I. Introduction to this chapter

 

From my point of view, it is impossible that the first 11 chapters from the book of Genesis represent an accurate description of what had happened at the beginning of the existence of our universe and of humankind. There are much too many contradictions in the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis and the stories found there are obviously mythological in their character and not scientific or historic. For me, that doesn’t mean the loss of my faith in God because it isn’t based on the factuality of all stories from the Bible, but it stands on a personal experience with Him. At the same time, the conclusion that the book of Genesis cannot offer a solid base for the understanding of our world carries important consequences. 

If one doesn’t believe that the biblical record of the book of Genesis is scientifically accurate what remains from the Christian teachings about salvation? What happens with an authentic Christian faith if one accepts that the universe had come in place through the Big Bang and human beings evolved from other forms of life? If Adam and Eve aren’t historical personages and they didn’t disobey God everything changes in the Christian doctrines. 

If Adam and Eve are not real personages but only legendary ones, how did humankind come into existence? The answer would be that humankind has a common origin with all forms of life and up to a point all developed in the same direction through the evolution of species. Human beings took another path under the influence of the internal and possibly external factors and we became what we are today. 

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It isn’t impossible that the original evolution of humankind would have been determined by contact with an extra-terrestrial civilization. It is wrong to affirm that human beings have evolved from “monkeys” because they started to evolve from much more primitive forms of life together with the entirety of biological nature. Between human beings and the most evolved primates there are many common points and the genetic resemblances are astonishing, but our unique ancestor is to be found farther in the past. We have evolved together with all nature from the first living organisms on Earth which appeared billions of years ago. 

After hundreds of thousands of years of evolution of the first humanoids, God had chosen to reveal Himself to humankind. Who were the human beings to whom God had revealed Himself for the first time? It couldn’t have been Adam and Eve because they didn’t exist in real life, and also it couldn’t have been Noah, another legendary personage. We have to take it that Abraham would have been the first human being to whom God would have revealed His existence directly, if we take the life of Abraham being less mythological and more real than that of his predecessors from the book of Genesis. 

After concluding that the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis are too absurd and contradictory to be the representation of real facts, one has two possibilities. One is to consider the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis a series of mythological stories which weren’t inspired by God and which don’t have any relation to reality and any spiritual meanings. The other one is to see the accounts of the creation not being faithful to reality but being full of spiritual meanings and being inspired by God as parables, not as historical facts. In the first case the book of Genesis has to be judged in connection with the universal mythological context at the time in which its narratives have been written, and in the second case one has to figure out how and when God had inspired these parables to humankind and what are their spiritual meanings. The problem of the multiple authorship of the texts still remains and has to be solved together with this analysis. 

If someone concludes that the book of Genesis is a series of parables and not the exact description of historical events, that conclusion will shake considerably the foundation of the Christian faith such as it had been laid by the official religious institutions which insist on biblical accuracy and factuality. 

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    The faith in God is still not restricted but the biblical narratives and the interpretations given to them by the classical theistic views are in doubt. 

The Christian official doctrines teach us that Adam and Eve, two real personages and the first human beings created by God, disobeyed Him, and their disobedience was a sin with consequences for all humankind. We all are sinners and need redemption through Christ’s sacrifice in order to be saved. In point of fact, because God didn’t directly create the earth, the light, the sun and the stars, Adam and Eve, or plants and animals on Earth, the original sin is a myth. Not being real, Adam and Eve didn’t disobey God and they committed no sin. 

We cannot deny the possibility that the universal Consciousness of existence per se would create things within the reality of existence, but if He created our universe He surely didn’t do it in the way which is described by the book of Genesis. All absurdities and inconsistencies found in the creation stories from the book of Genesis are peremptory arguments which support the affirmation according to which that part of the Bible is not a collection of writings about facts but a compilation of myths. 

Without original sin, without human nature being degraded beyond recognition by the sin as the classical theism maintains, without the theory which states that human beings cannot by themselves separate good from evil and without God as a direct Creator of humankind, the entire Christian theology looks very different from what we know it to be. 

God didn’t create humankind as it is. He only, at best, had created the right conditions for the apparition of intelligent life somewhere inside the cosmos, on our planet. Nevertheless, life on Earth took its particularities from the way in which it evolved during millions of years and not directly from the way in which it would have been created by God. 

There are several possibilities regarding the relationship between God and the world and His quality of Creator, from which one has to choose and which would determine and define one’s religious faith. 

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The theist creationist view:  

God is the Creator of the entire existence. He created all that is; the universe with the celestial bodies and the earth with all that it contains including humankind. God had created all these either in six literal days (young creationists) or in six historical periods, each much longer than a physical day. God isn’t responsible for the evil in the world and the responsibility for what goes wrong lies with an angel created by Him and who disobeyed Him, and this is Satan. If God had created Satan and he could have destroyed him but He didn’t, He cannot be exonerated of any responsibility for the evil in the world. 

The theist evolution view:  

God was not directly involved in the origin of life. He created the building blocks and the natural laws but at some point He stepped back and let His creation take over. He let it do what it does and life eventually emerged from non-living material.[1]  

Once they are set in place the laws of nature determine the apparition of life from inorganic matter and through evolution the emergence of human beings. This vision doesn’t exclude God’s intervention during human history or miracles. In this view, the revelation from God also has an important function to fulfil. 

