Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome back to the discussion on the flood narrative and elements therein. Now, don't expect my go through of the Flood to be like a verse by verse go through, because that's just not how this is going to work. That's not how my brain works. And I'm going to be jumping around to different topics, but I probably will largely be hanging out in the beginning of the Flood narrative and talking about elements about the lead up to the Flood and what's going on at the beginning of the flood, and the characters who were involved and all of that kind of thing.
So, we'll probably be talking about genealogies, we'll be talking about [00:01:00] Noah and his character, but we are also going to be talking about the different ways that this narrative of the flood has been seen through time. Because we assume, as Christians, we take the flood narrative to be a very important story, right? And of course it is, but has it always been that important in church history and in Jewish interpretation? I would argue that it really hasn't been that formative of a thing.
Now, it's become that way for us in large part in my opinion, because we want to be able to say that the flood narrative is historical. And that's really important for us. We see this as one of those things that we can prove the Bible with. At least that is often how it is used in apologetics. That's often how it's presented in many evangelical American churches. And so from a Christian [00:02:00] perspective, we're like, well, this is a story about the world and not just Israel.
And as Christians, we don't see our connection to Israel very clearly. Because again, we tend to be a little bit too focused on the idea of Israel being only the thing that is ethnic, right? And well, if you're not an ethnic Jew, then maybe Israel has nothing to do with you. And I would argue against that line of thought, but it's really common. And so we look at the early chapters of Genesis, and we place a lot of emphasis on those because to us, they seem to be talking about the world at large, and so we're like, look, the Bible is about everyone and the whole world.
And indeed it is, but sometimes we miss some of these ideas of the way that people have thought about it in the past and maybe ways that we can connect the whole arc of scripture into our story. [00:03:00] But anyway, suffice to say that the Flood narrative at times in history, currently today and at other times, has been really important and formative, has really played a big part in people's faith. Other times it's really been hardly mentioned.
But because this podcast has focused on things like the Divine Council worldview, and Dr. Heiser's content of teaching us about biblical theology and how the original writers and readers would have understood these passages, I kind of thought that this time it would be fun to go into looking at the historical views of Genesis 6, 1 through 4.
And we still have a lot of people today asking, well, why does it seem like the angelic view of these verses is not what the church has historically taught? Now, it's going to depend on what tradition of the church you're talking about, right? There's less [00:04:00] emphasis on it in certain strands of Christianity and certain trends in historical Christianity. And part of this is because our theology is going to be built on certain historical blocks of previous theology. Right? Like a Protestant is going to emphasize the theology from the Protestant Revolution. A Catholic is going to emphasize the theology from the Catholic perspective. An Eastern Orthodox person is going to emphasize other lines of historical interpretation, and basic theology and doctrine.
Part of my encouragement is for us to learn about all of those strands, because I think they all matter. But it's perfectly understandable and reasonable that people are taking historical interpretations from different places and building upon those. And so once an interpretation gains popularity, or is presented by an [00:05:00] influential church father, or theologian, then that idea is going to be taking off in particular ways.
So we're going to be looking at historical interpretations today and kind of skewing it a little bit towards early church and a little bit later church. But my main question is going to focus on what is the most common interpretation for these verses at which period of time? We're not really going to get too into why it's switched. That will be a different episode because it's going to have to be its own episode.
But here's our spoiler, early on, the angelic view was almost universally accepted, and only later did the human view of these verses come into popularity.
Now, as we look into these different historical sources, it's going to be interesting to see how they interpret who the sons of God are, and they're going to emphasize different aspects or [00:06:00] mention different things about the story. We might have giants mentioned, or we might not. We might have demons mentioned, or we might not. We might have the flood mentioned, or we might not. Some of these quotes are going to be a little longer than others, and I'm going to try and give you a little bit of historical background for each of these interpreters.
But I want you to put aside your viewpoint for the moment and consider it from the perspective of these ancient people and the particular circumstances and influences that they would have had. We don't necessarily have the answers to all of the questions and all of the situations for everyone in the past, so we should try not to over speculate, but here's a few questions we should keep in mind as we consider past interpretations.
And I'm not going to have time to answer each of these questions for each of the people I'm going to be talking about, but these are good questions to really [00:07:00] kind of think about and maybe investigate on your own if you are interested.
So one question we could ask about these past interpreters is what resources did they even have access to? Because unlike us, they did not live in a global society. They did not have access to all of the information from the past. Second question, what other interpreters would they be familiar with? And what would they emphasize? And who would they be partial to in those interpretations? Another question is, what languages did they know, and what Bible translations did they have available? A really important question is, what issues, either pastoral or antagonistic, would they be dealing with? What are they actually addressing? What is their point in bringing this up? And a final question I'm going to [00:08:00] suggest is, what methods or types of interpretation did the commentator display?
So, again, we're going to see a wide range of interpretation from the early church fathers, from the Jews, as well as those who would now be known as heretics for their unorthodox opinions or teachings or doctrine because we have to remember that those people were influential, and sometimes at the time of their writing, they weren't really recognized as heretics.
Now, a final thing to emphasize before I get into this is that it's really kind of hard to understand that the church has had such a wide ranging and differing set of opinions through time. That makes us a little bit concerned because can we trust historical interpretation that way? Who do we go with when we understand that we have all of these church fathers and all of these different [00:09:00] interpretations that we have available to us?
If the people in the past were closer to the context of the Bible and its people than we are, then why don't they have the same views as them? Why don't their interpretations match up to what we see in biblical theology? What does that mean for our interpretation when we're trying to go back to the text and we have all of this intervening historical interpretation? Those are hard questions. And most of that I'm just going to put on you to meditate over and to consider.
