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Annette Y. Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology
and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12:2 (Summer 2004):
141-171

Annette Y. Reed

Annette Y. Reed

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Annette Y. Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology
and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12:2 (Summer 2004):
141-171

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REED/TRICKERY OF THE FALLEN ANGELS141

Journal of Early Christian Studies 12:2, 141–171 © 2004 The Johns Hopkins University Press

The Trickery of the Fallen Angelsand the Demonic Mimesis of theDivine: Aetiology, Demonology,and
Polemics in theWritings of Justin Martyr

ANNETTE YOSHIKO REED

This article examines Justin’s appeal to Gen 6.1–4 to explain the origins of pagan worship. In an
innovative twist on earlier Jewish traditions, he proposesthat the progeny of the fallen angels became
demons who masquerade asdeities and trick pagans into persecuting Christians. Justin’s demonization
of Greco-Roman religion contrasts both with his approach to Hellenisticphilosophy and with his appeal
to the disobedience of Adam and Eve toexplain Jewish wickedness. Analysis of his demonology thus
sheds light on hisstrategies for explaining similarities between Christianity and Greco-Romanculture as
well as his understanding of the condition of the unsaved pagan asdistinct from both Christians and
Jews.

Throughout his works Justin Martyr equates the “gods of the nations”with demons (cf. LXX Ps 95.5) and
explores the various ways in whichthey deceptively imitate the divine in order to lead unwary humans
away

* This article benefited much from the questions, comments, and discussions in thetwo forums in which
I first presented these arguments: the SBL Early Jewish–Christian Relations Section and the Religion and
Culture Workshop of PrincetonUniversity’s Center for the Study of Religion, which also provided
financial supportfor this research. I would like to thank Elaine Pagels for reading and commenting
onmultiple versions and Adam H. Becker, Daniel Boyarin, Paula Fredriksen, John G.Gager, Martha
Himmelfarb, and David Satran for providing helpful feedback and forbringing various critical points,
problems, issues, and intertexts to my attention. Aswell, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Peter
Widdicombe. And for his angelologicalacumen, demonic wit, and so much else, my deepest thanks to
Dove C. Sussman.

142JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

from belief in the one God and his savior son. In one key passage,

2Apology

5, Justin describes the genesis of this lamentable situation.Drawing on the biblical account of the
mingling of

sons of God

with

daughters of men

(Gen 6.1
–

4), he explains how the fallen angels in-seminated human women with demonic offspring and how they
enslavedhumankind through trickery, coercion, and magic, encouraging them toworship the demons as
gods.The innovative nature of Justin

s assertion becomes clear when weconsider the history of interpretation of Gen 6.1

4.

This infamouslyterse passage tells of strange happenings in the days before the

ood:

When humans began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughterswere born to them, the sons of
God [MT:

µyhlah ynb

; some LXX MSS:

oflêggeloi toË yeoË

] saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they tookwives from them as they chose. . . . The

Nephilim

[MT:

µylpnh

; LXX:

g¤gantew

] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when thesons of God came in to the daughters of
men, and they bore children tothem. These were the mighty men [MT:

µydwbgh

; LXX:
g¤gantew

] of old, themen of renown. (Gen 6.1

4)

Our most ancient evidence for the exegesis and expansion of these versesoccurs in the

Book of the Watchers

, a document within

1Enoch

(ch. 1

36) that dates from the third or early second century

b.c.e

. Movingbeyond Genesis

comments about the sexual sins of the

sons of God

(here interpreted as angels), this early Jewish pseudepigraphon describesthe disastrous effects of their
unnatural union with the

daughters of men.

Not only does it decry the violence of their hybrid progeny andproclaim the punishment of all involved,
but it also asserts that the fallenangels corrupted humankind through teachings of metalworking, cos-
metics, magic, and celestial divination, thereby depicting angelic descentas the ultimate cause of evil on
the earth.Until the late fourth or early
fi

fth century

c.e.

