Under consideration is the website Revelation’s Message’s article by Brian Lloyd titled Nephilim, who were they, and why?
Unfortunately, upfront Lloyd asserts, “Some or all of the people named in [Gen 15] verses 18 to 21 are considered Nephilim and had to be displaced by Israel at a later date, when they took possession of those lands under the leadership of Joshua” but there’s literally zero indication of any of those assertions so we shall see how that conclusion came to be some sort of premise or primary point.
It’s note that, “on occasions the term ‘angels’ are interchangeable with ‘sons’, and the original Hebrew can be either word, according to context” yet, technically, it’s not just sons benim (or banim) but bene ha Elohim or bene Elim or ben Elyon. It’s also noted, “Septuagint translates ‘angels’, (the PshittA translates ‘sons of God’ looked on the ‘daughters of human beings’, see: Ancient Aramaic Manuscripts, Pshitta O and A:). This states that the ‘sons of God’ were not human!”
I’d note that Job 38:7, as one example, shows us that “sons of God” can refer to non-human beings (which the LXX has as “Angeloi”: plural of “Angelos”) since they, at the very least, witnessed the creation of the Earth.
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’s only a one-time fall/sin of Angels in the Bible.
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.
For some odd reason, it’s noted, “either in the form of angels, or other form, they took human women, and had children by them!” but the form of Angles is the form of human, and no other, since Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology. See my book, What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
We’re rightly told, “the creatures that were born, (Gen. 6:4) were called ‘Nephilim’. The KJV translates to the word ‘Giant’, but the Hebrew is ‘nephiyl’, which is from the root ‘napha’, which means (‘to fall’)!”: just a note, Giants isn’t a translation, but a mere rendering.
Next, Brian Lloyd noted that, “As they mated with human women, they clearly were human or near human sized” which is the only size that we have indication of for them. Yet, we’re told, “however their offspring were large in size, both male, female and children, and called Nephilim, which has been confirmed archaeologically; see listings on Google.” I’m unsure why that site advertises for Google or why we’re merely directed to an utterly generic non-citation as, “see listings.” Apparently, we’re supposed to search online for something as vague as, “Nephilim archaeology” and deal with thousands of incoherent half-baked tall-tales. Also, we need to keep an eye out for how Lloyd will justify the, thus far mere assertion, that Nephilim were, “were large in size”—even though, “large” is a vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage word.
Yet, we have to still wait since the next thing we’re told is, “The Nephilim were of great size, according to much evidence” none of which is mentioned, “between 9ft. to 15ft. even over 30ft. tall” for which there’s zero reliable indication.
Yet, we are told, “The tombs of the Marduk kings of Babylon were approx.14 ft. in length, which together with other evidences from Scripture, such as Goliath, shows the size and physical power of these creatures.” Yet, it’s merely asserted that they were Nephilim and virtually every single time Goliath is mentioned, we’re told that he was a Repha, not a Nephil.
As for the tombs, well, tombs are larger than the person, by definition, and even their individual sarcophagus are larger, by definition: consider, for example, that King Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus was 8.25 ft./2.53 m. but he was 5.11 ft./1.56 m. and some large sarcophagus were meant to hold more than one corpse.
Yet, just after we’re told about their size, we’re also told, “It has also been speculated” by unnamed personage/sources, “that they may still exist in smaller size.” We might as well get to this part right now: we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim so their size is a non-issue—yes, even if that debunks 100% of pop-Nephilology.
Yet, we’re told, “The reason for this idea, is that both King Saul and King David, did not eliminate them completely, as they had been ordered to do, by Almighty God! The order from God to eliminate Nephilim” yet, there’s literally not one single such order in the entire Bible. Also, note the mere assertion of post-flood Nephilim but not only is there zero reliable indication of that, it implies that God failed, He missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
It’s tragic that Brian Lloyd argued, “When the order was given, it was understood by the great men of God, what was at stake, and who they were to kill! In today’s world, even though men kill many more than the Biblical slaughter of Nephilim, many people hold up their hands in horror at the ‘Just’ request of Almighty God, and use the Biblical account as reason to criticise God, and to ridicule Christ-Ones, (Christians); because they are ignorant of the evil spiritual forces at play under the control of Satan, at present!”
It’s tragic because it’s meant to defend God’s honor but anyone can read the Bible and find that such a mere assertion is fallacious so personages who make such arguments only make the issue even worse: the initial issue is still an issue and that some Christians make up un-biblical tall-tales to attempt a defense discredits them and makes it appear as if there’s no defense. Well, God told us many times why He commanded such things and never said one single word about Nephilim, it was about centuries worth of unethical practices of various sorts: “abominable pagan practices, and sexual perversions” as Lloyd goes on to note—see the, “Herem: Were Post-Flood Nephilim Dedicated to Destruction?” chapter of my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
Next comes a style name-game whereby we’re told, “The land promised by God to the Jews, was populated by various tribes. The Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaims, Amorites, Girgashites, and Jebushites…known collectively variously as; Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, Horim, Zamzummim, and Avim.”
Brian Lloyd doesn’t seem to be aware that, “Anakim, Rephaim, Emim…Zamzummim” are one in the same: Zamzummim (aka Zuzim) is just an aka for Rephaim and Anakim and Emim were subgroups of Rephaim, like clans of a tribe.
Incidentally, yet utterly key, note that there’s zero indication of Nephilim in any of that.
