Ordained Lutheran pastor, Professor of Systematic Theology, Executive Director of Just and Sinner, and the President of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary Dr. Jordan B Cooper posted a video titled A Critique of Heiser’s Interpretation of the Nephilim which is undergoing review herein.
He has, “points of pushback” against his initial, in passing, reference to Heiser, one of which is, “that I did use the term demon in reference to the lower elohim whereas Michael Heiser restricts the term demon most particularly to those spirits of the Nephilim who are without homes so and they are looking for homes which is part of why demonic possession occurs.”
Since I wrote the paper Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons? I will succinctly state:
1) Heiser took that view due to picking up folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, running with it, and applying it (namely the pseudepigraphic texts Jubilees and 1 Enoch (which is Bible contradicting folklore, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch) and man-made Rabbinic traditions which followed therefrom).
2) My Bible-based elucidation is that demon is in reference to the physically incarcerated sinful Angels (Jude and 2 Peter 2) most particularly to their disembodied spirits who are without homes so and they are looking for homes which is part of why demonic possession occurs. That they are dead Nephilim was a good try but there is a more all-encompassing case to be made that they are the sinful Angels, in that round-about manner.
3) What Heiser further did is to make what I term a strictly linguistic argument by noting that 1 Enoch calls disembodied Nephilim spirits unclean spirits (or Jubilees’ unclean demons depending on translations), specifically, and so whenever we see the term unclean spirits in the New Testament we must read that as references to such. Yet, it is a strictly linguistic argument since it is detached from the context of the New Testament—which came along centuries after 1 Enoch (and Jubilees).
In linguistics, the usages (plural) of terms tends to me more relevant that the meanings (plural) or definitions (plural). Look up the etymology, definitions and meaning of the word bad but that will not tell you the usage of it within the Michael Jackson song Bad.
Cooper notes that Heiser, “uses a more restrictive sense of the word Angel because he believes Angel is more of a job description: he says the Seraphim, for example, are not Angels.” Well, Seraphim are not Angels because Seraphim are Seraphim and Angels are Angels. Some will dismiss that commonsense bifurcation by merely asserting that Seraphim are a kind of Angel but there is zero indication of any such thing and that is merely a man-made tradition.
Angels, Seraphim, and Cherubim are different categories of being:
1) they have different job titles, 2) they have different job functions, and 3) they have different morphologies.
To mash them all together is tantamount to claiming that bovines are a kind of human since both live on Earth, both have legs, both breath air, etc., etc., etc. It is a category error that violates the law of identity. See my books, What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology and What Does the Bible Say About Various Paranormal Entities? A Styled Paranormology.
Now, let us focus on when Cooper focuses on Heiser’s focus on Nephilim.
He notes, “your whole theology of who the demons are is now” referring to now having laid out Heiser’s view (and using demons to refer to unclean spirits), “dependent largely upon, I would say, a questionable interpretation of this,” Genesis 6:1-4, “text and” now referring to the Angel view, “it’s not the interpretation that I take and I don’t think it’s the best way to interpret this text.”
Here I will merely note that 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.
Cooper elucidates:
Genesis 6 verse 1, “Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God [בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים] saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose” and that’s kind of it. Like, if we have a little bit of description later, then goes on to say, “There were giants on earth in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old the men of renown.”
So, these figures that we call the Nephilim, that’s kind of the whole description that we get. Now, we can look at some other texts we can look outside of the Old Testament and look at some ancient Eastern texts and we look at Second Temple Jewish literature, the Enochic literature, which certainly does interpret this in that way, I think there’s no doubt about that.
Pardon the ongoing commercials but having written some dozen Nephilology books, and others on related topics, I have published on virtually all things that are being referenced. Thus, regarding, “texts we can look outside of the Old Testament…ancient Eastern texts…Second Temple Jewish literature,” see my books The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts as well as 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 and 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.
Cooper continues by noting, “But in terms of the what’s actually said in the text of the Book of Genesis, it is very little, there is very little there” indeed, which makes it all the more important that we handle the little we are told very carefully.
Moreover:
So, what do we see? That there are sons of God, daughters of men, sons of God see the daughters of men, that are beautiful, they’re taking them as wives and then they have children and these children are the Nephilim…So, the question then is: who are the sons of God and who are the daughters of men?
