Local flood, not all humanity killed?

[Audie]

Hope it was not one of them prophetic dreams we hear about.

You are not, like, touched, are you? Touch of prophecy?

You know what happens to prophets. Also I dont want HK to crumble.

[RickD]

Prophet? They don't call me Ben E. Hinn for nuthin, you know.

It was really the only dream I remember so clearly. I don't know why. It seemed so real. But many of my dreams seem real, so that's not a big deal. It's just that I really don't have a memory of my dreams.

Actually, there was one more dream I remember. It was a recurring dream. I looked up in the sky, and saw what looked like 1/3 of the stars which kinda grouped together, and fell from the sky. That was almost as vivid.

[Jac3510]

So just to illustrate what I've been saying, I'm going to paste Katabole's defense of the angelic view verbatim, with absolutely no response whatsoever and no changes except for this: I am going to print in blue any text relating to some passage other than Genesis (where an exegesis of Genesis 6 ought to be the focus but where we could allow other passages from Genesis some degree of consideration in our exegesis since they are written by the same author); I will print in red all those texts that do relate directly to Genesis 6. Finally, I print in green those texts that are editorial or explain views in general, that is, those texts that are not informative or evidentiary of any particular view. I would then ask the reader to excise in their own mind all the red and yellow text and read the blue as the argument for the angelic view, since, again, it is the blue text and the blue text alone that relates the actual interpretation of the passage in question. The reader may decide if the text in question is at all anything like persuasive. To me, the visual is rather striking and shows the shear foolishness of this "interpretation" (to use the word very, very loosely):

Of the three main views associated with Genesis 6, namely:

1/ The Sethite Interpretation.
2/ The Despot Interpretation
3/ The Fallen Angel Interpretation

I believe #3 to be the most accurate.

According to this view, the ‘sons of God’ of verses 2 and 4 are angels, who instead of being born of woman as the rest of us have been, instead escaped that habitation and came to the earthly dimension in human form (See the book of Jude). They took the form of masculine human-like creatures. These angels married women of the human race (either Cainites or Sethites) and the resulting offspring were the Nephilim. The Nephilim were giants with physical superiority and therefore established themselves as men of renown for their physical prowess and military might. This race of half human creatures was wiped out by the flood.

My basic presupposition in approaching our Biblical text is that we should let the Bible define its own terms. The Bible interprets the Bible. If biblical definitions are not to be found then we must look at the language and culture of contemporary peoples. What is interesting, is that the Bible does define the term ‘the sons of God’ for us.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan also came among them (Job 1:6).

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came among them to present himself before the Lord (Job 2:1).

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:7, Psalm 89:6; Daniel 3:25).

Scholars who reject this view readily acknowledge the fact that the precise term is clearly defined in Scripture.The reason for rejecting the fallen angel interpretation is that such a view is said to be in violation of both reason and Scripture.

The primary passage which is said to be problematical is that found in Matthew’s gospel, where our Lord said, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:29-30).

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 simply 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 either assume a human-like form, or look human 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). The perverted men of Sodom were very capable of judging sexuality. They were attracted by the ‘male’ angels who came to destroy the city (Genesis 19:1-5).

In the New Testament, two passages seem to refer to this incident in Genesis 6, and to support the angel view:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; (II Peter 2:4).

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude 6).

These verses would indicate that some of the angels who fell with Satan were not content with their ‘proper abode’ and therefore began to live among men (and women) as men. God’s judgment upon them was to place them in bonds so that they can no longer promote Satan’s purposes on earth as do the unbound fallen angels who continue to do his bidding.

The result of the union between fallen angels and women is rather clearly implied to be the Nephilim. While word studies have produced numerous suggestions for the meaning of this term, the biblical definition of this word comes from its only other instance in Scripture, Numbers 13:33:

There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

I therefore understand the Nephilim to be a race of super-humans who are the product of this angelic invasion of the earth.

This view not only conforms to the biblical use of the expression ‘sons of God,’ it also best fits the context of the passage.

Genesis 6 describes a desperate attempt on the part of Satan to attack the godly remnant that is named in chapter 5. So long as a righteous seed is preserved, God’s promise of salvation hangs over the head of Satan, threatening of his impending doom.

I could go on but I have written enough. The flood is a non-salvation issue as I have mentioned before. I chose the fallen angel interpretation as the best explanation from the Biblical text. If others disagree, no worries. It is up to them to explain their interpretation.

