WHY I CANNOT ACCEPT OR BELIEVE THAT THE "SONS OF GOD" OF GENESIS 6:2 ARE "FALLEN ANGELS" OR THAT THE GIANTS OF GENESIS 6:4 ARE DEMIGODS OR THE OFFSPRING OF DEMONS

Three principles of biblical interpretation are as follows:

1.     No doctrine can be built from one passage that would contradict doctrines established in the rest of Scripture.

2.     When common sense gives the sense no other sense should be looked for or it will end in nonsense.

3.     Always interpret the passage in context or you will end up with a pretext.

A.  CONTRADICTION OF SCRIPTURE

1. Textually.

a.  God is SPIRIT.  John 4:24

Until the incarnation there is no record of God "becoming flesh"  and "tabernacling among us".  Any earthly presence was a manifestation or appearance.  "the Voice of God walking in the garden", or the voice from the burning bush, or passing by on Mount Zion, or in the cloud, etc.

b. God's angels are Spirits:  Hebrews 1:13,14.

There is no record of them every taking on flesh, but again only appearing in a form to which man could relate.  And then "disappearing" once the message is delivered.

c. Angels, being "spirit" and living forever are not concerned with sex, and humans, in the resurrection are "like them" and will not be "married or given in marriage". Luke 20:34-36 and Matthew 22:30

d. Compare the whole matter of the "heavenly body" or "spiritual" as in 1 Corinthians 15:42-56.

e. There are no texts in the Old Testament to suggest that any demons or demigods did any supernormal acts that would be expected if they existed.  There are in fact no records of demons at all. (Apart from the "lying spirits" that spoke through false prophets and they, we are told, came from the Lord, as did the "evil spirit" that came upon King Saul. So obviously they are not "fallen angels" or demons at all.)   

2. Logically.

a. If there were fallen angels, they would still be "spirit beings".  If a spirit being could impregnate a human, then the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit when he came upon Mary would have no significance.  Any number of humans could thus carry the offspring of "elohim". 

b. If they were spirits indwelling humans, then the sperm would be human and there would be no super race or demi gods.

c. In the New Testament any demon activity was always acknowledged to be only as they "demonized" a human or an animal. And they were subject to the limitations of that body as to time and space. They may have demonstrated a fierce strength but that is not unusual today even in ordinary people when there is a special need.  So regular muscles  empowered by powerful emotion can produce these results.  But that does not make them demigods, or superpowers. 

B. SONS OF GOD

1. In Job 1:6 and 2:1

a. Note first of all that this takes place "in heaven" or before the LORD.  Note also that Satan should be rendered not as a proper name but simply as a title so that it reads "the Adversary" This is a court of heaven as it were and when these "sons of God" and the Adversary "present themselves" or "stood" before God it was a "servants".  The Adversary is not "cast out" and the "sons of God" are not "fallen". As God's "ministering spirits" they are they to do his bidding.  The Adversary appears as the witness for the prosecution and God deliberately singles out Job as his exhibit A of what one can do when they are totally committed to the LORD.  To get the rest of the story, (and lesson of Job) going, GOD gives the Adversary permission to bring natural disasters upon Job's family.  And when it comes to "controlling nature" or bringing disease (boils) it is only as God has "sanctioned" it and the Adversary is permitted to do so.

b. Compare the same situation when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:7 that the "thorn in the flesh" was a messenger of the Adversary, lest he should be exalted, and that in his appeal to God to have it removed God's answer confirms that it is his will that he should retain the thorn.  ie. it was "from God" in the same way that Job's trials were "from God" but delivered by the Adversary.  Therefore they hardly qualify to be considered "cast out of heaven" or a fallen angel.  (And certainly not incarnated in any human form!)      

2.Elsewhere:

1. a. In Luke 3:38 it says that Adam was (the son of) God. 

When we read in Genesis 1: 26-27 that God made man (adam) in his own image it has to mean that adam (and Adam) is a son of God. There is nothing to indicate that he was an angel, fallen or otherwise, or anything "spirit". In fact very much the other, he was formed of the "clay". 

b. In the NT those who "recieve Jesus" become "sons of God".  Their bodies don't change, they are still humans. 

Peacemakers are blessed and recognized as "sons of God" Again they are very much ordinary humans...in the flesh.

c. The word translated "sons" can also be translated "daughters" or "children" or "grandchildren", and just about any other word you can think of that suggests an offspring no matter how many generations removed from the original parent.  It also applies to branches and boughs, kids, calves, etc. etc.

d.  So "sons of God" and "daughters of men" really does not have to signify anything more than "human descendants".  The men are traced to God as was Adam, and the women, as daughter of "men" is really daughters of adam.  And see Gen. 5:2 where KJV says "male and female created he them; and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day they were created."

e. other application of "sons".  without implying a literal descent "sons of the living God" "sons of thunder", "son of Zion", "sons of the prophets", and the teachers of the Law whom Jesus said were of their "father" the devil.

