Patrick…
Lets state for the record that Enoch is not accepted as divinely inspired. Its not in any Canon, Christian or Hebrew. Wasn’t in the Septuagint …and one of major issues leading to its rejection was this myth, fiction of Angels having IC with humans.
Read: Ethiopia, both the Christians and the Jews.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea that the “sons of God” were angels who interbred with human women and passed on forbidden knowledge to mankind was a well-known idea during the Second Temple period, as attested by literary works from the period like 1 Enoch and others quoted above. Some manuscripts of the Septuagint even attest to the reading
oi angeloi tou Theou “the angels of God,” although the tradition is not uniform: it could have very well originally read
oi yioi tou Theou “the sons of God,” the reading followed in critical editions. (For the record, the Ethiopian translations of Genesis follow the “angels of God” translation.) Nevertheless, this variant was apparently popular enough to influence several Jewish and early Christian authors.
Later, however, the idea that fallen heavenly spirits could produce offspring with human women was deemed unacceptable in both Christianity and Judaism for a variety of reasons. One possibility is that this idea was eventually struck out post-AD 70 as a part of the general rejection of Enochic traditions along with other groups and practices perceived to be outside the bounds of “normative” Judaism. (This would explain why Enochic literature was not accepted by most Jews except for the ones at Ethiopia.) At least in the Talmudic period (AD 200-600), when we might expect to find this view voiced in classical midrashim alongside dissenting opinions and alternative interpretations, our sources are mostly silent about fallen angels.
In fact, there was a campaign started by Rabbi
Simeon bar Yoḥai, a disciple of the rabbi Akiva, explicitly condemning anyone who understood
ḇənê-hā’ĕlōhîm as referring to “sons of God,” i.e. angels, due to its perceived blasphemy. The favored interpretation is that
ḇənê-hā’ĕlōhîm should be understood, not as “sons of God,” but “sons of the great ones” or “sons of the judges:” in other words, “the sons of the great” (i.e. human nobles) chose wives for themselves among “the daughters of men” (i.e. the commoners), who were of course powerless to resist their betters (cf. the use of the word
’ĕlōhîm in Exodus 22:7.) This interpretation is generally followed by later targumim, translations of Scriptural books into Aramaic. Aquila, who produced his own Greek translation, rendered the phrase in question hyper-literally as
oi yioi tōn theōn “the sons of the gods:” which is notable as he often translates
’ĕlōhîm in the singular when the Hebrew God is meant. Apparently Aquila understood the term as denoting “the sons of the
false gods.”
This, however, does not mean that the tradition disappeared immediately as a result of the campaign. A contemporary of Akiva, Rabbi Ishmael b. Elisha, still contended that the legend of the fallen angels was historical fact. Also, the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan seems to reflect a confused tradition in its rendition of Genesis 6:
And it was when the sons of men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and fair daughters were born to them; and the sons of the great saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and painted, and curled, walking with revelation of the flesh, and with imaginations of wickedness; that they took them wives of all who pleased them. And the Lord said by His Word, All the generations of the wicked which are to arise shall not be purged after the order of the judgments of the generation of the deluge, which shall be destroyed and exterminated from the midst of the world. Have I not imparted My Holy Spirit to them, (or, placed My Holy Spirit in them,) that they may work good works? And, behold, their works are wicked. Behold, I will give them a prolongment of a hundred and twenty years, that they may work repentance, and not perish.
Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days; and also, after the sons of the Great had gone in with the daughters of men, they bare to them: and these are they who are called men who are of the world, men of names.
In keeping with Rabbi Simeon and other targumim, this Aramaic translation renders the term in question as “the sons of the great,” but at the same time it also makes references to the language and to the tradition found in 1 Enoch (Schamchazai and Uzziel = Shemihazah and Asael).
