The Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Read blog published an article titled, The Nephilim – Could Ancient Giants Really Exist? (February 17, 2022 AD) by an unnamed author about which I can only discern this:
“About me
Gender
Female.”
The article begins with the term “Huge humanoid creatures” and the second paragraph notes, “The term hanefelim…appears for the first time in the official Pentateuch in the Book of Genesis…Then, in the Book of Numbers and Deuteronomy…and the Nefilim are found in the apocryphal book of Enoch.”
One verse in Genesis reliably refers to them, one verse in Numbers unreliably refers to them (since it merely records an, “evil report” by unreliable guys whom God rebuked), no mention of them exists in Deuteronomy, Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah is found in 1 Enoch.
The word huge is as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as tall, big, giant, etc. Yet, Gen contains no physical description of them, Num contains a mere tall-tale about them, Deut is a non-data point, and 1 Enoch has them as 3,000 ells tall which is miles tall, which is great folklore but poor reality—for exact calculations, see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
Thus, we have no reliable physical description of then and so can only correlate them to huge due to it’s vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage nature as something to do with being subjectively unusually large—whatever that mean.
Yet, something about which I’ve oft warned happens next in the article which is, “I decided to use the name quoted in the Bible because in our culture this record has been considered a source of historical knowledge for centuries” within the context of, “all mythologies of the world.”
I don’t necessarily have problem with going cross-cultural, as it were, but the tendency is to water things down so as to give the appearance of cohesion where there may be none—such as swapping words for Nephilim which may not really refer to Nephilim and maybe even massaging those all mythologies contextual concepts so as to make them appear Nephilimic.
You see, the very next paragraph references that we ought to, “learn about the giants” and then to, “belief in giants.”
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?
Thus, the stage is set for merely appealing to any myth that refers to anyone/anything huge and giant and slapping the label Nephilim on them when, as I already noted, there’s no reliable data upon which to correlate Nephilim with huge or giant—since the article’s context is that giant refers to something about subjectively unusual height, which is not the usage of the English Bibles which employ it.
We get a typical list of, “creatures who lived in the distant past…evidence for the existence of giants was supposed to be megalithic structures, made of huge stones…references to the flood, giants, and fallen angels” and a reference to, “mythology that influenced European culture…the biblical giants who infiltrated our culture through Christianity” and mythology is all it ever was.
Thus, when it comes to, “great humanoids…the Greek titans…Atlas…Hercules and Perseus…huge beings…Ymir…a giant…Yeti…Bigfoot…Basque Bajasaduk…larger than humans…Cyclops…megalithic structures…giants…giants…giant…Purusha…giants…enormous heights…giants…Kihara…twice as tall as an ordinary man…great humanoid figures, and supernaturally grown people…giants…giant skeletons…giants…exceptionally tall…hominid giants…gigantism…Kihaora…Goliath…huge skeletons…” we must categorize such and note that if they are not the result of Angels mating with human then, by definition, they are not Nephilim.
A likewise article is Gary Lite’s The Ancient Myths of Giant which is subtitled, “The Ancient Myths of Giant Nephilim, Annunaki, Greek Gods, Angels & Flood are Possibly Real” (July 4, 2019 AD).
Gary Lite notes:
“After years of studying many different religions and myths, I am led to believe that most of what I have learned has too many similarities to one another, that one can not help and wonder if it all originates from one single source.
From the stories of the Nephilim in the bible, to the Greek Olympian Gods and Titans of Greek mythology, to the fallen Angels, known as the Watchers in the Book of Enoch, to the Annunaki from the ancient Sumerians, to the Hindu Vedas, Norse mythology, and Roman mythology.”
Lite notes, “There are many ancient myths that parallel to each other” but what, pray tell, are those parallels?
For one, “gods, angels, demons, giants, hero’s, flood deluges, and pretty much anything else that the mind can imagine” which is a bit too sweeping but, fair enough.
An example of the problems with watering down, Gary Lite again mentions, “parallel connection” in terms of, “the Greek Gods, Nephilim and the fallen angels of the Genesis account” specifies, “The Titans being the fallen angels or as the Book of Enoch calls them, the Watchers; and the Olympians being the Nephilim.” Yet, if anything, that’s precisely backward.
If there is such a correlation then, perhaps, it would be the Olympians being the fallen Angels/Watchers and the Titans being the Nephilim: that would be because it is the fallen Angels/Watchers who are otherworldly/gods and Titans/Nephilim being Earth born hybrids.
I would venture to say that any actual correlative parallels are due to that after humanity’s dispersal abroad, post-Tower of Babel, what had been commonly known and shared history when humanity lived in relative proximity, eventually came to be known as myth and legend as it was augmented at this or that point.
Gary Lite notes, “Nephilim, is the Hebrew words for giants” which begs the questions:
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?
He has a subsection titled, “The Legend of Giants” which begins by quoting the KJV for Genesis 6:1-4 which renders (doesn’t even translate) Nephilim as giants, and into which Lite added a parenthetical statemen in a bit of an odd place, “giants in the earth in those days; (The Nephilim) and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
He still hasn’t told us what he means by giants but follows directly with that, “The discussion of giants on earth goes much further and deeper” and appeals to, “[1] Enoch, in Greek mythology, and ancient Sumerian texts…stories of the Annunaki.”
Clearly, he means something unspecific to do with subjectively unusual height: which, again, isn’t the English Bible’s usage.
We get references to, “Sumerians…Watchers…Gilgamesh…the Book of Enoch…Annunaki…giants, also called Jotuns in Norse mythology…giants…the land of Jotunheim…the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda…Ymir…Odin…Vili and Vé…Jötunn…giants…men of great size…Nephilim…sons of Anak…giants…angels…Watchers…Greek mythology…Titans…Gaia and Uranus…Zeus and the Olympians…Tartarus…Sumer, Assyrian, Inca, Maya, Epic of Gilgamesh, Persian, Greek, India, Bolivia, South Sea Islands, American Indian…Gods or demi-Gods…hybrid humans. Part human, part god…Homer’s Odyssey…Odysseus…man-eating giants…Cyclops (Kyklopes),” etc.
Next Gary Lite states, “When Joshua and the Israelites conquered the land in 1400 BC, they either killed or drove out the giants” which is made very difficult to understand we, again, we know not to what he’s referring.
Yet, we do get hints (even though such authors shouldn’t make the readers work so hard) as he notes refers to, “Anakim” then to, “Goliath” and to, “other giants mentioned in 2 Samuel 21.”
Now, if by giants he’s referring to subjectively unusual height then yes, Anakim, of which Goliath was one, were said to have been generally, “tall” (Deut 2) and you know to what that’s subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Specifically, the preponderance of the earliest data is that Goliath was just shy of 7 ft.
Thus, whoever the, “other giants” were, they were right around these ranges.
Now, if by giants he’s referring to Rephaim, which would be the context biblical usage, then that applies to Anakim, since they were a clan of the Rephaim tribe and to Goliath since he was of that clan and tribe—and if the others are not Rephaim that it does not apply to them.
Yet, Gary Lite takes his misusage of the word giant to engage in a bit of speculative euhemerism, “Since the Israelites attacked from the east, it seems very possible that some of the giants who fled would have traveled west via the Mediterranean Sea. What if some of these giants settled on some of the islands in the nearby Aegean Sea? And what if these islands just happened to be the same islands that were supposedly visited by Odysseus during his return from the Trojan War” which is only relevant for Lite since Odysseus supposedly encountered subjectively tall personages/creatures, etc.
He then expounds on, “The Book of Enoch” whereby Nephilim were miles tall—1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah, see the book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
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