The Kebra Nagast is a collection of Ethiopian Biblical folklore that was put into to writing in the fourteenth century AD based on Ethiopian oral traditions of the Queen of Sheba, her state marriage with King Solomon, and their son Menyelek aka Bayna-Lehkem aka David II (this version was translated by E.A.W. Budge in 1922 AD).
Section 100 of Kebra Nagast is titled “Concerning the Angels Who Rebelled” which refers to “were certain angels with whom God was wroth” who “reviled Adam” because God had given him charge to subdue the Earth and “He hath fashioned him with His fingers, and He hath created him in His own image, and He hath kissed him and breathed upon him the spirit of life; and He saith unto him, ‘My son, My firstborn, My beloved.’”
Thus, we see a basic envy set up. They also complain that even though “He hath set him in a garden to eat and enjoy himself without sickness or suffering, and without toil or labour, but He hath commanded him not to eat from one tree” nevertheless “Adam hath transgressed.” They then want to declare the sin of Adam to God and state “we have reviled Adam because he hath transgressed Thy commandment.”
God notes to the Angles, “You have I created out of fire and air with the one intent [that ye should] praise [Me]. Him have I created of twice as many elements as you—of dust and water, and of wind and fire; and he became [a being] of flesh and blood. And in him are ten thoughts (or, intentions), five good, and five bad.”
That Angles are created out of fire and air may betray some Islamic influence which has Jinn/Djinn being created from a mixture of fire and/or smokeless fire.
God refers to “the Devil” as “that arrogant one who produced evil, and became an evil being” who “was driven forth from your assembly” for apparently similar envious reasons as God asks the Angels, “And now, why do ye magnify yourselves over Adam?”
The Angels affirm “We will not transgress Thy commandment, and we will not oppose Thy word…And when they had vaunted themselves in this manner God, the Lover of men, said unto them, ‘If now ye go astray so far as this in transgressing My word, the wrong will be upon your own heads, [for] Jahannam (or, hell), and fire, and sulphur, and fervent heat, and whirlwind shall be your habitation until the Great Day: ye shall be kept in chains which can neither be loosened nor broken for ever. But if ye keep truly My word, and ye do My commandment, ye shall sit upon My right hand and upon My left.’”
He adds that “Satan hath no power whatsoever, for he hath only what he maketh to germinate in the mind…he can only make thoughts to germinate silently in the mind.” And then a telling statement, “And to you, according to what ye wish, there shall be upon you the mind of a man and the body of a man” and indeed, biblically Angles look like human males (no wings, no halos) and God warns them not to “defile not ye yourselves with…fornication” amongst other things.
Well, they were given “flesh, and blood, and a heart of the children of men. And they were content to leave the height of heaven, and they came down to earth, to the folly of the dancing of the children of Cain with all their work of the artisan, which they had made in the folly of their fornication.”
And the daughters of the children of Cain “enjoyed the” well certain carnal activities “without shame, for they scented themselves” and “they lost the balance in their minds.”
And we now come to wherein the Kebra Nagast directly touches upon the Genesis 6 affair. At this point the text refers to the fallen Angels as “the men” who “did not restrain themselves for a moment, but they took to wife from among the women those whom they had chosen, and committed sin with them.” With the problem being elucidated as that “God hath no resting-place in the hearts of the arrogant and those who revile.”
Now, the Kebra Nagast taps into Jude and 2 Peter 2 in adding therefrom that “straightway God was wroth with them, and He bound them in the terror of Sheôl until the day of redemption, as the Apostle saith, ‘He treated His angels with severity. He spared them not, but made them to dwell in a state of judgement, and they were fettered until the Great Day.’”
It also quotes Genesis 6:3 with an additional statement, “My spirit shall only rest on them for one hundred and twenty years, and I will destroy them with the waters of the Flood.”
The Kebra Nagast is interesting as it does not take a sons of God as Sethites and daughters of men as Cainites view but a sons of God as Angels and daughters of men as Cainites view. Biblically, the sons of God are Angels but we are not specifically told that the daughters of men are Cainites.
In any case, “the daughters of Cain with whom the angels had companied conceived, but they were unable to bring forth their children, and they died. And of the children who were in their wombs some died, and some came forth; having split open the bellies of their mothers they came forth by their navels”—so an Aliens movie-like chest burst!
But why? Apparently, they were big babies as the text continues directly with that “when they were grown up and reached man’s estate they became giants, whose height reached unto the clouds.”
As I noted here, some ancient texts (and more recent ones such as the Kebra Nagast) speak of giants who are so tall that they would be unable to move, if they attempted to take a step their bones would shatter. In fact, they would be unable to simply stay alive as the caloric requirements for just the basal metabolic rate (the basic body’s functions without even taking into consideration the caloric requirements and expenditure involved in moving) would be such that armies of people would do nothing all day but feed them and then they would merely lay there all day.
God then speaks to Noah about how to survive the flood which is “Make thyself a four-sided ark…make for it three storeys inside.”
At this point we reach the sermonizing portion of the text as it discusses why God had Noah build a wooden ark rather than saving he and his otherwise, “God was well pleased that by means of wood which had been sanctified the salvation of His creation should take place, that is to say, the ark and the wood of the Cross” the ark is also likened to “the Tabernacle of the Church; and when He said unto him, ‘Make it foursided,’ He showed that the Sign of the Cross was fourfold,” etc.
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