Dan Baxley’s post which he titled thusly:
The Nephilim, Giants of Genesis 6
Giant Bones Found
“…Giants in those days…”
I don’t know who Baxley is and the site to which he posts’ (servantsofyahshua) About page is a sermonette and doesn’t elucidate anything about him.
That the title includes the specific ancient Hebrew term Nephilim and the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word Giants the key questions to ask are:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Baxley’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
Biblically, “The Nephilim, Giants of Genesis 6” would read as, “The Nephilim, Nephilim of Genesis 6” since giants renders (doesn’t even translate) Nephilim in two verse and Repha/im in 98% of all others.
Clearly, Baxley’s usage is something to do with subjectively unusual height—due to the phrase, “Giant Bones Found.”
Thus, no, the usages don’t agree.
He begins by referring to, “fables and fairy tales…Children’s story books” and notes, “The inspiration for the giants of story book land in childhood fantasy books may have come from the Hebrew Bible, or tales told by ancient holy men but the idea that there were giant humans of a class known as the Nephilim, or ‘giants’, as a species spawned by the Angels of Heaven having sexual relations with human women is, to say the least, nuts.”
That which Dan Baxley subjectively finds to be nuts isn’t a standard and since we instantly were ablet to conclude that his usage of the key term conflicts with the Bibles’ we’ll have to see if he actually handles the rest of the data accurately.
Note that there’s a vast different between, “the Hebrew Bible” and, “tales told by ancient holy men”—and we will have to see if nuts was a mere assertion of if he actually argues his way to that conclusion.
Since he’s referring to Nephilim and goes on to refer to, “These giants” we must note that he has not established that we should categorize them as such but merely begins with that conclusion—we will also have to see if he does establish why that category an accurate one in which to place them.
He noted, “These giants were pre-flood and for some reason the false teachings surrounding these beings seems to have carried over to this side of the Great Flood.”
In large part, it seems to be due to, “tales told by ancient holy men” or rather, tales told by ancient unholy men since the only physical description of Nephilim we have is from one single sentence from an evil report spoken by unreliable guys whom God rebuked (Num 13:33). Ergo, we’ve no reliable physical description of them.
Oddly, Dan Baxley wrote, “These ‘giants’ of old, the ‘Nephilim’ as some like to call them” which could only have been written by an English speaker since, of course, a linguistically and chronologically accurate statement would have been, “These ‘Nephilim’ of old, the ‘giants’ as some like to call them.”
His point was that they, “are connected by the false teachings with the family of giants that lived in Canaan around the time King David killed one of the brothers, Goliath…very tall men…These ‘Nephilim’, however, cannot be, or have anything to do with the pre-flood ‘giants’ of Genesis 6. For one thing, it was only Noah and his family that came over from the flood.”
He’s correct in an incorrect manner: indeed, it is false teachings to connect Goliath, et al., to Nephilim and doing so came about due to the evil report so that they, “cannot be, or have anything to do with the pre-flood ‘giants’ of Genesis 6.”
One reason why it’s important to define the term giants is that since he hasn’t, he’s (mis) using it in various ways as he progresses but leaves it to his readers to attempt to what he’s referring with any given usage.
This time around, “the family of giants” means, “the family of Rephaim” (and perhaps, et al.). As for his usage of giants and very tall men (with very and tall both being as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as giants): the preponderance of the earliest data is that Goliath was just shy of 7 ft. and that’s compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed: He meant to be rid of them via the flood but couldn’t get the job done, He must have missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc.
Post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent an un-biblical tall-tale about how they made it past the flood.
This, by the way, describes 100% of pop-Nephilologists. And those who claim they survived the flood contradict the Bible five times.
