When the Sons of God Ruled Eden
What really happened in the garden
In this article, we are going to examine the events that took place in Eden from a different perspective than usual. Usually, when reading Genesis, readers begin with the seven days of creation, and then move directly to the second version with its story of Adam and Eve in the garden.
Instead, I would like to explore the text using a method where the chapters are read in reverse order. So rather than beginning with Genesis chapter one, we instead begin with chapter six, which opens with the sons of God mating with the daughters of men.
1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. … 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — 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. (Gen 6:1-2,4 NIV)
We then follow this with chapter four, as chapter five is just a genealogy list.
1 Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” (Gen 4:1 NIV)
In the verse above, we see that after Eve gave birth to Cain, who was clearly a man of renown and a hero of old, she gave credit to the Lord for helping her with her pregnancy.
The text seems to suggest that the Lord who spent His time hanging around the garden wasn’t God himself, but rather a son of God, which is just another term for an angel. This stands to reason as it is written that to see the face of God is to die.
This son of God slept with Eve and produced a Nephilim named Cain.
The apocryphal Book of Enoch provides another window into this tradition. This provides more evidence to tie a fallen angel to the events in Eden.
CHAPTER VI. 1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’…
CHAPTER VII. 1. And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.
Let’s compare the actions of the serpent with that of these Sons of God.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “ 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:1–5 NIV)
It seems that the sons of God were restricted by something like Star Trek’s Prime Directive which prohibited interference with the technological development of the human population. In the Lord’s case, He may have fathered Cain the Nephilim, but at least he didn’t reveal any important secrets.
Let’s work through the various implications. Eve was Adam’s woman, but the Lord used her to father Cain. Later Eve gave birth to Abel. Let us suppose that Adam had as little to do with Abel’s birth as he did with Cain’s, only in Abel’s case his father was the ‘serpent’ rather than the Lord.
So Eve gave birth with the help of the ‘serpent’ and then he told her about the fruit of knowledge. This could help explain the way that the Lord seems to goad Cain into violence against Abel. The Lord wanted his son Cain to murder the ‘serpent’s’ son Abel. One Nephilim against another.
Eventually, Cain killed Abel and then went off and produced his cursed line of progeny while Adam and Eve had another son named Seth. Seth was pure of the taint of Cain, which was the result of the Lord manipulating his son to murder the son of his rival.
The two genealogies of Lamech
So Adam begat Seth. Seth begat Enosh. Enosh begat Cainan. Cainan begat Mahalaleel. Mahalaleel begat Jared. Jared begat Enoch. Enoch begat Methuselah. Methuselah begat Lamech. And Lamech begat a son:
29 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. (Gen 5:29 KJV)
So that’s the Sethian genealogy. This was the pure and godly line. But there was another line.
16 So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 17 Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. (Gen 4:16–17 NIV)
Adam begat Cain. Cain begat Enoch. Enoch begat Irad. Irad begat Mehujael. Mehujael begat Methushael. Methushael begat Lamech.
When we compare the genealogy of Seth with that of Cain, it is fairly obvious that they are just two versions of a single lineage.
Seth Enosh Cainan Mahalaleel Jared Enoch Methuselah Lamech
Cain Enoch Irad Mehujael Methushael Lamech
In Seth’s line, we can remove Seth, as he is simply a literary invention designed to erase the taint of Cain. Also, we can remove Enosh as the name is just another form of Enoch.
This leaves us with:
Cainan — Cain Mahalaleel — Mehujael Jared — Irad Enoch — Enoch Methuselah — Methushael Lamech — Lamech
Seth and the sons of God
The order is slightly skewed but that is the responsibility of the inventor of the Sethian lineage. This brings to light an interesting wrinkle. The term Sons of God has historically had two different interpretations.
- The children of Seth. This view became dominant starting in the 2nd century CE in Christian and rabbinic literature including works by Origen and Saint Augustine.
- Angels. This is the original view as found in texts dating from the 3rd century BCE including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jubilees, Josephus, and the book of Jude.
So in the first version, the sons of God are really the sons of Seth. They fell in love with the daughters of men and they married them. Their children were powerful giants. They come from the line of Seth, Adam’s third son.
In the second version, the sons of God are fallen angels who have broken their vow not to mate or to exchange technical information with the native population. Their children are exceptional beings bred for monumental struggle. Their label, Nephilim literally means ‘Fallen’. Adam did not have a third son named Seth. The entire alternative lineage of Seth was an invention designed to justify the existence of a bloodline free of the taint of Cain.
So originally Cain was a hero. His father was an angel and his mother was Eve. He murdered his younger brother. His son founded the world’s first city. His great, great, great-grandson fathered Noah. Or did he?
The father of Noah
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a fragment of the Book of Noah where Lamech is convinced that his wife slept with a Watcher, meaning a son of God, and she tries to convince him otherwise by reminding him of their lovemaking but her description of the event makes him only more certain that a Watcher was the real father of Noah.
Let’s think about this for a moment. First, we had Adam and Eve, but really it was the Lord who fathered Cain, a Nephilim. Then Cain fathered Enoch, who fathered Irad, who fathered Mehujael, who fathered Methushael, who fathered Lamech. And then Lamech, who believed that his son Noah had actually been fathered by a son of God.
That’s got to hurt. After all, Lamech has Nephilim blood. He does manage to father Jabal (of tent living and livestock raising) and Jubal (harp and flute playing) as well as Tubal-Cain (bronze and iron tools making) and his sister Naamah.
Still, when it came to the child that would be tasked with building the legendary ark, that required a fresh, first-generation Nephilim. And that required a woman. Lamech’s wife in this story is a woman known as Batenosh, whose name literally means ‘daughter of man’ as in “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful.”
My point is that, before Christianity became a force to be reckoned with, the section of text on the Sons of God was understood as referring to angels and their legendary offspring. However, once Christian texts defending the faith began to appear, the meaning shifted so that “the sons of God” came to be seen as actually referring to the sons of Seth.
Jesus the Nephilim
It seems that the early Church was aware of how such an interpretation might cast a negative light on the story surrounding the conception of Jesus. So they took steps to obscure such an interpretation.
However, as we continue, I will endeavor to demonstrate how such an explanation helps to better explain many of the mysteries surrounding the stories of Jesus.