One reason that I didn’t include Ryan Pitterson in my book Nephilim and Giants as per Pop-Researchers—which, after all, is subtitled: 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.—is that I could only spend so much on gathering books to review and I did end up perusing circa 80 of them.
I may have to publish a follow-up to that book as some researchers are becoming more pop. I decided to write a bit of a review of the The Wolf AND The Shepherd PODCAST show Episode 134 – Judgment Of The Nephilim With Ryan Pitterson.
He notes, “a Nephilim in scripture, so the term itself is an Aramaic term that was borrowed into the Hebrew language and it really means giants” and no, he doesn’t define giants.
Some technical linguistic notes: “a Nephilim” is compounding singular and plural since “a” is singular but “Nephilim” is male plural thus, the statement should have been “a Nephil.”
Now, that word was not borrowed into Hebrew and that it’s Aramaic in origin is speculative.
He’s actually referring to the etymology so, the root, not the word. If form Hebrew then Nephilim has its roots in naphal which refers to fall/fallen/to cause to fall, etc. and if from Aramaic it has its roots in naphiyla which, well, Dr. Michael Heiser, in particular, claims that it means giant which raises two issues:
- When he tells us it means giants he, like Pitterson, doesn’t tell us what he means by giants. Yet, he’s come to the same conclusion as I which is that no one, no giant, mentioned in the Bible is taller than right around 8 ft.
- This becomes battle of the credentialed scholars since Dr. J. Edward Wright notes, “The term traditionally translated as ‘giants’ in both the Greek Septuagint (γιγαντες) and now in English is נפילים nephilim, a term based on the root נפל npl meaning ‘fall.’ It has nothing to do with size” and specifies that this goes for both Hebrew and Aramaic as “The root npl in Aramaic also means fall and not giants.”
Pitterson refers to, “Genesis chapter 6 is where they’re introduced…the Nephilim, and they were giants they were super human sized.” Yet, Genesis 6 neither states nor implies any such thing. He’s committing two errors:
- He’s committing the word-concept fallacy whereby if someone is called a giant (or naphiyla) then they must be subjectively unusually tall. Yet, such is a non-sequitur as well since, for example, I’ve been called giant many, many, many times and I’m 6 ft. even.
- The second one is what we will get into next which is actually relying on an evil report.
One of the interviewers noted this to Ryan Pitterson, “the next mention of the Nephilim is, I think, Joshua and this is when Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt…they send the spies into the promised land and the spies come back and they say we saw the Nephilim…there are certain people that say well, they look at [like?] Nephilim because of the old stories as like the boogeyman.”
Pitterson replies:
“I think they were really giants, that they were actual Nephilim and, you know, when you think about that, like, you set it up perfectly right, so: this is Moses and Joshua now, they’ve, this is at right after the exodus…they see three Nephilim giants in the promised land and the spies come back and say there’s no way we can take the land right?
They come back and say God cannot give this land to us so that tells me right there that this wasn’t just that they saw a boogeyman or a real tall guy, that these were true giants and also the great detail about that chapter…Numbers chapter 13 is that when they scout the land they brought back fruits.
And it says the grapes, they have a bunch of grapes, and two men it takes two men carrying one bunch of grapes on a pole on their shoulders that they have to carry back. That’s how, that’s how large they were. So, even the agriculture of this area from where the giants were inhabiting was supernaturally large.
So I think that these, uh, these were real Nephilim giants hybrid offspring and it wasn’t just that they exaggerated or they were scared of a boogeyman or anything like that.
And I think that’s why the scripture calls them, in Hebrew, Nephilim is the word, as you said…the root of the term is giant, the meaning, the original meaning, of Nephilim in Aramaic is giant and so I even talked about how in the oldest version of the Old Testament we have today, the oldest version is the Septuagint, which, of course, is a Greek translation from paleo Hebrew, from the old ancient Hebrew and the word they use is gigantes in that chapter, so they’re just calling them again giants.”
Let us unpack this:
One issue is the generic nature of the references such that we’re told that it was about “the spies…They…say” but he fails to distinguish, at least that this point, between the spies: two, Caleb and Joshua, stated no such this as that “God cannot give this land…,” that was the ten unfaithful, disloyal, contradictory, embellishers who made five assertions about which the whole entire rest of the Bible knows nothing and whom God rebuked for presenting an evil report.