God is partially responsible for the evil in the world because He initiated the existence of the life on Earth. God didn’t create the universe, the earth, the sun, the life on Earth or the humankind directly. God only created matter and the laws of nature and they were working by the power of their inherent potential. God cannot be responsible entirely for death and suffering on Earth because they are determined by how things are and how they evolve. Death and suffering are the price to pay for the existence of intelligent life in biological form, for the union of spirit and matter and even God has paid this price in the Person of Christ. 

God didn’t directly create the carnivorous animals and they emerged on Earth through evolution, consequently killing other animals wouldn’t have been His idea but was unavoidable for the apparition of an ecosystem which could have supported intelligent life. 

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 God also isn’t responsible for the natural disasters because they are part of the natural world which permits the apparition of life on Earth. 

The deist view:  

In the deist view, similar to the theistic evolution principle God created the building blocks of creation and the laws of physics but He didn’t generate this universe or humankind directly. Once set in place nature works its way and what resulted on our planet is humankind. The difference with the theistic evolution view is that in the deistic vision God’s miracles or revelation are excluded. All we can know about God comes through rationality and through the study of nature. This is a natural religion with no place for the supernatural in the course of the development of natural phenomena. God had intervened only when He set in place the all necessary ingredients for the existence of the universe but after that He completely retracted from His creation. 

Christian Deists believe that it is never “God’s will” for anything “bad” to happen to human beings. These bad things may be caused by accident or by human action but are never determined by God. For example, an illness may be caused by an accidental infection or may be caused by a person choosing to ingest unhealthy food or liquids. God does not make a person sick or well by intervening in matters connected to his or her health.[2]     

The panentheistic view:  

God is one with the universe but is greater than it. This is similar to the consciousness which is more than the sum of all cells of the brain. The following quotation summarises well what panentheism is: 

“Panentheism is essentially a combination of theism (God is the supreme being) and pantheism (God is everything). While pantheism says that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims the God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God. Panentheism holds that God is the “supreme effect” of the universe.  God is everything in the universe, but God also is greater than the universe. Events and changes in the universe affect and change God. As the universe grows and learns, God also increases in knowledge and being.”[3]

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The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. God is responsible for the evil in the world only in direct proportion with His involvement in its development. God being a complex Reality and not a simple one, He influences the world from the top down and in this way He is a Creator. It is wrong to understand causation only from simple to complex because there is also causation from what is more complex to what is simpler. Consciousness influences matter and energy. 

If someone rejects the factuality of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis he or she cannot hold a theistic creationist view of God any more. The theistic creationist view is inextricably bound with a literal reading of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. In the Bible God is the Almighty Creator of the universe, of the heavens, the earth, humankind, the animals and plants. In the book of Genesis God would have created everything directly, not indirectly through evolution, not intermediated by nature. As a matter of fact, the natural world, meaning plants and animals, would have been created after the creation of man in Genesis chapter 2. In this situation, there is no place for a common ancestor for all living beings and God would have created nature randomly in an order which doesn’t have anything to do with our reality such as it is described by modern sciences. The order of creation from Genesis chapter 2 is absurd, hence irrational, and disqualifies completely the value of the texts. 

The book of Genesis isn’t a book of science or of history and at the best can be understood as a series of parables but with a mixed message. In these parables, the details are presented in an irrational order and for this reason they contradict each other and the spiritual meaning can be the opposite of what is commonly preached. For example, in the story of Adam and Eve the serpent isn’t a malefic personage but a good one who tells the truth, contrary to God who isn’t exact in all His statements.  

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   The serpent wanted to bring knowledge to humankind contrary to God who tried to prevent humankind getting it. The parable of the tree of knowledge isn’t only about human beings’ obedience to God as it is usually presented but is also about the importance of knowledge for humankind and the conflict generated by it. In my view the latter interpretation is much more important than the former but the idea of disobedience to God which in the parable is an act of courage is interpreted as the original sin. Pursuing knowledge even against God’s will is what gives humankind a heroic dimension and its special status, and which differentiates it from animals which couldn’t consciously disobey Him. Nevertheless, even if they didn’t disobey God, animals were also punished through the waters of the Flood and their only chance to survive was the knowledge acquired by humankind in building the ark.  

Adam and Eve were in a way less than human when they were created by God because they couldn’t have known the difference between good and evil. The first two human beings became human only when they ate from the tree of knowledge, but this human dimension would have been gained in contradiction to God’s will. 

   The courage of humankind was falsely interpreted and perverted by religions in the biggest possible sin and that without keeping a proper balance. The initial meaning of the story of Adam and Eve didn’t condemn in any way human behaviour toward knowledge and saw God as an authoritarian divinity who wanted to keep knowledge only for Him, because if human beings got it they would have become like Him. God’s attitude toward humankind is criticised by the parable because He is described as changing His words told to them, in contrast with the serpent who spoke only the truth. The parabolic messages of the book of Genesis give a particular image about God different than what is preached about Him. If in reality God would have created humankind in His likeness, He wouldn’t have become upset when human beings eating from the tree of knowledge became like Him, knowing the difference between good and evil. It is absurd to create humankind in God’s likeness but, at the same time, stopping them from being like Him, knowing good and evil. This is a contradiction contained by the book of Genesis. 

