Biblical Hebrew also has more then one word for Love.

I've talked before about my issues with the fixation so many have on drawing a hard distinction between the different Greek words for Love.  My lost post on that topic focusing on making Comparison to Japanese since I am somewhat of a Weeb. 

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2024/03/agape-and-eros.html

But I've also noticed a trend among people who want to argue Jesus and the Apostles and Paul actually taught in Greek, that the New Testament's usage of more then one word for Love is further evidence of it's innate Greekness.

The New Testament doesn't even use all these Greek words for Love people obsess over, it only really uses three, Aqape, Philia and Xenia. But rather then seeing that as evidence that the New Testament is only using the Greek language to express fundamentally Semitic ideas, they insist Eros was excluded deliberately, which lies at the heart of why I dislike this obsession.  

Stroge's absence from the New Testament can't be explained so ideologically however, familial love is definitely a theme in The New Testament.  The only reason for none of these texts to use a word that specifically means that, is if they are regardless of what language they were first physically written down it at their core translating ideas first formed in a language without an equivalent single word. It appears as an element of some names, but so does Eros the word these puritanical Christians want to reject. 

Xenia is used in The New Testament seemingly only ever as a word for a place of Lodging rather then a word for the abstract concept of Hospitality. Hospitality is definitely a New Testament value as we see in Hebrews 13. and when Jesus agrees with Ezekiel 16 that Inhospitality was the Sin of Sodom. Hebrews 13 uses the compound word Xenophilia which is equivalent to the Hebrew term Hachnasat Orchim.

Biblical Hebrew meanwhile has more words for Love then Greek actually, meaning the New Testament's usage of only three of it's options shows the limits of Greek in expressing Hebrew ideas. 

Ahabah and Ahab and Ohab are in the LXX interchangeably translated as both Agape and Eros, and I note again how the Song of Songs uses Agape not Eros, meaning it absolutely was applicable to Romantic/Sexual love in the minds of Ancient Greek speaking Jews. 

Meanwhile there are also the words Hesed and Rachamim and Dodim.  Rachamim is derived from the Hebrew word for Womb implying it was first thought of as an inherently Maternal kind of Love, making it's use for God's Love of Humanity quite interesting.

And one Hebrew word that doesn't come up right away when you google this topic is Agab/Egeb. In fact when you try to Google Agab or Egeb specifically now the darn AI continually assumes I'm just mis spelling something else, though the less common variant Agabah shows up just fine  These words only seem to be used in negative contexts, as if they represent the more problematic meaning of Eros. But it is used positively in Ezekiel 33:31-32.  I would also argue Ezekiel 23:11 by specifying corrupt love is clearly implying Agabah is not inherently corrupt. 

If I wanted to propose a theory that Agape was actually a Semitic loan word into Greek via Phoenician influence, Agabah is the Semitic word I would pick.  There is other precedent for a B becoming a P during such processes.  But since the variations of this word only appear in Jeremiah and Ezekiel perhaps you could argue they are foreign loan words from Greek into Hebrew. 

The Sin of Sodom was Capitalism actually

In the past I've put all my eggs in the Hospitality/Immigration argument, and that is still an important symptom of their disease.  But it's verse 49 of Ezekiel's 16th Chapter that gives us the full diagnosis.

"Moreover this was the sin of thy sister Sodom, pride: she and her daughters lived in pleasure, in fullness of bread in abundance: this belonged to her and her daughters, and they helped not the hand of the poor and needy."

There is no getting around that this is a condemnation of Wealth Hording, that the kind of people who talk this way today are Communists and Socialists.

And it's not addressing individual Rich People who don't voluntarily give to the Poor.  It's about Sodom as a society.

References to Sodom in Isaiah and Jeremiah also stress it being tied to their greed and wealth.  I argued on my Prophecy Blog that the Whoredom of Babylon is Capitalism, and Eschatological prophecies of Babylon do evoke Sodom.  

Jude 7 when talking about Sodom uses the word "Pornea" which the KJV translates "Fornication", it's actually a word for Prostitution but that unlike some other Greek words for Prostitution is stressing specifically the economic aspect of it, coming from a root which means "to sell".  Likewise in Ezekiel 16 the three times the KJV refers to "Fornication" it's the exact same words the KJV in this same chapter elsewhere translates whoredom, whore and harlot.  I believe some Biblical references to "whoredom" aren't about sex at all.

And the issue of Sodom being in-hospitable to immigrants is not unrelated, travelers and refuges are also needy and poor.  And Capitalists love to use nativist sentiments to get the poor citizens to blame the immigrants for the problems that are actually Capitalism's fault.

Ironically some Marxists might say I'm being Anachronistic here since we all know Capitalism didn't exist till after the Reformation, at the very soonest.  But the thing is part of why I'm not a Marxist is that I disagree with the Marxist view of history.  I know some Breadtubers love to stress how young Capitalism is in response to Conservatives arguing that it's "Natural", but we can't deny Patriarchy has been a thing for all of Human history.  How about when addressing Conservative Christians we remind them that The Church is supposed to be "contrary to nature" (Para Phusis) according to Romans 11.

Even if I were to concede that Feudalism is distinct from Capitalism, when I look at Ancient Rome ("Republican" Rome at least) it's hard for me not to see it as Capitalist with it's wealthy land owners and the way it's "Democracy" was so thoroughly jerrymandered against the urban poor.  And I see similar Capitalism in Carthage and at least some of the City-States of Greece.

Capitalism has different forms, from Mercantilism to industrial Capitalism, from Classical Liberalism to Neo-Liberalism, from Jeffersonianism to Hamiltonianism.  Some reactionaries claim to hate Capitalism as much as they do Communism while still being called Capitalists by Communists.  

