Who are the Sons of God?

Who are the Sons of God?

In Genesis 6:1 it says that as men multiplied “daughters were born unto them.” We note that this is no particular group of men to whom that these daughters were born. But then in the next verse a specific group is introduced. They are “sons of God.” These “sons of God” saw the daughters that they were fair.”

In verse one the word “men” is the Hebrew word “adam.” This word is use both for the first man “Adam” and for mankind in general. In the King James Bible, “adam” is translated “man” or “men” 504 times. The word “daughters” is the Hebrew “bath.” It means “young woman” or “female child” and is translated “daughter” or “daughters” 522 times in our Bible. So, in the course of time, men in general had daughters in general. Nothing odd or out of order here is there? God had told Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” in Genesis 1:28 in response Eve gave birth to Cain, Able and Seth. In Genesis 4 we find that Cain married and had children; both sons and daughter. Seth, likewise, married and had children according to Genesis 5. By the time we get to Genesis chapter both of these families had began to “multiply on the face of the earth.”

But in Genesis 6, a new group is introduced. They are called the “sons of God.” It seems clear that this group has been set apart from the men and women we read of in 6:1. Who are these “sons of God?”

The identity of the “Sons of God” has been a controversial subject among Christians and Jews alike for centuries. In the first century there were three main positions to choose from. While the number of possible interpretations has increase to as many as nine or more, these three positions remain in vogue.

The first interpretation of “sons of God” comes from Jewish sources such as Symmachus[1], Aquila[2] and the Targums[3]. Each of these identified the “Sons of God” as the sons of nobles or kings who married below their rank. This view has no support in the text of Genesis and is not found in the writing of the early Christian writers.[4]

The second view came about as the result of the book of First Enoch[5] being rejected from the Biblical Canon[6] some time in the second century. In the middle of the second century a Christian writer by the name of Julius Africanus suggested that the “sons of God” were Sethites. That is, the sons of Seth (see Gen 4:26). According to Robert I. Bradshaw, “From that point on the view that the Sons of God were purely human - the descendants of Seth - began to dominate.”[7] It was held that the daughters of men were the daughters of the ungodly line of Cain. In this view, God punishes the Earth because of the intermarriage of the so called godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain.

The Reformers, especially John Calvin, held the writings of a fifth century theologian known as Augustine of Hippo[8] in particularly high regard. In his The City of God, written soon after Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 AD, Augustine promoted the theory that "the sons of God" simply referred to the genealogical line of Seth, who were committed to preserving the true worship of God. He interpreted Genesis 6 to mean that the male offspring of Adam through Seth were "the sons of God," and the female offspring of Adam through Cain were "the daughters of men." He wrote that the problem was that the family of Seth had interbred with the family of Cain, intermingling the bloodlines and corrupting the pure religion. This view is still held by many in the Reform tradition,[9] most of whom are close adherents to Calvinism.

The third view is closely related to the fallen angels identified in Jude 1:6. This view was held by many early Christian writers. Justin Martyr[10], Lactantius[11], and Tertullian[12] all believed that some of the angels fell, perhaps after the fall of Satan, through lust for women. Tertullian referred to their offspring as a “more wicked demon-brood”.[13] Irenaeus[14] appears to have believed in two separate angelic falls as well. In one of the earliest references to the Genesis 6, Irenaeus draws heavily on 1 Enoch 6-9 when he writes the following:

“And wickedness very long-continued and widespread pervaded all the races of men, until very little seed of justice was in them. For unlawful unions came about on earth, as angels linked themselves with offspring of the daughters of men, who bore to them sons, who on account of their exceeding great were called Giants. The angels, then, brought to their wives as gifts teachings of evil, for they taught them the virtues of roots and herbs, and dyeing and cosmetics and discoveries of precious materials, love-philtes, hatreds, amours, passions, constraints of love, the bonds of witchcraft, every sorcery and idolatry, hateful to God; and when this was come into the world, the affairs of wickedness were propagated to overflowing, and those of justice dwindled to very little.”[15]

Tatian[16], Clement of Alexandria[17] and Tertullian all agree with Irenaeus. That is, each references 1 Enoch in support of the “angel theory” when explaining Genesis 6. The Septuagint which translated “sons of God” as “angels” also played an important role in their understanding of this passage of Scripture. In fact, according to Bradshaw, so widely held was the view that “sons of God” referred to angels that no Christian writer challenged this interpretation until the third century AD, as discussed above.

