Pages 5-10, 16: winter 1992

SONS OF GOD: JUST THE GODLY LINEAGE OF SETH?

                           Farrell Till
   
   In a front-page question-and-answer column in the June 1991 issue of 
Christian Courier, editor Wayne Jackson presented a bibliolater's view of 
Genesis 6:1-4,  which was also the subject of an article exchange in the 
autumn edition of TSR.  Jackson, of course, pooh-poohed the mere suggestion 
that this passage in any way implies the consorting of angels with earthly 
women. Here is his entire eisegesis of the passage with his original spelling, 
punctuation, and grammar retained:

        The context of Genesis 6:1f speaks of the "sons of God" who 
     took wives of the "daughters of men."  Subsequently, the record 
     reveals that in those days "the Nephilim were in the earth." 
     From these phrases, it has been assumed by some Bible students 
     that certain fallen angels ("sons of God") mated with women of 
     the earth ("daughters of men"), and that to these unions was 
     born a sort of hybrid race called the Nephilim.

        For this theory there is no evidence, and it runs counter to 
     numerous biblical facts.  Note: (1) Angels are spirit beings (Heb. 
     1:14).  As such, they do not consist of flesh (Luke 24:39), 
     hence, they are incapable of a physical relationship.  (2)  Christ 
     Himself plainly said that angels do not marry (Mt. 22:30; Mk. 
     12:25; Lk. 20:34-35).  (3) There is, in fact, nothing in Genesis 
     6:4 that indicates the Nephilim were offspring of the marriages 
     suggested in this context.  (4)  The word "Nephilim" usually 
     identified as "giants" (ASVfn), is a term of uncertain meaning. 
     Likely it suggests the idea of strength and prowess.  It is used 
     in Numbers 13:33 of certain inhabitants of Canaan whom the Is-
     raelite spies encountered in the survey of the land.  The context 
     indicates that they were merely "men of great stature" (32), and 
     nothing hints there [sic] they were the progeny of angels.

        The most reasonable view of Genesis 6:1f is that the allusion 
     refers to the fact that some men, from the godly lineage of Seth, 
     called "sons of God" (an expression denoting those in covenant 
     relationship with Jehovah--cf. Deut 14:1; 32:5), began to pursue 
     fleshly interests, and so took wives of "the daughters of men," 
     i.e., those who were unbelievers.  (Is there any principle that 
     we can learn from this?)  The subsequent context seems to 
     suggest that it was this carnal trend that  ultimately brought the 
     Flood--which  prompts this  question. If the "sons of God" were 
     angels, how did the Flood serve as a judgment upon them?  Can 
     angels drown?

   Although Mr. Jackson asserts that there is no evidence for the "theory" 
that Genesis 6:1-4 referred to the intermarriage of angels and human women, 
a review of my exchange of articles with Steve Gunter on this same subject 
(TSR, Autumn 1991, pp. 2-11) will show that there is not just "evidence" but 
overwhelming evidence that people living in the biblical era seriously believed 
that such marriages had actually occurred in antediluvian times.

   Chapters 1-20 in the book of First Enoch are devoted entirely to the 
premise that angels or watchers had descended from heaven, married human 
women, and thereby produced a state of almost total corruption upon the 
earth.  The language in this section of the book is too specific and the de-
scriptions too detailed to leave any doubt that the author believed that such 
marriages had indeed happened.  My first article on the subject pointed out 
that the "inspired" writer Jude (vv:14-15) had quoted 1 Enoch 1:9 in a way 
that both endorsed the Enochian authorship of the book and attributed pro-
phetic powers to its author.  As I said then, these facts, along with the 
biblical assertion that Enoch was so righteous that God translated him directly 
to heaven (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5), leave bibliolaters no recourse but to 
regard as truth whatever "Enoch" said about angels and women marrying. To 
say the least, such facts as these can hardly be regarded as "no evidence" 
for the "theory" that some in biblical times believed angels had once intermar-
ried with earthly women.

   But evidence to support the "theory" doesn't end with 1 Enoch. Legends 
of such marriages having occurred in antediluvian times abound in apocryphal 
literature.  Before his death in Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Reuben 
warned his sons not to be captivated by women who adorn themselves "to 
deceive men's sound minds":

        For it was thus that they (women) charmed the Watchers, who 
     were before the Flood.  As they continued looking at the women, 
     they were filled with desire for them and perpetrated the act in 
     their minds.  Then they were transformed into human males, and 
     while the women were cohabiting with their husbands they ap-
     peared to them.  Since the women's minds were filled with lust 
     for these apparitions, they gave birth to giants.  For the Watch-
     ers were disclosed to them as being as high as the heavens 
     (5:6).

