that they adorn not their heads and their faces; because every woman who acteth deceitfully in these things hath been reserved to everlasting punishment. For thus they allured the Watchers before the flood."
Testament of Reuben, 5.
He adds that these angelic Watchers manifested as apparitions to the women at the times of their union with their earthly husbands; "and the women, having in their minds desire towards their apparitions, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto heaven."
Here we see an attempt to account for the resulting progeny of "giants" by such simple and natural means as Jacob made use of when he desired to produce "ring-straked, speckled and spotted" goats (Genesis XXX). No mention is made of marital relations being established directly between earthly women and angels. Elsewhere the same writer (Testament of Naphthali, 3) he speaks of these same Watchers as having "changed the order of their nature, whom also the Lord cursed at the flood, and for their sakes made desolate the earth."
This follows a reference to Sodom, the writer seeming to trace a similarity between the two causes of the two punishments. Justin Martyr, however, makes the offence of the sinning angels to consist rather in ambition for power over mankind. He says:
"God * * * * * committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed the appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by their lustful passions; and among man they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness."
