Charles Welch and Fredk Brininger wrote of Nephilim Giants in The Berean Expositor, Vol. VIII, 1918 AD. The publication is said to be, “the organ of NO SOCIETY, the property of NO SECT, the exponent of NO CREED” yet, of course, it presents teachings from a certain perspective.
They quote an odd version that has the Gen 6 affair as:
And it came to pass, when Adam began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of Adam, that they were fair: and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always remain in Adam (the article is not used here, even as it is omitted in the words ‘in the earth’ in verse 4) for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”
They note, “We know that angels fell, for Jude 6 speaks of the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation…Their sin is likened to that of Sodom and Gomorrah…The time of their fall is not given in Jude, but Peter links the “angels that sinned” with the time of Noah (II Pet. ii. 4, 5).” In short, 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.
It’s also noted, “angels are always spoken of as men” since indeed, 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.
Focusing on Gen 6:4, they note the following—since they’re reading what’s typically translated as, “When man [or men] began to multiply” as referring to the singular hu-man Adam—“Of Adam the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not always remain in Adam, for that he also is flesh’” and from somewhere abouts they get, “Adam differed nothing in this respect from his children, his days were numbered” from which they conclude, “and it is revealed to us that from this point ‘his days’ were to be ‘an hundred and twenty years.’”
In a manner of speaking, whether v. 1 specifically refers to the individual person Adam or to men in general, it’s still roughly the same timeframe since if it’s read as when man/men began to multiply that could be as early as when Adam and Eve’s children first began having children which was still within Adam’s lifespan, of course.
In any wase, based on the above, they continue, “‘There were giants in the earth IN THOSE DAYS’, so continues verse 4, and the only days that can be meant are those which refer to the last 120 years of Adam’s life. Not only were they in the earth then, but ‘after that’, after Adam had died, and after the flood had destroyed the giants that were in the earth during Adam’s closing years.”
It’s challenging to discern to what they’re referring by, “after the flood had destroyed the giants that were in the earth during Adam’s closing years” since, of course, they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form.
They then get into linguistics by noting, “The word ‘giants’ comes from the Greek gigantes, which did not originally mean only greatness of size, but is derived for gegenes, ‘earth born,’” Indeed, 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.
It’s then noted, “The Hebrew word is Nephilim, or ‘the fallen ones’; these were the Gibbor, the ‘mighty’…Nimrod was ‘a mighty one in the earth’…These mighty ones are also called ‘men of renown’, or literally, ‘men of name’; this again is a prominent feature in the rebellion that originated Babel, for the builders said, ‘Let us make us a name.’” Fair enough if we leave it at that yet, be aware that virtually all pop-Nephiologists—who, by definition, make a living by selling un-biblical tall-tales to Christians—merely assert that Nimrod was a Nephil.
It’s generically asserted, “That the Nephilim numbered among them literal giants, the Scriptures clearly testify” which is the same ol’ problem of communicating vaguely.
Charles Welch and Fredk Brininger also generically wrote, “The spies sent by Moses into the land of promise spoke of the ‘men of great stature’ that they saw, saying, ‘and there we saw the giants (Nephilim) the sons of Anak which come of the giants.’” Well, that wasn’t vaguely, “The spies” since those were 12, rather the ones who stated that with an, “evil report” were the 10 unreliable ones who just made up a tall-tale and were rebuked by God: unsure why such key facts were not noted. Also, they’re quoting a non-LXX version since it doesn’t mention Anakim therein and those are two of the five mere assertions by the 10—see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Now, not defining giant leads to other unknowns such as what they mean by writing, “All however were not of necessity gigantic in size” since that’s fundamentally meaningless. Likewise with, “the giant cities of Bashan still bear testimony to the existence of a race of literal giants.”
Yet, as support they appeal to, “the iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan (over 15 feet long) bears its witness also” but that’s just piling assertions atop assumptions: that bedstead was not something upon which Og slept, it was a ritual object—see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
They conclude, “hence although the A.V. gives ‘giants’ as a translation of Nephilim” but 1) that’s not a translation, it’s a rendering, 2) that’s not why, and 3) that’s a non-sequitur after referring to a Repha—who’s height is unknown.
And even though we’re warned, “let us not hastily come to the conclusion that these Nephilim were not, nevertheless, literal giants, for Scripture most definitely tells us that many of them were” well, speaking for myself, mine wasn’t a hasty conclusion but one based on that 1) I would need to know their usage of giants and 2) note that their only reason for that assertion is misreading one vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word (which is a word-concept fallacy) and one sentence from an unreliably impossible evil report.
They argue, “The intermarrying of one section of Adam’s children with another does not supply a reasonable argument for ‘giants’ as a result” or, as a confused assertion, “If the sons of God were fallen angels, the abnormal consequences are what may be expected” but all indications are that Nephilim looked just like regular humans since both sides of their parentage looked just like regular humans.
Charles Welch and Fredk Brininger continued with that, “such a drastic and universal destruction as the flood becomes a necessity” but, I will add, wasteful since they just taught us post-flood Nephilim so the flood was a waste since God missed a loophole—let’s see if they tell us just how Nephilim made it past the flood, past God.
They throw in that, “Satan himself in the form of a serpent sought by the temptation in the garden to thwart the Most High” but there’s no indication of the form of a serpent but merely being referred to as such—just as with that in Rev 12 it’s not a case of Satan himself in the form of a dragon—beyond in visionary symbolism, that is—see my book What Does the Bible Say About the Devil Satan? A Styled Satanology.
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