Prof. Glenn Sunshine (“Professor Emeritus of History, ordained minister, Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, podcaster with the Theology Pugcast, and founder of Every Square Inch Ministries”) posted an article about Nephilim with two follow-ups starting with What are the Nephilim?
He begins with what turns out to be a paraphrase of objections to the Angel view since he noted the following but the circled back to it later on, “The Nephilim have been a popular topic in some circles ever since the publication of Michael Heiser’s Unseen Realm in 2019. I think it’s fair to say that most theologians don’t take his arguments seriously, pointing out that Jesus tells us that angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage (Matthew 22:30). If that’s true, how can they have offspring with human women?”
Besides that which I term the Gen 6 affair itself, this is how and why Nephilology has been an issue for millennia. There is much to unpack here.
Dr. Heiser was credentialed and experienced but his Nephilology was not altogether biblical, and he tended to create more problems than he solved—find detailed examples in these articles:
Review of Amy Richter and Michael Heiser on four Enochian Watcher related women in Jesus’ genealogy.
Rebuttal to Dr. Michael Heiser’s “All I Want for Christmas is Another Flawed Nephilim Rebuttal”.
I also included him in my book, The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants: What do Scholarly Academics Say About Nephilim Giants?
Those who actually argue thusly need to understand that there is no indication that, “Jesus tells us that angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage” and the citation does not record Him stating that. 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.
Matt 22:30 is a favorite of Angel view deniers yet, only if they misrepresent it (purposefully or not), since it reads (KJV), “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” Thus, when we actually quoted Jesus, His statement was very detailed, very nuanced, He employed qualifying terms, “the angels of God in heaven.” So, not all Angels at all times in all places at in all circumstances but the loyal ones, “of God” and, “in heaven” which is why those who did marry are considered sinners since they, “left their first estate,” as Jude put it, in order to do so.
Thus, “If that’s true, how can they have offspring with human women?” it is a non-issue since it is not true.
Prof. Glenn Sunshine quotes the Gen 6 affair thusly:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4 ESV)
He notes, “The term ‘sons of God’ is the central issue here. The Hebrew phrase is bene elohim. It is only used here and in Job, where it refers to members of the divine council (i.e. the heavenly court). There are a number of passages in the Psalms that use similar phrases, all of which also refer to the divine council” such as ben Elim in Psalm 82.
Now, while, “linguistically, it looks like the phrase means angels…later Jewish interpreters and some of the church fathers argued that it referred to nobles or human rulers” which was an early view but barely made a blip on the radar of historical interpretation and so, as I noted above, the later Jewish interpreters and the some of the church fathers were an extreme minority.
Referring to the Sethite view, he notes, “Probably the most common view is that the sons of God are descendants of the godly line of Seth and the daughters of men were from the ungodly line of Cain. But the text does not give any indication of this” indeed, and that is a late-comer of a view based on myth and prejudice.
The Prof. went on to note, “there is no reason to assume that all of Seth’s descendants were godly, and the text doesn’t say that the women were ungodly or descendants of Cain” and why were there no attractive female Sethites nor attractive male Cainites? The Angel view explain the gender binary with only strictly males on one side of the equation and only strictly females on the other: Angels look just like human males so they needed to mate with human females, by definitional necessity.
He continued by noting that for the view, “that ‘sons of God’ can refer to divinized kings…The usual justification points to Psalm 82:1, 6” but I will cut to the chase by noting that the authoritative Elohim in that text addresses lesser elohim and tells them that they will die like men—and men do not need to be told that they will die like men.
The Prof. notes, “Jesus says that elohim in verse 6 refers to ‘them to whom the word of God came’ (John 10:34-35)” and via whom the word of God came is referenced when in Gal 3 it is noted, “the covenant…the law…was ordained by angels.” Also, Acts 7 refers to, “your fathers…received the law by the disposition of angels” ἄγγελος/angelos. And, Heb 2 notes, “the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward.”
He then circles back to, “So what do we do about Jesus’ words about the angels in heaven not marrying?,” and notes, “In the resurrection, procreation will be unnecessary as it is among the angels in heaven. That is the point Jesus is making. Further, Jesus does not say the angels in heaven cannot procreate, only that they do not.” Well, those, loyal, ones in heaven technically cannot since they do not although we can say that they can but do not.