During the Middle Ages I believe Capitalism was continued by Venice and perhaps some other Italian coastal City-States.  Then after the Reformation opened the door for upheavals in some parts of Europe the city of Amsterdam and other northern ports started being influenced by the Venetians they traded with.  And then England started borrowing from both Amsterdam and Venice as it started striving to be a Sea Power under Henry VIII, Elizabeth and the Stuarts.

Some writers have argued Protastantism helped cause Capitalism.  But it's really one major school of Protestantism, the "Reformed Tradition" of Zwingly that later split into Calvinist and Arminian camps.  Luther actually loved Feudalism and wanted to make it stronger rather then weaker.  And the Anabaptists like the Taborite and John Ball before the Reformation were Communists.  But to the point I'm making here, it can be argued that Venetian theologians had an overlooked influence on the early Reformation even though they nominally stayed Catholic through men like Gasparo Continari.

Roman Capitalism came from the Greeks and also Carthage who's Trade networks Rome absorbed as they conquered it.  Carthage and Greece were both influenced by the Phoenicians, a people The Bible refers to as Sidonians who's major cities were first Sidon and later Tyre.  Ezekiel 27 is perhaps just as much a description of Capitalism as Ezekiel 16 is.  The Sidonians were the Canaanites of Lebanon and Sodom is also mentioned when talking about the Canaanites in Genesis 10.  In Ezekiel 16 God's criticism of Jerusalem (which is Sodom's Sin but now worse) also involved Him spiritually calling them Jebusites and Amorites.

Capitalism is the Socio-Economic Vice of the Canaanites, while Feudalism came from Egypt.

The Nephilim and the Sons of God

I had opposed the Sethite view for a long time.  My last major post on the Nephilim issue on my Prophecy Blog, The Sethite View and the Nephilim, was me still viewing the Nephilim and BeniElohim as fallen angels but arguing it doesn't actually depict any Hybridization.  An argument that was maybe a little convoluted.

First I want to advise fellow critics of the Hybrid view to stop making bad arguments.  What Jesus said about Marriage and the Resurrection in Matthew 22 had a specific purpose, I do still believe we will be having sex in the Resurrection because it's the Restoration of before the Fall.  The Marriage that is done away with is the patriarchal marriage of Genesis 3.  And nothing in Hebrews 1 proves Angels can't be called Sons of God, the key word in that verse is begotten, only Jesus is the begotten Son of God.

Calling this view the "Sethite view" does it a disservice because it makes it sound like it's the Racist view, when what made me grow more and more uncomfortable with the Hybride view is how it is constantly tied into racist beliefs.  The real point of the Sethite view reaffirms how spiritual intermarriage is the only mixed marriage Yahuah truly objects to.  Now it may have so happened that the peoples descended from Enosh may have been most likely to be followers of Yahuah in the Pre-Flood world, like how it was Israel Post-Flood, but that is not the actual point.

I get annoyed when people like Chuck Missler say that the end of Genesis 4 where it says "then began men to call upon the name of Yahuah" it actually says "profane the name of Yahuah" in the Hebrew.  Because this is actually the exact same Hebrew phraseology used when Abraham called upon the Name of Yahuah at Shechem and Bethel in Genesis 12.  If this "Profane" interpretation began among the Rabbis, it was probably a product of their Non-Biblical idea that you aren't supposed to pronounce the Name of Yahuah, that verbally saying it at all profanes it.  And it's the same wording used in Joel 2, quoted by Peter in Acts 2 and Paul in Romans 10 for saying that All who Call upon The Name of Yahuah shall be Saved.

The Bible definitely describes Gigantic people in certain narratives, but no word used in Genesis 6 or any other Pre-Flood narrative actually means that.  We don't need supernatural hybridization to make that happen, I think this ancient Gigantism, distinct from the modern known condition, was simply a natural part of Noah's genetic potential that has been lost.  But perhaps sometimes was triggered by cross breeding similar to why Lygers get so big.

Nephilim is a word used only three times in all of Scripture, in two passages, Genesis 6 and Numbers 13.  The problem is using Numbers 13 to help us define the word has a major problem.

In Numbers 13:21-25, the narrative voice describes the Anakim and it never calls them Nephilim or describes them as Gigantic.  Numbers 13:27-29 is the first description of the Anakim and others in Canaan the spies give, and still not yet called Nephilim or gigantic.

Caleb's good report comes next, and he doesn't use the word Nephilim or talk about giants.  Then comes Numbers 13:31-33.  In verse 32 the narrator says "and they gave an evil report of the land they had searched".  The Hebrew word translated "evil report" is also sometimes translated "defaming" and "slander", like in Numbers 14:36 referencing back to this report saying it was a slander.

It is this report that first talks about the Anakim having great stature and in verse 33 twice uses the word Nephilim.  What they are saying is not accurate, they are exaggerating, and may have themselves not been using this word correctly.  And this passage is probably the reason translations starting with the Septuagint translated it Giants.

Deuteronomy 1:27-28 is again referencing back to this evil report.  Deuteronomy 2:10 calls the Anakim tall, but Saul was also tall compared to most Israelites.  Verse 11 says that Emims like the Anakim were "accounted" Rephaim, this word for accounted is also translated esteemed, reckoned, and even imagined.  It is again describing a belief that may not be true.  Verse 20 again talks about them being "accounted' Rephaim.  Verse 21 again calls the Anakim tall, but nothing more.  Deuteronomy 9:2 again simply calls the Anakim tall while referencing back to the evil report.

