Dr. Sarah Schwartz (“lecturer on Bible in Bar Ilan University’s Bible department, and in Machon Schechter. She holds a Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University”) wrote an article titled The Scouts’ Report: From Rhetoric to Demagoguery for The Academic Torah Institute’s Torah.com website. My title was meant to narrow us down to my contextually interest since Nephilology is my intersest in that which I term Systematic Biblical Paranormology and counteracting the pop-Nephilology (very large post-flood Nephilim) movement.
Schwartz notes:
When the scouts return from traversing the land, they display the cluster of grapes they brought with them, and offer a report that initially sounds positive:
Num 13:27 …We came to the land you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw Anakites (or “giants”) there. 13:29 Amalekites dwell in the Negeb region; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites inhabit the hill country; and Canaanites dwell by the Sea and along the Jordan.
Caleb responds to this report by saying that they can nevertheless conquer the land (Num 13:30); the other scouts dispute this (Num 13:31), and then offer a further report:
They spread calumnies among the Israelites about the land they had scouted, saying, “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it are men of great size; 13:33 we saw the Nephilim there, children of giants from the Nephilim, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
It is problematic to write in terms of, “Anakites (or ‘giants’)” for a few reasons such as that I am unaware of any modern English version that would have, “giants” there (or anywhere) for Anakites/Anakim and also that it begs the questions what is the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word, “giants” in English Bibles? What is her usage? Do those two usages agree?
I might as well note here and now that the usage in English Bibles is that it merely renders (does not even translate) Nephilim in 2 verses or Repha/im in 98% of all others and, just in case, it never even hints at anything to do with any sort of height whatsoever.
So, we see that the first report is accepted as is even if it causes concern due to the prospect of having to confront and defeat six people groups living in large and well-fortified cities.
We see Caleb encouraging (with Joshua siding with him) and we see the ten other of the total twelve spies discouraging: it turns out that they merely asserted five points that are unbacked by even one single over verse in the whole Bible: aka they made up stuff, they just told an impossible scare-tactic, fear-mongering, “Don’t go in the woods!!!” type of tall-tale—and were rebuked by God.
She notes that the first report notes, “and the fortified cities are very large” but the second, the, “evil report,” embellishes that with, “men of great size.” Also, the first has it that, “we saw Anakites (giants) there” but the second embellishes as, “we saw the Nephilim (giants) there”—see why the issue of the usage of, “giants” is an issue? She wrote, “Anakites (giants)…Nephilim (giants)” the issue of which (well, one of may issues) is that by the time she writes, “both Joshua and Caleb will battle giants” we no longer know to whom she is referring.
She noted, “comparing the details highlights how the scouts’ reports undergo a shift from rhetorical skepticism to demagoguery” as we go from reliable to tall-tale.
She added:
Demagoguery is an attempt to convince people of a falsehood, using mythical thinking, logical fallacies, and sleight-of-hand proofs. Such speeches tend to offer simple solutions to complex problems, and work to excite very strong emotions in the audience, such as panic or hatred, often with the goal of changing the allegiance of the audience from the current powers or accepted norms to those of the speaker. Since such speeches can hardly rely on logos, the speaker’s status and the emotional pull of the claims are paramount. This is what we see in the scouts’ second report.
The narrator makes clear from his introduction that the scouts are going to be untruthful this time around by introducing their words with (v. 32), וַיּוֹצִיאוּ דִּבַּת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר תָּרוּ אֹתָהּ “they spread calumnies about the land they had scouted.” This highlights a key difference between the reports: In the first report, the scouts describe the land as flowing with milk and honey, and show the people the fruit they brought back. Here, they say the opposite: the land “devours its inhabitants”…
According to this second report, the land is a death trap; the Israelites will not be able to live off the agriculture there. Thus, the scouts begin by walking back the one positive element that led with in the previous report.
The second part of this report, like the first report, also describes the difficulty of conquering the land, but shifts its focus. The scouts skip over the realistic descriptions of the large and fortified cities, and the placement of the locals, threatening, though manageable details. Instead, they expand on the problem of giants.
First, they replace the עָרִים גְּדֹלֹת מְאֹד “enormous cities” with אַנְשֵׁי מִדּוֹת “enormous inhabitants,” and go so far as to claim that all of the inhabitants are enormous. In other words, it isn’t that the land contains some giants, but all of the inhabitants previously mentioned—Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites—are giants.
Solid points with the exception that her usage of, “giants” seems to have changed again: such is why it is a best practice to ignore that virtually useless word and just say to what one is referring with any given potential usage—the common parlance usage (especially amongst pop-Nephilologists) is something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average (and yes, that is how useless the common parlance usage of that modern English word is).
