On his X page, Paul Tackett (of VerseQuest Ministries, Master’s degree in Pastoral Theology: the, “Meet Out Pastor” section of the, “About” page of his site does not state from where) posted 🚨🚨 NEW VERSEQUEST SERIES RELEASED 🚨🚨 which is titled The Nephilim Were Not Clowns Series 1-22. My previous article about him is Review of Pastor Paul Tackett’s Post-Flood Nephilim Migration.
If you find yourself in the outermost corner of a pop-Nephilology rabbit hole, you will know that the reason to even write Nephilim and Clowns in the same sentence is due to that a certain Paul Stobbs has virtually single handedly turned Nephilology into a literal clown show.
Biblical Nephilology has been coopted by pop-Nephilologists for some time now. Pop-Nephilology sells un-biblical tall-tales (many of which include sci-fi aspects) to Christians.
Pop-Nephilology is where the most ridiculous conspiracy theories and theology proper damaging fantasy tall-tales find new life by being put into a blender and being peppered with assertions about being biblical. Stobbs has taken that cesspool of misinfo and disinfo and made a name for himself publishing a book titled The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns.
Now, the claim that Nephilim looked like clowns is based on a miscomprehension of the relevant linguistics, reliance on faulty sources, folklore, and mere assertions.
Stobbs admitted that it came from him having a hallucinogenic drug flashback.
For a detailed review of claim, see my book Did the Nephilim Look Like Clowns?: A Review of Paul Stobbs’ Theory.
For a succinct review, see the article I published before he published his book Is Paul Stobbs right? Did Nephilim Look Like Clowns? and also the follow-up article Anatomy of the making of a modern-day myth: Nephilim looked like clowns.
When it comes down to it, as you will see, Stobbs’ assertion The Nephilim Looked Like Clowns and Tackett’s The Nephilim Were Not Clowns are actually saying much the same thing: both, at once, claim that Nephilim did and also did not look like clowns since they both claim that Nephilim featured clown-like features that have been reflected in clown-like and modern clown aspects.
I found Tackett’s take interesting in that he walks the line between Stobbsian tall-tales and Biblical Nephilology—that is, in the text undergoing review: in my article Review of Pastor Paul Tackett’s Post-Flood Nephilim Migration I demonstrated that, in general, his Nephilology is not biblical since, for example, he asserts post-flood Nephilim, something he does not do in the present text.
In fact, in the text in question he wrote, “The flood erased their bodies…The last time humanity embraced such distortion, God sent a flood…a world humanity once knew and God erased with water…thoroughly that God wiped the slate clean…Nephilim were
Destroyed. The Bible says the flood was God’s judgment…those beings died in the flood” (and this is just a sample of the various times he affirmed such).
Now, logically (and bio-logically and theo-logically) how can that be the case (which it biblically is) and there also be Post-Flood Nephilim Migration? There cannot be thus, that is a fundamental level contradiction and one that implies that God failed, must have missed a loophole, and the flood was much of a waste.
I am typically loath to critique another author’s writing style since, as I have noted variously, mine style (or lack thereof) leaves much to be desired in part since suffering from some form of dyslexia, English being my second language, and not having an editor makes for a perfect storm for my writings.
Yet, I will note that, at least in the subject text, Paul Tackett is extremely repetitive and he could have produced a more succinct and ergo, more impactfully laser focused text if he condensed rather than having dispersed his claims and data points.
Paul Tackett notes:
One of the strangest symbols the modern world has normalized is the clown — a painted face, an exaggerated expression, a distorted body, a walking inversion of human dignity. Children laugh. Adults pretend to laugh. Yet somewhere deep inside the human soul, something recoils.
Something remembers. Something ancient recognizes something ancient. The face is familiar in a way we cannot articulate — and that is the warning…
Across continents, cultures, languages, and eras, the same grotesque figure reappears: white face, red mouth, oversized features, ritual paint, chaotic movement, mockery of order, mockery of authority, mockery of the human form itself. The world calls it comedy. The Bible believer asks a different question: Why does this symbol survive? And why now?