, the

Book of the Watch-ers

played a signi

cant role in shaping Jewish and Christian understand-

Translations of Justin in this article are from ANF 1, ed. A. C. Coxe (Grand Rapids:Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1979).1. For a survey, see Ferdinand Dexinger,

Judisch-christliche Nachgeschichte vonGenesis 6,1

4,

in

Zur Aktualit

t des Alten Testaments: Festschrift f

r Georg Sauerzum 65. Geburtstag

, ed.Siegfried Kreuzer and Kurt L

thi (Frankfurt am Main: PeterLang, 1992), 155

75; L. R. Wickham,
“

The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men:Genesis VI 2 in Early Christian Exegesis,

in

Language and Meaning: Studies inHebrew Language and Biblical Exegesis

, ed. J. Barr, W. A. M. Beuken, et al.,Oudtestamentische Studi

n 19 (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 135

47.

REED/TRICKERY OF THE FALLEN ANGELS143

ings of Gen 6.1

4.

When we survey the traditions that circulated prior to Justin Martyr, an interesting pattern emerges.
The widespread in

uenceof early Enochic pseudepigrapha can be inferred from the presence of explicit references to the
writings of Enoch in Second Temple Jewish andNew Testament literature (e.g.,

Jub.

4, esp. 4.17

19;

T. Sim.
5.4;

T. Levi

10.5, 14.1;

T. Dan

5.6;

T. Naph

. 4.1;

T. Benj.

9.1; Jude 14

15), and thepopularity of the

Book of the Watchers

in particular is suggested by themany allusions to its version of the angelic descent myth (esp. Jude 6
and2Pet 2.9

10).

Nevertheless, two of the most central concepts in the

Book of the Watchers

are consistently ignored or suppressed by theearliest authors who used this source or otherwise drew
upon its tradi-tions: (1) its assertion that the Watchers taught forbidden knowledge tohumans and (2) its
appeal to the fallen angels to explain the origins of human sin and suffering.

In the

Apologies

of Justin Martyr, however, the motif of illicit angelicinstruction resurfaces to play a pivotal role in the
aetiology of humanculture and its tragic distance from the divine. Just as the
Book of theWatchers

juxtaposes the teachings of the fallen angels with the revelationsto Enoch in order to warn its readers
against overzealous cosmologicalspeculation,

so Justin adapts this motif to critique his pagan contempo-raries. For him, the teachings of the fallen
angels serve to explain theorigins and continued practice of Greco-Roman religions: polytheistic

2. I explore the

Nachleben

of this tradition in detail in

What the Fallen AngelsTaught: The Reception-History of the

Book of the Watchers

in Judaism and Chris-tianity

(PhD diss., Princeton University, 2002). See also James VanderKam,

1Enoch,Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,

in

The Jewish ApocalypticHeritage in Early Christianity

, ed. J. VanderKam and W. Adler (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1996), 84

87; Richard J. Bauckham,

The Fall of the Angels as the Sourceof Philosophy in Hermias and Clement of Alexandria,

”
VC

39 (1985): 316, 321

22;and William Adler,

Time Immemorial: Archaic History and Its Sources in ChristianChronography from Julius Africanus to
George Syncellus,

DOS 26 (Washington,D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1989), 114

16.3. Reed,

What the Fallen Angels Taught,

88

219; James VanderKam,

Enoch: AMan for All Generations

(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 110

29, 143

47, 154

61, 170

80; idem,
“

1Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch,

60

88;Wickham,

Sons of God,

143

45; and Bauckham,

Fall of the Angels,

316, 319

21.4. Reed,

What the Fallen Angels Taught,

124

70.5. See my extended argument to this effect in

“
Heavenly Ascent, Angelic Descent,and the Transmission of Knowledge in 1Enoch 6

16,

in

Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions

, ed. R. S. Boustan and A. Y. Reed(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2004).

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