In apocryphal literature--and sometimes even in the Bible--watchers was a 
term frequently used for angels. In relating a dream to Daniel, king Nebu-
chadnezzar said that he saw a "watcher and a holy one" come down from 
heaven (Dan. 4:13).  The same designation (watcher) for angels was used 
two other times in the same context (vv: 17,23).  So when "Reuben" spoke in 
the above passage about "watchers before the flood" who had been "trans-
formed into human males" and who then consorted with women who "gave 
birth to giants," what could he have been speaking of but the same legend 
that figured so prominently in 1 Enoch?

   This legend was mentioned also in the book of Jubilees in relating events 
in the life of Enoch:

         And he was therefore with the angels of God six jubilees of 
     years.  And they showed him everything which is on earth and in 
     the heavens, the dominion of the sun.  And he wrote everything, 
     and bore witness to the Watchers, the ones who sinned with the 
     daughters of men because they began to mingle themselves with 
     the daughters of men so that they might be polluted.  And Enoch 
     bore witness against all of them (7:21).

As the story continues, Noah, after the birth of his grandchildren, bore 
witness and admonished them to "preserve themselves from fornication and 
pollution and from all injustice":

        For on account of these three (things) the Flood came upon 
     the earth.  For (it was) because of the fornication which the 
     Watchers, apart from the mandate of their authority, fornicated 
     with the daughters of men and took for themselves wives from all 
     whom they chose and made a beginning of impurity.  And they 
     begot sons, the Naphidim, and all of them were dissimilar.  And 
     each one ate his fellow.  The giants killed the Naphil, and the 
     Naphil killed the Elyo, and the Elyo mankind, and man his neigh-
     bor (7:21-22).

References to the teachings of the Watchers by which they corrupted the 
earth (8:3) and their punishment by confinement within the earth until the 
day of judgment (10:5) agree essentially with the legend as it was  presented 
in 1 Enoch.  Other allusions to the legend were made in The Testament of 
Naphtali (3:5) and Qumran MS4.  These contemporaries of the OT authors 
consistently spoke of angels or watchers or children of heaven, who married 
human women, produced giants, and corrupted the earth to a degree that 
caused God to send the great flood.  With this many references in the litera-
ture  of Old Testament times to a belief that giants had been born in antedi-
luvian days to women who had married angels, Mr. Jackson would have to be 
brazenly uncritical to argue that Genesis 6:1-4 was not referring to the same 
myth, and especially so since "Enoch the seventh from Adam" (Jude 14) had 
written so specifically and clearly about the myth.

   In the July 1991 issue of Reason and Revelation, an "apologetic" paper 
that he also edits, Mr. Jackson began a series on "Josephus and the Bible." 
The first article almost rhapsodized the "valuable contribution" that the testi-
mony of the Jewish historian Josephus makes in confirming the accuracy of 
"Sacred Scripture."  At one point in the article, where the "testimony" of 
Josephus didn't quite confirm the accuracy of the Biblical account of the same 
story, Jackson observed that "the narrative of the Jewish historian is marred 
by some discrepancies" (p. 27).  In other words, when Josephus's narrative 
agrees with the Bible (obviously the primary source that Josephus relied on 
to write The Antiquities of the Jews), Jackson sees this as wonderful confir-
mation of "Sacred Scripture," but when Josephus disagrees with the Bible, 
Jackson dismisses these occasions as "discrepancies" that mar the narrative of 
the Jewish historian.  It is a familiar game that bibliolaters play.  Whatever 
extrabiblical materials help their case, they readily accept, but whatever 
hurts their case, they reject.  They feel no need to critically appraise such 
materials.  The fact that they contradict the Bible is the only reason they 
need to reject them.

   No doubt, then, Jackson will say that the testimony of Josephus on the 
subject now under consideration was "marred" by discrepancies, because 
Josephus, like the writer of 1 Enoch, obviously thought that angels had once 
married earthly women and produced a race of giants.  After stating that men 
began to show "a double degree of wickedness, whereby they made God to be 
their enemy," he said this:

        (F)or many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat 
     sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on 
     account of the confidence they had in their own strength; for the 
     tradition is, That these men did what resembled the acts of those 
     whom the Grecians call giants" (Antiquities of the Jews, 1.3.1).

