2007 - Annette Yoshiko Reed - Reading Augustine And-As Midrash

67
READING AUGUSTINE AND/AS MIDRASH:

GENESIS 6 IN GENESIS RABBAH
AND THE CITY OF GOD
Annette Yoshiko Reed
McMaster University

Can Christian texts be read as midrash? This question, posed by
Lieve Teugels and Rivka Ulmer for the 2004 session of the SBL
Midrash Consultation,
1
raises a host of issues pertaining to the
interpenetration of Jewish and Christian traditions in Late Antiq-
uity. How much of Christianitys connection to Judaism is retained
or regained in the methods of its exegesis? And, conversely, has
the Christianization of Roman Palestine shaped Rabbinic reading?
In Late Antiquity, do Jewish and Christian interpretation still form
part of the same discourse?
2
Or, have their paths diverged, such
that their respective approaches to their shared Scriptures embody
the essential difference asserted by their respective elites? And,
more pragmatically: how might midrash, and the modern scholarly
study of midrash, aid us in the study of Patristic hermeneutics?

1
An earlier form of this piece was presented in the above mentioned
panel; I thank its organizers, presenters, and attendees for a thought-
provoking discussion. For preparation of the written form, support was
provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (U.S.A.) and
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am
grateful to Benjamin Fleming, Paula Fredriksen, Hindy Najman, Zdravko
Planinc, Karl Shuve, Susan Wendel, and Stephen Westerholm for their
comments and suggestions. A special thanks to Peter Schfer for pushing
me on a number of points.
2
I will not here address the ample research on midrash in the New
Testament, which raises its own sets of issues, on which see B. Visotzky,
Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tbingen,
1995) 3-5.
68 MIDRASH AND CONTEXT

In my view, the recent intensification of research on the his-
tory of biblical interpretation may open new paths for investigating
such questions in a manner that sheds light on late antique Judaism
as well as late antique Christianity. Despite the foundational work
in this area in nineteenth-century German scholarship, surprisingly
little attention has been dedicated to the task of comparing their
hermeneutics.
3
Concurrent with the growth of interest in Jew-
ish/Christian relations in the wake of World War II, a growing
number of studies have considered parallels in the content of Rab-
binic and Patristic exegesis; for the most part, however, the focus
has fallen on identifying shared motifs and pinpointing the direc-
tion of influence.
4
Comparisons of exegetical methods have been
rarer.
Until very recently, moreover, most have remained wedded to
the traditional assertion of the supposedly stark differences be-
tween Rabbinic and Patristic approaches to their shared scriptures.
Comparisons of their hermeneutics have tended to draw a sharp
contrast between Rabbinic and Patristic approaches, as emblem-
atized by the differences between the midrash of late antique Pales-
tinian Rabbis and the allegory of Alexandrian Church Fathers.
Hermeneutical differences have often been dramatized with appeal

3
Note esp. L. Ginsbergs expansive and synthetic Die Haggada bei den
Kirchenvtern und in der apokryphischen Litteratur (1899-1935). On the history
of scholarship see J. Baskin, Rabbinic-Patristic Exegetical Contacts in
Late Antiquity: A Bibliographical Reappraisal, in Approaches to Ancient
Judaism, vol. 5, ed. W. S. Green (Atlanta, 1978) 5380; Visotzky, Fathers of
the World, esp. 5-10, 24-27; also milien Lamirande, tude
bibliographique sur les Pres de lglise et lAggadah, Vigiliae Christianae
21 (1967) 1-11. Marc Hirshman, for instance, notes how surprisingly little
has been done to follow on the insights of German scholarship since
Ginzbergs monumental volumes, pointing to the shift of scholarly
attention toward the compilation of critical editions; Polemic Literary
Units in the Classical Midrashim and Justin Martyrs Dialogue with Trypho,
JSQ 83 (1993) 369.
4
See Visotzky, Fathers, 8-10. On the pre-occupation with influence
in comparative research on Jewish and Christian traditions, see P. Schfer,
Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the early Kabbala
(Princeton, 2003) 229-41.
READING AUGUSTINE 69

to the dichotomies traditionally drawn between Jerusalem and Ath-
ens, Hebrew and Hellene, Judaism and Christianity.
5

One might, however, question the explanatory value of such
contrasts. Not only have recent studies stressed the many com-
monalities that continued to connect Jews and Christians in Late
Antiquity, but research in Rabbinics and Patristics has shown the
complex, variegated, and highly localized character of their interac-
tions.
6
One can no longer ask whether and how Judaism and
Christianity are different without also asking when and where.
Here, as perhaps elsewhere, the challenge of comparative
study lies, not only in resisting the temptation to essentialize, sche-
matize, and reify difference, but also in avoiding the danger of con-
flating differences and ignoring specificities. In my view, insights
from recent research on Rabbinic midrash may aid us in mapping a
middle path. Midrash, as is often noted, denotes multiple related
phenomena: its semantic field encompasses the process of classical
Rabbinic biblical interpretation, the distinctive worldview therein
and thereby inscribed, and the various products of the process,
including interpretations (midrashim), the texts in which they are
preserved (midrashic collections), and the totality of these interpre-
tations (the Midrash).
7
Most concur that midrash consists of

5
A striking recent example of this familiar trope is S. Handelman, The
Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary
Theory (Albany, 1982). Such dichotomies have also been used to categorize
different Christian hermeneutics (Jewish literalism vs. Christian allegory
Antiochene Christian exegesis vs. Alexandrian Christian exegesis)
although further attention to the range of inner-Christian hermeneutical
difference has largely led to the deconstruction of this simple distinction;
F. M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture
(Cambridge, 1997).
6
See e.g. the essays in A. H. Becker and A. Y. Reed, eds., The Ways
that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages, TSAJ 95 (Tbingen, 2003) and bibliography there.
7
For discussions of whether and how to define midrash see G.
Stemberger, Midrasch: Vom Umgang der Rabbinen mit der Bibel (Munich,
1989); R. Le Daut, Apropos a Definition of Midrash, Interpretation 25
(1971) 259-82; G. Porton, Defining Midrash, in The Study of Ancient
Judaism, vol. 1, ed. J. Neusner (New York, 1981) 55-92; J. L. Kugel, Two
Introductions to Midrash, Prooftexts 3 (1983) 131-55, repr. in Midrash and
Literature, ed. G. Hartman and S. Budick (New Haven, 1986) 77-103; I.

more than a group of methods and the products of their applica-
tion.
8
Almost all agree that it is difficult, if not impossible, to de-
fine.
9

However the term is defined, it is widely agreed that midrash
is uniquely and distinctively Rabbinic, finding its fullest expression
in the interpretations collected in the classical midrashic collections
compiled by Rabbis in late antique Palestine. Interestingly, some of
the same scholars who stress this specificity also analyze midrash in
a manner that invites comparison: whether midrash is placed at the
heart of the Jewish encounter with Scripture or posited to exem-
plify elements of human interpretation more broadly, it has been
described in terms that have rendered it into a comparative cate-
gory.
10
In recent usage within and beyond the field of Rabbinics,
midrash has thus risen to the strange position of a specialized
term that invites parallels, paradoxically combining the culturally

Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism
(Cambridge, 1995) 1-20; L. M. Teugels, Bible and Midrash: The Story of The
Wooing of Rebekah (Gen. 24), Biblical Exegesis and Theology, 35 (Leuven,
2004).
8
E.g. Kugel, Two Introductions, esp. 91; G. Porton, Rabbinic
Midrash: Public or Private? Review of Rabbinic Judaism 5.2 (2002) 142-44,
154-56. Note, however, A. Goldbergs formal approach (e.g. Die
funktionale Form Midrasch [1982] reprinted in Rabbinische Texte als
Gegenstand der Auslegung, Gesammelte Studien II, ed. M. Schlter and P.
Schfer, TSAJ 73 [Tbingen, 1999] 199-229).
9
See e.g. D. Boyarins Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash
(Bloomington, Ind., 1990) viii.
10
J. Kugel, for instance, calls midrash the perfect expression of
rabbinic theology (Two Introductions, 80). His mapping of the
methods and assumptions of midrash (esp. In Potiphars House: The
Interpretative Life of Biblical Texts [Cambridge, Mass., 1990] 247-68) has
nevertheless facilitated comparison with other hermeneutics, just as his
collection of early exegetical motifs in Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge,
Mass., 1996) has exposed the breadth and depth of the commonality in
content between Jewish and Christian traditions of biblical interpretations
(see Traditions, 40; In Potiphars House, 266-68). Another interesting example
is D. Boyarins Intertextuality, which focuses on a single work Mekhilta de
R. Ishmael but highlights aspects of the human practice of interpretation
more generally.

contingent with the comparable. Whether such comparative usage
enriches or dilutes our understanding of late antique Rabbinic cul-
ture, it remains that the concept of midrash has resonated across
a surprisingly wide variety of disciplines. Scholars have adopted the
concept as useful for understanding figures as far-flung as Jesus,
John Milton, and Jacques Derrida.
11

Is midrash process or product? Is it particularly Rabbinic or
essentially Jewish or somehow universally human? For our present
purposes, the task of defining midrash proves less relevant than
the very fact of the flexibility in its web of meanings. This combi-
nation of different meanings serves, in my view, as a poignant re-
minder of the inextricability of hermeneutics from epistemology,
on the one hand, and textual reception, production, and transmis-
sion, on the other. Accordingly, the difficulty in defining midrash
may signal the inadequacy of investigating the intellectual signifi-
cance of interpretation apart from its historical and cultural signifi-
cations. And, in pointing to the need to approach biblical interpre-
tation as both social and discursive practice, the multi-valence of
midrash may push us towards a fresh perspective on the diversity
of Jewish and Christian approaches to Scripture as well as how
best to compare them.
In what follows, I attempt to bring some insights from recent
research on Rabbinic midrash to bear on Patristic hermeneutics.
12
I

11
E.g., F. Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of
Narrative (Cambridge, Mass., 1979) 82-99; J. S. Shoulson, Milton and the
Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity (New York, 2001); T. R. Wright,
Midrash and Intertextuality: Ancient Rabbinic Exegesis and Postmodern
Reading of the Bible, in Divine Aporia: Postmodern Conversations about the
Other, ed. J. C. Hawley (Lewisburg, 2000) 97-122. Note also T. Lubin,
The Virtuosic Exegesis of the Brahmavadin and the Rabbi: Parallel
Resemblances of Similar Centralized Cultic Rites and Internalized Ritual
Knowledge in Hindu and Judaic Cultures, Numen 49 (2002) 427-59; Z.
Longxi, Cultural Differences and Cultural Constructs: Reflections on
Jewish and Chinese Literalism, Poetics Today 19 (1998) 305-32.
12
I do not mean to imply that Church Fathers are the only Christian
exegetes in Late Antiquity, nor that Rabbis are the only Jews. I have
chosen the two for comparison [1] because of the limitations of our
extant evidence and [2] because they share the status of educated elites
interested in constructing and maintaining the boundaries between
Judaism and Christianity a shared practice of self-conscious social

seek to do so, however, while also retaining an understanding of
midrash as a culturally specific set of reading practices and meth-
ods, predicated on a very particular understanding of the impor-
tance of Scripture and its (Rabbinic) interpreters. At the same time,
I hope to use comparison further to situate midrash in its broader
late antique contexts.
Perhaps even more than other forms of interpretation,
midrash invokes an intimate encounter between reader and text.
Often, Sage and Scripture seem to form part of a closed circuit,
which excludes the present and which admits only those Rabbinic
realities that can be refracted through the Written Torah.
13
It can
thus be tempting to study midrash in isolation from socio-historical
specifics.
14
Comparison with other Jewish and Christian hermeneu-
tics suggests that this stance towards Scripture reflects a distinc-
tively Rabbinic cultural context albeit shaped by broader debates
about interpretation, authority, and identity. Comparison with Pa-
tristic hermeneutics may thus help us to locate Rabbinic midrash
within the religious landscape of Late Antiquity.
This article is an experiment in exploring the similarities be-
tween Rabbinic and Patristic hermeneutics in a manner that is sen-
sitive both [1] to the distinctive ideologies and epistemologies that
inform them and [2] to the specific socio-historical contexts to
which and from which each speaks. As my test-cases, I take two
celebrated and influential works from Late Antiquity: Genesis Rab-
bah and Augustines City of God. I will begin by considering schol-
arly insights into the characteristic elements and social contexts of
Rabbinic midrash as distinct from the biblical interpretation of
Church Fathers in general and Augustine in particular. Then, I will
turn to consider their respective approaches to Gen 6:1-4 an in-
famously troublesome basetext which, as we shall see, tests the lim-
its of their approaches to Scripture. By examining the reading
strategies that each marshals to meet this challenge, I hope to help
illumine the hermeneutics that informed these two fifth-century
sources as well as their contexts, their constraints, and the circuits
of tradition and transmission that might connect them.

and religious differentiation that makes the continued convergences in
their reading practices all the more significant.
13
Kugel, Two Introductions, 90.
14
Kugel, In Potiphars House, 3-9, 247-55.

COMPARING RABBINIC AND PATRISTIC HERMENEUTICS
What can be gained from comparing the writings of Augustine with
the classical Rabbinic midrashim collected in Genesis Rabbah? Before
turning to examine our sources, it may prove helpful to reflect a bit
further on the promises and pitfalls involved in such an enterprise.
The pitfalls, in particular, loom large. Even if we eschew ahistorical
or essentialist generalizations about Christianitys differences from
Judaism, an argument can still be made for the incommensurability
of Rabbinic and Patristic approaches to biblical interpretation. Af-
ter all, the Church Fathers have different scriptural canons, which
include New Testament texts as well as Old Testament apocry-
pha. Most, moreover, encounter the Hebrew Bible/Old Testa-
ment in Greek or Latin translation. Whereas the insights of Rab-
binic interpreters are collected in anonymously edited anthologies
such as Genesis Rabbah, Christian interpreters like Augustine
adopt Hellenistic modes of literary production, penning works in
their own names and adapting a variety of Greco-Roman literary
genres.
Recent scholarship on midrash has also stressed its distinc-
tively Rabbinic context and character. In response to the fascina-
tion with midrash among literary critics in the 1980s,
15
fresh efforts
have been made to understand its forms and methods in relation to
the self-definition, social status, theology, epistemology, and literary
production of Rabbis in Late Antiquity. Scholars such as Steven
Fraade, Gary Porton, David Stern, and Azzan Yadin have analyzed
tannaitic and amoraic midrashim in terms of a culturally specific set
of reading practices that can be located in the socio-historical con-
text of the slow rise of the Rabbinic movement in late antique Ro-
man Palestine.
16
Comparisons between pre-Rabbinic and Rabbinic

