Who were the "Sons of God" mentioned in Genesis?

I am not a Biblical scholar, but the Nephilim refers to the Giants of that time. Goliath was probably a Nephilim.
Sons of God may refer to angels, who did a lot of the heavy lifting back then.
But, as I said, I am not sure.

@filmfann I don’t think that it’s talking about angels. Elsewhere in the bible, we are given to understand that angels are not sexual beings. They are presented as genderless. They are able to look like men, but apparently couldn’t father children with the daughters of men. And Goliath wouldn’t have been a Nephilim because they would have all gotten wiped out in Noah’s flood far before the time of David and King Saul.

We can glean from the Bible or Torah a pretty solid idea of who they weren’t, but I’m clueless about who they were. :-)

I was raised to believe they were angels who wanted to become men to take human wives. And that Goliath was a descendant of theirs. But the flood story gets in the way of that supposed descendant line. Maybe an angel took a wife after the flood and it just wasn’t mentioned?

I always thought of it in the CS Lewis sense (he used the terms “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve” for boys and girls). The implication of the asymmetry of using “sons of God” and “daughters of Eve” is that men are holier than women (shocking, I know). But I think they are referring to humans in both cases.

@ninjacolin That interpretation collides with the fact angels are sexless beings. As Matt 22:30 tells us, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

@glacial The early writers of the books of the Bible made it abundantly clear they were deeply misogynistic. I find nothing surprising in their distinction.

A group of ProtoJesuses.

@ETpro That was a little irony right there.

I’ve been looking at the videos on YouTube on this subject. Most of them claim that the “Sons” were aliens and some were alien giants.

It is just another thing that I would have to see, personally, before I believe any of it.

in that case, @ETpro, they were Neaderthals.

My guess is that “sons of God” means God’s chosen/covenant people e.g. John 1:12 and Hosea 1:10

The “daughters of men” weren’t chosen people. Therefore, their offspring weren’t chosen people either and were “fallen”.

The Nephillim were supposed to be the inhabitants of the planet Niberu (the so-called planet X) which is said to cross the orbit of the Earth every 3000 years or so. It is claimed that the Nephillim created humans as slaves to extract the mineral resources of the Earth. Some of the Nephillim (the Sons of God) mated with humans (the daughters of man) creating the human race as we are today. Silly isn’t it? but there are people out there who believe this garbage.

@ragingloli Perhaps. A trial run.

@glacial Seeerrroooo. Sound of it sailing over me muddled head.

@Ron_C It’s based on the same sort of logic that other biblical claims seem to push.

@ninjacolin Neanderthals were relatively short and stocky. They would not be called giants in any sense of the term. Besides, modern humans wiped them out 24,000 years before God created the Heavens and the Earth, and all that lies therein.

@phaedryx A close reading of scripture from a Christian viewpoint suggests that sons of God refers to those who accept Christ as savior and so only humans alive in the Common Era. To Messianic Jews, it means those redeemed by their long-awaited Messiah, who’s quite a bit late according to the prophecies of Daniel. So to them, no such beings yet exist. So neither group accepts that as an explanation.

@basstrom188 Do they mention how they learned from these Nephilim that were destroyed by Noah’s flood, which we find no evidence of, what planet they came here from?

the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_God

@phaedryx Excellent article. My best guess is it is a carryover from El (Ugaritic Il) and that they are the sons of Asherah and El. El transmogrified into Elohim and eventually Yahweh.