Paganism, Christianity and Celebrating Halloween-- Everything We Thought We Knew Might Be Wrong and There are No Straightforward Answers

 

Woman in a Halloween costume from the Victorian Era.

Some people’s Halloween decorations don’t sit well with me, like the really gory ones or anything with Pennywise the Clown. (Why is Pennywise everywhere? I watched a drawing tutorial for drawing a cute pumpkin Pusheen the other night and Pennywise was in the queue of other cute Halloween drawing tutorials. Suddenly we need to involve Pennywise even in cute Halloween things.) Most haunted attractions don’t sit well with me either. The darkness and gore seems totally unnecessary to me and as someone who has been reading about war crimes and atrocities since the age of 9, I don't feel thrilled by the weird gore and violence and darkness. The people who design things seem to be enchanted by something they think of as being pretend, but it’s all too real. 

But on the other hand, the arguments for not celebrating Halloween haven’t sat well with me and the alternatives sometimes leave a bad taste in my mouth. From what I have been able to deduce, the arguments against Christians celebrating Halloween seem to fall into three categories: it has its origins in devil worship, its origins are pagan, and other people do terrible things on Halloween. I don’t feel that any of these are a really good explanation for not celebrating Halloween and some are just outright false.

A Holiday About The Devil?

Cauldron with antlered Celtic god Cerunnos.

The first argument is the one that annoys me the most because it’s so blatantly false. Halloween comes from the Christian holiday All Hallow’s Day, though some of the traditions go farther back into the Celtic festival of Samhain. And Samhain seems to be where the fallacy that Halloween is rooted in devil worship starts. The argument goes that the pagan Celts were worshipping the devil on Samhain. 

But Samhain actually had nothing to do with devil worship. First of all, because they were pagans, the Celts didn’t have a concept of God or Satan. They were a nature worshipping polytheistic society (Ancient Celtic Religion). and Samhain was the god of winter, while Bael was the god of summer. The Celts believed they must worship both and Samhain was the time to pay homage to the god of winter. Samhain occurred in fall as the last of the warm summer days were ending. They believed that at this time, spirits—both good and bad—were closer to humans than any other time of year, which is why they dressed in animal skins to try and fool the bad spirits. The bonfires guided spirits back to the world of the living (Smithsonian Magazine). At least we think so. There’s a lot we don’t know for sure. Much of what we have accepted about Samhain as fact comes from Victorian era scholars who didn’t have sources to back up what they published about Samhain and the Celts. It does seem as though they relied on oral and folk traditions from the 19th century when they put together a construct of Samhain as a new year celebration for the dead and All Saints and All Hallows’ Day. but we don’t actually know for sure. These scholars stated that All Saints and All Hallows Day were instituted to root out paganism by the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious in 835 at the behest of Pope Gregory IV, but the writings of the English monk, Bede, showed that a feast for the dead had already been established in the early 700s in England. The Sanas Mccormaic, which was the foundation for many of the conceptions of Samhain as the Celtic new year and feast for the dead, was added to and changed and eventually edited over the centuries, meaning that it’s information isn’t a firsthand account of the holiday (Hutton, 2024). All Saints Day was originally on May 13 when it started in 732, but Pope Gregory moved it to November 1 in the 9th century because of the many pilgrims traveling to Rome for the day and the reasoning seems to be that November had milder weather for traveling to Rome (Faith Notre Dame, n.d.) All Hallows Day actually bears a resemblance to a Roman festival called Lemuria. Lemuria was celebrated on May 9, 11, and 13th called and it was a time to cast out malevolent spirits that were believed to haunt the living and cause misfortune (Digital Maps of the Ancient World). So while All Hallows Day might have some pagan roots, they’re not Celtic roots, they might be Roman.

Furthermore, for ancient peoples who didn’t have clocks and calendars, natural phenomena would have been the distinctive factor for placing the time of a festival. And in fall the most distinctive natural event that occurs is the autumnal equinox, so it would seem more logical that ancient Celts would have celebrated a feast on the equinox, rather November 1, which isn’t any more distinctive than October 30 or November 2. In fact, the four festivals that are attributed to the Celts and the days they were celebrated (Beltane 1, Lughnasadh (August 1), Samhain (November 1) and Imbolc (February 1), were documented during the medieval period and were speculated by medieval writers to be of a pagan origin (Celtic Religion). We really don’t have any documented date from antiquity about when the Celts celebrated Samhain. So the idea that All Hallows and All Souls Days were ordered by the pope to combat paganism isn’t anything we have proof for. It is possible that rather than All Hallows Day trying to supplant the pagan holiday of Samhain, Samhain might have been the medieval product of blending older (possibly pagan) traditions with Christian traditions by moving equinox festivities to the Christian holiday on November 1. And both Samhain and All Hallows Day may have also been influenced by Roman festivals like  Keep in mind that the Celtic period where it was just the Celts without Roman or Christian influences was between roughly 500 BC and 100 AD (Celts). Anything after that, is subject to the influences of Roman culture (the Romans had several festivals related to harvests and the dead) and later Christianity. Even medieval scholars were writing about 500 to 1000 years after the Celts were the predominant group in Europe. 