He adds, “they were not the holy angels in heaven—they were fallen angels who left heaven. Jesus thus is not referring to those angels in Matthew 22.”
Prof. Glenn Sunshine then got into another Angelology issue:
But if angels are spirits, how can they impregnate women? Medieval thinkers saw them as purely immaterial. To Aquinas, they are “intellectual substances” that do not occupy space the way material bodies do, but whose location is defined by their interaction with people or objects. They can travel instantaneously from one place to another simply by willing to be in another location.
This means that angels cannot procreate with humans. Thus, for example, late medieval and early modern witchcraft treatises argued that as spirits, demons cannot impregnate women themselves, but they could steal semen from men, corrupt it, and put that into women.
But is this understanding of angels correct? Does the idea that angels are spirits mean that they are immaterial? Paul suggests otherwise when he says we will receive a spiritual body at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). Angels appear to have bodies whenever they appear in Scripture and can engage in physical activities. Angels eat with Abraham (Genesis 18:8), grab Lot, pull him indoors, and shut the door (Genesis 19:10), and seize Lot and his family by their hands and bring them out of Sodom (Genesis 19:16). In these passages, they are even described as “men” because they have taken on the physical form of men. But if angels can do all these things, isn’t it possible they could also assume a human body and engage in sexual relations?
Simply stated, “angels are spirits…purely immaterial…intellectual substances” is not biblical Angelology thus, “angels cannot procreate with humans” would be a non-sequitur following a fallacious premise.
Indeed, “as spirits, demons cannot impregnate women themselves” and there is no reliable indication, “they could steal semen” in part since that implies the usage of body parts they do not have in order to acquire and insert.
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.
The issue of, “can travel instantaneously from one place to another simply by willing to be in another location” seem to regard that they have additional capabilities than we humans. It is interesting that the go-to text for asserting that Angels are spirits is Heb 1:14 from which strictly English readers appeal to the one single poorly translated modern word, spirits.
Ironically, if you search the BibleGateway site specifically for Heb 1:7, then click on, “Hebrews 1:7 in all English translations” just below the verse, and you will find that 43 out of 64 versions rightly have Angels as, “winds” rather than, “spirits.” And looking at v 7 first is key since v. 14 plays off of it and must also be translated as, “winds” to be consistent.
Now, the difference is translation is not because translators just flipped a coin, it is because Heb is quoting (and then playing off of) Psalm 104:4 (do the same in BibleGateway for that one: the stats for which are 46 having, “winds” out of 58) and the entire context of the Psalm demands that we translate as, “winds” and not, “spirits.”
And Jesus said, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3) which is interesting in that Angels are called winds and, “can travel instantaneously from one place to another” but we do not know where they comes from or where it goes during any given mission.
Touching upon linguistics again, he notes, “the Nephilim (translated into Greek in the Septuagint as giants)” but that cannot be the case since giants is a modern English word. The Septuagint rendered, did not translate, as gigantes which means earth-born.
Near the end of the article, he claims, “Anakim and the Rephaim encountered by the Israelites during the conquest are Nephilim/giants, and in Second Temple Jewish thought, the spirits of the Nephilim became evil spirits” yet, the former assertion is premised on one single unreliable non-LXX sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked—since he dug into this in a follow-up, we will unpack it below. That evil spirits are the spirits of dead Nephilim 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?
The direct follow-up is Another Look at the Nephilim which we will pick up at:
I have found another approach in Fr. Stephen Damick’s book, The Lord of Spirits that offers an intriguing solution to the problems raised by hybridization. As an Orthodox priest, Fr. Damick views the Church Fathers as embodying holy tradition but notes the difference in opinion over the origin of the Nephilim. He suggests that there may be a way of reconciling the two views through understanding ritual magic in the ancient near east.
Fr. Damick points to Og, king of Bashan as a starting point for his discussion. Og was one of the Rephaim, who are described in Scripture as giants. Other giants in the post-Flood world include the Anakim (identified as Nephilim), Emim, and Zamzummim, all of which were linked to the Rephaim.
