"The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair."
--Genesis vi. 8.
According to the first book of the Bible, the earth fell into a very
wicked condition in the days of the patriarchs. God made everything
good, but the Devil turned everything bad; and in the end the Lord
put the whole concern into liquidation. It was a case of universal
bankruptcy. All that was saved out of the catastrophe was a consignment
of eight human beings and an unknown number of elephants, crocodiles,
horses, pigs, dogs, cats, and fleas.
Among other enormities of the antediluvian world was the fondness shown
by the sons of God for the daughters of men. That fondness has continued
ever since. The deluge itself could not wash out the amatory feelings
with which the pious males regard those fair creatures who were once
supposed to be the Devil's chief agents on earth. Even to this day it
is a fact that courtship goes on with remarkable briskness in religious
circles. Churches and chapels are places of harmless assignation, and
how many matches are made in Sunday-schools, where Alfred and Angelina
meet to teach the scripture and flirt. As for the clergy, who are
peculiarly the sons of God, they are notorious for their partiality to
the sex. They purr about the ladies like black tom-cats. Some of them
are adepts in the art of rolling one eye heavenwards and letting the
other languish on the fair faces of the daughters of men. It is also
noticeable that the Protestant clericals marry early and often, and
generally beget a numerous progeny; while the Catholic priest who, being
strictly celibate, _never_ adds to the population, "mashes" the ladies
through the confessional, worming out all their secrets, and making them
as pliable as wax in his holy hands. Too often the professional son of
God is a chartered libertine, whose amors are carried on under a veil of
sanctity. What else, indeed, could be expected when a lot of lusty
young fellows, in the prime of life, foreswear marriage, take vows of
chastity, and undertake to stem the current of their natures by such
feeble dams as prayers and hymns?
Who the original "sons of God" were is a moot point. God only knows, and
he has not told us. But Jewish and Christian divines have advanced many
theories. According to some the sons of Gods were the offspring of Seth,
who was born holy in succession to righteous Abel, while the daughters
of men were the offspring of wicked Cain. Among the oriental Christians
it is said that the children of Seth tried to regain Paradise by
living in great austerity on Mount Hermon, but they soon tired of
their laborious days and cheerless nights, and cast sheep's-eyes on the
daughters of Cain, who beauty was equal to their father's wickedness.
Marriages followed, and the Devil triumphed again.
According to the Cabbalists, two angels, Aza and Azael, complained to
God at the creation of man. God answered, "You, O angels, if you were
in the lower world, you too would sin." They descended on earth, and
directly they saw the ladies they forgot heaven. They married and
exchanged the hallelujahs of the celestial chorus for the tender tones
of loving women and the sweet prattle of little children. Having sinned,
or, to use the vile language of religion, "polluted themselves with
women," they became clothed with flesh. On trying to regain Paradise
they failed, and were cast back on the mountains, where they continued
to beget giants and devils.
"There were giants in the earth in those days" says Scripture. Of
course there were. Every barbarous people has similar legends of
primitive ages. The translators of our Revised Version are ashamed
of these mythical personages as being too suggestive of Jack and the
Beanstalk, so they have substituted Anakim for giants. In other words,
they have shirked the duty of translators, and left the nonsense veiled
under the original word.
The Mohammedans say that not only giants, but also Jins, were born of
the sons of God, who married the daughters of men. The Jins soon had the
world in their power. They ruled everywhere, and built colossal works,
including the pyramids.
Of the giants, the most remarkable was Og. He was taller than the last
Yankee story, for at the Deluge he stopped the windows of heaven with
his hands, or the water would have risen over his head. The Talmud says
that he saved himself by swimming close to the ark in company with the
rhinoceros. The water there happened to be cold, while all the rest was
boiling hot; and thus Og was saved while all the other giants perished.
According to another story, Og climbed on the roof of the ark, and
when Noah tried to dislodge him, he swore that he would become the
patriarch's slave. Noah at once clinched the bargain, and food was
passed through a hole for the giant every day.
When we look into them we find the myths of the Bible wonderfully like
the myths of other systems. The Giants are similar to the Titans, and
the union of divine males with human females is similar to the amors of
Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and Mars with the women of old. In this
matter there is nothing new under the sun. Every fresh myth is only the
recasting of an ancient fable, born of ignorance and imagination.
Let it finally be noted that this old Genesaic story of the angelic
husbands of earthly women gives us a poor idea of the felicity of
heaven. In that unknown region, as Jesus Christ informed his disciples,
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; that is, no males, no
females, no courting, no loving, no children, and no homes. Men cease to
be men and women cease to be women. Everybody is of the neuter gender.
Or else all the angels are gentlemen, without a lady amongst them.
Perhaps the latter view is preferable, as it harmonises with the Bible,
in which the angels are always _he's_. In that case heaven would be, to
say the least, rather a dull place. No whispering in the moonlight,
no clasped hands under the throbbing stars. Not even a kiss under the
misletoe. Oh, what must it be to be there! No wonder the sons of God
wandered from their cheerless Paradise, visited this lower world, and
saw the daughters of men that they were fair.