Due to his new book, Rick Renner wrote an article titled Nephilim Cannibals! Unmasking the Pre-Flood Giants That Terrorized the Ancient World for his publisher’s website—which actually seems to be a chapter sample from his book.
He begins by noting issues related to the location of Noah’s ark, “the lower slopes of the Ararat mountains near the border of Iran and eastern Turkiye [sic.], you could visibly see what many believe are the ruins of Noah’s Ark protruding from the ground. I have spent many days on location researching this site for myself, and along with others who have investigated it, I am personally convinced the ship-shaped object is indeed the remains of Noah’s Ark.”
He notes
In almost every ancient civilization, there are legends regarding the days preceding this momentous event — retellings of celestial beings that came down to earth and sexually comingled with earthly women, who then gave birth to demigods or giants. Likewise, these same ancient civilizations have stories of monsters, besides the giants, that also roamed the earth in the pre-Flood world. Some allege these creatures were produced when the giants — otherwise known as the Nephilim — began to sexually defile the animals, who then birthed hideous, hybrid creatures referred to, in general, as monsters. Although they had different names in various parts of the world, these creatures were basically the same in their descriptions from culture to culture.
The key questions are:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Rick Renner’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those two usages agree?
Well, we get (at least) one of his usages due to, “giants — otherwise known as the Nephilim” yet, it’s actually the 100% opposite, it’s Nephilim — otherwise known as the giants (in some modern English versions) since Hebrew came first.
It’d be nice to get some sort of quotations and citations regarding, “began to sexually defile the animals” since that’s certainly not biblical nor within the mythos of Bible related apocrypha or pseudepigrapha—merely asserted tall-tales sold to Christians by pop-Nephilologists not withstanding.
As for almost every ancient civilization, there are legends that are similar: that’s likely due to that pre-Tower of Babel humanity lived in relative proximity but thereafter, we spread abroad and took what was commonly known and shared history which with time, telling, and augmentation, came to be called myth and legend.
A subsection titled, “The Source of The Problem and The Purpose for The Flood” has Rick Renner quoting and noting
…the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives…they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown (Genesis 6:1,2,4)…“sons of God” actually refer to mutinous angels who abandoned their God-assigned posts in order to engage in illicit sexual relations with mortal women. And from those women, giants were born…
It would behoove such authors to stop using the useless term giants and just tell us to what they’re referring so that an elucidating re-write would be, “…from those women, Nephilim were born…”
He emphasizes, “the source of the problems in Noah’s day was the mutinous actions of the fallen angels and the actions of the giants they produced through forbidden unions with mortal women.”
Thus, “God chose to bring the Flood to cleanse the earth of the infestation of giants, monstrous creatures, and all the wickedness that was rampant at that time among man and beast (see Genesis 6:12)” so as to start over, “free of these evil contaminants.”
Rick Renner than commits a category error that violates the law of identity by writing, “Second Corinthians 11:14 states that Satan has the ability to transform himself into an ‘angel of light’…rebellious angels were entering the physical realm of earth, they outwardly appeared as glorious, celestial beings — angels of light.”
1) Satan isn’t an Angel, he’s a Cherub (Ezek 18).
2) “transform” refers to pretending to be, not morphing, since that text actually notes, “those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Thus, contextually, since those humans don’t morph, but pretend to me apostles, likewise Satan pretends to be a messenger of God but isn’t.
3) as for, “outwardly appeared as glorious, celestial beings — angels of light” well, such is what they were until they fell—and, FYI, Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology. See my book, What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
As for, “the kind of violence the giants brought to the earth,” Rick Renner included a subsection titled, “The Ban on Blood Consumption Was the First Post-Flood Law Established by God.” Of course, this is playing in to that he’s building an argument resulting in evidencing cannibalism. Yet, “the First Post-Flood Law” has nothing to do with that.
The original God-ordained diet did not include consuming animals. The post-flood Gen 9 states:
…every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea…Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Thus, this was about eating birds, creeping things, fish and not about cannibalism.
Yet, Rick Renner notes that, “From Eusebius to Josephus, ancient sources seem to agree that giants were murderous cannibals that not only ate other giants, but also ate human beings and drank human blood.” Well, perhaps they did yet, that’s folklore that, contextually, appears to have started with 1 Enoch (which is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch).