So, does, “the problem of giants” refer to the Anakim problem or the Nephilim problem—or both? But now she has, “Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites” as, “giants” so that is at least seven usages.
She continues:
Second, in place of Anakim (giants), they introduce the Nephilim, demigods, alluding to the account in Genesis:
בראשית ו:ד הַנְּפִלִים הָיוּ בָאָרֶץ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וְגַם אַחֲרֵי כֵן אֲשֶׁר יָבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים אֶל בְּנוֹת הָאָדָם וְיָלְדוּ לָהֶם הֵמָּה הַגִּבֹּרִים אֲשֶׁר מֵעוֹלָם אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם. Gen 6:4 It was then that the Nephilim appeared on earth—later too, when the divine beings cohabit with the daughters of men, who bear them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
By using the term Nephilim, the scouts have moved into the realm of the mythological. They then go further, offering a fantastic—and ludicrous—image of the size difference between these Nephilim and a normal sized human; they felt like grasshoppers and that’s how the Nephilim saw them.
The reference to grasshoppers specifically, the one insect used as food among the Israelites (Lev 11:22), is likely meant to conjure up the image of the Nephilim picking up some tiny Israelite warrior and having him as a snack—like the one-eyed ogre Polyphemus eats Odysseus’ companions in the Odyssey. Indeed, the image of colossal Nephilim snacking on Israelites feeds reinforces the imagery of a “land that consumes its own inhabitants.”
Note that, “It was then that the Nephilim appeared on earth—later too, when the divine beings cohabit with the daughters of men…” includes time-based terminology, “then…later…when.” A more common version (here the 1917 Jewish Publication Society version) has, “Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them” so, “those days…after that, when.”
The, “then” and, “when,” respectively, was, “when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them” since that was when, “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives.”
The, “later…after that” was simply later on from, after, “the sons of God” first, “saw the daughters of men…”
The, “when…when” is about, “men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them” again.
Thus, they began doing it, “when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them” and kept doing it and yet, that is only up until the flood.
As for the, “fantastic—and ludicrous—image of the size difference between these Nephilim and a normal sized human” this means that the dirty little secret is that since we have no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Before moving on, I will note that anyone appealing to Num 13:33 (especially pop-Nephilologists who merely uncritically pick up that one single verse, run with it, apply it, and build all-encompassing theories upon it) needed to mention that they are relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse does not even mention Anakim)
3. Of an unreliable “evil report”
4. By 10 unreliable guys
5. Whom God rebuked—to death
6. Who made five mere assertions unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible
7. Who contradicted Moses, Cable, Joshua, God, and the rest of the whole entire Bible
8. Then post-flood Nephilologists have to invent un-biblical fantasy tall-tales about how Nephilim got past the flood, past God.
I could go on but see my article Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Schwartz continued thusly:
How do the scouts succeed in convincing the people of this second report, given that it contradicts the first one that they just delivered? This is how demagoguery works. Instead of bringing up factual details to support a position, the demagogue finds the right emotional trigger and keeps pressing it.
In this case, the trigger is the Israelite feeling of inferiority in comparison with the locals. The scouts ratchet it up with each phrase: (a.) all the inhabitants are huge, (b.) some of them are even demigods, (c.) and those demigods are beyond human size and can literally eat us. Overwhelming the listeners with this kind of mortal terror allows the scouts to contradict their previous testimony about the land’s fertility, even though they literally showed them an example of it.
Given that the scouts cannot bring any realistic evidence to support their depiction, they highlight that they, unlike Moses and Aaron, have been to the land. Unlike the first report, which was delivered to Moses with the people watching (Num 13:27), here they speak directly to the people, ignoring Moses and Aaron entirely (Num 13:32), in an attempt to undermine them.
She adds, “Caleb Sets Off the Other Scouts…Num 13:30 Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, ‘Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.’”
It was literally logically, bio-logically, and theo-logically impossible that they saw Nephilim who did not make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form and in Num 1 Moses relates that event and does not even mention Nephilim: he was too practical, he mentioned Anakim since he was concerned about the real dangers on the ground and not some fantasy tall-tale.
I have asked so many pop-Nephilologists if we ever read Num chaps. 13-14 since they only referenced 13:33 and literally none of them replied to that question.
It is utterly key to read those chapters, note the two reports, ask key hermeneutical questions especially of 13:33 such as who said it, why was it said, what was the reaction to it, was it accurate, etc. and have enough regard for God and His Word to instantly know that God did not fail, did not miss a loophole, the flood was not much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and be aware that post-flood-Nephilologists always begin by throwing God and His Word under the bus.
Thus, the fundamental point was the bifurcation of the reports, who reported them, what they claim, and which was actually accurate.
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