Toby Adeyemi’s Rolling Out site’s interview with Jon Erwin, “the director of House Of David, which is now officially the second highest viewed series on Amazon Prime Video” is titled Jon Erwin joins the Director’s Chair to talk House Of David.
The key point I will focus on is when Toby asked:
I want to get your thought on a scene that kind of went above about a lot of people’s heads. In my opinion, when the Philistine King went to find Goliath, he went to the Land of the Giants. So what is your view on the belief of giants, or Nephilim walking the earth?
I don’t watch that show so, apparently, a Philistine King sought out Goliath for the infamous task.
The first answer to that question should have been, “You jumped from the modern generically subjective English one ‘giants’ to the specific ancient Hebrew word ‘Nephilim’ so what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word ‘giants’ in English Bibles? What’s Toby Adeyemi’s and Jon Erwin’s usage? Do those two usages agree?”
That’s especially important to ask since biblically contextually, “giants, or Nephilim” means, “Nephilim, or Nephilim.”
Jon Erwin replied:
And one of the things that you start to confront is, why in the world, would this character, Goliath, strike so much fear into the army of Israel?
Well, when you do that, you go all the way back to Moses, and when Moses spies, into the land, those spies came out and said, There’s walled cities. There’s really tall people. And the sons of Anak there, the Nephilim were there.
And so no matter what you believe, what Israelites at the time would have believed sitting around campfires was that Goliath was basically a son of the Nephilim and a demigod.
And what we play is that that’s what Goliath believed about himself as well. So, you know, we play with the Ministry of it. We play with the the myth of it.
But I do think it’s absolutely consistent with the Bible that the whole reason that Israel walked around the wilderness for 40 years is because they were afraid of people just like Goliath, and that is the fear he would have struck into the army of Israel.
Well, I’m more interested in what the text actually does and does not say rather than, “what would the characters have been feeling” in terms of, “clues” regarding biology and theology.
The text tells us, “why in the world, would this character, Goliath, strike so much fear into the army of Israel”: he was a, “champion” a trained, experienced and successful warrior who was the go-to guy and he was subjectively tall.
The Masoretic text has Goliath at just shy of 10 ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft. (compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days) so that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
What Jon Erwin did was to mash together two reports from Num 13 and in doing so, he misrepresented the narrative and both reports.
It wasn’t, “those spies came out and said, There’s walled cities. There’s really tall people. And the sons of Anak there, the Nephilim were there.”
The, “There’s walled cities” part is a paraphrase from the first, original, accepted as is report apparently by Caleb and/or Joshua who said, “the cities are fortified and very large”—specific reference to walled cities is actually from Deut 1.
The, “There’s really tall people. And the sons of Anak there, the Nephilim were there” is not only from the second, “evil report” by 10 guys whom God rebuked, but it’s from non-LXX versions since that version lacks reference to Anakim in that version’s version of that verse.
Thus, we’ve zero reliable correlation between Anakim and Nephilim.
And that merely supposed correlation based on one single sentence from non-LXX versions of an, “evil report” by unreliable guys whom God rebuked creates a lot of problems such as:
Post-flood-Nephilologists always begin by throwing God and His Word under the bus.
They imply that God failed, that He missed a loophole, that the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
And, just how did Jon Erwin get Nephilim past the flood, past God?
Moreover, “tall” is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as, “giants” and there’s not even any indication that all of the inhabitants of Cannan were even, taller than 50-5.3ft.—see my article Were “all the people” in Canaan “of great height”?
So, perhaps due to mere scare-tactic fear-mongering, “Don’t go in the woods!!!” type of fantasy tall-tale, such as the evil report was, “Israelites at the time” may, “have believed sitting around campfires was that Goliath was basically a son of the Nephilim and a demigod” but that’s illogical, ill-bio-logical, and ill-theo-logical—that’s actually why God didn’t let that whole generation, sans Caleb and Joshua, into the land but waited until they had all died out, the whole reason that Israel walked around the wilderness for 40 years.”
As for, “that’s what Goliath believed about himself” that’s unlikely since why would be believe some fantasy story?
Thus, it’s 100% inconsistent with the Bible—though, quite consistent with pop-Nephilology which is un-biblical tall-tales sold to Christians.
Now, I will answer the key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
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.
Such is why, “biblically contextually, ‘giants, or Nephilim’ means, ‘Nephilim, or Nephilim.’”
And biblically contextually, “the Land of the Giants” means, “the Land of the Rephaim”: Goliath was of the Anakim clan of the Rephaim tribe.
What’s Toby Adeyemi’s and Jon Erwin’s usage?
They seem to range from using it to wrongly use it to refer to Nephilim and something about un-specifically generically vague about subjectively unusual height.
Do those two usages agree?
No.
Incidentally, the dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue—and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical Nephilology—since the only physical description of them that we have is from, you guessed it, on one single sentence from non-LXX versions of an, “evil report” by unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby.
If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out.
Here is my donate/paypal page.
You can comment here and/or on my Twitter/X page, on my Facebook page, or any of my other social network sites all which are available here.
Leave a Reply