Just for our mutual edification...there is a little known 3rd perspective so I thought I would share it. It is called the Magistrate or City-Lord theory...
The idea that kings or tribal leaders were somehow the offspring of or manifestations of the local god or gods was not uncommon in ancient times. Meredith Kline in her article from The Westminster Theological Journal, May 1962, uses the Sumer-Babylonian epic tradition which either deals with these city-kings as either having been placed into these positions by the favor of their gods or else being offspring/manifestations of these gods. In her perspective, it makes perfect historical sense that these “sons of God” in Genesis six could have “established their own authority as supreme head of a fabricated religio-politico system; then they held their subjects in gross spiritual darkness and abject physical slavery.” Apparently there is a long history of this and similar anthropological developments though out history. Hittite kings were apparently deified after their deaths, while in Egypt the Pharaohs were believed to be divine from birth. The Krt text from Ras Sharma (Krt being the name of a god) tells us of his son, the king, who is called Krt bn il which can be interpreted to mean the “son of El”.
We see this concept everywhere we look from the early Celts and druids all the way to the ancient Japanese “Kami” or preist-kings. In Minoa, as well as in Inca and Aztec cultures, the kings or chiefs were considered the incarnation of the Sun god, or at least his direct descendants. In the Norse countries their kings were always the sons of Odin, or some other god. Many, like in the Japanese legend, were considered priest-kings, and often performed both functions. While the Roman Emperors were alleged gods themselves, the Byzantine emperors considered themselves to be God’s representative on earth. Perhaps this is what led to the control exercised by Popes in the middle ages who also billed themselves as the representative of God on earth (see also Ivan Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 1967). Undoubtedly these notions are so anthropologically universal that they must have had a root somewhere in the historical past. Only though these examples are often used in this context to support the magistrate or city king notion, all these tales point to some sort of intimate union or interaction between their gods and these human beings producing what we might call god-men.
In the Bible we also see usage of the term “elohim”, or gods, as it is applied to men (Psalm 82:6; John 10:34,35). This word, though used for the Creator in Genesis, is not actually a name, nor is it a word that only describes the one and only God (YHVH). In ancient Semitic languages, even Canaanite dialects, “elohim” is somewhat of a generic title. In the Babylonian as well as the Canaanite pantheons there are many El’s. Abraham called the Lord our God, El-Shaddai, or God Almighty, in order to indicate that He was the only real, as in most powerful, God. He referred to Him later as El-Elyon to refer to His being the Most High God, again taken to be a reference to a one true God, the Creator of the Universe and all that contains. Elohim as it is used for the one God, is in itself the plural of the title “Eloah” and indicates, as we Christians and some of the early Rabbis would understand it, a nature of the one true God, which is also a Unity. For us, the one God has revealed Himself in three personae, but for these Rabbis it referred only to a plurality of majesties or attributes of the one God. In the Biblical usage however we see the term always paired up with singular male pronouns.
As we study the Holy Scriptures, we see this term can represent a plethora of god-like beings, including angels, of whom YHVH is supreme Sovereign, therefore in Job the angels are called bene-Elohim, or sons of God, while in many places God Himself refers to others as His sons (Abraham, the judges, the nations of Israel, and of course Messiah).
Finally for some, in a more henotheistic sense, these el- names could be interpreted to indicate that YHVH is the most powerful or highest of the gods. This is the rendering derived by the Mormons who claim early Israelite religion was in fact henotheistic. Henotheism is the belief in one God while it is admitted that other gods or god-like beings do in fact exist. We also find this notion present in many of the earliest nature religions where the one Creator God gives over governance of the creation into the hands of lesser gods whose natures run the gambit from good to evil (such as we find in Nigeria’s Yaruba tribe).
The root of the word elohim also contains the idea of great strength or power to effect, and therefore was always used to refer as well to those people who held offices that were instituted by or empowered by God (YHVH). These included kings, princes, judges, priests, prophets, and magistrates, etc., who it was assumed received their authority ultimately from the one God, or the many gods, depending on your cultural perspective. These individuals or groups, like God Himself, had the power to seriously affect one’s life, sometimes even to the point of whether or not you got to keep it! However, in the Bible this did not indicate they were deity, only that they were appointed to perform these duties He had empowered them for by creating these institutions and offices (as in “ye are gods” or elohim). You can learn more about this aspect of the term from most good Commentaries like Matthew Henry’s, Adam Clarke’s, or Jameison Fausset Brown’s, or also if one does a word study in a good Bible Dictionary like, Smith’s Bible Dictionary (Jove Publications Inc., N.Y., 1977).