In fact, we know very little about the Celts and their religious beliefs and practices. They didn’t write anything down, so all we have to rely on are accounts of Greeks and Romans (some of which may contain significant bias or even false information— there’s still no archaeological evidence of a wicker man), early Christian commentaries, and archaeological evidence (Ancient Celtic Religion). So any attempt to definitively pin down Celtic religious beliefs, especially before the Romans took over, and practices is shaky at best. And what we have been told about Samhain is largely the result of reverse engineering the holiday from traditions in 1800s Ireland and Wales. So everything we have been told about Samhain should probably include the word “may” in it.

With that in mind, here’s what Samhain may have been like. The Celts may have regarded Samhain as the start of the year and they may have seen it as a time when supernatural creatures and the spirits of the dead were close to the world of the living. They may have lit bonfires to guide the dead. They may have set bread out and kept the doors open to let the spirits of loved ones back in. They may have dressed in costumes or animal skins to ward off malevolent or mischievous beings. So if even the traditions about the new year and spirits and bonfires are questionable, someone who is making further leap to devil worship on Samhain is on very weak ground.

Halloween=Paganism?

There is a movement among Catholics to take Halloween back to its religious roots, even as some Protestants equate it with paganism and the devil.

Many traditions of Halloween aren’t pagan at all though. They’re rooted in the Christian holidays of All Hallows’ Day and All Saints Day. Trick or treating comes from the tradition of collecting soul cakes.  The jack-o-lanterns may have also been a way to light the way for souls to get to the afterlife (Faith ND, n.d.). 

The historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence about the origins of Halloween and its lack of devil worship are abundant, especially in the internet age where you can simply google something like “origins of Halloween” and have several articles at your fingertips. This is why the “devil worship origin” story is the most disingenuous to me. If you don’t like Halloween, I think it’s better to cite that as a reason for not celebrating Halloween than ascribing to a false premise.

One step removed from the devil worship origin story, is the idea that because Halloween has pagan roots, it’s un-Christian to celebrate it. Again, we have to refer back to the history that Halloween is not solely pagan in its origins and might be rooted in the Christian holidays of Hallows Day and All Saints Day. But it does have some pagan roots as well, so I will look at that.

The Bible gives several prohibitions against pagan worship. However, it’s important to keep in mind that frequently pagan rituals, especially in the Old Testament, involved cultic prostitution and human sacrifice— a far cry from dressing up as a dinosaur and bobbing for apples and getting candy in a pillowcase. I think it is fair to differentiate between pagan traditions that are harmful and evil (prostitution and human sacrifice) and traditions that are benign (bonfires, bobbing for apples, or carving turnips or pumpkins and lighting them) and traditions that are uplifting and even beneficial (leaving bread out for loved ones who have passed). Perhaps it’s from my background of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where we have a worldwide church that has predisposed me to being more accepting of non-Christian traditions that are not immoral or unethical. The subject of cultural traditions and Church membership comes up in many different ways. It’s come up in conference talks where members are encouraged to keep and honor traditions that are in harmony with gospel teachings, but to let go of things that are not. (One example of a tradition that Church members have been asked to let go of in some cultures is a dowry. It needlessly prevents couples from getting married and starting families when the bride’s family demands an exorbitant amount and it’s demeaning to the woman to be priced out like a piece of livestock.) But other traditions I have heard about have held on among members in other countries, like social sauna outings in Nordic countries and painting a bride and groom with turmeric at Indian wedding parties. And so, I personally don’t see a problem with Halloween traditions that may have originated with Samhain or Roman festivals but are benign or even good.

Picture from an Evangelical Christian Hell House.

