We continued, from part 1, part 2, considering the issue of the Nephilim via the 1879 AD book The Fallen Angels and the Heroes of Mythology, the Same with “The Sons Of God” And “The Mighty Men” of the Sixth Chapter of the First Book Of Moses (Dublin: Hodges, Foster, And Figgis, Publishers To The University, 1879 AD) by Rev. John Fleming, A.B. Incumbent of Ventry And Kildrum, Diocese of Ardfert; Rural Dean; and Irish Society’s Missionary.
Referring to someone who would doubt that the Bible does identify the sons of God as Angels, John Fleming writes:
But, were this person to be informed that the original expression, translated in our version “sons of God,” is universally admitted to designate angels in the only other places in the Hebrew Scriptures in which it occurs, he would feel himself called upon to take it in the same signification in Genesis vi.; and not only so, but in the fact of a union of this nature—the confounding of two distinct orders of creatures—and the consequent production of a mixed race, partly angelic, partly human-in this derangement of the divine plan he would probably discern a solution of the difficulty which had presented itself to his mind—a sufficient explanation of the cause which necessitated the almost total extermination of those who were then upon the earth.
Were he further to be informed, that no other view of the subject was prevalent generally—at least, amongst Christian theologians—until some three or four centuries had elapsed from the commencement of the Christian era, when it was exchanged for one which seemed to be more in harmony with certain erroneous practices and opinions then beginning widely to spread themselves in Christendom, he would have little doubt that “the sons of God” of Gen. vi. were inhabitants originally of another world than this, beings of a nature diverse from that of mankind…the term Nephilim (giants) the superhuman progeny to which the lawless desires of these angels gave birth—an interpretation which, as it appears to have been the earliest, was also that most generally received in the ancient synagogue and early Christian Church-one which is neither at variance with the usage of the Hebrew language….
the knowledge that this view was maintained by the ancient Jewish synagogue, by Hellenistic Jews at, and before, the time of our Saviour’s sojourn on earth, and by the greater number of the early Christian writers—may serve to give confirmation to his belief….
Not only does this interpretation appear to have been the first which suggested itself to readers of Gen. vi., as the natural and obvious meaning of our passage, but it was very anciently received both by Jews and Christians, no motive being fairly assignable for their adoption of it, except their belief that it was the true one. [PP. 7-8, 80, 133]
With reference to Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:11, the following is noted:
…the occurrence…relates involved the renouncing by a portion of God’s creatures of their original divinely—appointed station and destination—their voluntary descent to a lower sphere, for the purpose of forming with beings inferior to themselves alliances unbefitting their own higher nature, and inconsistent with the ordination of God—and, as the result of this, the forcing into the creation of a new and monstrous race, whose existence had not been intended by the Creator. In thus ascertaining the fact which the Holy Spirit has in this place recorded—the unlawful commingling of different classes of creature. [P. 9]
This is because Jude 6-7 states:
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
2 Peter 2:4 states:
For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. And spared not the old world, but saved Noah…
Note how Peter contextualizes the fall of Angels with the follow up of the flood.
The Codex Alexandrinus (in the British Museum) and three later MSS. are said to render Bne-ha-Elohim, in verse 2, by…angels of God. All other MSS. of this version, including the Vatican, are stated to have…sons of God, in this verse, as well as in verse 4 : and even the Codex Alexandrinus reads [Greek font for sons] in the latter verse. (See Kurtz, p. 1 2 ; Keil, p. 222.)…
Dr. Kurtz has remarked that in Job i. 6, ii. I, xxxviii. 7, Where the interpretation is not liable to be affected, as in Gen. vi. 2, by dogmatic prejudice, these translators have rendered Bne-Elohim by [Greek font for Angel] and here the MSS. all agree. He has also pointed out (what it is of high importance to observe) that all the MSS. of the Septuagint, which we possess, date from a period when the angel-interpretation had fallen into disrepute. [PP. 133-134]
John Fleming specifies that “It may be remarked that Eusebius adds, that of these angels ‘were begotten the giants, famous from old time’” (P. 134). Also, “in the case of Josephus, although he does not quote the words of our passage : and Suicer…remarks that the Latin version must, at least, in some copies, have read angeli Dei, as Augustine, Ambrose, and Procopius testify” (P. 134).
To further demonstrate how ingrained the original understanding of the Genesis 6 text was, it is noted:
…the angel-story was set forth, but with mythic embellishments, by the author of the Book of Enoch, as early, according to some, as 110 B.C., and, at all events, not later than some thirty years before the birth of Christ. Indeed, this appears to have been the view entertained by the ancient Jewish Synagogue….
