The watcher story and genesis an intertextual reading

Along with other compositions from the period of the Second Temple the Watcher Story in the Books of Enoch (6-11+12-16) has been labelled rewritten Bible. This article challenges this opinion. It examines what is taken as the best arguments for reading Genesis as a parent text to Enoch and finds them not compelling. The examination of the correspondences rather points in the direction that Enoch and Genesis from the beginning made up two independent traditions drawing on the same Mesopotamian traditions about primeval time. The two traditions went into a dialogue with each other that left marks in the texts of an influence in both directions. The short allusion in Gen 6,1-4 refers to a story with some of the basic features known to us in the Watcher Story. On the other hand the scribe of the Watcher Story may have known a scroll that only contained material similar to the P source to the primeval history, since the correspondences to Genesis can all be explained on the basis of the priestly material. The relationship between the Watcher Story and Genesis is thus far more complex than to assume that the Watcher Story grew out of an elaboration of particularly Gen 6,1-4.