AISH styles itself, “the largest Jewish learning site” and published an article by Dovid Rosenfeld tiled, “Nephilim – Giants in the Torah” (May 6, 2022). Coming from a Jewish, Hebrew, perspective—as both Rosenfeld and I do—I looked forward to more than the typical pop-research based neo-theo-sci-fi about Nephilim.
Sadly, from the very first sentence we have problems since Rosenfeld employs the vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage English word “giants” (which was also used in the title) without bothering to define it. Thus, we have to guess to what he is referring—which turned out to be something unspecific about subjectively unusual height—and also face that he doesn’t seem to know what the English word “giants” is doing, is meaning, in certain English Bibles—stand by.
The key question that set the article off was, “The Torah talks about giants in Biblical times – in the times of Noah, Moses, and King David. What are their origins and what happened to them?” This alone tells us that confusion is being caused by exclusively reading certain English Bibles since the “giants” of Noah’s time and the “giants” of Moses’ and David’s times are in no way the same personages—stand by.
We’re told, “The Aish Rabbi Replies” and Dovid Rosenfeld is described as being the author of, “a riveting, fast-paced fantasy novel” which, as is the case with many pop-researchers who write pop-Nephilology, speaks volumes since the line between their supposed biblical Nephilology and their fiction is simply indistinguishable: both are very exciting, but both are very unbiblical.
Rosefeld notes, “Giants are mentioned many times in the Torah, primarily in the antediluvian world (before the Flood)” which means that by “many times” he must mean only once since that is exactly how many times “giants” are referenced “in the antediluvian world (before the Flood).”
Oddly, he referred to “giants” but when he quoted Genesis 6:4, as “adapted from ArtScroll Stone Chumash translation,” thusly, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward when the sons of the powerful ones would consort with the daughters of man, who would bear to them. They were the mighty who, from old, were men of devastation.”
Odder still, he prefaced the quote thusly, “Genesis 6:4 records that when man began straying from God” but that’s not what the text states, it states, as per the Jewish Publication Society’s (JPS) version, “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives, whomsoever they chose.”
Perhaps it is implied, it certainly was inferred, that it was, “when man began straying from God” but let us be careful about what the text actually provides as a premise.
In any case, after telling us about “giants…giants…giants,” etc., he notes, “‘Nephilim’ literally means fallen ones. Most commentators follow the opinion in the Midrash that ‘the sons of the powerful ones’ (bnei ha′elohim) actually refer to the sons of the judges and noblemen.”
Now, “the opinion in the Midrash” is just that, an opinion, and an opinion that came about millennia after the Torah was written and within a Midrash which means that opinion is a sermonizing homily—not a Bible commentary in any traditional sense of the term.
It is also unelucidated what was (then, chronologically) wrong with (exclusively male) judges of nobles marrying women. Dovid Rosenfeld has it that they, “‘fell’ from their appropriate spiritual level” yet, there is nothing in the Torah about any such class/status issues—especially when it comes to marriage.
He then notes, “There is, however, an opinion in the Midrash that they were actually fallen (but not rebellious) angels – who begat a race of physical giants” which is utterly unsubstantiated—unless, that is, someone for some odd reason wants to believe some utterly unreliable guys who are said to have presented an “evil report” and were rebuked by God, Rosenfeld does believe them and bases his Nephilology on them.
Note that Gen 6 does not physical describe them at all, so those who call them “giants” in terms of height must exclusively rely on Num 13:33 and so must rely on guys who contradicted Moses, Caleb, Joshua, God, and the rest of the whole Bible—to just mention a couple of problems with their mere assertions (I will mention another as we progress).
Now, I do hear from King James only proponents that since the KJV has “giants” then that is all we need to know. Yet, there are at least two issues with which to deal: 1. “giants” is still a vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage term and one cannot simply suppose what it must mean and 2. jumping from a reference to “giants” to concluding they were unusually tall is committing the word-concept fallacy.
Rosenfeld continues, “it is clear that the Nephilim were physically superior to common man. The above verse describes them as ‘mighty’” which is incoherent since there are plenty of mighty (gibbor/im) people in the Bible who were not physically superior to common man, such as Boaz (Ruth 2:1).
Dovid Rosenfeld then appeals to that in, “Numbers 13:33 the Spies claim that they felt like grasshoppers before the Nephilim,” claim indeed, as such is all that it was: it was a fear-mongering, scare-tactic tall tale on the level of, “Don’t go in the woods!”
