1 Enoch 6:2

Pseudepigrapha

1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2 And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' 3 And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' 4 And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' 5 Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.

Lactantius Epitome of the Divine Institutes 27

Patristic

But when God saw this, He sent His angels to instruct the race of men, and to protect them from all evil. He gave these a command to abstain from earthly things, lest, being polluted by any taint, they should be deprived of the honour of angels. But that wily accuser, while they tarried among men, allured these also to pleasures, so that they might defile themselves with women. Then, being condemned by the sentence of God, and cast forth on account of their sins, they lost both the name and substance of angels. Thus, having become ministers of the devil, that they might have a solace of their ruin, they betook themselves to the ruining of men, for whose protection they had come.

 Notes and References

"... Perhaps the last major writer to embrace the Enoch-inspired exegesis of the passage was Lactantius (240-320 CE) in his Divine Institutes (written from 304-311). He begins his work by affirming divine providence and the unity of God but soon turns to pagan accounts of origins and the evil effects produced by the Greek and Roman cults. The second hook of the Divine Institutes focuses on worship of humans and celestial phenomena. As Lactantius tries to explain how such religions began, he bases himself heavily on the Watcher myth, though he fails to name the source from which he drew it. The relevant sections are book 2, chapters 14-17. It may seem that he places the angel narrative after the flood. He treats that event in chapter 13 and proceeds beyond it to trace ignorance of the deity to the descendants of the accursed Canaan and to charge the Egyptians with being especially inclined to worship the stars and to indulge in other forms of idolatry. However, he closes the thirteenth chapter by saying: 'Now let us return to the beginning of the world'. The opening words of chapter 14 leave no doubt that Genesis 6:1 underlies the report: 'When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase ...' Lactantius indicates that God sent the angels to foil the devil, the ruler of the earth. They were to prevent him from corrupting humanity as he had at the first. In spite of God's warnings to the angels 'not to lose the dignity of their celestial substance through contagion with the stain of the earth,' the plan went awry ..."

VanderKam, James C. "1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature" in VanderKam, James C., and William Adler (eds.) The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (pp. 33-101) Fortress Press, 1993

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