by Brian Godawa
Thorkild Jacobsen, one of the foremost authorities on Mesopotamian religion explained the origins of the divine council as a projection of the terrestrial conditions of the primitive form of human governmental democracy that existed in ancient Mesopotamia.[25] Though this worldview of divine world and cosmos ruled by the gods through a divine assembly was not monolithic and unchanging, scholar Patrick D. Miller has argued that it nevertheless remained fairly constant, and was clearly a part of the Biblical worldview as well.[26]
The Mesopotamian/Sumerian worldview that Abraham was immersed in before his calling by Yahweh involved a divine council of gods that functioned in part as a court of law that ruled over the affairs of men, including the authority to grant kingship to both gods and men. The divine council met in assembly under the god of heaven and “father of the gods,” An (later, Anu), but also with him was Enlil, the god of storm. Either of them would broach a matter to be considered which would then be discussed and debated by the “great gods” or “Anunnaki,” whose number included the fifty senior gods as well as “the seven gods who determine fate.”[27] As Jacobsen put it, “Through such general discussion—“asking one another,” as the Babylonians expressed it—the issues were clarified and the various gods had opportunity to voice their opinions for or against.”[28] The executive duties of carrying out the decisions of the assembly seemed to have rested with Enlil as a kind of co-regent with An.
The Enuma Elish, the Akkadian creation myth of the Babylonians who presided over Israel’s exile also depicted a divine council of gods convened around the supreme god Marduk whose operations reflected the same heavenly bureaucracy.[29] But as Heiser points out, the consensus of scholars is that the Ugaritic pantheon of Canaan was the closest conceptual precursor to the Israelite version of the divine council.[30] The linguistic parallels are numerous and their comparison yields fruitful understanding of the Hebrew worldview, both in its similarities and differences.
Among the many parallels that Heiser draws out between the Canaanite and Israelite divine council are the following:
Ugaritic terms of the divine council include, “assembly of the gods,” and “assembly of the sons of God.” The Hebrew Bible uses the terms, “sons of God,” “assembly of the holy ones” (Psa. 89:6), and “gods” “in the council of God” (Job 15:8).
In Ugaritic mythology, El was the supreme god and Baal was his vice-regent who ruled over the other gods of the council. In the Hebrew Bible, El/Elohim/Yahweh is the creator God, but he also has a vice-regent, the Son of Man/Angel of the Lord who was a visible incarnation of Yahweh who ruled over the divine council (Dan. 7). Christians would eventually argue that this “second Yahweh” was in fact the pre-incarnate Messiah, Jesus.
In Ugaritic mythology, El lived in a tent on a cosmic mountain in the north (Sapon) “at the source of two rivers,” where the divine assembly would meet to deliberate and El would dispense his decrees. The mountain was a connection between heaven and earth, that is the earthly temple and its counterpart in heaven. In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh’s sanctuary is also in a tent (tabernacle) on a cosmic mountain, Zion (Psa. 48:1-2), that is in the heights of the north (Sapon). This mountain is poetically linked to Eden, which is the source of rivers (Ezek. 28:13-16) and its precursor, Mount Sinai was where God dispensed his word with his heavenly host (Deut. 33:1-2; Ps. 68:15-17).[31]
Though there are more congruencies between Canaanite and Hebrew concepts of the divine council than listed here, there are certainly many incongruencies as well, not the least of which was the polytheistic worldview of Canaan versus the monolatrous worldview of Israel. Gerald Cooke’s classic article, “The Sons of (the) God(s)” lists the distinguishing characteristics in the Hebrew divine council of sons of God:
The full mythological representation is absent: the individualization, personalization and specification of function which characterized this idea-complex in other cultures of the Near East finds little parallel in the Hebrew-Jewish records… The recognition or assignment of functions in the heavenly company is never specific as in non-Israelite mythologies: they appear only in the more general functions of praising Yahweh and his holiness, serving as members of the royal court, entering into counsel with Yahweh, exercising judgment over the peoples, and doing Yahweh’s bidding. Nor are the interrelations of the gods treated in Israelite tradition as in other traditions. Members of the heavenly company remain essentially characterless functionaries even when they appear singly as “the spirit,” “the satan,” or a “messenger.” Yahweh’s relationship to the lesser beings appears only in the formalized title “sons,” which seems to describe only the classification of these beings as divine; Yahweh is never associated in paternal relationship with any particular one(s) of these beings, as are many of the gods of pagan pantheons; if Yahweh’s “fatherhood” vis-à-vis these divine beings can be spoken of at all, it has only the formal meaning found in the idea of the “father” (i.e., head and leader) of a group of prophets; members of the heavenly company are never called “sons of Yahweh”; worship of any of the heavenly court besides the supreme Judge, Yahweh, is never countenanced by prophetic Yahwism. Members of the heavenly company never threaten his authority as supreme Judge and King.[32]
So the similarities between the worldviews need not mean absolute identity, but rather a common linguistic understanding that may help modern interpreters to understand the Bible in its own historical and cultural context. As Miller concluded, “The mythopoeic conception of the heavenly assembly, the divine council, is the Bible’s way of pointing to a transcendent ordering and governing of the universe, of which all human governments and institutions are a reflection, but even more it is the machinery by which the just rule of God is effective, that is, powerful, in the universe.”[33]
Appendix b
The Nephilim
Gen. 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Num. 13:33
And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
The meaning of the Biblical word Nephilim has been a matter of unending controversy in Church history. That the word is still not translated into an English defined word but transliterated in most Bible translations is evidence of the fact that no agreement can be made over its original meaning. The two passages quoted above are the only two places in the Bible where the Hebrew word Nephilim is used. What would surprise some Bible readers is that these are not the only places where the Nephilim are talked about in Scripture. Nephilim has a theological thread that begins in Genesis 6 and goes through all the way to the New Testament.
