BioLogos, self-IDd as, “A community seeking truth and engaging the tough questions on science and faith,” posted an article, or the beginning of a thread discussion, by a certain Clovis Merovingian titled The Nephilim and their Real Identity – Faith & Science Conversation.
It begins with:
So Genesis 6:1-4, the mentions of of [sic.] Giant Rephaim later in the Torah and elsewhere, the Book of Enoch and other Enochic literature, and the statements in Second Peter and Jude about angels being chained up, sexual indiscretions by angels, and quoting from the Book of Enoch, are part of a tradition of angels in the Antediluvian world and afterward lusting after human women, having sex with them, and siring giant warrior demigods called the Nephilim who upon their deaths in the flood became the unclean spirits in the gospels. The tradition also has the angels corrupting humanity by teaching the arts of Mesopotamian civilization to mankind.
Well, Rephaim aren’t mentioned until post-flood texts so it should have been, “So Genesis 6:1-4, the mentions of of [sic.] Giant” Nephilim. Now, the employment of the term, “Giant” 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 Clovis Merovingian’s usage? Do those two usages agree?
Biblically contextually, “Giant Nephilim” would mean, “Nephilim Nephilim.”
“later in the Torah” actually means in one single sentence.
As for, “the Book of Enoch and other Enochic literature” 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.
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.
What Jude quotes of 1 Enoch is, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” That seems to have been paraphrasing Deut 33:2, “The LORD came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand.”
“and afterward” is a mere assertion based on misreading Gen 6:4 and on one single unreliable sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked in Num 13:33.
That unclean spirits are the spirits of dead Nephilim is just folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah. For a biblical view, please see my article Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
Clovis Merovingian abruptly and generically asserts, “So this is a polemic against the Apkallu myth in Mesopotamia where they claimed their superiority on account of divine wisdom given to them by supernatural gods before the flood called Watchers or Apkallu who later reproduced with human women producing giants after the flood.” Well, that is generic since there are more than one version of the Apkallu myth—see the appendix on that issue in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
And why arbitrarily declare Gen 6 is, “a polemic against the Apkallu myth in Mesopotamia” rather than that the Apkallu myth is a polemic against the Nephilim myth in Israel?
Merovingian then jumps from pre-flood days to that, “Canaanite giants are also a polemic against the deified kings that founded the royal houses in Canaan and were worshipped as underworld figures…heroes who the Mesopotamians and Canaanites worshipped were really the result of a boundry crossing between the human and divine worlds that led to the corruption of the earth.”
There’s still the issue of what is meant by, “Canaanite giants” but what has been done is a jump—about which the readers weren’t told—from Nephilim to Rephaim.
What is being very vaguely stated is what happens due to that in Ugaritic texts recently deceased kings and heroes are referred to as kings and heroes but after they had been dead for some time, they were referred to as rph, could be summoned from the grave/underworld to attend rituals, etc., see my article Dead Kings and Rephaim The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty.
And this becomes evident in that the statement follows with reference to, “Canaanites called Rephaim” and, “the Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamia.”
Reference is made to that, “These people were only slightly taller than the average population” which seems to imply that by, “giant” Merovingian is referring to 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).
Well, that means that the usage isn’t in agreement with the English Bibles’ usage since 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.
, they had human Y DNA whose mutations could be traced back for thousands of years and contrary to the Biblical accounts that have them being wiped out in the conquest and during King David’s time they have millions of descendants today.
We’re told, “unclean spirits are said to come from these people because they were the bastard offspring of spirits. The word ‘unclean’ in unclean spirits refers to ritual uncleanliness by illegitimate mixture and the only place outside of the Bible in Greek texts that the term unclean spirit is used is in Apocryphal biblical texts like Jubilees to refer to the bastard spirits of the Nephilim.”
If, “of the Nephilim” then not of the Rephaim which is whom were being commented on. In any case, indeed, and again that unclean spirits are the spirits of dead Nephilim is just folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah.