The first time the Anakim are mentioned in Joshua is in 11:21-22, where there is no mention of them being large in size, or Nephilim or Rephaim.  Joshua 14:12-15 again references the evil report but without talking about Giants.    Joshua 15:13-14 again mentioned the Anakim but no gigantic size.  Joshua 21:11 and Judges 1:20 are the last two references to the Anakim and they are again not called Nephilim or Rephaim or giants.

The word Rephaim is also the name of a location in Israel, and sometimes gets translated "giants" even when referring to that location.  The Rephaim as a group of people are first mentioned in Genesis 14 and 15.

The remaining references to the Rephaim are in Deuteronomy 3:11, Joshua 12:4, and 13:12.  Which all call Og the king of Bashan the remnant or all the remains of the Rephaim.  Og was defeated and killed by Israel in the time of Moses, well before the Anakim were in the time of Joshua.  So if Og was the last of the Rephaim, then this repeatedly recorded belief that the Anakim were Rephaim must be wrong.

And it also proves the word Rephaim doesn't mean Giant because Goliath came later and he's never called a Rephaim, neither are his brothers.   If Rephaim means giant then Goliath's existence creates a contradiction.

The term BeniElohim, translated "Sons of God", only appears in Genesis 6 and Job in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.  Many Christians on this issue have argued the idea of believers being Sons of God isn't introduced until the New Testament in John 1.  And that Luke 3 calling Adam the Son of God is different because Adam was a "direct creation of God".  The problem is that the debate about if this term refers to angels or humans or both and if so when forgets that more verses are relevant to this issue then just those that use that exact phrase.

Exodus 4:22-23 Yahuah says to Pharaoh "Israel is my son, even my firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.".   Deuteronomy 14:1 says "Ye are the children of Yahuah your God", the word for children being Ben.

In the Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:8-9 says in both the Masoretic and Samaritan texts...

"When the Highest divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.  For Yahuah's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.". 

A DSS manuscript of this verse however says BeniElohim instead of "sons of Israel", which has lead many scholars to insist that must be the original and tie it into Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6 to create an idea that Elyon divided the 70 nations of Genesis 10 between 70 divine/angelic Principalities.  However, whatever is the original maybe the copyist who changed it simply felt "sons of Israel" and "sons of God" meant the same thing?  When Jacob came into Mizraim his family was 70, and in Numbers 11 we see another 70 for Israel.  Jesus had His 70 Disciples also.  Deuteronomy foretells Israel to be scattered to all the nations.  And Romans 11 tells us the fullness of the gentiles will be grafted into Israel.

Psalm 82:6, a verse Jesus quoted, says "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Highest.".  This is a Psalm of Asaph, and it sounds like it's referencing back to something.  When Jesus quotes it He attributes it to The Torah.

Also in the Book of Hosea, just read 1:10 and 11:1.  In the latter Yahuah called Israel collectively His Son singular.  But in the former he says the children of Israel are sons of the living God, present tense.

In II Samuel 7:14 Yahuah through Nathan tells David that Solomon will be His Son and He will be Solomon's Father.  And eventually Solomon's great failing in 1 Kings 11 is tied to exactly what Sethite View proponents think the Sons of God did wrong in Genesis 6.

Ezekiel 16 begins by speaking of Israel as Yahuah's adopted daughter.

Malachi chapter 3 warns against marrying the Daughter of a Strange god. If the followers of strange gods are refereed to as their children, then clearly the followers of Yahuah are His children as well.

Even what's said in John 1 is not contradicting that believers already were God's Children.  It says The Word came unto "His Own" and "His own received Him not" and then He gave others the ability to become Sons of God.   The implication is that "His Own" were Sons of God already, or were supposed to be anyway.

Job provides the only place where the Hebrew term "BeniElohim" is used in a way where it seems impossible to say it's human believers and not Angels.  And it's not even at the beginning, one could argue those are deceased believers in Heaven, or that this takes place in the congregation of an Earthly Mishkan, which is repeatedly refereed to as the Presence of Yahuah, as well as of Eden when Cain left it in Genesis 4.  Ezekiel 28 tells us Satan was in the Garden of God and the Mountain of God (a term used only of Sinai), and because of the stones mentioned maybe implies he was the High Priest of that Mishkan.

It's the reference to BeniElohim and Morning Stars singing and shouting for joy when the foundations of the Earth were laid, in 38:4-7.  Which then gets cross referenced with other precedent for calling Angels stars.

Thing is, Job unlike Deuteronomy and Psalm 82 isn't quoted by Jesus in the New Testament.  But even with viewing it as God's Word it could still be viewed as a poetic narrative or parable and not literal history.  And maybe how all these things said in Job 38 connect to each other is being misunderstood.  In Revelation 2:28 Jesus says He will give the Morning Star to the over-comer.  And Job 38:6 refers to The Corner Stone, something everywhere else we know is a title of Christ, so God could have been speaking Prophetically.  And then there is the theory many Nephilim theorists like that the Great Pyramid was a Pre-Flood monument built by Sethites and the Corner Stone was it's Capstone.  Verse 7 does seem to be about the Flood.

What Nebuchadnezzar says of the Angel who appeared in the Fiery Furnace in Daniel 3 also gets cited.  This is an Aramaic term (that should be translated sons of the gods, plural) being used by a Pagan Gentile King who didn't became properly a believer till chapter 4.  It's definitely not for building doctrine.  (But also this scene is commonly viewed as a Theophany, this is The Angel of Yahuah, The Word of God, not a common ordinary Angel.)

And that Pagan belief is why Skeptics agree with the Hybrid interpretation of Genesis 6 (they just don't think it actually happened) because they're seeing it in the context of how the Pagan texts of Ugarit called the gods of their pantheon the sons of El their chief god, and one at least says there were 70.  Actual Believers should be resisting that Pagan interpretation of the text rather then embracing it.

