I assume you also “…don’t buy the story of Samson and his magical hair”?
That’s divinely empowered hair - a different proposition altogether.
Oh that may have been what the audience thought of when Jude and Peter made the reference, but I noticed they stayed vague on exactly what happened. As I am sure you are aware, 1 Enoch was actually compiled over a long period of time as people added unconnected stories to the first chapter. I am inclined to take it that the first chapter was divinely inspired as Jude quotes it. But the rest of it is not quoted, just possibly alluded to.
So the writers just needed an example of God’s judgement and not letting anyone off the hook and this was an example familiar to the readers. And angels were judged so they used the example while avoiding the details from 1 Enoch. If they had endorsed the details I suppose 1 Enoch would be in the canon of scripture, either Hebrew, Catholic, or Protestant.
It is by the time of Daniel. We know that because the first unambiguous use of it is by Darius. But what about the time before the ANE? It all hinges on how ancient this Genesis material really is. If it was from stories long before Abraham, and translated from more ancient tablets into Hebrew by him on tablets which were later edited by Moses into what we know as Genesis (or even proto-Genesis if you account for later brushing up) then it precedes some of what we call the “Ancient” Near East. I am sure you are aware of the ANE attempts to write themselves into the stories, expanding them over time and deifying great rulers.
You’re welcome. And I agree that this is not the most critical issue on the board, hence its OK for it to be vague. It wouldn’t take much away from my model if it went the traditional way, but it would add something to it if I and the others here who see it that way are right.
I never thought about it but you’re right. The text only mentions what could be made into Leviathan later on. More evidence that Genesis 1 comes from a time from before the coiled serpent of the deep was personified as “Leviathan” and made into a rival of the gods.
This is theoretically possible, but to me it seems more than an illustration, especially when looking at the larger background of ANE/OT/Second Temple. Just to note, also, that some (e.g., Longman) use the “just an illustration” argument for Paul’s reference to Adam in Romans 5.
I think there are more details than you’re giving credit for. As to canonicity, there were a few early fathers (e.g. Tertullian, Origen, Irenaeus) who at least at some point considered it equally authoritative, but I trust the Spirit’s guidance for excluding it, But canonicity is nott required for endorsement of general or specific parts (I.e., beyond illustration).
Ugarit, e.g., goes back to the 2nd millennium.
I know this is your thing, but this doesn’t necessarily follow. Language is often (usually) updated.
Again, I don’t see this as the necessary implication. Genesis might be intentionally muting the chaos theme for theological reasons. Also, not all ANE creation stories had this chaos theme.
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Oh? In my view those two things are pretty much the same things.
To me as well. I am not trying to say it is just an illustration. There were angles that left their proper abode, and they are reserved in some unpleasant pit or place for the judgment. Maybe they are what is in that bottomless pit opened up in Revelations. So they are referencing something that happened but what happened is just not quite the way the book of Enoch tells it. The seduction of mankind was not so literally in that sense, so they mention events but stay vague on the details. This is different from Romans 5 mentioning Adam in a context where prior canon already puts him.
Me too. And I agree, They are endorsing the idea that angels sinned and are now bound. They just are not giving us the same details as to what they did.
Forgive me I meant to say first such use in scripture.
Yes it is. And the case I am making is that the early view of the sons of God being other men was changed over time to refer to more special men and then rulers who self-deified. Eventually this progressed to the view that these were among the divine beings. Not the original gods themselves, but the sons of the gods. This was the view of it by the time of the captivity.
This is different from words changing, like Persia becoming Iran. I think language is changing now faster than it has since Babel. A new word, like “virus” now is often used to describe a hostile program in a computer. Fifty years ago it meant something different. 150 years ago the word did not exist. The same basic terms are used, their meaning just changes over time. I mean I am agreeing with your premise. Language changes over time. The meaning of words changes over time. So that is what I am saying happened with the phrase “sons of god”. And the way the meaning changed fits with a logical progression of what we see in the ANE where they keep trying to re-write the accounts of their gods, working prominent rulers into the accounts.
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This assumes the hybrid off spring are fertile… perhaps the ability to interbreed is limited.