As the taking of wives by the angels, and the devouring, on the part of their monstrous sons, are prominent features in the above legend, it will be admitted, perhaps even by those who regard the angel-story as fabulous or absurd, to be a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that the only matters of which our Lord has made special mention, when referring to the social condition of the world before the Flood, are that of eating and drinking, and that of marrying and giving in manage—things which, if not in some way abused, are not only lawful and in accordance with the ordination of the Creator, but even essential to the existence and perpetuation of the race. [PP. 29, 138]
The reference to “devouring” is due to the Book of Enoch’s chap 7 stating that the giants, “consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind.”
Speaking of apocryphal mythology, John Fleming references Samuel Roffey Maitland’s (1792-1866 AD) The Fallen Angels, p. 143:
“Every school-book of heathen mythology,” he says, “will tell him. Let him, for instance, turn to Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary, and he will find ‘GIANTS, the sons of Coelus and Terra, who, according to Hesiod, sprang from the blood of the wound which Coelus received from his son Saturn: while Hyginus calls them the sons of Tartarus and Terra.’ (Note A.)
The giants, it is notorious, were a mixed race, of an origin partly celestial, and partly terrestrial : and it will be obvious that, supposing the Seventy Interpreters [of the LXX/Septuagint] to have understood angels by Bne-Eiohim (which I have endeavoured to show they did), they could not have better expressed in Greek, that which they must have supposed the Hebrew word Nephilim to mean.” [PP. 134-135]
Also, William Whiston’s translation of The Testament of Reuben (Section 5, Part 1, pp. 294, &c.) is quoted thusly:
For, so did they deceive the Egregori, before the Flood : when, by seeing those women continually, they desired one the other : and they conceived in their mind what they would do, and they were transformed into the figures of men ; and when their husbands accompanied with them, they appeared to them at the same time : and these women, desiring their company, in their imaginations, bare giants : for, the Egregori appeared to them as reaching up to heaven. [P. 145]
John Gill’s (1697-1771 AD) Exposition of the Old Testament is quoted thusly:
Those sons of God were not angels, either good or bad, as many have thought, since they are incorporeal beings, and cannot be affected with fleshly lusts, or marry and be given in marriage, or generate and be generated, nor the sons of judges, magistrates, and great personages. [PP. 38-39]
Note that Gill is functioning based on a presupposition which seems faulty namely that Angels are incorporeal beings, etc. Yet, every time that Angels are described in the Bible, they look like human males, have no wings, no halos and appear to inhabit bodies that are that which we may term glorified: physical yet, not constrained to the three special dimensions plus time.
It is mere common knowledge that Angels are incorporeal and take on human bodies when interacting with us and common knowledge are those things that everyone knows even though no one knows how anyone knows.
Amongst the Fathers who ascribed corporality to angels, are Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Caesarius, Tertullian, and others. Caesarius (4th cent.) says,
“Angels art incorporeal, as compared with us : they have, however, bodies suited to their nature, of a substance resembling wind, flame, smoke, air-subtle bodies, not formed of suck gross matter as ours.”—(Dial. I., Interrog. 48.)
Methodius Patarensis (3rd cent.), in his book On the Resurrection of the Body, against Origen, remarks that the latter maintained that the resurrection body, which he called a spiritual one, will consist of an ethereal, or fire-like substance, like to that of the bodies of angels.
The Egyptian Macarius (4th cent.) in Hom. IV., p. 47, and Theognostus of Alexandria (3rd cent.), a friend of Origen, and of whose works an abstract has been preserved by Photius (Biblioth. Cod., C VI., p. 280) ascribe bodies to angels, but bodies of refined substance—[Greek font], corpora tenvia.
Tertullian’s view of the subject will be found above, at page 93. Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine appear to be undecided in opinion on this question; the former saying that the angel is “incorporeal, or as nearly so as possible”—Orat, xxxiv., p. 560—while Augustine, on the words, Qui facit ministros suos ignem ardentem, says, “It is doubtful whether we should understand by this a reference to the bodies of angels, or merely that the ministers of God should burn with Divine love.”—De Civ. Dei., XV., 23 [P. 188]
Along these lines we are also told:
We insert the following, one of the annotations to the Douay Bible, not only as being curious in itself, but as exhibiting the views of the Doctors of the College of Douay on this question : —
“Gen. vi. 4. And Giants were upon the earth in those dayes. For after the sonnes of God did companie with the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these be the mightie of the old world, famous men.”“Some have thought that these giants were not men, nor begotten by men, but that either divels, which fel at first from heaven, or other Angels allured with concupiscence begat them of the daughters of Cain. Philo Judeus, in his booke de Gigantibus writeth, that those whom Moyses here called Angels, the Philosophers called Genios, which are living creatures with ayrie bodies.