And this is why I think understanding church history and reading about it and trying to see that from something of an objective stance is really important. This is also why it's important to have the text as a kind of a standard, to give us a little bit of guidelines and roadmaps. This is why grammatical historical methods of interpretation matter, because if we [00:10:00] are at a later time, and we're not understanding the original history, and we're not understanding the historical circumstance of the text, we're not understanding what they understood at the time, and we're taking things out of grammatical meaning, which we do quite frequently, honestly, then we're not doing proper exegesis.
Now that doesn't mean that the grammatical historical means of interpretation or that hermeneutic is the only way we can do things. Because we're going to run into some severe problems when we look at the early church and the early church fathers and the way that they are studying and interpreting the text, because quite often it wasn't by a grammatical historical means, right? Sometimes they didn't have access to the original grammar. They didn't understand the language. Quite often they did not understand the historical perspective of the original audience.
[00:11:00] So, we have to kind of give a little bit of leeway because otherwise, we have to toss out a massive section of historical interpretation and early church fathers who were bringing us things like the doctrine of the Trinity and understanding of salvation and all of these things that we really find value today.
So this is kind of a hard topic, really, but a very valuable one. Now, let's get into the historical interpretations, and I'm not really going to get into too much detail of the earliest ones, because we've talked about those before, and they really didn't have a whole lot of difference in interpretive bias as to who the sons of God are.
Okay, so first, of course, we have the Book of Genesis. Some people think Moses is the author. Some people think it was compiled over time. It's my opinion and the opinion of many textual scholars that [00:12:00] the final iteration of the text, we got during the exile. It doesn't mean that Moses couldn't have been an author. It just means that there was editing that went on through time, and the final text that has been transmitted through time definitely was established by the exile.
But an important aspect to the book of Genesis is to look at the Greek translation of the book. This is called the Septuagint, and it was probably translated into Greek around 250 BC.
Now, people can argue what Moses had in mind when he was writing, whether he thought the sons of God were spiritual beings or not. One of the arguments against that is people will say, well, there's no explicit mention of angels before this verse, so why should we put them in here? And I would argue that's a really silly reason to argue because [00:13:00] there's no description or explanation for sacrifice either. And a whole bunch of other things. It's clear that the readers are assuming a later context with later knowledge and information, and we don't need to presume that every element needs to be introduced. This is the kind of bad thinking we get into when we start thinking that Genesis is this historical, chronological narrative of the beginning. When really, it's more of a theological treatise of building up to the nation of Israel and who those people are.
Another thing is, the term Sons of God should not be equated with the metaphor of being God's Son, or other mentions of the concept in general. The term Sons of God is a particular phrase, and it shows up in Genesis, and it shows up in the book of Job, and it doesn't show up a whole lot of other places. So we're not talking [00:14:00] Adam as a son of God, or David as a son of God, or Israel in general as the son of God. We're certainly not talking about Jesus.
Any interpretation of the text requires importing concepts into the plain text of Genesis. And we shouldn't presume that the original audience would be confused or that they wouldn't understand what was being mentioned here.
Now the Septuagint numbering is a little bit different, so it includes the end of Chapter 5, but I'll go ahead and read this whole thing from my version of the Septuagint. Quote, And Noah lived five hundred years, and Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And it happened when humans began to become numerous upon the land, and they had daughters, angels of God, having seen the daughters of humans, that they were beautiful, took for themselves women from all whom they picked out. The [00:15:00] Lord God said, My breath will not at all reside in these humans for very long, because they are flesh, but their days will be one hundred and twenty years. Now, giants were upon the land in those days, and after that, whenever the sons of God visited the daughters of humans, they fathered children for themselves. Those were the giants who were from long ago. The people of renown. End quote.
Okay, so this translates the sons of God as the angels of God, and it's opposing the angels of God with the daughters of humans. It mentions giants. This is the word giant in Greek that is used to translate the Hebrew word nephilim. That's really important. Now, you could say, if you wanted to, that this is the interpretation of 250 BC, not 600 BC, and certainly not the [00:16:00] interpretation of Moses necessarily. I've seen it suggested by modern interpreters that Moses was demythologizing ancient stories.
But then, we have a break between Moses and his interpretation and understanding, and the people of the New Testament were often going back to the Greek translation. And personally, it's really hard for me to see Moses as demythologizing things. I think that's a modern bias that, oh, the right thing is to demythologize spiritual beings. I don't think we really see a whole lot of that before modern times or a few hundred years after Jesus.
Alright, I'm going to mention the other texts that are really early, but we're not going to quote from them, because I want to get into later interpretations. But we have 1st Enoch, which obviously is influenced by Genesis. And First Enoch has the watcher tradition. Very [00:17:00] much about spiritual beings and demons and things like that.
We have the Book of Giants. We find this in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it was influenced by First Enoch and by Genesis.
We have the Genesis Apocryphon, which might need its whole episode to talk about this, it's another Dead Sea Scroll text.
We have the Book of Jubilees, which is a retelling of Genesis, it definitely has influence from Enoch.
And all of those texts obviously take a supernatural view, but they're also Second Temple period texts . Another interesting one is the Damascus document. This was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was also found at the Cairo Geniza in the 1800s, before we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, actually.
So, the Cairo Geniza was a ganza in Cairo. A ganza is a storeroom or a [00:18:00] repository of outdated or abandoned documents in a synagogue. So, the Jews would have old texts. They weren't gonna treat them badly, right? They weren't going to burn them, they weren't gonna bury them, they weren't gonna throw them away. So they stored them in these store rooms.
And so the Damascus document was originally found at the Cairo Geniza, but just because it's in the Cairo Geniza doesn't mean it originated in Cairo or anything else. It was just, these are their documents and they've got to store them somewhere, and who knows where they all came from.
