In consideration of Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Azusa Pacific University B. J. Oropeza’s article Who Are the Nephilim and Did They Escape the Flood? which was posted to the Patheos site. Find my Oropeza related articles here.
He notes, “In the Bible we read about the Nephilim who lived during the time of Noah before the Great Flood (Genesis 6:1-4)” and what may be a key qualifying term—we shall see, “They are also mentioned again many years after the Flood in Numbers 13:33” (emphasis added for emphasis). Thus, he asks, “Did they escape the Flood?” and, “Depending on your translation, they are also called ‘giants’ along with the Rephaim and the Anakim” and asks, “Who are they?” (emphasis added for emphasis) which may hint at his answer since otherwise, the question would be, “Who were they?” but I may be reading too much into common parlance at this point.
- J. Oropeza notes, “the King James Version, New King James Version, the Septuagint (LXX), as well as the Latin Vulgate, translate this word as ‘giants’ after the Greek word, γίγαντες (gigantes).” Technically, that’s not a translation but a rendering. Also, he provided the Greek and transliteration but not the meaning which is that gigantes means earth-born.
He notes, “The Nephilim’s status as heroes or great warriors may have something to do with their designation as giants. In Numbers 13 they are mentioned again, and here they are said to be giants.” At this point, let us ask the key questions which are:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Oropeza’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
Well, we get an idea of his usage and he seems to be unaware that biblically contextually, “The Nephilim’s status as heroes or great warriors may have something to do with their designation as giants. In Numbers 13 they are mentioned again, and here they are said to be giants” reads thusly, “The Nephilim’s status as heroes or great warriors may have something to do with their designation as Nephilim. In Numbers 13 they are mentioned again, and here they are said to be Nephilim.” He is using the term, “giants” to refer to subjectively unusual height but that’s not the English Bible’s usage at all. Therein, it merely renders (doesn’t even translate) either Nephilim in two verses or Rephaim in 98% of all others without as much as a hint of anything to do with height whatsoever.
- J. Oropeza includes a section on the identify of the sons of God which I will bypass by noting that 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 place the one-time sin of Angels to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin.
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.
I will only note that he wrote, “Since the Nephilim first appear in the same context of this union between the sons of God and the daughters of humans, interpreters often infer from this that the Nephilim were their offspring…A careful reading of Genesis 6:1–4, however, does not explicitly state that the Nephilim were the children of this sexual union. Nevertheless, the inference is fairly clear.”
And it’s clear since the Gen 6 affair narrative’s contextual focus is the sons of God and daughters of men: their attraction, their marriage, and their offspring. Thus, it would violate that narrative’s contextual focus to artificially insert a mere passing reference to some unrelated Nephilim guys who just happened to be around at the time, are mentioned for no apparent reason, and about whom nothing more is said in relation to the narrative’s contextual focus.
Thus, “Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward” as a result of, “when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.”
- J. Oropeza includes a section titled, “Nephilim and Other Giants” the problem with which is that he tells us of “Other” before telling us of any—at least as per his mis-usage.
Recall, “what may be a key qualifying term—we shall see, ‘They are also mentioned again…” well, at this point he wrote another possible qualifying term, “Genesis 6 aside, we find only one other biblical reference to the Nephilim” (emphasis added for emphasis). Let’s keep in mind that if I write about George Washington right now, as I just did, that’s a mention and reference but that doesn’t mean he’s alive, on the ground, at this time. Concluding that mention and reference equal being alive at the time of the mentioned reference would be a non sequitur category error.
But let’s see if those were just common parlance terms or if B. J. Oropeza was implying something specific by them. He notes, “When Moses sent the twelve tribal leaders to spy out the land of Canaan, they brought back a discouraging report in Numbers 13:32–33: ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim)…’ (NIV).”
Well, he can quote whatever version he wants but none of them say what he just claimed.
Accurate rewrite—sine referring to “they” is too vaguely generic:
“When Moses sent the twelve tribal leaders to spy out the land of Canaan, they brought back a” original report that was accepted as is. Caleb encouraged the people who obey God (Joshua sided with him). 10 of them discouraged, we are told that they presented an evil report and it was the second—fear-mongering scare-tactic—“discouraging report in Numbers 13:32–33” wherein they asserted, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim)…’ (NIV)’” which led to God rebuking them.
There are so many problems with those few words that I wrote an entire chapter about it, which I released as a sample: Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Suffice it to say that post-flood Nephilologists are forced to rely on, to build an entire all-encompassing theory, upon one single sentence spoken by unfaithful, disloyal, contradictory embellishers who resented an evil report and were rebuked by God—I’m unaware of anyone who has ever done that for any other “doctrine” whatsoever.
Thus, it was not, “When Moses sent the twelve tribal leaders to spy out the land of Canaan, they brought back a discouraging report”: rather, B. J. Oropeza skipped the key portions of that narrative.
He proposes that, “The NIV, in my opinion, does a poor job of translating…A more literal reading of the phrase would be, ‘And there we saw the Nephilim, (the) sons of Anak of the Nephilim.’” At this point, he refers to, “the spies who were lying or at best exaggerating” but he didn’t tell us who that was. In other words, he referred to “twelve tribal leaders” failed to distinguish the two loyally faithful ones from the 10 who weren’t and now fails to distinguish them again by giving the impression that it was the twelve who were lying or at best exaggerating.”
He notes, “This passage connects the Nephilim with the Anakim” but fails to noted that such isn’t the case in the LXX which utterly lacks reference to Anakim in that section. This also would do nothing to elucidate just how it is that Anakim, named after Anak who was Arba’s son, could possibly be related to Nephilim.