15
E.g., Handelman, Slayers; Faur, Golden Doves; G. H. Hartman and S.
Budick, eds., Midrash and Literature, New Haven, 1986. See discussion in
D. Stern, Moses-cide: Midrash and Contemporary Literary Criticism,
Prooftexts 4 (1984) 193-213; idem, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis
and Contemporary Literary Studies (Rethinking Theory; Evanston, Ill., 1996),
esp. 1-9.
16
Esp. S. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation
in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany, 1991); D. Stern, Parables in
Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, Mass.,

interpretation, on the one hand, and between tannaitic and amoraic
midrashim, on the other, have further demonstrated how certain
characteristic features of midrash developed at specific times and in
specific contexts.
17
Although some still approach midrash as an
expression of an essential or enduring element of Judaism, these
lines of research have shown how our understanding of the Rab-
binic movement, late antique Judaism, and the history of biblical
interpretation can be enriched by an approach to midrash as an
historically-situated social practice.
Illustrative is the treatment of midrashs embrace of multiple
meanings, a feature often cited as among its most distinctive and
characteristic elements.
18
Whereas other exegetes are said to seek
singular and certain scriptural meanings, late antique Rabbis are
celebrated for approaching Scripture as an endlessly generative
source of truth, a divine text that accepts and, in fact, necessitates
a plurality of human interpretations. The epistemological ramifi-
cations point to the distinctively Rabbinic ideological context in
which this polysemy operates. In theory, the acceptance of multiple
meanings assumes a radical understanding of the revealed nature of
the Written Torah.
19
In practice, midrashic polysemy stands predi-
cated on the unifying concept of the Oral Torah, as continually
constituted by the discourse of the Sages.
20

1991); idem, Midrash; Porton, Rabbinic Midrash; A. Yadin, Scripture as
Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia, 2004)
17
Most frequent are contrasts with Qumran pesher and Philonic
allegory. Fraade, From Tradition, 3-6, 13; Stern, Midrash, 22-23; Kugel,
Two Introductions, 86-90; P. Mandel, Midrashic Exegesis and its
Precedents in the Dead Sea Scrolls, DSD 8 (2001) 149-168. See Yadin,
Scripture, on the tannaitic midrashim associated with R. Ishmael as
compared to later classical exemplars.
18
Stern, for instance, calls polysemy a virtual ideological cornerstone
of midrashic exegesis (Midrash, 18). See also Fraade, From Tradition, 15-
18, 123-27; Faur, Golden Doves, xiii-xv; Porton, Defining, esp. 79;
Michael Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology
(Cambridge, Mass. 1998) esp. 12-13. For a Rabbinic expression of this
principle, see the celebrated midrash on Jer 23:29 in b. Sanh 34a.
19
Porton, Rabbinic Midrash, 143-46.
20
Fraade, From Tradition, 123-62; Stern, Midrash, 27-32; Fishbane,
Exegetical Imagination, 19-20. On the development of the idea of the Oral

In dialogue with recent correctives to the traditional under-
standing of the status of Rabbis in the first centuries of the Com-
mon Era, scholars have sought to situate this polysemy within the
early history of the Rabbinic movement. Shaye Cohen, for instance,
has proposed that this principle was critical to the Rabbis pur-
ported success in unifying Judaism after 70 CE.
21
David Stern,
however, points to the degree to which this polysemy is a literary
artifact: in his view, the redactional juxtaposition of conflicting
views in the classical Rabbinic literature begins as a fantasy of so-
cial stability, a textual representation of an idealized academy of
Rabbinic tradition where all the opinions of the sages are recorded
equally as part of a single divine conversation.
22
More recently,
Azzan Yadin has proposed that midrashic polysemy is absent from
the tannaitic midrashim associated with R. Ishmael (i.e., Mekhilta
and Sifre Numbers); this feature may have come to be central to
Rabbinic midrash and Rabbinic self-definition more generally, but
it cannot merely be treated as essentially Rabbinic let alone essen-
tially Jewish.
23

Like other features deemed characteristic of midrash,
polysemy is often explained through a contrast with Christian ap-
proaches to Scripture.
24
Just as Rabbis are celebrating multiple
meanings, it is often said that Church Fathers are doing their best
to try to stop at one. Accordingly, early Christians are often charac-
terized as culling the Jewish scriptures for prooftexts and prophe-
sies about Christ an activity that, at its most extreme, involves
extracting and compiling Christologically-useful passages into testi-

Torah, see P. Schfer, Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie des rabbinischen
Judentums (Leiden, 1978) esp. 162; M. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and
Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE400 CE (Oxford, 2001).
21
E.g., S. J. D. Cohen, The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees,
Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism. HUCA 55 (1984) 27-53. See
also his A Virgin Defiled: Some Rabbinic and Christian Views on the
Origins of Heresy, USQR 36 (1980) 1-11, which notably for our
purposes draws a contrast with early Christian approaches to internal
difference and division.
22
Stern, Midrash, 33, see pp. 17-38 and Fraade, From Tradition, 15-19.
23
Yadin, Scripture, esp. 68-69.
24
Stern, Midrash, 23-24; Handelman, Slayers, xiv; Porton, Rabbinic
Midrash, 162; Boyarin, Intertextuality, 108-11.

monia, while paying little heed to the rest.
25
When seen from this
selective perspective, the contrast seems stark indeed with the cele-
bration, in Rabbinic midrash, of Scriptures omni-significance and
its status as Gods first-created and mediatory Wisdom.
26
By this
logic, Christian exegetes looked behind and beyond the Hebrew
Bible/Old Testament in a process that differs markedly from the
approach at the heart of midrash, which looks within it deeply,
and repeatedly, and for its own sake.
If such sweeping contrasts prove persuasive, it may be in part
because their origins root, not in essential difference, but in an his-
torically-situated and deliberate process of differentiation. As Marc
Hirshman, Reuven Kimelman, Jeffrey Siker, and others have
shown, Rabbinic Jews and proto-orthodox Christians defined dis-
tinct identities in Late Antiquity partly by means of their rivalrous
approaches to the Scriptures that they shared.
27
Daniel Boyarin has
gone even further, proposing that Christian supersessionism is tacit
in, and promoted by, the characteristically Christian use of allegory
to read the Old Testament as preface to the New.
28
By abstracting
biblical claims to record a specific peoples sacred history, it is al-
leged that the Church Fathers also denied the validity of the Jews
as a living and embodied people. If Rabbis responded with a resis-
tance of allegory,
29
then it was because Patristic interpretation was
predicated on a perniciously different approach to the Hebrew Bi-
ble: as empty letter figuring the fullness of Christian spirit.
No doubt, there is some truth to the contrast between Rab-
binic and Patristic approaches to Scripture. With the recent growth
of scholarly interest in the hermeneutics of both Rabbis and

25
On testimonia, see H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church
(New Haven, 1995) 24-28.
26
On Torah as Wisdom, see esp. GenR 1.1-2 and discussion in Stern,
Midrash, 23-24; Porton, Defining, 81-83; Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination,
13-18. See below for a comparison with Augustines view of Christ/Logos.
27
E.g. Hirshman, Rivalry; R. Kimelman, Rabbi Yohanan and Origen
on the Song of Songs: A Third-Century JewishChristian Disputation,
HTR 73 (1980) 567-95; J. S. Siker, Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in Early
Christian Controversy (Louisville, 1991).
28
Boyarin, Radical Jew, esp. 13, 104-5. Cf. idem, Intertextuality, 108;
Sparks of the Logos: Essays in Rabbinic Hermeneutics (Leiden, 2003) 184-210.
29
Boyarin, Radical Jew, 264 n.8.

Church Fathers, however, it has also become clear that the exegeti-
cal imaginations of each are more complex and more specific to
individual authors, collections, and locales than any generalization
can convey.
30
We can, moreover, cite counter-examples to situate
cases of exegetical rivalry in a more variegated terrain of direct and
indirect interchange of interpretative ideas.
31
The sharing of Scrip-
tures seems to have laid some common ground for Jews and Chris-
tians, providing a site for contact no less fertile for the contestation
that there took place; contrary to any simple model of influence,
controversy and polemics may have played a role in the transfer of
exegetical motifs across confessional boundaries.
32
Likewise, one
also wonders whether and how hermeneutical methods may have
traveled along these same embattled bridges, crossing the bounda-
ries between these and other competing religious groups in Late
Antiquity.
As foci for exploring such questions, Augustine and Genesis
Rabbah are an interesting pair. The two come from around the

30
J. D. Dawson has recently problematized Boyarins understanding
of Christian figurative reading as allegory in simple supersessionist
contrast to literalism (Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity
[Berkeley, 2002] 19-64; see also further comments by M. Vessey in his
review in BMCR 2002.11.16). For our present purposes, Dawsons book
proves interesting inasmuch as he unsettles some of the base assumptions
about Patristic hermeneutics that underlie the usual contrasts with
Rabbinic midrash.
31
This is most obvious in the case of Syriac Christians and Babylonian
Rabbis, who shared linguistic and geographical proximity; S. Brock,
Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources, JJS 30 (1979): 212-32; N. Koltun-
Fromm, A JewishChristian conversation in fourth-century Persian
Mesopotamia, JJS 47 (1996) 45-63; eadem, Aphrahat and Rabbis on
Noahs Righteousness in light of the JewishChristian polemic, in The
Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation, ed. J. Frishman
and L. Van Rompay (Louvain, 1997) 57-71; eadem, Zipporahs
Complaint; Moses is Not Conscientious in the Deed! Exegetical
Traditions of Moses Celibacy, in Ways that Never Parted, 283-306.
32
Notable in this regard are the examples of Origen and Jerome, on
whom see e.g. N. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian
Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge, 1976); A. Salvesen, A
Convergence of the Ways? The Judaizing of Christian Scripture by Origen
and Jerome, in Ways that Never Parted, 233-57.

same time; the former wrote in the fifth century, contemporaneous
with the redaction of the latter. Both became influential in their
respective traditions, informing the content, form, and methods of
biblical interpretation in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and be-
yond.
33

Recently, moreover, Augustines hermeneutics have been cited
both as an exemplar of a supersessionist use of allegory and as a
close Christian corollary to midrashic polysemy. Boyarin sees
Augustine as heir to Paul and Origens purported emptying of the
Old Testament of any literal truth tied to particularistic Jewish cul-
tural identity.
34
Yet, when Stern contrasts midrash with Christian
allegory in general, he stops to single out Augustine as the closest
analogue to midrashic polysemy that one can find in the Church
Fathers.
35
Not only does Augustine call the Old Testament the

33
To this we might add Stocks more general insight about the need
more comprehensively to investigate Augustines relationship to Jewish
thought (Augustine, 392 n. 231).
34
Boyarin, Radical Jew, 13, citing adv. Iud. 7.9 as a characteristically
Augustinian text. One could counter his citation with the argument that
Fredriksen makes against Blumenkrantz in a different context, namely,
that the Tractatus adversus Iudaeos occupies a quite minor part in
Augustines rich corpus (Excaecati Occulta Iustitia Dei: Augustine on
Jews and Judaism, JECS 3 [1995] 323). See also her very different
assessment of the lines of continuity and change from Paul to Origen to
Augustine, both in terms of their respective hermeneutics and in terms of
their respective (related) views of the Jews, in Allegory and Reading
Gods Book: Paul and Augustine on the Destiny of Israel, in The Human
Condition: A Study of the Comparison of Religious Ideas, ed. R. C. Neville, J.
Berthrong, and P. Berger (Albany, 2000) 133-56.
35
Stern, Midrash, 24. Stern goes on to qualify his comparison in two
ways: [1] Augustines notion of multiplicity of meaning is based in a sense
of the obscurity of Scripture and [2] exegetical exuberance is held in check
by the requirement that meanings are congruous with the truth taught in
other passages of Scripture, namely love of God. Stern interprets the
latter as a rule of faith under which all multiple interpretations are
subsumed (p. 25), noting that Augustine is the first Christian exegete to
use such a rule of faith to justify exegetical freedom. Even if we
question his equation of Augustines stress on the love of God with the
earlier Christian use of a rule of faith as the normative horizon of

autograph of God (En. in Ps. 144.17), but he stresses that by
these words many things may be understood, all of which are still
true (Conf. 12.8.27).
In addition, their interpretations of Gen 6:1-4 are marked by
many similarities in aim and approach as well as content.
36
To be
sure, there are numerous parallels in content between Rabbinic and
Patristic biblical interpretation.
37
But, whereas many can be ex-
plained (at least in part) with reference to a common heritage in
Second Temple Judaism, the convergence of Rabbinic and Patristic
interpretations of Gen 6:1-4 is something different: a shared depar-
ture from earlier Jewish tradition.
By the fifth century, learned elites in both traditions had re-
jected the interpretation of this passage that had been dominant in
Second Temple Judaism. Almost all pre-Rabbinic Jewish exegetes

biblical exegesis (see below), it remains significant that Stern admits how
tricky it is to distinguish Augustines approach from midrash. He stresses
that classical Rabbinic Judaism outlines no explicit rule of faith in the
sense of listing articles of faith, yet he points to some institutional controls
on exegesis, however tacit, obscured, and difficult to describe (pp. 25-26).
Unfortunately for our purposes, Sterns discussion of the question of this
issue here leads him in another direction, such that he leaves aside the
question of the parallel with Augustines biblical hermeneutics. Contrast
Handelmans conflation of Augustines hermeneutics with the hierarchy
of meanings in later medieval Christian exegesis (Slayers, 109; on the
problems with this reading of Augustine, see R. A. Norris, Augustine and
the Close of the Ancient Period of Interpretation, in A History of Biblical
Interpretation, vol. 1, The Ancient Period, ed. A. J. Hauser and D. F. Wilson
[Grand Rapids, Mich., 2003] 397-99).
36
Gen 6:1-4: When humans began to multiply on the face of the earth
and daughters were born to them, the sons of God [ohvktv hbc; some
LXX MSS: angels of God] saw that the daughters of men were fair; and
they took wives from them as they chose. The Lord said: My spirit shall
not remain [so LXX; meaning of Heb. iush uncertain] in man [LXX: these
men] forever, since he is flesh; let the days allotted to him be 120 years.
The Nephilim [LXX: Giants] were on the earth in those days, and also
after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and
they bore children to them. These were the Gibborim [LXX: Giants] of
old, men of renown.
37
For a sense of the sheer number of shared exegetical motifs, one
need only skim Kugel, Traditions.

had identified the sons of God with angels and read this passage
in terms of fallen angels.
38
Around the second century, however,
Rabbis seem to have rejected this view, reading Gen 6:1-4 euhe-
meristically;
39
they asserted that the sons of God are only hu-
man.
40
Although the angelic interpretation had a longer afterlife in
the church, Christian exegetes eventually followed their Rabbinic
counterparts, interpreting the sons of God as a metaphorical title
for a certain group of humans.
41

Elsewhere, I have suggested that the Christian adoption of
euhemeristic interpretations of the sons of God of Gen 6:1-4

38
E.g. 1 En. 1-16; Jub. 4-5; 1QApGen 11,1; 4QAgesCreat A frag.1 7-10;
CD-A II, 17-19; 2 En. 7:3-5, 18:1-9; 2 Bar. 56:9-16; T. Reub. 5:4-6. For a
survey see A. Y. Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity:
The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge, 2005) 24-116; also F.
Dexinger, Judisch-christliche Nachgeschichte von Genesis 6,1-4, Zur
Aktualitat des Alten Testaments (Frankfurt am Main, 1992) 155-75. In pre-
Rabbinic Jewish sources, I know of only three exceptions to the angelic
interpretation of Gen 6:1-4, and all are found in Hellenistic Jewish
sources: the euhemeristic interpretation of these figures by Josephus (Ant.
1.73) and in Sib. Or. 1.90-103, and the allegorical interpretation by Philo
(esp. Giants 6.1; QG 1.92).
39
By euhemeristic, I mean a rationalizing and naturalizing mode of
interpretation whereby references to divine figures (e.g. gods, angels) are
read in terms of humans. Initially popularized by fourth-century BCE
Greek author Euhemerus, this type of interpretation was widespread in
Hellenistic tradition. See W. A. Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and
Its Sources in Christian Chronography (Washington, D.C., 1989) 112-31, on
this hermeneutical method and its application to Gen 6:1-4.
40
So P. S. Alexander, Targumim and Early Exegesis of Sons of
God, JJS 23 (1972) 60-71, as followed and expanded in Reed, Fallen
Angels, 136-49. See esp. GenR 26.5 and Targums Onqelos, Neophyti, and
Pseudo-Jonathan ad Gen 6:2 as quoted below.
41
Adler, Time Immemorial, 113-22; W. Wagner, Interpretations of Gen
6:1-4 in Second Century Christianity, Journal of Religious History 20 (1996)
137-55; L. R. Wickham, The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men:
Gen IV 2 in Early Christian Exegesis, in Language and Meaning: Studies in
Hebrew Language and Biblical Exegesis, ed. J. Barr et al (Oudtestamentische
Studin 19: Leiden, 1974), 135-47; also Reed, Fallen Angels, 149-226 on the
various reasons for this development.