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Many parables from the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis don’t make any spiritual sense unless we understand God as a Force hostile to humankind, the existence of whom explains some disasters on Earth. God had created humankind and declared it good and the entire creation would have been qualified as very good, but after a while He regretted His creation and destroyed the majority of the population of the earth together with all animals and almost all plants. He, again, was sorry for the destruction of the earth through the Flood and He promised that another Deluge would not happen. In spite of the mayhem that would have been produced by the Flood, it didn’t solve any problems. The violence of all flesh would have been greater after the Flood than before it, because when the Deluge was gone meat consumption was allowed. 

If the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis don’t make any sense neither as a description of real events nor as parables with a high spiritual message; what remains is a pure interest in the way in which they used mythological symbols which can also be found in other mythologies or stories of creation from the ancient world. 

The biblical narratives are not as original as is commonly thought because they contain motives widely found in other Near-Eastern mythologies and other religions of the world such as the motives of the serpent, of the tree of life, of the number seven, of the primeval sea, chaos and so on. The biblical accounts used many of these symbols in a relatively new perspective but the latter don’t appear for the first time in the book of Genesis. The internal inconsistencies and the resemblances to other religions show that the narratives from the book of Genesis are not a unique revelation from the heavens and surely not a discovery from the point of view of facts. 

The serpent has a mixed symbolism in the biblical accounts. On the one side, it is the symbol of evil, of the devil who is the old serpent, but on the other side Moses had been asked by God to raise a serpent in the desert as a symbol for Jewish salvation. In other words, in Moses’ times the serpent symbolised Jesus because whoever saw him would have been healed. 

“In the Gospel of John 3:14–15, Jesus makes direct comparison between the raising up of the Son of Man and the act of Moses in raising up the serpent as a sign, using it as a symbol associatedwith salvation: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” [4]     

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In many religions of the world the serpent is an important symbolism of wisdom: 

“Because of its herbal knowledge and entheogenic association the snake was often considered one of the wisest animals, being (close to the) divine. Its divine aspect combined with its habitat in the earth between the roots of plants made it an animal with chthonic properties connected to the afterlife and immortality. Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing, carried a staff with one serpent wrapped around it, which has become the symbol of modern medicine.”[5]     

Sometimes the symbolism of the serpent is mixed with another mythical symbol which is the tree: 

“In many myths the chthonic serpent (sometimes a pair) lives in or is coiled around a Tree of Life situated in a divine garden. In the Genesis story of the Torah and Biblical Old Testament, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is situated in the Garden of Eden together with the tree of life and the Serpent. In Greek mythology Ladon coiled around the tree in the garden of the Hesperides protecting the entheogenic golden apples… Similarly Níðhöggr (Nidhogg Nagar) the dragon of Norse mythology eats from the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Under yet another Tree (the Bodhi tree of Enlightenment), the Buddha sat in ecstatic meditation. When a storm arose, the mighty serpent king Mucalinda rose up from his place beneath the earth and enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, not to break his ecstatic state.”[6]     

In connection to Buddha, the symbolism of the serpent and of the tree is completed with the symbol of the number seven found also in the book of Genesis. 

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 Another reference to the symbolic number seven is the one referred to by Joseph Campbell: 

“It has been suggested by Joseph Campbell that the symbol of snakes coiled around a staff is an ancient representation of Kundalini physiology. The staff represents the spinal column with the snake(s) being energy channels. In the case of two coiled snakes they usually cross each other seven times, a possible reference to the seven energy centers called chakras.” [7]  

In other Near-Eastern religions such is the Egyptian one, the serpent is also very present: 

“In Ancient Egypt, where the earliest written cultural records exist, the serpent appears from the beginning to the end of their mythology. Ra and Atum (“he who completes or perfects”) became the same god, Atum, the “counter-Ra,” was associated with earth animals, including the serpent: Nehebkau (“he who harnesses the souls”) was the two headed serpent deity who guarded the entrance to the underworld. He is often seen as the son of the snake goddess Renenutet.”[8]    

In Gnosticism the symbol of the serpent is important but in another sense than in orthodox Christianity: 

“The image of the serpent as the embodiment of the wisdom transmitted by Sophia was an emblem used by gnosticism, especially those sects that the more orthodox characterized as “Ophites” (“Serpent People”). The chthonic serpent was one of the earth-animals associated with the cult of Mithras. The Basilisk, the venomous “king of serpents” with the glance that kills, was hatched by a serpent, Pliny the Elder and others thought, from the egg of a cock.”[9]     

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The tree of life is a symbol found in the book of Genesis but also in other mythologies all over the world: 

“A stylized tree with obvious religious significance already occurs as an art motif in fourth-millennium Mesopotamia, and, by the second millennium B.C., it is found everywhere within the orbit of the ancient Near Eastern oikumene, including Egypt, Greece, and the Indus civilization. The meaning of the motif is not clear, but its over- all composition strikingly recalls the Tree of Life of later Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist art. The question of whether the concept of the Tree of Life actually existed in ancient Mesopotamia has been debated, however, and thus many scholars today prefer the more neutral term “sacred tree” when referring to the Mesopotamian Tree.”[10]     

The motif of the tree of life is not original or unique in the Bible and doesn’t particularise this book from any other texts in the ancient world – quite the contrary; it is proof that the book of Genesis belongs to a wider cultural tradition. 

