The AI Bible is described as, “a revolutionary platform that uses cutting-edge generative AI to transform timeless biblical stories into immersive, hyper-realistic experiences…reimagines how you connect with the Bible, delivering engaging, visually stunning, and thought-provoking content that resonates with today’s generation.” Yet, I have no idea if it is made to literally just spit out articles, in this case, based on keywords.
In any case, the article What do we know about the Nephilim? was posted/produced to it/by it and begins by moving the linguistics goalpost by stating, “The giants we tolerate today become the giants that rule us tomorrow” so that there was an abrupt jump from the specific ancient Hebrew word Nephilim to the modern generic English word giants.
This 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’s the AI Bible’s usage? Do those two usages agree?
We will have to see if answers are forthcoming or if we will have to discern based on any hints.
We are told, “There were giants in those days. The Nephilim” which leads to this Q&A:
Who Are the Nephilim?
Genesis 6:1-4 introduces them without explanation, almost as if the original readers were expected to recognize the name: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days… These were the mighty men of old, men of renown.”
They appear suddenly in Scripture’s narrative, and they vanish just as fast. Leaving nothing but questions scattered like footprints in wet earth…
Genesis speaks cryptically of “the sons of God” taking “the daughters of men.”
Whether you interpret “sons of God” as fallen angels, powerful human rulers, or something else entirely, the result is portrayed as crossing a boundary God never intended.
Something sacred was violated.
Something natural became unnatural.
2. Their presence is tied to corruption…Right after mentioning them, Scripture says: “The earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:11)
For interested readers, I will note that 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.
Now, there is a bit of an explanation of that which I term the Gen 6 affair, “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” so that, “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.”
As for, “they vanish just as fast,” I am unsure it was a pun intended but the reason that they were, “Leaving nothing but…footprints in wet earth” is that the last of them would have died in the flood.
We are told:
Centuries later, in Numbers 13:32-33, the Israelite spies return from Canaan trembling with fear: “We saw the descendants of Anak… from the Nephilim.”
Whether this is a literal or frightened exaggeration doesn’t really matter. What matters is what the Nephilim represented. They represented terror, chaos, and the overwhelming feeling of facing something far too big to overcome.
They were the monsters under Israel’s bed. They were the stories parents told to explain why evil felt so powerful, so entrenched, so giant.
That was a misrepresentation and missing that it is actually a hugely important theological issue.
It was not, “the Israelite spies” vaguely in general who said that: there were 12 of them so it must be noted that quoting just that one verse is relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse doesn’t even mention Anakim)
3. Of an unreliable “evil report”
4. By 10 unreliable guys (since Caleb and Josha did not side with them)
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
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
It is not a case of, “literal or frightened exaggeration doesn’t really matter” since if it was literal then that implies that God failed, missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and then post-flood Nephilologists have to literally invent un-biblical fantasy stories about just how they made it past the flood, past God.
Fallacious Nephilology damages theology proper.
Thus, perhaps, “They were the monsters under Israel’s bed” due to pre-flood history being retold and growing with each telling since the flood or due to the 10 unreliable spies making up a fear-mongering, scare-tactic, “Don’t go in the woods!!!” style of tall-tale on the spot.
It is noted:
The Book of the Watchers (part of 1 Enoch) takes the phrase “sons of God” literally and runs with it. It describes heavenly beings, called ‘Watchers,’ descending to the earth and lusting after human women and taking them as wives.
They bear giant offspring: the Nephilim.
These giants consume everything in sight, then turn to violence and cannibalism.
The Watchers teach humanity forbidden knowledge like sorcery, weapon crafting, seductive charms, and astrology.
THE BOOK OF JUBILEES
An ancient Jewish commentary expands the tale even further. The Book of Jubilees says that when the giants died in the Flood, their disembodied spirits became the evil spirits that roam the world.
This became a major interpretive framework for Second Temple Judaism, explaining not just where demons came from, but why evil feels so relentless, so hungry, so inhuman.
1 Enoch and Jubilees are Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my books In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch and The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
The dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Yet, 1 Enoch has them being MILES tall which is great folklore but poor reality.
At least 1 Enoch does not have physical post-flood Nephilim but Jubilees does: until the time of Noah’s grandsons.
As for that evil spirits/demons are the spirits of dead Nephilim indeed, 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?
Sadly, the article include fantasy tall-tale images that are not in the least bit helpful to real, researched-based, biblical Nephilology.
Now, given the usage of giants and the essentially unanswered key questions, I thought to dig a bit deeper and found some, “AI Bible Devotionals” such as The Lore of Goliath which notes:
The Bible records multiple giant tribes scattered throughout the ancient Near East: the Nephilim in Genesis 6, the Anakim in Numbers 13, the Rephaim in Deuteronomy 2–3, and others like the Emim and Zamzummim…
This is why scholars across Jewish, Christian, and even secular traditions argue that Goliath was likely one of the last descendants of the Rephaim-Anakim lineage.
That is another instance of referencing giants without much of an elucidation.
In reality, that is a list of one since Emim and Zamzummim are just aka for Rephaim and Anakim were like a clan of that tribe (Deut 2)—and we know to ignore Numbers 13(:33).
And yes, “Goliath was…of the Rephaim-Anakim lineage.”
