Eljoh Hartzer, MTh Practical Theology from the University of Stellenbosch, wrote an article titled What Does the Bible Actually Say About the Mysterious Nephilim? for TheCollector site which is, “is a community for scholars, classrooms, and enthusiasts. We broaden our audience’s understanding of the humanities through articles and discoveries from ancient history to the modern era.”
The article’s subtitle is Ancient Hebrew texts, Greek translations, and apocryphal traditions reveal the truth behind the mysterious Biblical giants known as the Nephilim and the giants known as the Nephilim statement 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 Hartzer’s usage? Do those two usages agree? We will have to keep an eye out for whether we get answers.
She notes, “theories about the Nephilim range from fallen angels to giants” well, she missed the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christian commentators, starting in BC days which 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).
And you see how important it is to answer those key question since without that data we can’t know what’s meant by that they were giants.
She quotes that which I term the Gen 6 affair thurly:
“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. The 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. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” vv.1-2;4, ESV
She notes, “Beyond the Bible: Enoch’s Watchers and Secret Giant Lore…The Bible was not created in a vacuum. So, we have what we call ‘apocryphal literature’ – later Jewish writings, often about the Bible, accepted by some traditions, yet not included in the Bible.” Granted and yet here, by appealing to 1 Enoch, “later Jewish writings” means from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah and so actually irrelevant to the Torah.
She assures us, “In this broader collection, books and legends shed light on the mysterious Nephilim” but is that the case? Do they shed light on the actual, real life, on the ground living, Nephilim on light on what time and telling turned them into—see my article How Nephilim Absconded from the Tanakh and Invaded Folkloric Territory.
At least she qualifies a statement in noting that, “Enoch’s book of the Watchers details and expands on the story” so the question repeats itself in a different form: expands with additional actual historical data or with the wild folklore that was in style when 1 Enoch was written (a few centuries BC)?
She quotes 1 Enoch Section I: Chapter 7, “4…the giants turned against 5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and 6 fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.” That version has giants merely rendering Nephilim—see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
She then offers a purported correlation that has become as popular as it is communicated much too generically, “A strangely similar idea to the Nephilim is present in Mesopotamian folklore…They had the Apkallu as divine sages teaching humans magic and crafts.” Yet, there are variations to the Apkallu myths so it’s too generic to mere appeal to Apkallu—see the appendix on Apkallu in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
She also mentions the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Book of Giants since therein, “an ancient Mesopotamian heroic king, is described as one of these Nephilim”—see my Enoch book and also The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
As for Gen 6, she reviews, “Who Were the ‘Sons of God’? The 3 Major Theories”:
The Sethite view: The sons of God were sons of Seth (Adam’s godly son), while the ‘daughters of man’ refer to the sons of Cain.
The angelic view: A second theory sees the sons of God as rebellious fallen angels who fathered demigods on earth (supernatural/human hybrids).
The ancient rulers view: Kings and tyrant leaders throughout history have claimed to be divine descendants of God – so they were just mighty, powerful men.
The Sethite view is a late-comer based on myth and prejudice.
I already commented on the Angel view.
The ancient rulers view is one of the oldest but barely made a blip on the historical interpretive radar.
Linguistically, she noted, “The Hebrew term for Nephilim, nāp̄îl, is from the primitive root word, nāp̄al, which means to fall down. This led to interpretations ranging from ‘fallen ones’ (i.e., wicked angels) to ‘those who fall upon others’ (i.e., giants). It is also translated as a bully or tyrant. So the Nephilim were large – in the literal or the figurative sense.”
I’m quite unsure how whatever, “(i.e., giants)” follows from, “those who fall upon others.” Yet, we seem to get an implied answer to her usage of giants with, “Nephilim were large” even though large is just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as giants.
I might as well note this now: 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.
Also, 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.
FYI: 1 Enoch has Nephilim as being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.
Another interesting qualifier is, “The Hebrew Scriptures use this Nephilim word once more (Numbers 13:33), describing the inhabitants of Canaan: ‘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.’”
Unfortunately, she didn’t deal with key hermeneutical questions such as who said it, why was it said, what was the reaction to it, was it accurate, etc.
It’s unfortunate since that’s one single unreliable non-LXX sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
Thus, the importance of the qualifier, especially when teased out, is that it is, “this Nephilim word once more” with the issue being the usage of a word within a fantasy tall-tale vs. whether the Nephilim were actually alive on the ground at the time—which, of course, they weren’t since that was post-flood and God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
Lastly, she notes, “The Septuagint (3rd century BC) is the earliest Greek translation of the Torah from the original Hebrew text…When the Jewish scholars reached Genesis 6, they faced a challenge: How do you translate nāp̄îl into Greek? The translators chose the closest Greek word: ‘gigantes’” and while she added, “(like the Titans of Greek mythology)” she didn’t get around to telling us that gigantes means earth-born.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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