I’ve written whole books debunking them such as, Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales and also, Nephilim and Giants as per Pop-Researchers: A Comprehensive Consideration of the claims of I.D.E. Thomas, Chuck Missler, Dante Fortson, Derek Gilbert, Brian Godawa, Patrick Heron, Thomas Horn, Ken Johnson, L.A. Marzulli, Josh Peck, CK Quarterman, Steve Quayle, Rob Skiba, Gary Wayne, Jim Wilhelmsen, et al.
Of the Rephaim tribe, of which Anakim were a clan, Dan Baxley wrote, “This family of giants in Canaan was an anomaly – freaks of nature, so to speak. They were unusually large” but the only relevant data we have of them is that they were generally tall (again, meaning taller than 5.0-5.3 ft.).
And even though he doesn’t bother providing any stats, no height ranges, he jump to that, “even today we have records of individuals of similar stature” and yet, “from all the records from the time of King David to now, there has never been a family like this one since” which are odd phrases to use without any premise.
In any case, about the Genesis 6 affair, he then mentions, “a union between spirit angels and human women” but that Angles are spirits isn’t biblical Angelology so we have uncovered a faulty view of Angels which results in a faulty view of the affair which leads to a faulty view of Nephilim: and on the line of dominos fall—see my book, What Does the Bible Say About Angles? A Styled Angelology.
About Nephilim, he states that we would figure that such beings, “would be ruling the world, right? Instead we find that these giant people were very vulnerable – apparently their size impeded their ability to move quickly and while they were fearsome to look at they were clumsy.” But, again, he gets ahead of himself since he’s rejecting a view he’s not yet established, he mashed up Nephilim with Rephaim and used vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage term to terms to jump to a conclusion.
He rightly notes that those who believe in very tall Nephilim, “go the Book of Enoch, as though it is scripture, when it is nothing more than a collection of Jewish fables and fairy tales, even then the real source of this, so called, long lost book, is questionable.”
1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch. It has Nephilim being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.
After referring to how internet hoaxes about giants, “fool the gullible…day dreaming, wishful thinking…gullible people…duped…fooled…lie…a bunch of fools” he loops back to the affair, “If you will read the Scriptures in Genesis 6, concerning the mentioning of the ‘giants’ you will see plainly that the context in no wise says that these ‘giants’ are the offspring of the ‘Sons of God’.”
He urges us, “Read it for yourself, read it carefully and purge what you have heard from others so that the fog of false religion will lift from your mind. If you have difficulty with this then ask our Heavenly Father to lift the fog from your brain and you will then clearly see what it says.”
He elucidates:
It says – fog of falsehood lifting, can you feel it – it says that “…in those days…” What days, in what days? The days that the Sons of God began marrying the daughters of men, daughter of common men, men outside of their own religion outside of their worship of YaHWeH as God.
The “sons of God”, in those days, as today, were followers of their Creator YaHWeH. Just as today the “sons and daughters of God are followers of the Heavenly Father and His Son, YaHshua.
(Gen 4:26) And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the Name of YaHWeH.
Well, Dan Baxley has created a fog of his own since no such thing is sated in Gen 6 which is why he quoted six words (“in those days…sons of God”) and then peppered his subjective views between them (FYI: he didn’t include a closing quotation mark to “sons and daughters so I’m unsure what he was going with that).
Yet, note that his claim is that, “followers of their Creator YaHWeH…followers of the Heavenly Father and His Son, YaHshua” were so very loyal that they were really so very disloyal that they married, “daughter of common men…outside of their own religion outside of their worship of YaHWeH as God” and their sin served as the premise for the flood—yet, for some reason, even thought that’s continued even since the flood, it has no longer resulted in floods.
As he quaintly puts it, “Something went wrong, very wrong and it led to the destruction of the entire world.”
He goes back to that, “these ‘sons of God’ breaking from their resolve to remain spiritually pure and began to intermarry with the common people, the pagans and idolaters” for which there’s zero biblical data: which is why he’s unable to quote of cite anything for support but can only assert.
You see, his view (the Sethite view) is based on myths and creates more problems than is solves (more than zero).