But perhaps it's disingenuous to use external sources or even later Torah verses to interpret Genesis 6 either way.  Let's think about what this term likely meant in the context of reading through Genesis blind chronologically.  The only prior precedent for something like Angels are the Cherubim and maybe the Serpent, none of them are in any way called sons of Elohim.

But when Eve gave birth to Seth near the end of Genesis 4, Seth is called a Son and then Eve says that Elohim appointed her another seed.  Seth is called at his introduction a Son as well as from Elohim. (Additionally Genesis 4:1 could be read as saying Yahuah is a co-father of Cain in some way.)  Even if I acquiesced to the Skeptics who think this text was originally written from a Pagan viewpoint, the ancient Pagans often didn't view the idea of having a Human father and a Divine father as contradictory, Alexander didn't think of it as denying Philip as his father when he claimed to be the Son of Zeus-Amon, Herakles was still heir to his father's royal line, and Oedipus was called a Son of Helios even though his story is built around him being the son of Laius.  So there is both a Pagan and a Monotheistic justification for reading that verse as proclaiming Seth a son of Elohim.  Also God-Human Hybrids (or Demigods) were mainly a Greek concept in antiquity, I've found no solid evidence of Near Eastern, Mesoptamian or Egyptian belief in similar Divine-Human Hybrids.

However maybe Genesis shouldn't be interpreted so independently. The first 5 books of The Bible are called the "books of Moses", but only 4 are directly about Moses.  Perhaps Genesis is meant to be looked at as a Prequel, and everything in it should be interpreted in terms of how it anticipates, foreshadows and sets the stage for the Mosaic narrative.  As a long time Star Wars Prequel Trilogy apologist and more recently a fan of Fate/Zero, I feel uniquely qualified to analyze Genesis as a Prequel.

In which case there is nothing in Exodus-Deuteronomy defining Angels as Sons of God, but plenty of precedent for believers being sons of Yahuah which I already cited above.  And there is no narrative from Moses time about Angels interbreeding with Humans, but a number of passages about the danger of Yahuah's people marrying those who serve other gods.  Numbers 25:1 even says "daughters of Moab" in a way that parallels "daughters of Adam".  In fact later parts of Genesis say "daughters of Canaan", "daughters of the Canaanites", and "daughters of Heth" talking about the same issue.  And beyond the Torah, Judges 14 uses "daughters of the philistines".

When defending the genealogies of Jesus, we love to point out how in the Hebrew mindset you can be called the Son of anyone your parents descended from.  So Luke 3 calling Adam the Son of God absolutely proves Humans can be called sons of God.  But during this mortal life non believers are currently estranged children, I of course believe God intends to bring everyone back in eventually, but it's us believers who already are.

The main reason lots of Christians have supported the Hybrid view is the apparent New Testament references in 2 Peter and Jude.  Even though offspring of these "rebel angels' are not refereed to in those verses.

2 Peter 2:4 and 5 are possibly not even about the same thing.  Verse 4 could seemingly be describing Dathan and Korah's rebellion.

Jude verses 6 and 7 are viewed as comparing the Genesis 6 incident to Sodom and Gomorrah.  In my past studies on what Jude says about Sodom, I said both these incidents are about lust between angels and humans, emphasizing how "strange" in strange flesh means different, alien, foreign, ect.  But now I recall how my greater point about the Sin of Sodom is how Ezekiel and Jesus define it has being inhospitable to foreigners.  I should have realized sooner that Jude's intent was to condemn them for their desire to rape foreigners traveling through them. 

Jude mentioned Korah in verse 11, could it be this is all connected and he was also thinking of that incident in verse 6?  Verse 5 seems to set up the context as after the Exodus.  And you can't object to Jude then going backwards chronologically when he mentions Sodom in verse 7 because verse 11 also listed the people it refers to out of their chronological order.

Chuck Missler makes a thing out of a rarely used word for Habitation in Jude 11.  Paul's use of Oiketerion in 1 Corinthians 5:5 follows a reference to the Tabernacle in verse 1.  Thing is, Mishkan also means Habitation, Dathan and Korah created their own Tabernacle that their followers chose over the Tabernacle of Moses and Aaron.

I think the Greek root normally translated Tabernacle in the KJV is the Greek equivalent to Ohel, since it literally means Tent and is used of both the Mishkan and the Sukkots of the Feast of Tabernacles in John 7.  I think Oiketerion should be viewed as the proper Greek equivalent of Mishkan.  A number of OT verses use Ohel and Mishkan interchangeably.

In the past I've argued Nephilim means Fallen Ones because it comes from Naphal meaning fall.  And viewed that as supporting it being of Fallen Angels because of Isaiah 14:12's use of Naphal.  But believers can also "fall away" or "fall from grace".  Maybe Nephilim originally meant Apostates or Apostasy?  It is often said that Apostasy is the theme of Jude.  Numbers 14:43 is also considered relevant to the issue of Apostasy, being possibly drawn on in Hebrews 6, and it uses Naphal.

Now in Number 13:33 it could be a wrong understanding of the word already existed, again we are told not to trust that account.  But hypothetically if at least that word was used accurately, there are ways one could argue the Anakim were Apostates, maybe people who once followed Melchizedek and then fell away and traveled south towards Hebron. 

Rob Skiba has attempted to make a point for his peculiar view by saying the second use of Nephilim in Numbers 13:33 is spelled the same as in Genesis 6 but the first use is different.  Hence him arguing these Nephilim came from the Genesis 6 Nephilim.  In the view I've proposed here, it could be these contemporary Anakim were not technically Apostates, but being called something similar because they descended from Apostates. Or more simply I could translate it "Apostates of the Apostasy".