The number seven is also an important symbol which is used by the book of Genesis. Number seven recurs throughout religious texts as a special number. The Babylonians divided weeks into seven days. Having this close relationship with the calendar the number seven gained a religious significance over the time.[11]  

In her book “A Four Thousand Year History” Patricia Fara writes: 

“Seven has always been a very special number. Sanskrit’s most ancient holy book, the Rig Vega, describes seven stars, seven concentric continents, and seven streams of soma, the drink of the gods. According to the Jewish and Christian Old Testament, the world was created in seven days and Noah’s dove returned seven days after the Flood. Similarly, the Egyptians mapped seven paths to heaven, Allah created a seven-layered Islamic heaven and earth, and the newborn Buddha took seven strides.”[12]     

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The book of Genesis isn’t in any way original by using the principle of creation in seven days. The primeval sea and the chaos are another two symbols already referred to in this study which are also used by the book of Genesis. The Bible utilises the same symbolism as other religions and its description of creation is not a unique revelation coming from the sky, in which some unknown facts had been discovered by humankind. 

Probably the most striking resemblance between the book of Genesis and almost all religions on Earth is the idea of the sacrifice of animals for religious rituals. Almost all religions of the world use sacrifice as a means to appease gods. The book of Genesis doesn’t make an exception to this norm based on the principle that God hasn’t been happy with humankind. In order to obtain God’s benevolence human beings in the O.T. had to atone for their sins by making offerings to Him. 

In other words, the book of Genesis utilizes the same symbols which were used by the narratives coming from cultures other than Jewish and which didn’t have the pretention to be inspired by God. These symbols reflect a cultural influence and not a divine inspiration. 

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➤

 

Chapter 6 of the book of Genesis is a very intriguing one. It speaks about special beings that had lived on Earth in ancient times. Who were those beings is the subject for many debates and very few opinions are able to shed some light on the issue.

“When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, ‘My spirit shall not abide* in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” (Genesis 6; 1-4 NRSV)

Who were “the sons of God”, “the daughters of man”, and the “Nephilin” in Genesis chapter 6, verses 1-4? There are three major interpretations of this expression circulating among the commentators and to which I want to add a fourth one which is probably the most convincing.

The combination between the ungodly Cainite with the godly Sethites.

The ‘sons of God’ are generally thought to be the godly men of the Sethite line. The ‘daughters of men’ are thought to be the daughters of the ungodly Cainite. The Nephilim are the ungodly men who are the product of this undesirable union. Chapter 4 from the book of Genesis describes the ungodly generation of Cain, while in chapter 5 we see the godly Sethite line. The premise of this line of argument is that Cain’s line of descendants and Seth’s line of descendants had to be separated because Cain was a criminal and Seth replaced Abel, the victim of Cain’s crime. No connections would have been adequate between the families of the criminal and of the victim.

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This version of interpretation is open to much possible criticism. In point of fact, humanity is seen by the Bible as a unity and not having two branches. God would have seen all humankind, not only Cain’s offspring, as having bad thoughts and as being unholy. Human beings were in unity and all were relatives amongst themselves.

Godly and ungodly are two notions applicable to certain individuals and not to whole families. Not all of Seth’s line would have been godly and not all of Caine’s line would have been ungodly. According to chapter 6 from the book of Genesis, few were godly in those days. Only Noah and his family could have been called righteous at the time of the Flood. If other people would have been righteous, they also probably would have been saved from the Flood, but only Noah and his family were deemed to be just by God.

Also, the “daughters of men” cannot be restricted to only the daughters of the Cainites. The “daughters of man” were not forced into this union with the sons of God. They would have been seen by the “sons of God” as suitable partners for them, they became their wives and they gave birth to children for them. The word “wife” is the key for this idea and this was a dignity attributed to the “daughters of man” by the “sons of God”.

If the sons of Seth’s line of inheritance had been married to Cain’s granddaughters, they all were relatives between them and they all started from the same set of DNA. Why would the product of such families have been giants? There isn’t any genetic explanation for such a phenomenon. Having the same DNA, all mankind had to be formed only from giants, but it wasn’t the case. Incest brings degeneration and not an increase in strength or other qualities. Nephilims were strong and courageous people, proving military prowess – they were not degenerates. A new set of genes had to be added to those of Adam and Eve’s in order to produce Nephilims.

The Despot Interpretation

In another interpretation, the sons of God are the sons of powerful rulers, identified by the languages of the Near East with “sons of God”. For example, in Egypt the Pharaoh was identified with the “son” of the Egyptian deity Re. The Hebrew word used in the O.T. for God, Elohim, was also used for men who exercised authority. In this view, “sons of God” should be understood to mean powerful nobles and kings.

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“1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement:” (Psalm 82; 1 NRSV)

Some of the commentators who maintain The Despot Interpretation are also of the opinion that the main sin of those despots was polygamy. I don’t think that polygamy would have really been a problem as far as Abraham or David had polygamous relations and that didn’t produce a strong reaction from God, as a matter of fact, no critical reaction was recorded by the book of Genesis about polygamy. If polygamy was so bad as to determine God to wipe out the majority of the human population through the Flood, why did He consider David’s polygamous relationships acceptable? The idea that polygamy would have determined God’s resolution to send the Flood isn’t sustained by the biblical texts.