The very next statement of Josephus introduced Noah and God's plan to save 
humanity through the ark that he commanded Noah to build--in other words, 
exactly the same premise and chronological order that was presented in both 
Genesis and 1 Enoch.  For once, then, I am going to have to agree with Mr. 
Jackson. Sometimes the testimony of Josephus does make a "valuable contribu-
tion" to confirming the accuracy of the Bible.  Genesis 6:1-4 "accurately" 
presented the antediluvian myth about angels and earthly women, and the 
testimony of Josephus makes a "valuable contribution" to confirming that this 
was exactly what the Genesis writer meant.

   In addition to the references already noted, the obvious existence of this 
antediluvian myth was also confirmed in the rabbinical midrashim or 
postcanonical commentaries written to interpret the Tanach or   OT scrip-
tures.  In Hebrew Myths, Robert Graves and Raphael Patai have written an 
excellent critical analysis of midrashic expansions of this antediluvian myth 
about the intermarriage of fallen angels and earthly women (pp. 100-107). 
Anyone who doubts that early Jewish tradition and scholarship held that 
Genesis 6:1-4 was a reference to this myth should get the book and read it. 
It also has some very enlightening information on other mythological refer-
ences in the book of Genesis.

   According to Mr. Jackson, the theory that angels once intermarried with 
human women "runs counter to numerous biblical facts." He then proceeded to 
play the game of pitting scripture against scripture to try to show that 
passages embarrassing to the inerrancy doctrine cannot mean what the most 
obvious and least incredible interpretations assign to them. When, for ex-
ample, a bibliolater is confronted with a passage clearly showing that God can 
and sometimes does lie (1 Kings 22:17-23), he will argue that the passage 
cannot mean what it "seems" to mean, because Hebrews 6:18 and Titus 1:2 
clearly state that it is impossible for God to lie.  It never occurs to our 
bibliolater that Bible writers simply had conflicting religious views, just as 
thetheologians of all generations have had conflicting religious views.  They 
are so hung up on their fantasy-land belief that the Bible is perfectly harmo-
nious from cover to cover that they cannot even consider the possibility that 
whoever wrote 1 Kings 22 simply disagreed with the writers of Hebrews and 
Titus on this particular point.

   Jackson used this same scripture-against-scripture tactic to begin his 
denial that Genesis 6:1-4 was about intermar-riages of angels and human 
women. It cannot mean that, he argued, because "it runs counter to numer-
ous biblical facts."  Well, what are these "biblical facts" that it runs counter 
to?  "Angels are spirit beings (Heb. 1:4)," Jackson told his gullible fun-
damentalist audience.  "As such, they do not consist of flesh (Luke 24:39); 
hence, they are incapable of a physical relationship."  But how did he arrive 
at such an unbiblical conclusion as this? He will surely agree that the Holy 
Spirit is a "spirit being," and the Bible very clearly depicted him as a crea-
ture capable not just of "a physical relationship" but of sexual intercourse. 
In announcing to Mary the impending birth of Jesus, Gabriel said, "The Holy 
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High  will overshadow 
you; for that reason the holy child to be born will be called Son of God" 
(Lk. 1:35, REB).  

   If Mr. Jackson wants to quibble that the Holy Spirit is not an angel, he 
should consider the implications of that quaint little biblical yarn  about Lot's 
encounter with angels.  After seeing two angels come into Sodom, Lot invited 
them into his home.  They accepted, and he made them a feast that they ate 
(Gen. 19:1-3).  This all sounds very "physical" to me. If angels have mouths 
and digestive  tracts to use in eating and if they have feet that can be 
washed (v:2), why would they not have genitals for use in sexual inter-
course?  As a matter of fact, when a group of homosexuals in Sodom heard 
that these "men" were lodging with Lot, they surrounded his house and 
demanded that he send the "men" out to them so that "we may know them" 
(v:5).  Now I assume that Mr. Jackson understands what that means, so at 
least these men of Sodom thought that angels were capable of "physical rela-
tionship."  Just where, then, does Mr. Jackson get his "biblical fact" that 
angels were "incapable of a physical relationship"?

