I knew the nephalim would get drawn into this. :-)
I believe these "sons of God" are the believers who began to marry non-believers and their offspring were non-believers. the "giants" in the earth can also be translated "fallen ones". IOW, those that are not believers.
WmFights, thank you and a few others who may not agree with this but you have not closed your mind to it. You are one of the few that has actually asked questions to debate the ideas.
You're welcome. Please do the same. I am convinced that this understanding of different ages and angels procreating with humans is wrong. The reference to the nephalim is the only instance where a possible interpretation of angels procreating with humans exists. Also, your understanding of prior ages is dependent upon the translation of key words. Do you believe that when the vowels were added to the Masoretic text mistakes were made?
Not only inadvertently, but deliberately as well. For those who are not familiar with this, the vowels were added to the original Hebrew text, along with formatting, in the Christian era centuries after Christ died.
One reason for this is that it made reading the Tanakh easier, which is true, but no one in those days was concerned about making the sacred books available to its mostly illiterate population. In fact, the ability to read sacred texts was jealously guarded by the few privileged. So, this reason is really not the real reason for adding the vowels.
The rabbis had every reason and motivation to make sure nothing in the Tanakh is understood to support any Christian leanings. The easiest way to accomplish this was by adding the vowels and changing the meanings of potentially undesirable words.
They didn't do this for sinister reasons. They were and are deeply convinced that Christianity represents a horrible apostasy and they wanted to make sure that the Hebrew scripture is set in stone and could not be interpreted any other way.
Thus the very addition of vowels was a deliberate alteration of the Old Testament. And since the rabbis were not inspired as far as we know, we must assume that the alteration corrupted it the way various versions of the New Testament are a clear corruption. The advnatage we have with the NT at discerning the truth is by using textual criticism, and arriving at the post plausible "true" rendition of it. We don't have the same luxury with the Old Testament.
Similar deliberate alterations of the New Testament can be seen in additions of punctuation marks, such as commas, for example. Often, depending where a comma is added, a sentence can be made to mean something completely different.
As all of you probably know, the Tanakh was written without any vowels (saves plenty of precious papyrus, clay, copper, parchment, or whatever else was used for writing; they couldn't just go to Office Depot to buy more...).
The ancients also didn't use word breaks, such as semicolons, colons, commas, quotation marks, etc. for the same reason.
Thus an ancient Hebrew text in English transliteration and formatting would look like this:
That's Gen 6:1-2 in case you wondered (the only vowels visible are the two letters "a" at the beginning of the word).
What one can do with vowell-less text is obvious when we consider a 'wrod' such as shp. Depending where you add the vowels, that letter combination becomes ship, shape or shop.
In Hebrew the possibilities of more combinations are even greater. Now consider that just about every word in Tanakh can be altered to mean something completely different simply by adding a vowell or two, or a comma where there wasn't one in the original text, and you get the picture.
That's why various Bible resources give you uncertain or multiple meanings of the same "word" (actually a cluster of consonants). And this is why the Mesoretic claim that their text remained [sic] unaltered, as evidenced by the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls is as misleading as it gets. The consonants are unaltered, but the vowels changed everything.
We are all sons of God, believers and non-believers but I think there is a special meaning for this use. For God to send a flood it seems to me that it would be much more than that many, if not all, didn't believe.
These are some of the reasons, in a study done by E.W. Bullinger, that I believe that these "sons of God" are angels.
It is only by the Divine specific act of creation that any created being can be called "a son of God". For that which is "born of the flesh is flesh". God is spirit, and that which is "born of the Spirit is spirit". Hence Adam is called a "son of God" in Luke 3:38. Those "in Christ" having "the new nature" which is by the direct creation of God can be, and are called "sons of God".
This is why angels are called "sons of God" in every other place where the expression is used in the OT. We have no authority or right to take the expression in Gen. 6:2,4 in any other sense. Moreover, in Gen.6:2 the Sept. renders it "angels".
He also goes on about the Nephilim, or giants, in great detail.
The reference to the nephalim is the only instance where a possible interpretation of angels procreating with humans exists.
I believe that the serpent in the garden is the first instance of that type of procreation. Satan was trying to interfere with the line to Christ. He knew it started with Adam and Eve and continued through the Adamic line (Hebrews).
In Gen.6:2, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.... The word "men" is (Heb. ha-'adham, sing. - the man Adam). This isn't mankind, "men", but Adam. It should have been translated as: That the sons of God saw the daughters of "ADAM" that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
Satan wanted that line to Christ wiped out.
Also, your understanding of prior ages is dependent upon the translation of key words. Do you believe that when the vowels were added to the Masoretic text mistakes were made?
Yes, I do. That is why I use the Companion Bible, by E.W. Bullinger. "Readers of the Companion Bible are put in possession of information denied to former generations of translators, commentators, critics, and general Bible students." Bullinger had access to notes by Ginsburg, or he himself took notes (I don't know the proper story) but because of Bullinger or Ginsburg, this Bible has scripture tested against the Massorah.
.....Ping