Chapter 3: Reformation and Final Apostasy of the Antediluvian Church

The second reformation of the antediluvian church, Genesis 4, last verse — the etymological notes of certain persons — Enoshian idolatry, the opinion of Maimonides, Selden, Cyril — the total apostasy of the reformed church — the beginning, occasion, and manner of this apostasy, Genesis 6:1–5 — the sons of God and the daughters of men — the triflings of the Jews — and of certain ancient Christians — no antediluvian idolatry — the causes of the Flood, and the tradition of these things among the nations — the end of the antediluvian church — a type in it of things to come.

After Cain had been driven out from the borders of the church — he being the ringleader of those who had corrupted the Adamic theology before the Flood — its power and energy, and the pure worship of God resting upon it, flourished up to the age of Enosh. A new corruption, which spread widely, had by that time invaded the church; and a new reformation, following upon it, destroyed that corruption: "For then it was begun to call upon the name of the Lord," Genesis 4:26. Concerning this passage, a few things must be added.

The words are: then he began to call upon the name of the Lord. There are those who judge that these words denote a reformation of the church; and there are those who judge that they denote its fall into idolatry. The Septuagint renders it thus: "This one hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God" — deriving the word, evidently, not from one root but from another. Hence arose at that time the innocent error of certain persons. They suspected that those words express an etymological notation of the name of Enosh. Chrysostom's interpretation in the passage rests upon that mistake alone; for taking "Enosh" to mean "he hoped," he comments at length on the pious hope of his parents.

And indeed in rendering the meaning of Hebrew names, the Greeks err without exception. So George Cedrenus, p. 172: "Cain named his firstborn son, which means 'grief,' and Cain also killed his brother Abel, which is interpreted as 'vanity'; for from him who was first slain the parents derived the name" — ineptly, and contrary to the etymological principle assigned in the very text, Genesis 4:1. Yet the coloring is not wholly absent; for the Hebrew word means "envy," and

and lamentation — so also Zonaras: "Abel, the second son, that is, grief or vanity." I judge that the word "then," or "at that time," is to be referred to the whole span of Enosh's life. These things were done in the days of Enosh, whom Seth begat. I would readily grant that the condition of the church was already wretched at the time when Enosh was born, and that hence arose for his pious parents an occasion of lamentation. The word Enosh denotes a miserable man; from the root it signifies one who is mortally sick, one who is calamitous, (Psalms 9:21). But no logic compels us to confine the things here recorded to the time of his birth. For these things occurred perhaps some three hundred years or thereabouts after the first reformation of the church through the expulsion of Cain, since the birth of Enosh falls in the one hundred and sixth year after that expulsion. For although the beginnings of that work — whatever it finally was — to which the Holy Spirit here makes mention were perhaps laid at the very birth of Enosh, I do not believe it was brought to completion until Enosh himself, who is specifically noted, had for some time been the head of a household; and in this opinion are almost all the Jews. 4. The Targum ascribed to Jonathan asserts that the entrance of idolatry into the world is denoted by these words, saying: "That generation, in whose days men began to err, and made idols for themselves, and called their idols by the name of the word of the Lord" — that is, they called their idols gods. So also the Arabic interpreter from the edition of Erpenius: "Then men began to depart from obedience to God" — differently from the text in the London Polyglot Bible edition. There are two copies of the Targum of Onkelos; one was set forth by Arias Montanus in the Royal Bible edition, another by Buxtorf in his Basel edition; the latter affirms that "men ceased from calling upon" the Lord, the former that they "began to call upon the name of the Lord." Maimonides traces the beginning of all idolatry from this point, at the beginning of his book on the Worship of the Stars, saying: "In the days of Enosh the children of men fell into great error, and the wise men of that generation were stupefied; even Enosh himself was among those who erred, and this was their error: they said, since God Himself created the stars and the spheres to govern the world, and placed them on high, and gave glory to them, and employs them as His ministers, it is surely fitting that we should celebrate them, and exalt them, and give them glory." That learned man had in view those words of Moses (Genesis 1:16), concerning the great lights appointed to rule the day and the night and over the whole world. He perceives that the degenerate sons of the patriarchs took from these words an occasion to worship the sun, the moon, and the whole adornment of the heavens, to which dominion over days and nights, and thus over the whole terrestrial globe, had been committed. R. D. Kimchi is of the same opinion: "In the days," he says, "of Enosh, they went astray after idolatry, and the invocation of the name of God was then profaned; but there are those who expound the word as meaning 'to begin' in this sense: 'Then men began to call the names of images and idols by the name of God.'" Selden follows Maimonides, Preface 2 to the Syntagma on the Syrian Gods. 5. But Josephus, earlier than all these, asserts that the worship of the one true God lasted until the seventh generation, in the Antiquities, Book 1. R. Eliezer agrees with him in Maase-Beresith, ch. 22, and proves that no mention of idolatry is made here, because no mention was made of those other things they worshipped — that is, the sun and the stars. Most of the ancient Christians agree with these. "Those who lived from Adam," says Cyril against Julian, "even to the time of Noah, had one true and genuine knowledge of the Creator of all things; but after the Flood and the building of the tower they became confused about God" — some supposing heaven to be God, others the sun, others the moon. And this opinion is most true, in which Epiphanius also stands, Book 1, ch. 1, sect. 4. Bede in his Chronicle. The Hebrew root signifies principally "to begin," and in the Piel "to profane," very rarely in the Hiphil or Hophal; hence the noun means "beginning," and the verb means "to enter upon something publicly." Jerome embraces this interpretation. Men did not first begin to profane the name of the Lord in the days of Enosh, since this had been done by the impious Cainites long before Enosh was born. There is therefore no reason why it should be specifically said that then men began to profane the name of God; but there is the greatest reason to say they began to invoke it in a peculiar manner.

