HistoricalChristian.Faith

Commodian on the Nephilim

Dates: c. 250 · Wikipedia
Summary: Commodian, a Latin Christian poet writing for ordinary believers, preserves the whole Enochic angel-fall sequence in verse: angels sent to the earth despised God's laws, were turned aside by the beauty of women, and "from their seed giants are said to have been born." The giants taught humanity the arts; when they died, men "erected images" to them — and their wandering spirits are the very "gods" the pagans now worship. It is the supernatural reading at its most complete: fall, giants, forbidden arts, euhemerism, and demonology in a single passage.

Claims & evidence

Angels turned aside by women beget giants, whose dead spirits become the pagan gods

When Almighty God, to beautify the nature of the world, willed that that earth should be visited by angels, when they were sent down they despised His laws. Such was the beauty of women, that it turned them aside; so that, being contaminated, they could not return to heaven. Rebels from God, they uttered words against Him. Then the Highest uttered His judgment against them; and from their seed giants are said to have been born. By them arts were made known in the earth, and they taught the dyeing of wool, and everything which is done; and to them, when they died, men erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of an evil seed, did not approve that, when dead, they should be brought back from death. Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies, and it is such as these especially that ye this day worship and pray to as gods.

— The Instructions, "Of the Foolish Mysteries of the Demons" (On Christian Discipline), source. Commodian welds together the angelic fall, the giants, the teaching of forbidden arts (cf. Tertullian), the cult of the deified dead (cf. Wisdom), and the demons' continued affliction of the living — the 1 Enoch tradition rendered for a popular audience.

Notes

• Commodian shows the angelic reading was not confined to the learned apologists: it was being taught in catechetical verse to rank-and-file Latin Christians in the mid-third century.
• His "to them, when they died, men erected images … Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies" is the demons-from-dead-giants etiology that decisively marks the supernatural tradition over the Sethite one — the reading weighed on the are the unclean spirits the dead Nephilim? argument (assessment: contested).
• Commodian's date is debated (a mid-third-century or, on a minority view, a fifth-century placement); the earlier date is followed here.