NP-8829Folder 09 — People & Texts to Investigate
Josephus on the Giants
Antiquities of the Jews 1.3.1
A first-century Jewish historian records the angelic reading as the understanding of his day.
HISTORICAL SOURCEANCIENT TEXT
What he wrote
Josephus writes that many angels of God had relations with women and begot sons who were unjust and despised all that was good, resembling the acts the Greeks attribute to the giants. He also reports that the bones of the giants were still shown in his own time.
Weight
Strong evidence for what first-century Jews believed Genesis 6 meant. Not evidence for the events themselves — Josephus is writing more than a thousand years after any purported event, and himself reaches for a Greek comparison.