   Some bibliolaters, in trying to circumvent the obvious anthropomorphic 
description of angels in this passage, contend that these angels were trans-
formed into men to complete their mission to warn Lot of the impending de-
struction of Sodom.  But if angels could be transformed for this purpose, 
why could they not have transformed themselves so that they could marry the 
human women they had lusted after.  This is, in fact, what the passage 
quoted above from Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs clearly said: "Then 
they (the watchers) were transformed into human males." That provides a 
perfectly sensible (in terms of biblical sensibility) explanation for how the 
physical aspects of sexual intercourse between angels and women could have 
occurred.

   "Christ Himself plainly said that angels do not marry (Mt. 22:30; Mk. 
12:25; Lk. 20:34-35)," Jackson went on to say. In this statement, there is an 
assumption of harmony in the Bible. Mr. Jackson is completely unwilling to 
concede that even if Jesus did believe that angels do not marry, this would 
not mean that the Genesis writer also believed that they do not marry.  It 
could simply be that Jesus and the Genesis writer disagreed on this point, 
and before Jackson himself would have a valid point, he would have to prove 
that the two did not disagree.  

   On closer examination of the passages that Jackson cited in support of 
this point, we can see that Jesus did not say that angels do not marry. 
What he actually said was that angels in heaven do not marry, but the legend 
as related in 1 Enoch and other apocryphal works clearly states that in times 
past angels did marry.  None of them said, however, that angels marry in 
heaven.  They all depicted them as angels who left heaven to marry earthly 
women: 

        And they were altogether two hundred; and they descended 
     into Ardos, which is the summit of Hermon.  And they called the 
     mount Armon, for they swore and bound one another by  a
     curse.... And they took wives unto themselves, and everyone 
     (respectively) chose one woman for himself, and they began to go 
     unto them.... And the women became pregnant and gave birth to 
     great giants whose heights were three hundred cubits (1 Enoch 
     6:6; 7:1-2).

So no one, including even the Genesis writer, ever even implied that these 
marriages between angels and women occurred in heaven. The angels left 
heaven and came to earth.  As Jude said in obvious allusion to the angels in 
this legend, "And angels who did not keep their own position, but left their 
proper dwelling, he (God) has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for 
the judgment of the great Day" (v:6).

   In the most ridiculous of all his points, Jackson said, "There is, in fact, 
nothing in Genesis 6:4 that indicates the Nephilim were offspring of the 
marriages suggested in this context."  Oh?  That's about like saying that 
there is nothing in Mark 16:16 or Acts 2:38 to indicate that baptism has 
anything to do with salvation, and we can imagine how quickly Mr. Jackson's 
Church- of-Christ mind would reject the mere suggestion of that. "The Nephi-
lim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward," the passage says, 
"when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore chil-
dren to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown" 
(NRSV).  A comparison of translations will show an overwhelming indication 
that "the Nephilim were offspring of the marriages suggested in this context":

        The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also after-
     ward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and 
     had children by them.  They were the heroes of old, men of 
     renown (NIV).

        In those days as well as later, when the sons of the gods had intercourse with the daugh-
     ters of mortals and children were born to them, the Nephilim were on the earth; they were the 
     heroes of old, people of renown (Revised English Bible).

        At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven 
     had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons.  They were the heroes of old, 
     the men of renown (New American Bible).

        The Nephilim were on the earth at that time (and even after-
     ward) when the sons of God resorted to the daughters of man, 
     and had children by them. These are the heroes of days gone 
     by, the famous men (Jerusalem Bible).

        There were giants on the earth in those days, and later, too, 
     when the sons of God used to cohabit with the daughters of men, 
     who bore them children, those mighty men of old who made a 
     name (Revised Berkeley Version).

        There were giants on the earth in those days--and also after-
     ward--when the sons of God lived with the daughters of men, and 
     they bore children to them.  These were the mighty men who 
     were of old, men of renown (Amplified Bible).

        There were giants on the earth in those days; and also after 
     that, for the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and 
     they bore children to them, and they became giants who in the 
     olden days were mighty men of renown (Lamsa's Translation of 
     the Peshitta Text).

        In those days, and even later, there were giants on the earth 
     who were descendants of human women and the supernatural 
     beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago 
     (Good News Bible).

Of all translations of this verse, however, none is any clearer than the Holy Spirit's favorite version, the Septuagint, in saying that giants had resulted from the sexual union of angels and human women:

        Now the giants were upon the earth in those days; and after 
     that when the sons of God were wont to go in to the daughters of 
     men, they bore children to them, those were the giants of old, 
     the men of renown (Brenton Translation).