This raises the question: If the Nephilim were wiped out in the Flood, where did these giants come from?
One possibility is that one or more of Noah’s daughters-in-law carried Nephilim DNA. But Fr. Dammick raises an alternative explanation.
This is actually the stuff of which pop-Nephilology is made—un-biblical tall-tales sold to Christians—beginning with the fundamental category error of correlating Og, a Repha, to Nephilim and doing so based on two unknown sizes.
The phrase, “described in Scripture as giants” does not mean anything until we know:
What is the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles?
What is Prof. Sunshine’s and Fr. Damick’s usage?
Do those two usages agree?
Well, their 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).
Thus, their usage does not agree with the English Bibles’ since the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles is that it 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.
Thus, biblically contextually, “described in Scripture as giants” would mean, “described in Scripture as Rephaim.” And what are we contextually told about Rephaim? We are told that they were, “tall” (Deut 2) subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days. Thus, Og was described as a Repha and we do not have a biblical physical description of him. Moreover, as we shall see, the dirty little secret is that since we have no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical pop-Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Note typical post-flood Nephilology problem causing and then seemingly arriving at a solution. They know, “Nephilim were wiped out in the Flood” but then ask, “where did these giants come from?” which is also language jumping from the specific ancient Hebrew word Nephilim to the modern generic English word giants.
One of their solutions is that the way that God failed and the flood was much of a waste, which is the implication, is that He missed the, “one or more of Noah’s daughters-in-law carried Nephilim DNA” loophole. That not only damages theology proper but contradicts the Bible five times (Gen 7:7, 23; Heb 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5) since that is how many times God told us who survived the flood but Nephilim are not mentioned.
But before tying a knot around that un-biblical fantasy tall-tale’s neck, note that, “Anakim (identified as Nephilim), Emim, and Zamzummim, all of which were linked to the Rephaim” is a very myopic thing to claim—but we will put that on hold for now.
A subsection is titled, “Og’s Bed” and a bed is all that those who search the Bible for any indication of subjectively unusual height have to go on when it comes to Og. Prof. Sunshine notes, “Og as king of a giant” read Rephaim, “clan [tribe would be better]” and he appeals to that, “Kings were often considered divine figures in the ancient world…who were typically depicted as being between 12 and 15 feet tall. Significantly, Og had a bed that was 13 and a half feet long and 6 feet wide (Deut. 3:11).” Yet, as the Prof. notes, “Herodotus reported a ritual bed of the same size on top of the ziggurat at Etemenanki” so that indications are it was just that, a ritual object, not something upon which Og slept—see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
He notes, “Fr. Dammick argues that Og used the bed for ritual sex with a temple prostitute in which the god would participate, a practice known as hierogamy. The resulting child would thus be understood as being 2/3 divine—Og and the god—and 1/3 human—the temple prostitute.” Well, that is a category error since there is no indication that Nephilim came about due to two humans mating. Yet, “As I understand him, Fr. Dammick suggests that the ritual did in fact connect the king with real demons who on a spiritual level were involved in the conception of the child” yet, there is no mechanism for any such thing to occur.
Yet, apparently that is another loophole that God would have missed since, “Since this sort of ritual could be performed both before and after the Flood, it could explain both the Nephilim and the post-Flood giants.”
One issue with a review of three articles is that we are tending to loop to an issues, away from it, back to it, etc. so that we next come to, “How Big Were They?” and are told, “Fr. Dammick is agnostic about whether this ritual led to overlarge individuals” which would be irrelevant since, again, we do not have reliable physical description for Nephilim nor one for Og and all we can say about Rephaim is that they were taller than 5.0-5.3ft.—from no actual data, Prof. Sunshine asserts, “giant clans in Canaan, but we know that they were significantly larger than the Israelites” (emphasis added for emphasis).
He refers to, “giants as the product of demons mating with humans…unusually large” and jumps to Goliath about whom I will note that the Masoretic text has Goliath at just shy of 10 ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft. so, that is the preponderance of the earliest data (the Greek LXX Codex Venetus actually has 5 cubits and a span).
