The Mystery of the Watchers
Wednesday March 12, 2008 8:38 AM
"In those days, there were giants in the earth." This passage, which opens Genesis 6:4 is one of the most compelling and mysterious statements in the Bible. The passage continues, growing even more peculiar, for it says, "...the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they; bare children unto them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." In some translations, the so-called "sons of God" are called the Nephilim. But who are the Nephilim, and what was their relationship with mankind in the early days of the Biblical world?
A lot of ink has been spilled over the issue of the Nephilim. The Bible itself says very little about them, mainly mentioning that they were attracted to the "daughters of men" and eventually took wives from among these beautiful daughters. But there is more to the story than the fragmentary passages that appear in Genesis. The Book of Enoch is a pseudopigraphal text written several hundred years before Christ's birth. It tells of the coming Messiah, and it further elaborates on the compelling story of the Watcher Angels, beings who are cognate to the "sons of God." This lost book of the Bible, once viewed as sacred scripture by the early Church Fathers, was eventually cut out of accepted Biblical literature and lost to the world — until a version was rediscovered in Ethiopia by the famous explorer, James Bruce.
The Book of Enoch tells of the Watcher Angels, heavenly beings who were charged with the duty of watching over fledgling humanity. But the Watchers, led by the angels Shemyaza and Azazel, fell in love with their charges and reportedly walked out of Heaven in order to take up more human lives. They took wives from among the daughters of men, siring children and teaching their new families forbidden knowledge, such as root-cutting, astrology and the art of cosmetics. The children of the Watchers were giants compared to their mortal mothers, and thus their existence gave rise to the Biblical notion of "giants in the earth." These half-angelic offspring were also called Nephilim, a word variously translated as meaning "the fallen ones" or, sometimes, "miscarriage" — a reference to the difficult births alleged to accompany the bearing of these giants.
According to the Book of Enoch, the sins of the Watchers, as well as the very existence of their half-angel sons, was the reason that the Flood was visited upon the earth. After the Flood, the progeny of the Watchers were cleansed from the earth, although certain Medieval legends attested that they remained in spirit form to tempt and mislead mankind.
The story of the Watchers is both curious and compelling, and it has inspired a variety of interpretations. A number of UFOlogists see the Watchers as alien beings who came down to interbreed with humanity. Their advanced knowledge led the people of the Biblical world to mistake them for gods or angels. Researcher Andrew Collins presents an alternate view. He sees the Watchers as the remnants of an earlier race, physically different enough from the people of the Biblical world to stand out as alien and even inhuman in their eyes. Although he never directly states it, Collins strongly implies that the Watchers may have been refugees from the lost Atlantis, or a similarly fallen civilization, whose advanced knowledge was perceived to have heavenly or supernatural origins.
Whatever the truth may be behind the Watchers and the Nephilim, the fragments that appear in Genesis and the curious story in the Book of Enoch both continue to pique the imagination, inspiring many writers and researchers to seek out the real meaning behind the mysterious giants and the otherworldly sons of God.