He then notes that Anakim, “latter are comparable in size with the Rephaim.” Yet, since the only physical description we have of Nephilim comes from utterly unreliable guys presenting an utterly unreliable report then we’ve no reliable physical description of them. As for Anakim and Rephaim as “Other Giants” well, Deut 2 tell us that Anakim and Rephaim (the former being a clan of the latter tribe) were subjectively “tall” and that’s it so, taller than 5.0-5.3 ft.
- J. Oropeza then writes, “Og, king of Bashan, was a Rephaite whose bed or sarcophagus measured 9 by 4 cubits (perhaps thirteen feet long and six feet wide: Deut 3:11). The gigantic Philistine warrior, Goliath, was said to be a descendant of the ‘Raphah,’…Goliath’s height at 4.5 cubits is not too impressive (a little over 6 1/2 feet tall based on the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls : 4Q Sam [1 Sam 17:4]). The Hebrew and Vulgate texts have him at 6.5 cubits (over 9 1/2 feet tall).”
Now, he wrote, “descendant of the ‘Raphah’” which some English Bibles have as, “descendant of the ‘giant’” (recall that it would merely be due to rendering Repha as giant) but then refers to, “the size of these giants” which he should, consistently, have written as, “the size of these Rephaim.” Yet, we don’t know Og’s height and the preponderance of the earliest data is that Goliath was subjectively tall but not so impressive in, say, modern day Norway, etc.—he left out that Flavius Josephus also has the shorter height range for him. Interested readers should consult my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Thus, just as with Og and Goliath (who got taller and taller with time and telling) so Nephilim went from being un-physically described to being so tall that humans are like grasshoppers in comparison to, “Nephilim of Genesis 6 as described in non-canonical books” who have, “bodies like mountains” and, “1 Enoch 7” which B. J. Oropeza tells us has them at, “three hundred cubits high” but it actually has them as 3,000 ells which is MILES tall—great folklore but poor reality.
We now come to, “Did the Nephilim Survive the Flood?” about which we’re told, “In Numbers 13:33 the Nephilim appear again during Israel’s travels in the wilderness” (emphasis added for emphasis) but we have zero reliable data to conclude that and only one single unreliable sentence in it’s favor.
He then asks, “If the Israelites saw the Nephilim in the land of Canaan, are we to assume that these are the offspring of the Nephilim from Genesis 6? Put differently, did the Nephilim survive the great Flood of Genesis 6–9?” Yet, even if we believe the evil report there’s no indication that, “the Israelites” saw any such thing, they were merely told that, as an assertion, by the 10.
He notes, “If we assume this to be the case (and not an inconsistency in the text), the great Flood may be interpreted as a local one” but the scope of the flood is irrelevant to Nephilology since they either didn’t make it past the flood because it was global or because they lived in the flooded region: either way, they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form.
Yet, he tells us, “it could be surmised that some of the Nephilim escaped the flood” but that contradicts the Bible five times: Genesis 7:7, 23; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; and 2 Peter 2:5.
- J. Oropeza notes, “Some scholars interpret the phrase ‘and also afterward’ in Genesis 6:4 as referring to a time after the Flood…Others, however, believe this interpretation is hard to reconcile with the context of Genesis 6—9, which depicts the flood as wiping out all human life except Noah’s family (Gen 6:5—7:23; esp. 7:19).”
Fallacious Nephilology (such as 100% of pop-Nephilology and much scholarly Nephilology) effects theology proper since any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed: He meant to be rid of them via the flood but couldn’t get the job done, He must have missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc.
Post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent un-biblical tall-tales about how they made it past the flood.
Again, this describes 100% of pop-Nephilologists and I’ve written whole books debunking them such as, Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
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.
Gen 6:4 doesn’t mention the flood nor does it have anything to do with it.
In fact, the flood isn’t even mentioned for the very first time until a full 13 vss. later: v. 17.
Gen 6:4 states, “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.”
The question becomes: when were those days?
Well, Gen 6:1 told us, “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.”
The next question becomes: when was afterward?
Since it was after those days then it was simply after, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them…”
Thus, the began doing it then and they continued to do it but that’s all pre-flood.
Yet, he notes that ways to get around afterward nor referring to the flood, “does not explain how the Nephilim reappear in Numbers 13.” Thus, his view begins by believing unreliable guys whom God rebuked and making a mess of other texts in order to make everything fit their deception—this is a continuation of a lost scrimmage or spiritual warfare.
Yet, He comes to the actual biblical view, “Perhaps a better explanation of this sort is that the spies reported false information in Numbers 13…If their report implies false information, they may have lied when they claimed that the Anakim were descendants of the Nephilim.” See how easy that was? Just taking the biblical narrative at face value does away with any and every contrived pseudo problem.
Yet, B. J. Oropeza can’t seem to get away from that, “false information…lied” since he still wrote, “Granted, they may have appeared to be similar to the Nephilim of old because of their great size” failing to note that, as pop-researchers and post-flood-“giant”-Nephilologists Gary Wayne himself was forced to admit (when I put him on the spot), “we don’t know how big Nephilim were…we don’t know how tall that they were” (sic.)—see our debate here.
Even though he includes a qualifying term, he does accurately conclude, “we can suggest that, according to Scripture, they perished in the Flood of Noah’s day” to which I will add: and they didn’t return in any way, shape, or form and never will.
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