The News 3 News Today 123 article If the Flood Killed the Nephilim, How Did Giants Return After Noah? was posted by a certain lananh8386: I say posted rather than written by since a disclaimer states “This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes.
Did a human involved with that site ever think that “If the Flood Killed the Nephilim, How Did Giants Return After Noah?” is the wrong primary question to ask and that the right one is “Did Giants Return After Noah?”?
Also, lananh8386 or the AI jumped from the specific ancient Hebrew word “Nephilim” to the modern generically subjective English word “giants” so what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s lananh8386’s or the AI’s usage? Do those two usages agree?
The article takes the Angel view as it notes, “Angelic beings, referred to as the sons of God, abandoned their heavenly stations, descended to the earthly realm, took human wives, and fathered a race of terrifying giants known as the Nephilim”: see why those linguistics questions are key? Biblically contextually “giants known as the Nephilim” would mean “Nephilim known as the Nephilim” so, what’s the usage in the article? For details, see my linguistics book Bible Encyclopedias and Dictionaries on Angels, Demons, Nephilim, and Giants: From 1851 to 2010.
The original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christian 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.
We’re told:
To stop this ultimate corruption of the human bloodline, God sent a global flood. Every living, breathing thing outside the wooden walls of Noah’s Ark was entirely wiped out. The earth was drowned; the giants were buried. But then, 400 years later, in Numbers chapter 13, the spies of Moses returned from the land of Canaan trembling in absolute terror.
They reported to the congregation of Israel, “We saw the Nephilim there.” How is this possible? Did some survive the waters of the flood? Did a second angelic invasion happen? Or does the biblical text reveal a historical reality far more disturbing than anyone has ever told you?
Note that every post-Nephilim theory implies that God failed, missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. He, “sent a global flood” Nephilim “were buried” but they just came right back.
In this case, the author, human or not, misrepresented Num 13 to make a point: it wasn’t “the spies of Moses…trembling…They reported” there were 12 of them but those were the actions and report of the 10 unreliable ones. Anyone relying on Num 13:33 needs to mention that they’re relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse doesn’t even mention Anakim)
3. Of an unreliable “evil report”
4. By 10 unreliable guys
5. Whom God rebuked—to death
6. Who made five mere assertions unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible
7. Who contradicted Moses, Cable, Joshua, God, and the rest of the whole entire Bible
8. Then post-flood Nephilologists have to invent un-biblical fantasy tall-tales about how Nephilim got past the flood, past God.
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
The article notes “Genesis chapter 6 paints a picture of a bio-spiritual apocalypse…angelic beings…materialized, took human women, and the offspring.” There’s literally zero indication in the whole Bible that any Angel ever materialized rather, Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology—see my book What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
It’s noted, “this forbidden union were the Nephilim…They were giants.” From this usage we get the idea that the usage of giants in the article is something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average (and yes, that is how useless the common parlance usage of that modern English word is). Reference is made to “The towering Nephilim” even though we’ve been given no reason to think they were that: nor is there any reliable reason to think it.
This means that no, the article’s usage doesn’t agree with the usage in English Bibles since therein it merely renders (doesn’t even translate) Nephilim in 2 verses or Repha/im in 98% of all others and so never even hints at anything to do with any sort of height whatsoever.
Pop-Nephilologists, and/or their AI robots, tend to write in circles: they’ll make a point, move away from it, go back to it, move away again, go back, and on it goes.
So, the article repeated that Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood and then goes back to Num 13 to add some details. This time, it’s accurately noted that “Moses sent 12 spies…10 of them were gripped by an unspeakable, paralyzing fear” yet, it’s not noted that the implication of the text is that they felt that due to the prospect of being itinerate tent dwellers facing the prospect of defeating six strong people groups living in large and well-fortified cities—with the six groups listed in the original, reliable, report in that chapter as “the descendants of Anak…The Amalekites…The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites…And the Canaanites” indeed, no mention of Nephilim: the ten embellished that report as a scare-tactic, fear-mongering, “Don’t go in the woods!!!” type of tall-tale.
It’s noted “We must pause and stare directly at the contradiction. If the flood killed every living thing outside the ark, how could Nephilim exist 400 years later? How could the spies of Israel look upward and see the living, breathing descendants of a race that was supposedly buried under the deluge? Throughout history, theologians and readers have proposed three main theories to answer this terrifying question.”
And yet, the biblical answer is very, very simple: the flood killed every living thing outside the ark (sans some sea life, insects, etc.), Nephilim didn’t exist 400 years later, “the” 10 “spies” just made up a fantasy story so that none of them saw “the living, breathing descendants of a race that was supposedly buried under the deluge.