C. GIANTS

1. Here there is no reason to capitalize the Hebrew word or make it a proper name.  KJV recognizes this and simply calls them "giants".  And it doesn't signify anything more than that they were "Large" in some way.  Figuratively or physically.  Only here and in Numbers 13:33 are they referred to by the word nefeel (as far as I can see) and later descendants of Anak are referred to as rapha, and again it implies nothing more than they were "tall". 

There is nothing to indicate that they had any superpowers or characteristics of demi gods.  Only that the spies felt like grasshoppers and were afraid of  them, but when it came time for battle, they were defeated by the Israelites as God fought for them. 

IF one gives credence to a Canaanite mythology that these were the offspring of fallen angels, it would be to buy into a pagan twist.  One could even make reference to "the Nephilim" in allusion to the myth, without attributing to them any semi-divine or demigod status in the same way that one might refer to a very tall, strong or athletic woman (in olden times when one did not have to worry about being politically correct) as an amazon, without implying that you thought she was a direct descendant from a mythical race of female warriors. 

D. FALLEN ANGELS or DEMONS or EVIL SPIRITS

Someone has appealed to Jude to suppose that fallen angels, vs. 6 supposedly were somehow present and being referred to in vs. 7 connected with Sodom and Gomorha, but there is nothing in this to suggest any such thing.  Rather you will see that Jude is writing a warning to the recipient that they need to "earnestly contend for the faith" and know that the ones who are come into them "unawares" are going to face judgment and from verse 5 on to 8 he is giving a list of those who in the past have faced judgement.

He could have done it with "bullets" to highlight it as being item by item:

* the people he saved out of Egypt he destroyed in the wilderness because of their unbelief

*the angels that didn't mind their own business he put into chains under darkness

*Sodom and Gomorrah he destroyed as an example of what would come to others.

So he will do with these filthy dreamers that defile the flesh and speak evil of dignitaries.

In the OT the reference to an "evil spirit" that comes upon Saul does not indicate any form of "demon" or fallen angel.  Spirit can be as benign as "the mind" or breath, or wind, and "evil" can be simply "troubled" or "heavy".  In any case in Saul's case it says this "heavy mind" or evil spirit came upon him "From the LORD" after the HOLY Spirit had been taken from him.  It could have been as simple as "depression" or maybe even "paranoia" which would be very likely, if you knew you had once had close fellowship with the Lord, and because of your own pride and disobedience you were now cut off. Especially when you knew a young "upstart" was getting the glory you once had.  The  "troubled mind" was not "cast out" as one would do with a demon, but would be (temporarily) lifted or "left him" when David played the harp. 

The anti-Christ which is NOT mentioned in Revelation anywhere but rather in John's epistles were men, ordinary humans already present when the epistles were being written and they were those who (under the influence of demons gave forth the doctrines of demons) and denied that Jesus was the anointed Messiah, and that he had the Father to Son relationship that he claimed.  To deny that Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh was to be of the spirit of the antichrist.  To do so is to be a deceiver.  But note again there is no indication that these are demons or demigods produced by fallen angels and humans.  They were just plain, ordinary humans who chose to follow a lie, and did not "obey his commands".  They were liars and the truth was not in them.  (1 John 2: 4, 18-23 etc.

I found this note about Nephilim in a Dictionary of Bible and Religion'

I do not suggest it is correct that it was a mistake that it was left in the Scriptures accidentally, but the point of it being contrary to the rest of the Bible and therefore needing a different understanding or interpretation (as I offer and accommodate in my reference to "amazons")

 If one has not bought into the myth beforehand that the sons of God were fallen angels, then there would be no need to make "giants" anything more than "giants",  in the same way we would not make tsawraf into a proper name and speak of the Tsawraf when all we meant were "goldsmiths".  A giant was nothing more than a tall person, and what could be expected when genes are passed on from one generation to another if parents had a DNA that gave them extra height. 

NEPHILIM. Giants or semidivine beings produced by intercourse between human females (“the daughters of men”) and divine or angelic beings (the sons of God”), according to ancient Canaanite mythology.  The Nephilim resemble, in concept the mythical heroes, half-man, half-God, found in ancient Greek mythology.  Such mythical figures appear in the OT, but only briefly.  Genesis 6:4 speaks of the giants in the earth or Nephelim, and refers to their mixed parentage.  Later in Numbers 13:33 the Israelite spies sent into Canaan reported the strength of the Canaanites by saying they looked like the Nephilim or giants.

There is no way to reconcile the concept of Nephilim, and of intercourse between angels and human beings, with the beliefs about God in the rest of Genesis.  Genesis 6:4 must represent a fragment of a longer account of an ancient myth that escaped removal from the text by the Priestly redactors (or editors) at the time of the Exile and after (586 B.C.)  The concept of heavenly beings engaging human beings sexually belongs to ancient non-Hebrew mythology and, throughout history, to the occult, that is, the incubi (demons), who, superstition holds, visit men and women by night. 

J.C. 

John Charles Cooper, Prof. of religion; chairman Dept. of Philosophy & Religion. Susquahanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.

The Dictionary of Bible and Religion.  William H. Gentz Gen. Ed.  Abingdon Press, 1986, Nashville, Tennessee.