Chris Bell, who self-IDs as having, “Diligently studied the Bible for over 30 years and prayed for wisdom,” wrote an article titled Who Were the Nephilim in the Bible? Misinterpreted as Giants for his Real Bible Study site. He noted, “This study is…based entirely on the Bible and reflects the teaching of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All conclusions are drawn directly from the full context of Scripture…”
His premise is, “The Nephilim were the ‘bad’ descendants of Adam & Eve before Noah’s flood…were not physical giants or children of fallen angels…are mentioned only a few times in the Bible, while many later sensational interpretations came from the so-called ‘Book of Enoch,’ which was not written by Enoch and was not recognized as Scripture in the Jewish Torah or most Bibles.”
On the point of, “not physical giants” he notes:
The term “Nephilim,” translated from the original Hebrew manuscripts, can carry meanings associated with tyrants, powerful men, aggressors, renown figures, or violent people. Although some translations render it as “giants,” it is completely out of context to mean “physical size giants”. Yet sensational books and movies have helped popularize that interpretation because people are often more drawn to myths and spectacle than to carefully studying the Bible itself.
Technically, giants isn’t a translation but a rendering—see my linguistics book Bible Encyclopedias and Dictionaries on Angels, Demons, Nephilim, and Giants: From 1851 to 2010.
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.
As for, “later sensational interpretations…sensational books and movies” that’s the sort of thing I term pop-Nephilology. I’ve written whole books debunking them such as:
Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
Nephilim and Giants as per Pop-Researchers: A Comprehensive Consideration of the claims of I.D.E. Thomas, Chuck Missler, Dante Fortson, Derek Gilbert, Brian Godawa, Patrick Heron, Thomas Horn, Ken Johnson, L.A. Marzulli, Josh Peck, CK Quarterman, Steve Quayle, Rob Skiba, Gary Wayne, Jim Wilhelmsen, et al.
And1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
He pinpointed that, “a few times” refers to, “only two direct references to the Nephilim in the Bible” and quoted that which I term the Gen 6 affair thusly:
1 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
I’m quite unsure how, from that, he got, “sons of Adam & Eve found the daughters of the other humans that God created” since the text doesn’t hint of any such thing nor has he evidence it.
He goes on to write, “In Genesis, Adam was called the ‘son of God’” but he isn’t. Rather, that in what he went on to quote which is Luke 3:38. Thus, his conclusion, “So it is fitting that Adam’s sons also be called the ‘sons of God’” is an anachronistic non-sequitur.
For some unknown reason, he asserted that, “All the descendants of Adam & Eve died in the flood. Except Noah from ‘the living’ line of Seth” even though his wife, their three sons and their three wives also survived—and we don’t have their genealogies—unless he is implying an assertion that the other 7 weren’t Sethites.
He wrote, “As explained above, Genesis does not explicitly say that God created only one couple” but no such thing was explained at all. What he is doing is taking the verifiable fact that Genesis explicitly say that God created one couple and creates the loophole that Genesis does not explicitly say that God created only one couple because it didn’t include, “God created only one couple.” So, he’s creating a gap and then merely asserting a filler which is an un-biblical man-made tradition.
Yet, he claims that, “A common misunderstanding historically assumed there was only one couple, but Genesis contains subtle indications that God created other couples” even though it doesn’t: many generations are referenced in Gen chaps 4-5 so there were plenty of descendants of Adam and Eve around to marry each other and without indication any non-Adam-ites/Eve-ites were around.
A subsection is titled, “Fallen Angels with Giant Children?!” and notes:
They were not children of fallen angels; they were the children of the “bad” sons of Adam & Eve. They were not giants. They were the connivingly-powerful people who lived hundreds of years – “the heroes of old, men of renown.”
I did some research into the translation of the Nephilim verses from Hebrew. My findings:
The word “Nephilim” is a transliterated Hebrew term, and its exact meaning is debated. The word “Nephilim” was not used in the original text language of neither the Torah nor the Bible.
What was used in the Torah & the Bible, was a term that can be translated to any combination of these: Tyrants, tough men, powerful, renown, titans, aggressive, ungodly. Although “giants” can be used, it is completely out of context to mean “physical size”.
Many people today simply accept the “giants” misinterpretation without examining the broader scriptural context.
If there were angelic beings or fallen angels having children with human daughters, why did they stop? Are today’s daughters of humans not beautiful?
As for, “They were not children of fallen angels” such is the second time he merely asserted that.
Job 38:7, as one example, shows us that, “sons of God” can refer to non-human beings (which the LXX has as “Angeloi”: plural of “Angelos”) since they, at the very least, witnessed the creation of the Earth.
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.
He complained, “Many people today simply accept…without examining the broader scriptural context” but the answer to, “If there were angelic beings or fallen angels having children with human daughters, why did they stop?” is what I just noted: one fall of Angels and an incarceration of them.
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.
As for, “The word ‘Nephilim’ was not used in the original text language of neither the Torah nor the Bible” (the Torah is part of, “the Bible”) but of course is was, if it wasn’t then he needs to show us manuscripts that lack it and latter manuscripts that include it. Nephilim is the, “term that can be translated to any combination of these…”
One reason that, “‘giants’…is completely out of context to mean ‘physical size’” is because it doesn’t mean that: that’s a rendering based on a rendering. The usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles is that 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.
A subsection has him misrepresenting Num 13 since he generically titled it, “The Spies in the Days of Moses” and generically noted, “The ones Moses sent ahead to spy the land, said they saw the Nephilim” but that is generic since he didn’t specify there was 12 but he’s really only referring to the 10 who were unreliable.
He quotes:
Numbers 13:32-33
And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
He does clear the air, for discerning readers, by adding:
This was superstition talk from people who did not believe in God. How do I know this? They were the ones who refused to trust God and refused to go into the land and possess it as God instructed them. Instead, because they saw some people larger than usual, they followed their evil instincts. Which they likely got from the unbiblical “book of Enoch”. Those Jewish spies were obviously overwhelmed and scared, and exaggerating everything out of fear.
Every indication is that, “book of Enoch” wasn’t written until centuries after that event. But yes, that bad report consists of five mere assertions that are unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible: and since Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form, it was impossible.
He goes on to note:
The Anaks were not the Nephilim. Because the Nephilim died in the flood, and were not mentioned on Noah’s ark. the Anaks were just people who were larger in size than the average person. Some may have reached unusual heights compared to the average people of that time. Goliath was one of them, and his height was specified in the Bible. Extra tall, yes, but not the sci-fi giants described in books today. Actually this “extra tall” subject is still being researched by historians, archaeological experts, and Bible scholars. Evidence seems to dispute the idea of any height above 9′. Example in this public reference.
Indeed, “The Anaks were not the Nephilim” and the only indication that they were was that one single unreliable mere assertion—and that, only from non-LXX versions since the LXX doesn’t have Anakim mentioned in that verse.
As for, “the Anaks were just people who were larger in size than the average person” indeed, it’s a subjective issue since Deut 2 tells that they were, “tall” but that’s compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.05-5.3ft in those days.
The Masoretic text has Goliath at just shy of 10ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7ft. so, that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
And well, the article abruptly ended after just a few more words.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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