We actually have a number of interpretations of both parts of that so, Heiser’s interpretation is going to be the more supernatural one.
He notes, “there are a couple different ways that it could be interpreted supernaturally. One is that the sons of God are what we usually would think of as demons, being a kind of disembodied spirits, or that these are the fallen Angels. In this approach, they are disembodied and these disembodied spirits can somehow have sexual relations.” Well, biblically, it is not, nor can it be, the case that if it is demons or fallen Angels, proper (before incarceration), both denote disembodied spirits since Angels are not disembodied spirits rather, Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such is not their ontology.
For this reason, we know it cannot be the case that is outline by, “another view that says that there are spirits that are in these people so they’re kind of these divine human entities” as in that they were humans that were possessed since Angels cannot and do not possess humans and demons did not exist until the sinful Angels were incarcerated (by the way, Jude and Peter both tell us they were incarcerated but do not specify when yet, since the flood was when God was cleaning house, as it were, then that would have been the logical time).
Furthermore, Cooper notes:
…it doesn’t seem to be the case that procreation is possible for a spirit entity so we have, for example, Jesus talking about how the spirits in heaven, the Angels in heaven, they do not marry are not given in marriage. Now, it’s not explicit, He doesn’t say, by the way, they also can’t take physical form and have sex but, you know, sex and procreation kind of go together.
He really is not on point by continuing to assert that Angels, proper, are spirits. As for, Jesus, he got close to the point since Jesus was not, “talking about…the spirits in heaven” but about, as Cooper went on to say, “the Angels in heaven, they do not marry are not given in marriage” and that was Jesus’ qualifying term, “in heaven” ergo, the loyal ones, which is why those who did marry are considered sinners (having sinned a sin correlated to sexual sin by Jude) having, “left their first estate” in order to do so, as Jude put it.
As per above, it is not just a case of, “they also can’t take physical form” but that they would not because they cannot because they are already in human form, ontologically: Angels are always described as looking like human males, we were created, “a little lower” (Psalm 8:5) than them, and we can reproduce with them so, by definition, we are of the same basic “kind” and why, by the way, would they only be missing the key features of the male anatomy?
Yet, based on his un-biblical Angelology, Cooper wrongly concludes:
…it seems to be the most logical explanation, with what we see Jesus [stating: or, Cooper’s odd handling of what Jesus stated] that they probably don’t have the ability to reproduce and we know that the creation of the Angels, or the Angelic spirits, at least in a traditional sense.
So, all is that these spirits are all created at once, they don’t procreate like humans do that, you know, we procreate and make more. That’s part of the call of Adam, the unique call of Adam.
The Angels, instead, we’re all created in a state of innocence and then some of them make the choice to follow the devil. Others don’t make that choice near confirmed in righteousness.
That’s, at least, a traditional interpretation, okay, that’s my view, that’s the traditional systematic theological approach from Roman Catholic [and] Reformed Lutheran traditions.
So, now we see whence, in reality, this came from, “a,” one of, mind you, “traditional interpretation” referring to, “Roman Catholic [and] Reformed Lutheran traditions.” Thus, he referred to their late-dated man-made tradition as per the, “systematic theological approach” that derives therefrom, but as a systematic biblical paranormologist, I have been able to show how such traditions are not biblical.
Also, indeed, “these [non] spirits are all created at once, they” were not supposed to, “procreate like humans do” and they did not technically, “make more” since Angels did not make more Angels but made half-Angels and half-humans—they cannot make more 100% Angels since it seems that all Angels are male.
Moreover, Cooper goes on to say:
…Let’s look at some of Heiser’s reasons for…[opposing] the Sethite view…he says this has been the dominant Christian position since the late 4th century AD. In this approach, the sons of God…are merely human beings men from the line of Seth: Adam and Eve’s son, who was born after Cain murdered Abel.
Presumably, these four hidden verses describe, or, for, I don’t know why I said, ‘hidden’ it doesn’t say that, I don’t know what’s in my head, these four, these four verses [the Genesis 6 affair, as I term it, 6:1-4] describe, I don’t know, forbid an intermarriage between the Godly men of Seth’s lineage, or the sons of God, and the ungodly women of Cain’s line, for the daughters of humankind.
In this reading, everyone who lived on Earth ultimately came from these two lines and both of them lines descended from Adam and Eve’s children, both of their lines, or those lines. In this way, the bible distinguished the Godly from the ungodly.
