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The operant words are "attempting to." There was no sex between men and angels, and Jude never indicated such.

No sex of any kind actually took place in Genesis 19, so again, this is a meaningless distinction.

1st, we don't know that there weren't other copies of Enoch's prophecy in Jude's day.

This is an argument from silence. Which is not an argument, it's just making things up without evidence.

It also contradicts the plain evidence in front of us. 1 Enoch was written in Aramaic, not Greek. But it was translated into Greek. And Jude quotes the Greek version word for word. He used 1 Enoch, not some conveniently missing "other copy" you conjured from thin air just for the sake of the argument.

We don't have evidence, perhaps, that there was, but 1 Enoch got it from somewhere, right?

1 Enoch has a complex origin. It is actually several different books attributed to Enoch, written by multiple authors between 350 and 50 BCE, and each of those books has its own compositional history. The opening chapters (1-5), where the quoted prophecy comes from, was written specifically to be an introduction to the original book (chapters 6-36). Those opening chapters (1-5) were written as an apocalyptic reflection on the book of Deuteronomy, and the part which is quoted by Jude was based on Deuteronomy 33:2.

2nd, Jude was quoting the part of 1 Enoch in which Enoch's prophecy was written. In other words, Jude was only validating *Enoch's prophecy,* and not everything 1 Enoch said apart from this.

Jude doesn't only quote 1 Enoch 1:9. Jude uses wording and metaphors from throughout 1 Enoch. Jude used the whole book. The only reason to make up excuses why this couldn't be the case is the anachronistic complaint that Jude wouldn't have used the whole book because Christians stopped using it centuries later.

He is validating only the parts that he cites.

By this logic, Jude did not validate the entirety of the Old Testament, since he never quotes any of it. Unless you meant we should use a double standard: Jude validated only scriptures you count as valid despite quoting none of them, but Jude didn't validate the scripture you don't count as valid despite using it extensively.

Oh, wait a minute. I thought Jude was using some other, never-mentioned copy of Enoch's prophecy, not 1 Enoch. Now you're acknowledging he used 1 Enoch, but you insist he did not "validate" it. Do you really think you're being intellectually honest here? You're making up whatever excuses you can think of in hopes that something will stick.

Again, you are *reading into* the comparison more than what is said. It is not specifically stated that angels and people had sex

Genesis 6 specifically states that angels ("sons of God") had sex with humans ("daughters of men/humans"). There's nothing to "read into" it. This is the plain text, and how it was understood by essentially all readers of Genesis from the fourth century BCE until the early second century CE.

The comparison isn't between angelic sex and human sex

Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust

Again, this is the plain text. Sodom and the rest "likewise," "in the same manner as they" (the antecedent angels) "indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust."

This isn't an identification of the giants with angels

You are mistaking what I have been saying. I didn't say anything about identifying the giants/Nephilim with angels. I said that from the fourth century BCE until the early second century CE, all known interpretations of Genesis 6 (including the one found in Jude, since he quotes 1 Enoch) agreed that it tells a story of angels having sex with humans, whose offspring were the giants/Nephilim.

Jesus indicated that in contrast to humans reproducing, angels don't.

Here is another example of "reading into the text." Jesus only said "the angels in heaven" "neither marry, nor are given in marriage." Jesus never said/implied the angels were genderless, and he never said/implied they can't/don't reproduce, and he never said he was referring to all angels.

If these rulers had let Israel pass by peacefully it wouldn't have given the Israelites the opportunity to annihilate them for their sin.

This is just the old "let me in so I can save you from what I'll do to you if you don't let me in" circular reasoning.

God hardened their hearts so they would attack Israel just because he can, so why doesn't he soften their hearts so they would help Israel instead? "Because then Israel wouldn't be justified in killing everyone for their sins!" So... couldn't God soften their hearts so that in addition to helping Israel, they also repent for their sins? Or is violence literally the only possible solution here?

All it succeeds in doing is to go down one turtle in the inherent moral problem of God blaming people for how he supernaturally forced them act.

my fuller reply, which you didn't quote.

It's not necessary to quote an entire comment when we can just scroll up to read it. I quote small parts to provide context for what I'm replying to.

I would take the note in v33 ("the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim") to be conjecture on the part of the editor, and possibly also part of the spies' fearful report.

The narrator is a third person omniscient writing sometime in the eighth century BCE or later. The entire book is "conjecture," centuries worth of Israelite traditions of varying historical authenticity being distilled through a single narrator. The parenthetical can't be singled out in that regard. His identifying them as "the descendants of Anak" is on the same plane as his identifying them as "from the Nephilim."

Or, per the suggestion above, this refers to 'giants' generally, and not the Nephilim of Genesis 6, since no one alive at the time of writing was alive at the time of Noah.

I think a more plausible theory is the contradiction is a contradiction, and doesn't need to be harmonized.

