You can surely tell by the title that Biblical docuseries on Nephilim giants in Israel to debut in the fall is just an infomercial by The Jerusalem Post on behalf of The Inspiration Network (INSP) so keep that in mind as we dig for anything that may be of interest.
Upfront, we’re told, “Docuseries on the Nephilim to be released: Giants from the Bible, proof in Golan Heights? Unraveling a Biblical Mystery: Did the Nephilim Giants Exist? Investigating in the Golan Heights, Angels & Giants: The Watchers & the Nephilim docuseries delves deep.”
The term, “Giants” 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 your usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those two usages agree?
They are especially key due to the reference to, “Nephilim Giants” which (hint to the answer to one of the two parts of the answer to the first key question) biblically contextually means, “Nephilim Nephilim.”
Also, “Angels…Watchers” means, “Angels…Angels” since Watchers is merely a Second Temple Era a.k.a. for Malakim/Angels.
It’s asserted, “A ghost wheel in the Golan Heights and its connection to the Nephilim” which is a very, very subtle nuanced hint combined with a category error that violates the law of identity.
This gets very complicated very fast and I only assume that the author was subtly hinting: they may just have sough to be excitingly creepy with a reference to ghosts—particularly when (fallaciously) coupled with Nephilim.
Firstly, the location is called Gilgal Rephaim or Wheel of the Rephaim and not ghosts—the article later references, “Gilgal Rephaim (‘Wheel of Spirits’ or ‘Wheel of Ghosts’).”
Secondly, the goalpost move to ghosts may be due to Pagan mythology about Rephaim being some sort of living dead/ghosts: that seems to derive from that the root word rapha ranges in meaning/usage from healing to dead—see my article Dead Kings and Rephaim The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty.
Thirdly, the other goalpost move to Nephilim is what I noted it is since Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
For details, see the, “Rephaim” chapter in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology and also my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
We continue with a comment about, “The Nephilim giants” which is that, “While many believe that these are fairy tales, others believe that their descendants are still alive today.” Neither are the case: it’s recorded as history in the Bible, with many likewise records in ancient myths and legends, and they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form so no one post-flood can be their descendants.
Via the Angel view of the Genesis 6 affair, as I term it, we are told, “the ‘sons of God’…came to Israel and gave birth to children with human daughters” yet, that was pre-flood so there was no Israel. This, we are told, “resulted in the birth of powerful beings of unusual size and shape known as the Nephilim” yet, we’ve no reliable physical description of them so we can only make arguments from silence regarding their size and shape. As pop-researcher and modern un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales Nephilologist Gary Wayne put it, “we don’t know how big Nephilim were…we don’t know how tall that they were.”
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.”
Vague reference is made that, “In the midrash and external books written in the days of the Second Temple, the Nephilim are identified with the angels…describe the Nephilim as legendary creatures, each of whom required a thousand camels, a thousand horses, and a thousand oxen to satisfy his tremendous hunger…These stories caused people to wonder if the blood of these ancient giants continues to exist among us today.”
Yes, I also wrote a book about such tall-tales, The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
It’s repeated that, “It is said that the descendants of the Nephilim may have survived by intermingling with human populations, with these descendants likely also inheriting unique traits from their giant ancestors.” Yet, again, since we’ve no reliable physical description of them we can’t know their traits.
Likewise with that, “Proponents of the theory point to alleged discoveries and strange findings as possible evidence of the Nephilim’s existence. These include finding extremely large skeletons…”
In case you’re so inclined, yes, I also wrote about that, see the relevant chapters in my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
Next, we’re told of, “Rudy Landa, executive producer and director at INSP, and David Cerullo, the company’s CEO” which Landa sating, “The Bible describes the Nephilim in several places” which is accurate only if several means merely two verses.
We’re told, “The main explanation appears in Genesis chapter 6. The Nephilim were descendants of heavenly beings…in another chapter of the Book of Genesis, it is written that the ‘sons of God’ lived with the daughters of men, and the offspring of these unions were called the Nephilim, a race of giants who lived on earth. In other words, there are two versions of the identity of these beings: the Nephilim are upper angels who descended to earth (‘fallen angels’) and took wives for them from human women, or they are the result of those forbidden hybrid pairings.”
Yet, I only read one version: granting that sons of God is an a.k.a. for Angels—and in Job 38:7 it’s clear that the phrase can refer to non-human beings.
It’s noted that they, “enlisted the help of author Douglas Van Doren [actually, Dorn]” which is a shame and I will let you uncover why via my articles My review of Zachary Garris’ review of Douglas Van Dorn’s book “Giants Sons of the Gods” and Review of Paul “Dr. Reluctant” Henebury’s review of Douglas Van Dorn’s book “Giants: Sons of the Gods.”
It’s also noted, “‘It makes sense to start in Israel, in the place where the story of the Nephilim began – and that is in the Golan,’ stressed Landa” but, again, we don’t and can’t know that since the Genesis 6 affair occurred pre-flood, pre-Israel.
Moreover, “The first Book of Enoch…describes the Nephilim and claims that the name of Mount Hermon is derived from the word ‘haram’…According to the first Book of Enoch, the Nephilim were expelled from heaven and sent to Mount Hermon.”
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.” Also it doesn’t have Nephilim being, “expelled from heaven”: that was their Angel dads. It also has Nephilim having been MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.
As for Gilgal, “Landa’s search for the truth brought him to Gilgal Rephaim…a circle of stones…five concentric rings, with the outer ring being more than 150 meters wide. In its center is a mound of loose stones over 20 meters in diameter and over 5 meters high, covering a central chamber carved in solid rock…‘There are theories that claim that King Og of Bashan was buried in Gilgal Rephaim,’ said Landa.”
So, if he’s buried there we’ll find the skeleton of a Repha, not a Nephil, for whom we’ve no physical description (at least, no reliable one, not until folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah). One such tall-tale has it that Og, “was alive during Noah’s time but escaped the flood by clinging to the side of the ark using a ladder” even though he didn’t live until centuries later and well, God would not have missed the ladder usage loophole: we’re told five times who survived the flood but Og isn’t on any of those lists, and neither are Nephilim (Genesis 7:7, 23; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; and 2 Peter 2:5).
We’re told, “A rough estimate of Og’s size can be made based on reference to the size of his bed” which is incoherent since that’s based on various mere assumptions: see my book on Og.
Thus, overall, this PR marketing infomercial is typical modern Nephilology: fallacies, watered down terminology, inaccuracies, but oooooooh so exciting!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Twitter page, on my Facebook page, or any of my other social network sites all which are available here.