Let us cut to the chase: the Sethite view is a late-comer of a view based on myth, prejudice, and which only creates more problems than it solves (so, more than zero). It is ungraceful, ungodly, and un-biblical to condemn an entire lineage, bloodline, genealogy as being ungodly based on one single sin committed by one member of that family (Cain) and two sins by another (Lamech). Likewise with the Sethites, why should we praise them as being Godly based on that some of them were Godly?
As Cooper put it, “from Augustine’s perspective, the sons of God who are mentioned in Genesis 6 are those who are coming from the line of Seth: they follow the faith of Seth…they’re doing things in faith…whereas those from the line of Cain are not operating in faith.”
Besides, on this views, the Sethites were clearly not so Godly after all since, after all, they were such terrible sinners that their sin served as the premise for the flood—besides which, it is merely presumed that there was any sort of, “forbid an intermarriage between the [supposedly] Godly men…and the [allegedly] ungodly women” even if centuries later, that was a command.
One may also ponder why only exclusively male Sethies with only exclusively female Cainites. Well, the Angel view elucidates why there’s such a gender binary distinction.
One more note on this point as Cooper went on to say that Heiser, “says the fourth century” is when the Sethite view took off, “he’s really talking about Augustine and it is true that there are a number of interpretations of this text in the pre-Augustinian era. So, when we’re talking about before Augustine’s City of God…”
It is actually hyperbolic to flatly assert, “there are a number of interpretations of this text in the pre-Augustinian era” since, again, t he original, traditional, and majority view was the Angel view and no other view, some mere two others, come even anywhere close to it—which I noted flatly as in laying them out on the same level—I actually began my book On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not? with a chart of who took which view which makes this point very simple to verify.
Interestingly enough, if we play arm-chair psychologist with Augustine we seem to discern why he opted against the original, traditional, and majority view. He converted to Christianity from the Gnostic Manichean cult and sought to rid himself of all things Manichean. Ergo, since Mani held to the Angel view, Augustine would not.
Cooper notes, “there is a divergence among the fathers on whether there’s a natural explanation for this or whether there’s a supernatural explanation for this. Now, what Augustine does is he makes the Sethite argument…” this goes to show what a wide range of time Cooper appeals to since by, “the fathers” he is spanning, at least, from Clement of Rome (35-99 AD) to Augustine (396-430 AD) and still, it is hyperbolic to assert a, “divergence” even if, as he puts it, “from Augustine onward that interpretation does become the predominant interpretation.”
Cooper notes, “the next born son, who is Seth, so after Abel is killed as seemingly the kind of godly promised one, God then provides Adam and Eve with Seth as the godly child” yet, that gives the wrong impression, since it is Sethite-view-biased because, after all, “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord’” (Gen 4:1). Thus, “those like Cain…are not sons of God” which is only accurate when only fixating on the one single sin of Cain’s about which we know.
He then focuses on
…where’s the Sethite view coming from, what is Heiser’s critique of this?
Okay well, he goes on to say…“part of the rationale for this view comes from Genesis 4:26 where, depending on the translation, we read that either Seth or humankind began to call on the name of the Lord. The line of Seth was to remain pure and separate from evil lineages. The marriage of Genesis 6:1-4 erased the separation and incurred the wrath of God in the flood.”
So, there’s supposed to be a separation those who call on the Lord and those who don’t
call on the Lord. Those who call on the Lord are those who are the related to Seth and those who don’t are related to Cain.
“Exposing the deficiencies of the Sethite view isn’t difficult, the position is deeply flawed”…
First point, “Genesis 4:26 never says that the only people who called on the name of the Lord were men from Seth’s lineage,” he goes on to say, “that idea is imposed on the text.”
All right, is that idea imposed on the text? Now, I was kind of shocked when I read this, I was actually a little surprised at how bad I thought his argumentation was on this point. So—I’ll say, in other points you know I think he makes a good case—here, I just don’t think this is this he’s really dealing with the reason why people come up with the Seth interpretation.
Augustine doesn’t have this interpretation based on nothing, he doesn’t just come up with this and say oh, yeah, I think Seth’s line was righteous and Cain’s wasn’t. He does get this from the text two ways, he gets it from the text. One is this, I think this is really important, is the question of what is the context in which the Book of Genesis is written and what is the purpose of the Book of Genesis.
