Sean Hill - Genesis Six in Early Christian Racial Discourse

In the face of Roman accusations of novelty, Christian authors often used the Old Testament to form their own narrative of descent and establish Christianity as the possessor of true cultural heritage.  This paper adds to the literature on ethnic reasoning in early Christianity by providing a case study on the exegesis of a specific series of verses: Genesis 6:1-4. These verses describe how the “sons of God,” usually understood by Christians to be fallen angels, were overcome by the beauty of human women and took them as wives.  The illicit offspring of these relationships provided an ideally degrading set of spiritual and ideological ancestors which Christian authors identified as the founding figures of Graeco-Roman religion.  By focusing on the exegeses of Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, and Commodianus in contrast to the pagan philosopher Porphyry, this paper investigates the role of ancestry and ethnic reasoning in early Christianity.

The theoretical approach taken in this paper relies on recent work done by Aaron Johnson and Denise Buell on ethnicity in early Christian discourse.  Buell, in particular, notes the importance of ancestry for membership in an ethnic group and how Christians such as Justin Martyr used the language of descent to create a group identity.  At the same time, the fluidity of belief and practice as elements of “Christianness” contrasts the fixity of membership by heritage.  

Using the exegesis of Genesis 6:1-4 as a case study, this paper investigates the model of ethno-racial reasoning as an integral part of early Christian discourse. Ultimately, I argue that the ethnic argumentation in the rhetoric surrounding Genesis 6 is a response to the Roman accusation of novelty in an attempt to characterize the pantheon as void of any respectable genealogy.  In this particular case, it is difficult to claim that Christianity created a dialogue of ethnicity and genealogy on its own since it relied on existing Roman ideals of antiquity.  Perhaps more significant is that early Christians used Scripture to engage in the Roman ethnic discourse.  Building on the notion of ethnic reasoning discussed in recent patristic scholarship, I will argue that the language of ethnic reasoning played a central role in early Christian rhetoric.