Genesis 6 gives the first clue: “There were giants in the earth in those days…” These were not merely tall men. They were the offspring of fallen angels and human women — hybrids, distortions, grotesque parodies of the divine order.
The flood erased their bodies, but it did not erase the trauma they left behind. Every post-flood culture carries a memory of distorted beings. Every myth remembers a hybrid face. Every pagan ritual recreates the mask of a fallen god. Humanity forgot the names — but remembered the faces.
Clown-Nephilologists make quite the case regarding clown features and yet, they seem to overlook that there are reasons as to why performers tends towards exaggeration: they need to be seen from afar—whether as spectacles in ancient rituals attended by hundreds, modern day stages which required huge screens to project the goings on to the people in backrows, or under the big top in circus center rings.
It is the reason that Michael Jackson would wear one sequined glove and high water black pants with black shoes and white sequined socks: so you can see his movements from afar. The same reason that opera singers traditionally overdo make up.
And yet, something recoils because they are other: they are unusual, they do unexpected odd things, they jokingly mock, etc., etc., etc.
Tackett’s view is that coulrophobia reflects ancient memories of having seen Nephilim.
He wrote:
The Nephilim were not clowns, but the clown is a faint, distorted reflection…these were not fairy-tale giants with cheerful faces and comedic antics (Genesis 6:4). They were the offspring of supernatural rebellion — the literal children of fallen angels, the product of abomination and transgression. Their appearance would not have been normal. Their faces would not have been pleasant. Their proportions would not have matched human design. They were the distortion of the image of God’s creation.
When a being outside of humanity corrupts human genetics, the result is something human-shaped but not human…
The exaggerated face is corruption. The elongated smile is corruption. The corpse-white skin is corruption. The blood-red markings around the mouth and eyes mimic wounds, death, or predatory expressions. These are not comedic enhancements. These are the echoes of a race that distorted humanity so…A clown is a mockery of humanity. A Nephilim was…A clown exaggerates what God made…
Behind the mask is an archetype — the trickster, the jester, the shaman, the ritual performer, the spirit medium — all descended from the same spiritual pattern: fallen beings masquerading behind distorted human form.
I want to insert a linguistics issue here as he refers to Nephilim as giants which begs the following key questions: what is the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles? what is his usage? Do those two usages agree?
The noted:
The King James Bible paints a picture of a world before the flood that was distorted, corrupted, mutated, and spiritually contaminated. “There were giants in the earth in those days”…“And also after that” (Genesis 6:4) was not a
suggestion. It was a warning that the spiritual corruption did not end with the giants’ bodies…Genesis 6 does not describe them in cartoon terms. It calls them “giants” and “mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Genesis 6:4).
That was stated within the context of reference to their, “height, proportion, strength, and shape that did not match human design.” Thus, that informs us that his usage of giants 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).
This means that his usage does not agree with the English Bibles’ usage since therein, giants merely renders (does not 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.
He also refers to them as, “tall” but that is just as vague, generic, and multi-usage as giants.
As for, “offspring of supernatural rebellion — the literal children of fallen angels” indeed, 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.
Yet, as for, “Their appearance would not have been normal” that is a speculative argument from silence especially since both sides of their parentage looked human thus, every indication is that their offspring would look human.
Human women look like human women because they are human women.
Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such is not their ontology—see my book What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
Could there still have been some abnormal effects from the combination of Angel and human, sure, yet, the dirty little secret is that since we have no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height and appearance is a non-issue—and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical-pop-Nephilology.
We have no reliable indication that, “elongated smile…corpse-white skin…blood-red markings…mimic” Nephilim features since we know not what Nephilim features are.
Now, there is something to be said regarding the issue of, “archetype — the trickster, the jester, the shaman, the ritual performer, the spirit medium” in terms of what Paul Tackett puts as:
…the clown…is the surviving symbol of a spiritual distortion. He is the echo of the Nephilim. He is the cartoon version of something humanity once feared…the same spirit behind the giants is conditioning the world again through imagery, mockery, inversion, and distortion…This is why the clown matters.