We then get into un-biblical and theology proper fantasy tall-tales about how it happened—with not a single word about the biblical answer:
The first theory suggests a second angelic incursion. Some scholars argue that whatever happened in Genesis 6 simply happened again. A new group of rebellious angels supposedly came down after the flood and fathered a new race of giants.
But there is a massive biblical problem with this theory. The New Testament writers explicitly close the door on this idea. The book of Jude, in verse 6, states that the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Second Peter chapter 2 repeats this, declaring that God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus and delivered them into chains of darkness.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ himself states that angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage. The angelic rebellion of Genesis 6 was a one-time event, an anomaly so severe that God instantly imprisoned the offending spirits in the deepest abyss of hell to ensure it could never happen again. There is no biblical text anywhere that records a second incursion of angels.
This implies that God failed, missed that loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
There’s zero reliable reason to even invent such a story.
Indeed, Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined refer to a sin of Angels, place that sin to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin which occurred after the Angels, “left their first estate,” after which they were incarcerated, and there’s only a one-time fall/sin of Angels in the Bible. So, if they’re not referring to the Gen 6 affair, we’ve no idea to what sin they’re referring.
Note that it’s not the case that “Jesus Christ himself states that angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage” since that’s an all-encompassing statement. But when we actually quote Jesus, His statement was very detailed, very nuanced, He employed qualifying terms, “the angels of God in heaven.”
So, not all Angels at all times in all places but the loyal ones “of God” and “in heaven” which is why those who did marry are considered sinners since they “left their first estate” as Jude put it, in order to do so.
Next:
The second theory suggests that the original Nephilim somehow survived the flood…
This implies that God failed, missed that loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
There’s zero reliable reason to even invent such a story.
This contradicts the Bible five times (Gen 7:7, 23; Heb 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5) since that’s how many times we’re told who survived but Nephilim are never mentioned.
Lastly:
This leaves us with the third theory—the only theory that aligns perfectly with the timeline, the geography, and the strict boundaries of scripture. The Nephilim corruption did not come from a new angelic rebellion, nor did the giants survive the water. The corruption reemerged through the ark itself, carried across the floodwaters, hidden within the lineage of Noah’s own family. It was a genetic latency that survived through the wife of Ham and erupted into the world through the curse of Canaan.
This implies that God failed, missed that loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
There’s zero reliable reason to even invent such a story.
This contradicts the Bible five times.
Yet, this is the story the article seeks to defend.
Post-flood, Noah:
…drinks of the wine, becomes intoxicated, and lies uncovered inside his tent. The text then tells us a deeply disturbing detail: Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father…In Leviticus chapter 18, the exact phrase ‘to uncover the nakedness of your father’ is explicitly defined as committing a sexual violation involving the father’s wife…Noah does not curse Ham…curse directly upon Ham’s son…Canaan…Why was Canaan cursed…The pre-flood corruption, the genetic anomalies of the watcher bloodline, may have been carried onto the ark…
This implies that God failed, missed that loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
There’s zero reliable reason to even invent such a story.
This contradicts the Bible five times.
Thus, the article first rejected, “Nephilim somehow survived the flood” but then defended it and all because of “What remains undeniable is that all post-flood giants were Canaanite.” So, water down terminology by referring to giants and rely on 10 guys whom God rebuked rather than with the God who rebuked them: such is the stuff of which post-flood Nephilology is based, it’s literally premised on one single unreliable sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
Incidentally, the dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Moreover, we’re told:
This singular, terrifying reality explains the rest of the Old Testament. It explains why God focused His absolute wrath upon a very specific patch of geography in the Middle East…As we trace the descendants of Canaan through the Old Testament, the Bible does not just speak of Nephilim theoretically….
The first group was the Anakim. Descended from a man named Anak…They were the ones who terrified the 12 spies. The Book of Deuteronomy describes them terrifyingly: “A people great and tall…
The second group were the Emim…a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim. The text notes that they were also regarded as giants, just like the Anakim, but the Moabites called them Emim.
Then there were the Zamzummim. These giants…a great and numerous people, as tall as the Anakim…
But the most famous, and perhaps the most terrifying branch of the post-flood giants, were known as the Rephaim…
That is wholly misguided. There’s literally zero reliable indication that this “explains why God focused His absolute wrath” there: God told us many times why His wrath was focused there but He never said a single word about Nephilim—I wrote a whole chapter just about this in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
Thus, “the Bible does not just speak of Nephilim theoretically” indeed, Gen 6:4 speaks of them historically, Num 13:33 specifies that an “evil report” was told about them and that’s all: they’re only mentioned in a mere two sentences in the whole Bible.
