there is this very strange text that is verses one through four of Genesis chapter six so let's go look at that for a second we'll read the text to refresh our memory and to be precise about what it said what is not said chapter six verse one through four one of the strangest passages in the Old Testament and the Old Testament is full of strange passages it says this when men began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born to them the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were
fair and they took to wife such of them as they chose then Lord said my spirit shall not abide and man forever for he is flesh but his day shall be a hundred and twenty years the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them these were the mighty men of old the men of renown immediately after this we see verse five the laws saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and it grieved into his heart and so he decides to wipe man out in the flood we'll get that in a second for now the question is this point to on the handout who are the sons of God and the daughters of men this has been an object of speculation and debate for many many many many centuries there are basically three options let's begin with the most common one the angelic interpretation in this
view which is a very ancient interpretation the sons of God are angelic beings they're angels put it simply and they take to wife human women and have sexual relations with the women who are called the daughters of men and as a result of this unnatural union talking about contrary to natural law this is one that is they give birth to the nepheline actually well it says that they give birth to the mighty men in Hebrew the gibble Reem and in Greek even with the Greek is gigantis yeah the Giants not the football team but the
big people which is by the way what Gabor means keyboard just means mighty or strong GI Bibi you are I am whenever you see I am on a Hebrew term that's the plural suffix means many like Elohim and then the Greek gigantis is obvious that's where we get the word giant from okay so in this view angels come down they have sexual relations with women and then the children of those are giants okay because you know those angelic genes they're strong all right and so the sitting question in this interpretation is the unnatural union of
the Angels with women and that's what leads to the flood God wipes out humanity because of this sin now what would be the argument for this position well it's very simple it's a linguistic argument the angels in the Old Testament are sometimes called sons of God for example job chapter 1 and 2 Psalm 29 verse 1 and Psalm 89 verse 6 those are examples of angels being called been a high Elohim sons of God and so if that's what the term means here then it would be saying that the angels had relations with women that's
the argument for what's the argument against this you know I see I like to do this Arden for against a right was your argument against this position angels don't have you've said bodies I was going to say the necessary equipment but we'll go with bodies okay yeah that's right by definition we know both from Scripture tradition and the analogy of faith that Church's teaching on angels that angels are pure spirits right even within the angelic realm angels don't generate if you look at the mystic angelology or any of the angel ology the father's each angel
is its own species they don't create they don't generate all right so the idea that they even have the power to generate is actually metaphysically impossible theologically erroneous okay it's simply impossible for them to copulate with a human person and create any kind of offspring so in other words this interpretation although ancient it's in the Book of Enoch for example which is an ancient Jewish writing from about second century BC is when most scholars dated widely read and known in the early church interprets this as this was the fall of the Angels I don't know
why the Angels fell well it's not narrated in Genesis 1 to 5 but it is narrated in Genesis 6 from this view they fell because ladies who are just too beautiful they saw the ladies like wow it's so beautiful they just couldn't resist and so actually that was true toll Ian's interpretation - and if you remember that the section in 1st Corinthians 11 when Paul's talking about women wearing veils in the liturgy to remember this he says that women should worship with their heads covered because of the angels and Tertullian and the 200 ad argued
that what Paul meant there was that women are just too beautiful and they need to cover themselves so that the angels can pay attention in the in the mass basically right so cover up you ladies are just too beautiful probably not right although it was a good try so that's one interpretation another interpretation let's go to back option number two option number two is the ancient rulers interpretation in this view the sons of God are ancient kingdoms ancient dynastic rulers and the daughters are men were these royal harems that they would take from among their
subjects and in this case the sin in question is sexual lust and polygamy in other words these Kings who remember in the ancient world kings were regarded as divine or at least semi divine these kings would take to wife the women of their subjects and create these harems and so out of lust and polygamy they sent and so God sends the flood to destroy them unimportance trait a bit of a modern interpretation it's kind of a novelty I take it with a grain of salt I actually think it can be fused with option one although
it does make me realize something else another major weakness to the angelic interpretation is that it would necessitate the Angels inserting themselves into the narrative in chapter 6 verse 1 and then pulling out in chapter 6 verse 4 in other words coming from nowhere and going nowhere because who is punished in Genesis 6 verse 5 it's not the angels it's not you know God doesn't throw them out of heaven or anything like that they are consigned to eternal darkness it's humanity that's punished so if the sin were the sin of the angels you would expect
to see the punishment to be the punishment of the angels but you don't have any description of the punishment of the angels people who are punished is humanity the human beings right so that exegetical argument also favors the idea that this is the sin that's being described as a human sin doesn't anything to do with the angels okay option number 1 which i think is the right interpretation is what is known as the seth ight interpretation in this view the sons of god are descendants of seth they're descendants of the righteous seed of Adam and
of the culture that Adam gave rise to whereas the daughters of men are the descendants of Cain the culture that's also described in Genesis chapter 5 and the sin in question here is the intermarriage between the godly Seth i'ts and the ungodly K Knights the sons of God in this case are attracted by the women of the canine civilization and they intermarry with them and though after I fall into the sin and the idolatry of the canine culture now I realized that we I don't have the time to defend this in the depth that we
would need I would encourage you to read if you can Hamilton section in the handbook and the Pentateuch or gustan City of God book 15 he deals with this in depth this whole question of the sons of God and the daughters of men in book 15 of Augustine's work the City of God and he argues for this interpretation Aquinas takes it also as well in the Summa Theologica in the section on whether angels have bodies and whether they can do things with those bodies that humans do Aquinas deals with this in the Summa part one
question 51 article 3 he says this the holy angels could not fall in such a fashion hence by the sons of God are to be understood the sons of Seth who were good while by the daughters of men the scripture designates those who sprang from the race of Cain nor is it to be wondered at that the giant should be born of them for they were not all Giants albeit there were many more before them after the deluge note this in Hebrew this just means mighty men of like these are powerful warlike men it doesn't
necessarily mean that they are you know 25 30 40 50 feet tall and you can check out Aquinas on that or Agustin as a more lengthy interpretation for now the basic point would be this one of the key strengths of the K night Seth I interpretation is Genesis six one through four is preceded by Genesis five and four and what is Genesis four and five all about the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Celle if we had the time which we don't because I got to get to Noah we're not even there yet just
go back and read chapter 4 some time and look at verses 17 through 23 which describe the descendants of Cain his genealogy who were warlike murderers violent and polygamous and then contrast that with the descendants of Seth who are described in verse 26 and the descendants of Seth are described in this way it says that they began to call on the name of the Lord so the Seth i'ts are described as a liturgical civilization whereas the canines are described as a polygamist violent technological civilization and these basically these two cities the city of Man City
of God and that's where a Gustin actually gets his whole title for his book the City of God from is the idea these two cultures at war with one another the city of man and the city of God and that's going to happen throughout the rest of Genesis the constant temptation of the citizens of the City of God is going to be to live like the citizens of the city of man to marry the citizens of the city of man and therefore to fall into the idolatry of the city of man ok so this view
sees basically what happened is the Seth aiight culture the descendants of Seth were corrupted by the sentence of Cain such that all humanity became wicked except for one family Noah's family are actually just as one man Noah and so God wipes out humanity and then establishes a new covenant with them [Music] [Music]