Why did 5^th century Christians abandon the clear and literal interpretation of Genesis 6? As I pointed out earlier, part of the reason was that much of the evidence for this view was found in the apocryphal book of 1 Enoch. The second reason may be found in the Emperor of Rome.

In 361 AD, Julian, the nephew of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who died in 337 AD, became the Emperor of the Roman Empire. After becoming Emperor he abandon the Christian faith in which he had been raised and tried to re-establish the traditional worship of the Roman and Greek gods. Because of this, he became known as “Julian the Apostate” by Christians of the day.

In his book Against the Gallileans he argues that that there is no evidence in the Old Testament for the idea of Christianity, so Christians have no right to regard their teaching as a development of Judaism.[18] He further argues that the angels were actually gods and writes: “And that Moses calls the angels gods you may hear from his own words, "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." (Gen 6:2) And a little further on:

"And also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became the giants which were of old, the men of renown." (Gen 6:4) Now that he means the angels is evident, and this has not been foisted on him from without, but it is clear also from his saying that not men but giants were born from them. For it is clear that if he had thought that men and not beings of some higher and more powerful nature were their fathers, he would not have said that the giants were their offspring. For it seems to me that he declared that the race of giants arose from the mixture of mortal and immortal. Again, when Moses speaks of many sons of God and calls them not men but angels…”

It is clear from this that Julian clearly believed that the “sons of God” and used this as an attack on Christianity. Apparently this caused Christian leaders of the day to question this interpretation. In his article titled Mischievous Angels or Sethites, Dr. Chuck Missler writes, “It was in the 5th century a.d. that the "angel" interpretation of Genesis 6 was increasingly viewed as an embarrassment when attacked by critics…Augustine also embraced the Sethite theory [the second view above] and thus it prevailed into the Middle Ages.”[19]  Because of the influence of Augustine on the Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther, the so called “Sethite theory” has prevailed even until our day. This quote by Presbyterian pastor and theologian, Albert Barnes (1798-1870) is typical of many theologians to this day:

“The sons of God, therefore, are those who are on the Lord’s side, who approach him with duly significant offerings, who call upon him by his proper name, and who walk with God in their daily conversation…The evil here described is that of promiscuous intermarriage, without regard to spiritual character. The godly took them wives of all; that is, of the ungodly as well as the godly families, without any discrimination.”[20]

A glance at John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis 6 will reveal the reasons his followers, such as Albert Barnes, have adopted the “Sethite theory:”   

“…the principle is to be kept in memory, that the world was then as if divided into two parts; because the family of Seth cherished the pure and lawful worship of Good, from which the rest had fallen…since the greater part [of mankind] had prostituted itself, either to an entire contempt of God, or to depraved superstitions; it was fitting that the small portion which God had adopted, by special privilege, to himself, should remain separate from others. It was, therefore, base ingratitude in the posterity of Seth, to mingle themselves with the children of Cain, and with other profane races; because they voluntarily deprived themselves of the inestimable grace of God. For it was an intolerable profanation, to pervert, and to confound, the order appointed by God. It seems at first sight frivolous, that the sons of God should be so severely condemned, for having chosen for themselves beautiful wives from the daughters of men. But we must know first, that it is not a light crime to violate a distinction established by the Lord; secondly, that for the worshippers of God to be separated from profane nations, was a sacred appointment which ought reverently to have been observed, in order that a Church of God might exist upon earth; thirdly, that the disease was desperate, seeing that men rejected the remedy divinely prescribed for them. In short, Moses points it out as the most extreme disorder; when the sons of the pious, whom God had separated to himself from others, as a peculiar and hidden treasure, became degenerate.”[21]

Calvin, has sided with his mentor, Augustine, saying that the reason God destroyed the antideluvian world was that the so called godly line of Seth had “voluntarily deprived themselves of the inestimable grace of God” by “having chosen for themselves beautiful wives from the daughters of men.”

Like most of those of the Reform persuasion, Calvin is contemptuous of those who predated Augustine:

“That ancient figment, concerning the intercourse of angels with women, is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity; and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious.”

It is interesting to note that Calvin, like his modern day supporters, comes to his conclusions not because of Scriptural insight but because the plain understanding of the passage is “so gross and prodigious.”

But, as we will learn in a later lesson, this “Sethite theory” has many problems that can not be ignored.

Allen