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Fallen Angels & The Mother of the Son of Man Fallen Women R O B I N J A R R E L L
e strange and enigmatic title son of man has intrigued biblical scholars for millennia. What does it mean and how does it describe Jesus in his role as the Christian messiah? Robin Jarrell surveys the mythological roots of the phrase in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and traces its development from the mythology of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsuts birth narrative, to the to the story of Pandora, and nally to the story of creation found in the book of Genesis. e key to unlocking the mystery of the phrase son of man is embedded in the story of the rst son of manNoahwith the reference to the sons of God who found wives among the daughters of men and whose ospring brought devastation to the earth and the reason for the ood. In the hands of the Christian gospel writers, the parallel son of man gure found in the Dead Sea Scrolls reemerges in the identity of the last son of manJesus of Nazareth.

ROBIN JARRELL is an independent scholar

and an Episcopal priest. She lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with her family.

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Fallen Angels and Fallen Women

Fallen Angels and Fallen Women

The Mother of the Son of Man

Robin Jarrell

FALLEN ANGELS AND FALLEN WOMEN The Mother of the Son of Man

Copyright 2013 Robin Jarrell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401. Wipf & Stock An imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3 Eugene, OR 97401 www.wipfandstock.com isbn 13: 9781-60899405-2

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For Kerry Walters beati pacifici

Contents
Acknowledgments/ix Chapter One / 1 Chapter Two / 49 Chapter Three / 86 Chapter Four / 114 Chapter Five / 142 Bibliography/175 Index/189

Acknowledgments
gratefully acknowledge the support of K. C. Hanson, whose mentorship guided my initial quest to understand Hagars theophany in Genesis 16 and whose gift of Margaret Barkers The Older Testament continues to enlighten me. I owe a debt to Gregory C. Riley who taught me to trust my work. I am grateful to the entire staff of Bertrand Library at Bucknell University, including James Van Fleet and Bud Hiller for their invaluable technical assistance. To Mary Neidig, Dan Heuer, Lona Sholly, and especially to Mary Jane Moser, librarian par excellence, who routinely went above and beyond the call of duty to assist me with this project. Thank you to Stephanie Larson, Matthew Adams, and Mia Rikala for personally sharing their scholarship. To my family who has always given me support: To June and Pod, Robert and Pat, Kelly and Gary, Gaffney and Amos who have lovingly put up with me. And to my adopted family whose gifts I cherish: To Sis, Kim, and Nancy. To Chris Boyatzis, for his expert editorial assistance, and to Sedona, Janine, and Alan who waited patiently while I labored upstairs to write this book. I am especially grateful to my colleague, mentor, and soul-friend Kerry, who continually inspires me with his loving devotion to his craft and who by his faith in action demonstrates that the vocation of writing is indeed a blessed path.

ix

Chapter One

n this chapter, we explore and analyze various myths from ancient Sumer, Ugarit, Egypt, and Greece in an attempt to bring to light those mythological antecedents that form the basis for the mythologies employed by the writers of noncanonical material of Qumran and the composers of the New Testament. We will briefly survey each geographical region in order to investigate those ancient cosmogonies, myths, and stories that function as the foundational background surrounding the highly complex and theologically significant interaction between fallen angels found in Genesis 6:4 and the daughter(s) of men. The ultimate goal of this book is to understand the full significance of the term daughter of man (in the singular) and to illuminate more fully the concept that continues to intrigue biblical scholars and those interested in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his connection to the epithet Son of Man. Beginning with analysis of the myths of Sumeria, our aim in this chapter is to examine the structures that exist between the divine and human worlds as they are portrayed within the literary genres of both myth and epic. More specifically, we will concern our examination with how these worlds are gendered and how gender dictates the transversal of the boundaries between divine and human.1 The way in which gendering and
1. The anthropologist Edmund Leach is helpful in establishing criteria for examining myths without discounting their religious significance. He also contends that The central problem of religion is then to re-establish some kind of bridge between Man and God ... the myth first discriminates between gods and men and then becomes preoccupied with the relations and intermediaries which link men and gods together ... so too with sex relations ... (Leach, Essential Edmund Leach, 31). This is the purpose for the chapter.

