The Nephilim

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Scott Bushey

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What position do you take on Gen 6:2?

If you take the view that these Nephilim were actual angels and not just men of Seth, do you think it was sinful for angels to mate w/ humankind given that it goes against the creation ordinance, i.e. 'be fruitful and multiply'?
 
Gen 6:1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, Gen 6:2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Gen 6:3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." Gen 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Gen 6:5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Gen 6:6 And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Gen 6:7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them."

What position do you take on Gen 6:2?

The sons of God were children of covenant parents who loved the Lord (line of Seth - Gen. 5)
The daughters of man were children of unbelievers (line of Cain - Gn. 4).

Same thing as warned about in Proverbs/Ephesians/etc. Covenant children were attracted to pagans not because of one's character but because of the 'daughters of men' were physically attractive and so they married them (intermarrying - NOT marrying those who are "in the Lord"; i.e. a Christian marrying a non-Christian).
 
Andrew,
I held to the Sethite view as well; however, after reading some of the Book of Enoch and how Jude cites from this writing, it would seem as if that lends some respectable credence to the angelic view given that Jude is inspired.

Thoughts?
 
How can an angel procreate? Even if they used human bodies (possessed them) how would that create something other than what would have been procreated naturally anyways? To say otherwise would give the fallen angels power that God alone has.
 
Jude v.6 is talking about the reprobate angels abandoning their proper place in Heaven through their prideful attempt to "be like God" and take His throne, which wasn't their place.

Any other explanation than the Sethite one has to explain how angels who were not created to pro-create, and don't need to, had the parts in order to have relations with women. I suppose it could be argued that these essentially spiritual beings can appear as men, with male parts.

Also, the Sethite interpretation serves as an explanation of the fact that there was eventually only one godly family left, and gives therefore, also, a lesson on not marrying unbelievers.

Moreover, it seems that terrible bloodshed and offense against the image of God and the Sixth Commandment was the order of the day ( Gen. 6:11) in that that particular sin is noted. The Lord gave man the authority and command to take the life of the murderer after the Flood ( Genesis 9) in order to restrain this. The mention of giants and mighty men of fame would then serve as part of the introduction/ explanation of the violence, if the inhabited earth was divided up between these competing warlords.

One question I have is, Is Moses saying in verse four that stories of these Nephilim and men of fame somehow survived the Flood, and do we have any such pre-Flood stories/legends extant today in the ancient literature? Any suggestions on this? Do we have (some) of these stories, or do we have them in legendary form?

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Andrew,
I held to the Sethite view as well; however, after reading some of the Book of Enoch and how Jude cites from this writing, it would seem as if that lends some respectable credence to the angelic view given that Jude is inspired.

Thoughts?

I would say the book of Enoch has no authority over how we interpret Scripture because we interpret Scripture with Scripture.
 
There may be elements of truth mixed with error in the Book of Enoch, and Jude was only citing the truth as the Holy Spirit taught him. Moreover, do we know that Jude was referencing Enoch at all but that God had shown Jude these things without Enoch?

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Andrew,
I was not implying that we use a non canonical book to validate scripture but that there is some credence to the historical data that the B of E provides as Jude thought it respectable in that light as he quotes from it.

Richard, I agree and thats my premise as well....it would be uncanny, but not impossible that God showed Enoch this in a vision, no doubt; but that he cites Enoch, in my opinion, lends more credence to the book itself.

From the B of E:

'121 Before these things Enoch was hidden, and no one of the children of men knew where he was hidden, and where he abode, and what had become of him. 2 And his activities had to do with the Watchers, and his days were with the holy ones.
3 And I Enoch was blessing the Lord of majesty and the King of the ages, and lo! the Watchers called me—Enoch the scribe—and said to me: 4 ‘Enoch, thou scribe of righteousness, go, †declare† to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as the children of earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives:'

Robert Henry Charles, ed., Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 195–196.