He then subjectively opines, “Forget about the fantasy that Spirit beings, we know as Angels, began taking wives and marrying them. Using common sense, again, ask yourself, why would such powerful beings want to bother with putrid, decaying humans? It would be one thing for super beings to go around raping the best of the best of human women, but to marry them?”
Well, that was an unpleasant window into Dan Baxley’s mind.
Again, Angles are not Spirit beings, they look just like human males, and they find human females attractive.
The only reason to think that daughters of men were putrid, decaying is that Baxley said so. But then again, if we describe humans, in our fallen state, as putrid, decaying then that description also includes the best of the best of human women.
He continues by writing, “Using your common senses again, consider – if these Angels from Heaven, were the rebel angels that tried to take over the Heavenly Throne why would they bother with ‘marriage’ to a lowly creature of the flesh?”
There’s no indication that rebel angels that tried to take over the Heavenly Throne—Satan, sure, but he’s not an Angel, he’s a Cherub.
Dan Baxley continues, “Let’s assume for one brief moment that this actually happened, so why don’t we see this same thing today?”
His objections are such that it appears that he’s unaware of the relevant data. 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” and after which they were incarcerated. Moreover, there’s only a one-time sin of Angels in the Bible.
He also noted, “if these ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6 were the ‘fallen angels’ of the rebellion, they would not be called ‘sons of God’, no, indeed, if anything they would be called ‘demons’, not sons.”
That is an arbitrary objection since we could say that rebellious or not, they are still God’s sons since He created them. Yet, his objection is doubly anachronistic:
1) They are called sons of God at the outset of the narrative, before they took a sinful action and not thereafter.
2) Demons is the term of disembodied incarcerated Angels so they would not have been referred to as such while they were still engaged in the affair—see my article, Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
He then abruptly jumps to, “Back to the bones being found the world over” and I discern that he seems to jump to conclusions without bothering to tell his readers about based on what he’s jumping—it’s as if he’s thinking something but forgot to write it. He wrote, “Back to” but the only thing he’s said about, “bones being found the world over” is the subtitled, “Giant Bones Found.”
In any case, “there are no Giant bones of humans being found – it is a Hoax. That’s right, a Hoax, a big fat lie, a joke and if you buy into it then you deserve to be the fool…lie…tale…hoax…foolish,” etc.
A more useful approach would be to ask whoever makes such claims: what’s the location of the find, who verified it’s human/oid rather than dinosaur or whale or pachyderm, were are the finds now, etc., etc., etc.
But, pause, he never got around to his assertion that, “in Genesis 6…you will see plainly that the context in no wise says that these ‘giants’ are the offspring of the ‘Sons of God’” which of course it does. The context of the narrative is the sons of God and daughters of men: their attraction, their marriages, their mating, and their offspring.
Dan Baxley notes, “some twisted view that Genesis 6 really is talking about giant offspring appearing because of the spirit world angels cohabiting with human women. Either way it is ridiculous and a lie” besides his misusage of the term giants and misidentification of spirits: I agree.
Dan Baxely has this looping way of writing whereby he’ll touch upon an issue, move away from it, jump back to it, goes on, then back, etc.
He went back to, “A human of that stature would have abnormalities very similar to those people today that reach nearly, and only, 9 feet tall…Even in the Greek myths they were not stupid enough to make Hercules over 20 feet tall” and he thinks that, “the idea that spirit beings from outer space would come and ravenous human women is but some kind of perverted idea, a perverted, romantic, idea that down plays and cheapens the birth of our Savior, YaHshua.”
Due to his misconceptions, he erroneously asserts, “If Angels of Heaven have this ability to copulate with flesh and blood women and create super beings, or ‘giants’ then what happened just over 2,000 years ago with the birth of our Savior would mean very little as this is something Satan and his gang have been able to do all along, but for some strange reason they quit that kind of activity.”
1) Angels copulated with flesh and blood women: God did not.