Rosenfeld asks and answers, “What happened to these giants? Presumably, most were wiped out during the Flood.” Well, that “most,” not all, “were wiped out during the Flood” contradicts Genesis 7:7, 23; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; and 2 Peter 2:5.
He tells us, “Indeed, their wicked presence was one of the main reasons God saw fit to destroy the earth” but he actually does not tell us how any Nephilim somehow made it past the flood (a view which implies that God failed)—stand by.
Yet, based exclusively on Num 13:33—one of the evil report’s assertions—he declares, “many remained afterwards.”
He continues with, “Tribes of giants are mentioned several times in connection to the conquest of the Land of Israel” and mistakenly notes, “the Spies describe themselves as feeling like grasshoppers in their presence” but even that’s incorrect: that was not “the Spies,” in toto, since there were 12 spies but that was asserted by 10 of them: the 10 unfaithful, disloyal, contradictory embellishing, and rebuked ones.
Dovid Rosenfeld has jumped from the vague English word “giants,” to the specific Hebrew word “Nephilim,” and next tells us, “Torah itself attests to three giants (‘sons of the giant [anak]’)…Moses…describes them as: A great and lofty people, children of giants, that you knew and of whom you have heard: ‘Who can stand up against the children of the giant?’ (Deut. 9:2, Art. trans.).”
He does not seem to realize that he moved from Nephilim to Anakim (a subgroup/clan of Rephaim). The brackets in the quotation are in the original (either Rosefeld’s or Art. trans’) and shows that, this time around, “giants” is not rendering (not even translating) Nephilim but is rendering Anak/im.
Thus, forget what he has been implying by giants, this is about sons of Anak, the Anakim, about children of Anakim. He does, at this point, not even bother telling us the one actual contextually relevant thing we are told about them which is that they were “tall”: subjective to being compared with the average Israelite male who in those days was 5.0-5.3 ft. tall.
Dovid Rosenfeld then notes, “There were several other tribes of giants (or near-giants)…the Eimim (lit., ‘fearful ones’ – Deut. 2:10) and the Zamzumim (v. 20). These nations were described as ‘great, numerous, and tall – as the giants’ (vv. 11 and 21)…Most notably, however, were the Refa′im tribes…”
This is actually incoherent since he clearly does not seem to realize that Eimim and Zamzumim are just regional a.k.a.s for Refa′im/Rephaim and that some of them are being compared to the Anakim clan, “tall – as the,” with “giants” merely rendering Anakim.
Now, I had noted that he actually doesn’t bother telling us how any Nephilim somehow made it past the flood yet, he next comes to that, “How did these giants survive the Flood?”
But wait, by “these giants,” he was referring to Rephaim who are not the “giants” who would have survived the flood, that would have been Nephilim. Yet, he may think they are but only by two extensions: if (and that’s a big IF) he actually believes the evil report (which he, sadly, does) and takes what it states about Anakim and (somehow, for some odd and unknown reason) applies a tall tale about Anakim to all Rephaim.
In any case, “One possible explanation could be based on the opinion in the Talmud and Midrash that the Flood did not reach the Land of Israel (see Zevachim 113a, Bereishis Rabbah 33:6; see also Rashi to Niddah 61a).” I already offered some facts about Midrashim and now, be aware that by Talmud (he does not tell us he is referring to the Talmud Bavli/Babylonian Talmud rather than the Talmud Yerushalmi/Jerusalem Talmud) we are dealing with a concoction of oral traditions, interpretations of such, rules, laws, folklore, etc., etc., etc. that was put into writing 300-500 years AD—millennia after the Torah.
In any case, the scope of the flood is utterly irrelevant to Nephilology since they either did not survive because the flood was global or because they lived in the flooded region—see my book Noah’s Flood, the Deluge, Global or Local, Vol I: A Historical Survey of Views from BC to AD
Yet, just as with the opinions, plural, of the Midrash—which conflicted—“This, however, is inconsistent with the Talmud there that although the water itself did not reach Israel, its inhabitants died from the water’s burning heat. Other commentators also suggest that…water spread from other locations, drowning the inhabitants.”
He notes, “Some suggest that even so, giants such as Og were powerful enough to withstand the indirect effects of the Flood – see Maharsha to Niddah 61a.” Firstly, “giants such as” biblically reads as, “Rephaim such as.” Secondly, Og did not live until millennia after the flood and it is only Babylonian Talmudic (and Midrash) folklore which places him at the time of the flood.
