A certain pkoutoupis posted the article The Nephilim and the Flood on the Ancient Origins site. It actually ends at, “In the first occurrence we find:” so it seems to be a sample article that must be purchased to read full. I’ll admit, it’s very challenging to read anything on that site since it’s so utterly saturated with ads and pop-ups that you can barely read one sentence without something popping up.
The article is meant to deal with issues such as, “Who are the Nephilim and what do they represent? Are they biblical giants?…It wasn’t until the discovery and translation of the Book of 1 Enoch that we were finally given a better understanding of these Nephilim, but is it a proper understanding?”
We will have to keep an eye on whether these key questions are answered:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s pkoutoupis’ usage?
Do those two usages agree?
Also, why assert, “It wasn’t until the discovery and translation of the Book of 1 Enoch” (I’d imagine that the question mark at the end of that sentence was supposed to be a period).
Reference is made to, “independent scholars” such as, “Zecharia Sitchin…who proposed that the Nephilim were nothing more than a god-like race with the knowledge and technology to navigate the heavens, who came to earth and created mankind as slave labor mining rare materials.” Of course, biblically that can’t be the case since Nephilim were born on Earth, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose…Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them” (Gen 6).
A history of modern day mythologizing is noted thusly:
Sitchin had jumped on the chance to translate the Nephilim as: (1) those who came down from above, (2) those who were cast down, and (3) people of the fiery rockets. These made-up epithets are clearly ridiculous and groundless. The Hebrew verb for ‘to go’ or ‘to come down, descend’ is yarad which shows no relation to the term in question.
He then goes on to identify the Nephilim with the Sumerian deities, claiming that the Sumerians knew of their existence and that they came from a planet called Nibiru…The sources cited came from his mistranslated Mesopotamian inscriptions and cylinder seal impressions.
Many others have tried to follow in Zecharia Sitchin’s footsteps, such as Alan Alford, but have quickly repealed their theories…retracted his ancient astronaut theories.
Apparently, this made such a powerful impact that Zecharia Sitchin threatened Alan Alford with a 50 million dollar lawsuit on the grounds that Alford’s comments discredited Sitchin’s theories and destroyed his reputation…
Then there was Andrew Collins, using the sons of God and the Nephilim to hint at a forgotten race…seems, may be based on earlier works, such as that belonging to Sitchin…Collin’s clearly displays his lack of knowledge in biblical Hebrew…
pkoutoupis then quotes Gen 6:4 but oddly assures us, “The biggest clues to the identification of the Nephilim will come from Numbers 13:33: And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight”—stand by.
We’re then told, “When the Old Testament was first translated to the Greek language, the word for Nephilim read gigantes, the Greek word for giants. This is confirmed in Numbers 13:33 with the description of the Israelites when compared to the race of giants.”
Well, we can now answer the key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s pkoutoupis’ usage?
Something about subjectively unusual height.
Do those two usages agree?
No.
Now, it’s actually the case that, “When the Old Testament was first translated to the Greek language, the word for Nephilim” and also gibborim and also Rephaim, “read gigantes, the Greek word for,” literally earth-born. Thus, nothing is, “confirmed in Numbers 13:33 with the description of” only the 10, “Israelites” who presented an, “evil report” and were rebuke by God who told a tall-tale about being, “compared to the race of giants.” It’s also literally impossible that they saw Nephilim since, of course, Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood since, of course, God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. For more, see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
And well, as far as I can tell between adds and pop-ups, that’s about it for the free sample section of the article.
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