may have been indirectly influenced by Rabbinic developments.
42

As with other Rabbinic traditions, these may have been mediated
through the writings of Christian scholars who spent time in the
Holy Land, such as Julius Africanus, Origen, and Jerome.
43
Ori-
gens influence may have been particularly significant, in this case,
insofar as his Hexapla included the Greek renderings of the Torah
by the Jewish translator Aquila and the Jewish or Jewish-Christian
translator Symmachus. In a manner consonant with the Rabbinic
traditions found in Genesis Rabbah as well as with the Aramaic
renderings of Gen 6:2 in the targumim,
44
Symmachus translates
sons of God as sons of the powerful (Ri XLRL WZQ
GXQDVWHXRQWZQ), thereby negating any connection with angels. By
means of Origens Hexapla, this tradition came to be transmitted to
other Christian exegetes.
45

The convergence in content of Rabbinic and Patristic inter-
pretations in Gen 6:1-4 sheds light on the indirect connections be-
tween Jewish and Christian learned elites in the Roman Empire. It
also serves, in my view, as an interesting starting point for compar-
ing their hermeneutics. In both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism,
the rejection of the angelic interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 was accom-
panied by efforts to promote euhemeristic alternatives. Augustine
and the redactors of Genesis Rabbah thus faced much the same set
of challenges. In what follows, we shall consider the range of
methods that each of them used to re-read these verses in terms of
human sons of God and to integrate this new reading into their
broader understandings of primeval history, salvation, and escha-
tology.
THE GENERATION OF THE FLOOD IN GENESIS RABBAH
In the expositions of Gen 6:1-4 collected in Gen. Rab. 26.5-7,
46
we
find a number of the features that scholars often cite as exemplary

42
Reed, Fallen Angels, 205-26.
43
Julius Africanus apud Sync. 19.24-20.4; Origen, c. Cels. 5.52-55.
44
See below and discussion in Reed, Fallen Angels, 213-18.
45
Augustine, for instance, seems to know Symmachus and Aquilas
translations of Genesis due to Jeromes use of the Hexapla in his Questions
on Genesis; see Wickham, Sons of God, 146-47, and discussion below.
46
Translations of Genesis Rabbah are based on the Soncino edition
(H. Freedman, trans., Midrash Rabbah I-II [London, 1939]), as revised

of Rabbinic hermeneutics.
47
Well attested, for instance, are the in-
terpretation of Scripture from Scripture to connect far-flung texts,
the assumption of Scriptures omni-significance whereby every
element of the text is read as important, the focus on verses and
phrases rather than chapters and books, the polyvalent word-plays,
and the special attention to surface irregularities in the text.
48

Many of these midrashim also evince multiple layers of polysemy.
The anonymous redactors responsible for Genesis Rabbah have
here collected a group of discrete midrashim expounding Gen 6:1-
4 most of which themselves contain multiple interpretations of
the lemma, as typically attributed to multiple Rabbis, without privi-
leging any one position as correct.
49

Even more interesting, for our present purposes, are the ways
in which Gen. Rab. 26 contravenes and thus questions the
usual modern expectations of Rabbinic midrash. As noted above,
these traditions include our earliest evidence for the Rabbinic rejec-
tion of the dominant understanding of Gen 6:1-4 in earlier Jewish
tradition, which read the sons of God as fallen angels.
50
To dis-
miss and displace the earlier interpretation, the Rabbis responsible
for Genesis Rabbah marshal a broad variety of methods, both
hermeneutical and redactional.
51
In light of the polysemy character-

against J. Theodor and C. Albeck, eds., Midrasch Bereschit Rabbah mit
kritischem Apparat und Kommentar (Berlin, 1912-1927; repr. Jerusalem,
1965).
47
Traditions from Genesis Rabbah are frequently cited to expound
the defining features of midrash. E.g. Porton, Defining, 81-82; Kugel,
Two Introductions, 94; Stern, Midrash, 23-24; Fishbane, Exegetical
Imagination, 13-21.
48
On these features as characteristic of midrashic hermeneutics, see
e.g. Kugel, Two Introductions, 91-95; idem, In Potiphars House, 246-64.
49
D. Stern, Anthology and Polysemy in Classical Midrash, in The
Anthology in Jewish Literature (Oxford, 2004) 108-39.
50
See further Reed, Fallen Angels, 24-116.
51
It is widely acknowledged that Genesis Rabbah, as an exegetical
midrash, collects and arranges its composite midrashim following the
order and content of Genesis. I here treat the selection and arrangement
of midrashim in Gen. Rab. 26.5-7, in particular, as the product of
additional redactional choices, which are deliberate and ideologically-
motivated. In this, I am drawing on Sterns approach to classical Rabbinic

istic of midrash, one might expect to find some debate here pre-
served. Strikingly, however, the proper understanding of sons of
God of Gen 6:1-4 as human beings is simply asserted at the outset
by means of two dicta attributed to R. Simeon b. Yoai:
The sons of God saw, etc. (Gen 6:2). R. Simeon b. Yoai
called them sons of judges [vhbhhs hbc].
52
R. Simeon b.
Yohai cursed all who called them sons of God/gods
[thvkt hbc]. (Gen. Rab. 26.5)
One might expect for R. Simeons opinion to be paired with
dissenting opinions, arguing for an angelic interpretation of the
sons of God. Not only would the prominence of this exegesis in
earlier Jewish tradition seem to demand some defense of an alter-
nate approach, but midrashic polysemy would seem to necessitate
the inclusion of multiple opinions about a point of exegetical un-
certainty. Yet, the opinion is simply stated in the name of a single
Sage. No Scriptural support is given, and no debate recorded. The
matter is treated as beyond question.
The angelic interpretation is similarly absent from the tradi-
tions that follow.
53
In a departure from typical Rabbinic redactional
practice, the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rabbah go on to pre-
sent a variety of readings of Gen 6:1-4, attributed to different Sages
who disagree on a number of textual and other matters yet they

midrashic collections as neither wholly consistent compositions nor
random assemblages of traditions (Anthology, esp. 108-110). He
suggests that, in certain cases, the very anthological form of the
midrashic collection, with its proclivity for preserving multiple
interpretations, may sometimes disguise the presence of an editorial hand
that has consistently excluded an unnamed interpretative approach an
approach, in other words, that could not, for ideological or political
reasons, be preserved (p. 110). I propose that Gen. Rab. 26.5-7 on Gen
6:1-4 is one of these cases.
52
At Gen 6:2, Targum Neophyti translates ohvktv hbc with sons of
the judges [thbhs hbc]; Targums Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan similarly
render ohvktv hbc with sons of the nobles [thcrcr hbc].
53
Directly following R. Simeons curse are two traditions about
leadership, the first of which is attributed to the same Sage. The
placement of these traditions directly after a comment on Gen 6:2 results
in the impression otherwise unstated that the sons of God are the
(human) leaders of the Generation of the Flood.

include only those traditions that accept the human identity of the
sons of God. In a manner more reminiscent of early Christian
tradition than Rabbinic midrash, R. Simeons assertion seems al-
most to function like an extrabiblical rule that guides biblical inter-
pretation.
54

Accordingly, the next question addressed is not whether these
figures are human but why they are called sons of God. The dis-
cussion proceeds with no reference to Scripture and centers on
their longevity:
Now, why are they called sons of God? R. anina
and Resh Lakish said: Because they lived a long time
without trouble and without suffering.
55
(Gen. Rab.
26.5)
This assertion is followed by two explanations for their lon-
gevity (cf. Augustine, Civ. 15.9-12):
R. una said in R. Joses name: It was in order to un-
derstand [astronomical] cycles and calculations [ 'v
n::::on 'v: n:t:n].
The Sages said: It was in order that they might receive
their own punishment and that of the Generations that
followed them [u+nx ux: n:+: 'o:]. (Gen. Rab.
26.5)

54
The parade example is Irenaeus rule of truth (Adv.haer. 1.10.1,
22.1; 2.27.1, 28.1-2; 3.2.2, 4.1, 5.1, 14.4; 4.32.1, 33.8), on which see F. M.
Young, The Art of Performance: Towards a Theology of Holy Scripture (London,
1990) 46-53; eadem, Biblical Exegesis, 18-21. See below on the normative
horizon of Augustines interpretation.
55
For other traditions about the ease of life for the Generation of
Flood, see e.g. Gen. Rab. 26.6 and 36.1 (also Sifre Deut. 43, 318; b. Sanh
108a). This tradition often serves to stress their wickedness i.e., even
under the best living conditions, this paradigmatically rebellious
Generation was unable to be righteous. In other cases, as in Gen. Rab.
26.6, their lack of suffering is causally connected to their wickedness: R.
Aibu interpreted [Gods statement in Gen 6:3 to mean]: What was the
reason that they rebelled against Me? Was it not because I did not bend
them through suffering? What keeps a door in position? Its hinges!

In the juxtaposition of these explanations, we find an example
of the redactional evocation of harmonious Rabbinic debate dis-
cussed by Stern.
56
Alexander has also noted how the inclusion of
multiple opinions in Rabbinic midrashim can function, in some
cases, as an effective strategy for displacing unwanted interpreta-
tions.
57
In the present example, this strategy seems to be at play: a
constraint is placed on the exegetical exuberance of Rabbis with
regard to Gen 6:1-4, and the appearance of polysemy distracts from
the complete omission of certain opinions from the conversation.
The discussion of the longevity of the sons of God serves to
distract from the issue of their identity as well as to displace other
possible views of these figures.
Comparison with earlier Jewish and contemporaneous Chris-
tian exegesis helps us to see just how many other options are here
being ignored. For instance, even if one accepts the human identity
of the sons of God, one might well assume that Scripture uses
this title to express something positive (e.g., their purity, their near-
ness to God, their membership in a chosen line).
58
Yet, in Genesis
Rabbah, their association with the divine is dismissed, without exe-
getical or other explanation, as merely a metaphor for long lives.
Of the two reasons given for their longevity, one is neutral
and the other negative. The first recalls Hellenistic Jewish traditions
explaining the long life-spans of the earliest humans in terms of the
time needed to observe astronomical cycles.
59
The second draws on
the Rabbinic tradition that shapes the reading of Gen 6:1-4
throughout Genesis Rabbah, namely, the motif of the Generation
of the Flood (kucnv rus) as one in a series of wicked Generations
and as a paradigm of sinners who stand totally beyond redemption,
punished without even hope of resurrection and judgment at the

56
Stern, Midrash, 25-26.
57
P. S. Alexander, Pre-Emptive Exegesis: Genesis Rabbas Reading
of the Story of Creation, JJS 43 (1992) 230-45; Stern, Anthology, 110.
58
Philo, for instance, reads sons of God as a title for good and
excellent men (QG 1.92). See also Ephraem, Comm. Gen 6:3 and below on
Augustine, Civ. 15.23 and related traditions.
59
In Ant. 1.106, Josephus explains that God allowed early humans to
live long lives in part to advance knowledge in astronomy and geometry;
note also Ant. 1.69-70 on the sons of Seth discovering science of the
heavenly bodies and their orderly array due to their long history of peace
and prosperity.

End of Time.
60
As we shall see, the imposition of this schema helps
even further to displace the angelic interpretation of the sons of
God: not only does the Generation of the Flood absorb a number
of the exegetical traditions associated with the angelic sons of
God, but earlier Jewish ideas about the corruption of civilization
by the fallen angels (e.g. 1 En. 6-16) are supplanted by an account
of the hopelessly wicked state of humankind prior to Abraham (e.g.
Gen. Rab. 19:7; 39:5).
In other words, the motivations for the selection and ar-
rangement of the midrashim about Gen 6:1-4 in Genesis Rabbah
may not simply be exegetical: this section of Genesis Rabbah may
be shaped by the redactors concern to suppress the angelic inter-
pretation and to place another schema in its stead. If so, it would
help to account for many of the peculiarities noted above. Espe-
cially in light of the other biblical uses of sons of God to mean
angels (e.g. Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7),
61
it is surprising to find a euhemer-
istic reading here assumed without any further explanation. Also
odd, in my estimation, is the lack of justification for assuming that
Scripture would choose to call certain humans sons of God to
express something negative about them. And, yet, this is precisely
what is necessitated by the Rabbinic interpretations of Genesis
statements about the sons of God in terms of the paradigmati-
cally wicked Generation of the Flood. The connection between the
two is achieved in Genesis Rabbah 26.5, but only with recourse to
reading strategies that are usually deemed uncharacteristic of
midrash: the assertion of Rabbinic authority apart from biblical
support, the exclusion of contradictory interpretations, and the

60
On this motif see Isaac, Midrashic Process, 26-42, 173-78; S. D.
Fraade, Enosh and His Generation: Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Postbiblical
Interpretation (Chico, Calif., 1984) 109-155 passim, and discussion below.
Although distinctly Rabbinic in the forms here discussed, the motif has
roots in the biblical contrast between Noah and his generation in Gen 6:9
and 7:1, wherein God finds Noah righteous in his generation. See Gen.
Rab. 30.1, 30.6, 30.7, 33.2, 34.3, 36.1, 36.2 (cf. 26.6, 28.8).
61
Compare Gen. Rab. 65.21, in which ohvktv hbc in Job 38:7 are
explicitly identified as the ministering angels.

explanation of the meaning of Scripture apart from a close reading
of its words.
62

In rejecting the angelic interpretation of Gen 6:1-4, the Rabbis
responsible for Genesis Rabbah must deal with the main weakness
of the euhemeristic interpretation of the sons of God: it is not
difficult to see how the sexual mingling of angels and women might
prompt God to purify the earth, but what could be so terrible
about marriages between human sons of god and daughters of
men? In the midrashim collected in Gen. Rab. 26, the Rabbinic
motif of the Generation of the Flood serves (among other things)
to solve this problem. Central to the motif is the notion that the
Generation is evil beyond redemption a notion supported and
developed by reading the references to the sons of God in terms
of the statements about humankind in Gen 6:5-6 and by reading
verses about the wicked throughout Scripture (esp. from the Book
of Job) in terms of this specific Generation.
63

Accordingly, in Gen. Rab. 26, the Sages statement linking the
longevity of the sons of God with the punishment of the Gen-
erations after them (i.e. 26.5, as quoted above) marks a shift in
focus from the sons of God to the Generation of the Flood. The
displacement of the (angelic) sons of God by the (human) Gen-
eration of the Flood is evident in the subsequent midrashim, which
expound their wickedness as paradigmatically great. Consistent
with the theme of marriage and childbirth in Gen 6:1-4 and with
earlier interpretative traditions about the sins of lust of the angelic