Jude:

6 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.

14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, 15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Jud 14–15.
 
I have always held the view that demons possessed humans in Gen 6 to intermarry with the chosen line, thus endangering the promised seed. In my view, this is the only view that makes sense. It avoids the problem of whether angels can mate with humans (which I think is ridiculous), but it also allows Jude (and 1 Peter 3!) to have their full weight as favoring demonic involvement.
 
It makes sense that fallen angels/demons could posses humans, and that maintains the gist of Enoch. But if manna is angel's food, and bread from heaven, can we rule out that angels cross over into our dimensions in ways we don't know about? Abraham fed them and they ate the food he gave them, They can eat our food. Good angels can appear as men. Can fallen angels take on bodily form as well, even so far as to impregnate women? I don't know, but I am hesitant to say it is impossible. Maybe something about the preflood world relating to fallen angels was different than after, and they no longer are able to do so. People lived to be 800, 900 years, and so human life itself was vastly different. We can only speculate.
 
I have always held the view that demons possessed humans in Gen 6 to intermarry with the chosen line, thus endangering the promised seed. In my view, this is the only view that makes sense. It avoids the problem of whether angels can mate with humans (which I think is ridiculous), but it also allows Jude (and 1 Peter 3!) to have their full weight as favoring demonic involvement.

So in your opinion can this happen today? Also did the "demon" pass on some type of extraordinary stuff by the possession and procreation? I ask because I would look for another view if I were you. :)
 
"I would say the book of Enoch has no authority over how we interpret Scripture because we interpret Scripture with Scripture"

Solid scholarship often considers outside texts for any words or phrases that are difficult to interpret within the Biblical text. Examples include using Josephus to understand the persecution noted in the epistles. The apacrypha is used enough by scholars like G. Vos that you need to know the abbreviations for these extrabiblical works in some editions of his work. This by NO means elevates an outside text to a Biblical text. That's one of the reasons the defining of the Nephilim is debated -- we don't have a definitive answer in scripures and outside sources are tenuous at best.
 
Romans922 (Elder Barnes) alluded to the following in his first and early response in the thread, but please let me elaborate.

Why is this item (Gen.6:2-4) even in the text? Surely, there's more here in the narrative of the people God is saving for himself by his mighty acts than a footnote of historical trivia, something to make the pre-flood era exotic, right?

But first, note there's no causative relation established in the text between the "sons of God" and the giants/Nephilim. All the text establishes is that both a) the relations between "sons" and "daughters," and b) the existence of giants/Nephilim, are concurrent.

And, we are alerted to what sounds like carry-over into the age after the flood; the giants are not unknown in the present world. Or... because of a built-in ambiguity in the word "erets" (the word can refer to land in anything from the widest sense to the narrowest), might there be a present interest in the fact of Nephilim? Consider Num.13:33, "There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

There are two connections in this passage between what was going on in the pre-flood world, and what was taking place in the present--that is, in the days of Israel coming out of Egypt, when this text is given in the form that we now know it. The first is the persistent problem of intermarriage with idolatrous neighbors. The second is the presence of Nephilim in the land (erets).

Moses paints a picture of the pre-flood world and its problems, which leads to destruction of the world-that-was (2Pet.3:6), a picture that is analogous to Israel's present moment, resonant, relational.

As far as I can see, the one linguistic connection between "sons of God" and angels comes in Job 1:6 & 2:1 (and 38:7), where we observe what presumably are angels (undifferentiated?) presenting themselves before God. There we also find Satan come in before the Lord. But note here that a quite natural reading of the passage separates Satan from these "sons of God;" he is said to come also. So, is it natural (on the basis of 38:7) to say that angels both unfallen and fallen are properly designated "sons of God?" 38:7 points to a time before rebellion in heaven (Rev.12:7).