Introduction

Fallen Angels and Fallen Women

sexual intercourse occurs (in most mythologies, but not in all) between both divine and human realms forms a trajectory that can be traced from the ancient myths of Sumer, Egypt, Greece, and finally, to the myths of Canaan and Israel. The ideological roots of the myths that include angelic beings, both fallen and heavenly, the origin of evil and its association with women, and the spiritual role of gender, are found within the literary mythologies that originate with Sumer. The focus, therefore, must be on the various sexual aspects of the myths. Such sexual aspects will by necessity include some characteristics of mythologies that posit the preexistence or creation of water, air and breath; the separation of earth and sky; the creation of animals, etc. However, the major purpose of our analysis in this chapter will involve tracing the role of the (created) mortal humans involvement in the sexual life of the gods. In the mythologies we survey, the concern is not exclusively on the reproductive attributes between human sexual encounters that flow from the original concepts of sexual relationships found in the image and likeness of the deity/deities. We are interested in the similarity between the ancient myths and cultures surveyed in establishing a connection between particular themes: (1) the human hope of the promise of immortality, (2) the attainment of (sexual) wisdom, and (3) the participation (either whole or in part) of the human mortal in the actual sexual life of the gods. For the purposes of our study, a useful definition of myth is in order. Myth may be defined simply as the story (or stories) we tell ourselves about our relationship to all aspects of the divine. Bruce Lincoln has developed a helpful paradigm for classifying not only the genre and type of stories we will be examining but also the manner in which those stories are given power and authority. As he puts it, ... we would do better to classify narratives not by their content but by the claims that are made by their narrators and the way in which those claims are received by their audience(s).2 Lincoln classifies four narrative types: Fable, Legend, History, and finally Mythand arranges them in the following taxonomy:
Truth-claims Fable Legend History Myth + + + Credibility + + Authority +

2.Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society, 24.

Chapter One
Lincoln makes the claim that of all the categories listed above, myth is the only classification type that possesses both credibility and authority and explains that a narrative possessed of authority is one for which successful claims are made not only to the status of truth, but what is more, to the status of paradigmatic truth.3

The Myths of Sumer

There can be no doubt that the myths and literary stories of Sumer reflect actual correspondences to the civilizations social and economic history. But questions concerning the practical historical role of the mythmakers and their particular motivation in creating the King Lists, or arguments concerning the economic status of historical women and priestesses in Sumer, is not our main focus, although, certainly it will be occasionally helpful.4 Neither are we concerned with the causal relationship between myth and history, insofar as it seeks to find in myth the source of certain religious practices based on gender, or seeks to find in the history of Sumer the source of myth. We are, instead, relying upon the definition of myth given by the mythmakers themselves and the acceptance of the authority of the myth adhered to by the readers of those mythsand the ultimate paradigmatic truth that the myth seeks to convey. Gwendolyn Leicks interest in the erotic elements of the Sumerian myths permits her to observe that unlike the Greeks, Mesopotamian writers did not describe some of their literary works as myths, and they did not set out to compose cosmogonies, that is, those myths whose concepts are worked into a coherent theory to account for the primary dynamics of the universe ...5 Nevertheless, Leick understands that while the ancient Mesopotamians may not have assigned the appellation myth to the story of the origins of the universe, modern scholarship does classify the various literary works of Mesopotamia into different genres.
3. Ibid. Emphasis in the original. 4. The kings of Sumer were known to have claimed to have personal relations with the gods, but such claims come from documents not classified as literary myth but as inscriptions on literary stele. The ruler seeking legitimacy usually proclaims himself the human offspring of a god who is treated theologically as a metaphorical parent to the future king (Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 102). For an excellent treatment on historical women of Mesopotamia and gender, see (Bahrani, Women of Babylon) and also (Toorn, From Her Cradle to Her Grave). 5.Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 11.

Fallen Angels and Fallen Women

Most modern scholars studying ancient Mesopotamia use a multidisciplinary approach (usually from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and biblical scholarship) to the interpretation of the myths of Sumer (and later variants found in Akkadian literature.) Bendt Alster is among the few Sumerologists who has expressly articulated an overarching theory of myth, especially as it pertains to myths of origins.6 Avoiding questions pertaining to the truth value of the myths of Sumer, Alster points out that in Sumerian literary genres, there is a categorical world order in which gods or men act as they do because they must.7 The myths of Sumer present the reader with a vast range of metaphor and meaningwith the more sophisticated elements lost to us by due to the chasm of time and culturethat separates the modern reader from the ancient composer. Using the popular Sumerian myth Inannas Descent to the Netherworld, Alster points to the modern readers quandary in comprehending the myths complete absence of motivation behind [the goddess] Inannas decision to leave her cities for the underworld.8 The impulse for the character development in various points of the Epic of Gilgamesh seems literary rather than psychological.9 In Sumerian cosmological origin myths, creation beginsnot ex nihilobut from some prima materia.10 Sexual reproduction is always the main focus of such stories. The creation of the world begins with a singular or unitary god (usually but not always female) who must be differentiated into a binary and gendered set of gods, both male and female, who reproduce in order to beget other deities, often taking take the form of the primal elements: earth, sky, water, etc.11 This binary paring is essential to the ordering of the Sumerian universe. The cosmological relationship between deity and created human,
6. Alster, Enki and Ninhursag, 19ff. For an anthropological view, see On Scholastic Nonsense: Myth and History and Holy Families: The Structure of Mythic Thought in Leach, Essential Edmund Leach. 7. Alster, Lugalbanda, 62. 8. Ibid. The myth has similarities to the Greek Homeric Hymn to Demeter which tells the story of Kores (or Persephones) abduction by Hades to the Underworld. For a translation of the myth, see Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 154. 9.Mitchell, Gilgamesh: A New English Version, 26. 10.Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 12. 11. See Leick, Sex and Eroticism; Bendt, Enki and Ninhursag; Dickson, Enki and Ninhursag.