There is no reason for Nephilim to be different than other people if they were the offspring of powerful human rulers. Genetically they had to be similar to all other human beings because they inherited the same DNA. In the Bible Nephilim are identified through their giganticness:

“32 So they brought to the Israelites an unfavourable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, ‘The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’ (Numbers 13; 32-33 NRSV)

Someone probably would want to solve the dilemma of how the Flood destroyed the Nephilim and in spite of that, they have been recorded after the Flood as being existent on Earth. The “sons of God” had come to Earth before the Flood and Noah or his family wouldn’t have been Nephilim, any of them, because if they were they wouldn’t have been accepted on the boat. 

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    Nephilim couldn’t have lived on Earth after the Flood if the “sons of God” had come to Earth before the Flood and the Deluge had destroyed the entirety of humankind except Noah and his family, who by definition couldn’t have been Nephilim. That contradiction nullifies any validity of the story of the Flood by rendering it completely untruthful.

The existence of the Nephilim needed a new set of genes in combination with Adam and Eve’s genes, and they couldn’t have been provided by the usual human beings or by angels, either fallen or not. They could have been delivered only by another civilization very similar to humankind but different in the size of the body.

The fallen angels interpretation

According to this view in Genesis chapter 6 verses 2 and 4 the “sons of God” are angels, belonging to Satan’s crew with whom he came down to the earth. Those angels have taken the form of masculine human-like creatures. Those angels married women of the human race, either Cainites or Sethites, and from that union resulted Nephilim, giants with physical superiority who established themselves as men renowned for their physical prowess and military might. This race of half-human creatures would have been wiped out by the Flood, along with all other humans because all of them were sinners.[1]

Some commentators reject the fallen angel interpretation because such a view is said to be in contradiction with reason and also with Scripture. In Mathew’s gospel Jesus said:

“29 Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels* in heaven.” (Matthew 22; 29-30 NRSV)

The commentators who support this view don’t find any problem in harmonising the text with the idea that the “sons of God” are fallen angels:

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“We are told that here our Lord said that angels are sexless, but is this really true? Jesus compared men in heaven to angels in heaven. Neither men nor angels are said to be sexless in heaven but we are told that in heaven there will be no marriage. There are no female angels with whom angels can generate offspring. Angels were never told to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as was man. When we find angels described in the book of Genesis, it is clear that they can assume a human-like form, and that their sex is masculine. The writer to the Hebrews mentions that angels can be entertained without man’s knowing it (Hebrews 13; 2).”

From my point of view there are many problems with the interpretation of the texts in this manner. In each and every text in which the angels took on human aspects, it is about good angels and not fallen angels. We don’t have any examples of fallen angels taking human form. If such a phenomenon would be possible we could be surrounded by devils in human form all around us, but the Bible discourages such a perspective. This would be more than an individual who is said to be possessed by the devil; this would be devils with human bodies. We are surrounded by human beings and not by fallen angels. This assertion is important for the way we see our world and we treat our fellow human beings. We should never consider them to be devils if we want to respect Jesus’s teachings.

The process of becoming similar in form to man is under God’s control and overcame Satan’s abilities. The angels sent to Abraham and to Sodom and Gomorrah were also assigned by God. They took human form even if they were spiritual beings. Probably, biologically those angels were similar to all human beings and there is no reason to believe that they were different. How do we know? If they could easily mix with other human beings they had to be similar to them. They were not giants as the Bible describes the Nephilim. If we consider the episode in Sodom and Gomorrah, if the ‘male’ angels had been giants the people in the city wouldn’t have seen them as a possible prey.

The point is that in order to beget giants the fallen angels had to have a biological potential of their own and not biology identical with the human beings impersonating them. When taking a human body, a fallen angel would have taken all biological characteristics of a human being.

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     To speculate that behind a human body a fallen angel would have had his own genetic potential to procreate is absurd.

The angels in God’s Paradise don’t multiply and that is what Jesus clearly said in Mathew 22; 29-30 therefore they are not endowed for multiplication. Why God would have endowed angels with the possibility of procreation if they wouldn’t multiply? If the angels would multiply by procreation God wouldn’t have needed to create human beings in order to replace one third of the angels who had fallen. If God didn’t endow angels with the possibility of procreation but they multiplied with the “daughters of men” then the logical consequence would be that the angels had the power to change their nature from the procreation point of view, but that is unacceptable in the biblical context.

The angels wouldn’t have had the creative power which would have enabled them to recreate their morphological structure. Angels either couldn’t procreate or they could, both versions don’t go together. A mixture between the two versions isn’t based on the Bible. Its texts imply that angels don’t procreate because if they don’t marry they cannot procreate. Procreation outside a marital relation is unacceptable in the biblical context from a moral point of view. God has the same moral standard for everyone, angels or humans, and for human beings procreation is recommended within a marital relationship.

To say that angels took human bodies is only an attempt to escape from the problem. Human bodies couldn’t generate Nephilim without the aid of a specific set of DNA, the creation of which isn’t described in the Bible.

