HistoricalChristian.Faith

Augustine of Hippo on the Nephilim

Dates: c. 420 (City of God, Bk. XV) · Wikipedia Summary: In City of God XV.23 Augustine gives the pivotal, de-mythologized Sethite reading. He identifies the "sons of God" as the sons of Seth who forsook righteousness and "sunk into this community," and treats the giants as ordinary (if unusually large) men. He rejects the apocryphal Enochic fables that the giants' fathers "were not men," and denies that "God's holy angels" could have so fallen — though he leaves open whether aerial spirits ("incubi") assault women.

Claims & evidence

The sons of God were the sons of Seth who forsook righteousness; the giants were men

There is therefore no doubt that, according to the Hebrew and Christian canonical Scriptures, there were many giants before the deluge, and that these were citizens of the earthly society of men, and that the sons of God, who were according to the flesh the sons of Seth, sunk into this community when they forsook righteousness. Nor need we wonder that giants should be born even from these. For all of their children were not giants; but there were more then than in the remaining periods since the deluge.

— The City of God (Book XV), Chapter 23, historicalchristian.faith. Augustine reads the "sons of God" as Sethites and the giants as men, born more frequently then than later.

Rejection of the apocryphal Enochic fables about the giants

Let us omit, then, the fables of those scriptures which are called apocryphal, because their obscure origin was unknown to the fathers… So that the writings which are produced under his name, and which contain these fables about the giants, saying that their fathers were not men, are properly judged by prudent men to be not genuine; just as many writings are produced by heretics under the names both of other prophets…

— The City of God (Book XV), Chapter 23, historicalchristian.faith. Augustine sets aside the writings circulating under Enoch's name that claim the giants' fathers were not men. He is one of the canon-defining witnesses against on the argument page The canonicity of 1 Enoch (assessment: weak).

Holy angels did not fall, though aerial spirits ("incubi") may assault women

There is, too, a very general rumor… that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called "incubi," had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them… From these assertions, indeed, I dare not determine whether there be some spirits embodied in an aerial substance… and who are capable of lust and of mingling sensibly with women; but certainly I could by no means believe that God's holy angels could at that time have so fallen, nor can I think that it is of them the Apostle Peter said, "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell…"

— The City of God (Book XV), Chapter 23, historicalchristian.faith. Augustine grants the popular reports of incubi while flatly denying that holy angels fell in Genesis 6.

Summary statement of the Sethite reading (City of God 15.23)

All that we indubitably know, from the authentic Scripture in the Hebrew and Christian traditions, is the fact that in the period before the flood there were many giants, all of whom belonged to the earthly city in human society, and that there were sons of God descended from Seth who abandoned their holiness and sank down into this city of men. There is nothing surprising in the fact that giants could be born from men like that.

— City of God 15.23, historicalchristian.faith. A condensed restatement of the Sethite reading: giants belonged to the earthly city; the sons of God were Seth's line who abandoned holiness.

On 1 Peter 3:19 he reads the "spirits in prison" as human, and cannot resolve the puzzle

Pressed (by Evodius) on 1 Peter 3:18–21, Augustine takes the "spirits in prison" as the human dead and confesses he cannot explain why Peter singles out Noah's generation:

If the Lord when He died preached in hell to spirits in prison, why were those who continued unbelieving while the ark was a preparing the only ones counted worthy of this favour, namely, the Lord's descending into hell? For in the ages between the time of Noah and the passion of Christ, there died many thousands… How was it that Christ, finding these in hell, did not preach to them, but preached only to those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah…?

You perceive, therefore, how intricate is the question why Peter chose to mention… those only who were unbelieving in the days of Noah when the ark was a preparing — and also the difficulties which prevent me from pronouncing any definite opinion on the subject.

— Letter 164 (to Evodius, A.D. 414), historicalchristian.faith. Throughout, Augustine treats the "spirits in prison" as the dead in hell (he never entertains the imprisoned Watchers), and explicitly declines to settle the meaning — which is exactly the difficulty De Young points to. (Elsewhere Augustine prefers reading the preaching as Christ working through Noah to Noah's living contemporaries — the line Aquinas later adopts.) His human reading anchors the patristic/medieval side of the 1 Peter 3:19 — the "spirits in prison" argument (assessment: contested), against the modern-critical Watchers identification.

Notes

• Augustine's reading is Sethite and consciously de-mythologized: the giants are men, the apocryphal Enochic material is set aside, and holy angels are exonerated.
• Fr. Stephen De Young's modern article credits Augustine with beginning the "de-mythologized" reading that displaced the older angelic interpretation; see the timeline.
• He nonetheless preserves a careful qualification, declining to rule out that aerial "incubi"-type spirits assault women, while distinguishing such spirits from the holy angels.
• De Young's "days of Noah" point — now verified. De Young argues the cost of Augustine's rejection of the angelic reading shows when he reaches 1 Peter 3:19–20 and "admits he doesn't know what it means." This is confirmed by Letter 164 (quoted above), where Augustine calls the question "intricate" and declines "to pronounce any definite opinion." (Whether his whole case against the angelic reading — belonging to City of God XV.23 — actually holds is now weighed on its own argument page, Does Augustine's case against the angelic reading hold? (assessment: sound): the case is sound in structure — his rejection of 1 Enoch rests on independent canon-history and his Sethite reading is drawn from the canonical text itself, so De Young's "circular" charge overstates it — but it is not decisive, resting on the unargued premise that holy angels cannot so fall and on this very unsettled verse.)
• Augustine appears on this wiki on many other timelines; on the primeval history of Genesis he is also a witness on the Flood and the First Language, where he is the anchor for the thesis that Hebrew was the primeval tongue kept through Babel in Heber's line.