A certain Zack Duncan posted an article titled Fallen Angels, Nephilim, and the Flood of Genesis 6 – What Second Temple Jews and the early Church believed about the Watchers on the BC Worldview site which self-IDs as consisting of, “Media Missionaries where Christianity and Culture collide. Providing honest reporting and analysis on the intersection of contemporary issues and theology, based on a Biblical Christian Worldview. We regularly discuss a broad range of contemporary topics in the areas of ethics, false theology, family, technology, megatrends, politics, freedoms, law, church, and eschatology.”
The issue of What Second Temple Jews and the early Church believed about the Watchers (with Watchers being a Second Temple Era (516 BC-70 AD) aka for Angels) has been an interest of mine even though I don’t think those BC texts inform us of any otherwise not previously recorded history, so only, indeed, only informs us of what they and the early Church believed.
On these issues, some of my relevant books are:
The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts
On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not?: A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim
In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch
The Paranormal in Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries: Over a Millennia’s Worth of Comments on Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Satan, the Devil, Demons, the Serpent and the Dragon
Zack Duncan begins by quoting half of that which I term the Gen 6 affair thusly:
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. [Genesis 6: 1–2]
He notes, “Jews at the time of Jesus generally understood the former as ordinary women belonging to the human race (Adam). They considered the male bene elohim to have a celestial, yet corrupted, nature. The term ‘bene elohim’ is also used to describe the divine council when the ‘sons of God’ assemble in Job 1:6 and Job 2:1.” Job 38:7, as one example, shows us that, “sons of God” can refer to non-human beings (which the LXX has as “Angeloi”: plural of “Angelos”) since they, at the very least, witnessed the creation of the Earth.
He points out, “this was the dominant view: fallen angels contributed to God’s judgement of the world in the Flood.” Indeed, the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days, was the Angel view as I proved in my book On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God book.
Zack Duncan notes that (particularly as per 1 Enoch, which is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah) has it that those Angels, “taught metallurgy for weapons-making to accelerate violence, the manufacture of cosmetics to increase vanity, and all manner of sorcery, divination, and occult knowledge.”
He continues by quoting the other relevant Gen 6 verse but first refers to, “giants, or Nephilim”:
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. [Genesis 6: 4]
Linguistically, he specifies:
The traditional linguistic view is from the Hebrew verb naphal, which means “to fall”…“ones who cause others to fall” or the “ones who fall on others.”
When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC (the Septuagint), Nephilim became gigantes. In the mythology of the Greeks, gigantes were not just large people. They were supernatural hybrids of gods and men, a good fit for the Hebrews translating the text….immense ancient figures…
Something not included is that gigantes means earth-born.
It’s not, “Nephilim became gigantes” but rather that the word Nephilim is being rendered (not translated) as gigantes.
Thus, we’re not told that Nephilim became, “large people…supernatural hybrids…immense” but that they’re said to have been earth-born. Yet, Duncan’s point is that, “large people…supernatural hybrids…immense” is being applied to them.
Well, this is linguistically and conceptually tricky since the Bible translated/rendered into Greek refers to the Septuagint/LXX yet, it uses gigantes to render Nephilim and also gibborim and also Rephaim.
Nephilim: the dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales. It’s a bit sloppy but we can go with that they were, “supernatural hybrids.”
Gibborim: this is merely a descriptive term for might/mighty and so isn’t an ontological reference to, “large people…supernatural hybrids…immense”: it’s applies to Angels, humans such as Gideon, Boaz, some of David’s soldiers, etc., and to God Himself.
Rephaim: “large…immense” are as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as giants. What we’re contextually told about them is that they, on average, were “tall” (Deut 2) subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days. There’s no indication that they were, “supernatural hybrids”: Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
Zack Duncan makes the interesting point that, “To many Second Temple Jews, mythology from other cultures was neither true nor fiction. It was a distorted record of the pre-flood world as told through the corrupted lens of the fallen Watchers.” Indeed, pre-Tower of Babel, humanity lived in relative proximity but thereafter we spread abroad taking with us what was then commonly known and shared history which, with time and telling (and aggrandized augmentation) became myth and legend.
He lists the Mesopotamian Apkallū characters amongst those with, “similar parallels to the bene elohim and Nephilim” but that is actually a huge issue that’s often watered down due to hyper-focusing on one of the various mythologies about them: see the appendix in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology
It’s also tricky to appeal to the Epic of Gilgamesh since the first issue to iron out is: which version of that epic. He notes, “Gilgamesh shows up the Book of Giants, fragments of which were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls…He is named as one of the pre-flood Nephilim who has nightmares of a coming divine judgment and flood.” This folklore doesn’t match reality since if Gilgamesh was a pre-flood Nephil then he didn’t survive it as he’s said to have done since God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. Also, we’re told five times who survived but Nephilim aren’t on those lists Gen 7:7, 23; Heb 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5.
When it comes to, “The Early Church on Watchers and Nephilim” it’s as I noted above: and I begin my book with a chart of who took which view during late BC and early AD days—circa a millennia’s worth of views.
Zack Duncan notes, “Peter and Jude both reference this belief found in Enoch through their New Testament writings” (although that seems hyperbolic) which I’ll break down to that Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined refer to a sin of Angels, place that sin to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin which occurred after the Angels, “left their first estate,” after which they were incarcerated, and there’s only a one-time fall/sin of Angels in the Bible.
Duncan notes:
For Christians who reject the fallen angel view of the bene elohim, there is an alternative perspective called the “Sethite view.”
This is the idea that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 were the righteous male descendants of Adam’s son Seth, while the “daughters of humans” were wicked female offspring from Cain. In this view, the Nephilim are not supernatural hybrids but are physically imposing and morally corrupt human rulers.
Critics of the “Sethite view” argue it doesn’t explain the supernatural language of the passages, but it does seem less “weird” and avoids the thorny issue of spiritual beings procreating with humans.
That view is a late-comer based on myth and prejudice. Note that it really teaches that, “righteous male descendants of Adam’s son Seth” weren’t really righteous since they were actually such terrible sinners that their sin served as the premise for the flood: so, that’s rather odd.
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