On Facebook, a certain Michael Shawn Kirby posted the following, in part:
…I honestly can’t recommend this book enough, or for that matter any work by Dr. Michael Heiser. I’d go so far to say that if you don’t understand the influence that the Book of Enoch…
Understanding who the Nephilim are in turn helps you to better understand the Hebrew conquest of the Holy Land…
Dr. Heiser touches upon all of these topics, and they all lead back to the Book of Enoch, as well as the fallen angels descent onto Mt. Hermon in order to seduce and cohabitate with the daughters of men.
I started a YouTube channel a while back where I discuss such topics as the elongated skulls…My hypothesis has been that they were descendants of the Nephilim, and I think Dr. Heiser’s work strengthens that hypothesis…the Nephilim Apkallu also occupied a similar position in Babylon, and as the Bible makes note of, so did the Nephilim Rephaim in Canaanite society.
I, True Freethinker, replied
There’s no such thing as “Nephilim Rephaim.” That’s a category error that violates the law of identity because Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids and Rephaim were strictly post-flood 100% humans.
Michael Shawn Kirby
No they weren’t, and the most obvious rebuttal to your assertion is that King Og was the last of the Rephaim, and he was noted by the OT writers to be a Nephilim giant whose bed was 9 cubits long (he was probably between 10 to 13 feet tall). He and the rest of the giant clans in Canaan were probably propagated by the post-flood Babylonian Apkallu who were two-thirds “divine” and one-third human. They were giants like King Og, with Gilgamesh being the most famous example (i.e. the Sumerians probably weren’t lying when they depicted him as a giant easily strong-arming a fully grown lion, just like the ancient Egyptians probably weren’t lying when also depicting their “gods” as giants that towered over homo sapiens).
Please also note that Dr. Heiser is not the only one that advocates that hypothesis. I’m an Orthodox Christian and a famous Orthodox Christian Podcast is The Lord of Spirits, which is hosted by Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen De Young. They also have the exact same theory that the way the Nephilim survived the flood was through the hybridized Apkallu. In regards to how those Nephilim were created, Father Stephen De Young points to ancient Ugaritic texts that speak of kings voluntary surrendering themselves to demonic possession and having ritualized, sexual intercourse with demonized Ishtar priestesses (i.e. temple prostitutes) as the vector by which the Nephilim were re-introduced into the world after the Flood. But what’s interesting is that Dr. Heiser was a Protestant and these guys are Orthodox, yet their combined research made both of them zero in on the post-flood Apkallu as the primary vector by which the Nephilim were reintroduced to Humanity after being wiped out by The Flood.
My friend I find your attempts at self-promotion to be very dishonest and disingenuous. In your other post (which I have deleted), you claimed I said that Dr. Heiser was infallible. I never said Dr. Heiser was infallible, no man is infallible. Furthermore, posting random websites that ask for both private and financial information from my friends list smacks of spam and gives off a very “scammy” vibe. It’s also a very dishonest way of building up your readership not through the quality of your content (because you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about), but instead trying to piggyback off of others with disingenuous libel and spam.
True Freethinker
That’s odd, I could have sworn that I wrote a reply to this already but don’t see it now.
In any case, indeed “King Og was the last of the Rephaim” but if “he was noted by the OT writers to be a Nephilim giant” (“Nephilim giant” is a redundant term) then please quote and cite where they did so.
As for, “bed was 9 cubits long (he was probably between 10 to 13 feet tall)” that’s a non sequitur based on various mere assumptions, please see my book, “The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?.”
As for, “Nephilim giants” and “giant clans”: the key questions are:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s your usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those two usages agree?
I’m unsure why we should take ancient sculptures literally.
As for De Young, please search online for my article, “Critical Review of Fr. Stephen De Young’s ‘Here There Be Giants.’”
“the exact same theory that the way the Nephilim survived the flood” is just another way to claim that God failed: He must have missed that loophole and the flood was much of a waste. Besides, Nephilim are half-Angel and half-human, by definition, not half-(only one of the various myths about)Apkallu and half-human so that’s also a category error that violates the law of identity.
Likewise, by definition Nephilim are physical offspring of Angels and humand and not the product of a ritual recipe that can be followed post-flood to make home-made Nephilim. Besides, we should not incorporate Pagan mythology into biblical theology.
What you emotively subjectively “find” after making failed attempts at mind reading are not a standard. Now, tell me what De Young said when you told him, “My friend I find your attempts at self-promotion to be very dishonest and disingenuous.”
Also, please don’t make up stuff just to argue with me or maybe you give evidence as to why you hold to an anti-biblical Nephilology due to a reading comprehension problem. See, you asserted, “In your other post (which I have deleted)” since you rely on censorship “you claimed I said that Dr. Heiser was infallible. I never said Dr. Heiser was infallible” and I never said that you said that.
I’ve no idea what you’re going on about “random websites that ask for both private and financial information.”
That brought the discussion to and end as no more replies were forthcoming and Michael Shawn Kirby relied on censorship to hide his fallacies since not that page reads, “This content isn’t available right now. When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”
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