JD Longmire (“a Northrop Grumman Fellow, enterprise architect, and ordained minister researching AI and Christian apologetics”) wrote an article titled Reassessing the Nephilim: Human Lineage, Genetic Continuity, and the Myth of Angelic Hybrids.
He proposed an interpretation that, “resolves multiple Genesis puzzles including Cain’s wife, declining lifespans, and post-Flood giants while maintaining theological coherence and scientific plausibility.”
I will begin my review by going to, “The Angelic Hybrid Hypothesis: A Critical Evaluation”:
Popularized by 1 Enoch and later commentary, this theory asserts that angels took human wives and produced semi-divine giants. Proponents argue:
The phrase benê hāʾĕlōhîm (”sons of God”) refers to angels (cf. Job 1-2)
Jude 6 describes angels who “left their proper dwelling”
The Nephilim’s extraordinary nature suggests supernatural origin
3.2 Fatal Weaknesses
Ontological Impossibility: Scripture consistently portrays angels as spiritual beings (Hebrews 1:14). While they can temporarily manifest physically, nothing suggests they possess reproductive biology. The mechanism for spiritual entities to produce physical gametes and compatible DNA remains unexplained and contradicts the fundamental Creator-creature distinction.
Textual Silence: Genesis 6 never mentions angels. The text focuses exclusively on humanity:
“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever” (v. 3)
“The wickedness of man was great” (v. 5)
“I will destroy man whom I have created” (v. 7)
If angelic rebellion were the issue, why is judgment pronounced only on humanity?
The Jude 6 Misreading: Careful examination reveals Jude 6 most naturally refers to Satan’s original rebellion:
“Left their proper dwelling” describes abandoning heaven for pride (Isaiah 14:12-15)
“Position of authority” (archēn) suggests rank, fitting Satan’s attempted usurpation
The immediate chaining matches Satan being cast down
Neither Jude nor the parallel in 2 Peter 2:4 mentions anything sexual
Crucially, while Jude later quotes 1 Enoch’s prophecy about judgment (vv. 14-15), he never references its angel-breeding narrative. Using Enoch’s sexual mythology to interpret Genesis 6, then claiming Jude validates this because he quotes Enoch, constitutes circular reasoning.
Doctrinal Chaos: If angels could reproduce, Scripture would need to address:
The redemptive status of angel-human hybrids
Why Christ became human, not hybrid
The fate of hybrid souls
Why hybrids aren’t mentioned in any redemptive category
Scripture’s silence on these necessary theological questions indicates the premise is false.
The original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christian commentators, starting in BC days, was the Angel view as I proved in my book On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not?: A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim.
The problem with Longmire’s, “Ontological Impossibility” is that the premise is un-biblical Angelology which results in a non-sequitur.
I imagine that in writing, “angels as spiritual beings (Hebrews 1:14)” spirt was accidentally swapped with spiritual.
There is literally zero indication that Angels, “can temporarily manifest physically.”
As for, “nothing suggests they possess reproductive biology” I will say nothing except for literally every single description of them since Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology—see my book What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
The point about, “physical gametes and compatible DNA” does not at all, “remains unexplained and contradicts reproduction after kinds if and when, that is, we apply biblical Angelology.
Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology. We were created “a little lower” (Psa 8:5) than them, and we can reproduce with them so, by definition, we’re of the same basic “kind.”
Longmire noted:
Textual Silence: Genesis 6 never mentions angels. The text focuses exclusively on humanity:
“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever” (v. 3)
“The wickedness of man was great” (v. 5)
“I will destroy man whom I have created” (v. 7)
If angelic rebellion were the issue, why is judgment pronounced only on humanity?
That very common objection misses that humans, Angels, and Nephilim (and God, actually) are all referred to as man/men.
Also, the Bible is more of an anthropological anthology rather than a theological one, it is about humanity’s creation, fall, and redemption.
Thus, whatever subject it touches upon, it touches upon briefly as it quickly and inevitably always makes the point be how it affects humanity.