What is proposed, on the basis of the theory of angelic/human interspecies sexual relations (something out of star-trek, It seems to me), or even demonic possession theory--is that a name of glory, sons of God, is put upon the evilest of personalities whose aim is to destroy the work of God and overthrow his intent to save. May I put it mildly? This is a very curious expectation from reading the text or having it read to the hearing.

It is far more natural a reading--given the immediate background of two separate genealogies: the first of an ungodly sort; the second of the godly--that those who were constituted adopted sons, even Israel's new self-awareness (see Is.43:6; cf. 2Cor.6:18), that they should identify the "sons of God" with the godly heritage of Seth (also adopted), over against those whose identity was purely of the earth (1Cor.15:47) and of mankind in general condemned to sink forever back into the dust from which he was raised.

In short, the notion of angelic-human interbreeding is quite speculative. It certainly seems to contradict a very clear teaching of our Lord on marriage and the nature of angels, Mt.22:30, forcing an attenuated sense upon one Scripture or another for harmonious interpretation. Whereas, the warning connection between the times past and present (to the Exodus), and the connection to the immediate context require no gymnastics, neither contextual reach to the book of Job.
 
To confirm Rev. Buchanan's exegesis, (1) There is nothing in the contextual use of the word Nephilim to suggest the individuals possessed super-human qualities. The word might be used in the same way the word "Spartan" was used to describe a military people. (2) The Nephilim are already in existence before the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men. "After that" refers to a time following the period when the Nephilim are in the earth. (3) The word "became" is in italics as an attempt to fill out the contextual tense in which the pronoun is used. The Hebrew can naturally be read as simply explaining what had been brought forth as a result of the union with the daughters of men -- "they were mighty men which were of old, men of renown." There is no reason to take this as referring to the Nephilim. (5) The Nephilim, together with the fact that the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, together with the fact that the offspring of the sons of God became men of renown like Cain and Lamech, are all part of the picture of wickedness at the time. There is no reason to make an identification between the Nephilim and the offspring of the sons of God. (6) The sons of God are pointed out in the previous chapter as the line of believers who sprung from Adam's likeness as one made in the likeness of God, and who called on the name of the Lord. Luke 3:38 interprets this as meaning that Adam was the Son of God.
 
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I disagree in part. If you hold to a Sethite view, you will read the text like I did prior to my most recent studies on the subject-which in part is presuppositional.

6 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 6.


Sons of God: is used in the OT to refer to heavenly beings; in the NT, the people of God.


Job 1:6

6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Job 1:6.


Job 38:7

7 When the morning stars sang together,

And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

The Holy Bible: King James Version
, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Job 38:7.

'The “angel” interpretation is at once the oldest view and that of most modern commentators. It is assumed in the earliest Jewish exegesis (e.g., the books of 1 Enoch 6:2ff; Jubilees 5:1), LXX, Philo De Gigant 2:358), Josephus (Ant. 1.31) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen 2:1; CD 2:17–19). The NT (2 Pet 2:4, Jude 6, 7) and the earliest Christian writers (e.g., Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen) also take this line.'
 
Sons of God: is used in the OT to refer to heavenly beings; in the NT, the people of God.

The people of God are called His sons and His children in the Old Testament.

There are contextual reasons for understanding "sons of God" as referring to the heavenly court in Job, all of which are absent from the narrative in Genesis.

Moreover the Job narrative presents Satan as insinuating himself with the sons of God as if he were not to be numbered among them.
 
MW posted while I was typing away; my comments shouldn't detract from his.

Scott,
You're putting much to close a demand on the exact term "sons of God," treating it like a technical term, and also borrowing from a later and prosaic/poetic text (Job) to force a meaning on it in the earlier.

The precise timing of the lives of the characters in Job (patriarchal setting) tells us literally nothing about when it was written, and we certainly are not free to ascribe its origin to that age, or that Israel had possession of it; any more than we should think Shakespeare must have been a contemporary of Julius Caesar. We are forced to first consider the local context of the book; and then to note what later authors say when speaking not only in an exact parallel of language, but also similar language.