I also find that some of the alternative celebrations to Halloween are just as disturbing as the haunted houses. “Hell houses” are something of a trend among some Evangelical Christians wanting to get away from Halloween. But these often have all the darkness and scariness of haunted attractions— the type of thing I don’t want in my life. These alternative attractions depict people being punished for sins with things like hemorrhaging from a botched abortion, drunk driving deaths, and dying from AIDS. Some of these would get pretty gory, including using real animal entrails — things that these parents wouldn’t allow in any other setting. Judgement houses are a less gory variation that still emphasize the reality of hell and (Cohen, 2010). Again, the evil and darkness is all too real and we will get plenty of it in our daily life. There’s no need to go creating more and I feel like it drives the Spirit away. 

13th century image of costumed merrymakers dancing. They are likely mummers, a common part of many medieval Christmas celebrations.

Other people’s traditions don’t have to define a holiday for anyone. We certainly don’t use that logic for Christmas. Certain parts of the 12 days of Christmas in England used to be celebrated in a less than reverent way during the Middle Ages with drunkenness, rule breaking, burning shoes instead of incense, wearing fearsome masks to mass, and cross dressing (Lawrence-Mathers, 2019). In Scandinavia, Yule looked more like Halloween with young men going out mumming, which meant donning costumes and playing pranks. In England a schoolboy would be chosen as a bishop for a day and would marry couples for a day (in a silly voice and manner) in exchange for an offering and if the boy didn’t like what the couple offered, he could hit them with a bag of ashes. Gambling in the form of dice games was another popular Medieval European Christmas activity. And Icelanders believed that trolls were out causing trouble at Christmas time because of the very short days (Seven Medieval Christmas Traditions, n.d.) However, despite the one-night stands, drunkenness gambling and pranking (medieval Christmas looked more like Halloween), no one would use that as a reason to not celebrate Christmas. Instead, we simply celebrate it in a more decorous and wholesome way. 

Other People Do Bad Things on Halloween, So That Makes It Un-Christian?

I think the argument that other people do terrible things on Halloween is the most pervasive argument though. The webpage from Focus on the Family acknowledges that Halloween isn’t a completely pagan holiday and that it didn’t originate as devil worship, but the author states that she and her family stopped celebrating Halloween in 1984 after two young girls were brutally murdered that night (Robinson, 2026). DNA evidence linked a serial killer to the case— who had murdered multiple victims at all times of the year (Associated Press, 2009). The girls were out at night without adult supervision, and this gave him the opportunity to act on his impulses, but the fact that it was Halloween wasn’t the determining factor. Had he found the opportunity to take unsupervised children, he would almost certainly have taken advantage of it at any time of the year. Halloween didn’t cause him to commit the horrific crime. His own choices were the cause. I think blaming Halloween for these kinds of crimes detracts from the sick and twisted character of these offenders. 

Everybody has the freedom to make that choice. But there’s an illogicality to it, that adherents to this idea don’t really address. There have been brutal murders around Christmas, just like Halloween. The Covina massacre on December 24, 2008 in which the perpetrator wore a Santa suit to gain access to his former in-laws’ house and hide his weapons. He killed 9 people (including a 17 year old and multiple elderly family members) and injured three (including an 8 year old girl) (Covina Massacre, n.d.) Anthony Milan Ross shot and killed his ex-wife and their 11 year old son and 8 month old daughter on Christmas Day 2017 at a custody exchange (Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, 2026). The Dayton Christmas murders in 1992 resulted in several robberies and the deaths of six people between December 24 and 26 that year (1992 Dayton Christmas murders, n.d.) . Lacy Peterson disappeared on December 24, 2002 (Guerrero and Pereira, 2024). In 1909, 35 year old Gwen Ellen Jones of Holyhead, Wales was killed on Christmas Day in murder so brutal her head was nearly severed from her body (Pierce, 2019). The list could go on and on because these are only a few of the murders that have taken place on Christmas Day, yet no one says we should stop celebrating Christmas because people have done horrible things on that holiday. Materialism, debt, and drunkenness are still part of most people’s Christmas celebrations, but that also doesn’t stop anyone from celebrating Christmas. We just don’t participate in those activities and form more wholesome, spiritual traditions.

Halloween sadism tends to feed these narratives about how Halloween inspired or influences people to do violent or vicious acts. Rumors of black and/or white cats being sacrificed on Halloween and poisoned candy and razor blades in apples abound, but most of the Halloween sadism stories about sacrificing black or white cats or increased violent crime against children and especially tampered Halloween candy are urban legends. The real danger to children on Halloween is actually an increased risk of traffic related injuries and deaths (Paul, 2024). Juvenile Type 2 diabetes could also be tied into Halloween as a risk because of the increased sugar consumption. (For a full examination of why you should worry more about cars than cults on Halloween, read my Substack post here.)