Thus, all indications are that the Israelites saw no such thing as giants, Nephilim, nor giants, Nephilim (except they did deal with Anakim who were “tall” subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft.), it was just the ten who merely asserted they saw them.
As for the grapes, note that he jumped form what the text stated, which placed emphasis on the “bunch” to that “that’s how large they were.” Now, if he means that the bunch was large then by I’m unsure how a large bunch from a fertile land flowing with milk and honey can be said to have been supernaturally large. Thus, I suspect he was actually taking the pop-pop-research view that the individual grapes were supernaturally large, which is something about which the text does not even hint—see chapter, “Here Be Giant—Grapes!” of my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not! Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
Just as generic is that Ryan Pitterson states, “the scripture calls them, in Hebrew, Nephilim …” but “the scripture” makes it clear that such was merely recording an utterly unreliable evil report.
As for the Septuagint, gigantes means earth-born which is part of why when certain English versions render (do not even translate) Nephilim as Giants neither the Hebrew nor Aramaic nor Greek nor English imply anything about height at all.
Moreover, the Septuagint renders (do not even translate) Nephilim and Rephaim, and also gibborim all as gigantes—which only caused problems. FYI: you don’t have to know any language very well to realize that words as different as Nephilim, Rephaim, and gibborim all mean the same thing—especially when gibbor is merely a descriptive term that might/mighty.
Now, Ryan Pitterson’s assertion of post-flood Nephilim raises another question, which he was asked, which is, “how did they survive the flood?”
He replies, “my belief, definitely, is that the Nephilim DNA traveled through on the ark and specifically through the wives of Noah’s sons and even then more specifically Noah’s son Ham.”
There’s actually no need to even delve in this since such a tall tale was invented by people who asserted post-flood Nephilim but had to evidence to back that thus, they just invented a way to get them through the flood—that must have been a loophole that God missed.
This is how he argues the tall-tale-loophole:
“…all flesh had corrupted himself and corrupted itself. So, by the time Noah’s sons were old enough to take wives and had their own children, the odds of finding a woman who was pure blood human were probably slim to none.
And even the way, uh, Noah is described in Genesis, it says that he was a just man and perfect in his generations and that term perfect, in Hebrew tamim, refers to physical perfection. It’s the same term you use for a sacrificial lamb as, to be a lamb without blemish, that sacrificed to the temple that that without blemish is tamim.
So, I think what the Bible is telling us that Noah was perfectly human whereas these whereas the wives would not have been.”
I got into this issue in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology—and archeologist and author Dr. Heather Lynn too particular note of it in that what I wrote “on Noah’s genetic ‘perfection,’ what it really means, and all it entails is a must read.”
In short, perfect pertained to Noah’s righteousness, not his genetics. As for the genetics of his family well, recall that this is all about inventing post hoc tall tale and one that implies God failed.
Ryan Pitterson also notes, “when you look at the giants, like the three giants, the sons of Anak you [the interviewer] mentioned in, in the Book of Numbers, and the other post-diluvian giants, they can, their lineage can all be traced back to Cannan, who was the son of Ham, Noah’s son Ham, they can, all that, their lineages in scripture, can be traced right back to him. So, it all goes back to the ark and I think the wife, the wife of Ham.”
This is multitudinously fallacious:
- The “three giants” were Anakim and as I noted, they were just subjectively “tall.”
- One reason for his correlating of Anakim with Nephilim is subjectively unusual height but that fails due to point 1. and also because we’re no reliable physical description of Nephilim and so can’t equate them with subjectively unusual height.
- Another reason for his correlating of Anakim with Nephilim is, exclusively, Numbers 13:33—one single verse which was part of the evil report and is also apparently a gloss since the Septuagint of that verse doesn’t contain any reference to Anakim.
- This is premised upon the post hoc tall tale.
Pitterson is asked about Atlantis and replies, “in Genesis you have the same account of angels taking human women as wives giving birth to Nephilim or demigods and then the world is flooded.”
Now, of course, one of the reasons for flooding the world would have been to be rid of Nephilim—even if just because of the general corruption of the times.
Pitterson states:
“…there’s a prophecy in Daniel that says that in the end times they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men. So again, this idea of mingling the seed and that even the Angels who committed this sin, right, like I said, it was a, it was a subset of the fallen Angels who committed this sin of fathering, of marrying, taking human women and fathering the Nephilim.