You pay scant attention to any distinction in Job between those who present themselves before God in chs.1&2, and on one hand the harmony of an unfallen chorus in Job 38:7, and on the other hand the presence of a single figure in chs.1&2 (Satan) who attends the audience of the sons of God, who is clearly not one of them (those texts say the sons of God, and also Satan). There is very little in Job 1&2 that indicates the general presence of both angels and demons before God.

Plus, if there is already an OT literary context prior to Job the literary creation, then "sons of God" in Job is actually informed BY earlier literary references of the same idea. On that rule, it is just as likely to suppose the "sons of God" in Job 1&2 refer to all, both angels and men (!) who enjoy the beatific vision. Ch.38 would involve only the restriction of the language brought on by temporal order to those angelic beings (all then unfallen) who rejoiced to see the universe brought to life.

There are numerous texts in the OT that refer to God's people as his sons. Hear where he says "Thus saith Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: Ask me of the things that are to come; concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me." Is.45:11; cf.Is.63:16; 64:8. Also Hos.11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." Ex.4:22-23, "Israel is my son.... Let my son go." 1Chron.17:13, "I will be his father, and he shall be my son," N.B. 22:10; 28:6. Ps.2:7,12. Ps.82:6.

Consider Deut. 14:1, "Ye are the children [literally, sons] of Jehovah your God." That's as plain as you could possibly want it. It is absurd to say that "sons of God" in reference to believers or saints is a NT idea.

Please rethink.
 
Bruce,
I am not saying that the term 'sons of God' is a NT idea-I never said that. I did say, however that the term 'sons of God' is only used in the OT 5 times and that being, in my opinion, to refer to spiritual beings the majority of the time, depending on your view.

I addressed Job 38:7. I believe these S of G are the heavenly host, not the local church singing.

Poole:
1. These stars are not here the objects or matter, but the authors or instruments, of God’s praises for the founding of the earth. 2. The stars were not created when the earth was founded, but upon the fourth day. 3. There is no satisfactory reason given why all the stars should be called morning stars, especially when there is but one star known by that name. Or rather, 2. The sons of God, as it here follows, the latter clause of the verse being explicatory of the former, as is most frequent in this and some other books of Scripture, to wit, the angels, who may well be called stars, as even men of eminent note, and particularly ministers of God’s word, are called, Dan. 8:10; 12:3; Rev. 1:16, 20; and morning stars, because of their excellent lustre and glory, for which they are called angels of light, 2 Cor. 11:14, and Christ for the same reason is called the Morning Star, Rev. 22:16. The sons of God; the blessed angels; for man not being yet made, God had then no other sons; and these are called the sons of God, partly because they had their whole being from him, and partly because they were made partakers of his Divine and glorious image. And all these are said to join in this work of praising God, probably because none of the angels were as yet fallen from their first estate, though they did fall within a very little time after.

Job 2;1
There was a day, i. e. a certain time appointed by God. The sons of God, i. e. the holy angels, so called Job 38:7; Dan. 3:25, 28, because of their creation by God, as Adam also was, Luke 3:38, and for their great resemblance of him in power, and dignity, and holiness, and for their filial affection and obedience to him. Before the Lord, i. e. before his throne, to receive his commands, and to give him an account of their negociations.

Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 1 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 922.

Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 1 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 1018.

In regard to the Deut citation, I am not addressing the cognates. Thats a whole nother chapter....

I have taken into consideration all the obvious citations; I believe one is harder pressed to hold to a Sethite view than an angelic one at this point.
 
I am not addressing the cognates
What could you possibly mean? What is "cognate" about the exact term in question in Dt.14:1, namely "sons of God." That there are personal pronouns thrown in, and the divine name, is to no purpose for changing the language.

You're just wrong about this; and since so much seems to be riding on this very contention for you, you might want to reconsider how tenuously you hold to it. The fact that many translations choose a more inclusive term like "children" rather than "sons" is immaterial to the underlying Hebrew.