The main opposing interpretations of this word come down to whether it is a reference to mighty leaders of some kind or to giants of abnormal human height. In my novel, Noah Primeval I take the perspective that these are giants and that these Bible passages are not merely obscure and unconnected factual references to an historical oddity, but rather that they are part of a diabolical supernatural plan of “sons of God” who are fallen from God’s divine council of heavenly host. While my novel is obviously speculative fictional fantasy, it is nevertheless loosely based upon what I believe is a theological thread revealed in the Bible that becomes clear upon closer inspection of the text.
Taking a look at the first passage, Genesis 6:4, in context we read:
Gen. 6:1-4
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 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.
Genesis 6 is the opening lines to the story of Noah’s flood. It talks about man reproducing upon the face of the earth and “sons of God” taking women as wives. I have already documented extensively elsewhere that the phrase sons of God in the Bible is a proven attribution to supernatural members of God’s divine council. But some still attempt to change that meaning of the phrase in this passage to mean either men in the “righteous lineage” of Seth as contrasted with the daughters of men in the “unrighteous lineage” of Cain, or to mean kingly rulers on the earth who were engaging in polygamy.
In either case, these interpretations correctly acknowledge the negative connotation of the intermarriage and the violation of a separation, but they both seek to define the sons of God as natural men on earth. What both of these “humanly” interpretations miss is that the passage does not talk about a violation of separation of status or bloodline, but upon heavenly and earthly essence. The text links the “daughters of men” to the multiplication of “man” in general, not to a particular bloodline or royalty.
The Sethite view seeks to base its argument on an early reference in Genesis after Cain has killed Abel, and God grants a new son, Seth, to replace Abel for Eve. “To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD (Gen. 4:26).” They believe that these ones calling upon the name of the Lord are those in the line of Seth as opposed to people in the line of Cain.
But the text does not restrict the righteousness in any way to Seth’s lineage. It speaks in general of people calling upon God. In fact, the word used of “man” in Genesis 6 is “adam” which makes the population growth of Genesis 6:1 a generic reference to humankind fulfilling God’s mandate to the Adam as mankind’s representative to populate the earth, not to the exclusive lineage of Cain. The daughters are after all, “daughters of adam,” in the text, not daughters of Cain.
Michael Heiser sums up the arguments against the human interpretation:
First, Genesis 4:26 never says the only people who “called on the name of the Lord” were men from Seth’s lineage, nor does it say that Seth’s birth produced some sort of spiritual revival. This is an idea brought to the text from the imagination of the interpreter. Second, if these marriages are human-to-human, how is it that giants (Nephilim) were the result of the unions? Third, the text never calls the women “daughters of Cain.” Rather, they are “daughters of men [humankind].” Fourth, nothing in Genesis 6:1-4 or anywhere else in the Bible identifies those who come from Seth’s lineage with the descriptive phrase “sons of God.”[34]
There is simply no explicit reference in the Bible to sons of Seth being sons of God or daughters of man being only daughters of Cain. One must bring a preconceived theory to the text to make it fit. But in so doing, one must ignore the more explicit Biblical passages about the sons of God as God’s heavenly host. And in so doing, one must affirm a racial righteousness based on human blood lineage. The emphasis in the text is on the separation of heavenly and earthly flesh.[35]
The New Testament agrees with the supernatural interpretation of divine/human cohabitation because it actually alludes to this very violation of fleshly categories and resultant punishment in 2 Peter and Jude, letters that show a strong literary interdependency on one another. If you compare the two passages you see the sensual violation of human and angelic flesh that is located in Genesis 6:
2Pet. 2:4-10
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell (tartarus) and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;... then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
Jude 6-7
And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in gross immorality and pursued strange flesh, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Both these passages speak of the same angels who sinned before the flood of Noah, and who were committed to chains of gloomy darkness. 1 Peter 3:19-20 calls these imprisoned angels “disobedient.” According to our study, the angelic sons of God are spoken of as sinning in Genesis 6, so these must be the same angels referred to by the authors of the New Testament. But just what is their sin?