62
As should become clear below, these reading strategies are actually
quite characteristic of Rabbinic midrash; my point here is that generalized
treatments and especially generalized contrasts with Patristic exegesis
tend to gloss over these strategies and to privilege others as central in their
definitions of what makes Rabbinic midrash both midrash and
distinctively Rabbinic.
63
On the application of verses from Job to the Generation of the
Flood, see Isaac, Midrashic Process, 26-42. In Gen. Rab. 26.7, this practice is
exegetically justified with appeal to Gen 6:4: R. Johanan interpreted:
These were the Gibborim of old, and who enumerates their deeds? The men
enumerated by name [oav habt] i.e., Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the
Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. For Rabbi said: Had Job come for
no other purpose but to enumerate for us the deeds of the Generation of
the Flood, it would have sufficed him!

sons of God the transgressions of the Generation of the Flood
are primarily sexual:
That they were fair [,ucuy] (Gen 6:2). R. Judan said: Ac-
tually ,cy is written: when a bride was made beautiful
[ohchyn] for her husband, the chief [of the Generation
of the Flood] entered and enjoyed her first. Thus it is
written, For they were fair, which refers to virgins. And
they took them wives, refers to married women. Whomever
they chose: that means males and beasts!
R. Huna said in R. Josephs name: The Generation of
the Flood (kucnv rus) was not blotted out from the
world until they composed nuptial songs in honor of
pederasty and bestiality! (Gen. Rab. 26.5; cf. Tanh.
Buber Gen 1.33; Lev. Rab. 23.9)
As in earlier traditions about the sons of God as fallen an-
gels, we here find accusations concerning their transgression of
proper categories (e.g., 1 En. 15; T. Napht. 3.5; Jude 6; Justin, 2
Apol. 5). The transgression is here transposed, however, from sex
between angels and humans, to sex between humans and animals.
Interestingly, the misdeeds associated with the Generation of
the Flood also recall the sins attributed to the Sodomites (see e.g.
Gen. Rab. 50.7). In this connection, we may see traces of earlier
interpretations of the sons of God, in which the fallen angels
were paired with the Sodomites as paradigms of sinners who were
unable to control their fleshly desires and who thus sated their lust
with unnatural sexual activities (e.g., Jub. 20:5; Sir 16:7-9; T.
Napht. 3-4; Jude 7). In the midrash that follows, for instance, the
two are similarly treated as a pair, and each is interpreted in terms
of the another:
R. Simlai said: Wherever you find sexual immorality
[,ubzv], an epidemic visits the world which slays both
good and bad.
R. Azariah and R. Judah b. R. Simon in R. Joshuas
name said: The Holy One, blessed be He, is long-
suffering for everything except sexual immorality
[,ubzv]. What is the proof? The sons of men saw (Gen 6:2)
etc., which is followed by, And the Lord said: I will blot
out humankind (Gen 6:7).

R. Joshua b. Levi said in the name of Bar Padiah: The
whole of that night Lot prayed for mercy for the
Sodomites. They [i.e., the angels] would have heeded
him, but as soon as they [i.e., the Sodomites] demanded
Bring them out unto us, that we may know them (Gen 19:5)
for intercourse, they said, Have you here any besides (Gen
19:12)? Previously, you [i.e., Lot] may have pleaded in
their defense, but you are no longer permitted to do
so! (Gen. Rab. 26.5; cf. Lev. Rab. 23.9)
By the time of the redaction of Genesis Rabbah, the pairing of
the Generation of the Flood and the Sodomites was already being
developed in new ways (esp. m. Sanh. 10.3). Hence, the redactional
combination of traditions about the two in Genesis Rabbah may
reflect Rabbinic precedents as well as the influence of pre-Rabbinic
exegesis.
64

In other cases, earlier traditions about fallen angels seem to
have transferred almost directly onto the Generation of the
Flood.
65
Most striking is a midrash attributed to R. Berekiah:
And also after that, when the sons of God came into the daugh-
ters of men (Gen 6:4). R. Berekiah said: A woman would
go out into the marketplace, see a young man, and con-
ceive a passion for him, whereupon she would go, co-
habit, and give birth to a young man like him. (Gen.
Rab. 26.7)
The tradition is almost incomprehensible as an exegesis of
Gen 6:4, and R. Berekiah here posits a lack of carnality that stands
in stark contrast with other Rabbinic traditions about the sexual
exploits of the Generation of Flood. The midrash does make sense,
however, when read in terms of pre-Rabbinic Jewish traditions
about how angelic sons of God could come into fleshly
daughters of men.
66
As part of the discussion about the logistics

64
See Gen. Rab. 27.3, 28.5, 49.5, 49.13.
65
On the transfer of exegetical motifs, see Kugel, In Potiphars House,
255-59.
66
For the original context of this tradition, it is telling, in my view,
that it is here associated with Gen 6:4 rather than Gen 6:2 even though
Gen 6:2 includes language of vision (i.e., And the sons of God saw). A
solution is here posited to the problem posed by the sons of God came into the

of angelic/human copulation,
67
there developed the opinion that
the daughters of men had visions of fallen angels while having
sex with their husbands and that these visions resulted in the birth
of hybrid offspring (e.g., T. Reub. 5:6). Genesis Rabbah seems to
preserve a version of this tradition, reapplied to humans who lived
in the Generation of the Flood. The thrust of the tradition may be
lost, but echoes of its origins remain, preserving traces of the proc-
ess by which the angelic interpretation of sons of God came to
be displaced by euhemeristic alternatives.
In most of the midrashim collected in Gen. Rab. 26, this
process has been successful. Not only are the sons of God sup-
planted by the Generation of the Flood, but Gen 6:1-4 is read
through the lens of a Rabbinic schematization of biblical history
whereby this Generation is one in a series of wicked groups. That
this schema was initially developed in the context of Rabbinic dis-
cussions about salvation history and eschatology is clear from its
earliest exemplars (esp. m. Sanh. 10.3; t. Sanh 13.6-12).
68
The redac-
tors of Genesis Rabbah, however, have selected and arranged the
constituent midrashim so as to transform this schema into an exe-
getical principle for reading Genesis.
In Gen. Rab. 26 we can see the influence of two versions of
the schema. The first involves a trio of Generations: the Genera-
tions of Enosh, the Flood, and the Dispersion.
69
The trio occurs
frequently in Genesis Rabbah, often exemplifying the decline in
early human history prior to Gods choice of Abraham and estab-

daughters of men (Gen 6:4), even though the human identity of both makes
this no longer a problem.
67
The persistence of this concern is clear from Augustines comments
in Civ. 15.32, as discussed below.
68
Other tannaitic examples include t. Sota 3.6-12; Mekh. Shirta 2.13-
19; Sifre Deut 43, 310, 311, 318, 324, 350, 351, 361, 375.
69
On Enosh, see Fraade, Enosh, 109-234. That this is a later version of
the schema is clear from the inclusion of the Generation of Enosh, which
is missing from tannaitic lists of the wicked (p. 130). The concept of the
Generation of Enosh, like the concept of the Generation of the Flood, is
a Rabbinic innovation; there is no precedent for the interpretation of Gen
4:26s comments about Enosh in terms of a paradigmatically wicked
Generation. The Generation of the Dispersion denotes the people who
built the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

lishment of the nation Israel.
70
Accordingly, one of the midrashim
on Gen 6:4 (The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also after
that) explains as follows:
In those days, and also after that. Judah b. Rabbi com-
mented: The later Generations would not learn from
the earlier ones the Generation of the Flood [would
not learn] from that of Enosh, and the Generation of
the Separation [would not learn] from that of the
Flood. (Gen. Rab. 26.7; cf. 38.4)
More pervasive, however, is the influence of an earlier version
of the schema: the list of the groups who have no share in the
World to Come in m. Sanh. 10.3. The Generation of the Flood is
the first in this list:
The Generation of the Flood has no share in the World
to Come, nor will they stand at the Judgment, as it is
written, My spirit [hjur] will not judge [iush] man forever
[okugk] (Gen 6:3a). There will be neither Judgment [ihs]
nor spirit [jur] for them! (m. Sanh 10.3)
This group sets the pattern for the treatment of others: the
Generation of the Dispersion, the men of Sodom, the Spies, the
Generation of the Wilderness, the congregation of Korah, and the
Ten Tribes.
71
In each case, the groups omission from the World to
Come is stated and supported with a biblical proof-text. This is
followed by a consideration of whether or not they will be resur-
rected and stand at the Last Judgment.
Consistent with the eschatological concerns of m. Sanh. 10.3,
many of the midrashim in Gen. Rab. 26 focus not on the Flood but
rather on post-mortem judgment. As in the Mishnah, this discus-
sion is spurred by a surface irregularity in Gen 6:3a, namely, the
hapax legomenon iush; typically rendered in English translations as
remain or abide, following the Septuagint (NDWDPHLQo), this
verb can also be read in terms of judgment (ihs).
72

70
See Gen. Rab. 4.6, 5.1, 22.6, 26.7, 28.2, 38.4, 38.5. The Generations
of the Flood and Separation are treated as a pair in Gen. Rab. 33.5, 38.2,
38.3, 38.6, 38.9, 52.6. For the contrast with Abraham, see Gen. Rab.39.5.
71
Some MSS omit the Generation of the Dispersion and Spies.
72
E. A. Speiser, YDWN, Gen 6:3, JBL 75 (1956) 126-29; J. W.
Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (Atlanta, 1993) 76-77; J. Bowker,

Just as the Mishnah uses Gen 6:3 to conclude that there will
be neither judgment [ihs] nor spirit [jur] for the Generation of the
Flood,
73
so the exposition of Gen 6:3 in Genesis Rabbah includes
two sets of traditions the first set focuses on the lack of spirit,
and the second on judgment.
In the first set, the unifying theme is the idea that the Genera-
tion of the Flood will not be resurrected:
And the Lord said: My spirit will not abide in man forever
(Gen 6:3a). R. Ishmael said: I will not put My spirit in
them [xvc hjur i,ub hbht] when I give the righteous
their reward [xhesmk rfa i,n i,ub hbhta vgac].
(Gen. Rab. 26.6)
In light of the close relationship between traditions in Genesis
Rabbah and traditions in the Talmud Yerushalmi, as noted by
Hans-Jrgen Becker and others,
74
it is interesting to point to the
close parallels with the comments on m. Sanh. 10.3 in the
Yerushalmi:
R. Judah said: My spirit will not abide in them, because I
shall not place my spirit in them [xvc hjur i,ub hbhta]
when I place my spirit [hjur i,ub hbta vgac] in hu-
mankind [xst hbcc].

The Targums and Rabbinic Literature: An Introduction to Jewish Interpretations of
Scripture (Cambridge, 1969) 154-55; C. T. R. Hayward, Saint Jeromes Hebrew
Questions on Genesis (Oxford, 1995) 129-30. It is possible that there once
circulated Hebrew MSS that read rush (endure) and/or ihsh (judge) for
iush/ The former reading is attested in 4Q252 I 2 and may underlie LXX
Gen 6:3. The latter seems presumed in the paraphrase of Pseudo-Philo
(LAB 3.2: My spirit will not judge [diiudicabit]) and the translation of
Symmachus (My spirit will not judge [NULQHL]). Furthermore, Questions in
Genesis 6:3, Jerome notes: In the Hebrew it is written: My spirit will not
judge these men forever. Cf. Jub. 10:11-18.
73
The use of Scripture in m. Sanh 10.1-3 is discussed in A. Samely,
Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah (Oxford, 2002) 99, 332-33
74
Hans-Jrgen Becker, Die groen rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palstinas:
Zur literarische Genese von Talmud Yerushalmi und Midrash Bereshit Rabba (TSAJ
70; Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999). References to y. Sanhedrin follow P.
Schfer and H.-J. Becker, eds., Synopse zum Talmud Yerushalmi, Band IV
(Tbingen, 1995).

R. Simeon said: My spirit will not abide in them, because I
will not put my spirit in them [xvc hjur i,ub hbhta]
when I pay the reward which is coming to the righteous
[xhesm ka irfa i,n i,ub hbta vgac]. (y. Sanh 10.3)
In the Mishnah and Yerushalmi, Gen 6:3 is presented as a
prooftext for the omission of the Generation of the Flood from
the end-time Resurrection and Judgment. In the midrash attributed
to R. Ishmael in Gen. Rab. 26.5, the same interpretation is pre-
sented from an exegetical perspective, as one of a number of inter-
pretations of Gen 6:3.
The other interpretations of Gen 6:3 are similarly shaped by
the concerns in the Mishnah and Yerushalmi. As in Yerushalmi
Sanhedrin 10.3, the discussion of the spirit is connected to a dis-
cussion of Gehenna. The reference to the future time when God
will give the righteous their reward prompts the inclusion of
three traditions with no direct connection to Genesis, which use
prophetic prooftexts to explore the precise nature of post-mortem
punishment:
R. Jannai and Resh Lakish said: There is no other Ge-
henna except for a Day that will burn up the wicked.
What is the proof? And the day that comes will set them
ablaze (Mal 3:19).
The Sages maintain: There will be a Gehenna, for it
says: Whose fire is in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem (Isa
31:9).
R. Judah b. R. Ilai said: There will be neither a Day
nor a Gehenna, but fire shall come forth from the body
of the wicked himself and burn him up. What is the
proof? You conceive chaff, you shall bring forth stubble, your
breath is a fire that shall devour you (Isa 33:11). (Gen. Rab.
26.5)
In an interesting example of midrashic polysemy, three very
different opinions are here offered, but the debate is left unre-
solved. Having the mapped a range of possible post-mortem pun-
ishments, the redactors of Genesis Rabbah turn back to Gods
choice to exclude the Generation of the Flood from the end-time
Resurrection:
R. Huna interpreted [Gen 6:3a] in R. Aas name:
When I restore the spirit [jur rhzjta vgac] to its

sheath [vbsbk], I will not restore their spirit to their
sheathes [ivhbsbk ijur rhzjn hbht].
R. Hiyya b. Abba interpreted: I will not fill them with
My spirit when I fill all other men with My spirit, be-
cause in this world it spreads only through one of
limbs, but in the future it will spread throughout the
body, as it is written And I will put My spirit [hjur] within
you (Ezek 36:27). (Gen. Rab. 26.6; cf. y. Sanh. 10.3)
75

The next set of interpretations read Gen 6:3 in terms of judg-
ment. Here too, the Mishnahs assertions about the omission of the
Generation of the Flood from the Resurrection and Last Judgment
are assumed. Moreover, in a manner reminiscent of traditions from
the Yerushalmi, the focus falls on questions about the relationship
between justice in this world and judgment in the next: whereas
Mishnah asserts the exclusion of certain groups and individuals
from the World to Come (m. Sanh. 10.1-3), the commentary in the
Yerushalmi includes a concern to ensure a balance of justice in this
world and the next (y. Sanh. 10.1-4). To the Mishnahs first list of
those with no share in the World to Come, for instance (m. Sanh.
10.1), the redactors of the Yerushalmi respond by outlining differ-
ent kinds of sin and associating them with different kinds of pun-
ishment; some people are punished in this world in order to inherit
the World to Come, whereas the punishment of others is fore-
stalled until the World to Come (y. Sanh. 10.3). Accordingly, the
Yerushalmis treatment of the Generation of the Flood explicitly
addresses the question: do they receive their punishment [i.e. in
this world] and then receive a portion in the World to Come? (y.
Sanh. 10.3).
76
The answer, as in the Mishnah, is negative. Neverthe-
less, it is notable that, by the time of the Yerushalmi, the justness of
this divine decision is a concern (cf. t. Sanh. 13.6-12).
A similar concern may be evident in the midrashim on Gen
6:3 and judgment in Genesis Rabbah. These include attempts to