JD Longmire also noted:
The Jude 6 Misreading: Careful examination reveals Jude 6 most naturally refers to Satan’s original rebellion:
“Left their proper dwelling” describes abandoning heaven for pride (Isaiah 14:12-15)
“Position of authority” (archēn) suggests rank, fitting Satan’s attempted usurpation
The immediate chaining matches Satan being cast down
Neither Jude nor the parallel in 2 Peter 2:4 mentions anything sexual
Crucially, while Jude later quotes 1 Enoch’s prophecy about judgment (vv. 14-15), he never references its angel-breeding narrative. Using Enoch’s sexual mythology to interpret Genesis 6, then claiming Jude validates this because he quotes Enoch, constitutes circular reasoning.
The premise is a category error that violates the law of identity and the conclusion is a non-sequitur.
Note that to whom Jude refers isn’t quoted but we did get this, “their” plural word: Satan isn’t plural.
Jude wrote, “the angels” which is also plural and Satan’s not an Angel, he’s a Cherub (Ezek 28) ergo, the pronouns and categorical identification don’t match him.
Since Satan and Angels, “Left their proper dwelling…Position of authority” then it’s too generic to just appeal to Isaiah.
As for, “The immediate chaining matches” that doesn’t match Satan at all since his fall was during the Gen 3 timeline but he’s not chained until well, whenever any eschatology wants to put Rev chap 20–in the meanwhile, all those millennia, he’s been lose.
As for lack of, “anything sexual” 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,” after which they were incarcerated, and there’s only a one-time fall of Angels in the Bible. So, if they’re not referring to the Gen 6 affair, we’ve no idea to what sin they’re referring—and we got all of those points without referring to 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).
Longmire then claims:
Doctrinal Chaos: If angels could reproduce, Scripture would need to address:
The redemptive status of angel-human hybrids
Why Christ became human, not hybrid
The fate of hybrid souls
Why hybrids aren’t mentioned in any redemptive category
Scripture’s silence on these necessary theological questions indicates the premise is false.
There’s no, “would need to address” about it since we, the readers, don’t get to demand what should have been there if X was the case—this is more of a game of gotcha.
Indeed, we don’t know, “The redemptive status of angel-human hybrids” but know they didn’t make it past the flood so we can assume their status is the same as all sans the 8 in the ark.
“Why Christ became human, not hybrid” since we can assume what I just noted and that implies they’re irredeemable.
Thus, their souls would have, just like everyone else, ended up in sheol until Jesus proclaimed to everyone there.
As for, “Why hybrids aren’t mentioned in any redemptive category” apparently because they don’t belong therein.
Thus, we don’t appeal to silence in order to conclude, “indicates the premise is false” since lack of evidence is not evidence and we’ve much by which to go—to include what I noted about the Bible having an anthropological focus.
JD Longmire then commits a styled series of fallacies in arguing, “Luke’s genealogy provides the interpretive key by explicitly calling Adam ‘the son of God.’ This establishes biblical precedent for applying this title to humans, specifically those bearing the uncorrupted image of God.”
I’m unsure how Adam can be categorized as, “uncorrupted” considering that he’s responsible for the fall of God’s creation.
Yet, the main issue is that Longmire jumped forward in time by millennia, into a different cultural context, into a different historical context, and into a different language in order to pick up Adam being called a son of God and then looped all the way back in time to apply it to the Gen 6 affair.
But let’s grant those aren’t issues and add this to his conclusion, “This establishes biblical precedent for applying this title to humans” as well as Angels: thus, the question is to whom it refers in Gen 6.
His application of this and take-away is:
…distinct populations:
“Sons of God”: Early descendants retaining substantial pre-Fall genetic material
“Daughters of men”: Humans born after multiple generations of accumulating genetic entropy
“Nephilim”: Products of intermarriage exhibiting hybrid vigor
I’m empathetic with what he’s attempting to accomplish here but it’s tricky to bifurcate, “Early descendants” and, “after multiple generations” since Nephilim came into being, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them.” That’s not exactly a pin-pointed time-stamp but it may have been as early as when Adam and Eve’s children started having children.
Longmire does note, “Genesis provides no timeline between Creation and Fall. Even a brief pre-Fall period with perfect fertility allows rapid population expansion. Post-Fall, early humanity would exhibit a spectrum of genetic integrity.”