Since he is now taking a bird’s eye view of the entire book, it is not surprising that that admits, “I recognize that we’re probably gonna have different answers to that question and our different answers to that question are going to guide how we interpret the text” besides that it will also, if not primarily, be based on the context of any given discussion since an anthropological answer will differ from a historical or scientific one or a linguistics one, etc.
Thus, Cooper will attempt to fill in the Sethite view’s gaps by picking out those bits of data that will appear to fill the myth and prejudice upon which it is based.
After 178 words, he gets to his answer:
If Moses is writing Genesis, and he is writing it in the context of the people of God being redeemed from the Egyptians, and the people of God really needing to have an identity, the people of Israel had been now been taken out by God through the power of, through the means of Moses, they’re in the wilderness, they’re wandering the wilderness for 40 years before they enter the promised land. So, the text is trying to define for them some really important key questions…
And we will jump ahead after his sermonizing so as to get to the point:
…some illustrations throughout the narratives of how they’re living in a certain way or not living in a certain way would fit into some patterns that we see even back here [Gen chaps 4-6]. So, what is the biggest danger that is repeated over and over and over again to the people of Israel when they are they’re about to enter into the promised land?
They are supposed to wipe out the Canaanites, they’re not supposed to live with the Canaanites: for what reason? Well, they’re repeatedly told that they are not to marry foreign women and then adopt their gods because they are going to fall into Pagan polytheism, they are going to worship the gods of those who they marry and that’s going to be the downfall of the nation of Israel. They’re going to fall into idolatry and it’s going to be through marriage.
If that’s the background it makes perfect sense contextually that Moses is going to include a story at the very beginning to say when everything got really bad and things got so bad that God sent, you know, this flood to wipe everything out, you know, what led to that is the intermarriage of those who were children of God with those who were of the other line, right, those who are separated from them those who are those who follow the Devil, that’s what led to the flood.
I suppose we are going to have to keep a keen eye on just where and when Gen chaps 4-6 (or anywhere else in the entire book or the whole of the Torah or the entire Tanakh) has Cainites as, “foreign” since they would have been offspring of siblings, and practitioners of, “Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil.”
Thus, to Cooper, “the Sethite view comes…from the context of Moses delivering it to the people of Israel and what would be most relevant to them and why is this detail being included” based on, keep in mind, “If that’s the background” then, “it makes perfect sense.”
And yet, even grating that background, that motivation, there’s still the matter of that the key features are missing.
Cooper then immediately jumps to:
Second part of this, where Heiser says that there’s, again, he says [partly quoting and partly paraphrasing], “This is the antithesis of exegesis, there’s nothing in the text that that talks at all about Seth’s lineage just being, like, the holy lineage and Cain’s lineage being not the holy one.”
Again, the entire point of this is God, is Moses is [based on “If,” you will recall] giving this to the people of Israel who are people of one specific lineage they are an ethnic lineage of Abraham.
and they are not to intermarry very specifically with people of other lineages because those other lineages are following false gods.
He directly stated, “so there’s a set up between one lineage and another in the context in which Moses is giving these words, it’s understood there, I think, to the first readers” but the question remains: why think that Cainites were, “following false gods”: “Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil”?
He continues thusly:
But it’s not just that, but it’s in the text itself, because what we have, you know, right after we have, okay, we’ve got Cain and Able right, we’ve got the murder of Abel, immediately after the murder of Abel in Genesis 4 verse 16, Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.
So, we have this imagery, and this is an imagery of sin and evil, and uncleanness, that there is a departure from God’s presence. So, Cain, after his evil, he is protected, we have the establishment of civil law that there are civil punishments the death penalty, essentially is what’s established here, but then he’s out of the presence of the Lord.
Who else is out of the presence of the Lord? His whole line.
That was a bit too quick so note how the protection came about, who protected Cain, “the Lord said to him, ‘…If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.’ And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him” and then, “Then Cain went away from the,” apparently physically manifested, “presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
It is incoherent to assert that since, “Cain went away from the presence of the Lord,” with the Lord’s special protection upon his very flesh ergo, anyone born in Nod was theologically and ethically, “following false gods…Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil”: that is the whole point about the level of prejudice upon which the Sethite view is premised.