But when we found the Damascus document in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seemed pretty clear that this was a sectarian document that kind of outlined some rules and things that they believed at Qumran about their community, right? It's called the Damascus document because it mentions Damascus a lot, but it's probably a metaphorical mentioning. It's probably up the biblical language [00:19:00] found in Amos 527. which says, Therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus. So the emphasis there is on the exile. Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatological hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.
Now, in the historical section of the document, it mentions guardian angels and their giant sons who fell because, just like some humans, they followed their own desires instead of God's. Now I will read a quote from this one because we're less familiar with it.
This is the Damascus Document 2, 16 through 19. So now, my children, listen to me, that I may uncover your eyes to see and to understand the deeds of God, choosing what pleases Him and hating what He rejects, living perfectly in all His ways, not turning away through thoughts caused by [00:20:00] the sinful urge and lecherous eyes. For many have gone astray by such thoughts. Even strong and doughty men of old faltered through them and still do. When they went about in their willful heart, the guardian angels of heaven fell and were ensnared by it, for they did not observe the commandments of God. Their sons who were as tall as cedars and whose bodies were as big as mountains fell by it. Everything mortal on dried land expired and became as if they had never existed, because they did their own will, and did not keep the commandments of their maker, until finally his anger was aroused against them. End quote.
Okay, so obviously we have spiritual beings here, we have the giants, who are going to be the Nephilim, and I want you to note the size of the sons of the guardian angels. They were as tall as cedars, and their bodies were as big as mountains. [00:21:00] And what do the floodwaters cover? They cover the mountains.
Ooh, interesting, hmm? We'll be getting more into that later on as we talk more about the flood. The flood isn't mentioned by name, but it's obviously the context here. Again, consider the water covering the mountains would be enough to drown the giants.
The last early document we're going to be talking about is Second Baruch. This is a pseudepigraphical writing, supposedly written by Jeremiah's Scribe, probably written around 100 AD after the fall of Jerusalem. It talks about the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 5 86 bc. That's probably making a parallel to what's going on in Jerusalem. It was influenced by, probably Greek mythology, 1st Enoch, maybe Peter and Jude, and it doesn't [00:22:00] mention any of the giants.
This is 2nd Baruch 56, 10 through 14. Quote, For he, Adam, became a danger to his own soul. Even to the angels, for moreover at that time when he was created, they enjoyed liberty, and became he a danger, some of them descended, and mingled with the women. And then those who did were tormented in chains. But the rest of the multitude of the angels, of which there is no number, restrained themselves. And those who dwelt on the earth perished together with them through the waters of the deluge. End quote.
Okay, so obviously the flood mentioned. Adam is mentioned, which this is fascinating. This is one of those really interesting texts because of the details it mentions that others don't. Angels didn't affect the humans here, but the humans affected the angels. We [00:23:00] have the concept of chains and torment that we see in Greek mythology and the New Testament. So, really interesting witness right there.
Alright, now we're going to move on into what we could say is the 1st century. I mean, 2nd Baruch is the 1st century, but it really connects very well into those 2nd Temple texts. Of course we have Jude and Peter, which again, I'll probably just skip over those in favor of trying to get to other historical interpreters.
But let's talk about Philo of Alexandria. Because Philo of Alexandria is the first place we see kind of a break with the interpretation of the angels but I will also say it's not entirely a break. And you're going to kind of see what I mean by that here as we read.
Philo of Alexandria lived from about 20 BC to 50 AD. He was a Jewish philosopher who really believed that [00:24:00] Greek concepts arose from a foundation of truth. So, he was very influenced by Greek philosophy and probably First Enoch and Jewish texts. His focus was on symbolism, so it's not incredibly clear how he thought about literal historicity because his concern was on symbolic aspects and allegory. And we can also say that is often true of early church fathers as well. Philo of Alexandria did use the Greek Septuagint, which makes sense, which has the term angels of God. He made the claim that the angels of God were not unique to Judaism, but they exist in other worldviews by other names.
In his writing, called On the Giants, he says, quote, And when the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, they took unto themselves wives [00:25:00] of all them whom they chose. Those beings, whom other philosophers call demons, Moses usually calls angels, and they are souls hovering in the air. And let no one suppose that what is here stated is a fable, for it is necessarily true that the universe must be filled with living things in all its parts, since every one of its primary and elementary portions contains appropriate animals and such as are consistent with its nature. End quote.
Okay, so here is a little bit more of that literalism that I think we can see. He sees literal reality in what's being talked about, souls hovering in the air. Continued in another writing, he talks about angelic substance. They were not human and did not have human existence in any form. So that would go against what I was talking about in my episode about [00:26:00] embodiment.
Another quote from Philo in a document where he gives questions and answers, quote, question. On what principle it was that giants were born of angels and women in Genesis 6, 4? Answer, the poets call those men who were born out of the earth giants, that is to say, sons of the earth. But Moses here uses this appellation improperly. And he uses it too very often merely to denote the vast personal size of the principal men equal to that of Hacik. Hacik is an addition of the Armenian translator. It's the name of a fabulous patriarch of the Armenian nation. Or Hercules. But he relates that these giants were sprung from a combined procreation of two natures. Namely, from angels, and mortal women for the substance of angels is spiritual, but it occurs every now and then that on emergencies [00:27:00] occurring, they have imitated the appearance of men and transformed themselves so as to assume the human shape as they did on this occasion when forming connections with women for the production of Giants. End quote.
Okay, so he's still really tracking on this supernatural view, right? But what about the offspring of these beings and the women? Are they wicked?
He goes on to say, quote, but if the children turn out imitators of the wickedness of their mothers, departing from the virtue of their fathers, let them depart according to the determination of the will of a depraved race and because of their proud contempt for the supreme deity. And so be condemned as guilty of voluntary and deliberate wickedness. End quote.
