In 2016 television psychologist Dr. Phil hosted a 19-year-old woman who believed she was pregnant with “baby Jesus” despite negative pregnancy tests and an ultrasound. In 2015 a 15-year-old (truly) pregnant girl in Zimbabwe claimed Jesus Christ impregnated her through a Nephilim, a member of a warrior race mentioned in Genesis 6, and therefore it was Jesus’ child. Sadly, I am personally familiar with such a case: a woman who believed she was pregnant with twins by Jesus. As you can imagine, this caused major dysfunction in her life and family. These women may be suffering a religious form of a delusional disorder called erotomania. In this disorder the patient believes that an exalted person is in love with her. Usually the purported lover is distant, like a movie star or some other public personality. Or in these cases, Jesus Christ. Isn’t it likely that people living in Biblical times also suffered from such disorders? Could this have influenced the development of some stories in the Bible?
After Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden they go on to start a family. Son Cain is a farmer and son Abel is a shepherd. Thus begins the conflict between rancher and farmer that continues until the 1943 musical Oklahoma! I assume you know their story: they each offer a sacrifice of their produce to Yahweh, and Yahweh is only happy with Abel’s, so Cain kills him. When Yahweh asks Cain about it, he issues his famous reply, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Apparently the answer is “yes.” Yahweh proceeds to tell Cain “you will be a wanderer and a drifter on the earth.”
Now a most curious thing is that there is supposed to be only one family on earth at this time, but Cain tells Yahweh he is afraid that “whoever finds me will kill me.” So Yahweh says, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him seven times as much.” And Yahweh placed a mark on Cain, so that no one finding him would kill him (Genesis 4:15). And when Cain settles in Nod he somehow obtains a wife. Who is he afraid of, and how does he find a wife?
The book of Genesis has a number of strange sexual stories, and this is one of them. If Adam’s family is the only one of earth so far, how did Cain find a wife? Some speculate that it must have been incest, that he married a sister. They rationalize that the gene pool had not been corrupted yet, and there were no formal laws yet, so incest was acceptable at that time. Incest is a very ancient taboo, and I doubt that is what the story tellers had in mind, but literalists have to find some solution to this conundrum. God could have cloned a wife for Cain as He did for Adam, but of course it does not say that. There have been others (such as pre-Adamites[1]) who believed that God had created other people in the world, but Adam and Eve were a special creation, set aside by God in a private garden. I think the ancient story tellers just introduced other people into the story and were not particularly concerned about consistency and loose ends. All such problems tend to go away if you acknowledge this is just folk lore created and told by ancient people rather than a factual recounting of human history. When you try to make them historical records then you create a whole host of difficulties. Don’t get your panties in a knot: just chill and enjoy the stories!
There is an even stranger story of sex in chapter 6. We are told:
…the sons of God [Heb: Elohim] saw that the daughters of mankind [Heb: adam] were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not remain with man forever, because he is also flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God [Elohim] came in to the daughters of mankind [adam], and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:2-4
People who do not believe that God had any sons other than Jesus do not take this literally, but interpret “sons of God [Elohim]” as meaning godly people, those who worshipped the true god, and the daughters of mankind were those who had drifted away from God. I do not think that is consistent with the text. The word is used in 6:2, translated as “mankind,” is “adam,” so it literally says “daughters of adam.” (English translations render it as “Adam” when it seems to be referring to the first man, and as “man” or “mankind” when referring to humanity.) But, is this story suggesting that divine beings came to earth and had sex with human women, fathering children, specifically the race known as the “Nephilim?” This word is commonly thought to mean “giants.” Goliath of Gath, of David and Goliath fame, was perhaps thought to be a descendant of the Nephilim.[2] Are these violent giants, hybrids of angels and humans, what led to the dire situation that necessitated the Great Flood? On a slight tangent, in the Qur’an Muhammad chides those who believe angels are daughters of God; he says God does not have children, but his statement shows that some Arabs had such a belief. By the way, angels in the Bible are always depicted simply as men (Sorry, no women, no wings. There are other beings like cherubim and seraphim, but they are not called angels). So, it makes sense to think of male angels impregnating human women.