The arguments against Halloween are typically externally focused and essentially place the responsibility on others. If other people do bad things on Halloween, then we shouldn’t do fun things on Halloween. I think the more honest choice is to simply say that you don’t like Halloween and don’t want to do anything Halloween related. But I think this where people who don’t want to celebrate and have kids can get into a sticky situation. The kids probably do want to dress up and get candy. The “Halloween is evil/pagan/leads to evil deeds” is a way to get around that with kids, though again, it doesn’t reflect the actual truth.

The Middle Road 

A CORN MAZE!!!

I do think there’s a middle road here though, particularly for families with kids. As I mentioned before, even though many medieval Christmas traditions were less-than-holy, we simply choose to celebrate in other ways. Halloween can be the same. If you don’t like Halloween or feel it creeps you out, but your kids want to dress up and get candy, you could do the costumes and trick-or-treating while they’re young and forgo the decorations and Halloween movies and such. It’s also possible to develop traditions around Halloween that you do feel are appropriate. As my ex husband and I started changing our diet to be healthier, I felt we needed something to replace the candy from trick-or-treating, so I suggested we tell the kids to leave their candy out on Halloween night and then the ghosts would come and take it away and leave them healthy treats instead. My kids loved this! One year they asked if the ghosts would come again the next night! Some years I donated the candy to a charity that sends it to deployed soldiers. Everyone wins! We have some movies that we watch every year like House with a Clock in the walls and Kiki’s Delivery Service. We make healthier caramel apples every year and a low sugar butter beer and chocolate frogs. I don’t agree with every Halloween tradition or the way some people decorate or celebrate. I choose what I want for my family.

The first time I heard about people not celebrating Halloween was when I was 9 or 10 (mid 1990s). I read an article in the paper about some Evangelical churches that had a prohibition on celebrating Halloween because they felt it was evil and pagan. I was disconcerted by the article. For a moment, I wondered if we should be celebrating Halloween. Was it really an evil holiday? And then I had a thought come into my mind very clearly that I believe was a prompting: If God really was against us celebrating Halloween, He would have told us through His prophets not to do it. And that made sense to me. Whenever God has had an important announcement about something we should do (serving missions, keeping civil discourse in person and online, building strong families, scripture study, tithing) or should not do (gambling apps, body piercings, pornography, abortion), He has revealed it through His prophets. He will do likewise if there is something truly dangerous about a holiday.

Celebrating Halloween is not inherently evil. It’s up to us to decide what we want to do on October 31. As with any holiday, we can make choices that are wholesome and build fun family traditions, or we can make choices to participate in activities that invite darkness into our lives. The choice is ours and the responsibility is ours and not anyone else’s.

References 

Ancient Celtic religion. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Accessed 2026 October 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Celtic_religion

Associated Press (2009). Police link deceased killer to more deaths. NBC Chicago. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-link-deceased-killer-to-more-deaths-melvin-johnson/1861529/?amp=1

Celts (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Accessed 2026 October 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

Cohen, S. (2010 October 27). Evangelical Christians reinvent the haunted house. Charleston City Paper. https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2010/10/27/evangelical-christians-reinvent-the-haunted-house/

Covina Massacre (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Accessed 2026 October 6 .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covina_massacre

Digital Maps of the Ancient World (n.d.) Roman Festivals. https://digitalmapsoftheancientworld.com/ancient-history/history-ancient-rome/roman-religion/roman-festivals/

Faith ND (n.d.) All Hallows’ Eve. University of Notre Dame. https://faith.nd.edu/saint/all-hallows-eve/

Guerrero, J.C. and Pereira, I. (2024). Timeline: How the Laci Peterson case unfolded. ABC News. https://abc7news.com/amp/post/laci-peterson-scott-murder-trials-in-the-bay-area-trial/2413509/

Hutton, R. (2024). The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead. Folklore, 135(1), 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282#d1e347

Lawrence-Mathers, A. (2019 December 10). A Very Medieval Christmas: What was Christmas like in Medieval Reading? Reading Museum. https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/very-medieval-christmas-what-was-christmas-like-medieval-reading

Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (2026 May 7). Father gets death penalty for Christmas Day massacre. https://maricopacountyattorney.org/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/1300

1992 Dayton Christmas murders (n.d.) In Wikipedia . 2026 October 23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Dayton_Christmas_murders

Paul, K. (2024 October 26). Red Cross of Utah offers safety tips

to keep kids safe on Halloween

American Red Cross. https://www.redcross.org/local/utah/about-us/news-and-events/press-releases/halloweensafetyut2024.html?srsltid=AYCX9vIb9xAr3yBlPg5b25do7bigKo3IoQfoWw-0MUDVTAGzNxG5aw4p

