Yes, the movie is unbiblical, but it is very entertaining. Even though what is presented in it is not accurate, it does get one thing right- there is a war going on between good angels and fallen angels. Fallen angels are real entities that are involved with human affairs. The movie gets that right.
What are fallen angels, and how did they “fall”? That is what we are going to look at in this post. As we will see, there are many different categories of fallen angels. With this being said, we are not given a “hard and fast” stringent angelology in the Scriptures. What we do see is that there are different types of fallen angels, with various ranks, yet we aren’t really given any more detail than that.
Also, though some of the entities we are going to discuss today do not fit the category of “angel” as it is used in the Old Testament, I am going to be using the term at times to refer to all supernatural beings other than God. Besides, this is the way the New Testament uses the term. It takes the word “angel” and broadens it to refer to all the supernatural entities, both good and evil.
For today’s post, we are going to divide this subject up into three different sections that will deal not so much with the various rankings, but with the “fall” of these angels. Because I want to keep these post short (and manageable) I will address the subject matter in two post. In this first post, we will look at the first angelic rebellion, while in the second post, we will look at two possible other angelic rebellions.
1. Genesis 6 and the Sons of God/Watchers Rebellion
In Genesis 6, we find some very strange happenings, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”(6:1-4).
If you have kept up with the posts so far, the "sons of God" should jump off the page at you. Here is yet another mention of these supernatural beings who are part of the divine council. We see that something goes terribly wrong- they lust after women and then marry them. Their offspring results in a race of giants- the Nephilim. Instead of ruling over humanity in a righteous way, they abuse their authority, and over step boundaries that they should have never crossed. Strange indeed.
However, not everyone accepts this interpretation. Some say that the phrase "sons of God" refers to kings, while others say it refers to the godly line of Seth, while the "daughters of men" refers to the women in the lineage of Cain. I don't think these interpretations are correct for several reasons:
1) Neither of the "human" views can account for the strange offspring (Nephilim).
2) As far as the kingly view goes, in the Ancient Near East, parallels refer to individual kings as sons of the gods, but there is not an instance where the plural phrase "sons of God" refers to human kings.
3) ANE cultures did see their kings as somewhat divine, but there is no ANE evidence for an entire household at large being called divine sons.
4) As far as the "Sethite" view is concerned, nowhere in the OT are the Sethites identified as the "sons of God".
5) The Sethite view forces two different meanings on the Hebrew word for "man" (adam). In Genesis 6:1 the word would have to mean "mankind", while in 6:2 it would have to then refer to a specific group of humans- the Cainites. Such a distinction is not there.
6) This view implies that all the women from Cain's line were ungodly. while all the men from Seth's line are godly.
7) The daughters born in the previous chapter of Genesis were born to Seth's line, not Cain's. This is the exact opposite of what this view tries to teach.
Since the particular phrase "sons of God" is used elsewhere to refer to supernatural beings, it is only consistent to interpret it the same way here. This view also explains why their offspring was so unusual. Even though this interpretation is the best reading of the text, many reject it because of what Jesus says in Matthew 22:29-30. He basically says that at the resurrection, we will be like the angels, who neither marry nor are given in marriage. Jesus says angels can't marry. Boom! End of discussion. Right?
Hmmmmm. Not. So. Fast. Let's back up and look at four things: 1) Do angels take human form in the Bible and engage in regular, human activity? 2) What was the traditional belief during the time of Jesus? 3) What is Jesus really saying in the Matthew passage? 4) What does the rest of the NT say about Genesis 6?
Let's start with the first question. The answer is yes. There are examples in the OT of both angels and God taking physical human form (Gen. 18:1-8; 32:22-32; Exod. 23:20-23; Judg. 6, 13). In Genesis 18, God and the angels eat food. Eating is not something they would need to do as spirit beings, yet they do it when they take human form. The Bible consistently shows angels in human form (or flesh) when coming to earth. Therefore, we see that it is possible for angels to take human form and do the things which humans do. Let me just say that if one part of the body functions like a human, it is likely that ALL the body parts function like a human...If you get my drift...This means that angels having sex in human form is not as outlandish as it first seems.
On to question two. What was the common belief of the day? For that, we turn to the intertestamental book of 1 Enoch. Chapters 6-36 is referred to as the Book of the Watchers. In this book, the Watchers (the title is taken from the book of Daniel, where it refers to the sons of God) are the sons of God in Genesis 6. The author of 1 Enoch understands Genesis 6 to refer to an angelic rebellion, in which the Watchers begin to lust after women, which leads to taking them as wives, etc. The Watchers are then judged and "bound in the Valleys of the Earth" until Judgement Day.
1 Enoch also relays the wickedness of what these angelic beings did during the period of time after they got married and before they were judged. There were 200 of them that rebelled under the leadership of Samyaza. These Watchers taught humans what was considered "forbidden knowledge." The wickedness of the humans grew, and God's patience and mercy reached its end. He ties the Watchers in chains, and then sends the flood.
This is just an aside, but it is interesting to note that the Watchers who first tempted the others to lust after the women are referred to as "satans", but the word is never used in the book as a proper name to refer to any of the Watchers (more on this later).
The book of Enoch was very popular both before, during, and after the days of Jesus. The Jews drew their understanding of Genesis 6 from this book. The traditional belief during that time was that angels could indeed appear in human form, and the sons of God most certainly rebelled by having sex with human women. In fact, not only was 1 Enoch influential in its view on the supernatural, there are also various other themes from the book that carry over into the New Testament (but that is a whole other series of post!).
What about question 3? Does Jesus' statement nullify what we just examined? No, it does not. Let's look at the passage closely: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven." (Matt. 22:30). The instances of angelic embodiment pertained only to events on earth, not heaven. The angels in heaven are spiritual beings, who have no flesh, and who do not marry. Though they may have the ability to take human form when they are on earth, they do not in heaven. Jesus says we will be like the angels in heaven, not when they appear on earth. Besides, this passage is not referring to the sons of God who rebelled and are no longer in heaven, but to the angels that are currently there, existing in spirit form.
Now, for the last question. What do other passages in the New Testament say about Genesis 6? They affirm 1 Enoch's interpretation, and draw implicitly upon his telling of it. There are two instances where this is found. In each passage, the author is referring to events in Genesis that relay God's judgement, in order to show that these false prophets will not be spared judgement either. The first instance is found in 2 Peter 2:4, "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgement..." The second instance is found in Jude 6, "And the angels who did not stay within their own positions of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgement of the great day."
Each of these passages are a reference to 1 Enoch, where the Watchers are chained and then bound in the Valleys of the Earth until Judgement Day. Therefore, based on context, tradition, and the New Testament, the angelic view of Genesis 6 is the best way to interpret the events portrayed there.
What we have here is the first angelic rebellion recorded in Scripture, and Satan as we know him is not involved. He could not have been one of these sons of God, because they are in chains in hell, and he is not. Even the intertestamental books that develop the idea that Satan is the main arch-enemy of God never associate him with this angelic rebellion...and neither does the New Testament.
Yet it is clear from other places in the New Testament that Satan is behind the serpent in the Garden,which means that by the time the rebellion of Genesis 6 happens, he is already evil. Why isn't he involved with this rebellion? I don't know, the Scriptures do not say. Maybe he was to cunning and wise? Maybe somehow he knew that those who did this were going to be locked away, which would spoil his plan for world corruption and dominance? That's all just speculation. For somethings, there are just no answers.
Next time we will look at two other possible angelic rebellions.