Okay, so did you notice that? The mothers are wicked and the fathers are not. Okay, so hold that thought for a [00:28:00] second.
Continuing on. But sometimes Moses styles the angels the sons of God, inasmuch as they were not produced by any mortal, but are incorporeal, as being spirits destitute of any body, or rather that exhorter and teacher of virtue, namely Moses, calls these men, who are very excellent and endowed with great virtue, the sons of God, and the wicked and depraved men he calls bodies or flesh. End quote.
Okay, so we're starting to get a little bit confusing here, probably because he's using the text allegorically and not relying on the literal interpretation as the be all end all. But it doesn't discount a literal reality of angelic beings. His emphasis is on human wickedness, and he doesn't want to saddle the Sons of God language with the idea of wickedness, but rather virtue. Because if the [00:29:00] sons of God are wicked, it kind of ruins his allegorical interpretation of sons of God versus fleshly men.
It's also possible that he was writing to materialistic skeptics. Remember the quote about souls hovering in the air?
He says, quote, It is therefore necessary that the air also should be full of living beings. And these beings are invisible to us, inasmuch as the air itself is not visible to mortal sight, but it does not follow, because our sight is incapable of perceiving the forms of souls, that for that reason there are no souls in the air. But it follows of necessity that they must be comprehended by the mind, in order that they may be contemplated by like. End quote.
But, really, he kept coming back to creation as a whole and humanity as the point of what we're talking about.
Quote, But as men in general speak of good and evil demons, [00:30:00] and in like manner of good and evil souls, so also do they speak of angels, looking upon some as worthy of a good appellation, and calling them ambassadors of man to God, and of God to man. And sacred and holy on account of this blameless and most excellent office. Others, again, you will not err if you look upon as unholy and unworthy of any address. And the expression used by the writer of the psalm in the following verse testifies to the truth of my assertion, for he says, he sent upon them the fury of his wrath, anger, and rage and affliction, and he sent evil angels among them. End quote.
Okay, so again, we're kind of battling with figuring out what Philo is talking about literally versus allegorically. But basically, right there, he says, just as we can see good and bad men, we have good and bad angels. But, again, [00:31:00] he wants to give the designation of Son of God to good angels because the Bible also talks about evil angels. It's really interesting trying to track what he's thinking, and this is why you have to put your mind back there and kind of release your current ideas. Try to get to what he's actually saying, because then he will also go on to equate wicked men as angels.
He says quote, these are the wicked who, assuming the name of angels, not being equated with the daughters of right reason, that is with the sciences and the virtues, but which pursue the mortal descendants of mortal men. That is the pleasures which can confer no genuine beauty, which is perceived by the intellect alone, but only a bastard sort of elegance of form, by means of which the outward sense is beguiled. And they do not all take all the daughters in marriage, [00:32:00] but some of them have selected some of that innumerable company to be their wives. Some choosing them by sight and others by the ear. Others, again, being influenced by the sense of taste or by the belly and some, even by the pleasures below the belly. End quote.
Again, it's hard to tell how what he is talking about literally and allegorically. And some of that passage might be really hard for us modern readers to listen to if we're not used to reading classical work. He says there's wicked people who assume the name of angels. Now, does that mean the angels don't exist? Or does that mean that the angels are examples to the wicked men? He talks about reason and science and intellect perceiving beauty. And that is as opposed to earthly pleasures, which probably he's talking about intercourse and lust and things like that. [00:33:00] And those men who choose intercourse and earthly pleasures versus the intellectual beauty of science and philosophy and reason, there's a big distinction there in his mind.
So, yeah, philosophers can be hard to read, but if you start tracking on what they're trying to say and what their point is, it gets a little bit easier. I mean, he clearly talks about demons and souls of the air and angels as a real reality. He's probably equating men who do the same things with the angels who did them previously, or maybe he's using that concept of the mirroring of heaven and earth, assuming the name of angels could be, again, just identifying with them or imaging them, right?
So an allegorical interpretation doesn't discount a literal interpretation. Philo's point is to pursue beauty and virtue and intellectual pursuits, [00:34:00] not physical fleshly pleasure. And he goes on to say that there are three types of people. People born of earth, those would be the ones who pursue fleshly pleasure. Then there are those who are born of heaven, which that's obviously better than being born of earth. And then there are those who are born of God.
As Philo says, quote, And there were giants on the earth in those days. Perhaps someone may here think that the lawgiver is speaking enigmatically and alluding to fables handed down by the poets and giants. Though he is a man as far removed as possible from any invention of fables, and one who thinks fit only to walk in the paths of truth itself, in consequence of which principle he has banished from the constitution, which he has established, those celebrated and beautiful arts of statuary and painting, because they, [00:35:00] falsely imitating the nature of truth, contrive deceits and snares in order through the medium of the eyes to beguile the souls which are liable to be easily won over. Therefore he utters no fable whatsoever respecting the giants. But he wishes to set this fact before your eyes, that some men are born of the earth, and some are born of heaven, and some are born of God. Those are born of the earth, who are hunters after the pleasures of the body, devoting themselves to the enjoyment and fruition of them, and being eager to provide themselves with all things that tend to each of them. Those, again, are born of heaven, who are men of skill and science and devoted to learning.
Now when he talks about fables, he's probably talking about the book of Enoch and the stories of the giants and things like that. So he's giving reality to the sons of God, but not to literal giants, I think.
[00:36:00] Something that's going to help us see that is a quote here that, he says, Quote, But he relates that these giants were sprung from a combined procreation of two natures, namely from angels and mortal women, for the substance of angels is spiritual, but it occurs every now and then that on emergencies occurring, they have imitated the appearance of men and transformed themselves so as to assume the human shape, as they did on this occasion for the production of giants. End quote.
