IN order to endorse the sanctity of the solar calendar, to confirm its divine source and eternal validity, attributed to angelic testimony, to affirm the consecrated appointed times, purity, sanctity and blessing, fertility and the cycle of life—all associated with fixed, cyclically repeating abstract numbers and calculations—the secessionist priesthood told and retold the story of Enoch son of Jared. Enoch, who ‘walked with God’, was transformed from human being to divine creature and ascended by God's will from earth to heaven to learn heavenly knowledge from the angels, to testify to the sanctity of the appointed times, the fixed cycles, numbers, and calculations, and to teach the secrets of the solar calendar. The lunar calendar, on the other hand, derived from a sinful source, associated with the Watchers (Aramaic irim) and forbidden sexual acts (arayot; the Hebrew roots of these two words share the consonants ayin and resh), with curses and sins, with impurity and blasphemy—all due to unsanctioned sighting and variable observation, confined by the limits of sensory perception. In order to denounce this source the seceding priests told and retold the story of the divine beings who ‘saw the daughters of man’, also known as the story of the angels of destruction who ‘followed the wilfulness of their hearts’, the story of the fallen angels, or the rebellion of the Watchers, who taught humans the lunar calendar.

This myth is concerned with ‘divine beings’ (Heb. benei elohim, lit. ‘sons of God’), who breached the barriers that separate mortals from immortals, descended in contravention of God's will from heaven to earth, were transformed from spiritual beings to flesh and blood, violated the limits of the taboo, and ‘took wives from among those that pleased them’. They committed forbidden acts of sexual union with the daughters of man and fathered monstrous giants known in Hebrew as nefilim. They disobeyed God and his commands, disrupted the order of nature, and taught men forbidden knowledge, derived from observations of the moon and the stars.