The Enochian literature is all influenced by Greek mythological and philosophical ideas.  I've been arguing against viewing such apocryphal literature as canon since way back when I did still believe in Angel-Human Hybrids.  Same with the Dead Sea Scrolls, none of them predate Greek influence.

But what's annoying is how people act like Apocryphal literature is universal in taking the Hybrid view.  The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan is one example of a text that clearly depicts the Sethite view.  The Book of the Cave of Treasures is an older Syriac version of the same story that one tells.

But what really surprised me was to find that Rob Skiba's own precious Book of Jasher supports the Sethite view.  Jasher chapter 4 verses 16-18, is clearly that book's version of Genesis 6.  Jasher chapter 3 verse 23 does use "Sons of God" seemingly of Angels in heaven, but this is unrelated to anything like the Genesis 6 account.  In chapter 4 it's clear that the people who's corruption is linked to marrying "daughters of men" are the men of Seth's clan who this chapter is chronicling. 

Jubilees chapter 5 I think could be interpreted as supporting either view, so I'm not gonna go into it.  It uses the word Angel but again that can be used of human believers. 

I've heard it claimed the Septuagint uses the word Angel in Genesis 6 which Hybrid view supporters point to, but the texts I've seen do not, either way the word can be used of human believers since it means messenger.

The Septuagint's main role in how views on this developed is in translating Nephilim as Gigantes, which is the origin of it being translated Giants, the English word Giant comes from Gigantes.  What the Gigantes were originally in Greek mythology however was not even partly human, they were siblings of the Titans.

Which interpretation is older is irrelevant to which one is true.  But regardless the Angel view can't be proven to exist before the time of Alexander bringing Greek influence to Judea.

The idea that Genetic Impurity was the reason for The Flood is what makes it the inherently Racist view.  The only intermarriage The Torah truly opposes is Spiritual intermarriage.  Malachi who is affirmed as a Prophet by the New Testament said it was marrying the daughter of a strange god Yahuah objected to.

Many Racists will use the Sethite view of course. Especially since the most blatantly racist Christians I've found online aren't even Young Earth Creationists and believe the first mixed marriage was Cain and his Wife who they wrongly claim didn't descend from Adam.

And what I'd say in a debate with them, is that if biological intermarriage was the point why did God describe it in Spiritual terms that made this confusion inevitable?  If their version of the Sethite view was the intent it would have just said Sons of Seth or Sons of Enosh.  But if the Hybrid view was true, it would have simply said Angels or just said Elohim which is already plural and sometimes used of Angels and thus not needed the "sons of" part.

In Genesis 6:11 the reason for the Flood is defined as being that the Earth was filled with Violence.  The word translated "corrupt" there is also a word often associated with warfare, being also translated things like perish and spoiler.  Verse 12 says man corrupted His way upon the Earth. 

And this emphasis on violence is also consistent with the first 4 verses of chapter 6 because the word translated "mighty men" in the KJV is gibborim, which also gets accused of being a word for Giant, but what it means is warrior.  It's sometimes used of good warriors in The Bible like David's Mighty Men, and  is used of the first Warrior King Nimrod.  But in this context it's about the world becoming filled with violence.

Also Genesis 6:4 calls them "Enosh of renown" which in a Pre-flood context I feel verifies they paternally descended from Enosh, since tribal identity in The Bible is usually identified by the father's line.

And the book of Jasher's interpretation of this situation of Sethites taking daughters of men is describing those daughters of men as spoils of war.  And even Hybrid view supporters have pointed out that the language in Genesis 6:1-4 can be interpreted as implying the daughters of Adam were taken by force.

The line of Cain was also associated with Violence. From Cain being the first murderer, to whatever Lamech did.  To Tubal-Cain's clan being perhaps the world's first weapons manufacturers.

The New Testament says Noah preached repentance, you can't repent of being born a hybrid, but you can repent of living by the sword.

Now you may object that I've made two different thematic connections, a connection to the theme of foreign pagan women leading Israelites astray, and women being raped as spoils of war.  But I'd argue those themes do go together.

The main obvious Torah example of the foreign women theme is what happened with the Moabite women because of Balaam.  People forget that happened after Israel had just been militarily victorious over Moab.  And Solomon's many wives also came mostly from nations David had conquered, and chronologically Rehoboam's Ammonite mother he was married to while David still lived.

Taking women as spoils of war can lead to unwanted foreign cultural influence.  To a moderner that's not the actual reason to morally object to the practice, and I'm sure God agrees.  But when writing people a religious guide book unintended consequences are what people are more likely to listen to.

Complex history of the Word Sodomite

This is my third post specifically on the Sin of Sodom being Inhospitality (Or Trumpism as I now like to call it).

What prompted this post was an interaction I had on IMDB.  So this is mainly my archiving those sources here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy

Many cognates in other languages, such as French sodomie (verb sodomiser), Spanish sodomía (verb sodomizar), and Portuguese sodomia (verb sodomizar), are used exclusively for penetrative anal sex, at least since the early nineteenth century. In those languages, the term is also often current vernacular (not just legal, unlike in other cultures) and a formal way of referring to any practice of anal penetration; the word sex is commonly associated with consent and pleasure with regard to all involved parties and often avoids directly mentioning two common aspects of social taboo—human sexuality and the anus—without a shunning or archaic connotation to its use.