If Mr. Jackson can read all these translations of Genesis 6:4 and still say 
with a straight face that there is nothing in the verse "that indicates the 
Nephilim were offspring of the marriages suggested in this context," then he 
needs some serious help with basic hermeneutics.

   His fourth point was that "(t)he word 'Nephilim,' usually identified as 
'giants' (ASVfn), is a term of uncertain meaning." As noted in "Bible Biolo-
gy" (TSR, Spring 1991, p. 10), he tried this same dodge in trying to show 
that no scientific error occurred in classifying hares and conies as cud-
chewers (Lev. 11:5-6).  The words translated hare and cony were "rare and 
difficult" in Hebrew, he contended, so we can't even be sure that hares and 
conies were the animals "Moses" had in mind.  Whenever a serious threat to 
the inerrancy doctrine is seen in situations like these, fundamentalists will 
often plead "uncertainty of meaning" in the language used. Apparently, they 
never stop to consider the damage that such a defense does to the very 
doctrine they are trying to prove.  An omniscient God oversaw the writing of 
the Bible down to the selection of individual words, yet the language was so 
vague and uncertain in places that we can't really be sure what was meant. 
This is the best that omniscience could do?

   At any rate, Jackson claims that the meaning of nephilim was "uncertain" 
and this despite numerous OT passages that very plainly associated the word 
with giantism.  The spies sent into Canaan saw the Nephilim in the land and 
described them as "men of great stature" (Num. 13:32).  The spies said that 
in the presence of these people they had felt like grasshoppers "in our own 
sight" (v:33).  These Nephilim were said to be "the sons of Anak," and in 
other places were called Anakim.  Like Nephilim, the Anakim were always 
associated with great stature.  A people "great, and many, and tall," who 
had once dwelt in Moab, were compared to the Anakim (Dt. 2:10).  There are 
enough references like these in the Old Testament to clearly establish that 
nephilim was a word used to mean giants, and except for the absurdity that 
the word exposes in the Bible inerrancy doctrine, Mr. Jackson would not 
argue the point.  As for his claim that "nothing hints that they (the Nephi-
lim) were the progeny of angels," I will just leave it to the readers to review 
the various translations of Genesis 6:4 quoted above and let them decide if 
there is anything to "hint" that the Nephilim were considered the progeny of 
angels.

   Jackson arbitrarily said that "(t)he most reasonable view of Genesis 6:1f 
is that the allusion refers to the fact that some men, from the godly lineage 
of Seth, called 'sons of God'... began to pursue fleshly interests, and so 
took wives of 'the daughters of men.'"  But what did he offer as proof of 
this "most reasonable view"?  Nothing whatsoever!  In "Much Ado About 
Nothing" (Autumn 1991, p. 7) Jackson's inerrancy cohort, Steve Gunter, said 
that the sons of God in Genesis 6:1 were "the descendants of righteous Abel" 
(despite the fact that the Bible doesn't even mention any children that Abel 
had). So which were they, these "sons of God," descendants of Abel or 
descendants of Seth?  One inerrancy defender says one thing, another some-
thing else.

    Did either man cite any places in the biblical text where descendants of 
Abel or Seth were called "sons of God"?  No, they didn't, and they didn't 
because they can't.  There simply are none. Like Gunter's purely arbitrary 
pronouncement that these "sons of God" were "descendants of rightous Abel," 
Jackson's "most reasonable view" is purely speculative, a recourse that he 
must resort to in order to defend the absurd notion that the Bible was ver-
bally inspired--every word of it-- by the omniscient Yahweh of the Hebrews.

   He thought that he had found in Deuteronomy 14:1 and 32:5 an indication 
that "sons of God" was "an expression denoting those in covenant relationship 
with Jehovah," but neither of these passages used the exact term (beni ha-
elohim) that was twice translated "sons of God" in Genesis 6.The expression 
and its usage in the Old Testament were analyzed in "If It Walks Like a 
Duck..." (TSR, Autumn 1991, pp. 3-4), so I will not repeat myself on this 
point.  A review of this section of the article, however, will clearly show that 
the expression was always applied to celestial beings, who in at least one case 
(Job 38:4-7) existed before man was even created.