Not being consistent, in jumping from Nephilim to Rephaim to Nephilim, Clovis Merovingian notes, “they have to be of divine descent for this to work” but they who, “if they aren’t what is the event referred to in Second Peter and Jude” that which I term the Gen 6 affair regarding, “angels in chains because they sexually transgressed with human women” thus it is asked, “if they have millions of descendants of their lineage which is illicitly from the angels do those millions of descendants become demons after they die?” no: this is just a mish mash of category errors.
Lastly, we’re told:
…the Bible does differentiate between the warrior elites in Canaan, normal humans and actual giants which are the Anakim (an actual historical people we know from the record but we don’t have solid proof they were giants.) It’s still strange that in elite burials in Canaan we don’t find giant skeletons, but then the Israelites would have probably said that YHWH reduced them to dust anyhow and wiped out all memory of them because their very bodies were unclean.
Should we imagine that by, “warrior elites in Canaan” reference is being made to Rephaim?
As for, “actual giants” note that we weren’t told the usage of giants but we’re told of actual giants: this is a persistent problem with pop-Nephilology authors.
As for, “Anakim…don’t have solid proof they were giants” but we do have proof they were something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average since, for example, Deut 2 notes that they were, “tall” subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Thus, “giant skeletons” can mean taller than 5.0-5.3 ft. by some unknown level.
And such is what happens when terminology isn’t defined, is watered down, and causes category errors.
Now, was quite active in the comments section so let us review:
Merovingian commented:
Disregard what I said about the Bible making a distinction between Rephaim and normal human kings in Canaan. This was because normal human kings were not thought to be of divine descent while the Rephaim were. These skeletons we have of these royal and military castes are the historical Nephilim.
I already noted the problem with, “normal human kings were not thought to be of divine descent while the Rephaim were”: that Pagan mythology had normal human kings becoming Rephaim—as opposed to the tribe called Rephaim of the Bible who were just normal humans.
As for, “These skeletons…are the historical Nephilim” then, by definition, those skeletons date to pre-flood days and I’m unsure why they were localized in what centuries later came to be called Canaan.
A certain Richard Gillett replied:
I was waiting to see if anyone jumped in.
I know there are some, maybe many, who try to accept and rationalise the existence of the Nephilim, but they only occur in the grey area of Genesis. Grey, as in, Oral Tradition, myth, Legend and all those words that have detrimental or inaccurate connotations and popular meanings that threaten faith.
I am reluctant to suggest that they are scientifically improbable, but…[ellipses in original]
It would seem that the author is trying to justify human behaviour as being affected spiritual beings manifested as physical entities and the flood as being thee removal of their influence. People are also keen to make the flood a real event and to claim that God would just wipe out humanity and then get second thoughts and save a few “faithfuls”
Humanity does not need angelic beings to fall, or muck up. Beautiful women are not gullible or susceptible to the influence of fantastic or “Supermen” contrary to popular culture and legend (well there might be exceptions, I guess).
As this is ancient History or pre-history perhaps we need not dwell too much on the physical aspects and try and discern why the Nephilim are mentioned at all.
I’m unsure why, “spiritual beings manifested as physical entities” is mentioned since Nephilim were born on Earth and the good ol’ fashioned way.
Indeed, “Humanity does not need angelic beings to fall, or muck up” but that doesn’t mean Angels didn’t fall.
It would seem that Nephilim are mentioned at all since they were part of the tripartite perfect storm that was the premise for the flood: fallen humans, fallen Angels, and fallen Nephilim.
Merovingian replied:
Thanks for your response. But I can’t dismiss it as a myth because I take the supernatural elements of the Bible very seriously and the main problem with all of this is the unclean spirits in the Gospels and where they came from. Furthermore everyone on earth just because of sheer mathematics descends from the people that the Bible calls Nephilim, the ancient populations Ive mentioned, and the populations of the Levant have their DNA.
So the question is everyone becomes am unclean spirit when they die because they’re descended from the Nephilim. This obviously isn’t true but why?
