Petros Koutoupis posted an article titled The Nephilim and the Flood on the site Digging Up the Past.
It’s noted that, “Many scholars, both independent and accredited” one of whom was the utterly unqualified Zecharia Sitchin who made a living by selling neo-tall-tales.
Back in the day, I read 10 or 11 of his books.
Dr. Michael Heiser, who was qualified and credentialed, challenged Sitchin to debate his assertions but Sitchin refused—for over a decade and until his passing away.
Thus, we’re told:
…many independent scholars have taken the opportunity to exploit the Nephilim to their advantage. Zecharia Sitchin was one of those individuals, who proposed that the Nephilim were nothing more than a god-like race with the knowledge and technology to navigate the heavens, who came to earth and created mankind as slave labor mining rare materials.
I’m glad they were, “nothing more” than that since if they were more we’d really be in trouble.
While when recognized as being etymologically rooted in the Hebrew naphal the word Nephilim is understood as fall/fallen/to fall/to cause to fall/feller, etc., “Sitchin had jumped on the chance to translate the Nephilim as: (1) those who came down from above, (2) those who were cast down, and (3) people of the fiery rockets” which is asking much too much uber specificity to derive from such a simple word (note that the, “im” ending merely makes a Hebrew word male plural).
Right on point, Petros Koutoupis pointedly noted, “These made-up epithets are clearly ridiculous and groundless.”
He then notes that Sitchin, “goes on to identify the Nephilim with the Sumerian deities, claiming that the Sumerians knew of their existence and that they came from a planet called Nibiru” yet, biblically, they were born on Earth and after, “man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them.”
Koutoupis also noted, “According to Sitchin, Nibiru completed its rotation around our sun every 3600 or so earth years. The sources cited came from his mistranslated Mesopotamian inscriptions and cylinder seal impressions.”
He adds, “in his second book, The Phoenix Solution…Alan Alford retracted his [Sitchin’s] ancient astronaut theories…Sitchin threatened Alan Alford with a 50 million dollar lawsuit on the grounds that Alford’s comments discredited Sitchin’s theories and destroyed his reputation.”
Why debate when you can file a lawsuit?
Also noted is Andrew Collins who, “using the sons of God and the Nephilim to hint at a forgotten race…uses translations similar to Sitchin’s for the noun Nephilim…Collins clearly displays his lack of knowledge in biblical Hebrew; confusing the Nephilim with the sons of God.”
Now to Koutoupis’ own view in that Gen 6:4 notes:
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.
Yet, he tells us:
The biggest clues to the identification of the Nephilim will come from Numbers 13:33:
And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Taking an interpretation of the Nephilim as the ‘people of the fiery rockets’ again holds no credibility when examining the term itself and the surrounding grammar of Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33.
The, “biggest clues to the identification of the Nephilim will come from Numbers 13:33” is a huge problem since that’s merely recording an, “evil report” by unreliable guys whom God rebuked so their tall-tale is meaningless.
Also, Petros Koutoupis quoted a non-LXX version since the LXX doesn’t mention Anakim in that verse—and when Caleb and Moses retell that event they don’t mention Nephilim: why would they, they weren’t concerned about a fantasy tall-tale.
Thus, it’s unfortunate that when Koutoupis goes on to argue that Nephilim was there used as, “the name of one of the Canaanite tribes” that’s not the case: it was just a, “Don’t go in the woods” style of fear-mongering, scare-tactic tall-tale.
He then tells us:
When the Old Testament was first translated to the Greek language, the word for Nephilim read gigantes, the Greek word for giants. This is confirmed in Numbers 13:33 with the description of the Israelites when compared to the race of giants.
Well, if gigantes is the word for giants that only begs these questions: What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s Koutoupis’ usage? Do those two usages agree?
Also, gigantes means earth-born.
That we’re told, “This is confirmed in Numbers 13:33” must mean that his usage is something un-specifically vague about generically subjectively unusual height. Yet, the usage 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.
He goes on to argue that, “the characteristics held by the Nephilim” don’t lend themselves to be grammatically related to naphal since, “what have the Nephilim fallen from? The answer is nothing” yet, historically they’ve been said to have cause the styled second fall which was the flood and/or that they fell upon men due to being mighty.
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