My objections would be anachronistic if I were suggesting that the author or original audience understood the text according to the objections I raised earlier. I am not suggesting this, however, and am instead offering reasons why we, today

Fair enough.

The few times it does in the OT, yes.

The phrasing here strikes me as unclear, so just to reiterate: every use of the phrase "sons of God" in the OT refers to angels/divine beings. Genesis 6 is not an exception.

Although, isn't it 1 Enoch that posits the height of these giant offspring at 4,500 feet tall? Details, I suppose.

Some manuscript copies include the statement that the offspring of the angels were 300 cubits tall. Most early English translations were based on these copies, which are the ones casual readers can find online. Not every manuscript has this detail, so critical reconstructions relying on all the manuscript evidence reject it as an interpolation.

I think it would be irrelevant if it was part of the original book, though, since ancient readers weren't bothered by such implausibilities (such as Gilgamesh being one-third human, a nonsense genealogical division, or Jesus' head reaching into heaven when he emerged from the tomb in the gospel of Peter).

It makes you wonder: if God bound in chains those angels that fell, how is it that Nephilim survived the divinely ordained flood that was meant to destroy them, only to show up again in Numbers 13?

The flood story in Genesis 6-9 (rife with textual inconsistencies, since it's really two versions puzzle-pieced together) were integrated into Genesis at a time after the Torah was already nearing completion. Before the flood's addition, Genesis had Noah being born to Lamech, the angels producing the Nephilim from human women, then Noah planting his vineyard. Some critical readers think there are textual cues that the flood story replaced a shorter narration of a drought or famine (the condition of Adam and Cain's difficult relationship to the ground being worsened over time), which was remedied with Noah, "a man of the ground."

The Nephilim was an etiology used to explain the gigantic residents of Canaan that Israel faced after the exodus (including Og of Bashan and, anachronistically, the Philistine giants like Goliath or the six-fingered man). The flood's insertion into the Genesis narrative resulted in a contradiction.

This of course isn't an unusual alternative reading

The Sethite view isn't unusual, no. But we have no evidence of this reading until Christians needed to invent a new interpretation because they were uncomfortable with the one that had been around the previous five centuries or so. When an interpretation is being invented that long after a text has been written, specifically for the purpose of theological harmonization, I am immediately skeptical of it being a plausible interpretation.

There's clearly room for compelling alternatives to the fallen angel view

If the religiously devout think there is a theological necessity for different readings, they will find them. But I don't agree there is any room for these alternative readings in the text as it stands, the text as it is critically analyzed, or the historical context the text was written in.

He's certainly a South American Jesuit.

The Bible doesn't say anything about this pope, or any pope.

The fact the Jewish People continue to reject NT Scriptures written by Jews is an oddity to me

"Not every Black person knows every other Black person."

A handful of Jews wrote parts of the NT. Why in the world would that mean all Jews must agree with the NT, then?

Even this idea you lay out is an expression of antisemitism (which, honestly, is pervasive in the theology you've been exhibiting in these threads). You might not be conscious of this, but calling an ethnic group's lack of a hive-mind mentality "an oddity" is pretty dang prejudiced.

Outlying interpretations are "us" is used as a deliberative figure of speech (like an individual saying "let's do this" to mentally prepare themselves for a task), the royal we (generally thought not to be a wide-enough used mode of speech for the time, though we find Artaxerxes using it in Ezra-Nehemiah), or the trinity (honestly a view taken only by the most theologically conservative Christian scholars, that is, the minority view).

From what I've found, most of scholarship identifies it as God speaking to the "divine council," an element originating in near eastern polytheism that lingered within Judaism as its theology evolved. The divine council was identified as the community of angels in heaven who serve God, witness his works, and carry out his commands. God creates, they participate by watching the act, and they likewise share God's image since they are also sapient creatures. Compare Job 15:7-8, where "the council of God" is mentioned in connection to "the firstborn of humanity." Examples of other glimpses of this council in Hebrew thought are seen in Genesis 11, Isaiah 6, 2 Kings 22, and Daniel 7. There is more evidence of it, but this is the summary.

No, I answered the question.

You absolutely did not.

You said

The Law contained a conditional provision which, if broken, would destroy the deal for all time.

and in response, both Fenris and I have asked several times for you to cite even a single verse from the Law which says what you claimed it says. After several back-and-forths, you finally acknowledged the request, but still refused to quote any part of the Torah which says this thing.

You typed nineteen paragraphs defending your claim, even insisting you did provide a chapter-and-verse reference, yet nowhere in any of your comments in this thread can we find a citation from the Torah that says what you originally claimed.

At what point can we just call this obvious lie a "lie"?

Hebrews 7:6 It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior.

Psalms 92:6 The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this.

Judges 6:40 And God did so that night.

Let the one with ears to listen understand...