lurk3r....Here is the thread just for you that presents much of the scholarship on the subject:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/68224/1/The-enigmatic-mystery-of-the-Nephilim-the-Rephaim-and-the-Titans
The concept goes back to Canaanite and Mesopotamian mythology and involves a kind of legendary way of recalling the past.
I have been looking into what the bible has to say. And from the things i have read, it's not conclusive as to who the "sons of god" actually are... anyone give me any input on this?
In the OT, the term "son of God" are the lesser gods that form part of the divine assembly; this concept comes straight out of Canaanite mythology. Bear in mind that the term uses a common Hebrew idiom, "sons of valor" are "valorous men" (1 Samuel 14:52), "son of murder" is a "murderer" (2 Kings 6:32), "son of rebellion" is a "rebel" (Numbers 17:25), "sons of tumult" are "tumultuous people" (Jeremiah 48:45), "son of man" is simply "man" (Job 16:21), "sons of oil" are those "anointed ones" (Zechariah 4:14), "sons of the troop" are "soldiers" (2 Chronicles 25:13), "son of the goldsmiths" is simply a "goldsmith" (Nehemiah 3:31), etc. So the term probably means "god". In Canaanite mythology, there are seventy "sons of Asherah" or "sons of El" that form the divine assembly. There is a similar concept in Deuteronomy 32:8 about El-Elyon: "When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man (= the men), he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (= the gods). For Yahweh's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance". Here Yahweh is one of the number of gods to whom Elyon allots a nation for his (= Yahweh's) inheritance. Curiously enough, in Genesis 10 the number of nations was seventy, the same number as the number of gods in Ugaritic myth. In later OT texts, Yahweh and El-Elyon were merged and the other gods became "angels" (hence the term "son of God" is translated as "angel" throughout the LXX). Since the original scheme in Deuteronomy 32:8 (which btw was corrupted in the MT to obscure the henotheism in the text) claimed that the other nations were ruled by real gods, and since the same concept is encountered elsewhere in the OT (cf. Judges 11:23-24, Deuteronomy 29:24-27, 1 Kings 11:33, Jeremiah 48:7), the notion was slighty adjusted to the view that the other nations were ruled by angels, particularly disobedient angels since they desired worship for themselves (cf. Daniel 10). The view in Enochic Judaism was a little different. There were fallen angels before the Flood that led man into sin, but the archangels apprehended them, bound them up, and threw them into an abyss for seventy generations (cf. Jude 6, which depends on this Enochic tradition). So in 1 Enoch, the supernatural beings that cause sin and false worship today could not be the fallen angels, for they are all locked away in Tartarus. The evil spirits are rather the souls of the Nephilim running amuck. The Nephilim drowned in the Flood, but because they were the offspring of immortal angels, they were immortal themselves. But because they lost their original fleshly bodies, and because they have fleshly desires, they continually desire new bodies to live in. This is the Essene view demons found in 1 Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Partiarchs, and also in the synoptic gospels and in the Shepherd of Hermas. The Society gets this one wrong, as they think the demons are the same as the fallen angels before the Flood, in conflict with statements like Jude 6. The Jewish view on demons is more logically coherent -- they seek unclean fleshly bodies because they lost their own, and they induce people to sin because they desire sin themselves. It also makes it easier to appreciate the irony in the story of Jesus and the legion of demons in Mark 5. The demons desire the swine because it is an unclean animal. And the swine go over the cliff and drown -- precisely the same kind of death the Nephilim experienced originally, drowning in the Flood.