This magistrate or city-king theory became the perspective of much of Rabbinical Judaism after Rabbi Simeon in the 2nd Century A.D. pronounced a curse upon all who believed that the “sons of God” were angels. In his interpretation, similar to many today, angels were not the progenitors of the Nephilim and neither were the Nephilim “giants” in a fairy tale sense, but rather human men of huge stature, and great power over the masses, i.e., ”men” of renowned. Thus when Numbers 13:13 speaks of the Anakim as being sons of Nephilim, according to this view they are simply describing warriors of massive size compared to the Israelites. We will discuss more about this in the section on Nephilim. This view is also expounded upon by the later Jewish scholars Raschi and Nachmenedes who also give their reasoning for their conclusions.
As a side note let me just say that whoever these “sons of God” were, the scriptures tell us that these beings “took wives unto themselves.” Now some say this implies merely that they all married, but some Rabbis have conjectured this plural could be implying polygamy, or maybe even that they took other men’s wives and forcibly had sex with them. However this final possibility seems to be reading way too much into the text, though it was not uncommon in ancient social structures for the powerful victorious tribal leaders, nobles, or magistrates, to exercise a practice similar to “the right of first night” we see played out in later European culture, whereby upon ending the marriage ceremony the Noble or City-Lord would sweep away the woman (usually a virgin) and have his sexual way with her throughout her wedding night planting his seed within her, and then send her home to her new husband. In either event, when we read the account of Cain’s offspring we see precisely these two types of sin, perversion of marriage and excessive violence.
In Genesis 4:19 we see the children of Cain’s disregard for God’s word and plan for the marriage union. It tells us there that Cain’s son Lamech took to himself “two wives” where the Lord had clearly proposed the union of one husband and one wife for life. Then in verse 23 Lamech proudly murders a man and boasts of it.
Some would then say that this degradation of marriage and use of violence is exactly what is implied in Genesis 6, but I just cannot confirm that by the text alone. For me the idea of “every imagination” of the heart being wicked implies they had become utterly tainted and sinful in all their dealings and ways, but that also is conjecture, we just do not know for sure.
Now I am not saying I agree this is what the scriptures are saying in verses 1-4 but it is a little different than the fallen angels and sons of Seth theories...
In His love
brother Paul
The idea that kings or tribal leaders were somehow the offspring of or manifestations of the local god or gods was not uncommon in ancient times. Meredith Kline in her article from The Westminster Theological Journal, May 1962, uses the Sumer-Babylonian epic tradition which either deals with these city-kings as either having been placed into these positions by the favor of their gods or else being offspring/manifestations of these gods. In her perspective, it makes perfect historical sense that these “sons of God” in Genesis six could have “established their own authority as supreme head of a fabricated religio-politico system; then they held their subjects in gross spiritual darkness and abject physical slavery.” Apparently there is a long history of this and similar anthropological developments though out history. Hittite kings were apparently deified after their deaths, while in Egypt the Pharaohs were believed to be divine from birth. The Krt text from Ras Sharma (Krt being the name of a god) tells us of his son, the king, who is called Krt bn il which can be interpreted to mean the “son of El”.
We see this concept everywhere we look from the early Celts and druids all the way to the ancient Japanese “Kami” or preist-kings. In Minoa, as well as in Inca and Aztec cultures, the kings or chiefs were considered the incarnation of the Sun god, or at least his direct descendants. In the Norse countries their kings were always the sons of Odin, or some other god. Many, like in the Japanese legend, were considered priest-kings, and often performed both functions. While the Roman Emperors were alleged gods themselves, the Byzantine emperors considered themselves to be God’s representative on earth. Perhaps this is what led to the control exercised by Popes in the middle ages who also billed themselves as the representative of God on earth (see also Ivan Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, Oxford, 1967). Undoubtedly these notions are so anthropologically universal that they must have had a root somewhere in the historical past. Only though these examples are often used in this context to support the magistrate or city king notion, all these tales point to some sort of intimate union or interaction between their gods and these human beings producing what we might call god-men.