We’re then told, “The question as to whether they still exist on a smaller physical scale, is undetermined” well, actually it’s 100% determined and in more than one way: again, we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim so we can’t even refer to, “a smaller physical scale” and the same goes for Rephaim, by any other name, since they were just subjectively, “tall.”
It’s also stated, “The last verse of Zechariah,14:22, speaks rather strongly in this context, ‘and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite (Nephilim?) in the house of the Lord of Hosts’!” no, not Nephilim, of course not, that would literally be impossible.
It’s then asserted, “It is implicit in Genesis, that there has been previous Creation/s” even thought, “We are given no detail on these” nor even a single mere hint. Yet, we’re told that Dr. J.R. Jochmans’ books, Old Strange Relics Ignored by Science and The Genesis 1:1 Enigma elucidate something that millennias worth of Bible scholars have somehow managed to miss—for what it’s worth.
We’re told, “The Smithsonian Institute was subject to a Supreme Court action in 2014, that ruled in 2015 that documentation of the destruction of thousands of Ancient humanoid giant skeletal remains in the 1800s be ‘declassified’”: this is a merely uncritical repeating of a mere assertion from a literally parody website: see chapter, “Giant Skeletons Reported in Old Newspapers Accounts” in my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
This is all part of a wild conspiracy theory about how, “The destructive actions were ‘apparently’ taken, to not conflict with the new Evolution ‘Theory’ of Charles Darwin, and others” and something about how finding, “giant” skeletons would prove the Bible—even though no one in the Bible is taller than 7.5ft.
It’s then noted, “Noah and his family were free from Satan’s corruption of the Adamic seed!” which somehow tied into the Gen 6 affair. And also, “The…flood…killed all the Nephilim” which begs the question of how the Brian Lloyd manages to get them past the flood, past God.
Well, “a further eruption of Nephilim took place (Gen. 6:4)” yet, that implies that God failed and that verse doesn’t even hint at any such thing. The theory is, “The object of Satan on this occasion was to populate Canaan ahead of the ‘children of Israel’, (Gen.12:6), and so to contest for the ‘Promised Land’ (Gen. 15:15-21)” and yet, the patriarchs, et al., were told who lived in and around that land but none of them were ever told a single word about Nephilim.
We then come to a section titled, “Nephilim in the Future?” regarding that, “It is conjectured by some commentators, that the effort of Satan via Nephilim is not yet finished since, apparently, God failed. Well, the only, “some” noted is, Charles Welch’s book This Prophecy which tells of such an un-biblical tall-tale such as, “He…refers to Deut. 3:1-13, which showed Og king of Bashan, king also of his own brood of giants (Deut. 3:13) where, of course, you just need to swap out the exciting English term, “giants” fill the gaps with the Hebrew Repha/im and not be left with any tall-tales to sell to Christians.
Now, Lloyd then takes a little bit of a step back with, “Satan’s people (whether Nephilim or not) are prominent in the attempts to thwart Israel” but it then take a gigantic leap forward from, “whether Nephilim or not” to, “Isa. 26…refer[s] to Nephilim: In Isa. 26:14, ‘They are dead, they shall not live’; they are Rephaim (Nephilim), they shall not rise: This is the corrected translation of the A.V., which uses the word ‘deceased’, instead of Rephaim!”
This is part of the name-game: just merely assert, “Rephaim (Nephilim),” which is linguistically and biologically incoherent, and you can then merely keep asserting post-flood Nephilim—and do so right after, “whether Nephilim or not.” Well, that verse refers to rapha/im since the root rapha ranges in meaning from healing to dead so many pop-Nephiologists merely assert that rapha (or you can even have rephaim, if you want) refers to the (100%) human Rephaim people group.
We then get to, “If the Nephilim survive, or are reintroduced by Satan at that time in the mode of Gen. 6” but such as utterly key point in the building of such an un-biblical tall-tale can’t just be bypassed with a mere, “If…or.”
It’s then notes, “If the Nephilim theory is correct…” well, the biblical one is correct but doesn’t include any room for what has been made of it by post-flood pop-Nephilologists.
Yet, we’re told, “in the future as in the past; then the statement in Zech. 14:21, ‘there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts’, may have special significance! As Nephilim collectively were known as ‘Canaanites’, that verse implies that they may have at some stage infiltrated the Priesthood of Israel, and also corrupted the original ‘Biblical Torah’!” so you can see how utterly incoherently fallacious Nephilology—to which you can add that there’s literally zero indication in all of human history of, “Nephilim collectively were known as ‘Canaanites’”—damages both theology proper and bibliology: now you have a God who failed to be rid of Nephilim via the flood and failed to preserve His, “Biblical Torah!”
But the Lloyd isn’t done yet, “This comment certainly seems confirmed by Jesus when addressing the Pharisees in John 8:44, where He states ‘you are of your father the devil’! (This is the verse that the great Martin Luther mistakenly used to condemn all Israel; instead of just the Pharisees)!” and this is the verse that Brian Lloyd mistakenly used to condemn all Pharisees since Jesus was manipulated by only quoting one single verse from John 8, not the one wherein Jesus affirms, “I know that you are offspring of Abraham.”
Thus, overall, the article could use some editing when it comes to linguistics and reliance of the unreliable regarding post-flood Nephilim which only creates problems since fallacious Nephilology damages theology proper.
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