VI. These words therefore indicate not a corruption of religious worship, but a reformation of the church. The prefixed particle marks that something new and unusual is signified. Now when the church was confined within the bounds of a single family, its reformation was not difficult, namely by the expulsion of the contumacious. But when the human race had increased immeasurably and the boundaries of the church had been extended, another course had to be taken. For a multitude of sinners produces impunity and license to sin; and so these two things are denoted by those words. First, that the pious had formed separate assemblies for the solemn performance of the worship of God. Second, that they had taken up a distinctive name — that of worshippers or sons of God — which they used until the next apostasy. Thus they called solemnly upon the name of God in separation; and they were called by the name of God, that is, worshippers or sons of God. Both senses are confirmed by our native interpreters; for as they read in the text, "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord," so they add in the margin, "To call themselves by the name of the Lord." And this was the only remaining way of reforming the church. That this course must be taken, when the greater part corrupt the true worship of God and persist stubbornly in wicked practices (which was the state of the church in those times), both the nature of the matter itself and right reason demands. For what could those do who desired to present their consciences undefiled and pure to God in religious worship? Were they to allow themselves to be mingled with and corrupted by the crowd of apostates? That does not appear to be their duty. Were they to drive the apostates out and banish them from the borders of the church? That cannot be done by the fewer against the more numerous. The separation of the pious, therefore, and their gathering into distinct assemblies remained as the only option. These words record that this was then done. For the name of the Lord was not profaned for the first time then — that had been done by the impious Cainites long before — nor, speaking absolutely, did men first begin to call upon the name of the Lord then, since all the pious had been devoted to His worship from the foundations of the world; but then, for the first time, certain persons, having made a visible separation from the rest of the world, performed religious worship solemnly among themselves.

VII. And this was the second reformation of the antediluvian church. The first apostasy had been singular, in the person of Cain. The first reformation consisted in his expulsion. In the time of Enosh, hypocrisy had crept more widely and infected more persons. In order to present themselves free from the common defilement and to preserve the worship of God in the promised Mediator in its purity, the pious Sethites, withdrawing from the crowd of apostates and forming separate assemblies, were called "sons of God." And here the church, visibly and voluntarily separated from the world, existed for the first time.