We can't really pin him down to say that he doesn't necessarily believe in literal giants. But I think that we could probably say he doesn't believe in all of the narratives and stories that necessarily accompany those giants. One of the interesting things about Philo in particular is that it seems like he's really familiar with the Enochic ideas of the giants and all of these things, but he's not [00:37:00] buying into it necessarily. But he wants to marry these ideas with Greek philosophy and say that the things that other people have believed are very similar and really functionally the same thing as these biblical stories. They have the same root, the same reality of it. But then he goes down all of these allegorical paths as well. And that's very normal, very typical of the time. And the church fathers take all of those kinds of ideas of interpretation and do that kind of thing quite frequently as well.
But before we get to the early Church Fathers, I want to talk about Josephus and his interpretations. Now, Josephus was a Jewish slash Roman historian. He was Jewish. The war happened. And he was part of that resistance, and he got captured, taken to Rome as a slave, became kind of an upstanding citizen of some level, and [00:38:00] wrote the Jewish histories and things like that. We owe a lot of our knowledge about this time from Josephus.
And so he wrote about this topic in the Antiquities of the Jews in chapter 3. And the problems with the sons, their actions were unjust and they despised that which is good. So again, he's kind of focusing on a human element. He mentions the sons of Seth. And this is where we see that specifically called out first. He says the sons of Seth made God their enemy. Now, later on, Augustine suggested the sons of Seth were righteous, or at least the godly line. And there's ideas in different types of interpretations that we'll see that have the sons of God either good or bad, or good and fell, or something like that.
But Josephus says that they turned against God like everyone else did. Which [00:39:00] is a good point, because if the Sons of Seth were the godly line, then really, how does that fit into the Flood narrative at all? Now here we get some new information about Noah, though it's probably some things that the Jews of the time were already thinking and had developed in their thoughts in the Second Temple period.
Noah wanted the people to get their act together. The people refused, and according to Josephus, Noah was afraid that they would kill him and his family, and so they left the area.
Okay, here is a quote from Josephus. He says, quote, Now this posterity of Seth continued to esteem God as the Lord of the universe and to have an entire regard to virtue for seven generations. But in the process of time, they were perverted and forsook the practices of their forefathers, and did neither pay those honors to God which were appointed to them, nor had they any concern to do justice towards [00:40:00] men. But for what degree of zeal they had formerly shown for virtue, they now showed by their actions a double degree of wickedness, whereby they made God to be their enemy. For many angels of God accompanied with women and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. For the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians called giants. But Noah was very uneasy at what they did, and being displeased at their conduct, persuaded them to change their dispositions and their acts for the better. But seeing they did not yield to him, but were slaves to their wicked pleasures, he was afraid they would kill him together with his wife and children and those they had married. So he departed out of that land. End quote.
Alright, so here we have Nephilim as the basis for the Greek story of the Giants. [00:41:00] We still have a supernatural element, even though the Sons of Seth are mentioned. So we're not discounting the supernatural view yet. Josephus gives that a reality, but he's putting the Sons of Seth on display for people to think about now.
Alright, it would be interesting to go into some Greek philosophy in Hesoid's Theogeny, which was around 750 BC, we have giant titans who are born of Heaven and Earth, or Uranus and Gaia, but heaven, Uranus, hated his offspring, hid them in the earth. And Gaia urged her offspring to punish heaven for this. And then we have the titan Cronus who ambushed and castrated his father and freed the titans. Cronus own son Zeus fights against his father and defeats the titans and casts them into Tartarus. So that's part of that Greek story that we have that parallels the Bible. And [00:42:00] indeed, we do know that Greek culture borrowed from previous times, so it's not like these are completely unrelated.
But what we can say about pre Christian and our very earliest Christian belief, when we're talking about Second Temple writings and New Testament writings and things that were written just after the New Testament, they all suggest a narrative of angels sinning. We don't always have a giant narrative that is specifically mentioned, but usually that's part of it.
Philo talks about angels and souls in the sky, but his main point is allegorical and focused on humans. We have Josephus, who loops in a connection with men and depravity, but mentions the sons of Seth as being godly and then wicked. Josephus does not mention the sons of Cain or the daughters of Cain.
And really, this makes complete sense to [00:43:00] talk this way, because if Noah was the righteous one, then how are the sons of God righteous, godly men? Surely you could say that they're corrupted eventually, like Josephus does, but you can't explain that via reading the Genesis text. The text doesn't say that the Sons of God were corrupted at any point.
And so, if early witness counts for anything, we've got the supernatural description in the bag. There's really no things that suggest anything beyond that. Although we do have allegorical readings and we have humans who are looped into it, which again, that makes sense. Nobody should be arguing against the wickedness of humans in any of this, right? Because the Bible does say the flood is coming because of the wickedness of humans.
Okay, so let's go ahead and move into the early church and kind of focus here. We have Justin [00:44:00] Martyr. He lived from about 100 to 165. He was an apologist who was really against paganism and Gnosticism in particular. Justin Martyr was, of course, martyred. He was martyred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. What we're going to see from him is that he has the influence from 1st Enoch. We have the appointment of angels to care for creation. We have their children as demons. And he also says that pagan cultures got their ideas from the Bible's original story.
In his second apology, he says, quote, God, when he had made the whole world, and subjected things earthly to man, and arranged the heavenly elements for the increase of fruits and rotation of the seasons, and appointed this divine law, for these things also he evidently made for man, committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom he appointed over [00:45:00] them. But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by the love of women, and begot children who are those that are called demons. And besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned. And partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions. And among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence all the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and these demons who had been begotten by them, that did these things to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to God himself, and to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his [00:46:00] brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them. End quote.
