I will admit that my title is a bit contrived but I sought to capture three things there: I’m going to comment on the Q&A portion of a lecture by Dr. Phil Fernandes which was titled, “The History of Western Thought”—via a video posted by the Apologetics Forum of Snohomish County.
He was asked to comment on post-flood Nephilim. Given that the question was utterly un-contextual the lecture it’s a best practice to have told the questioner just that, and that they should approach you afterward to discuss.
In any case, he was asked, “…your perspective on the Nephilim after the flood. If the Nephilim were destroyed during the flood how come the giants continued?”
Dr. Phil Fernandes went directly into various theories about that but the primary answer ought to have been a question or rather, a set of them.
Note that the questioner jumped from the specific ancient Hebrew word Nephilim to vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants.
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 your usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
The usage in those English Bibles which employ the term giants is that it merely renders (doesn’t even translate) Nephilim in only two verses, the other 98% of the time, it’s rendering Repha/im.
Thus, English readers should not chase an English word around a Hebrew Bible.
So, the re-written question is, If the Nephilim were destroyed during the flood how come the Nephilim continued?”
Another question ought to have been, “What makes you think that Nephilim continued post-flood?” The answer to that—after dealing with the giants linguistics issue—would have provided us the biblical answer—to which we shall get in due time.
Now, the questioner had actually added, “One theory was that the seed remained in the women that Noah’s boys married.”
I suppose I will make this statement upfront: any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed. He meant to be rid of them via the flood but couldn’t get the job done. He must have missed a loophole. The flood was much of a waste. Etc.
Post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent un-biblical tall-tales about how they made it past the flood. And those who claim they survived the flood contradict the Bible five times.
Dr. Phil Fernandes replied:
“…it’s a big debate, it wasn’t a debate in ancient times. Ancient times, everybody from Philo to [Flavius] Josephus, the ancient Jews, the early church, believe this the bene ha Elohim, the
sons of God, were Angels that left their proper domain…”
Pause: indeed, that was the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days, as I chronicled 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.
Now, he continued directly with that the Angels, “took on bodily form” which is certainly common tradition but it’s biblical at all.
Angles are described as looking just like human males, performing physical actions, but without any indication, ever, that such isn’t their ontology, nor that they take on bodily form, shapeshift, etc.
Moreover, “cohabited with female humans and produced the race of giants” which begs the key questions above: if he means a race of Nephilim then, sure, but if he means a race of subjectively unusually tall personages then well, see below.
Furthermore, “and it got so widespread that God flooded the Earth.” This is part of why I noted that post-flood Nephilology implies that God failed. The claim is that, “so widespread that God flooded the Earth” but they just came right back—the whole bit about the flood being much of a waste, God missing a loophole, etc. I’m not implying that Dr. Fernandes is personally implying that God failed, I’m noting that the view he’s proposing—somewhat uncritically, or so it seems to me—implies as much.
Continuing, “Augustine did hold the sons of God being just the descendants of…Seth cohabiting with the daughters of Cain. I don’t think that could be justified linguistically or historically.”
Indeed, such a view is a late-comer, it’s based on mythology, and it only creates more problems than it solves (so, more than zero).
Now, be aware that Augustine wrote so much over such a long period of time that he views, plural, were quite nuanced.
Also, it seems to me, if I may put Augustine on the psychology chair, that the reason that he (essentially) opted for the non-majority, traditional, original view is that he converted to Christianity from Gnostic Manichaeism and sough to do away with its influences. Thus, since Mani held to the Angel view, Augustine wouldn’t.
Dr. Phil Fernandes continued, “But whatever the case, there is an alternative view there. So, I do think that there were real Nephilim before the flood: lots of different views about how there could be Nephilim after the flood. One is the view that there was a second leaving of heaven, taking on bodily form by Angelic beings. A second round of that after the flood, but it was limited primarily to the land of Israel. And when the wickedness had reached its Point that’s when why God told the Jews to go in and told them what people groups to exterminate.”
As with any and all post-flood Nephilim views, this one is un-biblical and there’s only a one-time fall of Angels in the Bible.
Also, God told us many times why He commanded such exterminations but never said one single word about Nephilim—see chapter, “Herem: Were Post-Flood Nephilim Dedicated to Destruction?” of my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
Continuing, “Another is that one of the daughters-in-law of Noah had a little bit of that seed, uh, I, I don’t know, I, I honestly do not know.”
