We can clearly say that Jude is aware of 1 Enoch (cf. Jude 14–15), and that if he has Genesis 6 in mind, which I will argue below, then he likely has the stories of 1 Enoch in mind too. This does not mean he accepts everything 1 Enoch says, but we can make the following observations. Both 1 Enoch and Genesis 6 report the same historical event, albeit 1 Enoch 6–16 has vastly more details. Without making a distinction, it appears that 1 Enoch and Genesis 6 inform Jude. Or at least, both books report how the sons of God fell, if we take sons of God in Genesis 6 to be angels, as the Alexandrian Text of Septuagint did. We do know that Jude relies on both the Old Testament and the pseudepigrapha. In that vein, he doesn’t make any qualifications, nor does he have to qualify one as Scripture and the other not. Instead, he cites these events assuming that his Jewish audience would know both.
In Genesis 6 we find the curious introduction to a group of people (?) called the Nephilim. In verse 4, the ESV reads, “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.”
Thus concludes one of the strangest passages in all the Bible. For centuries, the four verses that begin Genesis 6 have occasioned debate on whom the Nephilim are, who the sons of God are, who the daughters of man are, who the mighty men of old were, the men of renown, and how these characters all fit together. Are these all descriptions of human beings, sons and daughters of Adam? Or, is something more nefarious afoot? Are the sons of God fallen angels? And if so, who are their offspring?
To these questions and more, I will attempt to give an answer in this post and three more to come. Below, I will consider what it means for Christians to use extra-biblical sources, and how we can properly benefit from reading 1 Enoch. In the next post, I will lay out the options for reading Genesis 6, and explain the strengths and weaknesses of various positions. Then third, I will make a canonical argument for understanding the sons of God as fallen angels and the Nephilim/mighty men as giants. Fourth, I will draw some theological conclusions related to Genesis 6 but also to Christ and his rule over the cosmos.
Always Begin with the Bible
Whenever evangelicals read the Bible, we do so as heirs of a great tradition. Among other things, that tradition is summarized in two words: Sola Scriptura.
Going back to the Reformation, the Protestant heritage has prioritized the Word of God as the only inspired and authoritative revelation of God. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church which put the Apocrypha on the same level at the other sixty-six books of the Bible, Protestant confessions always set Scripture apart from the other books. As the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, after delimiting the canon to sixty-six books,
The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings. (WFC 1.3)
This statement articulated in various ways by other Protestant confessions makes it clear that the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) is the source for all doctrine and the substance for all that God has revealed to his covenant people. And accordingly, when we study the Bible and formulate doctrine, the Bible has a special place. While studies investigating the language, history, and customs of the people surrounding God’s people, whether the Ancient Near East or Second Temple Judaism in the Greco-Roman world, Scripture itself is the first and final authority.
By consequence, we should strive to understand the Bible on its own terms. As Andy Naselli has framed it with respect to history and culture,
I can’t overstate how important this is. You can discover so much about the historical-cultural context by simply reading the text carefully. Never lose your anchor to this one text: the Bible. Everything else is supplementary. So in your zeal to understand the historical-cultural context, don’t neglect the one text that matters most. Give it preeminence. Read the text more often than you read any other. Let this text be supreme over all others.[1]
On this basis when we consider the various views related to Genesis 6, we should make our case for a given interpretation based upon what we find in text of Scripture, not outside of Scripture. That being said, there are ways that extra-biblical resources, understood to be non-inspired human writings, provide help in understanding the biblical text. As the Belgic Confession, Article 6, notes concerning the Apocrypha.
The church may certainly read these books and learn from them as far as they agree with the canonical books. But they do not have such power and virtue that one could confirm from their testimony any point of faith or of the Christian religion. Much less can they detract from the authority of the other holy books.[2]
While these statement does not directly apply to 1 Enoch, its sentiments do. The church has long recognized the importance of extra-biblical books that “agree with the canonical books.” And in fact, this point actually coheres with Naselli’s point above when read in the context of his own argument.
To speak personally for a minute, I found Naselli’s quotation when Graham Cole cited it in his book Against the Darkness: The Doctrine of Angels, Satan, and Demons.[3]Ironically, in a section describing evangelical theology and its engagement with extra-biblical resources, Cole only cited Naselli’s argument for the Bible; he said nothing of Naselli’s ongoing argument for other literature too. If he had, Cole would have found arguments for a wise and selective use of ancient literature that would be included in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
Benefitting from Extra-Biblical Sources
To be sure, the faithful student of Scripture does not read the Bible alone, even if the Bible alone has magisterial authority. Rather, students of Scripture will also “use primary (extracanonical) Jewish sources,” as Naselli notes. That is to say, the man who is committed to Sola Scriptura does not read the Bible only, he reads everything else—including ancient sources—through the lens of God’s inspired word. This is the point that Andy was making when he prioritized Scripture among all the other ancient documents.[4]
Critically, Naselli states, “With that exhortation [to use the Bible] ringing in your ears, let’s survey two other categories of resources to understand the historical-cultural context.”[5] In light of Cole’s appropriation of Naselli to argue against the application of 1 Enoch to Genesis 6, the first “other category” includes the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, which is the classification where one finds 1 Enoch. Listing “six bodies of Jewish literature for New Testament studies” (e.g., OT Apocrypha, OT Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and Targums and Rabbinic Literature), Naselli makes this entry on the pseudepigrapha,
In a handful of cases, New Testament writers apparently display direct dependence on sources belonging to early Judaism and their handling of the Old Testament (e.g., Jude). What is to be inferred from such dependence?[6]
Interestingly, Naselli cites Jude, because of the epistle’s dependence on 1 Enoch. Continued in a footnote, he writes,
In addition to several possible allusions, Jude refers to two stories not taught in the Bible: the story of Michael’s dispute with the devil over Moses body in v. 9 (apparently from The Assumption of Moses, OT pseudepigrapha) and the prophecy of Enoch in v. 14-15 (from 1 Enoch 1:9, a Jewish writing from the OT pseudepigrapha). Some wrongly conclude from this that the standard set of OT books (i.e., the OT ‘canon’) was not fixed in Jude’s day. Yet Jude cites neither of these books as ‘Scripture, nor does he use traditional formulas to introduce them. He implies nothing about his view of the books in which the stories are found. He may cite them simply because they are well-known to his audience.”[7]