He tells us, “So that is an alternative explanation of the Nephilim and of the post-Flood giants. It has a lot to recommend it” but has nothing to recommend it and much to debunk it. What we have is:
A linguistics jump from Nephilim to (a misusage of) giants.
Appeals to unknown heights.
Correlations based on unknown heights.
Another linguistics jump from Nephilim to Rephaim—and Anakim, etc.
Un-biblical Pagan mythology about demonically infused humans mating to accomplish what otherwise only Angels mating with humans could achieve.
Damage to theology proper.
Appeals to un-biblical fantasy tall-tales.
Etc.
Prof. Glenn Sunshine touches upon some problems, “The text does not mention human men being involved, only the angels. I don’t think this is an insurmountable exegetical problem. It’s an argument from silence, and the point of the text is to show angelic involvement in the emergence of the Nephilim, which this interpretation maintains.”
“A second objection is that this was not the understanding of Second Temple Judaism” which opted for the Angel view.
Since he mentions Jude, I will succinctly put it as that 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 is only a one-time fall of Angels in the Bible. So, if they are not referring to the Gen 6 affair, we have no idea to what sin they are referring.
He also comments on, “the efficacy of the ritual” or lack thereof since, “either demons could not influence procreation that way because all human children bear the image of God, or ritual magic simply does not work.”
He adds, “We can dismiss the second easily enough…People with past or present involvement with the occult can quickly disabuse you of that notion” and yet, accepting that ritual magic has some effect does not mean that it is omnipotent: there is still no indication that demon possessed people birth anything but humans and seemingly without some sort of trickly down possession of their infant bodies.
As for possession, he notes, “Some levels of demonization, commonly called oppression and obsession, can occur without consent…people have become possessed inadvertently through involvement in the occult.”
If, “post-Flood giants” come about due to demonized parents conceiving then we have always had giants among us—some whereabouts.
Yet, we have literally zero indication that, “post-Flood giants” came about in that manner especially due to the category errors and linguistics issues with even referring to, “post-Flood giants.”
The last (for now?) article in the series of Yet Another Look at the Nephilim and was prompted by, “a number of comments and questions” and this time around, “The sources I will be using are extra-biblical, and so they should not be taken as inspired and authoritative.”
He focuses on, “The Nephilim in Second Temple Judaism” which is centuries, if not millennia after the Torah, and while, “they provide some of the intellectual context for the New Testament authors” there is no indication that any of the apocrypha, more specifically pseudepigrapha, provide us any addition historical facts but only gap filling folklore, historical fiction, speculation, delusions, etc.
The Prof. notes:
In 1 Enoch and Jubilees, the sons of God involved are from a class of angels known as Watchers…
In The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, however, the Nephilim are the product of something like hierogamy [union between a god and a goddess or, in this case, god and human], though without the ritual magic…women lusted after them and their beauty while having sexual relations with their husbands; since the angels appeared as tall as the sky, the women gave birth to giants…
In 1 Enoch and Jubilees, knowledge of magic and other dark practices was given to humanity by the fallen Watchers; in the story told in The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, however, the Watchers cannot be the source of the ritual magic practiced in later hierogamy—they were seduced by the women, not the other way around.
And Jubilees has it that post-flood Nephilim came about due to someone finding a recipe for fresh, hot out of the oven, Nephilim: written rituals were found from pre-flood days which provided instructions as to how to make them—which, of course, is another category error since by definition Nephilim are physical offspring of physical mating between Angels and humans.
1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch. It has Nephilim as being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality. Jubilees is much the same and so for that text and The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and many others including The Book of Jasher, The Book of Giants, see my book The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
Moreover:
In 1 Enoch, the Watchers who fell are imprisoned in the lowest part of Sheol as reflected in 1 Peter and Jude. The Nephilim died in the Flood, but because of the angelic part of their nature, their spirits did not end up in Sheol. Rather, they wander the earth as evil spirits seeking bodies to inhabit. These are the demons that Jesus encountered and cast out.