What the article fails to note is that as per Deut 2, Zamzummim is just an aka for Rephaim and Emim and Anakim were like clans of that tribe: Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
As for “tall” well, that’s subjectively tall compared to the parochial average so that they were taller than 5.0-5.0ft by an unknown margin.
We’re told:
The word “Rephaim” in Hebrew carries dark connotations, often referencing the spirits of the dead, the shades of the underworld, or the ancient kings of old. And the absolute pinnacle of the Rephaim bloodline was a monarch named King Og of Bashan…In Deuteronomy chapter 3…Verse 11 states, “For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed, his bedstead was an iron bedstead. Is it not in Rabbah of the people of Ammon? Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width, according to the standard cubit”…13 and 1/2 feet long and 6 feet wide.
We can’t accuse the Rephaim of being anything but 100% human premised on often referencing. As for the bed, at least we were told, “Whether this was an actual bed for sleeping or a massive iron sarcophagus used for burial” or, I will add, was a ritual object, not some thing on which he slept, which is the direction in which the data we have points—see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
We’re told of “prehistoric burial chambers…a monumental ruin known officially as Rogem el-Hiri. In traditional Hebrew, it is called Gilgal Refaim, which literally translates into English as ‘the wheel of the giants’” no, it literally translates into English as ‘the wheel of the Rephaim.’”
We then get circled back to:
For centuries, skeptics and critics have looked at the Book of Joshua and labeled it a chronicle of ancient genocide. They point to passages in Deuteronomy chapter 7 where God explicitly commands the Israelites to show no mercy to the inhabitants of Canaan, to make no treaties with them, and to destroy them totally…They accuse the God of the Old Testament of being a bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser. But when you read the text through the lens of the Nephilim insurgency, the commands of God are not ethnic cleansing.
People, or AIs, who argue thusly only create more problems since, as noted, there’s literally no indication of any such thing to the discerning skeptic will end up doubly turned off: turned off by the facts and by manipulative people/AIs who misrepresent the Bible in seeking to defend it.
We’re then told:
In 1 Samuel chapter 17, the armies of Israel were paralyzed in the Valley of Elah. A champion stepped out from the camp of the Philistines. His height was six cubits and a span. He was nearly 9 feet, 9 inches tall. He wore bronze armor weighing exactly 125 pounds. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his iron spearhead weighed 15 pounds. And the text clearly identified his origin: he was Goliath of Gath…
But Goliath was not an only child. In 2 Samuel chapter 21, the Bible reveals a terrifying fact that most readers entirely overlook: Goliath had siblings. The text records four additional giants, all born to the giant in Gath…Ishbi-Benob…Saph…Lahmi…the fourth giant…was a man of great stature, a mutated titan who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot…a perfect physical manifestation of the corrupted, unnatural watcher DNA…post-flood Nephilim.
For some reason, the article didn’t mention that the Masoretic text has Goliath at just shy of 10 ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft. (compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days) so that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
He had a guy assisting with the equipment. Regular guy Benaiah took a spear like a weaver’s beam, just like Goliath’s, from a 7.5 ft. Egyptian and successfully wielded it against him in hand-to-hand combat (2 Sam 23). Also, you can search for strongman or weightlifting competition vids and see guys who are around 6 ft. lifting 1,000 lbs.
The others were actually his sons and what the article has as “four additional giants” were four more Rephaim. As for “great stature” that’s just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as giants. And referring to “a mutated titan…a perfect physical manifestation of the corrupted, unnatural watcher DNA…post-flood Nephilim” is not only misguided (it’s a simple genetic mutation that just reproduces the genetic instructions to for building fingers/toes one too many times per appendage) but also it implies that any human since then to this very day can be accused on being not fully human and that’s very dangerous.
The rest of the articles, the last 2,755 words, are the sort of stuff that disinterests me since it’s sermonizing, “The uncompromising truth is this: the sin you refuse to execute today is the giant your children will have to fight tomorrow. What specific Gath are you leaving alone in your heart?”
The worst part of the sermonizing, is that it comes after presenting a case based on so many vague assertions, missing data points, misrepresentations, and lacking basic knowledge of the subject matter (it was more like following pop-Nephilology dogma).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
You can comment here and/or on my Twitter/X page, on my Facebook page, or any of my other social network sites all which are available here.
Leave a Reply