Devotional Rephaim: Giants or Ghosts?asks, “What if the most dangerous giants aren’t the ones standing in front of you… but the ones whispering behind you?” so that another generic usage of giants leads to a discussion of Rephaim.
We are told that, “Some were flesh-and-blood giants. They were massive warriors you could actually fight” but there is no indication of the former and the latter is premised on the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word massive.
What we are contextually told about them is that, on average, they were, “tall” (Deut 2) subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
As for, “‘Og of Bashan’…impossibly large” well, we are not told about his personal size and assuming to know it based on his bed is a non-sequitur premised on various mere assumptions: indications are 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?
The article next makes a very, very common error which is to apply one myopic definition/meaning of a root word and applying it to the 100% human people group:
Scripture also uses the word Rephaim in a darker register. In Job, the Psalms, and Isaiah, the Rephaim are described as ‘the shades.’ The departed dead. Ghostlike voices that linger long after death.
Not quite living. Not quite gone.
The Rephaim lived in two realms at once: as literal enemies occupying the land and as symbolic reminders of the past that haunts the imagination.
It is actually quite a bit less exciting than that: the root rapha ranges in meaning/definition from dead to healing/healer. Such is why exclusively referring to, “shades…departed dead. Ghostlike” is myopic.
We might as well say:
In some texts Rephaim are described as healers. The departed healers. Wellbeing voices that linger long after death.
Not quite living. Not quite gone.
The Rephaim lived in two realms at once: as literal healers occupying the land and as symbolic reminders of the past that heals the imagination.
Consider that God is a Repha or rapha since, after all, He is referred to as a healer, “I am the LORD, your healer” (YHVH Rapha, Exo 15:26). There is also an apocryphal Angel named Raphael which certainly does not mean God of death or Dead God but Healing God or God the healer and many more examples are found in the Bible.
Yet, the article’s aim is to depict Rephaim as, “spirits of old giants clung to the world after death,” etc.
Another devotional is The Anikim: Descendants of Giants (typically transliterated Anakim) which begins by referring to, “the giants that kept God’s people out of the Promised Land” so more giants.
We are told:
These spies came back the color drained from their faces.
“We saw them…” they said, their voices trembling. “We seemed like grasshoppers compared to them.” (Numbers 13:33)
The Anakim.
The context was not, “marched around Jericho’s walls” and it was not Joshua who, “sent spies to scout out the land” he was one of those spies, it was Moses who sent them, and it was about entering Canaan for the first time after the exodus.
Again, it was not generically, “These spies” but 10 of the 12, Num 13:33 is unreliable, and the LXX does not mention the Anakim in that unreliable evil report verse.
Furthermore:
The Anakim appear in Scripture sporadically. According to the Bible, they were descendants of Anak (Deuteronomy 9:2), renowned for their size and ferocity.
They were also associated with the Nephilim tradition (Numbers 13:33), linking them to those ancient, mysterious giants.
They were occupants of the very land God had promised to His people.
Joshua later drove them out (Joshua 11:21), which reveals a crucial point:
When reading Genesis, we could argue that the Nephilim were a metaphor. Perhaps they weren’t actual giants or angel/human hybrids. The literary structure of Genesis 1-6 lends itself to some mixed interpretations. However, Joshua 11 tells us that these giants were, in fact, real!
These were flesh-and-blood giants whose presence exerted psychological, spiritual, and political pressure on Israel’s entire identity.
Indeed, “they were descendants of Anak” not Nephilim: that would be logically, bio-logically, and theo-logically impossible.
As for, “renowned for their size” again, they were subjectively taller than 5.0-5.3ft. The issue was their ferocity and they were notorious.
Thus, “associated with the Nephilim tradition (Numbers 13:33), linking them to those ancient, mysterious giants” is to buy into a fantasy tall-tale myopically based only on non-LXX versions.
Note that reliably speaking, “The literary structure of Genesis 1-6” has literally nothing whatsoever to do with, “Joshua 11 tells us that these giants were, in fact, real!” and we might as well get to answering those key questions.
The AI Bible’s usage seems to be 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).
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, the AI Bible’s usage does not match the English Bibles’ usage.
It is noted that, “Jewish tradition, from Josephus to Septuagintal expansions, paints the Anakim with eerie, vivid color” yet, “Jewish tradition” can refer to anything written by any Jew during a span of millennia, Josephus wrote centuries after Anakim lived, and it fascinating that reference is made to, “Septuagintal expansions” since that refers to the LXX but nothing is said in the article about them missing from Num 13:33 in that version.
Interestingly, only in this devotional do we get accuracy about the Num 13 narrative as it specifies, “Ten of the twelve spies came back and said, essentially, ‘God may have promised us that land, but He clearly didn’t account for them.’”
Yet, that was not incorporated since we are told, “When the spies saw the Anakim towering over them, they revealed something about their own souls: ‘We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers…’ (Numbers 13:33)” even though that statement was about (fantasy) Nephilim, not Anakim: even in non-LXX versions.
And so, whether AI literally means spit out by an innerwebs computer machine or people writing under the term AI or using AI in some or another way, the AI Bible leaves much to be desired in terms of the employment of vague terminology that is not defined which waters things down and makes connections that are not to be connected, mashing together categories (in terms of category errors), and oft being much less specific than is called for.
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