Under consideration is Marcos Reyna’s article What Does The Bible Say About Nephilim: Reyna is identified as, “a Christian author and speaker…dedicated to helping create disciples of Christ…A trained theologian and devotee of spiritual writing…”
Since he begins by referring to, “Nephilim, giants who lived before and during the time of the great flood” we will have to keep an eye out for the answers to the following key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Reyna’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those two usages agree?
We need to discern, hopefully via a direct definition by him, if by “Nephilim, giants” he’s providing an a.k.a. or is implying something. As for, “before and during the time of the great flood” fair enough since they certainly didn’t liver thereafter.
He notes, “The Bible does not explicitly state who the Nephilim were, though some have speculated the Nephilim were descendants of the fallen angels or ancient gods. Others believe the Nephilim to be a race of people who were large and powerful, a cross between humans and an ancient race.”
Since those are based on, “some have speculated” and, “Others believe” we will leave that be. Yet, as for, “The Bible does not explicitly state” well, they were the offspring of sons of God and daughters of men and Job 38:7, as one example, shows us that “sons of God” can refer to non-human beings (which the LXX has as “Angelos”).
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/sin of Angels in the Bible.
The original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians 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.
Marcos Reyna notes, “The Bible does not provide much information on what the Nephilim looked like, how they lived, or what happened to them after the great flood.” Now, it’s tricky to write in styled reification fallacy terms such as, “the Bible does not provide” since it’s a matter of whereabouts in the Bible certain data points are and there were abouts lets us discern who said it, why was it said, was it accurate, what was the reaction to it, etc.
In this case, reliably, “The Bible does not provide” any, “information on what the Nephilim looked like” but centuries post-flood, long after the last of them died in the flood, some unreliable guys presented an, “evil report” about them and were rebuked by God. Thus, we don’t have any reliable biblical physical description of them. As for, “how they lived” fair enough since we are only told they were well known and mighty. And as for, “what happened to them after the great flood” well, their bodies were covered by a lotta sediment and/or eaten by sea animals and/or insects, etc.
Reyna notes, “some,” unnamed, unnumbered, and uncited, “scholars believe that the tribe of Anak mentioned in the Bible as descendants of Nephilim survived the flood and continued to exist as a separate race.” Well then, those some are exclusively basing that exclusively upon one single sentence in only non-LXX versions of the “evil report” and thus, they create the gigantic problem of how it is that God failed when He sought to be rid of Nephilim, He must have missed the, “Nephilim survived the flood” loophole—which contradicts the Bible five times”—and the flood was much of a waste.
He notes, “Nephilim were powerful and formidable people in their time, and they played an important role in biblical history” history up until the flood—period, full stop.
Reyna has a very repetitive manner of working through his article such as some statement I have already quoted followed by, “The Bible does not provide any explicit explanation of the nature and origin of the Nephilim…Some scholars have suggested…The Bible does not go in-depth into who they were or how they came to be…Some biblical scholars theorize…Some biblical researchers believe……the Bible does not provide a clear description of who they were,” etc.
He does note, “their physical appearance is unknown since there is no clear illustration of them in the Bible” which is a refreshing factoid to note.
Now, Marcos Reyne asserts, “The Nephilim are mentioned in several passages in the Bible” but that is only the case if, “several” means two: reliably in Gen 6:4 and unreliably in Num 13:33—period, full stop.
He then circles to that, “In Numbers 13:33, the Nephilim are mentioned as the fathers of the Anakim people and the descendants of the ancient race of giants” so that this is another hint at that by, “giants” he appears to be referring to subjectively unusual height. Yet, he referred to Nephilim as such, had no reliable data upon which to do so, and admitted as much, “their physical appearance is unknown.” As for Anakim, the only relevant thing we are told about them is that they were, “tall” (see Deut 2) but that term is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as, “giants” and it’s subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3ft in those days.
Reyna also asserts, “Deuteronomy 2:20-21 suggests that the Nephilim were part of a larger group of nations” but there is no such suggestion since they are not mentioned nor even hinted at in those verses: he appears to be confusing Rephaim with Nephilim but Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
Thus, when he notes, “Other passages indicate that the Nephilim were hostile to Israel” the only viable candidate is the, “evil report” so that’s invalid.
Frankly, I get a feeling that this article was spat out by AI since it’s very, very, very repetitive as well as vaguely generic. We then circle to the, “what happened to the Nephilim after the great flood” issue and are told, “The only hint given is in Genesis 6:4, which states that the Nephilim were still present ‘also afterward’” and while Reyna and/or AI don’t get around to telling us, “afterwards” of when, we get a typical, “Some scholars have suggested that the tribe of Anak mentioned in the Bible could be the descendants of the Nephilim…the possibility that the Nephilim survived the flood. Additionally, there are some theories,” etc.
Reyna tells us, “Ultimately, we may never know the ultimate fate of the Nephilim as the Bible does not provide explicit answers” but it does: they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form, and centuries later ten unreliable guys made up a tall-tale about them and were rebuked by God.
Any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed. See, fallacious Nephilology negatively effects theology proper. Also, post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent un-biblical tall-tales about how they made it past the flood. This 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. which are among by dozen, or so, Nephilology books.
He also refers to, “their…size…their powerful size…their size” but recall that he had previously told us, “The Bible does not provide…information on what the Nephilim looked like” and went on to write, “it does not provide much information on…what they looked like.”
He then notes, “The Nephilim are also often mentioned in other spiritual texts, such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees” about which you can see my books In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch and The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
We are also told, “Many,” unnumbered, unnamed, and uncited, “people believe the Nephilim were the precursors to modern day giants” about which I will say: whatever that means. He also notes, “Legends of the Nephilim also exist in many cultures, from the Middle East and Europe to South and Central America, creating a common narrative about the mysterious ancient people.” But we must be very cautious about going cross-cultural, as it were, since it’s all to easy to water down terminology—such as referring to, “giants”—so as to (purposefully or not) give the appearance of correlation where there is none—such merely asserting that Nephilim were “giants” ergo, all “giants” were Nephilim.
So, when Marcos Reyna notes, “it is difficult to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the Nephilim” it really isn’t if we just remain logically, bio-logically, and theo-logically consistent.
We are also told, “The Nephilim have been mentioned in other books of the Bible, such as Ezekiel and Deuteronomy” but no specific citations are provided and such isn’t the case in any case.
In the name of sharpening iron with iron (which tends to result in someone getting cut) this is the sort of article that needed to be much less repetitive and that should have been published after a lot more factchecking.
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