Those on this site who know the kinds of things that ring my bells will have heard me mention the Nephilim before. In the ancient times before the Deluge, mysterious beings known only as the Watchers, the ‘sons of the gods', looked down from the heavens on high, and seeing the comely ‘daughters of men', descended to our world to party. The results of these unions were the Nephilim, human on their mothers' side, and on their fathers' side... well.. what, exactly?

Quite a body of speculative literature has grown up around this brief but oh-so-intriguing passage from the Book of Genesis. Were the Watchers perhaps all-too-Earthly visitors from a then-less familiar geographical region ^[1], strangers come from a strange land? Or were they even extraterrestrials visiting our planet to throw a few alien genes into the human mix, as has been speculated on the wilder shores of probability by some credulity-stretching ^[2] theorists?

There is a third possibility, and that is the Biblical one: that the Watchers were some kind of fallen (literally) angels, who during the long descent from their ethereal heights gradually acquired material bodies the closer to our world they became. But the Genesis account, as I've mentioned, yields only tantalizing glimpses of this episode, more shadows than substance. As with so much in Genesis, one has the feeling that there is more to tell, but that something, somehow, is missing. And it is.

I have just completed reading the ^[3] Book of Enoch. Enoch, the companionable prophet who was the seventh generation from Adam. Enoch, whose lengthy description of his visit to the heavenly abode is among the finest and most stirring passages of visionary writing that I have come across in literature (and trust me, I've read quite a bit). Enoch, who is the source for much detail that we feel is otherwise missing from Genesis. The identity of the serpent in Eden (and how it came to be there). A description of the actual fruit that hung on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (it wasn't an apple!) that grew in the Garden. The true cause of the Deluge (the brief reason given in Genesis, that it was ‘the wickedness of men', always did sound to my ears like a not-very-good justification for calling ‘time' on an entire planet). In short, it is the sympathetic voice of the prophet Enoch who supplies so much of the detail that seems to be missing from Genesis.
 

So where is Enoch? Or rather: where is Enoch's Book? Because (except, curiously, in Ethiopia) it failed to make it into the Biblical canon. The reason, apparently, was that the Church fathers considered aspects of the Book to be heretical, particularly the key question of immaterial angels being able to take on material bodies. And so Enoch hit the cutting room floor. Which I for one consider a tragedy of editing, not just because of the information that without it remains puzzlingly uncertain, but also because the book is frequently referenced, and was clearly known and respected, to the writers of both the Old and the New Testaments. And I can offhand think of at least two other instances in the canonical Bible where angels do indeed take on the bodies of men; or at least, are so indistinguishable from ordinary folk as to be mistaken for them.

So let's look at the situation in reverse, which is in a sense what we do on this site anyway. We are born, we live our lives, and we die. And afterwards? Are some ghosts really sightings of spirits of the departed? And this being so, if material bodies can become immaterial, then why should the reverse not be possible? Was what Enoch was claiming for the Watchers so unimaginable? As I've said before in other entries of this blog, perhaps it is so-called heresies which contain the real truth.
 

And the Nephilim? Because Enoch certainly provides us with more information about them than their brief mention in Genesis. Haha, another time, perhaps. This blog entry is already way longer than I planned, and on this site, speculation is a virtue.  - Davy -

[1] "From the Ashes of Angels", by Andrew Collins. Well-researched and well-expressed original ideas by an author who really knows how to take the reader on a journey, proposing that the Watchers were people from another geographical region.

[2] "The 12th Planet", by Zecharia Sitchin. I realize that Sitchin has a huge fan base, but for my taste his left-field ideas are too easy to disprove. Still, if you like the ‘ancient astronauts' style of speculative theories, then this book will do it for you.

[3] "Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil", by the aptly-named Elizabeth Clare Prophet. This gem not only contains the complete translated Book of Enoch and other ex-canonical texts, but much additional explanatory material (including all Biblical references to Enoch), and hints at intriguing personal ideas of the author's regarding the continued existence of the Watchers in our own world.

Also: "The Lost Prophet", by Margaret Barker. An excellent short introduction to the material by a recognized Biblical scholar who really knows her subject.