2) Baxley has and also doesn’t have Nephilim as giants: Jesus was not such a one.
3) it’s a category error to correlate physical copulation to, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:34-35).
4) Thus, there’s no reason to think that, “Satan and his gang have been able to do” that.
5) Again, “his gang” were incarcerated—and since Satan’s not an Angel he was not physically involved in the affair.
Baxely then argues, “the offspring did become men of renowned, not literal giants, or Nephilim. Read it again and you will see that at the time these children were becoming great, kings, men of renown, there were – there were giants on the earth. This could very well mean the dinosaurs.”
Again, since he’s misusing giants then not literal giants to him means not literally subjectively unusually tall—which is fair enough.
But (as per the ESV), “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
Again, the context of the narrative is about the sons of God and daughters of men but Baxely would have the text read, “The dinosaurs were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
That would be an incoherent narrative into which the author artificially inserted a mere passing reference to something unrelated and about which he says nothing more.
Clearly, “Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward” as a result of, “when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.
He then notes that you won’t, “find one ‘Nephilim’ on display” at museums: yet, since we’ve no reliable physical description of them, I’m unsure how he can merely assert that anymore than those who believe that giant bones are Nephilim bones can assert that.
He follows that with references to, “hoaxers…gullible…deception…hoax…liars and deceivers” and loops back to the issue of that that the Angel view is, “making the Birth of our Christ and Saviour, YaHshua, out to be nothing more than business as usual…to make the Birth of our Savior look bad, to degrade the ‘Virgin birth’ of YaHshua, our Savior.”
He then asserts, “Nephilim, giants, basically the same thing” which is clearly inaccurate given that Nephilim is a male plural term derived from naphal which means fall/fallen/feller/to cause to fall, etc. and yet, his usage of giants is something about subjectively unusual height.
He then loops back to, “dinosaurs roaming the earth, ‘in those days’.”
He argues, “we have the ‘they were heroes of old…’ and by taking this remark out of context some make this out to mean that it was the giants, or the Nephilim that were the ‘heros [sic.],’ but notice, what follows this, ‘…men of renown.’ Men, not angels, not Nephilim, not some hybrid monstrosity, but MEN and so we know this is talking about the ‘sons of god’ – it is the ‘sons of God’, believers, calling on the Name of YaHWeH, that are these ‘men ‘ [sic.] of renown, ‘heroes of old’.”
Compounding his un-biblical Angelology with his seeming lack of awareness of biblical Angelology resulted in another faulty conclusion.
Firstly, we’re back to that, “believers, calling on the Name of YaHWeH” were terrible sinners.
Secondly, the sons of God didn’t become the mighty men of renown since, again, “the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These” with the These referring to the offspring, “were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
Thirdly, he committed a linguistic category error by merely implying that men can only refer to humans created by God on Earth, etc. Yet, Angels are referred to as man/men and so Nephilim, being half-Angel and half-human are also referred to as men.
Dan Baxley asserts, “Recall that during the time of Seth and the rise of some righteous men who began to call on the Name or God – (Gen 4:26) And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the Name YaHWeH. This would be many hundreds of years before the event described in Genesis 6, and would allow for these men to be called ‘men of old’.”
Yet, the chronology of the Gen 6 affair is not that simple to pinpoint. Gen 6:1 sets the timeline somewhat vaguely as, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose” so that could have been as early as when Adam and Eve’s children first began having children.
It’s an argument from virtual silence either way but note also that the assumption that Seth was Adam and Eve’s third born is just tradition.
In any case, what he ends up reiterating as, “‘men’, not angels…MEN, not angels” is fallacious regardless of the chronology.
He also notes that in Gen 6, “you will find not one reference to angels in this extreme punishment. The flood falls on ‘men’ and what they have done and are doing.” Yet, again, men refers to Angles, Nephilim, and humans. Besides, the Bible’s constant focus is humanity and so any and all narratives always and quickly return to humanity. Again, Jude and 2 Peter 2 note that which Baxely notes is lacking from Gen 6.
