Michael Segal
the presence of this contradiction in the text as the result of a literary process
in which the dates of the chronological framework were superimposed upon
an already rewritten story.
- "Let the days allowed him be 120 years" (Gen 6:3). Interpreters from
antiquity until today are divided as to the meaning of the 120-year limitation
that was instituted in response to the intercourse between the sons of god
and the women and the subsequent birth of the giants (Gen 6:1-4). Some
posit that this limitation applies to humanity in general, including the giants
who were half-divine and half-human.^15 The establishment of a maximum
age for human life expectancy drew a boundary between the heavenly and
earthly realms.^16 Alternatively, other interpreters have suggested that the
sons of god story is related to the flood story that follows, and in fact pro
vides a justification for this cataclysmic punishment. According to this ap
proach, 120 years is the length of time from the Watchers' descent until the
flood.^17
Within the rewritten story in Jub 5, the limitation of 120 years applies
to the giants (5:7-9), the offspring of the Watchers, in accordance with the
first interpretive approach to Gen 6:3:
5:7Regarding their children there went out from his presence an order to
strike them with the sword and to remove them from beneath the sky.
5:8He said: "My spirit will not remain on people forever for they are
flesh. Their lifespan is to be 120 years." ssHe sent his sword among them
so that they would kill one another. They began to kill each other until
all of them fell by the sword and were obliterated from the earth.At the same time, according to the chronological framework, the Watchers
sinned in the twenty-fifth jubilee, a.m. 1177-1225 (Jub 5:1, referring to 4:33),
while the flood took place in the year 1308 (5:22-23). The difference between
- Cf. LAB (pseudo-Philo) 3.2; Josephus, Ant 1.75; the opinion of R. Joshua b.
Nehemiah in Genesis Rabbah 26:6 (Theodor-Albeck, ed., 251-52). - Compare the story of the Garden of Eden, where there is a concern if a human is
to consume from the tree of life and thus live forever (Gen 3:22). - Cf. 4Q252, col. 1, lines 1-3; S. 'Olam Rab. 28; Targum Onqelos to Gen 6:3; Targum
Neofiti; Fragmentary Targum; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan; Mek. R. Ishmael Shirta 5; Genesis
Rabbah 30:7; b. Sanhedrin 108a; Avot of Rabbi Nathan A 32; Jerome, Questions on Genesis 6:3;
Augustine, City of God 15.24.24; Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Radaq to Gen 6:3. See M. J. Bernstein,
"4Q252: From Re-Written Bible to Biblical Commentary," JJS 45 (1994): 1-27 (here 5-7); J. L.
Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 112-14.