VIII. By the power of this reformation, pure theology flourished, and the church visibly separated from the world, for about a thousand years. In the course of that time, God set forth a notable example of obedience, a specimen of true theology, and a pledge of eternal life, in the translation of Enoch (Genesis 5:24). But as things progressed, the impious Cainites, and those Sethites from whom the pious had withdrawn at the time of the Enoshian reformation, pretending, it seems, that a common peace should be cultivated through intermarriages and other bonds of civil life, were admitted into the fellowship of the pious, and nearly overthrew everything divine and human universally. Such is usually the fatal outcome, after a reformation, of corruption once more admitted into the church. IX. Moreover, when the very great multitude of impious apostates had been admitted into the fellowship of the pious, and the pious could no longer free themselves either by the expulsion of those others — as they say, using their authority — or by voluntary secession, an immediate and universal apostasy ensued, and the entire church became corrupted. God therefore put an end to that dispensation and to the Adamic sublapsarian theology, in the universal destruction of the apostate theologians, by the Flood.

X. Now the origin, progress, and end of this final apostasy of the antediluvian church were committed to record by its most just Avenger Himself (Genesis 6:1–5). Verses 1 and 2 describe the origin: "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God, seeing that the daughters of men were fair, took wives for themselves from whoever they chose."

XI. Who these "sons of God" are, and who the "daughters of men" are, is disputed. The Jews babble something or other about good and evil angels. So too, before the rabbis were born, did Philo and Josephus. Also the author of the books of Enoch, certain fragments of which survive — in Joseph Scaliger's annotations on Eusebius and in Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, vol. ii, pt. ii — favors this delusion, as do a great many of the ancient fathers: Justin, Apol. i; Clement, Strom. lib. iii; Tertullian, De Habitu Mulierum; Lactantius, Institut. lib. ii, cap. xv; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica lib. v; Ambrose, De Virginibus; Zosimus Panopolites in Photius, Cod. cxci. But neither the nature and condition of the angels (Matthew 22:30), nor the sequence of the Mosaic narrative, admits this suspicion. The term "sons of God" Onkelos renders by "sons of the mighty," and "daughters of men" by "daughters of the poor." The LXX renders them as "sons of God." Aquila: "sons of the gods." Symmachus: "sons of the rulers" — as Jerome attests. And all of these understand the phrase to signify an utter confusion of all ranks in the political order and in the common manner of life, as though men had consorted with one another after the manner of beasts, with no regard for degrees of rank or honor of dignities. Rambam holds this view in the More

Nevuchim, pt. i, cap. xiv: "Adam," he says, "signifies also 'the common people' and 'the multitude of men'; so also 'sons of Adam' and 'sons of man,' Ps. xxiii. 13; and in this sense it is said, 'And the sons of God saw the daughters of Adam.'"

XII. But the matter is sufficiently plain in itself. The "sons of God" were those who, from the days of Enosh, established separate assemblies for the celebration of the true worship of God, professing godliness. On this account they were objects of hatred and mockery to the ungodly world. Nor indeed has the world ever been, nor will it be, otherwise in this respect. For some hundreds of years, perhaps, they separated themselves from fellowship with the wicked — which has always been the chief cause of ecclesiastical apostasy. In the course of time, however, they too were increased by a degenerate offspring, in whom alone there was only a corrupt semblance of godliness. Inflamed by unbridled lust, this offspring joined itself in marriage to the daughters of apostates. And these were the "daughters of men." It is an old tradition among the Jews that the pious Sethites had maintained all their laws — both divine and human — separately from the Cainites, and had inhabited places far distant from them, without any intercourse of life or of the age. This tradition, because it has the appearance of truth, I would not rashly reject. Abulfaraj (as edited by Pococke) reports it interwoven with fables: "Seth," he says, "son of Adam: he is said to have been the first inventor of writing, and to have instilled into his descendants a longing for the blessed life that their parents had enjoyed in paradise; so that they withdrew to Mount Hermon, devoted to the worship of God, piety, and continence, approaching women not at all — from where they were called Bani-Elohim. But in the fortieth year of Jared, descending from Mount Hermon, when they had despaired of returning to paradise" (that is, when the holiness of life and separation from the world had begun to be a burden to them), "they lusted after women; and when those who were their kinsmen refused to give them wives, despising them, the Cainites invited them to marriage, freely offering them their daughters, with whom they consorted and begat giants, distinguished in wars and hostile raids."

