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Genesis 6 goes with the concept that the angelic got involved to help man out in his progress. Again, the Book of Enoch does a good job of laying things out..
The Book of Watchers was generally accepted by the early Christians, and was quoted by the New Testament book of Jude. Among the Rabbinic Jews, however, it was rejected. The Book of the Watchers is an apocalypse from the third century BC, which describes Enochs ascension to heaven and what he saw there. It also describes the Watchers (egrigori), the Sons of God of Genesis 6:1-4, who are accused of corrupting humankind through their teachings of metalworking, cosmetology, magic, and divination. These Watchers are fallen angels, who are led by Semihazah and Asael, and the book expands on the somewhat cryptic references in Genesis 6:1-4. The later parts of I Enoch, however, have a different emphasis. They concentrate on the sexual sins of the angels, rather than their teaching illicit and corrupting knowledge..as the angels lusted after the daughters of men, and breeding with them to produce a race of giants, the Nephilim. It is unclear whether these all perished in the Flood, but the spirits of those that did perish remained on the earth, and became the demons that plague the human race.
There have been many good debates on that paticular issue, especially as it concerns how the early Jewish Church once accepted Enoch as scripture....with other camps in Christendom (such as the Ethopian Orthodox) still accepting it and having good reason for doing so. For the book is referenced in Jude 1:14 when the author of scripture notes "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones." Many Christians thought that Enoch was quoting Jude until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. 3 Enoch was not written until later and Jude seems to be quoting from 1 Enoch of which multiple copies were found at Qumran (Dead Sea). The approx .date of Jude was prior to A.D. 68 (as said by the Archaeological Study Bible )....whereas the approx. date for 1st Enoch was 200 B.C, to A.D. 50 (seen in ancient texts for N.T. Studies- Craig Evans ). Thus, there is a small window if Enoch quoted Jude. I think it should be kept in mind that one does not even have to read a person's book in order to still come up with the same idea or words and not be quoting the other person. All truth is God's truth...and many times, an inspired thought one felt was for them alone was already shared spiritually with others.
In addition to using a pseudonym, the first chapter of the book of Enoch also makes use of a famous statement made by the real Enoch who lived millennia before the oldest known copies of the book of Enoch came into existence. A similar (albeit not exact) quotation of Enoch exists in the New Testament book of Jude in verses 14-15. I agree with others who have no doubt that the real Enoch of Genesis 5 spoke these words and that they had been passed on by tradition from his time. However, the commonality of Jude 14-15 with 1 Enoch 1:9 does not make the rest of the pseudepigraphical book of Enoch "God-inspired" any more than Paul's brief quotations of Aratus (Acts 17:28: "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring" ) and Epimenides (Titus 1:12: One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies") would sanctify the entirety of those authors' words.
The same dynamic of older Jewish apocryphal books being utilized is seen in Jude 1:9 with the story of Michael the Archangel wrestling with the Devil over the body of Moses. That story was something that one of the early church fathers (Origen ) mentioned in a book, called "the Assumption of Moses," (Αναληψις του Μωσεως Analēpsis tou Mōseōs,) as extant in his time, containing this very account of the contest between Michael and the devil about the body of Moses. That was a Jewish Greek book, and Origen supposed that this was the source of the account here. That book is now lost, sadly..but there is still extant a book in Hebrew, called פטירת משׁה paTiyret Mosheh - "the Death of Moses," which some have supposed to be the book referred to by Origen. Many scholars, based on the writings of Clement, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origin, and Didymus (Guthrie, 1962, p. 918; Earle, Blaney, and Hanson, 1955, p. 411), assume that Jude 9 is a reference to The Assumption of Moses. The fragment now known as The Assumption of Moses presents the account of Moses appointing of Joshua as his successor, and a description of the future of Israel during the conquest of the Promised Land.
According to Richard Lenksi, scholars believe that the missing portion of The Assumption included an elaboration of Deuteronomy 34:5, the biblical account of Moses death, showing how God used angels to bury Moses (1966, pp. 601-602). It is thought that The Assumption of Moses, at this point, used Zechariah 3:1-2 as its basis for the use of the phrase The Lord rebuke you! It has not been proven, however, that Jude intended to quote from The Assumption of Moses...but there's a significant possibility that it was intentional. If Jude intended to reference it, it cannot be determined 100% that Jude actually quoted the apocryphal book, because the material Jude allegedly quoted does not exist. If The Assumption of Moses did indeed contain material about Moses burial, then Jude independently wrote the same thing that the writer of The Assumption wrote. Thus, Jude confirmed that this particular portion of The Assumption is historical. That is very different from stating that any portion of The Assumption was inspired.