The Bible assumes their lineage was wiped out completely but that’s literally impossible for elite people like this who had loads of children and great sexual access to women. The idea that 6 foot 9 warrior elites Goliath in Gath (as described in the Bible) or people like him didn’t have descendants is laughable. For that to be true the Nephilim would have to be 100% percent endogamous and thats pretty much impossible.
I provided the answer to, “unclean spirits in the Gospels and where they came from” in my article Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
It’s biologically, genetically, incoherent to merely assert, “everyone on earth just because of sheer mathematics descends from the people that the Bible calls Nephilim” in part since they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form since God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and it contradicts the Bible five times (Gen 7:7, 23; Heb 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5) since that’s how many times God told us who survived the flood but Nephilim aren’t mentioned.
I’m unsure how we would know that, “the populations of the Levant have their DNA” especially when 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.
Inserting Goliath into the mix is another category error since he’s referred to as a Repha, not a Nephil, virtually every single time he’s mentioned.
A certain Kai noted:
Michel Heiser has discussed interpretations about the ‘Nephilim’ and giants in his book ‘The unseen realm’, pp. 225-239. I have not read the book yet (waiting on my desk) but I glanced the pages and there seemed to be many interesting observations.
The starting point to interpreting the passages about the ‘Nephilim’ is that the story is told to an audience in the Ancient Near East (ANE). The basic assumptions and what was considered ‘normal’ and expected was different for them than it is for us grown in modern societies with a materialistic worldview. (materialistic = what exists is either observable matter or measurable energy [except God]). That makes the story sound strange for us.
Now it’s, “the ‘Nephilim’ and giants” so who are the giants? Heiser referred to Nephilim as giants and told us, “I don’t think the biblical giants were taller than unusually tall people of modern times (between 7-9 feet).”
Dr. Heiser was credentialed and experienced but his Nephilology wasn’t altogether biblical, and he tended to create more problems than he solved—search online for these articles for examples:
Review of Amy Richter and Michael Heiser on four Enochian Watcher related women in Jesus’ genealogy.
Rebuttal to Dr. Michael Heiser’s “All I Want for Christmas is Another Flawed Nephilim Rebuttal.”
I also included him in my book, The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants: What do Scholarly Academics Say About Nephilim Giants?
Merovingian replied:
Yeah, the problems with the story are even evident in how Michael Heiser frames it. Michael Heiser believed that there was a tribe of six foot to 7 foot giants that walked the places in question who were invisible on the archeological record, and that their lineage was wiped out.
The Nephilim would have been a military and warrior elite in these areas in question Mesopotamia and Canaan and for them to leave no descendants they would have had to have been 100% endogamous. That is laughable. Even under Heisers formulation everyone on earth today is mathematically descended from the Nephilim.
The real question is not why they have human DNA or why they aren’t literal giants. The church fathers said that angels took human form to mate with women and gigantism was used as hyperbolic symbolic way of describing ones enemies in that culture. The real problem involves demononology. The Unclean Spirits in the Gospels came from them.
Note the term, “six foot to 7 foot giants” which shows how utterly useless the word giants is since it can mean virtually anything.
As for, “invisible on the archeological record” again, since we don’t know what they looked like we don’t know they were invisible on the archeological record since we might have their skeletons and not know it.
Not possible that, “The Nephilim would have been a military and warrior elite in these areas in question Mesopotamia and Canaan “ since Mesopotamia and Canaan didn’t even exist when they were around.
It’s simply not the case that, “Even under Heisers formulation everyone on earth today is mathematically descended from the Nephilim” since there’s no indication that Noah, his sons and their wives all, or any, mated with Nephilim.
It’s more like that some, “church fathers said that angels took human form” for which there’s literally zero indication, “to mate with women” but, “and gigantism” is merely asserted from the utterly false evil report in Num 13:33 which notes that 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked merely asserted this of Nephilim, “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology—see my book What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
If Nephilim, “was used as hyperbolic symbolic way of describing ones enemies in that culture” why is there only one single post-flood sentence that uses that term (and only one single pre-flood one).