Pierce, H. (2019). The Christmas Day murder 1909: Remembering Gwen Ellen Jones. Stephen Colclough Centre for History and Culture of the Book. 

https://www.bangor.ac.uk/stephen-colclough-centre/the-christmas-day-murder-1909

Robinson, R. (2026 October 17). Should Christians celebrate Halloween? Focus on the Family. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/should-christians-celebrate-halloween/

Seven Medieval Christmas traditions (n.d.) Medievalists.net. https://www.medievalists.net/2023/12/medieval-christmas-traditions/

Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives: Sorting Out the Overlap Between Them in the Old Testament

Abraham's Counsel to Sarai by James Tissot, 19th century

(The look on her face is hilarious!)

Did Abraham marry his sister as it seems like he says in Genesis 12 and 20? It seems to be common practice to simply read the stories of Abraham passing Sarah off as his sister to Pharaoh and Abimelech and take them at face value and kind of say, “Well it’s weird but I guess that’s what happened?” There’s a lot of wrangling with the text where people say, “Well she was his half-sister” (which was forbidden by the Torah) or some accounts that she was his niece. To the problem with the Torah prohibition on sibling marriages, many say that Abraham was before the Mosaic law, so he wasn’t subject to those laws. But like sooooo many other things in the Old Testament, it’s important to remember that when scribes were writing down the stories of the early patriarchs, they were writing them down with an eye towards the laws and social norms of their time, not ours. So the details that the scribes left in made sense to them, but may not make sense to us.

I would like to start by venturing a guess that the genetic problems associated with close relative marriages were probably known to ancient peoples. Their technology was more primitive than ours, but they weren’t stupid. But their marriage customs and laws were very different than ours and when we try to overlay our marriage laws and customs onto their culture, things get very muddled. A very illuminating article by Christopher Eames from the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology explains this very well.

When we impose our marriage laws and customs– two adults from different families and households consisting primarily of a married couple and their offspring making a decision to get married and having a wedding– we assume Abraham must have just decided to marry his half-sister and this was allowed because these people were just so ignorant and backwards. I remember reading this in the Old Testament as a teenager and no one really provided any really good answer as to why Abraham was marrying his half-sister. In the back of my mind, something just didn’t seem to fit and I always had a vague feeling that we were all missing something about the situation. It turns out that we are missing a lot of things about the situation because marriage and families in the ancient Levant weren’t like ours today.

Marriages were frequently arranged or contracted by parents on the behalf of the children and it was a multi-step process– not something you did in one day. According to Jastrow and  Drachman (n.d.) in the Jewish Encyclopedia, betrothal was not an engagement, but rather the beginning of the marriage. The English word “betroth” or “betrothal” are used to describe the time between when the couple had contracted the marriage and when they began living together. Once the couple had contracted the marriage, they were considered to be legally husband and wife even though they were not cohabiting (and presumably not engaging in sexual relations at this point) and would need a divorce to dissolve the union. In the Levant though, it was common for the father of a young man to adopt a girl or young woman into his household as his legal daughter as a part of the process of contracting a marriage. And in fact this process of the young lady receiving an offer of marriage and then leaving to join her future husband’s household before the marriage has been fully contracted is seen in the example of Isaac and Rebekah (Eames, n.d.). And this is where the pieces start falling into place with the story of Sarah being both Abraham’s “sister” and his wife. 

There were a number of reasons for this practice. If a woman had been previously married and brought a child into the new marriage from her previous husband, the child would be regarded as a legal son or daughter of the new husband. Sometimes it was a matter of money. It was cheaper, basically a discount dowry. Whether a girl contracted as a bride or adopted as a daughter, her family had to receive compensation and the price for adopting a daughter was lower than the dowry. However, even when poverty wasn’t an issue, it was still common for the groom’s father to adopt the bride as a daughter and the adoption contract would come with clauses about divorce and the second father. If the woman was a slave, she wasn’t free to contract a marriage. However, if she was adopted into the household as a legal daughter, then she was legally freed and could marry (Eames, n.d.) For poor families and slaves, adoption into a potential husband’s family might have been a way to obtain a better life for their daughter. More mercenary parents may have had an eye on the money, however I can see how a family with very little opportunity for their daughter might see adoption and marriage as a way to give their daughter more security and even freedom. (There’s a possible example of this in Hosea 3:1-3 with Hosea and Gomer:

Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of herfriend, yet an adulteress⁠, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine⁠.

