching such
women. It portrays the Klu Klux Klan as defenders of those women against that
threat. As ridiculous as that whole premise is, the movie, based on the book,
"The Klansman," by Thomas Dixon, Jr. seeks to establish an alternative history
for the fallen South, an alternative history still promoted by several white
supremacist groups to this day.
Why are they doing this? It is perhaps a vain
attempt to counter the normal trend of history. As former Confederate
legislator and later Missouri Senator, George Graham Vest once said, "...history
is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias
existing on their side."[ii]
This same sentiment about history has been echoed by several individuals over
the years, reflecting a recognition that it is written by the victors and
reflects their perspective at the expense of any perspective held by the
vanquished. If we consider the rise of Christianity from a dozen humble
followers in the 4th decade of the first century to where it is a
belief system professed by 29% of the over 7 1/2 billion people who populate our
planet today and is the dominant religion,[iii]
we can probably say that it has achieved enough victory to claim ownership of
its historical narrative. However, even within the Christian confession, debate
lingers as to how much should simply be accepted on blind faith. The spectrum
ranges from those that want to believe that the Bible is without error,
essentially dictated directly by God to those faithful scribes who wrote it all
down, to those who see much of the Bible to be metaphorically true and
therefore representing true principles, even if the stories themselves may be
factually questionable. The former group may naturally feel that any denial of
literal infallibility is also a denial of faith and may rightfully fear that
the whole edifice of their faith would collapse with any admission of possible
error. The latter group, on the other hand, may find a faith more readily made
culturally relevant because similar principles of morality manifest themselves
across most cultures, and the resulting faith is therefore much less tenuous.
We can examine an example of this from the passage
at the beginning of this article. In Genesis, chapter 6, we find the account of
the Nephilim, heroes that resulted from the mating between the "sons of God"
and the "daughters of men." This is so closely reminiscent of the demi-gods of
Greek mythology, like Hercules, it is hard not to see mythological parallels.
There has been much quibbling over the centuries about who were these "sons of
God." Some have identified them with angels of heaven. Others have identified
them with the fallen angels of Revelation, chapter 12.[iv]
Still others have identified them with the descendants of Seth intermarrying
with the descendants of Cain. The Bible is cryptic here, so clear answers are
not to be found. Instead the various perspectives continue to compete with one
another to be the dominant perspective without adequate power to ever overrule
the others completely.
But this is only incidental to a greater
illustration of the idea of the victor controlling the narrative. That centers
instead on the intriguing word "Nephilim." That word also occurs later in the
historical timeline of the Pentateuch. When the spies Moses sent into Canaan to
bring information back about the people there, they reported that the Nephilim
lived there, and the Bible writer added the note that the Nephilim were indeed
the descendants of Anak,[v]
who was apparently descended from Nephilim through Arba. This challenges the
historical accuracy of the Bible because of a very constricted nexus of Noah's
Ark. Genesis, chapter 6, tells us that there were Nephilim before the worldwide
flood that destroyed all life outside the ark, and Numbers, chapter 13, tells
us that there remained Nephilim after the flood. This would require Noah, his
wife or one of his sons' wives to be Nephilim for that to be possible. While
that may be possible, the Nephilim are typically mentioned in the context of
sin and judgment against them and their land, and one might question why God
would preserve them in the ark if they had such a reputation. But if we apply
the principle of the victors writing the history, it might be possible to see
where any opponent might be identified with the Nephilim and their attributes.
The theme repeats in the biblical narrative. One of the most outstanding attributes
of these Nephilim is their size, and whether referring to the sons of Anak, or
Goliath the Philistine or his brothers, who all opposed Israel, great size was
mentioned. Even Og, King of Bashan, who was defeated east of the Jordan River,
was of such size that he was said to sleep on a bed nine cubits long (over 13
feet).[vi]
What is significant about all of this is that this
fits the hyperbolic style of mythological narrative. The stronger and more
imposing your opponent, the more spectacular your victory and the greater the
evidence that the gods (for the Greeks), or God (for the Jews) favored you.
Even today, how often do we attribute miraculous or divine intervention to
seemingly impossible results being achieved. We typically do not go to God and
ask him if he was behind it. We simply assume his part in the scenario of
"answered prayer." This makes faith very personal, for we assert that God is
personally interested in the outcome and responds to requests we make of him.
(We might wonder why he would not care enough to intervene with the suffering
without the request but that is a different topic and has little to do with
historicity.)
One thing the Bible makes clear is that both Jews
and pagans supported a system of sacrifices as a part of worship. This also
supports the idea that the victor dictates the narrative. All the way back to
Cain and Abel, two sacrificial systems are identified, one evil, one righteous.
The people who were eventually displaced by the Jews, were the losers, so their
sacrificial system was ultimately destroyed and any Jew who identified with
that system was deemed apostate. The system practiced by the victors prevailed.
It became so solidly established that even when the Messiah, which Christianity
maintains those sacrifices prefigured, was incarnated, they still could not
abandon that system until the temple itself was destroyed by the Romans, who
maintained their own narrative about the defeated Jews. Eventually Christianity
overcame that empire and Rome and Christianity then borrowed from each other's
narratives to write a new one compatible with their mutual victory over
paganism.
The important take away here is that mythologies,
Christian or otherwise, are valid vehicles for inculcating cultural morality.
Literal understandings of such narratives make it difficult for the moral
principles to remain relevant as cultures change over time. For instance, in
Deuteronomy, we have instructions not to weave linen and wool together.[vii]
If we were to take that as a proscription against blended fabrics, we might
feel that most of the world is in apostasy for the blended fabrics most of us
wear. But if we instead see it as a metaphor for avoiding things that are not
complimentary as in the context provided by the previous verse,[viii]
the idea is capable of a much broader application that can endure the passage
of time and cultural adaptation. For this reason, a focus on whether some
biblical characters existed may be irrelevant to the message of the Bible. We
can lose much by attempting to be too literal in our Bible study, much like
those who, because of their literalness could not understand the allegories in
Jesus' parables, such as when he spoke of his body and blood.[ix]
Maybe we could do with less nit picking and seek what the Bible really wants to
tell us, even if we cannot establish a literal foundation.