Dovid Rosenfeld adds, “Another possibility is based on two other passages in the Talmud. Talmud Niddah 61a states that Og and Sihon were brothers, grandsons of one of the fallen angels” at which point we can stop to note that this is just adding folklore to folklore.
In fact, that Sihon was a “giants,” as Dovid Rosenfeld misuses that term, is even less certain than that Og was one—we actually have no physical description of Og (not until millennia after the fact, in fact). Biblically, Sihon would have been a “giant” if he was a Repha.
In any case, “Sihon and Og were thus two surviving giants from the antediluvian era, who possibly begat and ruled over races of giant humans, somewhere near their size.” Yet, we have no indication of 1. “races of giant humans” nor of anyone 2. “somewhere near their size” because 1a. there is only one race, the human race, 1b. those “races” were Rephaim humans, 1c. we are only given two specific heights in the Bible and vague terminology such as “tall,” and 2a. since we do not know either of their sizes/heights we cannot rightly refer to their size nor compare anyone to their unknown size—stand by.
Rosenfeld tells us, “in spite of their size, the Biblical giants were not great warriors” since they are “defeated in battle by lesser humans” about which he directs us to, “Genesis 14:5, Deuteronomy 2:21 and Rashi to Numbers 21:27.”
Genesis 14:5, JPS, reads, “And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim”: note that nothing is denoted about height whatsoever, this is just about a.k.a.s for Rephaim (again, only some of whom were subjectively “tall”) being defeated.
Deuteronomy 2:21 is a text we already encountered and which elucidates what I just noted, “a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead.”
Numbers 21:27 reads, “Wherefore they that speak in parables say: Come ye to Heshbon! Let the city of Sihon be built and established!,” about which, as per the M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann (London, 1929-1934 AD) version of Rashi (an acrostic for Rabbi Shlomo/Solomon ben Yitzchaki/Isaac, 1040-1105 AD), “על כן (more lit., about this) — about this war which Sihon waged against Moab, יאמרו המשלים THEY THAT SPEAK IN PARABLES SAY — One of these was Balaam of whom it is said, (Numbers 23:7), ‘And he took up his parable.’ המשלים THEY THAT SPEAK IN PARABLES — The plural המשלים refers to Balaam and his father Beor (see Rashi on Numbers 24:3). They said — באו חשבון ‘COME TO HESHBON,’ — For Sihon had been unable to capture it, and he went and hired Balaam to curse it, and this is the meaning of what Balak said, (Numbers 22:6) ‘For I know (by what has already happened) that whomsoever thou blessest is blessed, [and whomsoever thou cursest is cursed]’ (Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 24). תבנה ותכונן IT WILL BE BUILT UP AND ESTABLISHED, [SIHON’S CITY] — Heshbon will be rebuilt under Sihon’s name to be his city.”
I know not why Rosenfeld noted this comment.
In any case, he concludes, “Perhaps they relied on their massive size and never bothered studying the art of war” yet did so prior to demonstrating that any of them were of even of subjectively “massive” size.
He then ponders, “What happened to the giants who remained after the Flood?” about which I must note, again, that if he is referring to Nephilim then nothing happened to the after the flood since they did not remain and if to Rephaim, by any other name, then they were slowly widdled down.
Dovid Rosenfeld refers to that, “both the Torah and the Spies attested to” that “What remained were the giants in Israel proper” yet, the Torah attests that “the [10] Spies” were utterly unreliable—and no one can appeal to anything except their evil report for any indication of post-flood Nephilim in any way, shape, or form.
Or, perhaps, they are forced to exclusively rely on them for a premise upon which to weave tall tales—as Rosenfeld has done—via which they erroneously pull other text into the mix that mix about as well as olive oil and water.
He notes, “We have no record of Joshua and the Israelites fighting giants” but, again, if he means Nephilim then of course not since they did not exist at the time and if Rephaim then of course there are records of him doing just that (Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16 have him active at the Valley of the Rephaim) but if he means unusual size then no, no record of that either.
Rosenfeld then tells us of other “giants” by quoting Amos 2:9, “And I destroyed the Emorite [aka Amorites] from before them – whose height was like the height of cedar trees and who was mighty as oaks – and I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from below.”
I can only imagine that only someone suffering from that which I term Gigorexia Nervosa (an obsessive desire to see giants and making them up where they are nowhere to be seen) would assume that Amos is implying a mathematical one-to-one ratio-based comparison when he told us that they were big and strong.