At the same time, the explanation given to the texts that fallen angels had become in love with ancient women is not plausible for many reasons. Let’s try to figure out a world in which sexually active males constitute a community of spiritual beings that never have had sex. Why would God have created only male angels with sexuality if there were not females to multiply with them? Sexuality is a means for procreation and where procreation isn’t a purpose sexuality is useless. The angels had been created immortal; they didn’t need to procreate in order to multiply. Did God create sexually active male angels in view that they would fall in the future and mate with women? That would be nonsense because God didn’t like that union between His “sons” and the “daughters of man”.

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When someone departs from logic anything can be justified by all sorts of fantastic explanations. Jesus said it clearly: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels* in heaven”. Angels don’t marry and because they don’t marry they are sexless. Any sexual activity outside the marriage is prohibited under God’s moral standards therefore angels aren’t endowed with means of procreation if they don’t marry. Angels with sexual activity who don’t marry and, at the same time, sexual activity prohibited outside marriage, is absurd. The fallen angels wouldn’t have had the ability to procreate and to marry the “daughters of man”.

Pastor Doug Bachelor aptly clarified:

“Angels are spirits; they are not flesh. They are all around us now, but we cannot see them.—they don’t go to school, get jobs, or raise families. They are here to “minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Hebrew 1;14). Even if they wanted to marry and have babies, they couldn’t; they don’t have human DNA. It would be easier for a jellyfish to marry a mountain goat than for angels to marry people. Thus, it doesn’t make practical sense to believe that our passage in Genesis refers to the marriage of angels, fallen or holy, to humans.”[3]

The “sons of God” explained by the fallen angels theory is seen by many commentators as the most likely theory which could explain those verses, but is the most absurd from a rational point of view. Angels are not constructed as human beings are; they have not the same morphological structure because they are spiritual beings. When they dwell in the mind of a human being, that person is not different from any other person from a biological point of view. If God’s angels and people were the same kind of beings, there would be no difference between the spiritual world and the material realm.

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“Sons of God”, the representatives of an extra-terrestrial civilisation

None of the explanations given by the evangelical commentators have sufficient merits in order to be validated, but there is another possibility very little discussed. The “sons of God” were material extra-terrestrial beings similar to human beings but greater in power. They had their own genetic potential compatible with the human one and together the “sons of God” and the “daughters of man” procreated the Nephilim. As I mentioned previously, God in the book of Genesis looks more like a special man than like a universal spiritual Reality. The way in which Adam saw his son Seth is described in Genesis chapter 5 and it is identical with the way in which God had seen humankind in Genesis chapter 1.

“When God created humankind,* he made them* in the likeness of God.” This description of the creation of humankind is like the way in which Adam saw his son Seth, and for this reason by extrapolation one can imagine God as a bigger “man” similar to the human beings but not identical. How such an extraordinary “man” could be eternal is another question. Maybe God who was revealed to Abraham is different than the philosophical and theological understanding of Him. Anthropomorphism may be the key to understanding God if we consider also that the Son of God, Christ, had taken a human body.

"3 When Adam had lived for one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” (Genesis 5; 1-3 NRSV)

From my point of view this verse is very important for the understanding of the book of Genesis. God had created humankind in His likeness and mankind created and still creates other human beings, also in their likeness. The universal cosmic Man or Someone similar to man, Someone who would have been an extra-terrestrial Being, had created man. The book of Genesis can be seen to represent a continuation of the human anthropogenesis over the boundaries of the earth through the means of myths.

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Chapter 6 from the book of Genesis can represent the remnants of an ancient encounter between humankind and an extra-terrestrial civilization, but such an encounter doesn’t give us any understanding to how the cosmos was generated. To be more relevant such an extraordinary theory must be correlated with other possible evidence.

Probably, both Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 contain plenty of anthropomorphic elements just because they intended to be anthropomorphic and to illustrate a possible way in which an extra-terrestrial human-like Being would have created the universe. The philosophical construction about an infinite Reality is only a late development. God of the O.T. looks more like an extra-terrestrial civilization trying to educate humankind, but an extra-terrestrial Being coming from another planet couldn’t have created the universe as the Bible says. God is not alone; He is amongst His sons, who also are gods. Monotheism and the biblical texts about the “sons of God” have been gathered in a unique vision but the relationship between God and His “sons” has many unexplained dimensions.

God could have generated more than one material world. Nevertheless, the Bible doesn’t speak about the creation of other intelligent civilizations by God during the six days in which He would have created the entire universe and humankind. According to the book of Genesis there isn’t any time during the creation week in which God could have created other intelligent civilizations, therefore in the context of the Bible the existence of such worlds is pure speculation.

In the beginning, God couldn’t have created other civilizations because those are based in the sky, and the dome of the sky was created only on the second day. After the second day of creation the Bible tells us every step made by God in the process of creation; the stars and consequently other planets would have been created only on the fourth day with the function of illuminating the earth. As a matter of fact, the Bible speaks only about the creation of the stars but not about other planets, as it is the earth which could host life.

Doug Bachelor identifies the “sons of God” as the administrators of other worlds than ours and explains a difference between what the Bible understands through angels and also through “sons of God”.

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“Adam was the son of God, created to have dominion over the Earth. Thus one definition for sons of God is those beings God Himself created to have dominion over the worlds He made. These beings were not born but were created directly by God. Job 38:7 tells us that when our world was created, “the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The “morning stars” are angels, whereas “the sons of God” are the leaders of other worlds.”[4]

Beside the texts of the Bible, we don’t have direct proof that such “sons of God” really exist. We can take few skeletons of large dimensions found on Earth and they could be some evidence that Nephilim truly had existed.

