According to the bible, the angels saw the daughters of men, materialized into human bodies and married the women, had children. Here's my question...did they create for themselves a human body or did they transform themselves into a human body that already existed?
The Bible does not say. Matthew 22:30 says that the angels of heaven do not marry, and since Jesus says this in connection with the resurrection of the body, the implication is that angels have bodies that do not permit them to marry. It may be that gender is a condition of the flesh and angels as spiritual beings are genderless. This is the view of the Jesus saying in Gospel of Thomas 22 and quoted in 2 Clement 12:1-6 which presents those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven as those who are "neither male nor female" (compare Matthew 19:11 which refers to those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven"). Isaiah 6:2 however does euphemistically refer to angels having male sex organs. There is also a thread of understanding in the NT that angels can assume human form. Hebrews 13:2 says: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." This is clearly a reference to the story in Genesis 18-19 (and Judges 13), which presents the angels as appearing fully human, able to eat and drink. There is also a similar story regarding the angel Raphael in Tobit 5-6. What is not clear is whether these angels really do have human form or only appear to. This uncertainty surrounded early beliefs about Jesus' body, with the docetists believing that the resurrected Jesus only appeared to have a physical body but was really a spirit, and the followers of Paul and John believing that Jesus was resurrected with his glorified fleshly body. Thus does Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110-117), writing to the church at Smyrna, state: "I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection; and when he came to Peter and those with him, he said to them: 'Take hold of me, handle me and see that I am not a disembodied demon.' And immediately they touched him and believed, being closely united with his flesh and blood. And after his resurrection he ate and drank with them like one who is composed of flesh." (Smyrnaeans 3:1-3) The developing Christian doctrine of the incarnation, in wanting to keep Jesus' incarnation a unique event, would have leaned towards treating other angelic incarnations as inferior to that of Jesus.
The original text in Genesis 6 does not mention any incarnation, it simply says that the sons of God went to the daughters, chose, and married them. It was up to later Jewish tradition to work out how this supposedly happened. We know that word sarx "flesh" is explicitly used in Jude 7 to refer to the "different flesh" (Gk. sarkos heteras) that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah went after in the same way (Gk. ton homoion tropon) as the angels that sinned before the Flood (Jude 6). The words ton homoion tropon "in like manner" are critical to the understanding of this text. The people of Sodom lusted after angel flesh just as the angels lusted after human flesh before the Flood -- in both cases there is lust for "different flesh". Ergo, the angels in both cases had "flesh" (Gk. sarx). The next verse similarly links "defiling the flesh" (Gk. sarka miainousin) with "reviling angelic majesties" (Jude 8).
But since the angels had sarkos heteras "different flesh", their flesh was not the same as human flesh. This statement is reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 15:39-40 where Paul says: "All flesh [pasa sarx] is not the same flesh [aute sarx], but there is one flesh of men, and another [alle] flesh of birds, and another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another [hetera]." Here Paul uses the word allos "different, another" to refer to differences between the flesh of man, birds, and fish. This words means differences among a single type. But in contrasting the difference between heavenly and earthly bodies, Paul uses the word hetera, which means that something is entirely different. This is the same word that Jude uses to describe the difference between angel and human flesh. Jude's reference is to the miscegenation, the mixing of types forbidden in Leviticus, coupled with sexual immorality. In referring to the resurrection, Paul also says "It is sown a natural body [soma psukhikon], it is raised a spiritual body [pneumatikon]. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body" (v. 44). And while "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (v. 50), Paul makes it clear that spiritual resurrected bodies are glorified physical bodies.
Jude is directly dependent on the Jewish Enochian literature: Jude 6 derives from 1 Enoch 12:4, 15:3-10 (referring to the angels' abandonment of their proper abode) and 1 Enoch 10:4-12 (the binding of the angels with chains in dense darkness as they await Judgment Day), the linking between the angels that sinned and Sodom and Gomorrah in Jude 6-7 derives from a lost Enoch book quoted in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Jude 13 derives from 1 Enoch 18:14-16, 21:6 (disobedient "wandering stars" that have been imprisoned) and 1 Enoch 10:4, 17:6 (the "great darkness" of their prison), Jude 14 derives from 1 Enoch 60:8 (where Enoch is called the "seventh from Adam"), and Jude 14-15 is none other than a direct quotation from 1 Enoch 1:9. So to understand Jude, we need to look at what 1 Enoch says.