XIII. These things Abulfaraj drew from the apocryphal book of Enoch, Concerning the Watchers — except that what he attributes to the Sethites, that other Jewish trifler assigns to the angels descending upon Mount Hermon. The surviving fragments of those books Concerning the Watchers and Concerning the Revelation of Moses will abundantly furnish such fables to anyone who thirsts for them. The angels were called by the ancients egregori (Watchers). They seized their occasion from Daniel 4:10, where an "ir," that is, a "watcher," is said to have looked down from heaven. The common manuscripts of the Greek text retain the Hebrew word; but a certain manuscript reads the equivalent in Greek.

XIV. From this source sprang an indiscriminate mingling of all with all. At length the two assemblies coalesced into one to such a degree that, the family of Noah alone excepted, scarcely any distinction remained between the world and the church. This the Holy Spirit makes plain when He affirms that "all flesh had corrupted its way" (Genesis 6:12). This, I say, was the origin of the second apostasy of the catholic Enoshian, or Adamic, antediluvian church,

— reformed a second time, in which we have a distinguished example of the origin of every catholic apostasy. For it was always the fellowship of the wicked that brought the church to ruin.

XV. Let us consider further the progress of this apostasy. In ver. 11, 12, the Holy Spirit sets it forth: "The earth was corrupt before God Himself, and was filled with violence; and God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, because all flesh had corrupted its way." It had advanced so far, that is, as to extend to all flesh, with only Noah excepted (ver. 8, vi. 1). He, moreover, "was a preacher of righteousness" (2 Peter 1:5). In whose ministry the Spirit of Christ "strove with the rebellious" (1 Peter 1:19), for a hundred and twenty years (Genesis 6:3). Thus the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel expounds that passage — though he babbles in his usual manner about something or other concerning Shamhazai and Uzziel, who at that time fell from heaven and begat giants.

XVI. Maimonides contends that the nature of this apostasy consisted chiefly in idolatry. Selden adopted his view. The names of the gods they worshiped Muhammad furnishes us in the Quran, Sura lxxi: Wadd, Suwa, Yaghuth, Yauq, and Nasr. To these, it seems, Shamhazai and Uzziel devoted their service. But let us dismiss these trifles. What is said about antediluvian idolatry is utterly devoid of all probability. For the Holy Spirit makes no mention of it — He who would by no means have passed it over, inasmuch as it is the gravest of sins and the most powerful argument for the execution of divine justice in the destruction of the world. God willed, without doubt, to display in the destruction of the ancient world by the flood a great prejudgment of future judgment — as Tertullian expresses it — surpassed only by the cross of Christ alone. Can He then be thought to have passed over in silence the greatest of all sins when setting forth the causes of so great a calamity and punishment — a punishment only less than eternal — especially when He carefully enumerates the other crimes and wickednesses that deserved it? For the malice of men's hearts, the universal corruption of life, violence and rapine, and also illicit marriages are expressly mentioned in cap. vi. 2, 5, 11–13. The other vices and wickednesses of that age Berosus not unfittingly recounts in Annius of Viterbo; as also Ovid in Metamorphoses i: "These giants," he says, "trusting in the vastness of their bodies and their strength, fell upon all men with arms and overpowered them, and, serving their lust, they invented tents and musical instruments and every kind of luxury; they devoured men, and there was nothing they did not commit — despisers of religion and of the gods." That the true Berosus also consecrated the flood to memory in his history is attested by Josephus, Antiquities lib. i, cap. iv.