2 So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley:

3 And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee

 

And since the couple was regarded as legally married once the marriage had been contracted, even it hadn’t been consummated, the betrothed woman would have, for all intents and purposes, been regarded as the daughter-in-law (and legally daughter) of the groom’s father, so adoption of the bride into the groom’s family would make sense with how the marriage was legally regarded anyway.

Abraham’s explanation in Genesis 20 that Sarah was the daughter of his father, but not his mother (an arrangement that would likely have been recognized in the ancient world to involve adoption since the father would have been the one to legally contract the adoption) and the statement in Genesis 20:12 “and so she became my wife” implies a causal relationship between Sarah’s status as daughter of his father and her becoming his wife, so it seems very likely that Abraham’s father had adopted Sarah into the household with the objective of her marrying Abraham at some point (which she did), rather than her being a stepsister. Eames (n.d.) also points out that in Genesis 11 when Terah’s sons are named, Sarai is not listed among them, but as one of his son’s wives and that in verse 31 she is explicitly referred to as Terah’s daughter-in-law, not his daughter. Again, the evidence points to Sarah having been adopted as a potential bride. Whether the arrangement was more like Isaac and Rebekah where she came from a distant relative or associate’s family or she was a slave who was freed through marriage isn’t very clear. But the evidence points to her having been from another family and married to Abraham through adoption and betrothal. Eames (2022) speculates that it is possible that Sarah may have been Hittite and the strongly worded command for Abraham to change her name might have been because she had a name associated with a foreign deity.

So, in short, Abraham was very likely married to a woman from a different family whom his father had adopted into his household as a daughter as part of the betrothal and marriage contract. She was not his half sister. This process of adopting future brides as daughters by the groom’s father was very common and would have been understood by the audience of Jews to whom the Old Testament was written for.

References

Eames, C. (n.d.). Evaluating Abram and Sarai’s marriage in light of ancient practices. Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology https://armstronginstitute.org/1399-evaluating-abram-and-sarais-marriage-in-light-of-ancient-practices

Eames, C. (2022 December 21). What does the name “Sarai” really mean? Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology https://armstronginstitute.org/818-what-does-the-name-sarai-really-mean

Jastrow, M. and Drachman, B. (n.d.). Betrothal. Jewish Encyclopedia https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3229-betrothal

Giants, Sons of God, and Daughters of Men

 

Paul Gustave Dore illustration of Paradise Lost, 1882

Let me start off by saying that this is not salvific. There is nothing about the nature of giants that is going to determine your salvation. This is not an important topic– but it was interesting to me and it might be interesting to someone else. I’m also behind on this because the idea for this post started percolating in January when we were studying Genesis in Come Follow Me and I am getting around to writing it out. 

If you have read the first few chapters of Genesis, you probably read the following verses:

Genesis 6:1-2

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they werefair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

3 And the Lord said, My spiritshall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh⁠: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same becamemighty men which were of old, men of renown.

The earth also was corruptbefore God, and the earth was filled with violence⁠.

12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violencethrough them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth⁠.

You might have wondered, who were the sons of God and the daughters of men if all of humanity came from Adam and Eve? And who are these giants and why are they important to the subject of the sons of God and daughters of men? Frequently the sons of God having children with the daughters of men is interpreted as male angels having sexual relationships with human women, with the giants being the result of such pairings. The Book of Enoch, a widely read writing from the last few centuries BC, puts forth this narrative and also says that some of these angels taught humans forbidden knowledge like metal working, weapons-making, and cosmetics. The Book of Enoch, far from being written by Enoch himself, was written in the Second Temple period from the 6th century BCE to 70 AD (Marina, 2026). The Book of Giants was part of the discoveries in Qumran (between 1947 and 1956) and it is an incomplete account of the exploits of the giants and Enoch’s interpretations of their dreams and his attempts to intercede with God on their behalf to prevent their destruction. The Book fo Giants was heavily influenced by Near Eastern mythology, which is why one of the giants is named Gilgamesh (Wise et al., 1996). 

But none of this really make things clearer. Many religions believe that angels are spirits without bodies. (Latter Day Saints believe that some types of angels have bodies– see Doctrine and Covenants 129, but there is a general interpretation, which has never been discouraged or clarified, that these types of angels are not procreating. That seems to be for mortal bodies and exalted bodies.) So if angels don’t have bodies, then how would they procreate with human women? 