75
The tradition attributed to R. Huna similarly recalls an anonymous
tradition in y. Sanh 10.3: Others say: My spirit will not abide in them, for I
will not restore [rhzjn hbhta] to its sheath [vbsbk; MS Leiden 244b].
76
Another tradition in y. Sanh. 10.3 has that the waters of the Flood
heated by the fires of Gehenna, in a clever combination of this-worldly
and otherworldly punishment.

explain how the Flood relates to the denial of further judgment for
this Generation:
R. Judan b. Bathyra interpreted it [i.e. Gen 6:3a]:
Never [okugk] again will I judge [is] man with this
judgment [vzv ihsv]. R. Huna commented in R. Jo-
sephs name: I will not again curse... I will not again smite
(Gen 8:21) [means] let this suffice. The Rabbis said: I
will not again curse refers to the children of Noah; I will
not again smite, to future Generations. I intended that My
spirit should judge them [i.e., at the End of Time], but
they refused; behold, therefore, I will bend them
through suffering [i.e. in this world]. (Gen. Rab.
26.6)
Directly following this discussion is a series of traditions as-
serting that all of Gods creations are answerable for their deeds;
even trees must render an account (Gen. Rab. 26.6). The inclu-
sion of these traditions functions to develop the theme of retribu-
tive justice. At the same time, it serves to underscore the justness in
Gods treatment of the Generation of the Flood as well as in His
destruction of plants and animals as well as people in the Flood.
Genesis Rabbah then presents further traditions that explore
the theme of judgment (ihs) in terms of different readings of Gen
6:3. These midrashim explore the reasons for Gods destruction of
this Generation by Flood in this world, as noted in Genesis 6-9,
and His denial of their resurrection and participation in eschato-
logical judgment, as noted in the Mishnah and other Rabbinic tradi-
tions. Here too, we may sense some discomfort with the severity of
Gods punishment of this Generation. Some of these midrashim,
for instance, connect the divine punishment of this Generation
with their lack of any laws or justice system of their own, and par-
ticularly to their lack of knowledge of the Torah;
77
as such, their
punishment seems linked to their misfortune of living prior to

77
E.g., Gen. Rab. 26.6: R. Eleazar said: Wherever there is no
judgment [below], there is judgment [above]. R. Bibi the son of R. Ammi
interpreted, following R. Leazar: If they have not judged, then My spirit
[will judge]. R. Meir said: If they did not perform judgment below, am I
too not to perform judgment above? Thus it is written, Is not their tent-cord
plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom (Job 4:21) i.e.
lacking the wisdom of the Torah

Gods revelation of both the Noachide Commandments and the
Torah. A certain discomfort with the omission of this Generation,
without further judgment, from the World to Come, may also echo
in a saying attributed to R. Jose, which assures us that their fate was
exceptional:

R. Jose the Galilean interpreted [Gods statement in
Gen 6:3a to mean]: No more will I judge [is] My at-
tribute of justice [ihsv ,sn] before My attribute of
mercy [ohnjr ,sn]!
78

In the end, however, the justness of Gods judgment is con-
firmed again with reference to Mishnah. Consistent with the rul-
ing in m. Sanh. 10.1 that those who deny Resurrection have no
place in the World to Come, Genesis Rabbahs collection of
midrashim on Gen 6:3 ends with two traditions, attributed to Rabbi
and R. Akiba. Both stress the lack of belief in Resurrection
amongst the Generation of the Flood:
Rabbi interpreted: And the Generation of the Flood
said: The Lord will not judge my spirit!
79
R. Akiba
cited Thus does the wicked condemn God and say in his heart,
You will not require? (Ps 10:13) meaning that [the
Generation of the Flood said:] There is no judgment
[ihhs] or judge [ihs]. There is judgment, and there is a
Judge!
The rationale is left unstated, but with knowledge of the
Mishnah, the point rings clear: to assert their lack of belief in Res-
urrection is to assert their just exclusion from the World to Come.
The influence of mishnaic and talmudic traditions about those
omitted from the World to Come is also evident in traditions about
Gen 6:4 in Gen. Rab. 26.7. Here, we find some interpretations that
explore the euhemeristic interpretation of the sons of God

78
A similar point is made in Targum Pseudo-Jonathans rendering of
Gen 6:3: And the Lord said by His Word: None of the evil Generations
to arise in the future will be judged by the order of judgments applied to
the Generation of the Flood, which is to be destroyed and eliminated
from the world; Bowker, Targums and Rabbinic Literature, 151-56.
79
The full verse reads okugk ostc hjur iush tk 'v rnthu. This
tradition interprets only hjur iush tk 'v rnthu, understanding the
Generation of the Flood as the speaker.

through traditions about the Generation of the Flood. Although
these traditions leave open the possibility that the Nephilim have
some superhuman nature, the references to the sons of God and
Gibborim are read in terms of the Generation of the Flood. Interest-
ing, for our purposes, are the interpretations of the reference to the
latter as men of renown (oav habt). A tradition attributed to R.
Yohanan uses the verse to justify the Rabbinic practice of ex-
pounding the deeds of the Generation of the Flood by means of
statements about the wicked in the Book of Job.
80

This is followed by a tradition attributed to R. Aa, which
stresses the paradigmatic wickedness of the Generation of the
Flood and which forestalls any positive reading of men of re-
nown by using this phrase to connect the Generation of the Flood
with Korah and his followers:
R. Aa said: Dissension is as great an evil as the Gen-
eration of the Flood. It says here (i.e., Gen 6:4): men of
renown [oav habt], while elsewhere (i.e., Num 16:2) it
says, They were princes of the congregation, the elect men of the
assembly, men of renown [oav habt].
Inasmuch as Korah is counted among those with no share in
the World to Come in m. Sanh. 10.3, R. Aas appeal to Num 16:2
here functions to underline the connections among the paradig-
matically wicked groups from biblical history, even as it serves to
support an euhemeristic reading of Gen 6:4.
The midrashim collected in Gen. Rab. 26 are diverse. Never-
theless, in a striking departure from earlier exegesis of Gen 6:1-4,
all treat sons of God as human beings. Most, moreover, read
Gen 6:1-4 through the extrabiblical principle that the Generation
of the Flood is one in a line of evil Generations. To expound upon
the evils of this Generation, the midrashim in Genesis Rabbah thus
turn to traditions about the other evil groups, particularly those
listed in the Mishnah. Interpretations of Gen 6:3, in particular, are
framed in terms of Gehenna, the Last Judgment, and the end-time
Resurrection of the dead. More specifically, the redactors seem to
engage the same questions and concerns as the Rabbis who were
redacting the Talmud Yerushalmi in the same place and around the
same time.

80
See above, and Isaac, Midrashic Process, 26-42, 173-78.

Interestingly, some of the interpretative methods and choices
that shape this section of Genesis Rabbah fit better with the famil-
iar generalizations about Christian exegesis than with the conven-
tional modern characterizations of midrash. Not only do the Rab-
bis responsible for Genesis Rabbah read Gen 6:1-4 through a later
schema of salvation history, but they view primeval times in terms
of eschatology and use Scripture to trace a genealogy of error.
Even as Genesis Rabbah here appears to be engaged in exegesis of
Scripture from Scripture, its silent dialogue partners are the Mish-
nah and Talmud Yerushalmi.
81
And, perhaps most strikingly, all of
these interpretations follow from the rejection of an interpretation
of sons of God as angels, which is based only on the authority of
a single Sage (i.e., R. Simeon b. Yoai) and which is asserted apart
from any exegetical or other explanation.
The Mishnah and the Talmud Yerushalmi, of course, form
part of the Oral Torah, and the schema of the evil Generations is
there developed with appeal to prooftexts from the Written Torah.
Nevertheless, in Genesis Rabbahs re-application of this schema to
Scripture, we may find a sort of parallel to the Christian use of the
New Testament as interpretative guide to the Old Testament.
82
The
parallel proves particularly intriguing inasmuch as the extrabiblical
schema in question involves salvation-history and eschatology
two concerns typically associated far more with Christianity than
with Rabbinic Judaism.
83

One cannot, moreover, dismiss this section of Genesis Rab-
bah as merely atypical of Rabbinic midrash. Its interest in eschatol-

81
I borrow this language from Alexanders analysis of Genesis Rabbahs
commentary on Genesis 1, which engages the discussion of Maaseh
Bereshit in m. Hag 2.1 and y. Hag 2.1 ( Pre-Emptive Exegesis, 233-36).
See also Becker, Die groen rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palstinas, 16-60.
82
P. J. Tomson, The New Testament Canon as the Embodiment of
Evolving Christian Attitudes towards the Jews, in Canonization and De-
Canonization, ed. A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn (Leiden, 1998)
107-31.
83
Kugel, for instance, posits the irrelevance of eschatology to midrash
inasmuch as the latter treats Scripture as a world unto itself (Two
Introductions, 90).

ogy and salvation history is hardly singular.
84
Nor is its bold ap-
proach to re-reading Scripture unusual.
85
And, even if these inter-
ests reflect the polemical aims of the redactors, it remains that we
find other cases of polemically-motivated midrashim.
86
Conse-
quently, the example in Gen. Rab. 26.5-7 may help us to move be-
yond simple contrasts between Jewish and Christian hermeneutics
to explore the range of reading strategies current among late an-
tique Rabbis as they relate to the range of reading strategies also
used by Christians of the time.
ANGELS/SONS OF GOD AND GIANTS IN THE CITY OF GOD
Roughly around the same time that Genesis Rabbah was being re-
dacted in Christianized Roman Palestine, Augustine was penning
across the Empire in North Africa his celebrated City of God.
87

84
On the importance of eschatology and salvation history within
Rabbinic Judaism, see A. Goldberg, Schoepfung und Geschichte: Der
Midrasch von den Dingen, die vor der Welt erschaffen wurden, repr. in
Mystik und Theologie des rabbinischen Judentums: Gesammelte Studien I, ed. M.
Schlueter and P. Schfer (Tbingen 1997) 148-161; P. Schfer, Zur
Geschichtsauffassung des rabbinischen Judentums, JSJ 6 (1975) 167-188.
Note also A. J. Saldarini, Uses of Apocalyptic in the Mishna and
Tosepta, CBQ 39 (1977) 396-409; Saldarinis collection of references
attests the richness of tannaitic traditions about the Resurrection of the
dead and Gods end-time judgment (and to the interest in reading this
judgment into the biblical texts from which post-mortem punishment is
otherwise absent), even as his interpretation of this data shows the
scholarly tendency to downplay any Rabbinic interest in the eschatology.
85
See, e.g., B. L. Visotzkys assessment of Leviticus Rabbah approach to
biblical exegesis in Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Leviticus Rabbah
(TSAJ 96; Tbingen, 2003) esp. 173-4.
86
I have argued elsewhere that this departure may have been
motivated by polemics against non-Rabbinic groups (whether Jewish,
Jewish-Christian, or Christian) who continued to transmit early Enochic
texts and traditions; Reed, Fallen Angels, 136-47. For examples of
polemically-motivated midrashim, see e.g. Hirshman, Polemical Literary
Units; Visotzky, Fathers, 93-105. For a recent treatment on influence and
polemics see M. R. Niehoff, Creatio ex Nihilo Theology in Genesis Rabbah
in Light of Christian Exegesis, HTR 99 (2006) 37-64.
87
English translations below follow H. Bettenson, trans., City of God
(Harmondsworth, 1984), and quotations of the Latin are taken from the

Although it is not formally a work of biblical exegesis, the second
half of the book features a retelling of Creation (books 11-14) and
biblical history (books 15-18) as well as eschatological reflections
(books 19-22) in terms of the contrast between the city of God and
city of men.
88

Augustines discussion of Gen 6:1-4 occurs in book 15, an ex-
pansive exposition of Genesis 4-9.
89
At first sight, its literary setting
may thus seem more similar to the rewritten Bible of pre-Rabbinic
Jews (e.g., Jubilees., Josephus, Ant.) than to the midrash of late an-
tique Rabbis. Whereas rewritten Bible collapses the lines between
lemma and interpretation, however, Augustine here combines
paraphrases of Genesis with detailed exegetical discussions, both of
his lemma and of other texts with lexical or thematic connections
to it. As in Genesis Rabbah and other midrashic collections, quota-
tion, paraphrase, exegesis, and exposition are here combined, just
as close textual, lexical, and even numerological analyses of the
lemma are juxtaposed with creative appeals to intertexts and
prooftexts from every corner of his biblical canon.
90
Seen from the
standpoint of hermeneutics, moreover, the very project stands as
exemplar of the complexity of Augustines hermeneutics and its
resistance of simple contrasts between literalism and allegory:
throughout the City of God Augustine draws upon Scripture to un-
derstand the two cities in simultaneously historical and meta-
historical terms.
91

edition of B. Dombart and A. Kalb, as reprinted in G. Bardy and G.
Combs, La Cit de Dieu (Paris, 1959-1960).
88
This schema builds on biblical, Jewish, and Christian ideas about
Jerusalem and Babylon, on which see ODaly, Guide, 53-66; J. van Oort,
Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustines City of God and the Sources of his
Doctrine of the Two Cities (Leiden, 1991).
89
On book 15 see further F. E. Cranz, De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and
Augustines Ideas of the Christian Society, Speculum 25 (1950) 215-25; G.
ODaly, Augustines City of God: A Readers Guide (Oxford, 1999) 160-70.
90
Cf. the summary of midrashs literary features in Porton,
Defining, 79. Of course, the City of God is a single-authored text as
opposed to a collection. Parallels with midrash, however, may offer a
fresh perspective on Augustines reading strategies.
91
I.e., in speaking of the two cities, Scripture is both historian and
pedagogue, expressing historical truths and ahistorical truths neither of

In contrast to the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rabbah,
Augustine explicitly counters the angelic interpretation of sons of
God. He is dependant on Greek and Latin translations of Genesis
and seems to use a version that reads angels of God at Gen 6:2
and sons of God at Gen 6:4.
92
Nevertheless, he argues for an
understanding of these figures as human beings and does so largely
on exegetical grounds.
Interestingly, as we shall see, he achieves this goal by means of
many of the same reading strategies found in Rabbinic midrash.
Scripture is here treated as omni-significant, and surface irregulari-
ties are approached as invitations to explore new levels of mean-
ing. His interpretation involves close readings of his lemma in
combination with intertexts drawn from the Prophets and
Hagiographa as well as the New Testament. By interpreting Scrip-
ture from Scripture, he demonstrates its unity in multiplicity in a
manner that serves to justify and elevate a specific biblical canon.
93

