Sons of God
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Not to be confused with Son of God or God the Son.
Sons of the Gods (Hebrew: בני האלהים, romanized: bənê ĕlōhîm,[1] literally: "sons of the gods"[2]) is a phrase used in the Hebrew Bible and in Christian Apocrypha. The phrase is also used in Kabbalah where bene elohim are part of different Jewish angelic hierarchies.
Genesis 6
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
— Genesis 6:1–4, KJV
The first mention of "sons of God" in the Hebrew Bible occurs at Genesis 6:1–4. In terms of literary-historical origin, this phrase is typically associated with the Jahwist tradition.[3]
This passage has had two interpretations in Judaism,[citation needed]
Offspring of Seth: The first references to the offspring of Seth rebelling from God and mingling with the daughters of Cain are found in Christian and rabbinic literature from the second century CE onwards e.g. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Augustine of Hippo, Julius Africanus, and the Letters attributed to St. Clement. It is also the view expressed in the modern canonical Amharic Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. In Judaism "Sons of God" usually refers to the righteous, i.e. the children of Seth.
Angels: All of the earliest sources interpret the "sons of God" as angels. From the third century BCE onwards, references are found in the Enochic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls (the Genesis Apocryphon, the Damascus Document, 4Q180), Jubilees, the Testament of Reuben, 2 Baruch, Josephus, and the book of Jude (compare with 2 Peter 2). This is also the meaning of the only two identical occurrences of bene ha elohim in the Hebrew Bible (Job 1:6 and 2:1), and of the most closely related expressions (refer to the list above). In the Septuagint, the interpretive reading "angels" is found in Codex Alexandrinus, one of four main witnesses to the Greek text.
Rabbinic Judaism traditionally adheres to the first interpretation, with some exceptions, and modern Jewish translations may translate bnei elohim as "sons of rulers" rather than "sons of God". Regardless, the second interpretation (sons of angels or other divine beings) is nonexistent in modern Judaism. This is reflected by the rejection of Enoch and other Apocrypha supporting the second interpretation from the Hebrew Bible Canon.
Ugaritic text
Claus Westermann claims that the text of Genesis 6 is based on an Ugaritic urtext.[4] In Ugaritic, a cognate phrase is bn 'il.[5] This may occur in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle.[6]
KTU² 1.40 demonstrates the use of bn il to mean "sons of gods".[7]
KTU² 1.65 (which may be a scribal exercise) uses bn il three times in succession: il bn il / dr bn il / mphrt bn il "El, the sons of gods, the circle of the sons of gods / the totality of the sons of gods."[5]
The phrase bn ilm ("sons of the gods") is also attested in Ugaritic texts,[8][9][10][11][12] as is the phrase phr bn ilm ("assembly of the sons of the gods").[13]
Elsewhere in the Ugarit corpus it is suggested that the bn ilm were the 70 sons of Asherah and El, who were the titulary deities of the people of the known world, and their "hieros gamos" marriage with the daughters of men gave rise to their rulers.[14] There is evidence in 2 Samuel 7 that this may have been the case also in Israel.[15]
Late text
J. Scharbert associates Genesis 6:1–4 with the Priestly source and the final redaction of the Pentateuch.[16] On this basis, he assigns the text to later editorial activity.[17] Rüdiger Bartelmus sees only Genesis 6:3 as a late insertion.[16]
Józef Milik and Matthew Black advanced the view of a late text addition to a text dependent on post-exilic, non-canonical tradition, such as the legend of the Watchers from the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch.[16]
Translations
Different source versions of Genesis 6:1–4 vary in their use of "sons of God". Some manuscripts of the Septuagint have emendations to read "sons of God" as "angels".[citation needed] Codex Vaticanus contains "angels" originally.[citation needed] In Codex Alexandrinus "sons of God" has been omitted and replaced by "angels".[18] This reading of Angels is further confirmed by Augustine in his work City of God where he speaks of both variants in book 15 chapter 23.[19] The Peshitta reads "sons of God".[20] Furthermore the Vulgate goes for the literal filii Dei meaning Sons of God.[21] Most modern translations of Christian bibles retain this whereas Jewish ones tend to deviate to such as ‘Sons of Rulers’ which may in part be down to the Curse of Simeon Ben Yohai who cursed anyone who translated this as ‘Sons of God’ (Genesis Rabbah 26:7).[22]
Beyond this in both the Codices Job 1:6 and Deuteronomy 32:8 when the phrase ‘Angels of God’ is used in place of where the Hebrew says ‘Sons of God’.[23] For the verse in Deuteronomy the Masoretic Text does not say ‘Sons of God’ but ‘Sons of Israel’ however in 4Q37 the term ‘Sons of God’ is used.[24] This is probably the root reading for the reading we see in the Septuagint.[25]
Other mentions
The phrase "sons of the Elohim" also occurs in:
Job 1:6 bənê hāʼĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) the sons of Elohim.[26][citation needed]
Job 2:1 bənê hāʼĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) the sons of Elohim.
Job 38:7 bənê ĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי אֱלֹהִֽים) without the definite article - sons of Elohim[citation needed]
Deuteronomy 32:8 both bənê ĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) and bənê ĕl (בני אל) the sons of Elohim or sons of El in two Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDtj and 4QDtq); mostly "angels of God" (αγγελων θεου) in the LXX (sometimes "sons of God" or "sons of Israel"); "sons of Israel" in the MT.[27][28]:147[29]
Closely related phrases include:
Psalms 29:1 bənê ēlîm (בְּנֵי אֵלִים) without the definite article - sons of elim (a similar expression).[citation needed]
Psalms 82:6 bənê elîon (בְּנֵי עֶלְיוֹן) without the definite article and using ‘Most high’ instead of ēl.
Psalms 89:6 bənê ēlîm (בְּנֵי אֵלִים) - sons of elim
A closely related Aramaic expression occurs in Daniel 3:25: bar elahin - בַר אֱלָהִֽין - son of the gods.
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