I would like to propose a different way of looking at the Old Testament, particularly the very early books of Genesis. I understand that many Latter Day Saints (as well as other Christians) believe in the Young Earth Theory that the Earth is 7,000 years old and all of humanity falls within that timeframe as well. However, it is possible that the scientific dating of the Earth is correct and that the first humans emerged somewhere around 300,000 years ago (and quite possibly in Africa). If that were the case, then the story of humans would be much older than 7,000 years and the stories about the first humans would have been passed down for thousands and thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of years. In this case, some things might get “lost in translation” so to speak because they would be relating events that even people in antiquity would be very far removed from and have no experience with, such as an Ice Age, strange creatures like mammoths or woolly rhinos, and other human species, namely Neanderthals.

Current dating of the Book of Genesis places its writing around 500 BCE, though tradition states that Moses wrote it around the 13th or 14th centuries BCE. While Genesis and the four other books of the Pentateuch were likely written after the Babylonian captivity, they were also likely based on much older oral traditions (Schachterle, 2026). I’d also like to point out that much of the writings of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is the result of centuries of scholars copying sacred records and inspired writings so that we could have them today (Vickers, 2021). Even if we were to take the most compressed possible timeline of 7,000 years of Earth’s history and Moses writing Genesis in approximately 1400 BCE, Genesis would still be extremely removed from the first humans and have to rely on oral traditions or maybe (maybe) earlier written records. If we accept the possibility of a 300,000 year timeline, the potential for direct accounts in Genesis decreases dramatically. Latter Day Saints believe that Adam had a written language and kept records (Moses 6:5-6), but these records would have been extremely ancient, likely written in another (possibly extinct) language and discuss events of a paleolithic world that would be very hard to understand for people in antiquity. 

I would like to suggest that such records by Adam may have indeed been revealed to Moses and he may have translated them similar to the way Joseph Smith  described translating the Book of Mormon. Such records by the hand of Adam would run into the same problem as other scriptures that were about things far in the past or far in the future: difficulties with one-to-one translation of words and concepts, abridgement, and completely foreign objects, animals, etc. It would present a problem similar to that of current readers trying to understand the Book of Revelations: a writer from thousands of years ago trying to describe things from the future which he had absolutely no frame of reference for (possibly tanks, jets, 20th or 21st century military body armor, etc.) There was absolutely no word for something like “airplane” or “tank” for John the Revelator, so he used words that he had available to him, which don’t make as much sense to us. Likewise there seems to be no English word for a “curelom” or “cumom” in the Book of Mormon. What kind of word would a 19th century writer be able to use to effectively describe a still extant colony of Ice Age animals like a Giant Ground Sloth or an Ice Age tapir or even less exotic animals like llamas, alpacas or vicunas to a 19th century audience? So what kind of word would someone from the 13th-14th century BCE or even the 5th or 6th century BCE use to describe Neanderthals, who, if we assume accuracy in the scientific record, would have co-existed with humans for about 260,000 years? A writer in antiquity might possibly use words that would describe their physical features or the fact that they were like homo sapiens, but not of the same level of development and intelligence. So let’s now consider how “giants” and “daughters of men” might fit into such a framework.

Neanderthals lived on the Earth from about 430,000 years BCE and 40,000 BCE. They are often thought to be shorter, stockier and stronger than homo sapiens, though some more recent research indicates that they may have been not only muscular and stocky, but also a little taller than homo sapiens (Helmuth, 1998). Either way, they had wider shoulders, thicker bones and a more robust physique than homo sapiens. It also seems like their brains may have been more to vision and body control with less brain capacity left over for social interactions and complex cognition (Stromberg, 2013.) There is also evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals (Cosnefroy et al., 2025). This could have led to the rise of certain types of deadly diseases among Neanderthals and contributed to their decline (Liberski, 2013). 

I think it’s possible that “in those days there were giants” may have referred to a time when homo sapiens and Neanderthals occupied the same lands, the Neanderthals being the “giants”. They would have been powerful hunters and fighters, which could also explain the phrase “mighty men which were of old”. However, they lacked the cognitive abilities of homo sapiens. Now, Latter Day Saints believe in theosis and that the entire human race are spirit sons and daughters of God the Father and have the potential to become like Him. So while homo sapiens have the ability to understand more complex ethical concepts and make covenants with God and become like Him, it is very possible that Neanderthals did not. Thus the phrase “sons of God” might refer to homo sapien men and “daughters of men” (“men in the King James Bible often meant “human”) might  have referred to Neanderthal women. Offspring from these relationships may have been larger and stronger than homo sapien children, but also lacked the cognitive abilities to be able to participate in worshipping God and creating covenant marriages and families. But why the particular arrangement of homo sapien men and Neanderthal women? Well, genome analysis might have a clue for us about that. 

