Dean Smith, who self-describes as, “Not much to say. I am a Christian and Charismatic,” wrote an article titled Anthropology confirms the Bible’s description of a race of GIANTS on the Open the Word site.
Since we’re not only told of, “GIANTS” but it’s claimed that the Bible descriptions them, we’ll have to keep an eye out for what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s Smith usage? Do those two usages agree?
He notes, “we find several mentions of giant men. Of course, the most famous of these was Goliath” and refers to, “the tallest man on record was an Illinois man, Robert Pershing Wadlow, who grew to a size of 8’11”.”
Thus, his usage is something vague to do with generically being taller than the subjective parochial average.
Thus, his usage doesn’t agree with the usage in modern English Bibles since therein, word giants 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.
This fundamental linguistics error inevitably causes focus on the wrong issue and leads to English readers chasing a vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word around an ancient Hebrew Bible and thereby, connecting things that aren’t viably connectable.
Dean Smith also uses the term, “extraordinary size” which is just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as giants.
He also writes in terms of, “a race(s) of giants known as the Nephilim” which, as we have just seen, biblically contextually means, “a race(s) of Nephilim known as the Nephilim” which is circularly redundant.
He quotes Gen 6:4 thusly, “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.”
He comments, “some believe that the Nephilim were actually the offspring of the marriages between the sons of god (fallen angels) and the daughters of men. But a closer read of the verse seems to suggest that the Nephilim were already in existence when the sons of God and daughters of men started having children.”
The Gen 6 affair narrative’s contextual focus is the sons of God and daughters of men: their attraction, their marriage, and their offspring. Thus, it would violate that narrative’s contextual focus to artificially insert a mere passing reference to some unrelated Nephilim guys who just happened to be around at the time, are mentioned for no apparent reason, and about whom nothing more is said in relation to the narrative’s contextual focus.
He notes, “We know from the Biblical record and other Hebraic writings, such as the Book of Enoch, that the Nephilim were a race of giants” so Nephilim were a race of Nephilim and we learned that by, “Hebraic writings” he’s including 1 Enoch which is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
Now, misusing giants to refer to some generically vague thing about subjective size, he tells us:
The existence of these giants is confirmed again when the Israel spies reported seeing giants in Canaan.
In their fear, the 10 spies exaggerated the difference, stating the Hebrews looked like grasshoppers compared to the Anak:
33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” (Numbers 13:33 ESV)
Nevertheless, they identified them as a race of giants and instinctively connected them to the Nephilim.
This denotes a typical pop-Nephilology use, abuse, and misuse of a verse by misreading, misunderstanding, misinterpreting, misapplying and taking a text out of context to make a pretext for a prooftext.
So, “The existence of these” referring to subjectively oversized Nephilim, “is confirmed again when the Israel spies reported…” but he’s only referring to the second report in Num 13, the “evil report.”
Indeed, it was, “the 10 spies” out of 12: the unreliable ones.
And he myopically refers to, “looked like grasshoppers compared to the Anak” when the version he quoted is about, “looked like grasshoppers compared to the Nephilim.”
He also didn’t tell us that he’s relying on:
- One single sentence
- From strictly non-LXX versions—the LXX doesn’t mention Anakim in that verse
- Of an “evil report”
- By 10 unreliable guys
- Whom God rebuked—to death
- Who made five mere assertions unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible
- Who contradicted Moses, Cable, Joshua, God, and the rest of the whole entire Bible
I could go on but see my post, Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Thus, he has it that Anakim were, “a race of giants and instinctively connected them to the Nephilim” but 1. the only thing we’re contextually told about Anakim is that they were subjectively, “tall” (Deut 2) subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days and 2. Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Anakim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
He then uses that tragically fallacious assertion to conclude, “Goliath was not a one off, as he had brothers who were also giants and the Bible again connects Goliath’s family to a group called the Rapha (2 Samuel 21:18-22), and as well, Bashan’s King Og was a giant who was said to be the last of a group called the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3:11).” Yes, but he missed his own point: that should have alerted him that when he’s reading about post-flood, “giants” in his English Bible it’s merely rendering to the people group Rephaim (sans Num 13:33), the tribe, not anything to do with height.
Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
Also based on his fallacies, Dean Smith asserts, “a race of giants” were, “broken apart into different family groups” but he’s chasing references to height—I actually think he’s chasing Nephilim since that seems to be his subplot hidden assumption: if that’s the case then what makes him imply that God failed, that He missed a loophole, that the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.? Just how did Nephilim get past the flood, past God?
He continues with, “Professor Lee Berger…a paleo anthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa…talked about a race of giants who lived on the earth about 300,000 years ago.” Berger is quoted thusly, “They are huge. That’s so big we can’t even calculate how big this individual was. You would need an NBA basketball player to get someone of that height. Someone like this would have been something like over seven feet tall.”
See the uselessness of terms such as, “giants…extraordinary size…huge…big”? In this case, “we can’t even calculate how big this individual was” was calculated and it’s merely, “over seven feet tall.”
Overhyped and underdelivered in one single sentence.
He’s also quoted as referring to, “enormous….GIANTS…extreme giantism…huge…tall” since, “These were people routinely over seven feet tall.”
But for Dean Smith that level of hyperbolic incoherence amounts to, “For thousands of year, the Bible has been mocked for telling us that there was a race of giant men, and it wasn’t until the 20th century that evolutionists finally discovered that the Bible was right.”
Yet, this was just another case of poorly researched pop-Nephilology —the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales. FYI: I’ve written some dozen research based Nephilology books and posted dozens of vids on my YT channel, besides the hundreds of articles posted here on my website.
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