Considering Edward Lamar’s article, What are the Nephilim?, Jan, 2023. His self-description is, “My goal is to Spread Gods word!”
It was posted to the Medium site which self-identifies as, “Medium is where those ideas take shape, take off, and spark powerful conversations. We’re an open platform..” and, FYI, as it turns out, “The author deleted this Medium story.”
He begins by asking and answering, “what are these Nephilim? Well, they are giants. Yes, you heard me right” yet, what did we hear right since he employs the vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage modern English word giants without defining it. One issue is what he means by it and the other, more importantly is what the usage of it is in English Bibles.
Edward Lamar notes that they are mentioned in two texts, two mere verses actually, which he quotes thusly:
Genesis 6:4– “4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Numbers 13:33– “33 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.”
Yet, he adds, “There is potentially one more story. David and Goliath. Goliath was a giant man that stood at nine feet nine inches according to 1 Samuel 17:4. 1 Samuel 17:4: ‘4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits’” and he neglected to quote the, “and a span” part.
Three issues, at least:
1) it appears as if by giants he is referring unusual height.
2) since he was referring to Nephilim then that would not be one more since Goliath was an Anakite Repha, not a Nephil—stand by for more on this.
3) He is myopically appealing to the Masoretic version of that verse without informing his reads that the earlier Septuagint/LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at four cubits and a span which is just shy of 7 ft.
I noted more on point 2) since Goliath was an Anakite and Num 13:33 correlates them with Nephilim. Now, Edward Lamar tells us, “It is even more evidence of these creatures’ actual sizes: Numbers 13:32: ‘32And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.’”
Note the oddity of quoting the part that 99% of pop-researchers do not bother quoting, that it was a bad a.k.a. evil report but prefaced by that this provides us, “actual sizes.”
The issue is that he is appealing to an unreliable report by utterly unreliable guys whom God rebuked: they just made up a fear-mongering scare-tactic tall-tale—and Lamar will literally have to invent a manner whereby to get Nephilim past the flood. In short, claiming post-flood Nephilim, in any way, shape, or form, implies God failed: He meant to be rid of them but couldn’t get the job done, the flood was much of a waste, He missed a loophole whereby they survived or just came right back (and then one will have to literally just invent a story about how they survived or came back).
Thus, Goliath was not a Nephil and was not related to Nephil (be sure to check the LXX version of that verse) and since Num 13:33 is the only physical description we have of Nephilim, that means that we do not have a reliable physical description of them so that correlating them to unusual height—of any level of subjective unusualness—is not viable.
Lamar then directs us to, “one of my favorite characters in the Bible, Enoch” and makes his way to that, “The apocrypha I am referring to is the Book of Enoch.” Yet, the only thing that Bible contradicting folkloric text from millennia after the Torah has to do with the Bible is that every indication is that someone borrowed his name and made up a bunch of stuff—see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
He notes, “In this book he talked about how Nephilim grew up to 3000 cubic feet tall” which is MILES tall, which is great folklore but poor reality. At least Lamar notes, “As Christians, if your going to read that book. Read it for entertainment purposes only. it is important to read that book for entertainment purposes because it does not belong in the biblical canon for several reasons.”
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