He goes back to referring to, “the faithful line of Seth, calling on the one true God, YaHWeH” who were apparently not so faithful and, “intermarry with the common people, the pagans and idolaters…allowing pagan influence into their House.”
Oddly, Dan Baxley wrote, “Let’s take a look at a few more translation concerning this time of the ‘giants’. Nephilim sounds so much more mysterious, doesn’t it? And that is why the teachers of this lie like to use it – Nephilim, Nephilim, Nephilim.” Again, only an English speaker could make such an incoherent and linguistically anachronistic complaint.
He quotes Gen 6:4 and notes, “This is Genesis, remember, written after the fact” but of course, everything (besides certain prophecies, I suppose) are written after the fact, being history by definition.
Since he misuses the term giants he rightly/wrongly notes, “it is not talking about Giant humans as offspring, becoming men (?) [sic.] of renown, that is a fantasy being taught by men with wild imaginations, and men wanting to sell you stuff.”
He then quotes Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary which was Nephilim as, “properly, a feller, that is, a bully or tyrant: – giant” and he comments, “A bully, a tyrant? Notice, no mention of angels not even ‘fallen angels’ – no angels,
only ‘men’ are discussed” but why would a grammatical definition of Nephilim reference Angels?
He continues, “the whole context of Chapter 7 and 8 is about MEN, not angels” indeed, since it was about the survival of men via Noah and his family—besides, the Angels were likely incarcerated by then.
Baxley continued directly with that, “‘Giant’ is a more appropriate translation in the English and examining what is being mentioned, ever so briefly in Genesis 6:4, is that these ‘fellers’, these ‘bullies’, these giants were roaming the earth in ‘those days’. These titles could well be applied to the dinosaurs – giant animals pushing their way around the tropical forests, etc.” I will just let dinosaurs as bullies sit right there but will note that, again, the Baxley version has it that the author decided to insert a passing reference to dinosaurs to, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them” since that’s to when, “those days” refers.
Dan Baxley argues:
Men of renown, heroes, really? Men to be admired and followed are usually not called bullies, or tyrants, or fellers – fellers as in making things fall – these fellers or bullies are not called the children.
The men spoke of here, however, in the context, are men of “renown”, they are called “MIGHTY MEN” and seem to have been admired and never once called the “children of angels”.
Certainly men of renown can become monsters, as the case with men like Hitler, but he was no “Nephilim”, he began his career of murder as a much loved and adored man – then again, he did exhibit demon like qualities in his later years, didn’t he.”
Interestingly, he had quoted, Gen 6:4 in three versions: Hebrew Roots Bible, English Standard Version, and King James version with only the former having, “heroes” for gibborim which refers to might/mighty and is applied to Angles, Nephilim, some of David’s soldiers, Boaz, God, etc. so it’s better to translate as might/mighty rather than the more specific hero.
Yet, hero is a subjective term in term of that one culture’s hero could be another culture’s villain. Thus, if we go with the heroes reading, that would be heroes to an utterly corrupt culture.
In any case, the issue is that he selected the one out of three (of the ones he quoted) in order to make his argument.
We’re told that Nephilim were mighty and renown but not even why. Thus, his is a linguistically selective argument and also an argument from virtual silence.
As for, “never once called the ‘children of angels’” well, as per Job 38:7 (as one example) sons of God can refer to non-human beings, this fits the sons of God in Gen 6:4 and so, by definition, Nephilim are called the children of Angels.
Dan Baxley ends by exampling Solomon, “a ‘man’ of renown falling to paganism brought about by his lust for women outside of his race and religion,” etc.
Overall, we saw a mixture of fallacies that made him jump to conclusions that are only defeaters of fallacious assertions as premises in the first place. In other words, he did a good job debunking views that are erroneously presented in the first place and so as strawmen.
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