That one was part of the question and it’s just another un-biblical tall-tale—God must have missed the genetic loophole, etc.
Furthermore, “A third possibility, in Numbers 13:33, the second time and the only other time the word Nephilim is used, is when the spies came back with a bad report saying that we’re like grasshoppers before them the descendants of the Nephilim are there. That they could have been just, the Nephilim could have become just a term for giant humans. I don’t know.”
Be careful to pay attention that when referring to, “the spies” within the context of, “a bad report” that means we’re not dealing with, “the,” 12, “spies” who were sent to reconnoiter the land but with the 10 unfaithful, disloyal, ones who resented that report and were rebuked by God.
Thus, there’s no reason to believe them—see my very specific Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Since their tall-tale is the only physical description we have of Nephilim that mean that we’ve no reliable physical description of them and so can’t refer to their height. Thus, that does away with the speculation about if the word, “Nephilim could have become just a term for giant humans.”
Also, recall that Nephilim being rendered as giants is just that: a rendering, it implies nothing whatsoever about height at all.
Dr. Fernandes continued, “What I do know is, it doesn’t seem like humans can get as big as Goliath it’s, today’s warrior giants—Goliath was nine and a half feet tall, King Og of Bahsan could have been a 12-footer because it looked like his bed was 13 and a half feet tall and it’s talking about him as a Rephaim, a giant—today’s warrior giants, athletic giants who could put a whooping on you.”
I’m unsure to whom “today’s warrior giants” refers but that Goliath was 9.5 is myopically based on the Masoretic text, but the preponderance of the earliest evidence—the earlier Septuagint, the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls, and the earlier Josephus—all have him at a just why of 7 ft.
As for Og, we don’t have a physical description of him (not until folklore from millennia after the Torah) which is why appeal is made to his bed. Yet, seeking to derive his personal height from his bed is actually based on various assumptions—I will direct the interested readers to my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Yet, as for, “it’s talking about him as a Rephaim, a giant” well, biblically that reads as, “it’s talking about him as a Rephaim, a Rephaim”—more technically, a Repha or of the Rephaim.
Moreover, “So, their size is an advantage, it seems like they can only get to about seven and a half feet tall. Anything over that, they suffer from genetic diseases where a little child could beat up the eight footers that are alive today.”
I’m empathetic to his point but it seems a bit overstated since 8 ft. is just about the upper height of pro basketball players and they’re athletes.
He concluded thusly:
“And so, it seems to me like there were ancient warrior giants that could have been over eight feet tall, nine feet tall. We have skeletal, there’s a lot of evidence for them but…I did not understand it but, powerful tribes of powerful giant humans would discredit, would blow evolution right out of the water. So, the Smithsonian likes to collect these skeletons between the 1830s and 1930s in America. We had thousands of finds reported in local newspapers of skeletons over eight foot tall. Human skeletons, and the Smithsonian would come in would confiscate them—and did display them in the early 1900s.
But as evolutionary theory got more and more popular, all of a sudden, they said they had no memory of these things being there.
But, whatever, the case—I don’t know, is the short answer of the Nephilim after the flood.”
One of the first things my apologetics mentor told me was that when I don’t know, I should just say I don’t know so, I appreciate that bottom line.
I thought to note that I wrote a whole chapter in my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales about such newspaper reports from the late 1800s-early 1900s and they range in levels of believability, of course. Therein, I also included an entire chapter to the Smithsonian issues and there are a lot of problem with the typical blanket statement about that.
The saddest part is that asserting that this has something to do with Nephilim the real conspiracy is overlooked: it was about racism, it was about assuming that Native savages could not have accomplished building feats which must have been done by someone else, it was about hiding away skeletons so as to not leave anything behind to which Natives could appeal as evidence of a right to certain lands, etc.
Well, overall, we have seen that there are some issues to iron out along the way—as we sharpen iron with iron—and the biblical answer to, “If the Nephilim were destroyed during the flood how come the giants [Nephilim] continued?” is: they didn’t.
They lived pre-flood, they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form and then centuries post-flood some unreliable, unfaithful, disloyal, contradictory, embellishers made up a tall-tale about them and God rebuked them. The rest is history or rather, the rest is folklore.
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