“And after some days my son, Methuselah, took a wife for his son Lamech, and she became pregnant by him and bore him a son. And his body was white as snow and red as a rose; the hair of his head as white as wool and his demdema (‘long curly hair’) beautiful; and as for his eyes, when he opened them the whole house glowed like the sun . . . And his father, Lamech, was afraid of him and fled and went to Methuselah his father; and he said to him, ‘I have begotten a strange son. He is not like an (ordinary) human being, but he looks like the children of the angels of heaven to me, his form is different, and he is not like us . . . It does not seem to me that he is of me, but of angels . . .’
I Have Begotten A Strange Son
These words form the opening lines to what must be one of the most astonishing yet chilling fragments of religious text ever written. They are the assertions of the antediluvian patriarch Enoch as he describes the sheer distress and horror that accompanied the miraculous birth of a son to his grandson, Lamech. The passage is taken from the Book of Noah, an ancient script of Hebrew origin appended to the more famous Book of Enoch, a pseudepigraphal (falsely attributed) work, considered by scholars to have been put together in stages during the first half of the second century BC.
The predicament conveyed by these revealing lines seems manifestly clear: Lamech has recently taken the hand of a woman who has given birth to a child that bears no resemblance whatsoever to its immediate family. His appearance is entirely unlike other 'human beings', for his skin is white and ruddy, his long curly hair is white and 'beautiful', while his eyes mysteriously enable the whole house to 'glow like the sun'. From this specific appearance Lamech can only conclude that his wife has been unfaithful, since the infant resembles 'the children of the angels' who are 'not like us'.
This seems an extraordinary conclusion on the part of Lamech, and a very strange subject for a religious scribe to invent without good reason. If it can, for a moment, be accepted that this account records an actual event in the history of humankind, then it implies that the strange appearance of this child matched the offspring of angels, and must by inference have been the product of the union between a mortal woman and a divine 'messenger', a 'heavenly intelligence' in the service of God himself.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ancient Origins UNLEASHED to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.