In modern German, the word Sodomie has no connotation of anal or oral sex and specifically refers to bestiality.[11] The same goes for the Polish sodomia. The Norwegian word sodomi carries both senses. In Danish, sodomi is rendered as "unnatural carnal knowledge with someone of the same sex or (now) with animals".[12]

https://nwanglicanblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/sodomy-a-biblical-word-study-that-might-surprise-you/

Roman Catholic scholar, Mark Jordan in his book The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1997) shows that the term “sodomy” originated in the eleventh century as a new classification of certain ‘clerical sins’. While early church fathers such as St. Ambrose and Origen clearly associate sodomy with inhospitality, by the time of St. Augustine, cultural associations around the word, communicated through secular poetry and legend shifted both its denotative and connotative meanings.

http://www.banap.net/spip.php?article122

 “ ‘Sodomy’ as defined by religion and law included a range of condemned practices, ‘a way to encompass a multiple of sins with a minimum of signs’ as one critic has cleverly expressed it.” (Phillips and Reay. Sex Before Sexuality A Premodern History, p. 61)


Despite the term’s enduring flexibility, from the twelfth century sodomy was increasingly associated with sex acts between men. (Phillips and Reay. Sex Before Sexuality A Premodern History, p. 62)

...

In the older sense, sodomy surpassed all other crimes; in its sinfulness it also included all of them: from blasphemy, sedition, and witchcraft, to the demonic. It was, as many extracts declare, the crime without a name; language was incapable of sufficiently expressing the horror of it. The category was a repository for many items, yet in the eighteenth century a highly specific portrait of an individual, and of a group, was increasingly displacing an undiscriminating, demonic generalization.(McCormick editor, Secret Sexualities A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing, p. 118)

...

Sodomy surpassed all other crimes. In its sinfulness it also included all of them, blasphemy, sedition, witchcraft, the demonic: it is yet without a Name: What shall it then be called? There are not Words in our Language to expressive enough of the Horror of it. The foregoing suggests, however, a degree of insecurity about the range of the activity, and what it ought to be called. It was terrible in its sublimity, but unnamed in its sublimation. What was changing was that a specific kind of portrait of an individual was taking over from a theological category of generalized evil. (McCormick, editor Sexual Outcasts 1750-1850 Volume II Sodomy, p. 5)

...

“Clearly when we come across a writer using the words ‘sodomy’ or ‘buggery’ in relation to homosexuality we do the words less than justice if we simply disregard their other meanings. The one word was used because the one concept was intended, and this was a broader concept than simply homosexuality. The notion underlying these passages was not homosexuality but a more general notion: debauchery; and debauchery was a temptation to which all, in principle at least were subject.” (Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, p. 16

...

“On the one hand, historians confirmed sodomy’s capaciousness: it means masturbation, several of forms of same-sex sexual behavior, bestiality, non-procreative sex (oral or anal most commonly) between a and a woman, or any form of sex in which conception was impossible.” (Crawford, The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance, p. 4)

...

“Initially, sodomy was a theological construct, serving only intermittently to refer to a clear variety of sexual activity or to bring into focus the behaviour of a particular kind of person.” (Mills, “Male-Male Love and Sex in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500”, p. 14 in A Gay History of Britain Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages editor Matt Cook)

...

“In the early modern phase (here roughly before 1688), the term sodomy covered any activity that challenged the ‘Nature’ of the church-state authority. The logic of sodomy’s deviation from the feudal order was precise but the category covered a wide range of transgressive acts: witchcraft, usury, political dissent, nonconformity, any kind of nonreproductive, non-matrimonial sexuality, and exogamous social relations, for example with Jews or Muslims (Bredbeck, pp. 2-23). By the late eighteen –century, ‘sodomy’, more or less, narrowed to mean a male-male erotics typified by anal penetration (buggery).” (Shapiro, “Of Mollies: Class and same-Sex Sexualities in the Eighteen Century”, p. 159 in In a Queer Place Sexuality and Belonging in British and European Contexts, editors Kate Chedgzoy, Emma Francis, and Murray Pratt.)

So I hope this information is helpful to many.

Hospitality is an important Biblical Value

While this might effectively just retread some of what I've said before, I want to talk about what the Sin of Sodom was as opposed to what it wasn't.

Because I feel, and have felt even way back when I held the traditional view, that even if you do think Homosexual acts are wrong and has something to do with why Sodom was so wicked.  It's really bothersome that many in the Church trivialize the Value of Hospitality, the Bible talks about it in way more then just 6 isolated passages.

But you shouldn't have to be in the Middle East to value it.

I really like the Hammer movie Scars of Dracula, staring the late Christopher Lee.  That movie often makes me think of Sodom.  I love the Irony, how the presumably Christian population of that small Eastern European town is constantly rude and unwelcoming to strangers who travel through it.  But the Prince of Darkness tries very hard as a distinguished nobleman to honor the old world concept of Hospitality, but fate keeps screwing him over.

It's not just when Sodom comes up The Bible is concerned with it.  God also repeatedly told the Israelites to be hospitable to strangers "Because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt".  Like in Leviticus 19.

That is why when Revelation 11 calls Jerusalem "Spiritually Sodom and Egypt" it is when they are celebrating the death of God's witnesses.

Also the Sheep and Goats Judgment.  Isn't that a Judgment that seems to be based on Hospitality?  Or the Parable of the Good Samaritan for that matter, hospitality is certainly part of the message of that.

When Jesus said "As the days of Noah were" and "As the days of Lot were", everyone wants to see that as an opportunity to read their conjectures about those days into it.  But Jesus explained what he meant, and there nothing about Sexuality or Nephilim.

It amazes me how some people will use other references to Sodom as references to homosexuality rather then reading the context of those references to see if they contradict their narrative about what the Sin of Sodom was.