XVII. The end or issue of this catholic apostasy was the flood-destruction of the apostates — namely, "the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water" (2 Peter 3:6). That the nations received by tradition this cause of the flood is attested, among very many others, by Lucian, De Syria Dea, sect. 12: "The men of the present age," he says, "are not the first race, but that former race, all of them,

[illegible] These are of the second generation, which grew again from Deucalion into a great multitude —

— as has been said of them. Concerning those people, the following is reported: being exceedingly insolent, they committed impious deeds; they neither received strangers, nor showed compassion to suppliants, nor heeded those who prayed to them; on account of which a very great calamity immediately followed them. For the earth poured forth much water, and great rains fell, and the rivers flowed higher than their accustomed course, and the sea also rose greatly, until all things

— became water, and all perished. But Deucalion alone was left among men for the second generation, both on account of his prudence and his piety. His salvation came about in this manner. He had a great ark, and he entered it together with his children and his wife. As he was entering, there came to him also boars and horses, and kinds of lions, and serpents, and all other creatures that are pastured upon the earth, two of each kind. He received them all to himself, and they did him no harm at all, but there was great concord among them from God, and together in the ark they all sailed as long as the water prevailed — and these things the Greeks report concerning Deucalion. That is: "The present race of men did not exist from the beginning, but that race which then existed has entirely perished. Those men who now exist are of the second race, namely, that which grew again from Deucalion into so great a multitude. Concerning those former men the following is reported: that being exceedingly insolent, they committed impious deeds; that they received no strangers, and took no pity on suppliants; on account of which a very great calamity straightway overtook them; for immediately the earth poured forth much water, and great rains fell, and the rivers ran higher than their accustomed course, and the sea also rose greatly, until all things were inundated with waters and all perished. But Deucalion alone of men was left for the second generation, at once on account of his prudence and his piety. He was preserved in the following manner: he had a certain great ark, and, having placed in it his children and his wife, he went on board. Moreover, as he himself was entering, there came there also boars and horses, and kinds of lions, and serpents, and all other creatures whatever that are pastured upon the earth, two from each kind, all of them. He received them all to himself, and they did him no harm at all, but there was great concord among them from God, and together in the ark they all sailed as long as the water prevailed — and these things concerning Deucalion the Greeks report." So far he; and that all of these things are drawn from the sacred text, no one fails to see. Horace also plays with this matter:— "He frightened the nations, lest the grim age of Pyrrha should return, bemoaning strange portents: when Proteus drove all his herd to visit the lofty mountains, and the race of fishes clung to the top of the elm, which had been the well-known perch of doves, and the frightened does swam

over the overwhelming flood." — Ode 2, Book 1.

Josephus reports similar things from Hieronymus the Egyptian, Berosus, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus, in Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 4; from Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor, Eusebius in his Chronicle.

XVIII. But most people confuse the universal flood with the flood of Deucalion, or with the Ogygian flood, which preceded it by far. Concerning all of these, an ancient writer in Cedrenus speaks rightly: "The floods that have been remembered throughout Greece occurred first under Ogyges in Attica (though most say that Ogyges was king not of Attica but of Thebes); and afterwards in Thessaly (that is, what was afterwards called by that name, for not even Homer knew that name), in the time of Deucalion, when Cranaus the autochthon was the second king of Athens. Now the Phoenicians and Egyptians, hearing of this flood in the time of Deucalion, and being amazed that their own land had not been inundated, quite rightly concluded that the flood had not reached Egypt — for that flood was local; for they did not know of the earlier universal flood. For such was their patriarch at his birth. And Ham was the son of Noah, father of Mesraim, from whom the Egyptians derive." But there is no doubt that the earliest mythographers so mixed the fame of the universal flood with the history of the particular ones that posterity understood neither the one nor the other. Whoever wishes to know more about these floods should consult Augustine, On the City of God, Book 18, Chapter 9; Nonnos, Book 3; Orosius, Book 1, Chapter 9.

XIX. And such was the end that came upon the apostate antediluvian church. By binding itself in the crime of fresh defection after reformation, it became irreformable. This was the solemn period assigned to the primary revelation of supernatural theology. Moreover, as we shall see, the type and pattern of all churches to be established in future times and to be reformed after their falls was set forth in it. But may God, in His infinite mercy, avert this omen from the reformed Christian churches.