Chapter One
however, is far less certain. Almost none of the scholarly literature focuses extensively on the transversal of the sacred and inviolate boundary between divine and human by means of sexual intercourse, both reproductive and nonreproductive.12 We will examine the transversal of such divine/human boundaries in the case of certain demigods such as Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh. And we also discuss the boundary transversal process by which the gods bestow their imprimatur of kingship to their human servants, who are not of divine heritage but who are adopted by the gods for the very human purpose of ruling and administration.13 Sumerian myths of origin reveal an overarching focus on combat (where the world comes into existence through the divines ability to vanquish chaos).14 But there are other typologies that exist in Sumerian cosmogonies. Creation of the world may extend from the activities of the deity who inundates the earth with water (the chthonic myth).15 The water used by Sumerian god Enki (who is the god of water and one of the creator gods in the Sumerian pantheon) in Enki and Ninhursaga may allude to a third type of creation myththe marriage typology.16 In the earliest forms of Sumerian creation typologies, the unitary creator exists in a timeless and sexless state. The unitary becomes binary and sex occurs between the binary pair for the purposes of reproduction. With one rare exception, the gods do not speak of love or emotion ... the texts instead emphasize that male orgasm is an act of creation.17 This
12. Dickson discusses boundary crossings of the god Enki (in the myth of Enki and Ninhursaga) solely in the divine realm and not as it pertains to humans. See Dickson, Enki and Ninhursag. 13. The adoption of humans by the Deity for the purpose of kingship occurs also in Israel, for example, in Psalm 2:7. 14. See Forsyth, Old Enemy. 15.Daise, Biblical Creation Motifs, 300. 16. Translated from Kramer Maier in Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 31. In Enki and Ninhursaga, creation begins with the sexual union between heaven and earth since Enkis promise to provide the origins of the city of Dilmun with sweet fresh ponds include his phallus fill[ing] the ditches with semen. Leick also notes that the double meaning of the Sumerian sign a [can denote] sperm as well as water (39). There could also be a fourth type of Sumerian/Mesopotamian creation motifthat of creation from the elements of earth (clay, etc.) through the craftmanship of the deity who may also use the blood of slain evil and/or chaos-like deitiesfor instance, in the Enuma Elish, Marduk creates the universe from the corpse of Tiamat and the blood of Quingu. See Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 4. 17. Leick, Sex and Eroticism, 55. In the myth of Enki and Ninhursaga, Ninhursaga impregnates herself with Enkis semen. Enki deceives Ninhursaga and has sex with

Fallen Angels and Fallen Women

sheer act of reproduction results in the concomitant creation of time, since there must necessarily be temporal space for the introduction of offspring into the world of the creator gods.18 There is an elemental relationship in the mythological texts of Sumer between the sexual reproductive aspects and behavior of the gods and the transmission of the ability for humans to mimic godlike sexuality. In the beginning, humans presumably have sex for procreative and pleasurable purposes since the gods who created them do.19 In the same way, when humans are first created (the exact reason is not altogether clear in most Sumerian cosmogonies),20 they are immortal. The immortality of humans is threatened when, due to human overpopulationthe din of humans reaches heaven and disturbs the sleep of the deities. The gods are then forced to create demons (sickness and disease) to truncate the length of human life.21 The immortal life of humans first given by the gods is now curtailed. So, too, the sexual life of humans first given by the gods is then presumably circumscribed into categories that include productive sex (within the construct of marriage) and nonproductive sex (within the construct of prostitution). The question remains: why do the deities create death to solve the problem of human overpopulation instead of modifying the reproductive outcome of human sexuality? The Sumerian ethos of human sexuality is apparently modeled on that of the gods, but the myths describe evidence to suggest a connection between human sexuality and human mortality.

his first daughter, his offspring, and this sequence continues. 18. The creation of time gives way to the chaos of birth, which is not painful for Sumerian female deities (Dickson, Enki and Ninhursag, 12). Whether we can make a distinction between the painful birth of humans in the Genesis story and the easy birth of the Sumerian female deities will be discussed later. 19.As Leick notes, Mesopotamian systems have a strong anthropomorphic component and with this conceptual framework the most persistent pattern is that of sexual reproduction (Sex and Eroticism, 12). 20. See Bottro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, 98, who remarks that in the Mesopotamian legends the eternal question, why do human beings exist? appears in few mythological writings with the exception of the Atrahasis myth. 21. In the Gilgamesh epic, however, the tavern keeper Shiduri tells Gilgamesh, You will not find the eternal life you seek. / When the gods created mankind / They appointed death for mankind, / Kept eternal life in their own hands (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 150).