Moreover, this section of the City of God reflects Augustines inter-
pretative polysemy. By means of literal and allegorical modes of
reading, he here unfolds the historical and meta-historical meanings
in Scripture, which is seen to speak of the city of God and the city
of men both in the timeless language of God and in the time-
bounded language of humankind (see Civ. 11.3-4).
94

which can be reduced to the other. See G. Lavere, Metaphor and Symbol
in Augustines De civitate Dei, in Collectanea Augustiniana, ed. J. C.
Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (New York, 1990) 225-43; Pulsiano,
Language, 242.
92
The reading RL DJJHORL WRX THRX is found in the fifth-century Codex
Alexandrinus as well as in a handful of related miniscules from the
medieval period and in marginal notations in the Syro-Hexapla. It is also
attested by a number of Jewish and Christian authors (e.g., Philo,
Didymus, Eusebius).
93
In Augustines time, the Christian canon is still in the process of
being set in the Roman Empire. On his canon see Doctr. Chr. 2.8 and
discussion in A.-M. La Bonnardire, The Canon of Sacred Scriptures, in
Augustine and the Bible, ed. and trans. P. Bright (Notre Dame, 1986) 26-41.
94
See P. Pulsiano, Language Theory and Narrative Patterning in De
Civitate Dei, books XV-XVIII, in The City of God: A Collection of Critical
Essays, ed. D. F. Donnelly (New York, 1995) 241-52. Pulsiano discusses
books 15-18 in terms of Augustines concern with language and narrative

In book 15, Augustine begins by expounding the contrast be-
tween the cities in genealogical terms. He does so with reference to
Cain and Abel (15.1) and, after Abels death, with Cain and Seth
(15.8, 15, 17) and their respective progeny (15.15, 20, 22-23).
95

Within this schema, Gen 6:1-4 serves an important role: the pas-
sage is used to explain how genealogical distinctions between the
city of God and city of men became muddled by intermarriage be-
tween the Sethian and Cainite lines.
96

Before Augustine defends his interpretation from a close read-
ing of Gen 6:1-4, he communicates its conclusions by means of a
paraphrase that assumes the human identity of the sons of God
and their association with the city of God as well as with the sons
of Seth:

there arose a mixture and confusion of the two cities
by their participation in a common iniquity. And this
calamity, like the first [i.e., the Fall], was occasioned by
woman, although not in the same way [i.e., as Eve]. For
these women [= the daughters of men] were not
themselves betrayed nor did they persuade the men to
sin. But, having belonged to the earthly city and society
of the earthly, they had been of corrupt manners from
the beginning and were loved for their bodily beauty by
the sons of God (cf. Gen 6:2), or the citizens of the
other city which sojourns in this world and when
they were captivated by the daughters of men, they
adopted the manners of the earthly to win them as their

as syntactic structures of meaning at once temporally bound and yet
atemporal as they urge their way towards the divine (p. 242).
95
To make these connections, Augustine engages in detailed exegesis
of the names and numbers in the genealogies in Gen 4-5. His concern for
their historicity is clear from the space dedicated to the question of
lengths of their lifetimes, and his interest in accounting for the different
numbers, as given in the Hebrew original and Greek and Latin
translations (Civ. 15.10-13). For the comparison with midrash, it is also
interesting to note his concern for the Hebrew meanings of the names of
early humans (esp. 15.17-21).
96
In identifying the sons of God with Sethians and daughters of
men with Cainites, Augustine follows the dominant stream in late
antique Christian interpretation of Gen 6:1-4; Reed, Fallen Angels, 221-26.

brides and forsook the godly ways they had followed in
their own holy society. (Civ. 15.22)
Unlike the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rabbah, Augustine
makes explicit the schema through which he is interpreting Gen
6:1-4. And, thereafter, he explains and defends his rejection of the
angelic interpretation. This exegetical discussion is introduced by
the question of whether angels, inasmuch as they are spirits, could
have bodily intercourse with women (Civ. 15.32). In a manner
reminiscent of Rabbinic petiot,
97
he does not immediately quote
and discuss the passage at hand. First, he brings in a series of inter-
texts, beginning with a passage from the Psalms:
For it is written, Who makes His angels spirits [Qui facit an-
gelos suos spiritus; Ps 104:4a]

that is: He makes His an-
gels those who are by nature spirits by appointing them
to the duty of bearing His messages. For the Greek
word DJJHOR,, which in Latin appears as angelus, means
messenger. But whether the Psalmist speaks of their
bodies when he adds and His ministers a flaming fire (Ps
104:4b), or whether he means that Gods ministers ought
to blaze with love as with a spiritual fire, is unclear. (Civ.
15.23)
For Augustine, Ps 104:4a confirms that angels are spirit rather
than flesh. But it also raises questions. Does Ps 104:4b refer to
these spirits as made of fire? Or, does it refer to human ministers
who blaze, metaphorically aflame, with love? In a passing example
of Augustines interpretative polysemy, both options are presented,
but the answer is left open.
An embrace of Scriptures singularity in multiplicity is also
suggested by his subsequent appeal to a dissenting opinion in the
same trustworthy Scripture. Psalm 104 may express the identity of
angels as spirits and/or fire, but the same Scripture also attests that
angels have appeared to men in such bodies as could not only be
seen but also touched (Civ. 15.32; cf. 13.22). This leads him to
depart from Scripture, citing supporting examples from his own

97
On the use of intertexts in petihot, see J. Heinemann, The Proem in
the Aggadic Midrashim: A Form-Critical Study, Scripta Hiersolymitana
XXII, Studies in Aggadah and Folk-literature, ed. J. Heinemann and D. Noy
(Jerusalem, 1971) 100-22. On the Psalms and Augustine, see R. Williams,
Augustine and the Psalms, Interpretation 58 (2004) 17-27.

time concerning spirits made flesh; he brings in the evidence of
rumors about incubi and devils who have often made wicked as-
saults upon women and satisfied their lust upon them (Civ. 15.32).
Deeming the evidence of present-day rumor and experience
inconclusive, however, Augustine quickly turns back to the trust-
worthy testimony of what is for him canonical Scripture. He
draws an intertext from the New Testament:
But certainly I could by no means believe that Gods
holy angels could at that time [i.e., before the Flood]
have so fallen! Nor can I think that it is of them that
the Apostle Peter said: For if God spared not the angels that
sinned, but cast them down to Hell and delivered them into
chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment (2 Pet 2:4). I
think he rather speaks of these who first apostatized
from God, along with their chief the Devil, who envi-
ously deceived the first man [i.e., Adam] under the
form of a Serpent (cf. Gen 1-3). (Civ. 15.32)
From both his method and his argument, it is clear that
Augustine presumes that the entire canon must speak with a single
voice: however one interprets Gen 6:1-4, it must be consonant with
2 Pet 2:4. In this case, the assumption of Scriptural unity complexi-
fies the task of interpretation. Inasmuch as 2 Pet 2:4 originally re-
ferred to angels who fell before the Flood, Augustine is faced with
a double challenge: to counter the dominant Christian understand-
ing of the sons of God of Genesis as fallen angels and to re-read
the peshat of 2 Pet 2:4. In order to argue against the angelic inter-
pretation of Gen 6:1-4, he must also defend an alternative interpre-
tation of 2 Pet 2:4 (cf. Civ. 11.33).
As in Gen. Rab. 26, there is more at stake here than antedilu-
vian history. Augustine denies the fall of the angels in the days be-
fore the Flood with appeal to a different narrative of primeval de-
cline, as outlined in books 11-14 of the City of God. His schema in-
volves a single angelic fall at the beginning of time (11.9-20),
98

98
His stress on singularity is important to note (Civ. 11.13: For what
a catholic Christian does not know that no new devil will ever arise among
the good angels, just as he knows that this present devil will never again
return into the fellowship of the good?); contrast Manichean beliefs
about fallen angels, on which see J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean
Cosmology: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (Cincinnati, 1992) 185-209.

which is correlated with the fall of humankind (13.1-15; 14.1-22)
and which will be reversed by end-time events inaugurated by the
incarnational intervention of Christ as second Adam (esp. 12.13,
13.23; 14.27-28). Just as the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rabbah
interpret Gen 6:1-4 with reference to a schema of salvation-history
and genealogy of error developed in the Mishnah, so Augustine
here uses the New Testament to understand Genesis, and he ap-
peals to extrabiblical traditions about the fall of Satan at Creation to
understand what is and is not said in Gen 6:1-4 and 2 Pet 2:4.
99

He does so, moreover, in the broader interests of promoting a new
schema: only through euhemeristic interpretation can he re-read
the sons of God and daughters of men as part of the course of
the city of God and city of men in human history.
Having established an alternative framework for the interpre-
tation of 2 Pet 2:4, Augustine lays the exegetical groundwork for
his interpretation of Genesis sons of God as human beings who
participate in and point towards the city of God. As noted above,
he knows Gen 6:1-4 in its Latin and Greek versions and, more spe-
cifically, seems to use a text that reads angels of God at Gen 6:2
and sons of God at Gen 6:4. In order to argue against the estab-
lished, angelic interpretation of this passage, Augustine must thus
explain why sons of God need not mean angels and also why
angels of God need not mean angels either.
Consistent with the canon that constitutes his Scripture, he
does so by drawing examples from both the Hebrew Bible/Old
Testament and the New Testament. Although the scope, shape,
and language of his canon differ from his Rabbinic counterparts,
he approaches his canon much like they approach theirs. Even
though Augustines Scripture is constituted by different books, he
uses the same practices of intertextual interpretation to legitimate,
naturalize, and celebrate it.
100
As with midrash, moreover, his her-

99
Augustine interprets the separation of light and darkness in Gen 1:4
as denoting the fall of angelic hosts under the leadership of Satan (Civ.
11.19-20, 33). The separation of good and wicked angels both prefigures
and parallels the separation of humankind into the city of God and city of
men (Civ. 11.1, 37; 14.27-28).
100
Note Boyarins tentative definition of midrash as a radical
intertextual reading of the canon, in which potentially every part refers to
and is interpretable by every other part (Intertextuality, 16). Kugel points
to midrashs canonizing interest its striking interest in connecting

meneutics stand predicated on a radical understanding of Scripture
as revelation.
101
The univocality of Scripture is presumed in the act
of interpreting Scripture from Scripture. And, when Augustine out-
lines different possible interpretations and unfolds different levels
of meanings, he is able to do precisely because this multiplicity is
set under the unifying rubric of Scriptures divine singularity. In the
process, his seemingly paradoxical association of Scriptures unity
with interpretative multiplicity gives poignant expression to the gap
between divine Wisdom and the human wisdom which strives to-
wards it through the study of Scripture.
To expound Gen 6:1-4, Augustine draws intertexts from
throughout his canon, and he interweaves them in a manner that
both assumes and asserts their unity. When he introduces cases in

one biblical text or problem to another at some remove from the first
as distinguishing it from earlier exegesis (In Potiphars House, 261-64). See
Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination, 12, on midrash as predicated on canon.
101
For the dynamics in midrash, see Fraade, From Revelation, 25-68;
Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination, 12-21. Notably, Porton defines midrash in
a manner that centers on its view of Scripture as revelation (Rabbinic
Midrash, 142), and he asserts that the Rabbinic view of revelation and
approach to interpreting the Hebrew Bible may be unique in late
antiquity (p. 156), drawing a contrast with Christian views in particular.
Even as he admits the complexity and development in Augustines
approach to Scripture (p. 156 n. 62), he goes on to conflate Augustine
with Origen when arguing for the supposedly stark differences between
Christian hermeneutics and Rabbinic midrash (pp. 156-162). It is arguable
that Augustines later works are shaped by a view of Scriptures revealed
nature that falls closer to late antique Rabbis than to Origen, for the
reasons discussed above. To expound the difference between midrash and
Christian interpretation, Porton also cites the Rabbis belief in the direct
divine authorship of Scripture in contrast to Christian beliefs in indirect
inspiration of biblical authors by the Holy Spirit (p. 156). That the former
is more complex is suggested by Rabbinic traditions about Moses
mediation of revelation (on which see S. D. Fraade, Moses and the
Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric be
Disentangled? in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation; Essays in Honor of James L.
Kugel, ed. H. Najman and J. H. Newman [Leiden, 2004] 399-422). That the
latter is more complex is suggested by Augustines many statements about
the inspiration of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, as noted above.

which human beings are called angels by Old Testament proph-
ets and New Testament gospels, for instance, he frames both as
evidence offered by the same Holy Scripture:
But the same Holy Scripture affords the most ample
testimony that even godly men have been called angels.
Of John it is written: Behold, I send my messenger [angelum]
before Your face, who shall prepare your way (Mark 1:2). And
the prophet Malachi, by a peculiar grace specially
communicated to him, was called an angel (Mal 2:7).
(Civ. 15.23)
When Augustine then turns to argue on the basis on the iden-
tity and origins of the Giants,
102
he again brings evidence from his
own times to support the witness of Scripture:
Some, however, are moved by the fact that we have
read that the fruit of the connection between those
who are called angels of God [qui dicti sunt angeli Dei; Gen
6:2] and the women they loved were not men like our
own breed but Giants (Gen 6:4) just as if there were
not born even in our own time, as I have mentioned
above, men of much greater size than the ordinary
stature. Was there not at Rome a few years ago, when
the destruction of the city now accomplished by the
Goths was drawing near, a woman, with her father and
mother, who by her gigantic size over-topped all oth-
ers? Surprising crowds from all quarters came to see
her, and that which struck them most was the circum-
stance that neither of her parents were quite up to the
tallest ordinary stature! (Civ. 15.23)
By drawing on contemporary data, he suggests that Giants can
be born to ordinary human parents. This opens the way for an in-
terpretation of Gen 6:4 (There were Giants on the earth in those days, and
also after that) as meaning that Giants have been born, not only to

102
Augustine here addresses an argument that seems to have
developed within the context of anti-Christian polemics. Julian uses the
supernatural character of the Giants in Gen 6:1-4 as proof that Moses
meant to assert the angelic character of the sons of God who dwelt on
earth in the days before the Flood. See Cyril, c. Julian. 9, and discussion in
Wickham, Sons of God, 136-37.

the sons of God and daughters of men, but also to human
parents before and also after that:
Giants, therefore, might well be born even before the
sons of God, who are also called angels of God [filii Dei, qui
et angeli Dei dicti sunt], formed a connection with the
daughters of men, or of those living according to men [fili-
abus hominum, hoc est secundum hominem uiuentium] that is
to say, before the sons of Seth formed a connection
with the daughters of Cain. (Civ. 15.23)
It is in the course of his reading of Gen 6:4 in terms of Giants
past and present that he links his exegesis with his understanding of
the sons of God and daughters of men as terms for the
Sethian city of God and Cainite city of men.
Having carefully outlined the meaning of each of the key ele-
ments in Gen 6:1-4, Augustine finally turns to quote and discuss
the text. After quoting the passage as the testimony of the canoni-
cal Scripture [canonica scriptura] itself, he explains:
These words of the Divine Book sufficiently indicate
that already there were Giants on the earth, in those days in
which the sons of God took wives of the children of
men when they loved them because they were good
[bonas], that is, fair [pulchras] for it is the custom of
this Scripture to call those who are beautiful in appear-
ance good. But after this connection had been
formed, then too were Giants also born. For the words
are There were Giants in the earth in those days, and also after
that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men.
Therefore there were Giants both before in those days and
also after that.
And the words they bore children to them show plainly
enough that before the sons of God fell in this fashion
they begat children to God not to themselves that is
to say, not moved by the lust of sexual intercourse, but
discharging the duty of propagation, intending to pro-
duce, not a family to gratify their own pride, but citi-
zens to people the city of God. And to these they, as
Gods angels (cf. Gen 6:2) would bear the message
that they should place their hope in God like him
who was born of Seth [i.e. Enosh], the son of resurrec-
tion, and who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God

