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According to Bush’s Notes on Genesis, the word translated here as “sons of God” is a Hebrew word, Elohim. The following passage explains the meaning of the word, “Elohim.”

2. The sons of God. Heb. (don’t have a Hebrew font) sons of the Elohim. Chal. ‘sons of the eminent ones.’ That is, the descendents of Seth, Enos, and the other pious patriarchs who were separated from the posterity of Cain and formed the visible church. The appellation no doubt has reference to Gen. 4.26, where the same class of persons are said to be ‘called by the name of the Lord;’ i.e. to be the sons and servants of God in contradistinction from others, the seed of Cain, who are merely called ‘men.’ The term Elohim is occasionally applied to persons of distinguished eminence in place or power, such as judges, magistrates, &c. but is here probably used to denote a distinction of a *moral* kind, such as resulted from their likeness to God, their maintaining his worship, and obeying his laws. The persons designated included, it may be presumed, all, or nearly all, those enumerated in the preceding chapter as forming the line of the faithful from Seth to Noah, who though pious and devout themselves, were yet unfortunate in their children. They unhappily swerved from the precepts in which they had been trained, forsook the counsels of their fathers, relaxed the strictness of their walk, and, yielding gradually to temptation, formed unhallowed connections with the worldly and profane, and thus opened the floodgates of a universal corruption of morals.

This is just one more example of how a single person attempting to translate his copy of the Bible in a vacuum will always fall into error.

When Saint Jerome undertook to translate the Bible into Latin in the 4th century, he had access to many resources unavailable to those who have tried to prepare other translations. For starters, he was 13 centuries closer to events than those who prepared the King James Version. To get some idea what that means, read some English written in the 17th century, then read some Chaucer as originally written, and finally, read Beowulf in the original old English. Better yet, have someone versed in old English read you some of it.

Saint Jerome had access to Jewish scholars who had studied the Torah for decades, and stood on the shoulders of a line earlier Jewish scholars stretching back many centuries. These scholars didn’t have to ponder a passage of Hebrew to get its gist; they understood it like we understand the breakfast conversation in our own homes.

He had access to native speakers of Aramaic who weren’t as far removed from the Aramaic of Jesus’ time as we are from the English of Shakespeare’s time. Ditto Koine Greek. Aside from that, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, while some later translators show no sign of such inspiration.

Having been a professional translator for some 20-odd years, I know that it is often impossible to translate a passage without a good deal of background knowledge. Saint Jerome had a degree of context that no subsequent translator could approach.

Some passages, such as John 3:16, can be easily understood by just about anyone. Other passages are completely opaque without context.

Then, too, there are things that are just lost because of our remove from the era. For instance, in John 2:4 Jesus says to His mother, “Woman, what is that to me and to thee?” A lot of people think that sounds pretty harsh, but the obscure little linguistic point there is this: those words were a popular, humorous catchphrase in Aramaic that was going around at the time, kind of like “Where’s the beef?” or, “No soup for you.” It was a bit of good-natured banter that in no way indicated that He didn’t care about the people giving the party.

Genesis 6:2 is extremely likely (almost certain?) to be misinterpreted by a person who is unaware that the passage refers to the sons of the “Elohim” as explained in Bush’s Notes.

What I’m getting at is this: If you’re an ordinary person like me (and I hope that isn’t too self-congratulatory), you cannot just pick up your Bible at any old time of the day and be certain of understanding what you read. If you have been taught the correct interpretation of some passages, you should be all right there. But if you haven’t, or are reading a passage for the first time, there is a very real danger of getting it wrong.

The four Gospels do not contain every word that Jesus ever spoke, nor can you rely on may translations to give you the information you need to understand.