The two sources he appealed to lived 36-100 AD and 260/265-339 AD which is millennia after the Torah.
He then jumps all the way to Leviticus to quote, “whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood.”
Then concludes, “Without question, the ‘eating of blood’ was one of the atrocities committed by the giants before the Flood” but the only indication he gave of that is one appeal to a text that didn’t even imply any such thing. He goes are far as noting that such was, “a contributing factor as to why God brought the Flood…When God saw that the earth was filled with violence through the activities of fallen angels and giants, He decided to cleanse the earth through a flood.”
That’s all for the chapter sample/article.
Now, I noted the various reasons Rick Renner noted for God to flood the Earth—“Purpose for The Flood” was the doings of fallen Angels and Nephilim.
Solution one: the Angels were incarcerated as per Jude and 2 Peter 2. They don’t specify when they were incarcerated but around the time of the flood would make sense since such is when God was cleaning house, as it were.
Solution two was to be rid of Nephilim.
Yet, in teachings such as on the video Giants After the Flood? — Rick Renner, he teaches:
…let’s see what Amos 2 verse 9 and 10 says about the giants that appeared after the flood. Here’s what it says it says, they were so huge, the giants after the flood that, their height was to be compared to the great cedar trees of, of Leban, Lebanon and those trees were enormous.
The giants after the flood so thickly populated the land of Canaan that when Moses sent the 12 spies in to search out the land, they returned with an evil report and said the giants they saw were so enormous that they fell like grasshoppers in comparison to them: that’s what we read in Numbers 13:32-33.
Listen to this, “and they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched and they so told the children of Israel the land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature and there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak which come of the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers and so we were in their sight.”
But notice they said it’s a place that eats up the land and just eats everything. Well, that’s what giants were known for, they were known for consuming everything including people and drinking blood.
We are told of giants throughout the entire early Old Testament but it seems the most famous of all the giants were the Anakim. In Deuteronomy 1:28 the Bible says, “wither shall we go up? Our Brethren have discouraged our heart saying, “The people is greater and taller than we, the cities are great and walled up to heaven and moreover, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.”
These were terrifically large giants. Then we read in Deuteronomy 2…
Firstly, the terms, “huge…enormous…large” are just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as, “giants” so they’re useless.
Since he’s being vague in generically referring to giants he can water everything down and mash together impressive sounding stuff.
Amos 2 is about Amorites, not Nephilim, Amos 2:9 says, “the Amorite…whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.” He was clearly just saying they were big and strong and not implying conducting a one-to-one ratio based mathematical calculation. In fact, people who do measure cedars and claim Amorites were that tall never get around to a calculation correlating the strength of oaks—since they’re only interested in tall-tales. Plus, if they take it that incoherently literal then they have to conclude that Amorites had fruits and roots growing right out of their bodies.
He also manipulated Num 13 since he generically asserted, “12 spies…they returned with an evil report” and then he actually believes the evil report, mind you. Yet, the narrative of the chapter is about 12 spies, the reporting of an original report that’s accepted as is, then 10 of those spies prove themselves to be unreliable (with Joshua and Cabel siding tother) since it’s those 10 that present an incoherent evil report and are rebuked by God: Rick Renner didn’t mention these relevant an utterly key facts).
He also quoted a rather odd version which makes it seem like they asserted that by, “Nephilim” they were referring to, “Anakim” but it’s normative to have it read that they asserted that they saw Nephilim and that Anakim were related to them—both of which are impossible since Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form.
He also didn’t bother mentioning the key fact that, “the land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof” was a straight up contradiction of the original/as is report which had it as a good land flowing with milk and honey.
Yet, Rick Renner wants to go with the deception since he can force it to play into his fascination with cannibalism—even though there’s none in the entire Bible.
He also fails to mention the key fact that in Deut 1 when Moses is relating that event, he mentions Anakim but not Nephilim: he seems to be being practical, he’s concerned about what the real dangers were on the ground, such as the infamous Anakim, and not about some tall-tale about Nephilim.
Then, to butters, “terrifically large giants” he goes to Deut 2 which doesn’t correlate Nephilim with Anakim and only tell us that on average, Anakim were, “tall” which is subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Thus, we got non-data about cannibals, non-data about giants and an implication that God failed: and that’s what passes for Nephilology now-a-days.
See my various books here.
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