Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Polycarp66 AT aol.com]

In a message dated 12/30/1999 3:00:04 PM Central Daylight Time, 
mc2499 AT mclink.it writes:

<< 
 While I do have a written source for Enoch Watchers traditions that belies
 a development in itself, one cannot claim that the Watchers materials came
 from Genesis as Gen seems to know materials that are found in the developed
 sections of Watchers. If the material was available already united then
 there would have been no need for Watchers to have gone through the
 development it has. As to some dating of the Watchers, it is assumed by the
 Animal Apocalypse which can be dated to late in Judas Maccabaeus's efforts.
 
 Now while the "Watchers" has followed a certain theological development
 which places the burden of the flood on the intrusion of the Watchers into
 the human world and the fall of man through the Watchers, Genesis is
 offering a different paradigm for the flood: the deeds of the Watchers are
 not tied to the wickedness of humankind, but to their inherent waywardness
 as displayed by the fall in the garden. If there had been the fall in the
 garden available for the writers of the Watchers, could they have developed
 their paradigm regardless?
 
 The different approach to the fall taken by Genesis explains why its
 version of the Watchers story has been obfuscated. You may like to attempt
 to generate a theory that the "Watchers" was developed after the Genesis
 materials existed, but to do so you would have to explain how something as
 well entrenched as you would have it was completely ignored by the writers
 of "Watchers".
  >>

Is it not possible that the Watchers tradition and the Gen. reference both 
refer to a common tradition.  It is possible that Enoch is simply a further 
development of the same tradition which has gone in a direction which Gen. 
would not have known or supported.

gfsomsel