(Gen 4:26),
103
in which hope they and their offspring
would be heirs of eternal blessings and brethren in the
family of which God is the Father. (Civ. 15.23)
To shed doubt on the supernatural character of the figures
mentioned in Gen 6:1-4, Augustine has already appealed to other
biblical uses of the term angel and to Gen 6:4s depiction of Gi-
ants as he understands it. He now turns to argue more pointedly
for the human identity of the sons of God. As in Genesis Rabbah
26, the statement about Gods spirit in Gen 6:3 proves central to
his assertion of a euhemeristic understanding of angels/sons of
God. Augustine is not faced with the same surface irregularity
as the Rabbis. Moreover, the LXX version of the verse makes an
explicit connection with the sons of God of Gen 6:2 and the
people mentioned in Gen 6:3, explaining that Gods spirit will not
abide in these men (cf. MT: humankind) forever because they are
flesh. He thus identifies the angels of God of his version of
Gen 6:2, not only with the sons of God of Gen 6:4, but also with
the men who are also flesh according to Gen 6:3:
But that those angels were not angels in the sense of not
being men, as some suppose, Scripture itself decides,
which unambiguously declares that they were men. For
when it had first been stated that the angels of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of
all which they chose (Gen 6:2), it was immediately added,
And the Lord God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with
these men, for they also are flesh [Non permanebit spiritus meus
in hominibus his in aeternum, propter quod caro sunt; Gen
6:3]. (Civ. 15.23)
Assuming Scriptures inspiration and omni-significance, he
then explains what each term adds to the description of these fig-
ures:
For by the Spirit of God [Spiritu Dei] they had been
made angels of God [angeli Dei; Gen 6:2] and sons
of God [filii Dei; Gen 6:4]. But, declining towards
lower things [sed declinando ad inferiora], they are called

103
Augustines view of Enosh (developed further in Civ. 15.17-18)
contrasts strikingly with the Rabbinic conception of the Generation of
Enosh as paradigmatically wicked discussed above; on Christian views of
Enosh, see Fraade, Enosh, 47-107, esp. 75-80 on Augustine.

men [homines; Gen 6:3] a name of nature not of
grace. And they are called flesh [caro; Gen 6:3] as
deserters of the Spirit [desertores spiritus], and by their de-
sertion are deserted [et deserendo deserti]. (Civ. 15.23)
Having used Gen 6:3 to confirm that the angels/sons of
God of Gen 6:2 and 6:4 must have been men, Augustine re-reads
these verses in terms of questions about why these men are named
in these specific terms: he proposes that the terms in Gen 6:2 and
6:4 express their spiritual gifts, whereas the references to them in
Gen 6:3 point to their desertion of these gifts.
This approach to Scripture as unified and omni-significant re-
calls Rabbinic reading strategies, especially in the atomized focus
on the biblical text and in the assumption of the significance of
Scriptures every word choice. In this, however, Augustine faces
more of a challenge than the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rab-
bah. He must account for the variant readings in the Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin versions used by Christians at the time.
The strength of his commitment to expressing the unity of
truth expressed and interpreted multi-vocalically in Scripture is
perhaps nowhere clearer than in his approach to this problem in
Civ. 15.23. He does not seek to select the best reading.
104
Nor does
he simply privilege the Septuagint, even though he deems this
translation inspired (Civ. 18.43). Rather, he tries to explain how all
the variant readings can be correct, by showing how each unfolds
different aspects of the meaning of the passage:
The Septuagint indeed calls them both angels of God
(Gen 6:2) and sons of God (Gen 6:4) although all
the copies do not show this, some having only the
name sons of God (i.e., also at Gen 6:4). And Aquila,
whom the Jews prefer to the other interpreters,
105
has

104
Cf. Civ. 15.10-14, where he reconciles the diversity of numbers
which distinguishes the Hebrew from the Greek and Latin copies of
Scripture in the genealogies of Genesis 4-5 by appealing to scribal error
in the transmission of the LXX. See Pulsiano, Language, 243-44.
105
It is notable Genesis Rabbah contains multiple references to the
translation of Aquila (called xkheg or rdv xkheg; 21.1; 46.3; 93.3) as well
to as Aquila himself (rdv xkheg in 70.5; also 1.12). Note also the tradition
attributed to Bar Kappara in Gen. Rab. 36.8 about the permissibility of

translated neither angels of God nor sons of God,
but rather sons of gods [non angelos Dei, nec filios Dei,
sed filios deorum].
106

But both are correct! For they were both sons of
God [filii Dei] and thus brothers of their own fa-
thers, who were children of the same God and they
were sons of gods [filii deorum], because begotten by
gods together with whom they themselves also were
gods, i.e., according to that expression of the Psalm:
I have said, You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most
High [Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes; Ps 82:6]. (Civ. 15.23)
To understand the identity of the figures discussed in Gen
6:1-4, Augustine stresses that one must understand how they are
sons of God but also angels of God (as some MSS of the LXX
say) and even sons of gods (as Aquila says). He shares with late
antique Rabbis, then, the idea that apparent difficulties in Scripture
as invitations to look deeper in accordance, moreover, with a
similar view of the place of biblical interpretation in Gods peda-
gogical guidance of humankind.
107

Even after mining such a richness of meaning from Gen 6:1-4
in its various versions, Augustine cannot resist stopping to defend
the Septuagints inspiration.
108
In passing, he suggests how this ex-
ample may show some superiority of the LXX over the original
Hebrew:
For the Septuagint translators are justly believed to
have received the spirit of prophecy, so that, if they
made any alterations under His authority and did not
adhere to a strict translation, we could not doubt that
this was divinely dictated. The Hebrew term, however,
may be said to be ambiguous, and to be susceptible of

translating the Torah into Greek (Let the words of the Torah be uttered
in the language of Japheth in the tents of Shem).
106
I.e., RL XLRL WZQ THZQ (lit. sons of the gods), rendering ohvktv as
a plural. As noted above, Augustine probably does not write from direct
knowledge but is likely dependant on Jerome for these details. See
Jeromes Hebrew Questions on Genesis 6:2; also A.-M. La Bonnardire, Did
Augustine Use Jeromes Vulgate? in Augustine and the Bible, esp. 45-49.
107
On Scripture as divine pedagogy, see Stock, Augustine, passim.
108
E.g. Augustine, Civ. 18.42-44; also Ep. 71; Doctr. Chr. 2.15.

either translation sons of God or sons of gods.
(Civ. 15.23)
109

Nevertheless, it remains Augustine outlines an hermeneutic
that embraces the multiple meanings found in the multiple versions
and translations of Scripture. Rather seeking to solve such prob-
lems through textual criticism, or by privileging one version above
the rest, Augustine here finds an interpretative solution to the
problem posed by textual variation.
110
This strategy is consistent
with his treatment of Scriptures unity in multiplicity; in effect, his
assumption of the divine inspiration that unifies the different
books of Scripture and the different possible meanings of its verses
is here extended to different translations and versions.
111

That much is at stake in his stress on Scriptures unity be-
comes clear when Augustine then turns to discuss the book of
Enoch an early Jewish text that had been excluded from the
Christian canon (e.g., Athanasius, Ep. 39) despite its popularity
among earlier Christians and its quotation in the Epistle of Jude
(i.e., 1 En. 1:9 at Jude 14-15). Inasmuch as this text had been influ-
ential in shaping earlier Christian views of the sons of God as
fallen angels and had been widely used to support the angelic inter-
pretation of Gen 6:1-4,
112
Augustine here addresses its status and
reliability.
113

109
Compare the references to verses that the Septuagint translators
altered for King Ptolemy in Gen. Rab. 8.11; 10:9; 38:10; 48:17; 98:5.
Gen. R. 38:10 similarly answers concerns about the use of plural forms for
God in the Hebrew (here: Let us go down in Gen 10:7) as they might
confuse readers of Greek. See further b. Meg 9a.
110
Pulsiano, Language, 244. On Augustines departure from earlier
Christian exegetes most notably Origen and Jerome see P. Benoit,
Linspiration des Septante daprs les Pres, in Lhomme devant Dieu, ed.
H. de Lubac (Paris, 1963) esp. 184-85.
111
Note the stark contrast with the text-criticism and corrected
canon of the Manichees. See Augustine, Conf. 5.11; cf. c. Faust. 11.2.
112
See e.g. the use of 1 En. 1-16 and defense of the book of Enoch
in Tertullian, Cult. fem. 1.2-3. For a summary of the early Christian
reception of Enochic literature, see Reed, Fallen Angels, 147-89.
113
Note also the continued popularity of Enochic traditions in
Manichaean tradition, on which see Reeves, Jewish Lore.

Having already marshaled so much Scriptural evidence from
the Old Testament and New Testament, as well as from multiple
versions of the former to speak with a single voice, Augustine is
able to present the canon as a unified front against the cacopho-
nous diversity of this and other so-called apocrypha. Whereas his
references to Scripture had stressed the status of canonical books
as trustworthy testimonies, he dismisses apocrypha as suspect in
origin and character. In describing their content, he draws on the
contrast with what he sees as the unique omni-significance, author-
ity, and truth of Scripture. Accordingly, he notes that though there
is some truth in these apocryphal writings, they contain so many
false statements, that they have no canonical authority (Civ. 15.23).
He does not dismiss apocrypha as false. Rather, he proposes that
they cannot be canonical because they are not like Scripture
completely and wholly true.
114

This understanding of Scripture, however, raises another
problem vis--vis the book of Enoch, due to its quotation by
Jude. Whereas Jerome, for instance, does not hesitate to impugn
Judes value on this account (Vir. ill. 4), Augustine does not com-
promise his concept of Scripture by denigrating any of its parts.
Rather, he asserts that we cannot deny that Enoch, the seventh
from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the
Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle (Civ. 15.23; also 18.37-38).
115

In order to justify the exclusion of the book of Enoch from
the interpretation of Gen 6:1-4, he calls upon the witness of the
Jews:
these writings have no place in that canon of Scrip-
ture, which was preserved in the Temple of the He-
brew people by the diligence of successive priests; for
their antiquity brought them under suspicion, and it
was impossible to ascertain whether these were his
genuine writings, and they were not brought forward as
genuine by the persons who were found to have care-
fully preserved the canonical books by a successive
transmission. (Civ. 15.23)

114
On Augustines concept of canonical authority, see e.g. Civ. 11.3; c.
Cresc. 2.31.
115
That Judes place in the Christian biblical canon was debated is
attested by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.25.1-7. Its inclusion in Augustines canon
is clear from Civ. 4.23 and 18.38.

To the Jews is attributed the trustworthy transmission of
Scripture, to which is tied their trustworthy testimony against
apocrypha.
116

This appeal to the witness of the Jews serves to introduce
Augustines final argument, namely, that the Jews and Christians
derive the same reading of Gen 6:1-4 from each their own Scrip-
tures:
There is therefore no doubt that, according to the He-
brew and Christian canonical Scriptures [scripturas can-
onicas Hebraeas atque Christianas], there were many Giants
before the Deluge, and that these were citizens of the
earthly society of men, and that the sons of God who
were according to the flesh the sons of Seth [Dei autem
filios, qui secundum carnem de Seth propagati sunt], sunk into
this community when they forsook righteousness.
117

Earlier Christian exegetes often associated Jews with literal
reading, typically in a contrast between Jewish flesh, conceived in
negative terms, and Christian spirit, conceived positively and asso-
ciated with allegory. Yet, in this case, the Jewish association with
literalism proves to be a very helpful thing indeed. By appealing to
the Jews and their Scriptures both in the Hebrew and in Aquilas
Greek Augustine can not only establish a consensus about the
identity of the sons of God as human beings, but he can affirm
that this reading is indeed the peshat of the passage.
118

116
Augustine accepts other books, of course, as canonical despite their
omission from the Jewish canon. Note his comments on Judith, Wisdom
of Solomon, Wisdom of ben Sira, and 1-2 Maccabees in Civ. 17.20, 18.26,
18.36; also La Bonnardire, Canon, 34-36. Augustine admits, however,
that such books do not have the same force among our adversaries
because they are not part of the Hebrew canon (17.20).
117
Augustine is, as we have seen, correct about the adoption of
euhemeristic approaches to Gen 6:1-4 among his Jewish contemporaries.
But Jewish traditions about sons of God as sons of Seth who marry
sons of Cain only emerge in early medieval midrashim (e.g., PRE 22;
praef. Aggadat Bereshit); Reed, Fallen Angels, 221-26.
118
In effect, Jewish literalism is here pitted against Manichean
literalism (see below). This is notwithstanding the fact that Jewish
literalism, thus conceived, is a Christian construct, and that late antique
exegetes conceived literalism in a manner different than moderns. On

Paula Fredriksen has suggested that Augustines approach to
literal reading is closely connected with a view of Jews more com-
plex than simple supersessionism.
119
Thus it proves particular in-
triguing that Augustines approach to Scripture in some ways falls
closer to Rabbinic midrash than to the approaches of his Christian
predecessors. That Augustine cares about the literal meaning is im-
portant in itself. Despite his initial Manichaean disdain for the Old
Testament and his later attraction to Ambroses allegorical explana-
tions,
120
Augustine eventually sought to struggle towards an her-
meneutic that could combine the spiritual ascent to Christian truth
through allegory, with a commitment to the historical truth of
Scripture as established through interpretation ad litteram.
121
Just as
midrashic hermeneutics cannot be described in terms of a di-
chotomous understanding of allegorical and literal, so Augustine
worked to develop a way of reading the words of Scripture both as
true records of historical truth and as signs that point beyond it.
122

literalism in the history of Jewish biblical interpretation, see D. Weiss-
Halivini, Peshat and Derash (Oxford, 1991); Isaac, Midrashic Process, 3-13.
119
P. Fredriksen, Augustine and Israel: Interpretatio ad litteram,
Jews, and Judaism in Augustines Theology of History, Studia Patristica 38
(2001) 119-35; eadem, Excaecati, esp. pp. 313-17 on the contrast with
Justin Martyr and Tertullian; eadem, Allegory and Reading Gods Book,
139-56; eadem, Secundum Carnem: History and Israel In The Theology
of St. Augustine, in The Limits of Ancient Christianity. Essays on Late Antique
Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus (Ann Arbor, 1999) 26-41.
Contra Boyarin, Fredriksen stresses that Augustines hermeneutics and his
views of Jews and Judaism depart from earlier Christian approaches in
interlinked ways. She considers the development of his thought, showing
how later works (such as already the City of God) contain an historicizing
hermeneutic and an interest in interpretation ad litteram alongside a view of
the continued religious significance of the Jewish people and their
special status as protected witness people (Excaecati, 320).
120
E.g. Augustine, Conf. 3.5.8-9 on the former and 5.14.24 on the
latter. Also Froehlich, Take Up, 3-4; Stock, Augustine, 43-64.
121
This is clear, for instance, in his interpretation of the Flood as both
figure for Church and as historical event in Civ. 15.26-27 (note esp. his
defense of this double reading in 15.27). On the development in his
hermeneutics, see e.g. M. Cameron, The Christological Substructure of
Augustines Figurative Exegesis, in Augustine and the Bible, 74-103.
122
Froelich, Take Up, 8-9, 12; Fredriksen, Excaecati, 312-13.

