The Learn Religions site posted an article by Mary Fairchild that is titled, Giants in the Bible: Who Were the Nephilim? and subtitled, “Who Were the Nephilim Giants of the Bible? Bible scholars debate the true origin of Nephilim” (December 08, 2019 AD).
The article begins with, “Nephilim may have been giants in the Bible, or they may have been something much more sinister” and quotes from the New Living Translation which has it that, “In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times. The comment and quote beg the key questions:
What’s Fairchild’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
We’re told, “the word Nephilites or Nephilim, which some Bible scholars translate as ‘giants.’ Others, however, believe it is related to the Hebrew word ‘naphal,’ meaning ‘to fall.’”
Note that, “In those days, and for some time after” is taken to mean, “Giants in the Bible Before and After the Flood” since, “In Genesis 6:4, the mention comes before The Flood. Another mention of Nephilim occurs in Numbers 13:32-33, after the Flood” but, in typical fashion, no crucial distinction is made between a “mention” vs. actually being alive, on the ground at the time—if I now mention that I just saw former POTUS George Washington that does not mean that I did just see him.
For some reason, Mary Fairchild first quoted the NLT but then the NIV to the effect that, “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). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Yet, she is more faithful to the text’s actual statements that may in noting that, “Moses sent 12 spies…Only Joshua and Caleb believed Israel could conquer the land. The other ten spies did not trust in God to give the Israelites victory” and it was the ten unreliable guys who presented the evil report that is merely quoted in Num 13:32-33, guys whom God rebuked.
She notes, “These men the spies saw could have been giants, but they could not have been part human and part demonic beings. All those would have died in the Flood. Besides, the cowardly spies gave a distorted report. They may have used the word Nephilim simply to arouse fear.” Which, besides the questionable word giants, is on point—yet, the only reason to think that any of them were giants is the unreliable guys themselves.
Yet, we begin to get a better idea of what she mean by it since she continued thusly, “Giants certainly existed in Canaan after the Flood. The descendants of Anak (Anakim, Anakites)…a giant from Gath…Goliath…nine-foot-tall…Nowhere in that account does it imply Goliath was semi-divine.”
Now, the only physical description we get of Anakim (a clan of the Rephaim tribe) is that they were “tall” (Deut 2) which is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as giants.
In this case, it’s subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. Also, the height Mary Fairchild gave us for Goliath is myopic: she’s appealing to the Masoretic Text but the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft.
At this point, there’s an insert in the article that states, “Nimrod, who tried to build the Tower of Babel, is portrayed as a giant” but all we are told about whence came those assertions is a painting from “Artist Gustave Doré (circa 1890)” and there is no indication that Nimrod was a giant nor that he had anything to do with that Tower.
She then turns to, “sons of God” whom, she says, “is interpreted by some scholars to mean fallen angels or demons; however, there is no concrete evidence in the text to support that view” and yet, that was the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christian commentators alike starting in BC days—see 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.
Since as per Job 38:7, as a direct example, that term can refer to non-human beings then that’s applicable to Angels.
The immediate context (“in the text”) clearly distinguishes between sons of God and daughters of men and the greater context allows for understanding that Angels are being referenced. Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined place the one-time sin of Angels to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin.
Mary Fairchild went on to say, “it seems far-fetched that God would have created angels to make it possible for them to mate with human beings, producing a hybrid species. Jesus Christ made this revealing remark about angels: ‘For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.’ (Matthew 22:30, NIV) Christ’s statement implies that angels (including fallen angels) do not procreate at all.”
What, “seems far-fetched” to her is subjective and she missed Jesus’ very specifically qualified statement.
It is as far-fetched as that God would put a forbidden tree in the garden. And Jesus was speaking of, “angels of God in heaven”: the loyal ones, which is why those who did marry are considered sinners, having, “left their first estate” as Jude put it.
Thus, it was not a blanket statement about, “angels (including fallen angels) do not procreate at all.”
She decided to assert that a late-comer view is, “A more likely theory” which is that sons of God were Sethites and daughters of men were, “from the wicked line of Cain.” Yet, that idea is based on myths about, for example as she had it, some supposed entire, “wicked line” and some supposed entire holy line.
A throw away other idea is, “kings and royalty…rulers (‘sons of God’) took any beautiful women they wanted” but why that (or the Sethite view for that matter) would server as a premise for the flood is left unstated.
Mary Fairchild then goes back to discussing, “Tall men were extremely rare in ancient times” yet, she’s still to establish why subjectively unusual height is any sort of issue to even discuss.
She tells us, “The word ‘giant’ is not used in the Bible, but the Rephaim or Rephaites…Emites…were all reputed to be exceptionally tall” but, of course, “exceptionally tall” is just as vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage as just tall and giants.
She refers to, “giants like Goliath” and goes on to discuss, “gigantism or acromegaly” which, “leads to excessive growth” which, “may account for entire tribes or groups of people in biblical times reaching extraordinary height” even though the most extraordinary height we got was just shy of 7 ft.—or, 9 ft. as per her myopia.
And well, she left it like that so, I rate her article as maybe 40% accurate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Twitter page, on my Facebook page, or any of my other social network sites all which are available here.