This is why the imagery matters. This is why the symbols matter…A clown is one of the strangest contradictions in modern culture. People pretend it’s harmless, pretend it’s comedic, pretend it’s a children’s toy — but the soul knows better…
Satan…needs the world to stop recognizing distortion when it sees it. He only needs mockery to become entertainment…the devil repeats himself. He recycles symbols. He repackages ancient corruption into modern aesthetics.
At issue is the, “the clown…is the surviving symbol of a spiritual distortion” the something to be said about which is that Satan only one untuned stringed banjo card is: copy but corrupt. He does that which God does but upside-down, inside out and backward.
Now, just as Nephilim might have been physically distorted, we cannot ignore that memories—especially cultural memories such as those held by Noah’s grandchildren and beyond who did not actually see Nephilim—and stories in general grow with telling, retelling, re-retelling, etc. as they become tall-tales: taller and taller they grow with time and telling—see my paper How Nephilim Absconded from the Tanakh and Invaded Folkloric Territory.
Hyped click-bait existed long before clicking and the way to get and keep attention is to keep upping the ante, taking it up a notch, seeking to be unique my making the most outlandishly interesting claims: and now you have a taste of why neo-theo-sci-fi-tall-tales Nephilology has become a very lucrative cottage industry—an cottage made of straw.
An issue with which we must be very mindful is the ease with which we can water down otherwise solid data points in order to string them together in a manner that is actually not viable.
As for, “He only needs mockery to become entertainment,” Tackett noted, “Hollywood turns demons into superheroes” which is the case indeed especially in terms of the anti-hero who is a technical bad guy and does bad things but it is painted as being pragmatically acceptable since bad is being done for the right reasons, for the good—and I am italicizing terms here since they are being blurred into subjectivism.
And so many superheroes are aliens, hybrids, genetically mutated humans, have superpowers, etc.—Batman is among the only actually 100% non-GMO human superheroes.
We were told of, “white face, red mouth, oversized features…” and:
Nephilim, the hybrids, the corrupted seed, the giants who twisted the natural order. It’s no accident that the earliest giant legends from after the flood — in Canaan, in Bashan, in Native American lore, in Norse mythology — describe beings whose features were unnatural, whose faces were
oversized, whose expressions were monstrous.
It is too simple to vaguely refer to, “Native American lore” for example since Native American refers to many cultures from many locations and with various levels of oral traditions passed on for centuries and millennia with whatever level of reliability: see my article Lovelock Cave Giants: lost or found? for an example of this.
As for, “Nephilim, the hybrids…giants…after the flood — in Canaan” one such example is found in Num 13:33 which reads, “there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
Yet, that was:
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 one has to make up an un-biblical tall-tale about how they made it past the flood, past God.
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
As for, “Nephilim, the hybrids…giants…after the flood…in Bashan” I would imagine that he is specifically referring to King Og of Bashan about whom we are told, “only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit” (circa 13.5x6ft.).
The only contextually relevant thing we are told about Rephaim, in general, is that they were subjectively, “tall,” in general and that is subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days (Victor Harold Matthews, (Hendrickson, 1991 ed.) Manners and Customs in the Bible).
Also, seeking to derive Og’s height from the size of his bed is a non-sequitur based on various mere assumptions. Every indication is that it was a ritual object, not something upon which he slept—see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Note that Paul Tackett argues thusly, very specifically:
Many were said to have red hair…
One of the strangest consistencies in giant lore across the world is the description of their physical features…pale skin and fiery, red hair. The Bible itself gives hints of this pattern, not in superficial description but in typology. Esau — the progenitor of nations hostile to Israel — is born “red, all over like an hairy garment” (Genesis 25:25). That is not normal. That is an emphasis.
The Native Americans spoke of the Si-Te-Cah, a race of red-haired giants who were cannibalistic, violent, and godlike in stature. When the Comanches spoke of their ancient enemies, they described them as “white men” with reddish or copper hair, massive height, and unnatural strength.
…red hair preserved in strands, pale bones of abnormal size, and skulls elongated far beyond normal human proportions…The Bible believer calls them evidence of Genesis 6 and its aftermath.