Augustines own contacts with Jews were probably indirect,
mediated by authors like Origen and Jerome. His views on reading,
moreover, are rooted in, and react against, his Greco-Roman edu-
cation.
123
His assertion of the unity of Scripture must similarly be
seen against the background of his defense of the Hebrew Bi-
ble/Old Testament against the Manichees.
124
In addition, his her-
meneutics reflect his theology. He qualifies the central place of the
practice of Scriptural reading in divine pedagogy with the assertion
that interpretation only became necessary after the fall of human-
kind.
125
And, if Augustine departs from an earlier Christian asser-
tion of the spiritual truth of allegory as superseding the carnality of
Jewish literalism, then his search for a more integrative approach to
the Old Testament may be best read as a quest for the hermeneuti-
cal counterpart to Christs incarnation, as holy spirit in Jewish
flesh.
126

It remains, however, that his approach to Scripture recalls
classical Rabbinic midrash both in its hermeneutics and in the epis-

123
Stock, Augustine, 65-74.
124
Fredriksen, Excaecati, 302-12, 320-24; Stock, Augustine, 163-65;
R. J. Teske, Augustine, the Manichees, and the Bible, in Augustine and the
Bible, 208-21.
125
Augustine, De Diu. Quaes. 52; De Gen. ad Litt. 8.17; for discussion
and further references, see Stock, Augustine, 15-16. By contrast, Genesis
Rabbah depicts the Torah as pre-created and with God as a helper at
Creation (1.1-2), in a manner more consistent with the place of
Logos/Christ in Christian schemas. Note, e.g., Augustines explanation of
Moses inspired authorship of Genesis in Civ. 11.4: Was the prophet [i.e.
Moses] present when God made the heavens and the earth? No, but the
Wisdom of God, by whom all things were made, was there, and Wisdom
insinuates itself into holy souls and makes them into the friends of God and into His
prophets (Wisd 7:25-26), and it silently informs them of His works.
Wisdom, in this case, is Christ/Logos: God made all things by His
Wisdom or Logos, who is named in Scripture the beginning (Gen 1:1), just
as he himself, in the gospel, replied to the Jews when they asked him who
he was, that he was the beginning (John 8:5) (11.32; cf. Gen. Rab. 1.1-2 on
Torah, Wisdom, and Bereshit).
126
On the interconnections between hermeneutics and Christology in
Augustines work, see Williams, Augustine, 20-21; Cameron,
Christological Substructure.

temological assumptions that inform them. For both Augustine
and late antique Rabbis, Scripture is inspired and speaks with one
voice, and due to its divine origins, its words cannot be reduced to
single and simple meanings.
127
Moreover, Augustines own treat-
ment of Genesis may perhaps find no closer corollary than in the
midrashic presentation of the Rabbinic encounter with Torah as
on-going and continually fruitful. Throughout his life, Augustine
returned time and again to Genesis 1-2, for instance, writing multi-
ple commentaries and uncovering new meanings each time.
128
That
an exegesis of these chapters forms the climax of the account of his
conversion in the Confessions (books 11-13) may also bespeak a simi-
lar view of the significance of reading as religious practice.
129

For both Augustine and late antique Rabbis, interpretation is a
difficult yet exhilarating task that enriches the interpreter and forms
a central part of spiritual development. In both cases, the bounda-
ries between study and worship are blurred in creative and genera-
tive ways. Augustine may differ from Rabbinic exegetes in explicitly
naming the guiding rule and normative horizon of his interpreta-
tion of Scripture.
130
Yet it is perhaps significant that he judges in-
terpretative truth against the affirmation of the love of God and
neighbor (e.g., Doctr. Chr. 1.36.40) in a manner that recalls Hillels
famous summary of the whole of the Torah (b. Shab 31a),
131
no

127
On Augustines theory of language, and view of the differences
between divine language and human language, in the City of God, see e.g.
Civ. 11.6, 16.4, 18.6; Pulsiano, Language, esp. 244-45.
128
I.e., de Genesi contra Manichaeos (389 CE); de Genesis ad litteram
imperfectus liber (ca. 393 CE); Confessions 11-13 (397 CE). See Froelich,
Take Up, 6-7.
129
On reading as religious practice, see Stock, Augustine, passim.
Notably, Augustines famous account of his conversion experience in
Confessions 8.6 finds an intriguing Rabbinic counterpart in a tale of a
Gentile who was passing behind a schoolhouse and heard the voice of a
child reading in ARN
A
15 (cf. b. Shabb 31a); see Visotzky, Fathers, 167-68
for a detailed discussion of the parallels and their possible meaning.
130
On the character and ramifications of this difference, see Stern,
Midrash, 25; Boyarin, Intertextuality, 68-70.
131
I.e., What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is
the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Although this tradition is
typically used to compare Hillel and Jesus, it might be more apt to
compare late antique Jewish and Christian appeals to the Golden Rule;

less than the golden rule attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (Mark
12:29-31; Matt 22:37-39; Luke 10:27).
CONCLUSION
Parallels in the form, methods, and content of Jewish and Christian
biblical interpretation are usually explained with appeal [1] to the
independent use of common elements from the ancient Israelite,
Second Temple Jewish, and/or Hellenistic heritage, or [2] to geo-
graphical proximity and other factors that render plausible the ex-
change of traditions by contact and/or by participation in shared
discourses. What fascinates me about the comparison at hand
between Augustine and the Rabbis responsible for Genesis Rabbah
is the inadequacy of any such explanations.
The two, as noted above, both depart from Second Temple
Jewish tradition to interpret Gen 6:1-4. They share many of the
same assumptions about Scripture as well as many of the same
reading strategies for naturalizing innovative interpretations and
integrating extrabiblical traditions into Scripture. While some of
their assumptions have precedents in pre-Christian and pre-
Rabbinic Jewish forms of exegesis, others are late antique innova-
tions.
132
In the case of Augustine, moreover, his hermeneutical
similarities with Rabbinic midrash root in his departures from ear-
lier Christian tradition during the course of his own personal jour-
ney: his approach in the City of God is the product of a long process
whereby he developed his own distinctive perspective on Scripture,
the practice of reading, and the nature of language and meaning.
133

This convergence, however, cannot be explained in terms of
direct contact. Genesis Rabbah and the City of God may be contem-
poraneous, but there are only indirect lines of contact connecting
them.
134
These Rabbis are separated geographically and linguisti-
cally from Augustine, and the hermeneutics of both are shaped by

see P. S. Alexander, Jesus and the Golden Rule, in Hillel and Jesus, ed. J.
H. Charlesworth and L. L. Jones (Minneapolis, 1997) 363-88.
132
See above, e.g., on interpretative polysemy as well as on
intertextuality as canonical discourse.
133
Esp. Augustine, Conf. 1-9 and analysis in Stock, Augustine, 23-121.
134
I.e., the mediated transfer of traditions by figures like Jerome.

their own local cultures.
135
They participate in a common discourse
only in the broad sense of living in the enduringly Greco-Roman
cultural milieu of the Roman Empire at a key moment in the proc-
ess of its Christianization and seeking to understand their experi-
ences through Scripture.
136

What, then, can we gain from the comparison? Illuminative, in
my view, is Augustines own appeal to the Jewish and Christian
consensus on Gen 6:1-4. This sense of interpretative commonal-
ities with Jews in the Holy Land Jews whom he seems to know
mainly through Jerome may prompt us to approach our compari-
son from a different perspective: modern scholars may be accus-
tomed to contrasting Jews and Christians, but Augustine here ap-
peals to the Jews to counter the Manichees.
Likewise, our comparison of Augustine and late antique Rab-
bis may be best seen against the backdrop of the diversity of late
antique religions. When seen from this perspective, what stands out
is their radical view of the unity, inspiration, and divinity of the
canon and text(s) of Scripture. In holding such beliefs and in em-
bedding them within their practices of reading, these exegetes dis-
tinguished themselves from most others: Valentinians, Ebionites,
and Manichees seem to have read the Hebrew Bible/Old Testa-
ment in selective or dismissive ways. Marcionites and so-called
pagans rejected it altogether. And many Christians and Jewish-
Christians, no less than so-called heretics, saw fit to use textual
criticism to shape biblical texts to fit their beliefs.
137

135
The Palestinian context of Genesis Rabbah is evident in its
relationship with the Yerushalmi (see Becker, Die groen rabbinischen
Sammelwerke Palstinas and above). The African context of Augustines
hermeneutics is most often discussed with reference to Tyconius; e.g. C.
Kannengiesser, Augustine and Tyconius: A Conflict of Christian
Hermeneutics in Roman Africa, in Augustine and the Bible, 149-77.
136
R. Kirschner, Two Responses to Epochal Change: Augustine and
the Rabbis on Ps. 137 (136), Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990) 242-62.
137
We might see the efforts of Christian scholars like Origen as part
of a continuum of text-critical efforts to come to grips with the ancient
Israelite materials in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the Jewish
traditions in the New Testament from a Greco-Roman perspective. Such
a continuum might also include the doctrine of false pericopes in the
Pseudo-Clementine Homilies whereby scriptural references to Gods
imperfection, divine multiplicity, and patriarchal immorality are dismissed

The very aspects of the Hebrew Bible that others tried to ig-
nore, allegorize, or efface were embraced by late antique Rabbis; in
the process, moreover, they developed a complex and creative un-
derstanding of tradition, language, text, and the multiplication of
meaning.
138
By the challenge of rendering the Old Testament ac-
ceptable and accessible to Greco-Roman readers, Augustine is also
pushed to explore the gap between divine and human language as
well as the generative spaces in between. By marshalling many
strategies including intertextual modes of reading similar to those
used in Rabbinic midrashim Augustine integrates the Old and
New Testaments of the Christians into an inextricable whole; the
result is a single Scripture, whose many words stand unified by his
belief in the one Logos.
If, in the case of Augustine, Christian literature can profitably
be read as midrash, I suggest that the profit may lie both [1] in a
recognition of the surprising re-convergence of hermeneutical
paths once divided and [2] in an acknowledgement of their similar
epistemologies both of which, moreover, stand in stark contrast
with the denigration of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament by the
enemies that they shared.
139

Such comparisons may also be fruitful for what they tell us
about our own modern blind-spots and biases. Precisely because of
the probable lack of any direct connection between Augustine and
late antique Rabbis, their commonalities may provide a useful

as later textual corruptions (Hom. 2.3852, 3.46, 911, 1721, 3.37
51, 16.914, 18.1213, 18.1822), Ptolemys assertion that certain (esp.
legal) portions of the Pentateuch are additions to Gods word by Moses
and the elders in his Letter to Flora (apud Epiphanius, Haer. 33.3.1-
33.7.10) as well as Marcionite efforts to de-Judaize the New Testament by
omitting allegedly Judaizing textual corruptions (e.g., Irenaeus, Adv. haer.
1.27.3; 3.2.2; 3.13.1-2).
138
This dynamic has perhaps been best described by M. Fishbane in
his work on myth and midrash; see Exegetical Imagination, 22-40, 94-99,
and, most recently, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford, 2003).
139
See Fredriksen, Excaecati, 320-24, on Augustines embrace of
literal exegesis as forged in response to Manichees, rather than in
interactions with Jews.

check on scholarship.
140
Recent work on Augustines ideas about
language and reading, for instance, may point to the potential bene-
fits of further exploration into whether and how Greco-Roman
reading practices shaped Rabbinic culture.
141
The turn towards exe-

140
Due to the sophistication of their views of language and their
embrace of the multiplicity of interpretative meaning, both share a status
as late antique darlings of literary critics with a postmodern bent. On
midrash, see above, and on Augustine, J. D. Caputo and M. J. Scanlon,
eds., Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession (Bloomington,
2005); F. Young, Augustines Hermeneutics and Postmodern Criticism,
Interpretation 58 (2004) 42-55; eadem, From Suspicion and Sociology to
Spirituality: On Method, Hermeneutics and Appropriation with Respect
to Patristic Material, Studia Patristica 29 (1997) 421-35.
What they share, then, may also speak to the differences between
post-modern and late antique hermeneutics. It can be tempting to treat
their theories and practices of biblical interpretation as comments on
reading and interpretation in general, forgetting that their intertextualities
are not merely the usual and unavoidable referential web from which any
cultural production springs. Yet both stand predicated on a particular
concept of Scripture and its inspiration. Accordingly, the acceptance of an
indeterminacy of interpretative meaning cannot be understood, in either
case, apart from the radical centralization of truth in a singular divine
source. For both Augustine and the Rabbis, it is perhaps their beliefs in
the unique nature of Scripture as divine revelation that prompt their
theories of language and their approach to reading as devotion.
141
Research on Rabbinic hermeneutical rules and their Greco-Roman
parallels has been limited but important and intriguing: see D. Daube,
Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric, HUCA
22 (1949) 239-64; S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York,
1962) 68-82; W. S. Towner, Hermeneutical Systems of Hillel and
Shammai: A Fresh Look, HUCA 53 (1982) 107-9. The range of attitudes
towards Greek wisdom in Rabbinic culture is perhaps most poignantly
expressed by the traditions collected in b. Sotah 49a. Some of the
comments follow the mishnaic dictum that No one should teach his son
Greek, making exceptions only in specific cases. We also find, however,
an interesting tradition attributed to Rabbi: Why use the Syrian language
in the land of Israel? Either use the holy tongue or Greek! This is
followed by the assertion that The Greek language and Greek wisdom
are distinct. And, in response to the question of whether Greek
philosophy is forbidden, a tradition attributed to R. Simeon b. Gamalial

gesis in recent research on midrash may have distracted scholars
from considerations of how polemical concerns and context may
have also shaped Rabbinic midrashim.
142
In turn, insights from
exegetically-oriented research on midrash may help scholars to il-
lumine Christian interpretations. Furthermore, the example of
Augustine suggests the need to look more closely at the impact of
the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament on Christian culture.
Especially in light of the current interest in exploring how the
differences between Judaism and Christianity originated, it can be
tempting to compare generalizations, idealizations, or reifications
of the two traditions rather than grapple with specificities of the
authors and texts that constituted them. By some standards, for
instance, our two examples could be dismissed as too atypical for
inclusion in a comparative discussion. Contrary to the modern view
of Rabbis as this-worldly thinkers who responded to Christianity by
retreating into the world of the biblical text, Genesis Rabbah exhib-
its eschatological concerns and bears the scars of polemics against
non-Rabbis and non-Jews. Contrary to the modern view of late
antique Christian biblical interpretation as Christological eisegesis
justified with appeal to the spirits supersession of the letter,
Augustine takes seriously the encounter with the text of Scripture
as an act of divine worship and divine/human conversation.
This, in my view, is part of what makes these examples valu-
able. It goes without saying that there are many differences be-
tween Rabbinic and Patristic approaches to Scripture, but these
examples suggest that we might benefit from situating specific
works and authors within a broader continuum that includes inter-
nal as well as external diversity. Attention to commonalities may
yield surprising points of convergence which, in turn, open the way
for a more textured view of the hermeneutics used by late antique
Jews and Christians to define themselves in relation to a variety of
others both past and present, both distant and near.

asserts that There were 1,000 pupils in my fathers house; 500 hundred
studied Torah and 500 studied Greek wisdom (cf. b. Men 64b; 99b).
142
This task entails a great deal of methodological care, due both to
the form of the classical Rabbinic literature and the opacity of the Rabbis
on the topic of their opponents, but it does, I think, nevertheless remain
worthwhile; see the methodological discussion in Visotzky, Fathers,
passim.

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