As for, “The Unclean Spirits in the Gospels came from them” that’s a mere assertion based on picking up folklore from a few centuries BC, running with it, applying it, and merely claiming, “The Unclean Spirits in the Gospels came from” Nephilim—or Rephaim, or swap whatever’s the latest hip trend—and so, it’s a merely linguistics argument: unclean spirits is used BC, unclean spirits is used AD ergo, unclean spirits can only ever refer to one thing so that’s also a word-concept fallacy.
A certain Robin replied:
Nice comment! I found Heiser’s ideas interesting…possible [ellipses in original] (as far as that can be!)…and for most of us a shift in thinking. It is not unreasonable to assert that we do not look at these stories the way ancient people did. People in those days were, on average, shorter than we are As for the giants in Genesis…I don’t know.. The text of 1 Samuel 17 describes Goliath –whom some consider a leftover from the Nephilim etc —as over “nine feet tall” per NIV…but the Dead Sea Scrolls used the Septuagint and said 6’6″. So they were “literal giants” by comparison to 20-year-old men with slingshots.
Not a bad comment regarding the subjectivity of the term giants and I will add Flavius Josephus to who had the shorter range for Goliath’s height.
Kai came back to comment on Clovis Merovingian last paragraph:
The real question is not why they have human DNA or why they aren’t literal giants. The church fathers said that angels took human form to mate with women and gigantism was used as hyperbolic symbolic way of describing ones enemies in that culture. The real problem involves demononology. The Unclean Spirits in the Gospels came from them.
The explanation that the unclean spirits came from Nephilim or their descendants (the giants) is not based on the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. IIRC, it comes from another tradition, the Enoch tradition. How we deal with the claims based on the Enoch tradition is a matter of opinion.
What seems to be a fact is that the people in ANE believed that there were spiritual creatures that lived in Heaven (above the firmament), the realm of God/gods. The Heavenly Council is part of that group, as are the messengers of God (angels). A claim of such creatures as the Nephilim was ‘normal’ and expected for the ANE people.
The idea of the heavenly creatures mixing with humans fits also well to the worldview of the ANE people. In the Greek world, half-gods (children of gods) were just such: persons born from the mating of the gods and humans. In the OT, we see examples of angels or other heavenly beings visiting on Earth in the form of humans. It does not take much imagination to invent stories about matings of the heavenly beings and humans.
What is perhaps a more controversial issue is whether there were actual reproduction between the heavenly creatures and humans? Enoch tradition and some other stories in the ANE claim that. I do not know whether those stories were simply fairy tales or whether there was some truth in the core of those stories.
A family of (relative) giants in the past is believable based on possible mutations in human genes. An alternative explanation might be the ancient tradition of stressing the greatness of the rulers and heroes by painting them (or their enemies) as superior to the others: larger, stronger and long-lived.
In the OT stories, the Anakim are described with two deviating features: larger than the others and having six fingers and/or toes. If the latter feature is part of a syndromic condition, a deviating body growth pattern is possible. Mostly it does not lead to gigantism but it is one possibility. ‘Gigantism’ does not necessarily mean as large as the Masoretic version tells but larger than the other contemporary humans anyway. Assortative mating would enhance such features; it is likely that the largest persons took spouses that were larger than the average size.
The linguistics issue never goes away when virtually everyone is being vague, “Nephilim or their descendants (the giants)” doesn’t really mean anything, begs questions, and causes problems such as, “(relative) giants” relative to well, whatever any given person feels like asserting.
Again, “angels…in the form of humans” since such is their form (male humans).
Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology. We were created “a little lower” (Psa 8:5) than them, and we can reproduce with them so, by definition, we’re of the same basic “kind.” This does away with issues of, “whether there were actual reproduction between the heavenly creatures and humans?”
As for, “Anakim…larger than the others and having six fingers and/or toes” well, I already dealt with the, “larger” part due to referencing that they were, “tall”—large and tall are just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as giant.
As for the digits, that’s only stated about one single Repha—with Anakim being like a clan of the Rephaim tribe.