Ezekiel 16:49 defines the Sin of Sodom.  But people tell me I'm ignoring verse 50 which uses the word Abomination.  The word for Abomination there refers to all idolatrous practices.  It is Biblically never a synonym for unnatural.

Then you got people who act like my argument about Sodom is inconsistent with itself, saying "So was the Sin of Sodom Rape or Inhospitably? Make up your mind?"

Okay, tell ya what, arrange for your town to gang rape two strangers passing through it and then ask them if they thought you were hospitable to them.

So, btw, I agree 100% that the Sin of Sodom is something modern America is highly guilty of.  My understanding of certain parts of Leviticus 19 has lead me to believe the Christian thing is to support open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, the Hebrew and Greek words translated stranger are their words for aliens.

Update July 22 2016: I wonder if these two cities tendency towards hating aliens even applied towards each other.  I'm imagining now a politician in ancient Sodom saying.

"We're gonna build a Wall, and Gomorrah's gonna pay for it".

The Bible does not condemn Homosexuality: Sin of Sodom

Sodom and Gomorrah

Even back when I was still under the impression homosexuality was a sin, I never agreed with the view that homosexuality was "The Sin of Sodom". Neither did anyone in Pre-Christian times, absolutely no Jewish source or commentary (Philo is the only exception, he was a Platonist) would claim it was.

I don’t believe it’s accurate to label anything "The Sin" of Sodom, I see Sodom and Gomorrah as places where it world be easier to list what sins they weren't committing. But many Jewish sources, including the Talmud and Midrashim, see in-hospitality, greed, and selfishness as the primary issue in question. Hospitality was and is very important in Semitic/Middle Eastern cultures, far more then it’s ever been in the west, which is part of why Western readers today have trouble getting this part of the point. Twice when the Bible itself later refers to Sodom it’s with this concern.

"As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.  Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.  And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good."

Ezekiel 16:48-50, and Jesus himself, when he sends the Apostles out in Matthew 10:1-15 and Luke 10:1-12, compares to Sodom and Gomorrah those who are inhospitable to his disciples. (In The Book of Judges, 19-21, there is an account, similar in many ways, where Gibeah, a city of the Benjamin tribe, is destroyed by the other tribes of Israel in revenge for a mob of its inhabitants raping and killing a woman.)

Hebrews 13:2 which famously says "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Is there to encourage Hospitality, and what Paul mainly had in mind was Genesis 18, which is part of the same narrative as Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. So that's two New Testament witnesses that Hospitality is what's in mind here.

Leviticus 19 also demonstrates how Hospitality was an important value in the Mosaic Law. It's funny actually how some modern politically conservative Christians want to impose Leviticus 18 and 20 on modern America, but won't mention the following passage of the in-between chapter when discussing Immigration. Verses 33 and 34. Verse 34 draws on the phrase from the earlier verse 18 that is the only Leviticus statement ever directly quoted by Jesus, it's what he labels it the second greatest commandment.

"And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."

This notion of reminding the Israelites that they where strangers in Egypt is something God often does when telling them to be kind to their strangers. This is why Egypt is paired with Sodom when Jerusalem "spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" in places like Revelation 11, where they celebrating he martyrdom of God's two messengers.   God is condemning Jerusalem for it's in-hospitality.

In Genesis 19, a sexual act is threatened in the narrative, but it's an act of rape, gang rape specifically, and is thus sinful regardless of the genders involved. Rape back then as now is more about Power then Sex, male on male rape particularly is about humiliation.  That's the reason for Prison Rape, those men aren't actually of a Homosexual orientation.

Yet I have critics of my view then asking me with a mocking tone"so what it Rape or In-Hospitality".  And I just rolls my eyes.  Can they really not figure out that raping a guest in your home or visitor in your town is the ultimate in-hospitality?

In various key verses of Genesis 18 and 19 the word you see translated "men" is actually 'enowsh (en-oshe') Strong # 582 (in it's plural form). Enosh is not actually a gender specific term, if the author wanted to be gender specific here he’d have used either iysh or zakar. Enosh is closer to how Adam is used, as a references to all humans. Enos was the name of an ancestor of Noah in Genesis 4 and 5, in other words we are all descendants of Enos just as we are of Adam. Elsewhere even the KJV simply translated it "persons". The Sodom and Gomorrah narrative uses it both of the angel visitors and those who seek to attack them. Genesis 19:4 says “the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:” The italics are Enosh, as seen by what I put in bold, it’s clearly NOT just the males doing this. I think it’s very conceivable it’d have been just the women actually screwing them and the men would have just watched, some people are into that sort of thing.

I've recently read some of Ken Johnson's material ('Ancient Post-Flood History: Historical Documents That Point to Biblical Creation' and 'Ancient Paganism: The Sorcery of the Fallen Angels'), he has a fixation on the so called "Book of Jasher" (which he also has an entire book dedicated to, which I don't have yet but I'm sure he makes the same statement). He believes the medieval Midrash Jasher is the "Jasher" mentioned in Joshua and Samuel, but I the real Jasher we don't have. But at any rate, when mentioning what Chapter 18 of this Pseudo-Jasher has to say about Sodom and Gomorrah, he unfortunately shoehorns homosexuality into it. Not even the text as he quotes it say anything emphasizing a homosexual nature to the men of Sodom, but instead do give many details testifying to their evident heterosexuality. Jasher 18, verses 13 and 14 reads

"And all the people of Sodom and Gomorrah went there four times in the year, with their wives and children and all belonging to them, and they rejoiced there with timbrels and dances. And in the time of rejoicing they would all rise and lay hold of their neighbor's wives, and some, the virgin daughters of their neighbors, and they enjoyed them, and each man saw his wife and daughter in the hands of his neighbor and did not say a word." Reading from verse 16 onwards however, the emphasis is on in-hospitality; it's discussed far more than any sexual issues. Verse 16 "the people of these cities would assemble, men, women and children, young and old, and go to the man and take his goods by force". And it lists many other examples of their ill treatment of visitors.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/jasher/18.html
This isn't the only thing he gets wrong either. His scholarship is horrible and I absolutely would not recommend his books to any young Christian not already well informed on these subjects.

