Vincent, “a pastor, monk enthusiast, and a giant theology nerd,” posted the article THE NEPHILIM! A Word Study and History of Interpretation which begins by asking, “Be there giants?”
He informs us that, “2 Timothy 3:16 famously says that all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness…So let’s pick out a really weird verse and see what God has to say in it!”
He then quotes:
Genesis 6:1-8
6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
He notes that, “To make heads or tails of this passage, we have to be able to identify 3 different groups: the sons of God, the daughters of man, and the Nephilim.”
He notes, “sons of God or ‘bene haelohim’…appears two other times in the Bible (Job 1:6 and Job 2:1) and in each instance it clearly means ‘angels.’”
I would add Job 38:7 wherein it’s even clearer that the bene ha Elohim are non-human—FYI: the LXX has Angeloi, the plural of Angelos. Also, we could look to texts such as Psalm 82 which employs the similar term ben Elyon.
Vincent notes that since, “Genesis and Job weren’t written at the same time…It could mean something like ‘men who follow God’ or ‘men who are like God,’ (aka godly men).” Yet, that would mean that men who follow God/who are like God/godly men didn’t really follow God, weren’t like God, and weren’t Godly since they were such terrible sinners that their sin served as the premise for the flood—and what was their sin anyhow?
He also notes the generic nature of the term Elohim since it, “can mean ‘God’…could mean ‘king’…could mean ‘angel’…could easily mean ‘sons of kings’ or ‘sons of warlords.’” And yet, since it’s juxtaposed with, “‘daughters of humans’ (a phrase uncommon in Scripture and more clearly rendered ‘daughters of man’ in Hebrew): then that’s part of why the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days, was the Angel view” as I proved in my book, On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not? A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim.
Also, Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined refer to a sin of Angels, place that sin to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin which occurred after the Angels, “left their first estate,” after which they were incarcerated, and there’s only a one-time fall/sin of Angels in the Bible.
Of Nephilim, he notes, “The literal translation from the Hebrew is ‘the fallen ones’” and in stating, “It appears in two other places in the Bible” besides Gen 6:4, he ends up misrepresenting Num 13 since he notes that it appears, “when the Hebrew spies look over at Canaan to see if it is safe to inhabit and they see nephilim (usually rendered ‘giants’ in English) and again in Ezekiel 32 to describe warriors that have fallen on the battlefield.”
There are 12 spies and two reports in Num 13, he generically referred to them all, “the spies” but it was the 10 unreliable ones who in their, “evil report” merely asserted, “they see nephilim” but that’s literally impossible since that was post-flood—and, BTW, God rebuked them, to death: see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
As for, “usually rendered ‘giants’” that’s actually a very on point qualifying technical term since most refer to that as a translation but it’s not.
That actually begs these key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Vincent’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
For now, I will say that he seems to understand that it’s merely rendering words: Nephilim, in this case, which he identified as meaning, “the fallen ones.”
As for, “in Ezekiel 32” well, that’s really just the usage of the root word naphal so it’s referring to fallen, dead, warriors, v. :27, “And they do not lie with the mighty, the fallen [naphal] from among the uncircumcised, who went down to Sheol with their weapons of war, whose swords were laid under their heads, and whose iniquities are upon their bones; for the terror of the mighty men was in the land of the living.”
Back to the key questions, Vicent rightly notes, “The giants idea might seem out of left field, given the English translation, but an ancient Greek manuscript grants us a little insight. The Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Old Testament from the 3rd century BC) has Nephilim translated as ‘gigantes’ or giants” yet, we need a bit more technicality.
The Septuagint/LXX, “has Nephilim” and gibbor/im and Repha/im all rendered, not, “translated”—come on Vincent, you were going so well ;o)—as gigantes which means earth-born. Also, “‘gigantes’ or giants” only begs the question: what does giants mean. Rendering three very different words with very different meanings with only one word was a terrible idea. The English Bibles that follow the LXX by swapping gigantes for giants have lead to undiscerning English readers to chase an English flaccid designator, a usus loquendi, around a Hebrew Bible without discerning that—and here’s the answer to the first key question—it merely renders Nephilim in 2 verses or Rephaim in 98% of all others (and so, BTW, never even hints at anything to do with any sort of height whatsoever)—English versions don’t render gibbor/im as giants so that’s at least one giant step forward in cleaning up the LXX’s mess.