And indeed, the phrase "strange flesh" (sarkos heteras) has special meaning in 1 Enoch. The birth of the son of Lamech in 1 Enoch 106:5-12 explicitly refers to the child as having a "strange" or "different" (hetera) body, having the glory of angels (cf. 1 Corinthians):
1 Enoch 106:5-12
I have begotten a strange son: He is not like an ordinary human being, but he looks like the children of the angels of heaven to me; his form is different, and he is not like us. His eyes are like the rays of the sun, and his face glorious. It does not seem to me that he is of me, but of the angels; and I fear that a wondrous phenomenon may take place upon the earth in his days...his color was whiter than snow and redder than a rose, the hair of his head is whiter than white wool....He did not believe that the child was of him but of the image of the angels of heaven.
In v. 14 reference is then made to the angels having "united themselves with women and commit sin together with them; and they have married wives from among them, and begotten children by them, upon the earth they give birth to giants, not of the spirit but of the flesh." Unfortunately, 1 Enoch doesn't specifically refer to an incarnation and does not specify exactly how the angels were able to mate with the daughters of men. In the following text, it is not obvious whether reference is being made to the bodies of the angels. Did the angels "beget children ... with the blood of the flesh" of women, or with their own "blood of the flesh"?
1 Enoch 15:3-8
For what reason have you abandoned the high, holy, and eternal heaven; and slept with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of the people, taking wives, acting like the children of the earth, and begetting giant sons? Surely you used to be holy, spiritual, the living ones, possessing eternal life; but now you have defiled yourselves with women, and with the blood of the flesh begotten children, you have lusted with the blood of the people, like them producing blood and flesh, which die and perish. On that account, you have taken wives in order that seeds might be sown upon them and children born by them, so that the deeds that are done upon the earth might not be withheld from you. Indeed you, formerly you were spiritual, having eternal life, and immortal in all generations of the world. That is why formerly I did not make wives for you, for the dwelling of spiritual beings of heaven is heaven. But now the giants who are born from the union of the spirits and the flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, because their dwelling shall be upon the earth and inside the earth. Evil spirits have come out of their bodies.
Most likely, the reference to "the blood of the flesh" is to the human women they lusted after. But there is some indication that they have physically changed: God tells the angels that "formerly you were spiritual" and "you used to be holy, spiritual, the living ones," suggesting that they have taken mortal form. The same text also refers to their "seeds", suggesting again human form. Yet, the same passage also refers to the mutant giants as the abnormal result of "the union of the spirits and the flesh," suggesting to the contrary that the angels were still spirit and not really human. And the giants themselves were physically a union between spirits and flesh because "at the death of the giants, their spirits depart from their bodies" and their spirits are held in bondage for judgment, just as their angelic parents (1 Enoch 16:1). As for the angels, they did not die -- they were simply captured and bound in the abyss.
So I don't there is a clear picture in all of this. It may be that some viewed the angels as already male with male sex organs (cf. Isaiah 6:2) and coming down to have relations with human women without any human incarnation. 1 Enoch views the angels as still possessing angelic nature and glory, but having changed their form in some uncertain way. And then Hebrews suggests that angels can appear fully human so that people may entertain them unawares.
As an aside, in the Live Forever book, the incarnation of the angels is described as "some angels took bodies from flesh" (p. 93). This phrasing is very characteristic of LDS literature, where people are viewed as having a heavenly existence before birth (similar to Origen's view), where they say Adam and Eve "took bodies of flesh" (Council of the Twelve, 1860), or people "taking bodies of flesh and bones" (Pratt Discourse, 1879). This particular phrasing is very characteristic and I haven't found similar wording in Catholic or Protestant writings on the incarnation of the angels.
Leolaia
