Dave Roos, identified as a freelance journalist, wrote an article titled Who Were the Nephilim, the Bible’s Mysterious Race of Giants? for the How Stuff Works site.
He begins with, “While the giant Nephilim are barely mentioned in the Genesis narrative, they were the subject of great fascination in later apocalyptic literature. The Nephilim in the Bible were superhuman giants…”
This begs the questions: what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s your usage? Do those two usages agree?
Considering that he instantly jumps to, “The Book of Enoch expands on the Nephilim story, introducing rebellious angels called the Watchers who bring monstrous giants into the world” it seems that his usage 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).
Thus, that usage doesn’t agree with English Bibles’ usage 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.
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.
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: it has Nephilim as being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.
He reference the, “account of fallen angels and a race of superhuman giants roaming Earth” the first portion of which is 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.
Dave Roos notes, “some experts think the ‘daughters of men’ mentioned in that Genesis passage were ungodly women descended from Cain, while the ‘sons of God’ were human males descended from godly Seth; both Cain and Seth were sons of Adam and Eve.” That’s a late-comer of a view based on myth and prejudice: see my article Are there a godly line of Seth and a wicked line of Cain?
He quotes that which I term the Gen 6 affair thusly:
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 of all which they chose. … There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
His comment is, “In the original Hebrew, the term for these giants and ‘mighty men’ is Nephilim, which is derived from the Hebrew word naphal meaning ‘to fall.’ In that sense, this race of giants.” Note that his assertion of giants is still just that: we’ve no reason to accept it since there’s no reason to believe it. And it’s, “In the original Hebrew, the term” used to describe Nephilim is gibborim, “mighty men.”
He points out, “the giant Nephilim are barely mentioned in the Genesis narrative” which is an interesting way to refer to one single sentence.
For some reason, he asserts, “In the ‘Book of Enoch,’ the Nephilim begat by the Watchers and human women aren’t the heroic ‘men of renown’ of Genesis” but I’m unsure whence he got heroic and they were renown: but renown by a corrupt society.
In essence, Dave Roos article is completely based on parroting whatever a certain Prof. Kevin Sullivan said and since he said a lot about 1 Enoch then it’s based on what 1 Enoch says.
We’re told, “In Genesis, chapter three, Adam and Eve were blamed for introducing sin into the world…But The Book of Enoch paints a very different origin story for sin. Here, human beings aren’t the ones to screw everything up, but the Watchers and their heinous offspring.” Yet, that seems like a false dichotomy since we can say that the reason why daughters of men fell in with the Angel/Watcher sons of God is that they were already fallen.
As for the Angel view and Sethite view, “Sullivan says that these two competing narratives around the origin of sin existed simultaneously within Judaism for hundreds of years” without telling us when those years were—FYI: it couldn’t have been until latter BC days.
Oddly, the article ends with a “FAQs” section, one Q is, “Were the Nephilim only mentioned in the Genesis narrative?” and the reply is, “No, the Nephilim were also the subject of great fascination in later apocalyptic literature, especially in the Book of Enoch.” So, he seems to be unaware that the term also appears in a fantasy tall-tale in Num 13:33 in the Bible.
As Dave Roos put it, “God commanding Noah to collect two of every animal to survive the great flood…God…has no choice but to send the floodwaters and wipe Earth clean…The Book of Enoch says…that God intervenes and tells the angels to warn Noah of the coming flood, intended to ‘heal the earth that the angels have corrupted’…God destroyed the human race via a great flood…God spared him [Noah] and his family.”
Ergo, there couldn’t have been post-flood Nephilim which is why Num 13:33 is unreliable as it merely records an evil report by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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