In the Bible we also see usage of the term “elohim”, or gods, as it is applied to men (Psalm 82:6; John 10:34,35). This word, though used for the Creator in Genesis, is not actually a name, nor is it a word that only describes the one and only God (YHVH). In ancient Semitic languages, even Canaanite dialects, “elohim” is somewhat of a generic title. In the Babylonian as well as the Canaanite pantheons there are many El’s. Abraham called the Lord our God, El-Shaddai, or God Almighty, in order to indicate that He was the only real, as in most powerful, God. He referred to Him later as El-Elyon to refer to His being the Most High God, again taken to be a reference to a one true God, the Creator of the Universe and all that contains. Elohim as it is used for the one God, is in itself the plural of the title “Eloah” and indicates, as we Christians and some of the early Rabbis would understand it, a nature of the one true God, which is also a Unity. For us, the one God has revealed Himself in three personae, but for these Rabbis it referred only to a plurality of majesties or attributes of the one God. In the Biblical usage however we see the term always paired up with singular male pronouns.
As we study the Holy Scriptures, we see this term can represent a plethora of god-like beings, including angels, of whom YHVH is supreme Sovereign, therefore in Job the angels are called bene-Elohim, or sons of God, while in many places God Himself refers to others as His sons (Abraham, the judges, the nations of Israel, and of course Messiah).
Finally for some, in a more henotheistic sense, these el- names could be interpreted to indicate that YHVH is the most powerful or highest of the gods. This is the rendering derived by the Mormons who claim early Israelite religion was in fact henotheistic. Henotheism is the belief in one God while it is admitted that other gods or god-like beings do in fact exist. We also find this notion present in many of the earliest nature religions where the one Creator God gives over governance of the creation into the hands of lesser gods whose natures run the gambit from good to evil (such as we find in Nigeria’s Yaruba tribe).
The root of the word elohim also contains the idea of great strength or power to effect, and therefore was always used to refer as well to those people who held offices that were instituted by or empowered by God (YHVH). These included kings, princes, judges, priests, prophets, and magistrates, etc., who it was assumed received their authority ultimately from the one God, or the many gods, depending on your cultural perspective. These individuals or groups, like God Himself, had the power to seriously affect one’s life, sometimes even to the point of whether or not you got to keep it! However, in the Bible this did not indicate they were deity, only that they were appointed to perform these duties He had empowered them for by creating these institutions and offices (as in “ye are gods” or elohim). You can learn more about this aspect of the term from most good Commentaries like Matthew Henry’s, Adam Clarke’s, or Jameison Fausset Brown’s, or also if one does a word study in a good Bible Dictionary like, Smith’s Bible Dictionary (Jove Publications Inc., N.Y., 1977).
This magistrate or city-king theory became the perspective of much of Rabbinical Judaism after Rabbi Simeon in the 2nd Century A.D. pronounced a curse upon all who believed that the “sons of God” were angels. In his interpretation, similar to many today, angels were not the progenitors of the Nephilim and neither were the Nephilim “giants” in a fairy tale sense, but rather human men of huge stature, and great power over the masses, i.e., ”men” of renowned. Thus when Numbers 13:13 speaks of the Anakim as being sons of Nephilim, according to this view they are simply describing warriors of massive size compared to the Israelites. We will discuss more about this in the section on Nephilim. This view is also expounded upon by the later Jewish scholars Raschi and Nachmenedes who also give their reasoning for their conclusions.
As a side note let me just say that whoever these “sons of God” were, the scriptures tell us that these beings “took wives unto themselves.” Now some say this implies merely that they all married, but some Rabbis have conjectured this plural could be implying polygamy, or maybe even that they took other men’s wives and forcibly had sex with them. However this final possibility seems to be reading way too much into the text, though it was not uncommon in ancient social structures for the powerful victorious tribal leaders, nobles, or magistrates, to exercise a practice similar to “the right of first night” we see played out in later European culture, whereby upon ending the marriage ceremony the Noble or City-Lord would sweep away the woman (usually a virgin) and have his sexual way with her throughout her wedding night planting his seed within her, and then send her home to her new husband. In either event, when we read the account of Cain’s offspring we see precisely these two types of sin, perversion of marriage and excessive violence.
In Genesis 4:19 we see the children of Cain’s disregard for God’s word and plan for the marriage union. It tells us there that Cain’s son Lamech took to himself “two wives” where the Lord had clearly proposed the union of one husband and one wife for life. Then in verse 23 Lamech proudly murders a man and boasts of it.
Some would then say that this degradation of marriage and use of violence is exactly what is implied in Genesis 6, but I just cannot confirm that by the text alone. For me the idea of “every imagination” of the heart being wicked implies they had become utterly tainted and sinful in all their dealings and ways, but that also is conjecture, we just do not know for sure.
Now I am not saying I agree this is what the scriptures are saying in verses 1-4 but it is a little different than the fallen angels and sons of Seth theories...
In His love
brother Paul