In many biblical texts we can find the expression “sons of God” for people who, being born again, became the children, sons, and daughters of the One from whom they are reborn.

“12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1 12-13 NRSV)

“25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” (Galatians 3; 25-26 NRSV)

     Otherworldly beings who didn’t sin could be named children or sons of God but there is a problem. When they came to Earth they disobeyed God and that would have been a strong reason not to name them the “sons of God” anymore. If the expression “sons of God” had been suitable only for someone who obeys Him, this expression wouldn’t apply to beings that had come to Earth in spite of God’s interdiction. Did the “sons of God” have His approval before coming to Earth? This question can be answered negatively if we follow the story and see that God wasn’t happy with the result of the multiplication of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of man”.    

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   The consequence is that God sent the Flood over humankind for their inequities. The “sons of God” would have been powerful and respected beings and so were the Nephilim, their offspring, but something wrong happened with them and they displeased Him.

The Nephilim aren’t the offspring of the sons of God and of the daughters of man.

Another interpretation which must be taken in consideration is that the Nephilim aren’t the children born to the “sons of God” and daughters of men. If we attentively read the biblical passage we can notice that the book of Genesis doesn’t say that the Nephilim would have been the offspring of the “sons of God” and of the daughters of men.

“4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” (Genesis 6; 4 NRSV)

The Nephilim would have been on the earth in those days when the sons of God would have gone into the daughters of humans. If the Nephilim were already on Earth when the “sons of God” married the daughters of men, that means that they couldn’t have been the offspring of the “sons of God”. The children resulted from the union between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” were the heroes of old, warriors of renown. Were the Nephilim the same personages as the “heroes that were of old”? I consider that the book of Genesis says they are different characters. The Nephilim were neither Adam and Eve’s offspring nor the result of the marriages between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men”. How did the Nephilim come to Earth? They weren’t related to the “sons of God” but they are as difficult to be identified as are the former. In chapter 6 of the book of Genesis we have four different kinds of beings. The “sons of God”, the Nephilim, the heroes resulting from the marriages between the “sons of God” and human beings, and the human beings.

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The entire story is pretty confused. The “sons of God” coming to Earth without His approval, marrying the “daughters of man”, making children with them and only after a long period of time being destroyed by Him for their disobedience, seems an unlikely story.

A parallel can be made between Christ coming to Earth as the Son of God and embodying himself in a human being through the Virgin Mary and the “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” and also generated human beings. It is the same idea of “sons of God” coming to Earth and multiplying with the “daughters of men” but in Genesis they were negative personages and in the N.T. Christ is the Saviour of humankind. What is strange is that the “sons of God” of old, in spite of being seen somehow negatively by the book of Genesis, they were beneficial for humankind, teaching them many professions. Probably, they were depicted as negative personages precisely because they helped humankind to increase their knowledge. Christ also is on the side of humankind, dying for the human beings and teaching them salvation.

The myth of Prometheus with gods on human’s side against other gods is a common motif. The “sons of God” were gods who helped humankind against God’s will. At the same time, the rebellion of the “sons of God” against their Father when they married the “daughters of men” and taught humankind their science, is in a way a repetition of both motifs of the tree of knowledge and of Satan’s revolt against Him.

What is the theory which could better explain the meaning of the expression the “sons of God” in Genesis chapter 6? This text is an insertion in the book of Genesis generated by influences made by different old stories about visits paid to the earth by alien civilizations. The following is a quotation which summarises this view:

“Most people believe in aliens - from ancient visitors to modern day extraterrestrials who visit Earth with an agenda. Clearly the creation myths of each ancient civilization discuss alien gods who descended from the sky for any number of reasons, some of who allegedly mated with human woman to create bloodlines, or created humans through biogenetic experiments ….. According to ancient alien theorists, most of whom have researched the topic for decades, extraterrestrials with superior knowledge of science and engineering landed on Earth thousands of years ago, sharing their expertise with early civilizations and forever changing the course of human history.  researchers to this day look for evidence to support this theory.”[5]

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   In my opinion the text from Genesis chapter 6 cannot be understood isolated from the ancient culture of humankind. This very strange assertion must be put in a biblical context and also in a larger context of so many stories which indicate contact between humankind and aliens coming from outer space.

If angels are spiritual beings and not material ones, not having DNA and not being endowed for procreation, the only credible interpretation of the text from Genesis chapter 6; 1-4 have to be linked with so many other references of extra-terrestrial beings from other ancient texts.