About 2% of the genome of people descended from those living outside Africa is derived from Neanderthals. Courtship and also violence may have both been ways that humans and Neanderthals ended up interbreeding. The first Neanderthals and humans probably made contact with each other around 250,000 years ago, but it was not these first sporadic encounters that led to the intermingling of DNA that occurred. Between about 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, humans started making a big push out of Africa and into Europe. It was during this time that interbreeding between humans and neanderthals became relatively frequent. While humans have DNA from Neanderthals, none of it is mitochondrial DNA that is inherited from the mother. There aren't any homo sapiens genes in the genetic material from Neanderthals that has been analyzed so far. While this could be due to quirks in the availability of Neanderthal DNA samples, the fact that the passage of genetic material only seems to go one way, from Neanderthal fathers to human mothers, indicates that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were not very compatible species and that the viability or fertility of the offspring may have depended on the pairing of the parents. Female homo sapiens and Neanderthal men may have been more likely to produce viable offspring with female hybrids being more likely to be fertile and males possibly having a greater likelihood of sterility. Homo sapiens men and Neanderthal females though, may have been less likely to produce viable or fertile hybrids, thus reducing the likelihood of finding homo sapiens genes in the Neanderthal genome. The continual interbreeding between homo sapiens and Neanderthals resulted in more sterile offspring and a decline in Neanderthal populations, which may have led to more Neanderthal inbreeding, likewise resulting in more sterile offspring (Ashworth, 2022).

The specific arrangement that Genesis mentions as being a problem, sons of God and daughters of men, is reminiscent of this nonviable arrangement of homo sapiens males and Neanderthal females. I think it is possible that the record in Genesis is alluding to a time in very far distant history when the future of humanity hung in the balance because of homo sapiens pairing up with Neanderthals– and it might . The statement that “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth”, might hint at the mixing of the human and Neanderthal genomes. That “the earth was filled with violence” might also offer an insight that some of the pairings between homo sapiens and Neanderthals may not have been peaceful. There could have been a great deal of conflict that was also contributing to the potential destruction of homo sapiens. If homo sapiens were following the example of Neanderthals and engaging cannibalism on a relatively widespread scale as well, this could have likewise presented a threat to human existence.

What about the Flood?

Sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle began in the cycle of glacial and interglacial periods. By about 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle was underway, increasing the Earth’s temperature by about 10 degrees (Eldredge and Biek, 2019). Hypothetically speaking, this could have led to significant flooding in the land and that could point to the flood of Noah. A continual state of violence along with interbreeding between Neanderthals and homo sapiens could have placed humanity at a point where they were heading towards destroying themselves whether a flood came or not. 

Wrapping Up

Again, none of this is salvific. You don’t need any of this. However, I think there are some relevant points to an exploration of a biblical topic in this way. For one thing, the Bible doesn’t have to be a straightjacket that we tie ourselves into. We can look at outside information from history and science to help us understand the Bible better. We can seek truths from multiple sources to help us understand the whole truth better. And it is a reminder of the importance of following the Lord’s commandments. There is evidence from science and the Bible that humanity’s history may have hung in the balance from a failure to follow the Lord’s commandments.

References

Ashworth, J. (2022 October 31). Neanderthal extinction may have been caused by sex, not fighting. Natural History Museum. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/october/neanderthal-extinction-maybe-caused-sex-not-fighting.html 

Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al. (2025). Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3

Eldredge, S. and Biek, B. (2019). Glad you asked: Ice ages– what are they and what causes them? Utah Geological Survey.

https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/

Helmuth H. Body height, body mass and surface area of the Neanderthals. Z Morphol Anthropol. 1998;82(1):1-12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9850627/

Liberski, P. P. (2013). Kuru: A Journey Back in Time from Papua New Guinea to the Neanderthals’ Extinction. Pathogens, 2(3), 472-505. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens2030472

Marina, M. (2026 March 8). Book of Enoch: Summary, who wrote it, when written. Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/book-of-enoch/

Schachterle, J. (2026 March 18). When was Genesis written? (Debates and evidence). Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/when-was-genesis-written/

Stromberg, J. (2013 March 12). Science shows why you’re smarter than a Neanderthal. Smithsonian Magazine.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-shows-why-youre-smarter-than-a-neanderthal-1885827/  

Vickers, B. (2012 May 31). From the hands of scribes. Tyndale House Cambridge. https://tyndalehouse.com/2021/05/31/from-the-hands-of-scribes/

Wise, M., Abegg, M. and Cook, E. (1996). The Book of Giants: Introduction and commentary. The Gnostic Society Library (http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm