Mauro Biglino is, as per his bios, an ancient languages scholar, translator of Masoretic biblical Hebrew, who hold to a literal reinterpretation of the Bible.
His article Giants in the Bible refers to, “figures with gigantic appearances” so that his subjective usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants appears to be 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).
That, however, does not agree with the usage of that word in English Bibles since that usage is that it merely renders (does not 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.
He notes, “a theme that runs throughout the Bible, from the Book of Genesis to the Apocrypha, passing through rabbinical commentaries and historians such as Josephus” about which you can see my paper How Nephilim Absconded from the Tanakh and Invaded Folkloric Territory.
Interestingly, he begins his article on his usage of Giants in the Bible by referring to, “Nimrod and the genealogical anomaly…the text defines him as gibbòr, meaning powerful, strong, the same term that in other passages will be used to refer to giants or gibborìm.”
That is, “the same term that in other passages will be used to refer to giants or gibborìm” and, I will add, Nephilim (Gen 6:4), Angels (Psa 103:20), Boaz (Ruth 2:1), some of King David’s soldiers (1 Chron 11:11), even God Himself (Isa 9:6) since, indeed, gibbor is a merely descriptive term and so it is widely applicable.
He then moves on to, “The sons of the Elohim and the Gibborim” in terms of, “Who were these gibborim mentioned in the Bible and whom we find connected to the figures of giants?”
Well, these gibborim were whoever was powerful, strong (typically translated as mighty) so he seems to be asking who were and what connects powerful/strong/mighty to vaguely generic subjectively unusually taller, by some unknown level, above the parochial average.
But from a list of Nephilim, Nimrod, Angels, Boaz, some of King David’s soldiers, and God, to list some examples, we have no indication that any of those were gigantic.
The question is actually: how do Nephilim, Nimrod, Angels, Boaz, some of King David’s soldiers, and God correlate to whoever was gigantic?
Yet, the question is really: how does being powerful/strong/mighty correlate to being gigantic—history is full of examples of powerful/strong/mighty people who we not in the least bit gigantic.
Mauro Biglino quotes that which I term the Gen 6 affair thusly, “‘the sons of Elohim saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took them as wives… and they bore children’…I keep Elohim in the plural because translating it as ‘sons of God’ alters the original meaning of the term. These stories describe unions between the Elohim and Adamite women” (first ellipses in original).
Yet, the Hebrew is bene ha Elohim is sons of Elohim/sons of God so it was not, “Elohim and Adamite” but rather, bene/sons of Elohim/God and Adamites.
He follows directly with, “in Greek myths: the gods united with mortal women, giving birth to half-blood heroes such as Heracles, credited with exceptional stature” but that is abruptly stated since he has not told us about anyone who is gigantic or of exceptional stature—which is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as giants.
His conclusion is, “Hercules was probably one of these anomalous beings, let’s say one of these giants. The Bible tells us about these giants.” He assures us that, “It mentions them often” and notes, “for example in the two passages where it says that they had six fingers on each limb, 24 fingers in total, according to the biblical author…they had six fingers, these giants had six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot.”
That is not the case, he turned one single reference to one single person into a plural, “these…they…they…these” and the two passages are just iterations of the same story.
The ESV for 2 Samuel 21:20 reads thusly, “there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants.”
Note that, “great stature” is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as giants and exceptional stature and that giants in this text is merely rendering Repha: it is describing his tribal affiliation, not his height.
Mauro Biglino then writes of, “Giants and fears in the Land of Canaan”:
The theme of giants returns forcefully in Numbers 13, when Moses sends twelve scouts to observe the land of Canaan, which they intended to conquer by force of arms. Returning from their mission, they report: ” We saw the giants, descendants of Anak, of the race of giants; in our eyes we seemed like locusts, and so we must have seemed to them” (Numbers 13:33).
This is not a numerical comparison (there were only twelve scouts) but a comparison of physical proportions: in front of such imposing beings, the men felt as tiny and powerless as insects.