Ezk.16:20-21, "Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Were thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children [sons, again], and delivered them up, in causing them to pass through the fire unto them?"

This is not a late development in the thinking of Israel or her prophetic spokesmen, as if on the verge of the NT. These are the oldest conceptions that the prophets are drawing on, and Deut. 14:1 is simply the strongest proof of it.

You argue that "sons of God" in Gen.6:2, 4 are depraved and disobedient angels, and you appeal to the supposed Job refs as proof. The Matthew Poole quote isn't helpful to your contention; the fact that one may restrict the term in Job 1,2 as Poole does, exclusive to the HOLY angels (and not to the entire host of heaven, which would include spirits of just men made perfect) does not free you up to allow the language to refer to "HOLY and UNHOLY angels" all together. That's a gratuitous proposal; and the appeal to authority hasn't upheld your contention.

What Poole has to say on Gen.6 might be relevant:
In all ages there has been a peculiar curse of God upon marriages between professors of true religion and its avowed enemies. The evil example of the ungodly party corrupts or greatly hurts the other. Family religion is put an end to, and the children are trained up according to the worldly maxims of that parent who is without the fear of God. If we profess to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, we must not marry without his consent.
Matthew Poole would not support your proposal, though you invoked him with respect to Job, and that appeal does not hold the weight you ask of it.

At this point, my goal is not to change your mind. But for readers from the outside, I think I have to answer the proposal.
 
'You're just wrong about this;'

Bruce, you act as if no one else in all of Christiandom held this view.....as if I hatched it or something; in fact, the majority hold to this view.


Fair enough; thanks for the interaction.
 
'You're just wrong about this;'
Bruce, you act as if no one else in all of Christiandom held this view.....as if I hatched it or something; in fact, the majority hold to this view.
Fair enough; thanks for the interaction.
Scott,
If your argument is based on what you've offered up as "proof," then it just doesn't hold. The fact you appeal to two passages of Scripture, both in the same book, as though they established a "technical use" for this language for the whole OT; then make an interpretive call concerning one passage at the beginning of the first book in the Bible... this should be shown to our readership as poor reasoning. They shouldn't follow it. No matter how many people have held it. And Matthew Poole isn't one of them.

Not one appeal to Job is the least demonstrative that God holds (or held) audiences with--get this--angels and demons. It is NOT there in the text, simple as that. M.Poole says that this reference is to--wait for it--holy angels, period. And I'm willing to grant his proposal. It's a red herring to focus on my suggestion the divine audience could even include others beside them; then you exclude them, and stuff the demons into the term.

You have to stuff them in, in order to make the Gen.2 reference be suitable to them. "Demons are sons-of-God, by a technical use of this terminology." And we know this...? "Well, because Gen.2 demands it." That's viciously circular.

Please, deal with Deut. 14:1. Teach us how that reference to "sons of God," which uses the SAME (not "cognate") terminology is somehow "exceptional" to the "technical use" established by Job and Genesis. Teach us why Luke in reference to Adam calls him a "Son of God," but this does not impact the "technical OT use" of "sons of God" for any-and-all subordinate spiritual intelligences, good or bad. The NT does not (certainly not Lk.3:38) come up with this term absent the OT background.

Then, we still haven't dealt with the matter of literary priority. There is little basis for thinking Job properly informs our reading in any part of Genesis. All the evidence points the other way. We understand Job better because we have Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. If Job is the product of a much later age, inspired indeed, but looking back on a time long past, a sanctified rehearsal of an old story that dealt with inexplicable suffering; then it actually borrows imagery of angels (et al) who are in the presence of God--borrows from the extant Scriptural language of God's people.

