Table of Contents
Some readers of Genesis and of the Greek myths treat the Great Flood as the line between an Age of Heroes and an Age of Humans. In that reading, gods, demigods and heroes act openly among people before the flood, and afterwards people are left to govern themselves under divine law.
The Age of Heroes
In this view the age before the flood is one in which divine and human beings deal with each other directly. Yahweh, Athena, the Nephilim and other semi-divine figures take part in human affairs. Genesis places the LORD God walking in the garden of Eden “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8, KJV), and it names the offspring of the sons of God as men of renown.
The giants and the mighty men of old
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… the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4, KJV
The Hebrew word behind “giants” is Nephilim; see the Nephilim. Greece had its own demigods, such as Perseus and Heracles, both sons of Zeus. In Hesiod’s Ages of Man the Heroic Age is the one age not named after a metal. Its heroes and demigods fought at Thebes and at Troy, and at the end they were taken to a land beyond the seas ruled by Cronus. In Hesiod they are not wiped out by a flood.
The Great Flood as the Turning Point
Genesis gives the reason for the flood as human wickedness.
Why the flood came
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Genesis 6:5, KJV
The next verse says it “repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth” (Genesis 6:6, KJV). Some readers take the flood as a direct intervention by Yahweh, or by other gods in the parallel myths, to “reset” creation. They also hold that the Nephilim died in the flood. Genesis 6:4 itself says the giants were there “also after that,” and the spies in Numbers report “the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants” (Numbers 13:33, KJV). See also the Anakim.
After the flood, humanity is given a new covenant with Noah (Genesis 9) and is charged with stewardship over the Earth. God tells Noah and his sons to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” and gives every beast, fowl and fish “into your hand” (Genesis 9:1 to 2, KJV).
The covenant after the flood
And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
Genesis 9:11, KJV
In Genesis 11 the people of one language set out to build “a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven” so as to “make us a name” (Genesis 11:4, KJV). See the Tower of Babel.
The Rise of Kings
Genesis calls Nimrod, son of Cush, “a mighty one in the earth” and “a mighty hunter before the LORD,” and gives the beginning of his kingdom as “Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (Genesis 10:8 to 10, KJV). Some read him as the first ruler of the human age that follows the heroes. Some also hold that after the flood Yahweh speaks through prophets and covenants rather than appearing directly, and that the later laws, among them the Ten Commandments, carry this shift further.
Other Flood Traditions
The Mesopotamian flood hero is Utnapishtim, called Ziusudra in the Sumerian versions, who in the Gilgamesh flood myth survives by building a boat; see Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, Ziusudra and Noah. In Greek myth Zeus, angered by King Lycaon of Arcadia, sends a deluge to end what Hesiod’s scheme calls the Bronze Age, and Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha survive in a chest; see Deucalion and Pyrrha and Ovid’s four ages. Apollodorus, in the Bibliotheca, ends the Bronze Age with Deucalion’s flood. In Hindu tradition the fish Matsya rescues Manu from a great deluge; see Vaivasvata Manu. For more accounts see Great Flood stories world wide.
