Passages from the Second Temple Period book of 1 Enoch offer an interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. It claims that the sons of God were rebellious spiritual beings who married human women and that these marriages produced a race of giants called the Nephilim. What do we know about 1 Enoch and can we trust it for shedding light on the Scriptures?
First of all, the book 1 Enoch is not inspired and people never considered it to be part of the canon of the Hebrew Scripture. Works such as 1 Enoch are religious fiction loosely comparable to Dante’s Inferno or Paradise Lost. Although they are based on real events recorded in the Bible and may contain certain truths, they are works of fiction, lack inspiration, and hold no authority. 1 Enoch was a fictional interpretation of the events recorded in Genesis 6. Not only is it mere fiction, but Jews wrote it under the influence of pagan stories they encountered during their exile in Babylon. Surprisingly, some Bible students are allowing this work of fiction to influence their interpretation of the inspired Scriptures.
Second Temple Period literature
1 Enoch was written about 1200 years after Moses wrote Genesis (about 300-200 BC).1 While it is nearly certain that Moses’s original readers of Genesis 6 understood who the sons of God and Nephilim were, it is not at all certain that the Jews of the 2nd Century BC did. Moreover, the Jews encountered Mesopotamian pagan mythology during their exile in Babylon, which influenced the books of Enoch and other literature from the same period.2
By way of illustration, consider the myth of the Apkallu. Many ancient cultures had a flood story and the Mesopotamians had one as well. Mesopotamian literature describes divine beings of great knowledge called the Apkallu who lived before the flood. Mesopotamian myth says the Apkallus descended to earth, mated with human women, and had semi-divine offspring.3 Sound familiar?
Sound biblical theology cannot be derived from uninspired, non-canonical Second Temple Period literature!
The Jewish writers were well aware of these pagan stories and there can be little doubt that the myth of the Apkallus colored their thinking about Genesis 6. As a matter of fact, some Jewish texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls give names to the offspring of the “sons of God.” The Book of Giants calls one of these offspring Gilgamesh, the main character from the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh!4 Clearly, Mesopotamian mythology found its way into Jewish literary tradition during the intertestamental period.5
Resisting pagan influence in biblical interpretation
Even though these pagan laced literary traditions existed in Judaism, we should not assume all Jews believed the Enoch interpretation. Likewise, today we must not allow this pagan influence to alter our perception of the scriptures. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context in which the author and original readers lived. Uninspired literature written 1200 years after Genesis cannot provide the original context and cannot be used to arrive at a correct understanding of biblical passages. People cannot derive sound biblical theology from uninspired, non-canonical Second Temple Period literature! Filtering Genesis 6 through a genre of intertestamental religious fiction is not being true to Moses’s original intent. It is true that Second Temple Period literature is valuable for understanding Jewish ideas from that period, but we must not let uninspired writings overly influence our understanding of the Bible.
What does Genesis 6:1-4 actually say?
Just as important, what does it NOT say? The proponents of divine/human marriages read a good deal into the text that it does not actually say.
“1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 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. 6:1–4 ESV)
First of all, notice that the text does not identify the sons of God as angels nor any other kind of spiritual beings. As we noted in the previous article, the context determines who the sons of God are and the context here suggests they are human. In addition, there is no indication in this passage that anything sinful was taking place. It does not say that the sons of God sinned, nor does it say that the daughters of men engaged in nefarious activities. Since the phrases “sons of God” and “daughters of men” refer to godly and ungodly people respectively, the worst we can say is that people exercised poor judgment in selecting spouses.
What about the Nephilim?
Likewise, the passage here in Genesis does not accuse the Nephilim of any particular sin. Yet, an important part of the fictional account of 1 Enoch centers on the giants, also known as the Nephilim. The assumption is that the Nephilim were the hybrid offspring produced by the union of angels mating with human women. There is one huge problem with this notion: this is not what Genesis 6:4 says!
The text says that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. What was happening in “those days?” It was the time when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and bore children to them. Notice the text does not say the Nephilim were the children who were born to the sons of God and daughters of men. It says they lived at the same time. That’s all it says. The Nephilim existed on the earth at this time and the text does not say they were the offspring of these unions.
Flaws in the Nephilim and Flood Theory
The related idea from 1 Enoch that God sent the flood to clean up the mess instigated by these rebellious angels and to eliminate the Nephilim falls flat. Genesis 6 states that there were Nephilim after the flood also. This theory of divine/human mating says the Nephilim were around after the flood because these fallen angels continued to have relations with Noah’s female offspring. Wouldn’t this imply that God wiped out almost all life on earth for nothing if these angels were just going to keep on having sex with human women? Was God so inept that He couldn’t defeat the rebellion of these angels, especially since they continued procreating once the earth was repopulated with human women?
This exposes an internal inconsistency in the theory. 1 Enoch says God had the rebellious angels captured and chained in darkness to await their judgement. If the angels were locked up and could no longer have sex with human women, how did they appear again to seduce human women after the flood?
The reality set forth in the text is simply that the Nephilim lived at the time when the sons of God were marrying the daughters of men. The Bible doesn’t say where the Nephilim came from nor exactly what they were. The fact that Nephilim appeared after the flood (Num 13:33) shows that the word is not ethnic—it simply refers to “giants” (though scholars still dispute its exact meaning). Everyone after the flood, including giants (e.g. Goliath), was a descendant of Noah, not some sort of hybrid offspring.
Is it possible for angels to procreate?
There is no evidence whatsoever in the Bible which suggests angels can reproduce. There is no example, statement, nor necessary inference. When God ordered creation, He designed both plants and animals to reproduce their own kind (Gen 1:11, 24). It is common knowledge that plants and animals of different kinds cannot reproduce. Likewise, there is no evidence that angels would be able to reproduce with a different kind (humans). In fact, the evidence is fairly conclusive that angels cannot reproduce at all.
“in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Matt. 22:30 ESV)
Jesus plainly says angels do not marry! Those who believe in divine/human mating point out that it is the angels in heaven who do not marry and therefore Jesus said nothing about the mating habits of the angels who left heaven. Fair enough. I think they’re stretching things a bit with that observation. Still, the burden of proof falls on them to show that angels can procreate, because the Bible never teaches that idea.
Conclusion
The Bible simply doesn’t support the idea that humans and angels married and produced a race of hybrid giants. At first glance it may appear that Genesis 6:1-4 suggests this, but when we read the passage very carefully it is easy to see that it doesn’t actually say any of this. The proponents of the theory of divine beings mating with humans have allowed a genre of religious fiction written in the 3rd century B.C. to dominate their view of Scripture. This is something that we cannot allow ourselves to do if we are to draw valid conclusions from God’s Word. In the next article, we’ll examine Jude and Peter’s interaction with 1 Enoch.
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch.
- Annus, Amar. “The Story of the Watchers as a Counter Narrative: Enochic Responses to the Authority of Mesopotamian Sages.” Religions 15, no. 9 (September 2024): 1024.
- Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (pp. 102-103). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.
- http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm.
- Fröhlich, Ida. “Mesopotamian Elements and the Watchers Traditions.” In The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions, 11–24. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.