Aren't the red and blue biblical texts the same passages, though? You've just put the scriptures in red and their references in blue. If the whole Bible is God's word, however, what's wrong with using passages from different books together, even books written by different people? Why shouldn't any book tell us something about angels (or whatever) that we can use in interpreting another passage?

I don't understand what you are asking me. Just because a passage is from the Bible, it doesn't follow that it has any exegetical value for another passage. Suppose you were a part of the original audience that Moses wrote Genesis for. Suppose you were in the audience the very first time Genesis 6 was ever read to you.

Now, suppose someone next to you says, "Wow! I didn't know that angels procreated with women and made giants so that the Messiah's blood line would be corrupted by Satan and He would never be born and that's why God sent the Flood! That's amazing!" You would say, "What? How did you get that out of the story?" And they respond, "Well, it's not in the story itself. I got it from the Book of Job and from 2 Peter and from the Book of Enoch." You ask, "What are those?" "Oh, they are books that haven't been written yet. But when they are, you'll see that's what this story really means." Would you say, "Oh, great! Works for me!"

No, it's ridiculous. The only passage you have to work with is Genesis 6 (or the whole of Genesis if you prefer). That's why when we consider what this passage means, we have to ask what data we use in interpretation. When I considered Katabole's argument, I put the relevant data in blue. And in doing so, you can see that by that argument, there's no data at all to support the interpretation.

And this is a VERY important point in good hermeneutics. We can NEVER use future revelation to tell us what previous revelation means. If that is our rule of interpretation, then the practical result is that the original revelation didn't mean anything at all until the later revelation came along to tell us what it REALLY meant. If Genesis 6 really is telling a story of angels getting girls preggo, we certainly don't get it from Genesis 6. You get it from all those other passages. That means that the original readers were NOT given enough information to understand the meaning. That means the original readers were not privy to the meaning of the text, and it was only readers of later generations who were the recipients of later revelation who could suddenly understand the original text. Thus, the original story was NOT revelation to the original audience. It was just a collection of words with no meaning to them at all. And if THAT is possible, then you can't say that the Bible means anything, because how do you know there won't be future revelation that tells you what the texts you are reading now ACTUALLY mean by importing on the Bible as it is currently written meanings that are not found in it but that will be found in those later texts? You can't, and therefore, you can't say the Bible means anything.

So that's the stakes here, and that's why I say this is an affront to serious interpretation. The stakes are literally absolute skepticism and the claim that the Bible means absolutely nothing at all if we adopt the angel rapist interpretation, or else it is intelligible and means something both to the original reader and to us if we adopt the Sethite (or maybe the despot king) interpretation.

[abelcainsbrother]

Wow! I have never heard a Christian claim to ignore other parts of the bible and ignore what they say because we must make up our own theories about what sons of God are based on how ridiculous it is to believe angels can procreate with human women.Instead of going by what God's word tells us sons of God are and it tells us they are angels,no ignore them verses and just believe me and my opinion over God's word.

Also you are assuming things you cannot and do not know.You cannot know if it was understood when Moses wrote Genesis 6 that the people did not know they were angels,and if the book of Job was written before Genesis then it very well could have been understood to be angels.You are assuming things you cannot know and you have picked up a Catholic doctrine when it comes to Genesis 6. Even if Job had not been written before you still don't know if people asked Moses about it for further clarification and he told them it was angels.

I refuse to go with my feelings and opinions over God's word so I refuse to go by your bible hermeneutics in order to believe you're right.Jac I agree with you when it comes to a global flood instead of a local flood,but by interpreting things the way you do it makes me think you are just choosing a global flood based on your personal feelings about it and not so much on what God's word says.

[Jac3510]

Jac, bare with me here, you'll quickly see where I'm going with this I'm sure.

Could Genesis 6:1 be re-translated as follows under the light of Strong's meanings:

• "Now it came to pass, when [the] men [who profaned/defile/slay] increased [on-the ground of] earth [emphasis upon tilled earth, earth that yields, also cf. Gen 4:14)] and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful."

Sorry . . . I don't think this is going to work. I do get what you're saying, but I just don't think it's a proper reading. In the first place, chalal can often have the idea of profaning, but we have to avoid what's called an illegitimate totality transfer, in which you take all the possible meanings of a word and lump them together in some super-definition that carries all meanings simultaneously. Sometimes, the word just means "to begin," and I think it's pretty clear that fits this best. When it means "to begin" it does not mean "to profane" at the same. It's one or the other in any given context, not both.

