HistoricalChristian.Faith

Julius Africanus on the Nephilim

Dates: c. 240 Summary: Julius Africanus (d. c. 240) is the earliest known Christian writer to state the Sethite reading of Genesis 6: the "sons of God" are the righteous descendants of Seth and the "daughters of men" are the line of Cain. He notes a textual variant ("the sons of God" versus "the angels of heaven") and, notably, records the angelic alternative as a position others hold — recasting those angels as practitioners of magic who taught women celestial lore. His position thus preserves both readings, leading with the Sethite one.

Claims & evidence

The sons of God are the descendants of Seth; the seed of men are the descendants of Cain

When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies I found "the sons of God." What is meant by the Spirit, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Saviour Himself; but that the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in them, on account of the wickedness of their race and the inequality of their nature, being a mixed people, and having stirred the indignation of God.

— Fragment 2, source. This fragment of Africanus's Chronography survives only through its quotation by the Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus (AD 810); Africanus also registers the textual variant "sons of God" against "angels of heaven."

But if these are angels, they were teachers of magic who fathered the giants

But if it is thought that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic and jugglery, who taught the women the motions of the stars and the knowledge of things celestial, by whose power they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness came to its height on the earth, until God decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the deluge.

— Fragment 2, source. Africanus does not endorse this reading but reports it as a held alternative, again preserved via Syncellus.

Notes

• A pivotal text for the debate: the earliest explicit articulation of the Sethite line, yet it openly acknowledges the angelic reading was current and frames it without endorsement. That priority — the Sethite reading first attested in a Christian, not a rabbi — is the hinge of the did the Sethite reading originate as a Rabbinic reaction? argument (assessment: plausible).
• Even on the angelic alternative, Africanus rationalizes the angels as magic-teachers rather than as literal procreating spirits, prefiguring later euhemerizing tendencies.
• Lead (per De Young, Lord of Spirits). De Young identifies Africanus (b. 160 – d. 240) as the first Christian to adopt the Sethite reading, which he traces to Rabbinic Judaism after the synagogue rejected the Enochic literature as "too Christian." Notably, the George Syncellus who preserved this fragment (c. 810) himself transmits the angelic reading — he transcribes the Enochic Watchers narrative into his Chronography as antediluvian history — a datapoint that the angelic reading persisted into the Byzantine period. Now a timeline entry of its own: George Syncellus on the Nephilim. (De Young's further claim that he called 1 Enoch an "apostolic apocryphon" remains unsourced to a primary.)