An interestingly related point is that some personages in both lineages share the same names but rather than seeing that as a point of commonality, Cooper manipulates that towards his mythical ends since Cain, “has a wife, she conceived and bore Enoch and then, apart from the presence of the Lord, Enoch built a city [it was actually Cain] and I think it also was significant that we have, in the line of Seth, another Enoch: we’ve got, like, baddie Enoch and goody Enoch.” Thus, he just literally invented that prejudicial story and worse yet, he thinks he is offering up defeaters for Heiser’s view and critique of the Sethite view.
But in Cooper’s mind since, “Cain establishes the first city outside of the presence of God” it is tantamount to the land of the damned by definition and his evidence includes that one guy committed two sins—period full stop—since as I already noted, “through his genealogy we get Lamech” who, “takes for himself, in verse 19, two wives” and, “killed a man for wounding me even a young man for hurting me.”
So, again, we have a grand total of two men sinning once in the former case and twice in the latter case (assuming, “wounding me…hurting me” does not imply self-defense) and that is enough for Cooper to merely assert, “we have a genealogy of Cain, and the entire genealogy of Cain is around disobedience” which is simply unsupportable and shows the desperation of the Sethite view’s fundamental—as well as tragically ungraceful—faulty premise.
And he, himself, exposes this weakness even whilst seeking to support it by continuing by noting, “the whole point is Cain disobeyed God, he’s kicked out of the presence of God, then he’s got a bunch of kids which leads to Lamech who’s even worse than Cain. So, of course there’s a whole, like, genealogy of this, this line is bad.”
He might as well argue that Sethites were, “following false gods…Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil” since, after all, Adam disobeyed God, he’s kicked out of the presence of God, then he’s got a bunch of kids which leads to that only Noah is uniquely righteous in his generation so, of course there’s a whole, like, genealogy of this, this line is bad with one noted exception.
Gen 3 notes, “the Lord God sent him” Adam, and also Eve by implication, “out from the garden of Eden…He drove out the man…he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way.” Cooper noted, “Adam’s punishment is being removed from the [metaphorical] temple, the temple the place where God’s presence is so he’s exiled.”
Ergo, we may argue that since the parents of all living were driven away from the presence of God and can point to sins by their offspring then all lineages are practitioners of, “Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil” since all lineages came from them.
But wait, there’s more! Cooper continues with, “we’ve got this this evil line, Lamech becomes this embodiment of the seed of the serpent and so we’ve got the two seeds right there in the beginning of Genesis 3.” God help us if someone who is on record sinning once or twice is condemned as, “evil” and the, “embodiment of the seed of the serpent.”
So, to Cooper, any reference to, “seed” or any place wherein he can insert the word, “seed” correlate. Thus, “Israel is already thinking about seeds because of they’re thinking who are we uniquely and how are we not to be of the seed of the Canaanites…seeds of the serpent and the seed of the woman…seed being played out and Adam and Eve have two seeds one is good one is bad,” etc. Yet, in the case of the Canaanites, we have many statement to example the utter corruption of their culture as a whole (and continuing on like that for centuries) and we have one sin by Cain recorded but not one single word that calls for the hyper-hyperbolic incrimination of, “entire genealogy…whole, like, genealogy…evil line” who were, “following false gods…Pagan polytheism…who follow the Devil.”
Now, back to one of Heiser’s points, Cooper seeks to counter it by dancing around it, “‘Abel…to him also a son was born and he named him Enosh, then men began to call in the name of the Lord.’ So, you see, it doesn’t, it’s not just oh yeah, Seth called the name of the Lord, it’s, there’s a whole line of people that’s doing evil and then there’s a whole line of people from Seth that’s not doing evil, that’s doing the opposite calling on the name of the Lord.”
Interestingly, another of the Sethite view’s premise is that Sethites and Cainites interacted but when it comes to that, “men began to call in the name of the Lord” it is merely asserted that, “men” are only, solely, exclusively, only Sethites.
And, of course, let us not forget that another premise of the Sethite view is that Sethies were doing evil, that is the entire point, since they were so very evil that their evil served as the premise for the flood.
Cooper continues by arguing based on, “one might say” and, “maybe” stating, “Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. So, he’s walking with God and then he has sons and daughters. One might say that he was a son of god and maybe his sons were as well.”
