Civilisation as Rebellion: Fallen Angels, Giants, and the Critique of Techne in the Writings of Early Christian Converts

Abstract

My thesis argues that Christian authors of the second and third centuries used the account of the Fall of the Angels, as well as its wide-ranging consequences, to critique the Roman society in which they were treated as outcasts and revolutionaries. This account finds its root in Jewish pseudepigrapha, and describes an antediluvian union between fallen angels and human women. This union led not only to the birth of the demons, who plague mankind even to the Christians’ own day, but also to the invention of various technical skills and the subsequent birth of civilisation. Ultimately, this union led to the enslavement of mankind to the worship of idols and the demons who inhabited them; an act which further deepened this illicit union between wicked spirits and the world of matter. By tracing such a beginning to the Fall of the Angels, these early Christian apologists argued for the foundational corruption of human society, as well as Roman society which partook of it. For human society was founded by wicked and lascivious men who were, in some sense, fathered and influenced by the wicked and rebellious demons. The nations are in turn founded upon the rebellious desire to thwart the will of God and to exert power of the natural world and its inhabitants. Such ambition puts these nations directly at odds with the Christian movement, and thus shows its persecution to be both foreseen and explainable. While such arguments benefit immensely from 1 Enoch and the Jewish textual tradition, they also bear the unmistakable signs of being written by pagan converts to Christianity. The language of their writings are replete with references to giants, titans, and the various historical traditions surrounding Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In writing so, these Christian authors support their arguments with evidence that their opponents also valued, and provide a vision of human culture and society which is not destroyed by adopting the Christian faith, but is nevertheless changed to serve the true king of heaven and earth.