   Jackson can say that the expression denoted "those in covenant relation-
ship with Jehovah" all that he wishes, but he has no proof of that.  The 
term covenant (Heb. beryth) doesn't even appear in the Bible text until 
after the "sons of God" had taken wives from the daughters of men, so why 
would the descendants of Seth have been in "covenant relationship with 
Jehovah" any more than descendants of the other sons and daughters who 
were born to Adam and Eve after the birth of Seth (Gen. 5:3)?  [As far as 
actual textual records are concerned, Cain was the only child of Adam and 
Eve who went bad.] The  "sons of God" who came to present themselves to 
Yahweh (Job 1:6; 2:1), were these descendants of Seth too who were in 
"covenant relationship with Jehovah"?  If so, where is that covenant relation-
ship even hinted at in the book of Job?  For that matter, where is their 
descent from Seth even suggested?  If Jackson is going to make an assertion 
like this, he should be prepared to support it with more than two verses that 
didn't even contain the same Hebrew expression.

   Jackson said that "(t)he subsequent context (of Genesis 6) seems to 
suggest that it (marriages between the sons of God and the daughters of 
men) was this carnal trend that ultimately brought the Flood."  I have no 
problems with this interpretation. It is in complete agreement with 1 Enoch 
and the other apocryphal works that elaborated on this myth about the sons 
of God or heaven marrying the daughters of men. They all agreed that the 
flood resulted from the corruption that the marriages had brought upon the 
earth.  I have all kinds of problems, however, with a conclusion that he drew 
from this interpretation.  It "prompts this interesting question," he said.  "If 
the 'sons of God' were angels, how did the Flood serve as a judgment upon 
them?  Can angels drown?"  

   These questions simplistically overlook the fact that we are dealing with a 
definite possibility of myth, and in mythology anything could happen, even 
the drowning of angels. Aside from this, Jackson's questions ignore several 
important aspects of the myth.  First of all, as noted above in T12P 5:6, 
these angels "were transformed into human males" and as such would have 
been subject to death by drowning as well as any other human males.  Jack-
son may as well have questioned the death of Jesus on the cross on the 
grounds that  he was God (Jn. 1:1) and that God could not have been killed. 
The idea, however, was that Jesus was made human to suffer in all points as 
humans do (Heb. 4:15) even to the point of becoming subject unto death 
(Phil. 2:5-8).  So if God incarnated as a man could die by crucifixion, why 
couldn't angels incarnated as men die by drowning?  Sometimes Mr. Jackson 
doesn't seem to be thinking too clearly, but adherence to a belief as fun-
damentally absurd as Bible inerrancy will do that to a person.

   Furthermore, the flood was sent not as judgment upon the fallen angels 
but upon the "children of adultery" and "children of the Watchers" (1 Enoch 
10:9) who had been born to the wives of the angels. The fornicating angels, 
after having witnessed "the destruction of their beloved ones" (v:12), were 
to be bound "for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground 
until the day of their judgment" (v:13).  So there was nothing in the myth to 
imply that the flood was sent to destroy the fallen angels.  It was sent to 
destroy the corruption they had caused, but they themselves were bound in 
the earth for judgment of a later date.  To this, Jackson must agree or find 
himself arguing with the "inspired" writers Jude and Peter:

        And the angels who did not keep their own position, but left 
     their proper dwelling, he (God) has kept in eternal chains in 
     deepest darkness for the judgment of the great Day (Jude 6).

        For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but 
     cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest 
     darkness to be kept until the judgment... then the Lord knows 
     how to rescue the ungodly from trial, and to keep the unright-
     eous under punishment until the day of judgment--especially those 
     who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise author-
     ity (2 Peter 2:4-10).

As it turns out, then, there are no "biblical facts" to prove that Genesis 6:1-
4 was not referring to the intermarriage of angels and human women. 

   I realize how embarrassing these things must be to Mr. Jackson.  Perhaps 
that is why he consistently refuses our offer of space in the pages of TSR 
(as he has done this time too) to defend the ridiculous positions he takes in 
support of Bible inerrancy.  However, if he expects rational people to believe 
that Genesis 6:1-4 had nothing to do with a mythological belief that angels 
had once intermarried with earthly women, he will have to present better 
evidence than what he has thus far shown us.  

   In July 1991, six months before its publication, a preliminary draft of this 
article was sent to Mr. (See SETH, p. 16) Jackson with an offer to simultane-
ously publish his response to it.  He did not accept.  (He, in fact, returned 
without comment the $3 that I included to renew my subscription to his 
paper.) Anyone wishing to contact him about this or any of the other matters 
on which we have  quoted him in TSR may do so at P. O. Box 55265, Stock-
ton, CA 95205. 

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