Thus, why would being larger (whatever that means) result in or derive from gigantism when, for example, I’m taller and larger than my wife at 6ft and circa 197lbs but no one would claim I exhibit gigantism?
And that comment ends with the key subjectivism issue, “…than the average size.”
Richard Gillett also came back to reply to, “The real problem involves demononology”:
You seem to be confusing demonology and superstition.
Whether demons exist is one question. Whether everything assigned to them by Scripture (ANE) is another.
Our knowledge of the Spiritual world and the tensions or dynamics within it our limited as much as the physical presence of God. There is a ying/yang logic to the existence of evil beings, so that if you ae going to believe in an angelic host then the demonic one becomes probable.
My experience is that if you do not chase or identify it, evil will let the Christian be. We are already lost to them and any attempt to sway us is met with faith. However, as Christians we have a certain obligation to fight evil and put ourselves in harm’s way (spiritually). To dismiss demons or evil as fallacy is precisely what they want, which is why they will leave you alone.
I have a fondness for the Screwtape letters by C,S, Lewis.
We can happily accept that the Biblical understanding of demonology was affected by their ignorance of science, and illness, but there is still a spiritual battle that we need to be aware of and not ignore.
The only, “ying/yang logic to the existence of evil beings” of which I can think is that some Angels fell. That’s because ying/yang isn’t what the West has watered down as perpetual balance but the logic is that ying becomes yang and yang becomes ying in a perpetual flux.
Clovis Merovingian commented:
Alright, so the only place in Greek outside of the New Testament in all of literature that the term translated, “Unclean Spirit” is used is in Second Temple Jewish apocryphal books like Jubilees to describe the spirits of dead Nephilim. By using this term the Gospels are not being ambiguous, they’re saying that it’s those specific unclean spirits from the Enochic tradition.
There’s also the fact the Enochic tradition is referenced throughout the New Testament in Second Peter and Jude where in Jude the book is quoted. There’s no question that the unclean spirits are the ghosts of dead Nephilim. As for the rest of what you said. People are making comments here speculating on tribes of seven foot giants and wondering if it’s possible but they’ve skipped over the main premise of my original post.
The people that the Nephilim story in the Bible is targeting, meaning the people that the Israelites called Nephilim, the Early Dynastic Mesopotamian Royalty, the people the Canaanites called Rp’hum or Rephiam, and the elites of Hebron, Bashan, and other places that were said to be ruled by Anakim in the Southern Hillcountry’s skeletons have been found and they are only slightly taller than the average person in the local population, they are 100% human genetically including in Y DNA which were from the local population and had mutations that could be traced through human populations going thousands of years.
Now does this debunk angelic ancestry? Not necessarily, the could have taken on the exact DNA of the local population to breed with their women. Angels don’t have DNA and so when taking human form must manifest it from somewhere. Theres no reason their DNA would be something unheard of from earth.
See what I mean about a strictly linguistics argument? There’s no New Testament statement about appealing to Jubilees or 1 Enoch or any such pseudepigrapha in terms of the identification of demons/unclean spirits thus, it’s merely asserted, “the Gospels are not being ambiguous, they’re saying that it’s those specific unclean spirits from the Enochic tradition.”
And that is still the case even when it’s clear that some or all NT authors were well aware of 1 Enoch, to the point of quoting it.
Thus, “There’s no question that the unclean spirits are the ghosts of dead Nephilim” is to turn a folkloric assertion in to an assurance based on it supposedly being filtered through the NT.
Again, how could it be that, “The people that the Nephilim story in the Bible is targeting” were, “the people the Canaanites” when by the time Canaanites existed we only have one single sentence’s worth of such alleged targeting?
The, “Rp’hum or Rephiam [sic.]” is what I meant about Pagan mythology. Now, Deut 2 tells us that the 100% human Rephaim tribe were aka Zamzummim (or Zuzim) and also Emim so the question becomes who called them Rephaim? Would they have they self-IDd as Rephaim or…my theory is that since the root rapha ranges in meaning from healing to dead, Israelites called them rapahim/Rephaim as a polemic playing off of Pagan mythology: they were basically calling them the dead as in lowly, defeated, etc.—like the old-fashioned taunt you’re dead meat!!!
