In this fourth session in our series, we will first clarify the imperfect picture we had of the personality of Hanoch in the material from last session , and see how the sages in the midrash take the ambiguities in the Torah text about his life in extremely different directions.
Then we will see how, in the view of the midrashic sources, idolatry seems to have become normative and mainstream in the subsequent generations immediately before, and long after, the Flood, with the apparently noteworthy exceptions of certain individuals such as Shem and Eiver.