Another extra-Biblical source would be Clement of Rome, besides the Didache perhaps our oldest extra-Biblical Christian document.  He too refereed to Sodom when discussing Hospitality.

Jude verse 7 is often cited by Chuck Missler and others as confirming the sin of Sodom was sexual in nature. I’m a fan of Chuck’s but we have disagreements, and here I’m actually going to use some of Chuck’s own arguments against him. The sin Jude is concerned with does have a sexual nature to it, but it’s not homosexual.

Here are both verses 6 and 7 as they read in the KJV “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”

I have put "strange" in bold for a reason. The irony of trying to say this is condemning Homosexuality is that the word translated strange here is Heteros (het'-er-os) Strong # 2087, which is the word the hetero part of the word Heterosexual comes from. Homios means the same kind while Heteros means a different kind. In New Testament times neither was combined with a word meaning sexual to imply orientation, that is a modern development. Both words are commonly translated "another". Chuck Missler will often make points about there being 2 different words for "another" in Greek, Homios meaning "another" of the same kind, while Heteros means another of a different kind. But he fails to acknowledge that they're not always translated "another", and that Heteros is used here.

Homios is part of what’s translated “like manner” to indicate this being the same kind of sin addressed in the previous verse. I personally would in this verse translate Heteros as Alien, “Alien flesh” (Some scholars have already suggested that before me). Essentially it can be taken to mean foreigner, and thus consistent with the issue being their in-hospitality to strangers.

Secondarily, if you believe the Angel view of Genesis 6.  We do know from various references to the Raphaim that the region where Sodom and Gomorrah was located was a center of Nephilim activity, the servants of Satan trying to repeat what they did before The Flood as explained in Genesis 6 which Jude alludes to in verse 6. 2 Peter 2:4-10 also mentions that and Sodom & Gomorrah together in the context of explaining the signs of the end times. Chuck talks about this subject a lot, including “As in the days of Noah” from the Olivet Discourse, but the Luke account of the discourse adds to that a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah in 17:28-30.

I don’t believe these were the first Angels the people of Sodom had encountered, just the first not fallen ones. And I believe Human and Angel interbreeding is what Jude was referring to. It was rather the opposite of homosexuality; it's how the intended victims were different from their attackers that is the concern.

The Testament of Naphtali refers of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs 3.3.4-5 refers explicitly to the Women of Sodom having Sex with Angels, with terminology that is similar to Romans 1 interestingly.

But I'm not so convinced of the Angel view of Genesis 6 as I used to be.

Another common mistake on this passage, do not leave it with the conclusion that God approves of Lot offering his Daughters.  He has the key value the Sodomites do not, Hospitality.  But he goes about that in the wrong way.  Lot is NOT meant to be an ideal role model, he's consistently depicted as a worldly believer.  God never condones what Lot did here, in fact the Angels there as God's agents who clearly understand God's will better then Lot does made sure it didn't happen.

What is a Sodomite?

The word Sodomite, both singular and plural, often occurs in the KJV of the Hebrew Bible. This term derives from Medieval interpretations of Sodom and Gomorrah being about male homosexuality. The way it’s used in many verses in the KJV and some modern Bibles makes it look like the text is referring back to Sodom and Gomorrah. Problem is that’s NOT in the Hebrew text at all.

The first occurrence is Deuteronomy 23:17 “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.” The reason why this is such an obviously bad rendering, is that in the Hebrew the word rendered Sodomite (Qadesh (kaw-dashe') Strong # 6945) here is actually just the masculine form of the word rendered whore (Q@deshah (ked-ay-shaw') Strong # 4948) . And it’s the same word all 5 times Sodomite occurs, the other 4 occurrences are all in Kings. Once the same word is translated differently by the KJV, in Job 36:14 it’s rendered "unclean". The feminine form is also often rendered "harlot".

The feminine form is closer to being translated accurately but not quite. It doesn't refer to just any prostitute (there were other Hebrew words for that), but specifically to Temple prostitutes engaged in ritual prostitution in the cults of goddesses like Astarte and Qedeshtu. The root of the word is "Qedosh" which means "Holy". Every time you see "Holy" in the OT it's "Qedosh", and "Holy One" (a title of the God of Israel) is it's noun form. It derives from similar practices involved in the worship of Inanna in Uruk of ancient Sumer, who later became known as Ishtar in Babylon. The prostitute (male or female) in question played the goddess while a male played the goddess’s husband and they then engaged in ritual sex.

From my studies of the contemporary equivalents to this kind of pagan practice, I've coined my own word to be a translation of the term. "Hierogamist" from "Hieros gamos" (holy marriage). It means one who engages in a ritual goddess worshiping sex act.

But I will add for the most radical KJV onliers reading this, that in 1611 "Sodomite" and "Sodomy" did not exactly refer to what we today call Homosexuality or even specifically male Homosexuality. The term simply meant Anal sex and could include heterosexual anal intercourse. There will be more on that in the next part.

But regardless of how the word is translated. The context of it's occurrences in Kings tell us it's about Canaanite pagan practices. Because it's linked to the tearing down of the Groves (phallic obelisks, named after the goddess Asherah) and High Places.