“Angels don’t have DNA” is a mere assertion: Angels are described as looking just like human males and performing physical actions and without any indication that such isn’t their ontology. Why would they only be missing THE key feature of the male genetic makeup?
Bill_II commented as follows to, “Theres no reason their DNA would be something unheard of from earth”:
Their DNA would have to be a close enough match to produce offspring. So there is no reason why they would “have” to match the DNA of the locals. But when you are talking about angelic beings I guess anything is possible. Including scanning and replicating local DNA.
Again, we are of the same basic kind as Angels so why turn what Gen 6 has as good ol’ fashioned physical copulation as sci-fi, “scanning and replicating local DNA”?
Ethan commented:
The term angels, means messengers, and the giants or nephilim are just tyrants or bullies. 2 Peter says that the flood was brought upon the “ungodly” who sinned. This gave Noah, who was righteous, and his family a fresh start in the region of Mesopotamia.
Book of Enoch and other related literature are uninspired texts that should not be brought into our interpretation of the Bible.
Goliath was a warrior of Gath that stood out and his stature is not out of line with modern giantism. There is nothing said about him being descended from nephilim.
That’s fair enough and cut through a lot of the generic clutter.
Clovis Merovingian replied by parsing Ethan’s statements and commenting in sections:
[Ethan] The term angels, means messengers, and the giants or nephilim are just tyrants or bullies. 2 Peter says that the flood was brought upon the “ungodly” who sinned. This gave Noah, who was righteous, and his family a fresh start in the region of Mesopotamia.
I agree that depicting enemies as giants could be Ancient Near Eastern way of describing people as tyrants. I’m not sure what angel being a word for messenger has to do with anything though.
[Ethan] Book of Enoch and other related literature are uninspired texts that should not be brought into our interpretation of the Bible.
Yeah except those uninspired texts and the sin of the Watchers is directly alluded to in 2nd Peter and Jude and is quoted in Jude and alluded to many times in the Bible. The New Testament writers were steeped in texts like 1 Enoch and Jubilees and it very clearly informed their theology, hence the unclean spirits. I didn’t bring Enoch into our interpretation of the Bible, the New Testament writers did.
[Ethan] Goliath was a warrior of Gath that stood out and his stature is not out of line with modern giantism. There is nothing said about him being descended from nephilim.
Numbers 13:33, “And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Joshua 11:22, “**22 **No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.”
Goliath was a giant man from Gath, do the obvious math. Other giants are said to be killed in the same books that mention Golaith [sic.] and they are explicitly told as descendants of Rephaim, the Nephilim.
Now we can’t know what, “depicting enemies as giants” means since it could mean as Nephilim or as Rephaim or as living dead/unclean spirits or as something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average.
Note that anyone appealing to Num 13:33 needs to mention that they’re relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse doesn’t 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
8. Then post-flood Nephilologists have to invent un-biblical fantasy tall-tales about how Nephilim got past the flood, past God.
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal—which I’m currently updating.
Thus, in terms of discerning reality, vs. a tall-tale, Num 13:33 is irrelevant. And so, “explicitly told as descendants of Rephaim, the Nephilim” is an incoherently fallacious mere assertion.
Ethan replied by parsing Merovingian comment:
[Merovingian] I agree that depicting enemies as giants could be Ancient Near Eastern way of describing people as tyrants. I’m not sure what angel being a word for messenger has to do with anything though.
Well a messenger called to carry the word of God. Those who hear are also called. These angels or messengers referred to by Peter and Jude are the sons of God who are called to spread the word of God which is the seed (Luke 8:11). As sons of God, they corrupted His word with the words of men… sons of God corrupting themselves with the daughters of men.
The sons of God who are called are represented by the line of Adam:
Gen 4:25-26 …God has granted me another seed in place of Abel… At that time men began to call upon the name of the LORD.