In fact, I’ve encountered many pop-researchers who infer that a mathematical one-to-one ratio-based was being implied but none of them ever bother elucidating what the mathematical one-to-one ratio-based results are when comparing the strength of a person versus the strength of an oak.
An example comes from a discussion with my acquaintance Eric Rolon (actor and Bible researcher), I pointed this out since he was arguing in this direction and this is the key portion of the interaction—from the video Eric Rolon & Ken Ammi sharpening iron with iron on Nephilology:
Ammi: I found strange is that you quoted us statistics about cedars, why didn’t you talk to us about oaks…if you—I’m gonna say, “for some odd reason”—think that Amos was implying to us that we should conduct a ratio-based mathematical calculation correlating the height of cedars to the height of the Amorites: where’s the calculation correlating their strength to the strength of an oak? That’s what I want to see.
Rolon: I’m not saying that he’s giving us a mathematical calculation which we should then use to then infer the height. What I’m saying here is when Amos says they’re as tall as cedars, the statement he’s making right there is that they are not subjectively tall but objectively tall, and not just objectively tall but powerful, taller than anybody else that they’ve seen.
Ammi: Oh yeah, of course, that’s a given, that’s a given [because sure, why not, let them be the tallest: that still does not tell us how tall they were]. So, the way I would put it is this: I think it’s obvious Amos was telling us that they’re big and strong, that’s just obvious. To then, if somebody, as many people do, take a step to literally measuring cedars and saying “There you go, now we know how tall they were,” that to me is unwarranted.
Nobody would imagine any such thing unless they were suffering from what I call Gigorexia Nervosa, which is, they want to construct people that were very unusually tall instead of just the common sense reading, “Oh yeah, these guys were big and strong.”
Rolon: …these guys were humongous.
Ammi: So, that’s why I started by asking for the calculations on the strength of an oak.
Rolon: I don’t know those numbers on the top of my head.
Ammi: But see…you will have to end up claiming that they are thus and such strong because of oak is thus and such strong [cross talk].
Rolon: I don’t have to get into the to the strength of them, I can just say that they were tall as that because Amos says [cross talk].
Ammi: Wait a minute, hold on, hold on, you’re taking every word as it’s written and that’s what is written: they are as strong as oaks. So, at some point you will have to face the calculation and figure out, “Hey, I know that they were this strong because I know that oaks at that time were this strong.” You’re going to have to do that.
Rolon: Okay, then I can go ahead and do that.
Ammi: Right, exactly, but I’m saying there’s a reason why nobody’s bothered doing that: because they don’t care about that, they just want to tell people about [cross talk].
Rolon: I care about it because I think Aamos said [cross talk]
Ammi: All I’m saying is that you’re not interested enough to have done that until I pointed it out. And I’m just telling you nobody has because all they care about is making people tall. They don’t care about their actual description.
Rolon: When I see them [him] say, “A people great and tall,” I assume that when he’s saying “great” he’s either talking about their physical size or, he’s talking about the number of them or, he’s talking about both.
Ammi: Right, right.
Rolon: And it dawns on me now that I saw “cedar” when I read that, I didn’t see “oak” but now you can you can bet your [posterior] I’m going to be looking up how strong this is.
Ammi: This is just a caution, I’m just cautioning, because what you just said is incredibly important: you didn’t even notice 50% of what Amos told you about them because your focus is so much on looking for giants that you didn’t literally even see half a full 50% of the description.
Dovid Rosenfeld notes, “giants…were wiped by some of God’s smallest
agents – the hornets” with reference to “And also the hornets will the Lord your God send among them, until the remaining ones and the hidden ones are destroyed before you (Deut. 7:20)” and, “the main targets of the hornets were the giants…God thus spared the Jews much of the rigors of battle – especially against the giants – using insects…with their defeat ended the saga of angel-bred giants dwelling among man.”
Well, there are no indications of Nephilim—“angel-bred giants”—ever dealing with insects and especially not post-flood. And the premise promises more than it can deliver since Deut 7 is generic in referring to a variety of plural, “nations.”
We now come to a key point I have been peppering all along as he asks, “Just how tall were the
giants?” He merely asserts, “the Torah records them as mating with humans” so he must be referring to Nephilim (half-human). Yet, there is no indication in the Torah that they mated with humans—even though they surely did so. His conclusion is, “so they couldn’t have been that huge” which is fair enough.
Yet, in the same breath he notes, “they were always being defeated in battle,” which means he has jumped context to Rephaim now.
