This is a podcast review that’s actually titled, “The Bible Project on God Question & Response God, Abraham, Demons, & Giants” but my focus will be the latter subject.
The podcasters are Jon Collins, Tim Mackie, and Bryce Linda.
Tim notes, “the sons of Elohim sleeping with women. And that’s connected to the presence of giants in the biblical world.” This begs the key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Tim’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those two usages agree?
He then states, “The giants are called by many titles in the Old Testament. They are called the Nephilim. They’re also sometimes called the Rephaim. And the Rephaim, was both a name for ancient giants and for the spirits, the deceased life presence of these beings in the underworld, in the grave” and he replies in the affirmative when asked, “So Rephaim is just a synonymous term to the Nephilim?”
This is a basic level category error since Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
Of course, this still doesn’t answer question 2—or does it? Stand by.
As for, “Rephaim…a name for ancient giants and for the spirits, the deceased…in the underworld, in the grave” well, that’s based on two things:
1) The root word rapha ranges in meaning/definition or usage from healing to death. Thus, some read it as a reference to the dead and mistakenly apply it to the 100% human Rephaim people groups—see my whole chapter about them in my book, What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
2) Some actually incorporate Pagan mythology into biblical theology—or biblical Rephaology. For the Pagan mythological background, see my article Dead Kings and Rephaim The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty.
Tim Mackie continues thusly, “We’re told in the book of Deuteronomy, that the Nephilim are also called the sons of Anak” and, “called them the Rephaim” plus that, “We conquered one of them. Moses did. His name was Og. And he had this gigantic bed, big iron. It’s Deuteronomy 2. Go read it. He says, ‘Big iron bed.’ Moses says, ‘You can still go see it to this day.’ Dude, this is so crazy.”
I would suppose that one reason why Deut wasn’t quoted in support is that it states no such thing. What it does say is that Rephaim had various a.k.a.s by peoples of different regions: it doesn’t say a single word about Nephilim whatsoever.
As for, “the sons of Anak,” the Anakim, they were a clan of the Rephaim tribe.
As for Og: he was a Repha and I assume that his, “gigantic bed” is mentioned as some sort of appeal to his personal size. Yet, that there’s a correlation between the two is based on various assumptions and we don’t have a physical description of Og—a least not until fantastical folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after his death—see my book, The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Jon references, “Nephilim, the half breeds” with Tim chiming in with, “half divine half human…half god half man” and Jon, “they’re connected to these warrior giants” apparently because they’re referred to as, “mighty” in Gen 6.
The way I will put it is that having watered down the very specific concept of, “Nephilim” to, “giants” and, “warriors” allows for that they then can (mis) identify various characters as such. For example, Tim notes, “warrior giants that founded the kingdoms of old. Babylon’s founding legends are about them being founded by these half god half human warrior giants…Gilgamesh was a warrior giant. Nimrod in Genesis 10, is a warrior giant. Totally.”
Yet, Gen 10 doesn’t identify Nimrod as a giant nor as a warrior. He’s identified as a regular guys who became mighty and established kingdoms. Very well then, we may assume that someone who established kingdoms was a warrior but then again, many establishers of kingdoms had their warriors do the warrioring for them and we’ve no physical description of him.
Jon then asserts, “these guys are all over the place, and then Joshua has to fight them.” Now, if they’re consistently referring to biblical Nephilim then absolutely not, there’s not a single reliable data point to back that. Yet, when we’re dealing with name-games such as referring to giants and warriors then the issue becomes much more complex since it’s watered down: did Joshua fight warriors? Sure. Did Joshua fight giants? We’re back to what that word means. Did Joshua fight Nephilim? No. Did Joshua fight Rephaim and Anakim? Yes. Did Josphua fight personages that were taller than the subjective average? Sure but what of it?
Now, Tim Mackie takes a view that, “Genesis 6…is trash talk story against Babylon founding mythology.” That’s a known view in scholarly circles but note that it implies something that’s simply not evidenced: it implies that some form of Genesis existed but it was during one of the dispersals to Babylon that someone decided to inserts trash talk into it and we simple don’t have pre and post manuscripts that show no Gen 6 affair pre and an appearance of it post. For more on this specific issue, see in my, “Appendix: Review of Amar Annus’s On the Origin of Waters” book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim?