Okay, so here we have the narrative of them teaching evil things, right? So that is very much in line with what we've understood previously. One thing about thinking about what kinds of texts that people had to deal with is we can ask ourselves, did they have the Hebrew text that says, Sons of God, and are they tracking on that? Or, are they tracking primarily off of the Septuagint, which says angels? Because those could be potentially different concepts, right? We're gonna see people who go, well, we can't call sons of God evil, because they're sons of God. So, we're gonna have to find some way to explain that. [00:47:00] But if you don't have that language of sons of God, and you're just tracking with the angel language, then that's potentially gonna give you a slightly different angle there.
Okay, moving on to Tertullian. Tertullian lived from 160 to 225, and he was in Carthage. He converted to Christianity in Rome. And there are several writings that we could look at from Tertullian. He doesn't mention the Nephilim. He uses Enoch to argue against women's ornamentation, to argue against idolatry, and to argue against astrology. And he was one of the people in the early church who tried to argue for the canonicity of the Book of Enoch. So that's a really interesting aspect of his writing.
In his writing on idolatry, he says, quote, We observe among the arts also some professions liable to the [00:48:00] charge of idolatry. Of astrologers there should be no speaking even, but since one in these days has challenged us, defending on his own behalf perseverance in that profession, I will use a few words. I allege not that he honors idols, whose names he has inscribed on the heaven, to whom he has attributed all God's power. Because men, presuming that we are disposed of by the immutable arbitrariment of the stars, think on that account that God is not to be sought after. One proposition I lay down, that those angels, the deserters from God, the lovers of women, were likewise the discoverers of this curious art, on that account also condemned by God. O divine sentence, reaching even unto the earth in its vigor, whereunto the unwitting render testimony? The astrologers are expelled, just like their angels. The city and Italy are interdited [00:49:00] to the astrologers, just as heaven to their angels. End quote.
Then in On the Veiling of Virgins, he says, quote, Turn we next to the examination of the reasons themselves which lead the apostle to teach that the female ought to be veiled. For if it is on account of the angels, those to wit, whom we read of as having fallen from God in heaven on account of concubescence after females, who can presume that it was bodies already defiled and relics of human lust with such angels yearned after, so as not rather to have been inflamed for virgins, whose bloom pleads an excuse for human lust likewise? For thus does Scripture withal suggest. And it came to pass, it says, when men had begun to grow more numerous upon the earth, there were withal daughters born to them. But the sons of God, having descried, the daughters of [00:50:00] men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all whom they elected. For here, the Greek name of women does seem to have the sense wives, in as much as mention is made of marriage. When, then, it says the daughters of men, it manifestly purports virgins who would be still reckoned as belonging to their parents. For wedded, women are called their husbands'. Whereas it could have said, the wives of men, in like manner not naming the angels adulterers, but husbands, while they take unwedded daughters of men, who, it has above said, were born, thus also signifying their virginity. First born, but here wedded to angels. Anything else, I know not that they were except born, and subsequently wedded. So perilous a face then ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling stones even so far as heaven, that [00:51:00] when standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their native confines, it may blush before the other angels as well, and may repress that former evil liberty of its head, a liberty now to be exhibited not even before human eyes. But even if they were females already contaminated, whom those angels had desired, so much the more on account of the angels would it have been the duty of virgins to be veiled, as it would have been the more possible for virgins to have been the cause of the angels sinning. End quote.
Okay, so here we have a lot of the early church's presumption of what sexuality is and virginity and all of these things presented in the form of the story of Genesis. Quite interesting that he's focusing on the fact that the daughters of men were virgins as opposed to [00:52:00] the contaminated wives of men.
Okay, so not to get lost in the veiling idea and all of that, which is, again, going to need its own episode. We're going to move on to his quotes from On the Apparel of Women. And here we're going to see Enoch as canonical. His reasoning is that Jude quotes or mentions it. And his supposition is that this could still be an old text, because it could have been preserved by Noah, who was a preacher, or could have been renewed under the Spirit's inspiration, like he supposes happened in Ezra's day, where the Torah and the law was restored. Possibly there's like a re downloading of the Word of God to the people.
Alright, Tertullian says, Quote, I am aware that the scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order of action to angels, is not [00:53:00] received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that worldwide calamity, the abolisher of all things. If that is the reason for rejecting it, let them recall to their memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great grandson of Enoch himself. And he, of course, had heard and remembered from domestic renown and hereditary tradition concerning his own great grandfather's grace in the sight of God and concerning all of his preachings. Since Enoch had given no other charge to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowledge of them to his prosperity. Noah, therefore, no doubt, might have succeeded in the trusteeship of his preaching. Or, had the case been otherwise, he would not have been silent alike concerning the disposition of things made by God, his [00:54:00] preserver, and concerning the particular glory of his own house. If Noah had not had this conservative power by so short a route, there would still be this consideration to warrant our assertion of the genuineness of the scripture. He could equally have renewed it under the Spirit's inspiration after it had been destroyed by the violence of the deluge. As, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored through Ezra. But since Enoch in the same scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us, and we read that every scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired. By the Jews, it may now seem to have been rejected for that very reason, just like all the other portions nearly which tell of Christ. Nor, of course, is this fact wonderful, that they did not receive some [00:55:00] scriptures which spake of him, whom even in person, speaking in their presence, they were not to receive. To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude. End quote.
Okay, so very interesting stuff there regarding the canonicity of 1st Enoch. Now, this was a minority view and he didn't win out in the argument of making Enoch a canonical book, but let's move on to our next quote.