That would resolve most of the scientific issues…
Edit: one interesting part of this is the possible emergence of nephilim in the future… which indicates that future occurrences are again due to intercourse between the “sons of God” and “daughters of men”…
Each to his own. To me, God’s giving supernatural strength in connection with a Nazirite vow is somewhat different from angels having the natural capacity for liicit matrimony with humans.
I can’t see why people don’t see this as a problem: angels are not biological or gebetic, so hybridisation is not the model in question. The Incarnation is not a model, as that was a unique and divine hypostatic union. The question’s more akin to wondering if the offspring of people and ghosts are fertile… first get the wedding ring on your ghost.
The idea that “sons of God” could mean kings, regarded as semi-divine, is in a different category, because kings aren’t semi-divine, at least biologically.
I can think of two reasons why People see Biblical support for the view -
- The Nephilim/their descendants are described in subsequent passages as being very large in Stature. (Eg King of Og)
- The Bible teaches that Angels are capable of appearing in human Form (eg: the Angels who visited Abraham on the way to judging Sodom and Gomorrah).
Its not a big stretch from there to consider the possibility of Angels mating with Humans. Besides the idea of Giant Human beings is not alien to many cultures. Hence people haven’t really questioned their existence till recently.
Sometimes i see these interpretations as a package deal because of hermenutic choices involved -
Package 1 - Adam and Eve as not the first Human beings (This includes GA where there were other “Humans” outside the Garden as well as treating Adam/Eve as mythical “types”) + Local Flood + No Part human part Angel Hybrids.
Package 2 - Adam and Eve as the first human beings + Global Flood + Nephilim as human/Angelic hybrids…
I think any discussion on Nephilim would have to settle on what the Flood exactly was.
@Ashwin_s Your scenario 2 also has to explain how a global flood that killed all living creatures did not kill all the nephilim that appear later… especially if it is taken that the Nephilim were a major reson for the Flood in the first place.
I don’t think anyone’s ever suggested that King Og was immune to drowning!
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Yes it will have to… one option I have often heard of is that genesis 6 is not the only time angels were upto mischief…
Genesis 6: 4 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, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
The main problem with this view is not textual as far as I can see… It has a lot of biblical support. And that’s one of the reasons such a wierd explanation has survived over the years.
The other reason is that human beings just love wierd fantastical stories. Take me for an example, I find the second view so much more exiting than the first… 
@deuteroKJ is correct about the Peter and Jude also supporting this view indirectly…
Well, something would have to change about their nature. The angels of God took human form and yet Matt. 22:30 says they don’t marry nor are they given in marriage.
Yes it does… but being able to appear in human form indicates a change in form…Matt 22:30 does not necessarily apply to this change in state.
The references in Jude and the letters of Peter are far more stronger and direct reference to Angels mating with humans because of quotations from the book of Enoch. The referencing to Angels not remaining in their original domains or of Angels sinning in a manner similar to Sodom and Gomorrah are made in connection to quoting the book of Enoch which explicitly teaches that Angels fell and cohabited with Human women while imparting many skills to those who lived with them. It also teaches that these offending angels were then confined in chains. The references in 2Peter and Jude seem to be referring to this.
Overall the scriptural evidence for this position is strong. Of course, there have always been alternative/competing explanations…
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Well I don’t know about that. Maybe they look like us no matter where they are. That’s the way they consistently look in scripture until you are talking about some of the special forms.
Except they don’t actually say anything about angels mating with humans. Its like they tread all around it. Now I am only aware of one instance of what could be called a “quotation” from Enoch. It is from the original prophecy from Enoch in Jude “I saw the LORD coming with thousands upon thousands of His holy ones”. The other instances are more like references than quotes. As Dr. Turner and I discussed above, Enoch started with just that first chapter. The rest was added in layers much later. I assume the original prophecy was inspired or else Jude would not have quoted from it. But the rest is unrelated stories added much later.
Dr. Turner @deuteroKJ can straighten me out here if called for but I don’t see the Greek in Jude connecting the specific sin of Sodom and Gomorrah to the sin of the angels who gave up their proper abode. I think it is saying htat the cities around Sodom and Gomorrah behaved in a like manner. Here is a link to the interlinear on it.