Jubilees follows this account with a few wrinkles. In the third week after the Flood, the evil spirits of the Nephilim began to lead Noah’s grandchildren astray. Noah appealed to God to bind them, but their leader, Mastema, asked God to leave some of the evil spirits free to tempt humanity. God agreed to leave 10% of these spirits in the world while the rest went to the place of punishment.
The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs likewise says that the Watchers were cursed after the Flood because of the Nephilim. Because its focus is on moral exhortation, however, it doesn’t say much about the fate of the Nephilim themselves.
Jude does not specify where the Angels/Watchers were incarcerated and Peter tells us that it is in Tartarus.
I already noted the folly of thinking that unclean spirits/demons are dead Nephilim but at least 1 Enoch does not have physical post-flood Nephilim.
Jubilees has them being made anew but only surviving until the time of Noah’s grandchildren.
Prof. Glenn Sunchine repeats the partial word argument, “Genesis 6:4 tells us that the Nephilim were in the earth ‘in those days [before the Flood] and also afterward.’ This explains Numbers 13:33, which tells us that the Anakim come from the Nephilim.”
Note that in order to make his point he, once again, only partially quoted the verse and this time, he artificially inserted, “[before the Flood]” into it. We already reviewed how it is not the case that, “also afterward.’ This explains Numbers 13:33” and that, “Anakim come from the Nephilim” is actually believing in one single unreliable non-LXX sentence from one single unreliable evil report spoken by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
Let us know come down to it and note that anyone appealing to Num 13:33 needs to mention that they are relying on:
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 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 am currently updating.
Circling back to, “if the Nephilim were killed in the Flood, how did they continue to exist afterwards?”—the biblical answer to which is that they did not—we are told, “Michael Heiser offered three possible explanations for the continued existence of Nephilim. The first is that the Flood was not worldwide but local, wiping out the corrupt population in Canaan…After the Flood, Nephilim from elsewhere migrated back into the land” thus, that is how God failed and the flood was much of a waste.
Dr. Heiser was what I will term opportunistic in this regard:
He personally told me that Gen 6:4 says there were post-flood Nephilim but that is not the case in any manuscript from any time or any place in any language nor from any printed Bibles.
He uncritically picked up Num 13:33, ran with it, and applied it—and admitted that he only interacted with it (which is 50% of what the Bible says about Nephilim) after many people pointed out and complained that he neglected it: see my aforementioned Rebuttal to Dr. Michael Heiser’s “All I Want for Christmas is Another Flawed Nephilim Rebuttal”.
So, he opted for the local flood model as an rescue mechanism—even though this is irrelevant since the scope of the flood is irrelevant to Nephilology since they either did not make it past the flood because it was global or because they lived in the flooded region: either way, they did not make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form and that they did so is illogical, ill-theological, and ill-biological.
Of Dr. Heiser’s view, the Prof. adds, “I don’t think it works” which includes the issue of, “if the Nephilim were the problem that caused the Flood in the first place, why did God not wipe them out in other parts of the world as well as the Middle East?” See, this is the issue I have mentioned, about God’s apparent inability to get the job done or to prevent it from happening again.
We also already covered how, “A second explanation offered by Heiser is that one or more people in Noah’s family—Noah’s wife or his sons’ wives—carried Nephilim genes” contradicts the Bible five times and implies that God missed that loophole.
It is noted, “Heiser notes that there was some Jewish speculation about this in the midrash” but by definition, Midrashim’s genre is sermonizing homilies and not history nor strict interpretation—for example, from Midrash we get the anachronistic category error that Og was a very, very, very large pre-flood personage who survived the flood by hanging of off the side of the ark and being fed by Noah.
And that the, “explanation, and the one Heiser prefers, is that history repeated itself” is not only a data-free mere assertion, it is unnecessary since there were no post-flood Nephilim and so all post-flood Nephilologists end up doing is creating gigantic problems and damaging theology proper.
Prof. Sunshine, “Still, I think it is a possibility” regarding, “one or more people in Noah’s family—Noah’s wife or his sons’ wives—carried Nephilim genes.”