In the judgment of the flood they weren’t killed, they, the Bible says they were locked in an Abyss. They were dragged down to the Abyss which is in Hell and imprisoned there for millennia. Well, in Revelation they are released. So, they return, the fallen Angels return to Earth and so there will be a second attempt at trying to again mingle our seed corrupt human DNA so I think all this will repeat again uh in in the details of the Book of Revelation.”
I must again punt to a book of mine, this time it’s chapter “Daniel’s ‘They’ and the ‘Seed of Men’” of What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim?
Pitterson moved much too fast as he painted a narrative yet, he painted with with a broom. The entire book of Daniel states nothing about Nephilim nor any such thing—he implies that the “they” refers to Angels but there’s no textual indication of that. Daniel was telling us of two people groups that would do business with each other but would not intermarry.
There’s also no indication that “it was a subset of the fallen Angels who committed this sin” since Jude refers to “the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left…” and 2 Peter 2 to “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them…” thus, “the angels…cast them” rather than only some of the Angels.
On a technical note, is was not “dragged down to the Abyss which is in Hell” but rather; into Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4) which is in the Abyss (as per the cultural context of Greek mythology).
I agree that “Revelation [chap. 9] they are released” but there’s no indication that there will be “a second attempt…” Rather, we’re told they wreak havoc on Earth, they fight a war in heaven, and end up in what some term hell. Thus, anything beyond this is speculation—and may also imply a loophole that God missed.
Ryan Pitterson was (clumsily) asked, “is there any correlation from Goliath being a Nephilim?”
He replied, “Yeah, absolutely for sure, yeah…he was a descendant of the Anakim who fled to Gath during the wars in Canaan. In the Book of Joshua they said the last of the Anakim fled to Gath which is where Goliath is from. The Anakim, you know, were the descendants of the sons of Anak who the spies saw in Numbers, you know, when most of the 12 spies” made that assertion.
This is another case of the folly of actually believing some of them most reliable people recorded in the Bible since the one and only way for him to correlate Goliath to Nephilim is exclusively via one single verse in the evil report—and, again, he could not do that from the Septuagint.
Thus, this is a non-issue—but at least he was more specific about the spies with that it was “most of the 12.”
Ryan Pitterson notes, “Jesus is called the son of David in the, that’s a, it’s a messianic title, battling a Nephilim right, so, battling an offspring, a half hybrid, fallen Angel offspring so that to me it’s a total foreshadow of Christ versus antichrist.”
Yet, since there’s no correlation between Goliath and Nephilim there’s no such correlation between David fighting Goliath and Jesus “versus” antichrist—except, perhaps, in the loosest of symbolic manners.
Beyond that non-starter, he argues, “the antichrist will be a literal Nephilim, he will be the literal offspring of the Devil. And I think the fallen Angels, again, Daniel says that they’re going to try to mingle their seed with, this, they’re going to try to mingle with the seed of men.”
Here we have the problem of that there’s no indication that the Devil could father genetic/physical offspring even if he wanted to. Recall that he argued that fallen Angels did and will father genetic/physical offspring but the Devil is not an Angel, he’s a Cherub (Ezekiel 28:14).
Also, note how specific he is in asserting, “fallen Angels…Daniel says that they’re going to…” but Daniel specifies no such thing.
He was asked, “I want to do a lot of research about the Nephilim…other than maybe your books and, of course, getting the Bible out and starting to read this you’d kind of alluded to earlier, how there’s a lot of misinformation and all that so, other than obviously your books and the Bible where would you point somebody to say, you know, ‘I just gotta learn more’?”
He recommends Michael Heiser: he teaches post-flood Nephilim, but the Bible does not. He also teaches that unclean spirits (demons) are the spirits of dead Nephilim, but that’s folklore from millennia after the Torah was written.
He recommends Gary Stearman: while I’m unsure if he’s published on the subject, I do recall that he taught that Adam and Eve were not naked pre-fall.
He recommends Rob Skiba (R.I.P.) and notes that when he met Rob, he was a “fanboy”: he also taught post-flood Nephilim, that they were very, very tall, giant grapes, etc.
Thus, ironically, reference was made to “a lot of misinformation” and the recommended reading is of some of them men responsible for such misinformation.
For more details, see my relevant books.
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