Second, "the men" doesn't really point back to a subset of humanity (i.e., the of Cain). Ha'adam is singular, so a very wooden translation would be, "The man." So that doesn't make sense, for obvious reasons. The article here makes the singular adam a class note, such that it's translated, "When man began to multiply . . ."

Anyway, on to some of the specifics . . .

Cain is said to have been banished from the face the of land. Yet, could it be that his descendants returned, and those who rightfully remaining in the land (Seth's line), allowed them back. You know, we have then Lamech who re-committed his father's sin and slew a man (Gen 4:23). The violence spread unto the "godly" people, people stopped caring about the Lord's decrees and we eventually have Noah born who was meant to fix the cursed ground or something (Gen 5:29). Sounds like the curse that the Lord placed upon Cain not yielding its crops (Gen 4:12) was visited upon the Sethites. Which also lends support to interpreting "the men" in Gen 6:1 as Cain's descendants re-entering the land from which the Lord had banished them.

I'll admit the flow of previous chapters, makes angels in Genesis 6 quite awkward, like sudden and abrupt without any real introduction or setting the scene as Scripture normally provides. Yet, if Genesis 6 is a continuation of previous chapters, then there really needs to be a clear identification of at least one lineage. This introduction of lineages would happen at the start i.e., Genesis 6:1, so this is why I carefully went over the words closely according to the Strong's dictionary.

I don't happen to think the flow is that odd. Gen 1-2 is the creation account. Gen 3 is the fall. Gen 4 shows the immediate extent of sin (fratricide!), followed by the bloodline of the murder/rebellious line. And yet immediately after the this discussion of these awful people, we have a statement about Seth's line calling up the name of the Lord. The contrast is obvious and intended. Gen 5 immediately launches into a discussion of Seth's line with intentional contrasts with Cain's all along the way. (By the way, this is a big reason that we have to adopt the Sethite interpretation. The angel interpretation makes this entire passages completely superfluous.) And then in Gen 6, we have the corruption of his line, which leaves us with the corruption of the entire world. And that, in turn, speaks to the point of the entire unit (Gen 1-11), which tells the story of how God brought order out of chaos and how, by sin, mankind brought chaos to God's order. So the flow is perfect, as is the use of ha'adam and the beginning of the passage! It's a nice little linguistic tie in, actually, and the use of enosh a couple of verses later is a nice touch, too, since the whole idea is to point out man's frailty/mortality and thus the fact that God gives them a limited amount of time before ending them. After all, we've seen a lot of death in these chapters, and all of it the direct result of sin!

Yeah . . . and still nothing about raping angels . . .

I found it interesting that that the word "began" (chalal in Hebrew) had other meanings such as profane, defile, pollute, wound, slay (which fits in the context of the violence spoken of in Gen 6). Then, we don't just have adam (men) increasing, but rather ha'adam (the men) increasing -- which suggests particular men within humanity. So alongside 'chalal' then, a possible interpretation might be be "the men of violence" or "the men who slay".

Then we hit the conjuction 'al-paniym' (upon the face) which half carries an insinuation of ground within it, and then adamah (rather than erets) which implies a fertile ground of sorts, of red soil.... also Genesis 4:14 which has Cain being cast out from "the face of the ground" (what would have been already fertile lands). Mere coincidence that the same terms are used? No, I find significance in such.

I think I already addressed ha'adam. I don't take much from the conjunction al-paniym. That's a very common phrase.

In conclusion, all this seems like Genesis 6:1 is suggesting those in the line of Cain, had returned. Then those in the land who weren't directly banished by the Lord (hence "sons of God") saw their women, and took them to themselves as they pleased. Directly contradicting the Lord's decrees.

So then the Lord's frustration in Gen 6:3 with everyone just ignoring what he had said and set in place:

• And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh;”

I'd be interested to know if you consider my revised translation of Gen 6:1 a sound one? I feel it makes a lot of sense and merit to it. But, I wouldn't want you quickly saying, "yes!" just because it supports what your view.

So I wish I could say "yes!" but I really just don't see the warrant for it. Sorry

[abelcainsbrother]

Well at least I kinda have something to go on biblically when it comes to the line of Seth interpretation,so that I can at least check it out.Can't say I'm convinced yet but at least I can look into it.Thanks Jac.