Both Peter and Jude link the sin of those fallen angels with the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is described as indulging in “gross immorality” by pursuing “strange flesh.” The Greek word for “gross immorality” (ek porneuo) indicates a heightened form of sexual immorality, and the Greek words for “strange flesh” (heteros sarx) indicate the pursuit of something against one’s natural flesh. The angels who visited Sodom were clearly spoken of as enfleshed in such a way that they were physically present to have their feet washed and even eat food with Abraham and with Lot (Gen. 18:1-8; 19:3).
Angels on earth can have a physical presence. Bible students know that the men in Sodom were seeking to engage in sexual penetration of these same angels who later visited Lot in his home. So here, men seeking sex with angels is not merely a homosexual act, it is a violation of the heavenly and earthly flesh distinction that the Scriptures seem to reinforce. So Peter and Jude link the angels sinning before the flood to the violation of a sexual separation of angels and humankind. The New Testament commentary on Genesis 6:1 affirms the supernatural view of the sons of God as having sex with humans.
It has been long known by scholars that the letter of Jude not only quotes a verse from the non-canonical book of 1 Enoch (v. 14 with 1 Enoch 1:9),[36] but that Jude 6-7 and 2 Peter 2:4-10 both paraphrase content from 1 Enoch, thus supporting the notion that the inspired authors intended an Enochian interpretation of “angels” called the Watchers (sons of God) having sexual intercourse with humans. 1 Enoch extrapolates the Nephilim pre-flood story from the Bible as speaking of angels violating their supernatural separation and having sex with humans who bear them giants.[37]
Any question regarding the authenticity of this interpretation in Jude and Peter is quickly answered by another commonality that the New Testament authors share with the Enochian interpretation. Their combination of the angelic sexual sin with the sexual sin of Sodom is a poetic doublet that does not occur in the Old Testament, but does appear in multiple Second Temple Jewish manuscripts circulating in the New Testament time period. Jude and Peter are alluding to a common understanding of their culture that the angelic sin (and its hybrid fruit of giants) was an unnatural sexual violation of the divine and human separation. Here are some of those texts:
Sirach 16:7-8
He forgave not the giants of old, [the fruit of the angelic sin]
Who revolted in their might.
He spared not the place where Lot sojourned, Who were arrogant in their pride.[38]
Testament of Naphtali 3:4-5
[D]iscern the Lord who made all things, so that you do not become like Sodom, which departed from the order of nature. Likewise the Watchers departed from nature’s order; the Lord pronounced a curse on them at the Flood.[39]
3 Maccabees 2:4-5
Thou didst destroy those who aforetime did iniquity, among whom were giants trusting in their strength and boldness, bringing upon them a boundless flood of water. Thou didst burn up with fire and brimstone the men of Sodom, workers of arrogance, who had become known of all for their crimes, and didst make them an example to those who should come after.[40]
[n
otice “making an example for those after” that is also referenced in Jude 7]
Jubilees 20:4-5
[L]et them not take to themselves wives from the daughters of Canaan; for the seed of Canaan will be rooted out of the land. And he told them of the judgment of the giants, and the judgment of the Sodomites, how they had been judged on account of their wickedness, and had died on account of their fornication, and uncleanness, and mutual corruption through fornication.[41]
This is critical for understanding the Nephilim as unholy giant progeny because the Nephilim are the result of this sexual union between angel and human.
Some respond that angelic beings cannot have sex with humans because of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 22. Jesus is confronted by Sadducees who are trying to force Jesus to deny the future Resurrection of the dead. They construct a hypothetical of a woman with multiple husbands due to their multiple deaths, and then ask him whose wife she is at the Resurrection,, hoping to stump Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. Jesus replies, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven (Matt. 22:29-30).” Because of this, it is alleged that angels cannot have sexual intercourse with humans.
But this is not at all what Jesus is concluding. Firstly, Jesus is not talking about sexual intercourse, but the religious law of marriage connections between husband and wife. Secondly, he is not talking about what angels cannot do, but what they do not do. Angels in heaven who obey God do not marry. This has no implication on what a fallen angel is capable of physically doing when coming to earth. Thirdly, Jesus is talking about angels in heaven, their natural abode, not angels on earth who left that abode to engage in unnatural liaisons with human flesh (as we saw in 2 Peter 2 and Jude). The angels in heaven that Jesus is talking about are not the angelic sons of God who left heaven, came to earth, and violated God’s separation of those domains by having intercourse with human women.