Likewise, “there’s a good Lamech along with the bad Lamech and as, and this Lamech is the one who’s the father of Noah, by the way, okay? So, he’s the righteous one, the righteous line: we have only bad people singled out in Cain’s line and being out of the presence of God, in Seth’s line we have the people that are singled out are like Enoch who walks with God and who is such a picture of righteousness that he just departs straight into heaven and then through that line comes Noah.”
It is almost as if Cooper thinks that being righteous or not is based on lineage and yet, both lineages from Adam and Eve, both of whom sinned—and, again, the entire point of the story is that Sethites were not so righteous after all.
Thus, after making a case for which there is no data and force-fitting the data that we do have by hyperbolic means, Cooper is flummoxed, “I, honestly, I think, I don’t know how Heiser can come to this conclusion honestly, or portray this honestly, for him to just say it’s not supported by anything in the text, it’s the antithesis of exegesis…to just say oh, there’s nothing in the text that means that at all it’s so dismissive and just not honest with what the text says.” And yet, Cooper had to exaggerate the little bits of data he thought supported his view so as to come to a conclusion that he thinks is cogent ergo, there’s nothing in the text that means that at all.
Another of Heiser’s points is that, “there is no command in the text regarding marriages or any prohibition against marrying certain persons, there are no Jews and Gentiles at this time, and here’s where he’s got kind of a very wooden interpretation of the text” by appealing directly to it, by the way which is why Cooper was forced to fast-forward for many centuries post-flood to come up with commands against intermarriages.
Now, granted, one may say that there are also no command in the text regarding prohibitions against marrying Angels and yet, that would have been the point of the text, to emphasize that such occurred and it was condemnable.
Sure, we could then say that there are no command in the text regarding prohibitions against Sethites (only exclusively males, recall) marrying Cainites (only exclusively females, recall) and yet, that would have been the point of the text, to emphasize that such occurred and it was condemnable which may be fair enough but it all goes back to the fundamental, premise level, failure of the Sethite view: there’s no there, there.
He then goes back to, “If it’s true that the context is Moses is talking to the people specifically about how they are to be set apart…” and reiterates his tale until he gets to another of Heiser’s objections, “Nothing in genesis 6:1-4, or anywhere else in the Bible, identifies people who come from Seth’s lineage with the descriptive phrase sons of God. That connection is purely an assumption through which the story is filtered by those who hold the Sethite view.”
Cooper replies via a circumlocution, “The argument that’s going to be made for this interpretation is the particular phrase sons of God is used here and then in the Book of Job…[wherein] it is pretty clear that there are these kind of supernatural Angelic figures.” The most direct route to this would be Job 38:7 which shows us that sons of God (בְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים/ben Elyon) can refer to non-human beings (which the LXX has as ἄγγελοί/Angeloi, plural of Angelos).
He attempts to deal with this by appealing to, “different author, different context” referring to Genesis and Job. Ergo, “just because a phrase can be used in a certain way doesn’t mean it’s restricted to that use” which is an effective defeater for an argument no one has ever made. It is not a case of, a phrase can be used in a certain way so it’s restricted to that use but rather, a phrase can be used in a certain way so that use is being identified and applied—particularly due to the strictly male sons of God and the strictly female daughters of men.
That is an issue that comes up after he then trails off, as I will term it, about how, “the whole story of Adam is that Adam is a son of God” which pertains to another usage and/or application of that phrase which is a non-issue since it is undisputed and undisputable.
The next quote from Heiser is, “A close reading of genesis 6:1-4 makes it clear that the contrast is being created between two classes of individuals: one human and then one divine: sons of man [Cooper misstated what should have been “of God”] being a divine beings. When speaking of how humanity was multiplying on earth the text mentions only daughters quote, ‘the daughters are born unto them’ the point is not literally that every birth in the history of the earth after Cain and Abel resulted in a girl.”
Just as Cooper took umbrage at what he considered to be Heiser’s jejune critiques of the Sethite view, we here begin to see that Cooper does likewise with the Angel view as he, in a scatted manner, refers to, “the hypothesis that this these are supernatural beings is, well, it’s, it’s because now we have these kind of demonic entities, whatever they are, impregnating human women so that human women who can bear fourth children, are bearing, these, I don’t know, these, these, you know, monstrous things that are part human part man or, sorry, part human apart Elohim, or whatever, um, divine in some way.”