He commented thusly on, “history repeated itself and supernatural beings again mated with humans. These would not be the original Watchers…Heiser has them assuming physical bodies like the Watchers” via a note, “EDIT: It has been pointed out to me by several readers that there are plenty of stories of giants and fairy abductions and impregnations of women in folklore from around the world. That is absolutely correct, and it answers my question about this theory. I’m a bit embarrassed that I overlooked these stories, many of which I knew. Thanks to those of you who contacted me about it.”
I am quite unsure how and why plenty of stories of a misusage of giants and fairy abductions and impregnations of women has much of anything to do with the Gen 6 affair: presumably the latter being generic enough to fit and Angels could be swapped with fairy who abduct/take (as wives), and tall-tales about something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average.
We are then taken back to the issue of, “How Big Were They?”:
Heiser notes that these Nephilim were not necessarily identical with those in Genesis 6—they are described as coming from the Nephilim. Nonetheless, the Anakim, the Rephaim, and others were giants for their time. Most people at the time of the Conquest were between 5 feet and 5 feet 6 inches tall. Estimates of the size of the Anakim vary, but it is likely they were between 7 and 10 feet tall. If Og’s bed was actually his bed and not a ritual implement, he would have been about 10 feet tall. But even if they were just the size of an NFL or NBA player, they would have been considered giants. Add weapons and armor, and they were fearsome opponents.
Recall that I noted that Dr. Heiser tended to create more problems than he solved such that Gen 6:4 is said to say something it does not, he actually applies Num 13:33, opts for a local flood due to his Nephilology, asserts dead Nephilim were unclean spirits, and now, “these” non-existent post-flood, “Nephilim were not necessarily identical with those in Genesis 6—they are described as coming from the Nephilim” but to conclude that you have to 1) only appeal to non-LXX versions and 2) actually believe the evil report is factually reliable.
Again, biblically contextually, “Anakim, the Rephaim, and others were giants for their time” would mean, “Anakim, the Rephaim, and others were Rephaim for their time” and no one can be correlated to Nephilim based on size of any sort.
Also, “Heiser believes that the commands to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan was particularly aimed at the giant clans” but that is the problem of writing generically: to who, exactly, does that refer? To actual Anakim, actual Rephaim, Nephilim 2.0, and what about the many other tribes with whom the Israelites delt?
This is a form of saying that since God failed to note the post-flood return of fallen Angels and neo-Nephilim loophole, He had to get mere humans to do what He could not manage to successfully do—one should wonder why it just did not just keep happening. Biblically we know why it never even happened one single more time post-flood: there is only a one-time fall of Angels in the Bible and Jude and 2 Peter 2 tell us that those Angels were incarcerated now, they do not tell us when but since the flood was when God was cleaning house, as it were, then it would have been during the flood or before it.
The Prof. notes, “essentially Heiser is right that there was a supernatural war going on in the Conquest, but it was being waged against Canaanite gods, not the Nephilim.”
God told us many times why He commanded such things but never said one single word about Nephilim, original or not, nor anything to do with any sort of Angelic intervention nor any such thing—see my whole chapter just on this issue in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
He also noted, “Rephaim (descendants of Rapha), a group associated with the Anakim” with regards to, “David’s defeat of Goliath and his men’s defeat of the other giants is thus the culmination of God’s long war against the Nephilim in Scripture.” The way that he ends up referring to Nephilim when the issue is Rephaim is 1) myopically only appeal to non-LXX versions of the evil report, 2) actually apply it, 3) aggrandize the non-LXX versions’ correlation of Nephilim to the Anakim clan to also, for unknown reasons and in unknown ways, also be a correlation to the entire Rephaim tribe.
Clearly, we keep getting special examples of especially special pleading to rescue devices which merely string together merely asserted assumptions. At least Prof. Sunshine notes, “We don’t have clear teaching in Scripture about any of this and so we have to consider all of this speculative.”
As for, “Which options are in the realm of possibility? Since Scripture doesn’t speak on these questions, whatever you rule out as impossible reveals something about your worldview assumptions about the relationship between the visible and invisible worlds.” Yet, that is not the case since we have seen that there are much more detailed and accurate ways in which to deal with the data and also that regard for God and His Word does away with all post-flood Nephilim tall-tales by definition.
And that brings an end to the tripartite review.
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