[Nicki]

And this is a VERY important point in good hermeneutics. We can NEVER use future revelation to tell us what previous revelation means. If that is our rule of interpretation, then the practical result is that the original revelation didn't mean anything at all until the later revelation came along to tell us what it REALLY meant. If Genesis 6 really is telling a story of angels getting girls preggo, we certainly don't get it from Genesis 6. You get it from all those other passages. That means that the original readers were NOT given enough information to understand the meaning. That means the original readers were not privy to the meaning of the text, and it was only readers of later generations who were the recipients of later revelation who could suddenly understand the original text. Thus, the original story was NOT revelation to the original audience. It was just a collection of words with no meaning to them at all. And if THAT is possible, then you can't say that the Bible means anything, because how do you know there won't be future revelation that tells you what the texts you are reading now ACTUALLY mean by importing on the Bible as it is currently written meanings that are not found in it but that will be found in those later texts? You can't, and therefore, you can't say the Bible means anything.

I can't see that that's really so as long as there's no contradiction between passages. The Genesis passage is somewhat ambiguous and, as we still do, the original audience may have been wondering what it really meant - but that was as it was; of course they didn't have future revelation to help them interpret it. Or one interpretation may have been the obvious one to them. I don't see any problem with the later revelation giving us more information about angels - like their being referred to as sons of God. That said, I'm leaning more towards agreeing with your view (the Sethite)

[B. W.]

It is plausible that fallen angelic beings messed with human DNA in the womb... Instead of sexual relations, they would artificially impregnate a woman. Human science can do this now as well alter DNA. See article:

Artificial insemination:

http://attainfertility.com/article/arti ... -procedure

Synthetic gene altering the natural human gene/DNA

https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/03/hgp ... e-project/

One last point:

Ancient Hebrew of Moses's time used approx 8,679 words compared to modern English's approx 300,000 words. So it stands to reason that the first five books of the Bible would use terms and phrases limited to its own vocabulary. Artificially impregnation would appear in that language as causing a women to become pregnant.

The fallen angels saw human women as desirable to impregnate albeit artificially in order to get God to wipe humanity off the face of the earth and thus prove that God could not keep the promise-callings He gave to humanity mentioned in Genesis chapter one and two... Thus, another's throne would become exalted above God's.

There are many writers who bring these same points up. So take your grain of salt and research on your own...
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[PaulSacramento]

This doesn't require me to be a Theistic Evolutionist, does it? That would mean I'd have to be associated with those Catholics like Byblos and PaulS. I don't know if I could agree with a Catholic on anything.

HOW DARE YOU?

Call Paul a Catholic.

[JButler]

I grew up being told the major events in the Bible happen at 2000 year increments, which put the earth at about 6000 to 8000 years old. A global flood is one of the 2k points. But you don't have to look very far to see there are problems with this belief.

If a global flood happened literally then we'd all be descendants of Noah and family. A quick look at the human races today will put up a big red flag immediately. How could all these different characteristics evolve into fairly distinct races and in such a short period of time? You would need to be a believer in super evolution to make this work.

Even the ancient Egyptian paintings show distinct differences between them and their African neighbors on their south border. Not just in skin color but head and facial features. Considering these artifacts are from roughly 3k to 4k years old then evolution would have be turbocharged and then some. I don't think so.

The earth record shows that different creatures existed at different times in the various layers. You won't find T-rex bones co-mingled with giant bison and wooly mammoths but the bones of both are in the earth however at different levels.

Its like the life on earth has been reset several times, for lack of a better description.

Seems to me these misunderstandings are rooted in strict literal interpretation. This coupled with the belief that not taking it literally is heresy or blasphemy. Never considering the back story or the nuances of the Hebrew language and tradition. That alone would be "questioning the Bible" in some churches.

Such strict literal interpretations IMHO cause a poor light to be cast upon those espousing these views and causes discredit upon the Bible. Plus strict literal application misses the deepness and richness embedded in the Bible*. Putting the creation into man-made timelines subjects God's timelessness to human's view of time. That's the way it looks to me.
Tell me if I'm off base.


*something I'm learning more and more as I learn more

[hughfarey]

You're off some bases, but bang on others. Mine for example. Welcome!

[JButler]

You're off some bases, but bang on others. Mine for example. Welcome!

Well, that nails it down!