He follows that with, “the spies [again, ten of them] described themselves as feeling like grasshoppers before them (Numbers 13:33),” so he has jumped context again, back to Nephilim (even if only imaginary ones).
For some unstated reason, he has arbitrarily decided, “that is actually a perfectly accurate description of the complete helplessness a person would feel standing before a warrior 10 feet tall”—no, he does not tell us why 10 and not 9 or 11 or 8 or 12, etc.
Rosenfeld notes, “In terms of specific dimensions, there is a single verse which is highly significant,” and yet, the one to which he appeals provides us nothing specific about height, and there are actually two that do, but he does not reference them.
The one he chose is Deuteronomy 3:11 which tells us about the size of King Og of Bashan’s “bed” but not a word—ever, anywhere—about his personal size.
In short, there are many problems with merely assuming that we can take the size of his “bed” and calculate his personal height. Rosenfeld has decided that, “Og’s bed was 13.5 feet long and 6 wide. Assuming a person’s bed is about a foot longer then he is, Og would have been 12-13 feet tall – broadly built as well.” We’ve no reason to think that such an equation applies to an ancient sovereign living the lifestyles of the rich and (in)famous—his cultural context differs from ours.
Yet, the key issue is that a “bed” of such dimensions was found in the Etemenanki ziggurat and it was not meant to be slept upon, it is a ritual object upon which the supposed gods and alleged goddesses mate.
Rosenfeld notes that “the Talmud (Brachos 54b) describes Og…as a sky-scraping giant who held up a mountain,” etc., which is part of why in my article How Nephilim Absconded from the Tanakh and Invaded Folkloric Territory, I noted how in such folklore, “giants” got taller and taller and taller by the telling.
Dovid Rosenfeld notes what I have noted, “We would tend to view such a Talmudic tale as nonliteral but intended to teach deeper messages (as the Midrash is often meant to be understood allegorically…” but adds, “the Talmud there (54a) rules that a person must recite a blessing upon seeing the location in which Og held up the mountain and was defeated…So there is definitely a strain of thought that Og was a much larger giant” but whence came that strain or, more particularly, when?—surely millennia after the Torah.
He concludes by “noting that there are also a few later giants mentioned in King David’s time – specifically four brothers, the most famous of whom was Goliath,” at which point we must pause: he is, again, swapping the word “Rephaim” for “giants” and the fact is that we have no physical description whatsoever for the four —at least he noted, “They were not purported to have descended from angels,” although if he chased down the trail of his own tall tale telling he would conclude that they, somehow, were since Goliath and family were of the Anakim clan of the Rephaim tribe and according to his evil report based assertion, they were, somehow, related to Nephilim.
As for Goliath, he is only one of two people in the entire Bible for whom we are given a specific height and yet, there is a textual issue with which to deal (the other specified height is, “an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits high” (1 Chronicles 11:23): circa 7.5 ft.).
Rosenfeld tells us, exclusively, “Goliath himself was described as ‘six cubits and a span’ (I Samuel 17:4) making him nearly 10 feet tall.” Yet, he needed to add a qualifying term thusly, “Goliath himself was described as ‘six cubits and a span’ within the Masoretic family of manuscripts for I Samuel 17:4.
That is because the earlier Septuagint/LXX, and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls (4QSam), and the earlier Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 6:9) have him at four cubits and a span: just shy of 7 ft.
Incidentally, the LXX version’s evil report, Num 13:32-33, contains no reference to Anakim thus, one cannot even get just Anakim related to Nephilim from the LXX.
Rosenfeld also notes, “Madon,” a name he seems to have picked up from much latter sources, “was described as having six fingers and six toes…We could possibly view them as sufferers of some kind of genetic mutation or of gigantism.”
Now, the text just has him as “a champion” who was “born to the” Repha, Goliath (2 Samuel 21:20)—“was described as having six fingers and six toes…We could possibly view them as sufferers of some kind of genetic mutation or of gigantism.”
Moreover, this is reminiscent of why in my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It Or Not! Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales, I included a chapter titled, “Polydactyly or Prestidigitation?” since to jump from one single person having extra digits to that “them,” plural, were, “sufferers of some kind of genetic mutation” is a bit of a stretch and it is a gigantic stretch to correlate one many with extra digits to “gigantism”—at least Rosenfeld offered the qualifier, “could possibly.”
Thus, overall, I really struggled to find even one single statement in this article that was accurate and, sadly, encountered much which is the stuff of which neo-Nephilology is made: very exciting but very erroneous.
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