He adds that his theory explains, “Why Seth’s line maintained vitality longer than Cain’s” but I’m unaware of any indication that such was the case—it seems to only be a case of which lineage was recorded for more generations and it would seem that Seth’s was since more was to be said about some of it’s members such as getting us to Noah.
There’s no actual indication that, “Nephilim possessed extraordinary characteristics” since quite mundane regular humans throughout history have been, “mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” The only actual thing that would make them extraordinary is if they were half-Angel and half-human.
As for, “some traits resurface post-Flood” there’s none of which we know: he’s surely appealing to one single unreliable sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked recorded in Num 13:33.
I’m unsure why there weren’t any attractive female, “Early descendants retaining substantial pre-Fall genetic material” nor any attractive male, “Humans born after multiple generations of accumulating genetic entropy.” The Angel view elucidates why there’s a gender binary in the Gen 6 affair and that’s because Angels are always described as looking like human males thus, it was only strictly male Angels on one side of the equation who, by definition, had to mate with human females on the other side of it.
Yet, JD Longmire’s conclusion is, “Human “sons of God” (per Luke 3:38) see beautiful women” who are also human—again, why the bifurcation, on Longmire’s view?
“Intermarriage occurs across genetic lines” which all go back to Adam and Eve.
“Offspring possess unusual size” for which there’s literally zero reliable indication.
“God grieves over human wickedness (not angelic rebellion). Judgment targets humanity exclusively. No angels, no supernatural breeding, no mythological elements” which I already covered.
With regards to, “Post-Flood Giants” we must first ask these key questions: what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s your usage? Do those two usages agree?
Predictably, we’re directed to that:
Numbers 13:33 mentions Nephilim-like beings after the Flood. Rather than requiring repeated angelic events, simple genetics explains this:
Recessive traits preserve ancestral characteristics
Isolated populations may express dormant genes
Genetic atavism causes ancient traits to resurface
The term “Nephilim” may be used comparatively (”giants like the ancient Nephilim”)
Such is what happens when one hyper-fixates on one sentence and doesn’t interact with the narrative.
The term, “Nephilim-like” is made up.
Indeed, there’s no indication of, “repeated angelic events.”
Yet, there’s also no need to appeal to, “genetics…Recessive traits…dormant genes,” and, “giants like the ancient Nephilim” begs the questions I just noted: biblically contextually that would mean, “Nephilim like the ancient Nephilim” which is redundant.
Longmire’s usage is clearly 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). Yet, the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles is that 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.
It’s noted, “The Hebrew term nephilim likely derives from naphal (to fall), not necessarily indicating unusual size. Even if it means ‘giants,’ this fits perfectly with genetic expression of pre-Fall characteristics. Many isolated populations throughout history have produced individuals of unusual stature through purely genetic means.”
Anyone appealing to Num 13:33 needs to mention that they’re relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse doesn’t even mention Anakim)—applicable to those who does quote non-LXX versions.
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 post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal—which I’m currently updating.
Longmire references, “The Sufficiency of Scripture” by noting, “By demonstrating that Genesis 6 makes complete sense without importing extra-biblical mythology, this interpretation upholds Scripture’s sufficiency” yet, that was only concluded after ignoring Job 38, Psalm 82, and the actual statements by Jude and 2 Peter 2.
We’re also told, “most ancient Near Eastern sources describe mighty men and declining human vitality, not angel-human breeding…The Gilgamesh Epic features a mighty man of human (not hybrid) origin…Only later sources like 1 Enoch (3rd-2nd century BC) introduce elaborate angel-breeding narratives, likely influenced by Greek mythology where god-human coupling was common. The absence of clear angel-human breeding in contemporaneous ancient sources supports the human lineage reading.”
I’m unaware to what, “most” refers statistically. As for, “angel-human breeding” well, they may not say Angel and might opt for gods or some such thing. As for, The Gilgamesh Epic we’d have to know which one but the fact is that they’re not about, “human (not hybrid)” since he’s said to have been one-third human and two-third god.
It’s one-sided bias and/or incomplete to reference, “likely influenced by Greek mythology” since that begs the question of whence they got that: it would seem that pre-Tower of Babel, humanity lived in relative proximity but thereafter we spread abroad taking with us what was then commonly known and shared history which, with time and telling (and aggrandized augmentation) became myth and legend.
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