“While the Book of Genesis contains references to the fallen angels as ‘Nephilim’, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the original sources for this information. The Book of Enoch gives a highly detailed account of the activities of 200 fallen angels or ‘Nephilim’/’Watchers’ who were locked into a deep conflict with the ‘righteous angels’ or ‘Aeons’. The Nephilim proceeded to interbreed with humanity and created a race of giants that had much authority until the time of the Noah and the great flood. The Book of Enoch gives surprising validation to the theory of extraterrestrial visitation, and that this involved genetic intermixing with ancient humanity.”[6]

After discovering the Book of Enoch in 1773 in Ethiopia, James Bruce writes:

“Amongst the articles I consigned to the library at Paris was a very beautiful and magnificent copy of the prophecies of Enoch, in large Quarto; another is amongst the books of scripture that I brought home, standing immediately before the book of Job, which is its proper place in the Abyssinian Cannon: and a third copy I presented to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, by the hands of Dr. Douglass, the Bishop of Carlisle.”[7]

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Lyman Abbott also notes:

“Reverting to the second century of Christianity, we find Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria citing the Book of Enoch without questioning it’s sacred character. Thus, Irenaeus, assigning to the Book of Enoch an authenticity analogous to that of Mosaic literature, affirms that Enoch, although a man, filled the office of God’s messenger to the angels. Tertullian, who flourished at the close of the first and at the beginning of the second century, whilst admitting that the ‘Scripture of Enoch’ is not received by some because it is not included in the Hebrew Canon, speaks of the author as ‘the most ancient prophet, Enoch,’ and of the book as the divinely inspired autograph of that immortal patriarch...”[8]

There is no doubt that Genesis chapter 6; 1-4 is not singular to the old religious texts belonging to the Judeo-Christian tradition and that the idea of an extra-terrestrial civilization is not foreign to those texts. This conclusion is in contradiction with the fact that the book of Genesis doesn’t give any hint in the description of the week of creation, about the apparition of such entities in the cosmos. According to the book of Enoch, these civilizations had taught mankind certain technologies:

“And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cutting, ‘Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl (taught) astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Êzêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven...”[9]

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Much knowledge which would have been offered by the “sons of God” to humankind didn’t enter the book of Genesis and the proof is its naïve cosmology. The first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis hadn’t been inspired by God, not even by its “sons”, about whom the book of Enoch says imparted knowledge to humankind.

If extra-terrestrial beings had come to the earth, it doesn’t matter how we name them, angels or otherwise, they weren’t spiritual beings but material ones. They mixed with “daughters of men” and it is possible that a race of giants would have been generated. Probably the extension of that mixture was not as important as the book of Genesis presents it, and the end of the giants could have been determined by environmental motives. The following is a very brief synthesis of the theory of the ancient aliens:

“As first came to Earth many millennia ago. They were beings whose biology was similar to modern humans. They created modern mankind by mixing their genetic makeup with that of sub-humans. The purpose of mankind was to serve the AAs, principally by providing food and mining and construction labor. The AAs did not allow humans to view them – only their symbols (idols), suggesting that their appearance was frightening; however humans were occasionally permitted to see their emissaries, e.g. “geniuses” and “angels”. They also would not allow humans near them, except priests who had cleansed and covered themselves and spread a germicide, suggesting their susceptibility to earthly diseases.”[10]

What explanation can be found for the presence of the text in Genesis chapter 2, in which are described the valuable materials of the Garden of Eden? The only reasonable explanation is that some extra-terrestrial beings in the past were ones interested in some material elements found on Earth and they used human force in order to extract it. This could be seen as bearing a very loose connection with possible ancient civilisations visiting the earth.

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Genesis chapter 6; 1-4 can be understood as having a certain relation to a possible reality. This is not proof that the book is inspired by God but it is a hint that the book of Genesis is a collection of texts influenced by many sources. Some of those sources are the stories about the possible encounters between ancient civilizations and humankind.

The Watchers in the book of Enoch did a similar thing as Satan did in Genesis chapter 3. They taught humankind different professions and the knowledge they provided would have been considered to be the root of all evil. Knowledge gives power and the power of men was seen as a threat for God. Knowledge would have been perceived as a threat only by the representatives of an extra-terrestrial civilization, but not by God who is eternal and Almighty.

Is it possible that some ancient astronauts created humankind from inferior beings through genetic engineering in order to use them for work, and after a while the latter emancipated and became independent? God in the Bible is different from the “sons of God” and He wasn’t happy when His “sons” offered knowledge to humankind. The point is that an extra-terrestrial civilization is something different and cannot be confounded with God. The existence of extra-terrestrial civilizations as a source of inspiration for the book of Genesis is only a speculation which theoretically isn’t impossible, but God in the book of Genesis is seen as the Creator not only of humankind but also of the universe. No extra-terrestrial civilization could have created the universe if it dwells in it. At the same time, there are many reasons to believe that God didn’t create the universe in the way described by the book of Genesis.

Starting with Adam and Eve, humankind wanted to be knowledgeable like God. The book of Genesis tells us that some otherworldly forces were favourable of humankind acquiring knowledge and gave it to them, but God saw this thirst for knowledge as being sinful, the expression of disobedience. God in the book of Genesis didn’t want to share knowledge with mankind and punished severely whoever helped humankind to get knowledge. Such a punishment would have been given to the “sons of God” who allegedly had been destroyed by the Flood.

    The knowledge was a way of emancipating from God’s authority. That is a constant idea in the book of Genesis. 

    The same idea entered the Judeo-Christian tradition and followed an insidious path which generated mistrust in science during a long period of time. The stories of creation from the book of Genesis contain in them the supposition that human knowledge is dangerous and it isn’t seen as favourable by God but this, in my opinion is very false. Humankind’s knowledge opens the gates for the understanding of God because He is also Knowledge and every step in the direction of knowledge is a path toward Him.

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