We should not be surprised that such a story would appear in ancient Hebrew folklore; it is a common theme in mythology. If you read Greek and Roman mythology there are many stories of the gods mating with human women, often spawning semi-divine children, Hercules being the best-known example. Why wouldn’t Semitic folklore also contain such tales? Some Jews clearly thought that this is indeed what Genesis 6 is describing. There is an apocryphal book called the Book of Enoch, or 1st Enoch, dated to the 2nd or 3rd Century BCE, which was known to First Century Jews and Christians. It specifically says that angels descended to earth and fathered children, also teaching humans various arts, like metalwork and the making of weapons. Although most Christians and Jews do not give 1st Enoch status as Scripture the letter of Jude which was included in the New Testament echoes 1st Enoch and condemns angels for engaging in immorality with humans:
And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 6,7
Jude seems to accept 1st Enoch’s idea that angels left heaven and engaged in sexual misconduct like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. This legend may be the source of a curious passage from the apostle Paul (Christianity’s first great evangelizer, and our earliest Christian author). When speaking of women praying he says:
Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
1 Corinthians 11:10
It may be that Paul wanted women to cover their heads when praying, as prayer would attract the attention of God’s messengers and he wants to shield women from the lustful gaze of those angels. Don’t want more Nephilim arising and causing problems!
Let’s fast-forward to the New Testament and look at something Jesus said concerning the afterlife. In Matthew 22:23-30 the Sadducees, a Jewish sect who did not believe in a resurrection, try to trip up Jesus with a trick question. A woman was widowed and remarried seven times, so in the afterlife, to whom would she be married? In answering Jesus replies, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Some people assume that Jesus means there will be no marriage in heaven, and therefore no sex. But obviously people can have sex without being married. 1st Enoch was known to the Jews of the 1st Century so it seems likely that Jesus knew of it. Did he accept its idea that angels could and did have sex with earthly women? Is Jesus actually saying that in the afterlife there will be no marriage, but rather there will be free love: sex without the constraint of marriage? After all, without marriage one would not be committing adultery. I think Jesus’ statement is a bit ambiguous. I wish he had gone a little further and had explained exactly what he meant. On the other hand, maybe leaving it ambiguous leads to more contemplation and discussion, and that can be a good thing. Muslims aren’t bashful about saying that in the afterlife a faithful man will have “beautiful maidens” waiting for him [3]; why should Christians be bashful about the possibility of free love in the afterlife? Still, I doubt many Christians will let their minds go in that direction.
A concluding thought: If you think it is not possible for divine beings to impregnate human women, perhaps you are forgetting the stories of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke. We’ll look at that situation more closely in the next post, as it raises some interesting questions about the biology of divine sex.
Thinking Exercises:
1. Do you think there will be sex in the afterlife? What will it be like?
2. Jesus said there will not be marriage in heaven. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Does your answer vary depending on whether your spouse is in on the discussion?
3. Do you like the idea of virgins waiting for you in heaven? What if they are all nuns? With rulers in their hands?
[1] There is even a Jewish tradition that there were 974 generations before Adam. Psalm 105:8 say, “The word which He commanded to a thousand generations,” “the word” meaning the Torah. Since Jewish tradition says that the Torah was given to the 26th generation after Adam, i.e. to the generation of Moses, there must have been 974 generations before Adam. (Talk about taking a passage literally!)
[2] See Numbers 13:33 and Joshua 11:22. The stories do not attempt to explain how the Nephilim and Anakim survived the Great Flood.
[3] See sura 55:56, 70-74. One of my issues with the Quran is that like the Bible it seems to be written from a male perspective. Men get beautiful virgins, but what do women get in the afterlife?