The daughters of men are represented by the line of Cain who like to put their own words in place of God. These are the words of a tyrant:
Gen 4:23-24 Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech. For I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
The word of God is not a biological seed but a righteous seed (uncorrupted word)… and yet who listens to you better than your own children?
[Merovingian] Yeah except those uninspired texts and the sin of the Watchers is directly alluded to in 2nd Peter and Jude and is quoted in Jude and alluded to many times in the Bible. The New Testament writers were steeped in texts like 1 Enoch and Jubilees and it very clearly informed their theology, hence the unclean spirits. I didn’t bring Enoch into our interpretation of the Bible, the New Testament writers did.
Alluded to or perhaps your reading it into? Those uninspired texts are written to work with and often fill in details that “daughters of men” would like to tickle our ears with. Ok, so Jude quoted 1 Enoch… There was inspiration in that particular passage which talks about the end times, not other fantastical things presumably written by Enoch.
I will give that the New Testement [sic.] writers did have a lot to navigate without an established canon at the time. As Jude said, certain men crept in unnoticed.
[Merovingian] Numbers 13:33, “And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Nephilim should not be capitalized as a proper name. It is an untranslated Hebrew word that should be read as a descriptive noun. Again it is not a biological seed. The KJV translates it as giants.
– 5303 נְפִיל Nephilim: (properly) a feller, i.e. a bully or tyrant.
[Merovingian] Goliath was a giant man from Gath, do the obvious math.
Goliath can certainly be described as a bully or tyrant, and being from Gath is likely a descendent of Anak who was a Canaanite… Canaan the son of Ham who was on the Ark, was not wiped out in the flood, but the “Nephilim” were.
Yes, the isolated term messenger is general so can apply to human and non-human conveyers of data. But to assert, “messenger called to carry the word of God…are represented by the line of Adam” is to turn the Gen 6 sons of God into humans when all indications, including the history of interpretation, has them being Angels.
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.
Yet, the allusion is to the Sethite view which is a late-comer based on myth and prejudice.
Note that a generic statement about that, “men” in general, “began to call upon the name of the LORD” was turned into exclusively excluding, “daughters of men” or, “the line of Cain” about whom it’s merely asserted, “like to put their own words in place of God.”
And the supposed proof of that—which was stated about the entire, “line”—is that one single individual member of that line marries two women and seems to have killed or murdered one man: could be killed in self-defense due to the claim of, “for wounding me…striking me.”
Actually, “Nephilim should…be capitalized as a proper name” since it specifically identifies the offspring of sons of God and daughters of men from that which I term the Gen 6 affair: it is descriptive of them. Thus, they were, “a biological seed.”
As for, “The KJV translates it as giants” that merely begs the question: what’s the usage of giants and I already answered that—it’s merely rendering Nephilim.
Bill_II replied to, “Alluded to or perhaps your reading it into?”:
In addition to the direct quotes from Enoch there are many theological themes that are shared between Enoch, portions written before the NT, and the rest of the NT. So while it may be considered “uninspired” it did seem to influence the NT authors. Perhaps it is better to say Second Temple Judaism had an impact on the formation of Christian thought.
Richard Gillett commented:
Hmm, I wonder why the Book of Enoch is not Canonical in either mainstream Judaism or Christianity.
Well, in part due to what I already noted, it’s Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah even if it’s quoted and played off of just like Paul quoted Greek poets, Jude also quoted The Assumption of Moses, etc.
Bill_II’s reply to that was:
In Judaism since the book was written late and obviously not by Enoch it wasn’t considered authoritative.
For Christianity it gets messy. Some early church fathers went along with the Jewish judgement and didn’t consider it inspired. Problem is it was found at Qumran so it is hard to judge exactly what people thought of it. Some of the ideas in it did make it into the NT and some modern people hold beliefs from it that they think came from the NT.
That, “it was found at Qumran” isn’t a problem since that refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls and most of those aren’t scripture but are things such as Community Rules, etc.
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