ABOVE, WE CONSIDERED TEXTS FROM THE FIRST AND EARLY SECOND century ce as part of our evidence for pre-Rabbinic Judaism, without distinguishing between authors who did and did not believe that Jesus was the messiah. This reflects the character of our evidence. References to the fallen angels in Second Temple Judaism and the NT literature follow the same basic pattern: early Enochic traditions about the Watchers' sexual sins and their punishment were widespread, but even texts that were clearly dependent on the Book of the Watchers consistently omitted reference to their transmission of corrupting teachings to humankind. The only exceptions that we found were two texts closely aligned with the Book of the Watchers: Jubilees and the Similitudes. By contrast, the relevant Christian sources all followed the majority of Jewish sources in their exegesis of Gen 6:1–4 and their use of this apocalypse.

This finding fits well with what we know about the Jewish origins of the Jesus Movement and early Christianity. In the century after the death of Jesus, this messianic movement became gradually displaced from its original Galilean and Jerusalemite contexts, but the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians (whether ethnic Jews or Gentile converts) continued to be shaped by the diverse forms of Judaism that flourished both in Israel and in the Diaspora. In the NT and early Patristic literature, we can discern the first traces of a long process by which some Christians forged systems of belief and practice that distinguished them first from other Jewish groups and progressively from “Judaism” more broadly.