It may be that Jude simply intended to reference an oral tradition (which was true) that became the basis for The Assumption. Again, that book contains many fabulous stories about the death of Moses ....and the reference here, as well as that in Jde 1:14, to the prophecy of Enoch, is rightly considered to be derived from some apocryphal books existing in the time of Jude. For more on the issue, one can go online/investigate the following:
- "Clement of Alexandria: Fragments - Early Christian Writings"
- "PSEUDEPIGRAPHA: AN ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN APOCRYPHAL SACRED WRITINGS"
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the apocryphal book of Enoch (more precisely, I Enoch) was known only in an Ethiopic translation. Now as many as twenty fragmentary copies of the Aramaic original have been found at Qumran, which suggests that Enoch and perhaps other books now considered apocryphal were regarded as authoritative Scripture at least by some groups. Allusions to Enoch occur at least fourteen times in the New Testament; the New Testament Letter of Jude quotes from Enoch as having the authority of inspired Scripture (Jude 14-15). In some copies of the Ethiopic Bible Enoch is included in the canon. Jubilees, the so-called Rewritten Bible, was apparently considered authoritative at Qumran: At least fifteen copies of this book have been identified, an immediate indication of the importance the Qumran sectarians attached to it. To this day, it is considered canonical by the Abyssinian Church in Ethiopia. (pp. 160-161, The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls)
From 1 Enoch, we learn more about the sin of the Watchers (Dan. 4:17), angels charged with watching over mankind...and the ways they were bound up:
ENOCH 6:1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto 2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men 3 and beget us children.' (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R.H. Charles)
ENOCH 10:11 . . . And the Lord said unto Michael: 'Go, bind Semjaza and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves 12 with them in all their uncleanness. And when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is 13 for ever and ever is consummated. In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire: and 14 to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever. . . .' (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R.H. Charles)
But now the giants who are born from the [union of] the spirits and the flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, because their dwelling shall be upon the earth and inside the earth. Evil spirits have come out of their bodies. Because from the day that they were created from the sons of God they became Watchers: their first origin is the spiritual foundation. They will become evil upon the earth and shall be called evil spirits. The dwelling of the spiritual beings of heaven is heaven; but the dwelling of the spirits of the earth, which are born upon the earth, is in the earth. (1 Enoch 15:8-10)
It is clear from the book of Enoch that evil spirits are the giants who were born from the union of spirits and flesh. This passage sounds like it came from Greek mythology. But this should not surprise us because another name for evil spirits is demon, and the word "demon" comes from Greek mythology. E.W. Vines will confirm this. He writes concerning the Greek word daimon, which is translated demon in the New Testament as being derived "among pagan Greeks, an inferior deity..." [Vines, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words]. This word was used by the Greeks to describe their mythological gods, like Zeus and Hermes. Do you remember thats what the people of Lystra thought Paul and Barnabus were (Acts 14:12)? The Greeks worshipped many gods and most believed their gods were superhuman beings. Essentially, they believed that these gods came down to earth and intermingled with humans, thus were born their heroes. ....and I believe alongside others that this mythology is rooted in a real, dramatic event in the past, with this event, after centuries, being clouded in mystery while the Bible shares in detail what occurred according to Genesis 6....just as it is the case that in multiple cultures a global flood account is found and others have noted that they were all memories of the dramatic event that Genesis 6 records with the Flood.
Many Christians would agree with the concept of the sons of God in Genesis being fallen angels, although it's understandable when they question the conclusion about demons being the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim, even though the book of Enoch specifically declares this. They may disagree by saying, "You can't prove anything by the book of Enoch. You must prove it by the Bible." he same time, skeptics must understand that the book of Enoch was highly regarded by the Jews in Jesus day and by the apostles. The Apostle Jude, in fact, quotes from it, as seen plainly in Jude 1:14-15. How did Jude know what Enoch prophesied? After all, the Bible never mentions one word that Enoch spoke. The only reference to Enoch in the Old Testament is in Genesis 5:18-24. Read it and youll find no reference to this prophecy which Jude mentions. The Bible just mentions the fact that Enoch walked with God and was no more, because God took him away. Nothing is mentioned about his prophesying.
So again, how did Jude know that Enoch had prophesied these words? He knew it because the book of Enoch mentions it. The book of Enoch was widely known during the days of the Apostles, and they freely quoted from it thus giving the book credibility on certain levels. in Jude 1:14, where I Enoch 1:9 is referenced, it is possible that through God's providence some pseudepigrapha have preserved some genuine traditions and that Jude was able to discern the true from the false....
It's hard not to take serious notice of how 1 Enoch and Jubilees agree with the Scriptures such as Jude 1:6 and II Peter 2:4 which show that a portion of the fallen angels are currently restrained in a spiritual prison called "the Abyss" (Luke 8:31):
And the angelic/supernatural side can help to explain the mythology given for other cultures worshipping these "gods/goddesses" that helped them with certain things others felt were impossible.
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