Talk:Sons of God

Jude 1:6

"And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Jude 1:6 (KJV)

This passage is often used as a counterpoint to the one in Matthew.

Sons of the powerful

Another interpretation, which may be specifically Jewish, (I'm not sure, but I've seen it footnoted in Jewish bible translations) is that the phrase "elohim" literally means "powerful." Therefore the passage could be translated; "Sons of the powerful."

Counter to theory one

I removed the following text from the end of theory one as it is unreferenced (unfortunately like much of this page) and blatently wrong:

However, taking a look at every other instance of the phrase "Sons of God" or "Son of God" in the Old Testament, it becomes clear that the reference is to a spiritual creature of some sort. This is in contrast to the New Testament's use of the phrase, where it can refer to man or spiritual being. This leads us to the second theory:

In the old testament it is not clear at all that the phrase refers to "a spiritual creature", quite the opposite:

"When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose." (Genesis 6:1-2)

And in the New Testament it refers to any person "led by the Spirit":

"because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." (Romans 8:14)

Article issues, beginning with title

"Of God" is only one meaning of the Hebrew word elohim, for example it can also mean Godly, and elohim can even denote princely or high rank (god-like in a very small-g sort of sense.). Traditional Judaism generally holds that Benei elohim may mean godly children or children of Powers, but does not mean "Sons of God". The difficulty here is that the very article title reflects a POV. Second, in traditional Judaism angels are living entities which people encounter from time to time -- it's customary for religious Jews to talk to their personal angels every Friday night -- so the topic is not solely about theories the meaning of an obscure passage in the Bible, but about entities that are parts of a living world. Best, --Shirahadasha 04:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Titanesses?

"from whose marriage with a race of titanesses (the daughters of man), the 70 nations of the earth were born" Can we remove the reference to Titans/Titanesses - a specifically Greek myth - in an article on Levantine religion/myth? However, this is a Canaanite myth, and Judeo-Christianity supposedly originated in Mesopotamia.--Flowerpower94us (talk) 00:37, 5 December 2008 (UTC)Vultur (talk) 22:40, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Point taken! Unfortunately the only source we have for much Canaanite religion comes second hand via Greek or Roman sources, and I believe they referred to Titanesses. Maybe Giantess would be a better modern equivalent, but it would need checkning from the sources.

Deletion of original research

I've just deleted quite a bit. It was either original research based on editor's own understanding of various biblical passages, or possibly in one case based on one person's personal website, which was not a reliable source -- see WP:RS and WP:SPS. Dougweller (talk) 07:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

References

These are in general badly cited. WP:CITE gives guidance for this. Specifically, for anything but articles we should have page publisher, year, ISBN, and page numbers so that readers can WP:Verify cites such as:

^ Niese Josephus - Greek Critical Edition with Apparatus

^ Dialogue

^ for example Whittaker H.A. Studies in the Gospels ch. Luke 20, Biblia, Stafford

I note that DDD is used for one footnote. Someone added it to our dab page DDD] which I'll remove as that's only for articles. As it's the second reference to the same page, a reference name would be acceptable, see WP:REFNAME. This is all made simpler by the new templates in the new interface. Dougweller (talk) 10:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Doug, I suppose it would be surplus to say that the refs in the article were indeed much better when there were none. As for DDD I was going to submit a stub, which could have been done while writing this.... but instead I'll jump to it and get you the refs for the three above. ;) Cheers In ictu oculi (talk) 11:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I didn't know if you understood what dab pages are for, you may note that I removed several other entries with no articles. Thanks for offering to fix the references. As I said, it's much easier now with the new interface, although that's not perfect. Dougweller (talk) 11:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Deletions

Sorry PiCo, have reversed the four deletions.

• "Levantine texts say" .... rather than delete the , better to give the ref, it can't be that difficult to find, if it's a header fact.
• Job 1:6 .......... just as much a relevant verse as the other 3, why delete?
• Early Christianity ........... cannot be merged into Second Temple Judaism
• Contemporary Christianity..... well I don't think 2 lines are undue weight. Relevant to any 21stC readers lighting on the article

Sorry, but don't see any case for these deletes. Cheers :) In ictu oculi (talk) 17:53, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. I've been spreading myself too thin lately (too many articles) and so haven't given any one of them sufficient attention, with the result that my edits probably haven't been as useful as the could and should be. PiCo (talk) 01:03, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Von Daniken

Perhaps a note about Von Daniken and his ilk would be in order. They often identify this phrase with aliens.-MacRusgail (talk) 15:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

New Testament

John 1:12, in speaking of Jesus, reads "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.5.238 (talk) 02:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Article structure

Virtually, the entire body of this article pertains to Genesis 6:2,4...

However, the arguments surrounding Genesis 6:2,4 do not pertain to the occurrence of the phrase "sons of God" in the Book of Job or even the New Testament.

Therefore, it would be appropriate for the page to have the title Book of Genesis with the origins/translations subsections following. This would allow for an analysis of future sections for Book of Job and New Testament.

For a rough example:

• Book of Genesis

Origins

Translations

Interpretations

• Book of Job

Interpretations

• New Testament

Interpretations

Thanks, Jasonasosa (talk) 21:39, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Citations asked for

The article asks for citations of the term, which are in fact given by the Biblical text. As a result I have deleted the requests. John D. Croft (talk) 00:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Hebrew Bible translation

Shouldn't the NJPS translation available at https://www.sefaria.org.il/Genesis.6?lang=en&aliyot=0 be referred to? Mcljlm (talk) 03:28, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Renaming title of page

Son of God (Hebrew Bible) so we won't have two Son of God pages Doremon764 (talk) 04:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Didn't notice this page was titled Sons and not just Son Doremon764 (talk) 04:19, 15 December 2020 (UTC)