[coksiw]

That's the first and last time Moses used that phrase "sons of God". Job is the other ancient book that uses that terminology to refer to angels in Job 38:7.

The Jewish tradition always interpreted it as angels. The Biblical literary context gives no room for other interpretation that it was angels. Some Biblical theological analysis favors the idea of just a kind of men. I think the latter encounters more problems that the former. Godly linage of Seth? that raises a lot of other difficult questions. The magistrates, governors, etc...? bunch of other difficult questions.

If we see that story narrative as simply testifying what they appeared to be to the eyewitnesses, and you simply understand they refer to angels, it is still theologically possible. A possible explanation is that what really happened was angels somehow inseminated those women with other men's seeds, and the women had just regular human children, and the angels possessed them, and/or performed signs for them, making them appear as powerful people. Basically, the angels didn't really procreate with women, but rather was all a deception, yet appeared as "the sons of God had children with the daughters of men.

This is the Jewish translation of the verse:

https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.6.4?...h=all&lang2=en

It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth—when divine beings cohabited with the human women, who bore them offspring. Such were the heroes of old, the men of renown.

The Antiquities of the Jews 1:3:1:

for many angels [11] of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good

[11] This notion, that the fallen angels were, in some sense, the fathers of the old giants, was the constant opinion of antiquity.

On the Unchangeble God, Philo (Also from the second temple period):

[1]..“And after that,” says..Moses, “when the angels of God went in unto the daughters of men and begat for themselves”..(Gen. 6:4). It is worth our while to consider what is meant by the word “after..that.” The answer is that it is a reference back, bringing out more clearly something of what has been already stated.

Philo in another place:

And that the reference to the "sons of God" here is also to the angels

Targum Johnathan:

Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days; and also, after the sons of the Great had gone in with the daughters of men, they bare to them: and these are they who are called men who are of the world, men of names.

So, during Jesus' time, that was the thought, and what was taught in the synagogues.