They then circle back and adds some spice with Tim referring to, “These mutant giants,” Jon stating, “They’re called the Rephaim” and Tim noting, “Eventually, one of their titles is called the Rephaim. And the Giants exist in the Bible to be killed off by just three sets of heroes: by God and the flood, by Joshua in the conquest” but we know by now that all of that is mistaken.
Not surprisingly, reference is made to that, “Michael Heiser has done a lot of this in [his book] ‘Unseen Realm’” well, Dr. Heiser was credentialed and experienced but not infallible, his Nephilology wasn’t biblical, and he tended to create more problems than he solved—see these articles for examples:
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”
But, again, the problem is being unspecific since Tim notes, “the whole conquest story in Joshua, if you do your homework, they’re targeting the giant clans in Joshua” so, apparently, “giant” claims means Nephilim/Rephaim/Anakim/tall/warrior and well, they were all of those sans Nephilim since they didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form—lest God failed and the flood was much of a waste.
Well, Tim notes, “It’s a giant purge,” whatever that means, and emphasizes that it, “makes perfect sense, because it’s God bringing another flood but through Joshua” which, by definition, means that God failed the first time and the actual flood was much of a waste. And there’s still no indication of just how they made it through: one can’t simply assert, especially something as important as this.
He notes, “Goliath is the final ultimate giant” but he was a Repha, not a Nephil: yet, such technical facts inconveniently get int the way of merely asserting that Reaphim is an a.k.a. for Nephilim. Also, as it if matters since we’ve no reliable reason to think that Nephilim were any taller than the subjective average—oooh, I know that debunks virtually all of modern pop-Nephilology: as uber pop-Nephiologist Gary Wayne put it, “we don’t know how big Nephilim were…we don’t know how tall that they were” (sic.)—the LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Flavius Josephus, which is the preponderance of the earliest data, all have him at four cubits and a span, just shy of 7 ft.—subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
In keeping with the faulty etymology and Pagan mythology, it’s noted, “they’re divine and human…so the Rephaim becomes a title for evil spiritual presences that live on to terrorize people. These are the beings Jesus is encountering in the Gospels.” Yet, that’s not the case and you can see how it’s not in my article Demons Ex Machina: What Are Demons?
And we can see their error in that Jon noted, “in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Rephaim are described as evil spirits” with Tim supporting that with, “It’s in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 32. They are spiritual beings that are the remnant existence of these warrior mutants of old”: yes, those are references to the dead and to dead warriors and/or kings but what’s missing is the specific correlation to the 100% human Rephaim people group.
As for, “Jesus and his encounter with these demons,” Jon notes, “I just figured it was like the angels that rebelled with the Satan, but they seem different in some way and Tim asks, “But why are they called impure spirits?” and offers the generic reply, “they emerged from the dead corpses of the giant warriors.” Well, that’s too generically vague: the issue is that folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah asserts that the unclean spirits are the spirits of dead Nephilim (which the podcasters watered down to also include Rephaim and giants) but why apply such an assertion to biblical demonology? The texts are namely and mainly Jubilees and the Bible contradicting 1 Enoch: 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.
Jon actually asserts, “Demons or the leftover spirit remains of the half breed giants. Welcome to your Bible” but not so: it’s welcome to late-dated folklore.
Tim and Jon the essentially example why I refer to modern Nephilology as un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales in terms of that Tim notes, “Jesus meets that guy in the graveyard [Legion], it’s a crew of these” to which Jon add, “It’s a battle” and Tim elucidates that the, “military title, legion…Clue you back into Goliath and Og and the Nephilim and all that” with, “all of that” being a perfect way to described how once you water things down enough, you can basically force fit that water into any mold you can imagine—and imagination is all that is going on at this point.
And that essentially brings the podcast to a close.
For more details, see my relevant books.
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