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/jude/1-7.htm
Jude 1:6 is very hard to put together for me. If it is referencing what is discussed in Enoch I do wish he’d been more clear.
They do seem to be. Except for the women bearing the children of the fallen angels part. As I explained to Kenneth above, I do think some fallen angles imparted some dark skills, and I do think they corrupted the line of Messiah prior to the flood, and that they were confined for breaking some taboo. SO Enoch contains a germ of truth, an account that was then spun to ridiculous extremes. So Peter and Jude reference what is true from it while not validating what is not true. And what is not true helped keep Enoch out of the canon of scripture. We may not agree on that but let me ask you, do you consider all of the book of Enoch to be true?
I don’t believe it is scripture if that is what you mean by true. I treat as an important document which can inform us about scripture especially where it is explicitly quoted. I don’t think it’s important whether Jude or Peter considered all of Enoch as scripture… however, them being aware of the book and the fact that it was complete in the first century is significant.
I am personally open to both views of Genesis 6 (I am yet to conclude on any one view as correct). However, the view in Enoch seems closer to what was in Jude and Peters mind when writing their respective letters.
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I failed to respond to this earlier, but it’s not consistent with, as far as I understand, where current scholarship is. While there are debates about which parts precede and postdate the dawning of the church, it’s generally understand that a substantial portion predates, and so the bulk of the book as we know it was likely well known to the early Christians. (And the supposed Christian interpolations, if that’s what they are, indicate that at least some Christians respected the book.) Off the top of my head, I think the first 18 chapters (give or take) of 1 Enoch are relevant for the NT.
I don’t assume this. Why can’t a biblical writer draw on a but non-inspired text or story? Paul quotes a pagan poet (Acts 17:28). Proverbs nearly quotes verbatim from the Egyptian Amenemope.Perhaps this indicates different operating definitions of inspiration?
The two are linked (as they are in other Second Temple literature) as two illustrations of God’s (eternal) judgment of sexual-related sin. The rub is whether one infers sex in v. 6 (the angels)–based on the Enochian reading of Gen 6–or if one does not see sex as part of the comparison.
At the end of the day, this is the important part, so I’m glad you affirm this. The divine participation in corrupting humanity–thus threatening God’s redemptive plan–is part and parcel with the biblical metanarrative, and broadens our understanding of what God was doing through the cross and resurrection. It raises our attention to the supernatural battle in which YHWH and his Messiah are engaged. The defeat of Satan and all other dark spiritual forces (not just our sin) was necessary for Christ’s own enthronement and revelation as King. Additionally (as I think I stated elsewhere) it is a polemic against the Babylonian view that divine interaction with humans–providing supernatural wisdom and advanced technology–was a good thing. No, says Genesis: this was a corruption of God’s design (noted beginning in Gen 3 with the grasp for wisdom that rightly belonged to the supernatural realm of [plural] 'elohim and to whom YHWH chooses to give it).
Agreed. This fits my understanding of inspiration, even when drawing on a non-inspired text.
I don’t know enough of the early patristic discussion to know what reasons finally kept the book out, since we do know that some big wigs treated it as Scripture, at least for a time. Perhaps with some Protestant bias, I might suggest that none of the Second Temple books made it in because the Hebrew canon (which is the same in content as our Protestant Old Testament) was already in place before the first century (confirmed by Jesus, Philo, and Josephus). (Only the early Ethiopian church adopted 1 Enoch into their canon.)
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OK it seems I got a lot wrong on that last one, but I still think I could be right about this one. Some translations definitely connect the events of Sodom and Gomorrah with the fallen angels while others suggest that it was the surrounding towns that were behaving “in a like manner”. Some examples…
English Standard Version
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Webster’s Bible Translation
Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to impurity, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
Weymouth New Testament
So also Sodom and Gomorrah–and the neighboring towns in the same manner–having been guilty of gross fornication and having gone astray in pursuit of unnatural vice, are now before us as a specimen of the fire of the Ages in the punishment which they are undergoing.
Here is a link to the interlinear… Jude 1:7 Interlinear: as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in like manner to these, having given themselves to whoredom, and gone after other flesh, have been set before -- an example, of fire age-during, justice suffering.
@jongarvey,
So how did they survive the flood?