In the end, these explorers advised Moses’ men not to go against these characters, and because of their warning, which went against the instructions of Yahweh and Moses himself, most of them were killed.
This is a misrepresentation of the narrative since, “there were…twelve scouts” which he combined into v. 33 by asserting, “twelve scouts…their…they report” but he skipped over that there are two reports in the narrative and a bifurcation amongst the scouts.
A report is presented about a good land, fortified cities, and the six strong people groups whom the scouts saw.
Then loyal and faithful Caleb and Joshua encourage that what God commanded ought to be done but the disloyal and unfaithful other 10 discourage, “advised Moses’ men not to go against these characters.”
When their first attempt does not work, they take their scare-tactic, fear-mongering, “Don’t go in the woods!!!” style of tall-tale up quite a few notches by presenting an, “evil report” which consists of five mere assertions that are unsupported by even one single verse in the whole Bible.
Anyone who presents Num 13:33 (especially as a single, stand alone, un-contextual verse) as support for something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average (or in favor of post-flood Nephilim or for Nephilim being related to Anakim) needs to mention that they are relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse does not 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
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Thus, this comes down to that 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked, presented one (non-LXX) unreliable sentence wherein they merely asserted that they saw Nephilim (which was an artificial insertion into the original, reliable, report which had listed whom they saw) and the Israelite congregation believed them.
Mauro Biglino next wrote about, “Polydactyly and Og’s bed” which is a subsection which he begins by circling back to, “curious anatomical details about these frightening beings” note the plural these, “In 2 Samuel 21:20 and 1 Chronicles 20:6, we read, as mentioned above, of giants” note the plural giants, “with six fingers on each hand and foot, twenty-four fingers in all.”
He adds, “In Deuteronomy 3:11, Og, king of Bashan, is mentioned, who was also a giant. The text states that ‘his bed was made of iron… nine cubits long and four cubits wide,’ or about 4.1 × 1.8 meters. Here too, these are very concrete data, not symbols.”
Actually, “Og…was also a” Repha, is what the text is telling us. But what of Biglino’s un-biblical usage of giant with regards to his bed? Note that his bed is appealed to since we do not have a physical description of Og (at least, not until utterly wild folkloric tall-tales from millennia after his time).
And yet, concluding that we can conclude something about his personal size based on the size of his bed is a non-sequitur based on various mere assumptions: indications are that it was a ritual object, not something on which he slept—see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Yet, even if he slept on it: he was not a regular guy, he was a king who lived the lifestyles of the rich and (in)famous! If you measured my bed sure, you would get a good estimation of my height but you would also conclude that I am some five times wider than I actually am.
What we are contextually told about Rephaim is that, in general, they were, “tall” (Deut 2) which is subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
He then comes to, “The rabbinic interpretation” which means what (within Rabbinic Judaism) any given Rabbi may have said at any time during a span of millennia.
We are told, “The teacher Abrāhām ibn ‘Ezrā” 1093-1167 AD, “explains that the Nephilim take their name from the Hebrew verb nafal (‘to fall, to descend’), because ‘at the sight of them, the heart fell.’ So they were so real and so frightening that those who saw them felt faint. This is an interesting note” and is a very, very, very late dated note likely merely based on a subjective view of to what fall/descend may refer.
A more typical view is that they are referred to as such since they were in part responsible for one of the falls of humanity—the one that resulted in the flood.
It also seems to have been a polemical point. It is doubtful that if you lived pre-flood, met a Nephil, and asked about it, the reply would be, “I’m a Nephil, of the Nephilim.” Rather, since many Pagan cultures revered their versions of such pre-flood characters, Israelites were pointing out that their heroes were fallen.