Well, it is not, “demonic entities, whatever they are” but Angels and not, “monstrous things” but, “men” (since humans, Angels, and Nephilim are all referred to as man/men).
At this point, he again traipses centuries, and even many millennia, into the future rather than sticking to the very exclusive statements in the text. He notes, “it specifically mentions daughters because that’s exactly going to be the temptation of the people of Israel, it’s going to be men marrying women” which implies that women marry men, “it’s going to be men marrying women who are Pagans” without indication Cainite women were Pagans, “and you know like this is even true today.” No one denies the inherent problems with marriages between (actual) believers and (actual) unbelievers so this is another non-issue.
He concludes, “it’s the man are enticed by these beautiful women and since they’re enticed by the beautiful women they can fall into the idolatry of the women” even though there is no indication that Cainite women were idolaters—he merely keeps inserting prejudicial mythology into the texts even if and when centuries later, “that’s what’s going on with the Israelites.”
Heiser is then quoted thusly “The Sethite hypothesis collapses under the weight of its own incoherence” about which Cooper asserts, “It’s just not true” after having had to make much ado about nothing and weaving anachronistic tall-tales. It is almost as if Cooper is saying that Moses made up stories, ethical tales, and called them history.
Interestingly, Cooper notes, “there are plenty of reasons to argue for the validity of the Sethite hypothesis” from the text (as he misreads it) and the history (which is questionable in terms of what Cooper might think Moses might have done), etc.
He also notes, “influences on me in terms of Old Testament theology…the most influential figures in my own my own views are Meredith Klein…and Augustine…my top…influences.” As for Klein’s view, Cooper notes, “I don’t agree with Klein’s interpretation here” and we have seen that Augustine had psychological reasons for opting against the original, traditional, and majority view.
In short, Klein’s view is that the Gen 6 affair, as I term it, is, “about human kingship…other ancient Eastern literature…most ancient cultures” viewed, “the leader is a son of the, of a divine being.”
Now, what is interesting here is that previously it was, “different author, different context,” but now, it is still, “different author, different context” from Genesis to, “other ancient Eastern literature…ancient cultures” among whom he lists Rome: be weary of the term “ancient” since ancient Rome is ancient to us, but it still came along millennia post-flood, post the Gen 6 affair timeline) but is now acceptable.
Klein’s view, as Cooper relays it is, “this is likely a kind of polygamous thing…sons of God is a phrase that refers to leaders which, it is a phrase that means, that at least in some instances in the ancient near Eastern literature.”
Before it was, “just because a phrase can be used in a certain way” within the canon, “doesn’t mean it’s restricted to that use” but now it is, just because a phrase can be used in a certain way, by other ancient Eastern literature by ancient cultures, means it’s restricted to that use—but not really since Cooper makes Klein’s point but also rejects it.
Yet, in order to also incorporate this into his own view, Cooper take the opportunity to exaggerate about bad Lamech, “this this kind of makes sense with what happens with Lamech…with Lamech we see this evil guy and he’s kind of a ruler, he’s got this lust for power, he’s like wanting revenge seven times, what Cain did, he founds a city: so Lamech is set up as this evil ruler figure and part of that usurping that authority is that he takes multiple women.”
Well, that is accurate when multiple means two, we have no indication that he built a city, nor that he was a ruler, nor lusted for power, and evil since he sinned once or twice (on record).
Let us also note that Cooper states, “I’m not convinced that, that would be the case either also Psalm 82…there is an argument to be made that the sons of the Most High that are mentioned there are actually kings” followed by the apparently obligatory, “depending on which interpretation of that text you take…there’s a debate about it…that’s a debatable text…Jesus interpretation…read some commentary on that,” etc.
The issue is that the Psalm refers to וּבְנֵי עֶלְיוֹן/ben Elyon (which is a form of בְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים/bene ha Elohim in Gen 6 and Job 38).
Yet, this gets complicated due to what I elucidated via a paper the tile of which speaks for itself, The Apocalypse of the Hidden Hand: The Bible’s teaching on the spiritual sovereign behind the human sovereign. Thus, it may not be a simple case of either or Angel/demon or King but both and the former empowering the latter.
In short, Cooper has not done anything to weaken the Angel view nor Heiser’s critique of the Sethite view but has done a lot to expose the weak framework upon which the Sethite view is based.
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