HumanisTim

I'm just wondering if anyone can answer this. I seem to get two interpretations out of the Noah's ark story. One is that everyone on Earth was drowned for being evil sinners. The second is that they had to be drowned. Because the Nephilim blood was too mixed with the human blood. And the 8 on the Ark were the last pure humans left. Any idea which one its supposed to be?

Marduk

Genesis 6 says because humans were evil and this is the standard most common idea. The part about the blood being mixed with "the sons of the gods" is an extrapolation from extra-Biblical books like Enoch and are not generally accepted. It is the Nephilim who are descended from humans and angels. Children of the nephilim have a different name which I can’t remember. Eloud perhaps? I forget. Their children also have a name which I also forgot.
The Nephilim are a puzzle because the flood did not kill them, they turn up after the flood in Numbers.

wade-w

What, you were expecting consistency?

Doctor X

They were . . . like . . . "giants" . . . so they . . . you know . . . kept their heads above water. . . .

Anyways, I think it is possible that the whole sequence is similar to the "kill them because they are noisy" myth. The "sons of the gods" may, indeed, have been part of the whole Flood Myth at one point or the Flood may have served as a good enough place as any to insert the passage. Clearly, the Flood Myth borrows from the Babylonian/Sumerian but changes "the point"--Noah does not become immortal like Iptshanarubawhatever.

--J.D.

Marduk

“What, you were expecting consistency?”

not really, considering the nephilim were supposedly 450 feet tall I guess they could have kept their heads above water (according to Enoch) the Bible shrinks them down to around 9 foot tall.
I won’t get in to the whole ‘the nephilim were aliens’ business.
( they hovered above the water in big flying saucers!)

mark9950

I think are stars because they believed that stars were living creatures that could fall from heaven and when a star fell they had to bind it and throw it into the abyss.

The sons of God are the stars that shine.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

scroll down.

In 1 Enoch 88:1, a star that fell from the sky is seized, bound hand and foot, and thrown into an abyss. A few verses later, other stars “whose sexual organs were like the organs of horses” are likewise bound hand and foot and cast “into the pits of the earth (1 Enoch 88:3).”

They could have climed out of the abyss.

Doctor X

They are not the same, but it is a common mistake to make the "sons of the gods" fallen angels.

--J.D.

The_Unknown_Banana

Isn't the explanation just that the "sons of God" came and interbred with humans again, after the flood?

Marduk

"Isn't the explanation just that the "sons of God" came and interbred with humans again, after the flood?"

they may try and explain it that way but the only mention of the interbreeding is Gen. 6:4 which is before the flood.