This is by Bardasian, and he lived from about 1 54 to 2 22. He was Assyrian or Parthian. He has a gnostic background and he kind of formed a heterodox group. So this is one of those people that is not gonna be widely read because he wasn't fully orthodox. One of his big topics was the topic of free will. Now, again, that's [00:56:00] not part of his heterodoxy. His problem was more in line of how he described the Trinity and the nature of Jesus.
But let's go ahead and read what he has to say about this passage in Genesis. He says, quote, It will therefore be manifest to you that the goodness of God is great toward man, and that freedom has been given to him in greater measure than to any of those elemental bodies of which we have spoken, in order that, by this freedom, he may justify himself, and order his conduct in a godlike manner, and be co partner with angels, who are likewise possessed of personal freedom. For we are sure that if angels likewise had not been possessed of personal freedom, they would not have consorted with the daughters of men, and sinned and fallen from their places. In like manner, too, those other angels, who did the will of their Lord, were, by reason of their self control, raised to higher rank, [00:57:00] and sanctified, and received noble gifts. For every being in existence is in need of the Lord of all, his gifts also there is no end. End quote.
So is that talking about angelic redemption? Not necessarily, but he's talking about how there's a reward when we exercise our free will when it's in alignment with God's will.
Okay, so, so far we're still tracking on the angelic beings as the perpetrators of what's going on in Genesis 6. But now we reach Julius Africanus. And he is where we see a big break. He lived from 160 to 240, so that's still fairly early, right? He wrote a five volume history of the world from creation to 221 AD. We don't have any more of those manuscripts, unfortunately, though he is quoted in [00:58:00] several other people's works.
He says the sons of God are the righteous men and the patriarchs. And here we have finally the mention of the Sons of Cain as being the seed of men. They have no divine connection. They are wicked. Of note, Julius Africanus does not totally deny the angelic story. He gives the angelic side of things as a possible interpretation. So we could be dealing with something that's similar to an allegorical reading of Philo. Julius Africanus does mention giants as well.
Okay, so let's read this very important quote from Julius Africanus, who says, Quote, When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies, I have found the sons of God. What is meant by the Spirit, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of [00:59:00] God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Savior himself, but that the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in them, on account of the wickedness of their race and the inequality of their nature, being a mixed people and having stirred the indignation of God. But if it is thought that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic and jugglry who taught the women the motions of the stars and the knowledge of things celestial by whose power they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness came to its height on the earth until God decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the deluge. End quote.
Alright, so he acknowledges that if the Sons of God were angels, then this is connected to the reason for the Flood. Augustine took that further and said it [01:00:00] couldn't be angels. So here we have the first introduction of the human view of the Sons of God. But note what he says and how he says it. He gives the quote from the Septuagint that says the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. And then he says, in some copies I found the sons of God. And so he's like, whoa, what do I do with this variant reading and how do we interpret it?
I don't think he realizes the sons of God was the original Hebrew. And so he's like, well, it's just a variant reading, right? As opposed to the original reading, and so he's trying to describe why they would be called Sons of God.
So again, this is what you kind of get when you have a break with the historical understanding of a text. You don't understand textual criticism and what parts are earlier. You [01:01:00] know, a lot of people, still today, will be really against the idea of textual criticism. But you see here, Africanus had no idea which one was the original reading. To him, they were all just variant readings. And he had to describe and understand why we have a reading that says the Sons of God.
Okay, so super interesting. This is our first real hit on the human view of Genesis 6. But we're going to go through the next interpretations, and they're still going to be landing on the angels as the designation . But we're going to be reading some other quotes here. And for quite some time, this angelic view was still the most popular one.
We have Clement of Rome. And what he describes is that heavenly spirits in the lowest region of heaven were unhappy about how ungrateful humans were. So they assumed human [01:02:00] form. This is not a spiritual, angelic form, but they assumed human form, and they exposed human sin. They defiled themselves with women and lust, and their celestial essence was diminished, and they were bound in these earthly bodies that they had taken on. And they became impure. Clement of Rome also has a lot of influence with Greek mythology, and he mentions the Nephilim.
Alright, he says, quote, For of the spirits who inhabit the heaven, the angels who dwell in the lowest region, being grieved at the ingratitude of men to God, asked that they might come into the life of men, that, really becoming men, by more intercourse they might convict those who had acted ungratefully towards him, and might subject everyone to adequate punishment. But, when having assumed these forms, they convicted as covetous those who stole them, and changed themselves into the nature of men, [01:03:00] in order that, living holily, and showing the possibility of so living, they might subject the ungrateful to punishment. Yet, having become in all respects men, they also partook of human lust, and being brought under its subjection, they fell into cohabitation with women, and being involved with them, and sunk into defilement, and altogether emptied of their power, were unable to turn back to the first purity of their proper nature. Their members turned away from their fiery substance, for the fire itself, being exhausted by the weight of lust, and changed into flesh, they trod the impious path downward. For they themselves, being fettered with bonds of flesh, were constrained and strongly bound. Wherefore, they have no more been able to ascend into the heavens. End quote.
So this is really interesting interpretation and gives us a few extra little meaty details. The [01:04:00] binding they went through was a binding to their human forms here.
Another quote, quote, all things therefore being completed, which are in heaven and in earth and in the waters, and the human race also, having multiplied in the eighth generation, righteous men who had lived the life of angels, being allured by the beauty of women, fell into promiscuous and illicit connections with these. And thenceforth acting in all things without discretion and disorderly, they changed the state of human affairs, and the divinely prescribed order of life, so that either by persuasion or force, they compelled all men to sin against God their creator. In the ninth generation are born the giants, so called from of old, not dragon footed as the fables of the Greeks relate, but men of immense bodies, whose bones of enormous size are still shown in some places for confirmation. But against these, the [01:05:00] righteous providence of God brought a flood upon the world, that the earth might be purified from their pollution, and every place might be turned into a sea by the destruction of the wicked. Yet there was then found one righteous man, by name Noah, who being delivered in an ark with his three sons and their wives, became the colonizer of the world after the subsiding of the waters, with those animals and seeds which he had shut up with him. End quote.
