Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)

2012 / 3-4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Jaap Dekker: A Szolga és a szolgák Ézsaiás próféta könyvében

Jacob J. T. Doedens

6. One More Key: The Exegesis of Septuagint Genesis 4:26

Athanasius is the first attested Greek church father who exegetically underpins the Sethites-interpretation with the help of the Septuagint translation of Gen 4:26. That passage reads: “Enosh hoped to invoke (emKaAeiaGca) the name of the Lord God”.65 The verbal form ÉTUKoAeloGai is ambivalent. Understood as a middle voice it means ‘to call upon, to invoke’, as passive voice ‘to be called by the name of, to be sur- named’. Evidence suggests that a middle voice was meant by the Septuagint, as all early references take it that way.66 Yet later on, ecclesiastical authors from the fourth century onwards chose for a passive interpretation, taking the verse to mean that Enosh himself was called by God’s name or even called ‘God’. This interpretation may have been stimulated by the translation that Enosh “hoped”, which fits better the hope to be called with the name of God than a hope to invoke God’s name. If the Sethite Enosh was called by the name of God, then logically his sons were ‘sons of God’. That is why representatives of the Sethites-interpretation regularly mention both Seth and Enosh together.

Athanasius’ exegesis is the first documented explanation in the Greek church fathers that understood the infinitive eirucaAetaGoa in Gen 4:26 as a passive, and in this manner influenced later exegesis of Gen 6:1—4. However, Athanasius’ interpretation of Gen 4:26 may be derived from Syriac contemporaries, for a similar approach is found in Eusebius of Emesa and Ephrem the Syrian. However, for them Gen 4:26 appears to have less a key-function than for the Greek church fathers. For the Greek fathers, the whole story about Mount Paradise and the Sethites descending to the low countries of the Cainites, plays no part. They probably took an element that only played an additional role in Syriac exegesis and promoted this to become their main argument.67

7. Conclusions

It, then, can be concluded that the Sethites-interpretation possibly originated in Syria. In its Syriac form it ‘conserved’ the elements from the earlier angels interpretation. It seems as if the ‘rewritten Bible’ as found in the Enochic tradition was so strong, that every element of it needed an integral reworking. Within the Sethites-interpretation, the ‘sons of God’ where no longer viewed as angels descending from heaven, but as pious men descending from their dwelling verging on Paradise. But also other elements, resembling the Prometheus myth, that the angels gave their knowledge to the women, remained in some cases part of the exegetical tradition, but now in the form that the Cainites handed over the knowledge of their technically more developed culture to the Sethites.

In general, a the culture of the Sethites is depicted as pure and simple, without musical instruments, without eating meat, and especially with sexual chastity. The changed view on sexuality in the early Christian period can be seen in the celibacy of

65 VEnw.j( ou-toj h;lpisen evpikalei/sqai to. o;noma Kuri.ou tou/ Qeou/) LXX Gen 4:26.

66 See Steven D. Fraade, Enosh and His Generation: Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Postbiblical Interpretation (SBLMS 30; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1984), 10-11, 51-62.

67 The interpretation of the verb as a passive can still be felt in the Greek katharevousa Bible translation of Neophytos Vamvas from 1850: To,te e;geinen avrch. na. ovnoma,zwntai me. to. o;noma tou/ Kuri.ou) (Gen 4:26).

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