I had to write a paper this week on the "Sons of God" written about in Genesis 6. It was a pretty interesting topic, but I found it pretty difficult to find enough material on the subject. Well, that’s not true, there was lots of info on the internet, but who knows how much credibility any of that stuff has? Anyway, as I researched, I discovered that many scholars held a totally different view than I had once thought. I personally believe these "sons of God" were angels, but I was surprised at how many people really believed they were humans from the line of Seth. I guess I gained an appreciation for both viewpoints as I learned each one and the evidence for them. I still believe they were angels, and feel like I could back it up now, but it was interesting to learn about. In the process I found myself reading all kinds of other things including portions the "Epic of Gilgamesh." I’m gonna have to go back and read the whole thing someday – it’s interesting to me that this story was written long before the Book of Genesis and yet, there are so many similarities. I know some would say that Moses ripped off the Epic of Gilgamesh, but what if they are both stories of the same world flood event, just written from two different viewpoints. Of course we know that what Moses wrote down was inspired by God, but it had also been passed down from generation to generation before that. Moses didn’t invent the story. I wonder if the Epic of Gilgamesh is just the way someone else got it passed down to them? Anyway, it’s all pretty interesting.
I also ended up reading a bit of the Book of Enoch in studying about these "sons of God." That’s seems pretty interesting too. It’s obviously not a book which made the cannon, but I wonder why not? I wonder how much of it can be trusted? Which parts? It’s all very interesting to me, but I’ll bet it’ll be a couple of years before I’ll have time to research some of these thigns on my own. Right now, just keeping up with the reading for my classes is taking all the time I have. I feel like there are all kinds of things I’m learning about which are making me think in different ways, and therefore causing me to ask more questions. That’s a really good thing, but it’s hard to just let these things go without studying them more in depth, and I just don’t have time to do it right now.
Maybe when I finish school, I’ll be able to read a book for fun again. Maybe I’ll be able to look at these things more in depth. Of course, the other side is that maybe I’ll be sick of it all and not wanna study at all again for a while.
Lord, I don’t wanna be that way. Help me to always remain a learner and to always have the desire to grow and deepen our relationship and my understanding of Your Word. Help me also to live out the things I’m learning in my life. AMEN.
“who knows how much credibility any of that stuff has?” I do: Nephilology has become what I term “neo-theo-sci-fi.”
Biblical Nephiology is much too boring, not sexy enough to be able to make a living off of by selling tall-tales day-to-day.
That “‘sons of God’ were angels” was the original, traditional, and majority view amongst the earliest Jewish and Christian commentators alike–for many, many centuries.
The Sethite view is a humanistic late comer and only causes more problems than it solves.
1 Enoch/Ethiopic Enoch is just Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah. For example, it has Nephilim being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.