Mauro Biglino then writes of, “The Book of Enoch and the sex of angels”:
An apocryphal but central text is the Book of Enoch, canonical for Coptic Christians. In the section called The Watchers, we read that “the angels, sons of heaven, descended upon Mount Hermon, swore together, and took wives from among the daughters of men; they conceived and bore giants” (1 Enoch:6,7).
Some translations specify that they descended “in the days of Yared,” a name derived from the verb yarad, “to descend,” which fossilizes the memory of a “great descent.” These angels, as Tertullian also recalls, had concrete sexual desires: in this regard, women at that time, especially if they had long hair, had to veil themselves for protection. This is not metaphorical language: it is, once again, narrative chronicle.
That 1 Enoch is in the Ethiopian canon does not make that one canon uniquely correct but rather, uniquely incorrect since 1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah (see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch) in fact, that cannon also contains a text titled The Life of Adam and Eve which claims that when God created Adam, God commanded the Angels to worship Adam.
It seems to pinpoint Mount Hermon since a few centuries BC, which is from when 1 Enoch dates, Pagans revered that mount so it was another case of polemics.
As for, “bore giants”: it has Nephilim as being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality (I provide calculations in my book since the measurement is done in elles).
The original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians 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 then move on to:
The Jewish historian Giuseppe Flavio [aka Flavius Josephus], in Antiquities of the Jews (1st century AD), recounts that the Israelites conquered Hebron, where there remained “a race of giants who, because of their large stature and different appearance, were a horrible sight.” . He then adds: “Even today, their bones are still on display, unlike anything known.”
Giuseppe Flavio writes for the Romans and does not question the existence of giants. He tells us about bones that were visible in his time, in the same way that the Bible recounts that Og’s bed was still preserved.
From that very, very late dated source (millennia after the Torah) we can only conclude that Flavio retold what had been retold—and tall-tales grow with time and telling (and retelling and re-re-re-re-retelling.
As for, “bones are still on display…Og’s bed was still preserved” those are things he tells us: he does not even say that he personally saw them. Yet, even if he had seen bones: he was not a qualified anatomist and would not have been able to discern the difference between the relatively large bones of whales, dinos, pachyderm, etc.—see, “Appendix: Review of Adrienne Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters” of my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
We are then circled back to etymology:
The term Nephilim: fallen ones, miscarriages, or Orion?
The term Nephilim has also sparked centuries of debate. Some derive it from the Hebrew root n-f-l (“to fall, to descend”), with possible moral or concrete meanings. Others, such as the scholar Heiser, link it to an Aramaic origin: the singular nephila refers to the constellation of Orion. It is no coincidence that the Septuagint translates the term without hesitation as γίγαντες.
Some exegetical strands even speak of “selective abortions”: when the Elohim united with the Adamites, they are said to have given birth mainly to females and aborted males, as if they already knew prenatal analysis techniques. It is a hypothesis that, if given the consideration it deserves, opens up surprising scenarios.
As for Michael Heiser’s view, the J. Edward Wright Endowed Professor of Judaic Studies, who is J. Edward Wright, Ph.D. himself, and who is the Director of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona 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” (private communique, July 2019).
Note that being told, “the Septuagint translates the term without hesitation as γίγαντες” begs the question of what γίγαντες means. Well, gigantes means earth-born as in born of the Greek Earth false goddess Gaia—see my linguistics book Bible Encyclopedias and Dictionaries on Angels, Demons, Nephilim, and Giants: From 1851 to 2010.
Mauro Biglino’s conclusion section notes:
Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Book of Enoch, rabbinic traditions, and Giuseppe Flavio: different sources, but all converging on one fact, the memory of gigantic beings who lived among men. They are described as powerful, frightening, often enemies of Israel and the armies of Yahweh…This is why I choose to read the Bible literally, without theological filters.
To review his evidence for giants, gigantic appearances, exceptional stature:
Nephilim: no reliable physical description.
Nimrod: no physical description.
Og: no physical description.
One man of subjectively, “great stature” so, taller than 5.0-5.3ft.
So, where are all of the giants?
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