The Chick Tracts Official YouTube Channel posted a video titled Sons of God or Angels? – Genesis 6 the premise of which is the receipt of an email asking:
I watched your video on the giants of Genesis 6, and for a long time I agreed with you. But this note in my study Bible seems to prove the common teaching. Thanks!
The speaker on the vid, a certain David W. Daniels, noted:
And this is the page he showed me:
At Genesis 6:2 it says, “The identity of these ‘sons of God’ has been a matter of much discussion, but the obvious meaning is that they were angelic beings.”
Then he says, “This was the uniform interpretation of the ancient Jews, who translated the phrase as ‘angels of God’ in their Septuagint translation of the Old Testament.”
Next, he says, “The apocryphal books of Enoch elaborate this interpretation…”
So, I have four questions: 1. Is the obvious meaning that they were “angelic beings”?
2. Was this the uniform interpretation of the ancient Jews?
3. Did they translate “sons of God” as “angels of God” in the Septuagint?
And 4. What about the apocryphal books and this part of the story of Genesis 6?
He decided to begin his traipse through history with, “Origen from about 230-250 AD…Genesis 6:2 in Origen’s Hexapla…in Latin it says the sons of God are “Sethites,” and the daughters of man are ‘Cainites.’” He then notes, “Origen didn’t write that, because it’s in Latin, but note that it’s not a new teaching, either” so, wait, why appeal to Origen only to not quote him? Stand by.
He then moves on to, “Aquila, 120-130 [AD]” then, “Symmachus, 175-200” and then, “Theodotion. Again, 175-200 [AD]” who all say, “‘sons’/‘huioi” well, okay, of course they would, why wouldn’t they? Well, he is arguing that the uniform interpretation was sons of God and not Angels of God but that is just question begging since we still need to know who the sons of God were: that’s what’s at question.
David W. Daniels then notes:
Then there is a Latin note. It says, ‘another example,’ ‘alia exemplum,’ is ‘hoi angeloi,’ ‘the angels.’ But those words are Latin, not Greek, so they were not written by Origen.
Let’s look at the footnote for this in my copy of Origen’s Hexapla…it says that ‘Angels of God’ is in the margin of the Syrian Hexapla, 600s AD.
And it’s in ‘certain copies,’ according to Cyril of Alexandria in the 400s AD.
And Procopius wrote that apostates wrote these words, he was around 400s-500s AD.
So, the Septuagint doesn’t say ‘angels of God.’
Correct, the LXX says sons of God (υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ) just as does the Hebrew as he continued:
And look: even the Hebrew, according to Origen…says “b’nei ha Elohim,” “sons of God.”
But wait! Alexandrinus says “angels of God”!
And that’s apparently because the manuscript Alexandrinus, “erases everything that’s there, so you can’t recognize it, and then writes on top of it” as Daniels put it, “And that’s where you got the ‘angeloi.’”
As noted above, his surface level question begging conclusion is, “It was most likely [emphasis added for emphasis: since he’s guessing] what almost every other text everywhere in Greek, and Hebrew, says: ‘sons of God.’ So, ‘sons’ looks like the ‘uniform interpretation,’ not ‘angels.’”
He then speak on, “what they [1 Enoch and Jasher] say caused the flood” but that’s irrelevant to me since 1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch. Also, Jasher is just a modern-day hoaxed fraud, see my book, The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
David W. Daniels notes, “Enoch does say, ‘angels’ and makes up a detailed fantasy”: just a technical note, it doesn’t employ the term Angel but rather, Watcher which is just a Second Temple Era aka for Angels.
He also noted, “But Jasher, supposedly just as ancient, merely says the people were corrupt, made idols, and their judges grabbed men’s daughters and married them. No mention of Nephilim or angels.” The fact that it ops for a non-Angel view is one of many reasons to know it’s not legit: not the lost text mentioned in the Bible.
He then asserts, “It was not the uniform interpretation of ancient Jews that the sons of God were angels” but expecting one single, “uniform” view is an unreasonable expectation. What is a fact is that nothing comes even close to being as uniform as the Angel view since 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: Angels or Not?: A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim.
David W. Daniels also asserted, “The Septuagint did NOT translate ‘sons of God’ as ‘angels of God’” well, not in Gen 6. Yet, Job 38:7, as one example, shows us that “sons of God” can refer to non-human beings since they, at the very least, witnessed the creation of the Earth: and the LXX does have them as, Angeloi/ἄγγελοί: plural of Angelos.
Ultimately, his bottom-line conclusion is, “I’m just gonna stick with what I know…I know I can trust my King James Bible.” Also, “I don’t need outside, uninspired revelation, to look for simple patterns in God’s words” which is why he needs to, at least, look for the patters followed by Jude and 2 Peter 2 since they, 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.
So, if the Gen 6 affair isn’t that sin, we don’t know what the sin was. And such is part of why some invent a primordial gap since they reject the Angel view but don’t know where to put that sin.
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