Josephus saith that Angels begat these giants. Tertullian also holdeth the same erroure, and divers more otherwise good Authours. But S. Ciril of Alexandria, S. Chrisostom, and other most principal Doctours teach it to be untrue, yea unpossible, that these giants should have been begotten by any other creatures then by men. For that angels and divels are mere spirits without al natural bodies. And if they had ayrie bodies (as they have not) yet they could not have such generation.” [P. 83 emphasis added for emphasis]
I, almost, fully agree with John Fleming’s statement, “We do not ourselves believe in the purely spiritual nature of angels : nor do we suppose that there is any being in the universe simply spiritual and immaterial save the One Infinite, who is above and beyond all time and space [P. 89].” I agree with this when it comes to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim and Ophanim but there are beings to which the Bible actually does refer as spirits: evil/wicked spirits, lying spirits, etc.
Philo of Alexandria aka Philo Judaeus (20 BC-50 AD) commented thusly in De Gigantibus, “Those whom other philosophers call demons, Moses is wont to call angels. They are souls…flitting through the air….Some of these (aerial beings) came down into human bodies, and could not separate themselves from them.”
John Fleming cites, “See Keil’s Der Fall der Engel, in Zeilsthrift fur die luth. Theol., 1856: and his Comm. on Pent. p. 132, n. I”:
Whitby (2 Pet. ii. 4) cites authorities to show that by Tartarus was sometimes understood the region of the air between earth and heaven, where not only heathen and Jews, but also Church Fathers, placed the abode of Demons (see§ XX.): but this is again to confound the angels of SS. Peter and Jude, with the [Greek for demons] and “the prince of the power of the air.” [P. 173]
Also:
“according to the prince of the power of the air ” (Eph. ii. 2 ), [Dr. Bloomfield] says, “Mede, Whitby, and Wetstein have shewn at large, that both the Jews and the Gentiles (especially of the Pythagorean sect) believed the air to be peopled with genii or spirits, under the governance of a chief, who there held his seat of empire.” [P. 163]
Moreover:
Athenagoras, in his Legatio pro Christianis, written about A.D. 177, having remarked that angels like men were created free agents, and that some of them continued in the state divinely appointed them, while others departed from it, says of some of the latter: “These fell into impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by the flesh, and he became negligent and wicked in the management of the things entrusted to him. Of these lovers of virgins, therefore, were begotten those who are called giants; And if something has been said by the poets, too, about the giants, be not surprised at this : ” &c., &c. In the following chapter (xxv.) he continues :
“These angels, then, who have fallen from heaven, and haunt the air, and the earth, and are no longer able to rise to heavenly things, and the souls of the giants, which are the demons who wander about the world, perform actions similar, the one (that is the demons) to the natures they have received, the other (that is the angels) to the appetites they have indulged.”—Writings of Justin Martyr and Athenagoras, as above, pp. 406-7 [P. 148]
Moreover:
The Jewish interpretation of our passage appears for the first time…in the Targum of Onkelos, in which Bne-ha-Elohim is rendered [Hebrew font] “sons of the great.” It is believed, indeed, by some, that the Targum called by the name of Onkelos cannot lay claim, at least in its present shape, to a higher antiquity than the end of the third, or beginning of the fourth, century…
Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai (2nd cent.), a disciple of Akibha, may be named as a supporter of this interpretation. [Franz] Delitzsch says, on the authority of Bereschith Rabba, that he translated Bne-ha-Elohim, [Hebrew font], the term, it may be remarked, which Onkelos employs, Deut. xix. 17, as the rendering of the Hebrew shophetim, judges. About the same time flourished, also, the two Hellenistic Jews, Aquila and Symmachus, of whom at least the latter adopts the filii-magnatum interpretation….The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel (Gen. vi. 1-4), from the Chaldee. By J. W. Etheridge, M.A., Translator of the New Testament from the Peschito Syriac.—London. 1862. And Noach was a son of five hundred years, and Noach begat Shem, Cham, and Japheth. And it was when the sons of men had begun to multiply upon the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of the mighty saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, and took to them wives of all whom they pleased. And the Lord said, This evil generation shall not stand before me for ever, because they are flesh, and their works are evil. A term (or length) will I give them, an hundred and twenty years, if they may be converted. Giants were in the earth in those days : and also when, after that the sons of the mighty had gone in unto the daughters of men, there were born from them giants who from of old were men of name. And it was when the sons of men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and fair daughters were born to them ; and the sons of the great saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and painted, and curled, walking with revelation of the flesh, and with imaginations of wickedness : that they took them wives of all who pleased them. And the Lord said by his Word, All the generations of the wicked which are to arise shall not be purged after the order of the judgments of the generation of the Deluge, which shall be destroyed and exterminated from the midst of the world. Have I not imparted my Holy Spirit to them (or, placed my Holy Spirit in them), that they may work good works? and behold their works are wicked. Behold, I will give them a prolongment of a hundred and twenty years, that they may work repentance, and not perish.
Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days : and also, after the sons of the great had gone in with the daughters of men, they bare to them : and these are they who are called men who are of the world (Gibreen demealma) men of names. [PP. 25, 181-182]
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