Monday, April 8, 2024

Tremper Longman III on Genesis 6 and the Sex of Angels

  

Many readers are misled by the idea that angels were incapable of having sex. Indeed, according to Jesus, angels neither marry nor are given in marriage (Luke 20:34 – 36). However, the heavenly beings in Genesis 6 are not obedient but rebellious angels. They aren’t acting according to their divinely given nature. As for their supposed inability, no Israelite/Jewish reader would have thought of the angels as incapable of sexual intercourse. Yes, they are spiritual beings, but they are capable of taking on human appearance (see Gen 18 – 19; Mark 16:5). The opposite idea is not a biblical one, but one produced by a faulty view on angels developed during the Middle Ages when Christians thinkers were influenced by a neo-Platonic philosophy that radically separated the spiritual from the physical.

 

As I say, no ancient Israelite/Jew would have adopted this perspective. Indeed, we know from the intertestamental book 1 Enoch (see chs. 6 – 36) that many Jews read Genesis 6:1 – 5 in precisely this way. Even more compellingly for the Christian reader, the author of the book of Jude also understood the sexual transgression here as that between humans and angels (Jude 6; see also 2 Pet 2:4). (Tremper Longman III, Genesis [The Story of God Bible Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2016], 114)

 

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