Why does this matter? Because the clown archetype — without consciously knowing it — preserves the same two features. The pale, corpse-like skin. The unnatural, blazing red hair…
Some accounts even describe them as glowing or luminous, not in a divine sense but in the eerie way moonlight reflects off a lifeless surface.
Red is the color of blood, the color of violence, the color of war, the color of sacrifice. It is the color of Esau, who despised his birthright and became a type of carnal rejection and opposition to God’s covenant.
Now, that, “Many were said to have red hair” is clearly a mere assertion and the only citation we have is generically to, “The Native Americans” and specifically to, “the Comanches.”
Worse yet, the argument was myopic and vague when it came down to it: and rather potentially dangerous to red-heads.
It would seem that what Native Americans were depicting are not cultural memories of Nephilim but rather, cultural memories of interacting with Vikings: giant/tall, White, and red-haired.
As for, “hints of this pattern…Esau” if we are to correlate that he was, “red, all over like an hairy garment” coupled with, “progenitor of nations hostile to Israel” we might was well say that King David was likewise (sans, “progenitor of nations hostile to Israel”) correlated to Nephilim since, after all, “he was ruddy” (1 Sam 16:12).
As for, “pale bones,” and he also wrote, “The pale face is the color of death” well, all bones are pale but there are huge issues with appealing to generic bones since that opens us a can of gigantic worms that range from individual bones to skeletons and from those examined by qualified people to unqualified people claiming they saw such.
Some are mere tall-tales without evidence, some are vague assertions, some end up being bones of pachyderm, whales, dinos, etc.—see my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales for a whole chapter featuring newspaper accounts form the late 1800s-early 1900s and, “Appendix: Review of Adrienne Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters” of my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
As for, “abnormal size, and skulls elongated far beyond normal human proportions…The Bible believer calls them evidence of Genesis 6 and its aftermath” that is a clearly unfounded mere assertion.
Note that even, “pale, corpse-like skin” is generic and myopic since some people are just pale so the only reason to refer to pale as corpse-like is bias.
Even his, “Red is the color of…” statement is myopic since he could have just as easily have said, “…delicious fruit, beautiful sunsets, gorgeous flowers. It is the color of David, who’s hear was after God’s own heart and became a type of loyalty to God’s covenant.”
Referring to Stephen King’s novel It, Paul Tackett wrote:
Pennywise is not terrifying because he’s a clown. He’s terrifying because he is almost human. The white face and red markings are not scary because of makeup. They are scary because they visually approximate a hybrid face — a face that is human enough to identify but wrong enough to disturb.
Pennywise is not terrifying because he’s a clown. He’s terrifying because he is almost human but ontologically, he is not human and is not a clown.
In fact, he is not a he rather, It was created by what King referred to as other and another which is a Gnostic-style unknown god, deus absconditus, theos agnosticos who created some indescribable something that, for human comprehension, is symbolically described as a spider and which takes on various shapes once it discern that which will scare its victims the most: one such shape is Pennywise the Dancing Clown—for details, see my book A Worldview Review of Stephen King’s “It”: The Mystical, Mysterious, and Metaphysical in the Novel, Miniseries, and Movies.
Thus, as for, “features were unnatural, whose faces were oversized, whose expressions were monstrous” it may be the case that depictions of giants were meant to visualizing such distorted beginnings: rebellion that resulted in offspring that were never meant to be.
For all of his talk about distorted vestiges of humanity, the most terrifying facts of history include that the most terrible actions against humanity (sans weather and genetic related catastrophes) is that humans with normal human features have been some of the most monstrous.
Paul Tackett asserted, “The Bible says demons desire to ‘inhabit’ bodies because they once had bodies. Their former state was hybrid, flesh” yet, that is not the case: which is why it is a mere assertion.
While the Bible does not state that, it is true and yet, he seemed to be arguing that demons are the spirits of dead Nephilim and yet, that is just folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah. For a biblical view, please see my article Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
Thus, overall, Paul Tackett’s point is that The Nephilim Were Not Clowns but they were, for all intents and purposes since, “Humanity…is haunted by what it remembers…the world before the flood was…preserved not in writing, but in imagery” and that imagery is supposedly based on how Nephilim looked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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