Alright, lots of interesting stuff there, right? What I want to do is create a blog post that's going to accompany this episode so that you can have these quotes and you can look at them and compare them with each other and kind of pick them apart yourself and see what elements each person is talking about and trying to bring forth for their audience.
Actually, I have so much content here that I think I'm going to push pause on the episode here at Clement of Rome and do another episode with the rest of it, because I really want to give [01:06:00] you guys this information from early interpretations, because this is one of those things that people talk about a lot, and I think it's important to have these early witnesses in hand to really be able to see, what did people think? How did these ideas develop? I think that's really important and that's going to help our interpretation and our understanding of where we want to be landing and where we should be coming from.
So I want to remind you the kinds of things that we should be thinking about when we're reading these things. What resources might they have had? What other interpreters were they familiar with? What biases did they lean towards? Were they trying to take Greek philosophy and see how that fit into the Bible? What languages did they know? What Bible translations did they have? How did they understand those Bible translations and the different manuscript traditions that they had? The different variations that they saw in their Bible [01:07:00] reading? What issues, pastoral and antagonistic were they dealing with? Were they fighting paganism? Were they fighting Gnosticism? Did they have a more pastoral bent where they were trying to encourage behavior and things like that? And what methods of interpretation are we seeing?
Again, what we've seen so far is that the earliest traditions and interpretations are hands down absolutely all about the angelic interpretation. But we also have this thread of allegorization, where people are taking these stories and they're trying to apply it to their modern day.
So when we look back at these things and we want them to be giving propositional facts, sometimes that's not what they're doing. And that's why we have readings like Philo's reading that seems so confusing to us. And why we have Julius Africanus, who says, you know what, it's men. But [01:08:00] if we're going to see this as an angelic interpretation, here is why it might be angelic, because we have to fit it into the narrative of the flood. And the Bible says outright that man's wickedness is what instigated the flood. Not angelic wickedness, but mankind's wickedness. There's also the question of the depravity of man and the source of evil, and why we have the origin of sin, right?
Because when we're talking from the framework of the way that Dr. Heiser talks about this kind of content, for instance, we have that idea of , this is the explanation for the origin of evil. And already I think we've seen in our readings that maybe that's not really even the focus of what people are thinking here. It's not always the focus. And really in one case, we see that it's mankind who's making angels sin. So, it's the cause of angelic [01:09:00] sin, not really the cause of human sin.
So, all of these things are really interesting. And again, we can have in mind this question about how we can trust the Church and historical opinion and interpretation. And my view on these things is that when we look at it historically, that can give us grace for our own day in seeing people around us who have different interpretations. So that we can kind of loosen our grasp and say, yeah, we think that this is really the original reality, but we can understand how other people are going to come to different interpretations, and we don't have to make it a fight. We don't have to make it like this dividing line in the sand, that if you don't interpret it this way, then you're not a Christian, or I'm not going to go to your church, or all of these kinds of things.
We make it into a litmus test. And if what we see in the early Church is that it's a little bit [01:10:00] more loose than we would prefer it to be when we're coming at it from our historical, grammatical interpretations, then that kind of should make us see other people around us and the Church around us and say, Okay, we can give some grace to this, and we can see how different people are going to approach it in different ways. And we can say, What are the important things? What are the implications of our belief? What are we saying about our applications?
So, okay, I hope this is a useful topic for you guys. I think it's something that's kind of lacking because when you're getting into biblical studies and biblical, theology, you're not really looking at the early church and its historical interpretation, but for us on this end of history, it's really important that we do go there and we do look into that history and say, how did this come to be? Where did we kind of switch gears and [01:11:00] how did that happen and why? Because once we start seeing that, we can say, Okay, well there's an original meaning here that kind of got lost, but at the same time we can see how it's not fully lost, or the application of it actually is still continuing, even in what we might see as poor interpretation.
That's kind of mind blowing when you want an either or situation, when you want to land on just one thing, and again, I do land on just one thing and I do think there is an original interpretation that is better than another one, but that doesn't mean we can't look at those other interpretations for what they can bring us and for what they're suggesting to the church and to people, and sometimes that's bad and sometimes there's really kind of nothing wrong with that.
And so that's kind of the thing I want to get into and dig a little bit deeper in next time and in following [01:12:00] conversations. Because there's a lot of data here, and it's hard to process, and it's hard to kind of historically place it where it should be and understand that importance to our own lives and our own church history and our own interpretations and all of these things.
So, stay tuned for next week and we will talk more about all of these early historical interpretations. I don't know how much we will get into Augustine and his whole thing. He's a very interesting person and I think there are really strong reasons for why he went the direction he did, but he's obviously had such a strong impact in church history that we really need to spend some time on him, so I don't know if I will get to that next week, but that will be on the future docket.
So, really appreciate you guys listening. I hope you guys are enjoying the podcast. Hope you guys are enjoying the content. If there is more of something that [01:13:00] you would like to see, please go ahead and contact me and let me know about that. I love getting feedback and hearing from you guys about what topics you'd like to see and what you would like to hear about.
But thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for subscribing and for rating the podcast wherever you listen and for interacting in the various ways that you do. Big shout out to my supporters out there who provided me a new computer, you guys! So grateful for this. My old computer had been on its last legs for quite some time, and I was able to buy a new laptop for editing and research and writing, so a really big shout out to you guys. Thank you for your support. You guys are really helping me to do this and to keep moving forward with what I'm trying to do. So, much appreciation to all of you. Thank you guys, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.