In that case, the idea that "sons of God" could reasonably include demonic figures becomes incredible. No, for the idea to work at all, this use of language has to be as ancient--yea, more ancient and therefore conventional speech--before Moses even writes. And Job as literary product has to be as old or older than the Pentateuch. No such evidence exists for that notion; not unless one believes Job had to be written by a contemporary witness to the events it describes.

I'm not trying to "change your mind," in the sense that I don't feel like treating you like an enemy to be conquered. Who else or how many may hold the view you have embraced is not determinative to me. I simply have to challenge the weakness of argument put forward in its defense. I wish you would reconsider, but you are not my enemy.

This goofy notion, on the other hand, is early fantasy/sci-fi.

edit: [Having read the GTJ article, I'm not impressed by his treatment especially of the NT "evidence." The fact that early Christian interpretation is "mixed" is sufficient to show that the non-supernatural interpretation is as early as the other; I'm glad he quotes Augustin as one who pooh-poohs interpretations that rely on "fables" of apocrypha. Our side has the very best men.]
 
This rendering of the Septuagint uses the term 'angels':

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Taken from:

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This rendering of the Septuagint uses the term 'angels':

The author of the Book of Enoch and the person who translated this particular portion into Greek shared similar cultic influences. Neither spoke by divine inspiration. Instead of commending the interpretation it should demonstrate the capability of fallible man to fall into errors and the importance of going back to authentic sources. In this case the authentic source is the Old Testament in Hebrew, which was immediately inspired by God and preserved pure by His singular care and providence.

There is no sound exegetical basis for this Greek translation. The contextual reasons for understanding sons of God as "angels" in the book of Job are not present in the narrative of Genesis. It is a natural reading within the flow of a narrative to look for antecedent markers which point to the identification of specific referents; and the narrative flow from chapters 4-6 of Genesis points to human lines of descent and provides the necessary background information to the statement in chapter 6.
 
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Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.

Neanderthals were stockier and had larger skulls than contemporary HS with stronger arms. In other words, men of renown.

Not much post flood DNA.

And a totally unprovable theory.
 
This is a quote from the canon, written by the Holy Spirit:

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh......

So how exactly did angels indulge in immorality and go after strange flesh?

Why can't we take this literally? In some way angels committed immorality and perversion. Either by direct manifestation in 3D bodies, or by possession of such bodies.

Jude directly quotes a passage in Enoch which says they are fallen angels and refers back to Gen 6 events, but we are supposed to think that in Jude, inerrant scripture by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit actually intended us to separate Jude's quote from the rest of the section, and we are supposed to know that Enoch talks about spirit being angels but Jude is really talking about people?

"Goofy early fantasy Sci-fi?" The book of Jude???

I am shaking my head. Its like the angelic spirit realm doesn't even exist with some Reformed folk.
 
So how exactly did angels indulge in immorality and go after strange flesh?

They didn't. Please read the text without any inclination to justify the strange exegesis of Genesis 6. It is clear that we are being given different examples of decisive and final judgment on sin. The sin is different in each case, but there is decisive and final judgment which is characteristic in each instance.
 
There is no sound exegetical basis for this Greek translation. The contextual reasons for understanding sons of God as "angels" in the book of Job are not present in the narrative of Genesis. It is a natural reading within the flow of a narrative to look for antecedent markers which point to the identification of specific referents; and the narrative flow from chapters 4-6 of Genesis points to human lines of descent and provides the necessary background information to the statement in chapter 6.

This is the definitive evidence for me, even more so than the science-fiction involved in the other view. It is just too natural a flow into the first verses of Gen. 6 from the immediately preceding lines of Seth and Cain in Gen. 4-5. First Cain's line is outlined, and we see men building the kingdom of men and fulfilling their own lusts - capped off in Lamech the Less's polygamy and murder. Then we see men beginning to call upon the name of the Lord, and Seth's line is outlined. Then the sons of God see that the daughters of men, etc., and the Lord is grieved that he made man because every imagination of their hearts is only evil continually. Nothing is said about the Lord being grieved that he made angels.
 
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