Chaplain Jeff Davis posted an article titled the Sons of God, the Nephilim, and the Battle for the Promised Land wherein he notes and quotes:
…mysterious accounts of the “sons of God” and the Nephilim—beings that challenge our understanding of God’s creation and the spiritual battle that has raged since the beginning of time. These narratives provide profound insight into God’s sovereignty and His plan for His people.
The story begins in Genesis 6:1-4, where we read about the “sons of God” who took human women as wives, resulting in the birth of the Nephilim…
That is known as the Angel view of the Gen 6 affair (as I term it) and it was the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days, 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.
He notes, “This union produced the Nephilim, a race of giants described as mighty and renowned but ultimately corrupt and violent.”
Since biblically contextually, “Nephilim, a race of giants” means, “Nephilim, a race of Nephilim” and he did not inform us to what he’s referring by, “giants” then the questions become: What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s Chaplain Jeff Davis’ usage? Do those two usages agree?
He went on to write:
The post-Flood presence of giants, descendants of the Nephilim, is evident in later biblical accounts, particularly during the time of Moses and Joshua. Numbers 13:32-33 records the report of the spies sent to scout the land:
“The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 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.”
Note that he claims that whatever he means by, “giants” post-flood where, “descendants of the Nephilim’ is based on unquoted and uncited, “later biblical accounts, particularly during the time of Moses and Joshua” and with only one sentence’s worth of evidence.
In fact, he misrepresented the one sentence he can appeal to since it wasn’t, generically, “the spies” since there were 12 spies but he’s replying on the 10 unreliable ones who presented an unreliable, “evil report” and were rebuked by God—to death. I’m unsure why Chaplain Davis didn’t note these facts.
Also, note that he also didn’t inform his readers that he’s not only exclusively relying on one single sentence, a sentence that’s utterly unreliable, but a sentence exclusively from non-LXX versions since that version doesn’t include a reference to Anakim in that sentence.
He also misrepresented the unreliable report from non-LXX versions since he had it that it evidenced, “giants, descendants of the Nephilim” buy it asserts post-flood Nephilim and descendants of the Nephilim. Well, both of those are logical, bio-logical, and theo-logical impossibilities since God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
And now, Chaplain Davis will have to invent an un-biblical theology proper damaging fantasy tall-tale about just how Nephilim got past the flood, past God.
For more details, see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
The dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue since that one unreliable sentence is the only physical description we have.
As for, their supposedly alleged descendants, that sentence told us nothing about their size.
See, what Chaplain Jeff Davis has done, without outright telling his readers, is to insert a usage of the word giants as something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height compared to the parochial average—yes, that’s how useless that usage of the word is.
So, now we can answer the third question I posted above: no, his usage does not agree with the English Bibles’ usage.
And that is the case because 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.
So, he artificially inserted his subjective usage of giants into a Bible which knows nothing of it and so he chases that English word around a Hebrew Bible correlating texts that have nothing to do with each other—he takes texts out of context to make pretexts for prooftexts.
For example, he wrote, “These giants were part of the reason God commanded Moses and Joshua to utterly destroy certain tribes and cities” but God told us many times why He commanded such things but never said one single word about Nephilim nor relation to them.
But the Chaplain’s problem is that he uncritically read one sentence, believed it, picked it up, ran with it, and applied it.
He elucidated:
God’s instructions to Moses and Joshua were clear: to annihilate the Anakim (giants) and other wicked nations occupying the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 2:10-11 mentions the Rephaim, another race of giants, while Joshua 11:21-22 highlights Joshua’s campaign to eradicate the Anakim:
“At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns. No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.”
See, based on an unreliable sentence from non-LXX versions from an unreliable report by 10 unreliable guys he can now appeal to Anakim and think he’s referring to Nephilim and/or Nephilim 2.0.
And as for, “Anakim (giants)” he means, “Anakim (something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height compared to the parochial average).” Yet, biblically contextually, “Anakim (giants)” means, “Anakim (Rephaim)” so I’m unsure why he didn’t mention that.
Deut 2 makes it clear that Anakim (and Emmim) were like clans of the Rephaim (aka Zuzim or Zammzumim) tribe—not Nephilim: Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
In fact, Deut 2 also tells us the only contextually relevant thing about them: Rephaim, in general, were subjectively, “tall”—which is just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as giants. And they were tall compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3ft. in those days.
He then specified Goliath—who was a Repha—but for some reason he didn’t note that the Masoretic text has Goliath at just shy of 10 ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft. so, that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
The rest of the article is a succinct sermonizing homily about, “As we face our own giants” which is understandable since he’s chaplaining and not writing a treaties on Nephilology and related issues.
Yet, that may make it all the more important that he get his Nephilology, and related issues, correct since without that, his sermonizing homily is based on a false premise.
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