To make the next point succinct, Vincent notes, “The oldest interpretation I could find was from the Book of Enoch. This little apocryphal book (book that didn’t make it into the Bible) was probably written between 200 and 300 BC. And obviously Enoch didn’t write it” indeed, 1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch. Yet, it correctly identified the sons of God as Angles, which it terms Watchers since that’s the Second Temple Era term for Malakim/Angels.
Vincent then notes, “we’ve got the angels and giants theory on the table” just ignore the English term giants and read it as Nephilim, and, “How does mainstream Judaism react in the coming years? They don’t seem to care for it much…a majority of rabbinic writings that emerge tend to favor readings that cast the sons of God as tyrants and the Nephilim as powerful warriors. These readings gain more and more momentum over time.”
Well, that’s a bit of a tricky statement since we’ve no much mainstream, Rabbinic mind you, Judaism literature until the codification of the Talmudim circa 300-500 BC and, again, the majority was still the Angel view granting some early Targumim and Midrashim.
He notes that while early Christians took the Angel view, “After about the year 300, the angel/giant theory seems to take a nosedive” and there’s a reason for that and that reasons’ name is Augustine (of Hippo who lived 354-430 BC (give up this “C.E.” stuff Vincent, it’s just an anti-Christian MO).
Augustine was massively influential and while his views on this issue where actually quite nuanced, see my book’s chapter about him, I put him on my psychologist armchair and determined why he went against centuries worth of a majority view. He converted from the Gnostic Manichean sect, Augustine sought to be rid of all Manichean influences upon him thus, since Mani held to the Angel view, Augustine wouldn’t.
For some odd reason, Vincent asserted, “Jesus said specifically in Mark 12 that Angels have no interest in procreation.” Yet, I’m unsure how he got that from, “they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” I suppose we could say that, as Jesus was so careful to qualify: loyal, “angels in heaven” have no such interest but those who did, “left their first estate” in order to do so, as Jude put it, which is why they’re considered sinners.
On Vincent’s view, “what happened to the giants, because if you render that word ‘giants’ to resolve their appearance in Numbers, you need them to survive a world-ending flood that the Bible deliberately says they would not have survived.” Indeed, and that alone debunks 100% of pop-Nephilology.
Yes, he goes on to opine, “The whole interpretation is just incredibly bizarre and doesn’t make logical or narrative sense. So theologians started speaking out against it.”
Yet, that’s much ado about nothing since the biblical doctrine is clear: they didn’t survive and didn’t return in any way, shape, or form. Yet, centuries post-flood 10 unreliable guys just made a up an evil report tall-tale about seeing them and were rebuked my God. End of biblical story.
It really is that simple and is why there’s literally zero post-flood reference to living Nephilim from anywhere except one single sentence in that unreliable evil report.
Vincent then does what seems to me to be much ado about nothing about that Seth looked like Adam more than his other kids, “Seth is born to Adam ‘in his image and likeness.’ Genesis 1:26 previously established that Adam was made in God’s image and likeness. To some interpreters, this was a symbolic passing of the torch. Seth inherited his godliness from his father.”
From there, he asserts, “There became two types of people on the Earth: the children of Seth, and the children of Cain. These two branches seem to be symbolic, more than biological” which is rather odd since Sethies are of the lineage of Seth by definition and Cainites of Cain.
Perhaps he knows the utter weakness of the Sethite view and so does what Sethite view holders don’t actually tend to do which is to water down what it was to be a Sethite and Cainite: they were biological bloodline lineages.
Yet, by doing that he can go on to claim, “The devout and the worldly…people of faith decide to compromise” but the issue is that it becomes to vague and generic so you can feel free to call someone bio-born in Seth’s genealogy a Cainite but Vicent’s whole point was to point back to the genealogies in Gen 5 and yet, only to go on to ignore them: he began this train of thought thusly, “Christians looked back at what happened previously in Genesis and tried to think about how this puzzle piece fit. Genesis 5 is highly interested in genealogies.”
We finally come to Vincent elucidating, “What do I believe?” a section wherein he oddly writes, “I’d rather be wrong with the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin than right with anybody else”: such as with the Bible and the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days?
To him, the late-comer of a view based on myth, prejudice and which only creates more problems than it solves (so, more than zero) is, “the most well-represented in Christian tradition, but it just makes sense. It’s logical. It fits the Biblical narrative leading from genealogy to flood, and it addresses a constant theme in the Bible: don’t compromise your faith to fit into this world more comfortably.”
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