Andrew Wilson, “Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London, and has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD),” wrote an article titled Nephilim, Anakim, and Why We Care for the Think Theology site that I thought to review when it was brought to my attention by someone who had trouble evidencing post-flood Nephilim.
Wilson lays out a view that, “Nephilim (Gen 6:1-4) were the results of sexual relations between angels and women.” 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.
He notes, “Many don’t” hold that view and, “the best counterargument is that Jesus says in Matthew 22:30 that it is impossible for angels to have sex.” That is a very common manner in which to put it, a reference to all, “angels” in general. Yet, Jesus’ statement was very detailed, very nuanced, He employed qualifying terms, “the angels of God in heaven.” So, not all Angels at all times in all places but the loyal ones, “in heaven” and, “of God” (see various versions here) which is why those who did marry are considered sinners since they, “left their first estate,” as Jude put it, in order to do so.
Unfortunately, he then makes a fundamental error by writing:
I also take it as read that the Anakim, the sons of Anak whom we meet in the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua, are descended from the Nephilim: “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Num 13:33).
Which is to say that, when Israel first spied out and then conquered the Land, there were very large individuals milling around, who could trace their lineage back to sexual relations between angels and women. Bizarre, admittedly. But biblical.”
Let’s ask ourselves what it means that something is, “biblical.” If it means recorded in the Bible well, sure: so are Satan’s deceptions. If it means biblical doctrine then no, it’s not, “biblical” and neither are Satan’s deceptions.
But there’s a reason why Pastor Andrew Wilson was forced to only quote that one single verse and it’s because 100% of post-flood Nephilology is based on that one single sentence. Yet, he didn’t bother elucidating that he’s appealing to one sentence from an, “evil report” by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked. He didn’t even mention that he’s forced to rely on non-LXX versions, since that version lacks reference to Anakim in that verse, nor that Moses relates that event in Deut 1 but doesn’t mention Nephilim—on and on and on the problems go by uncritically relying on that one vrse, see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
As for that, “The question is: why do we care?” he notes, “they provide a biblical basis for biological continuity between antediluvians and postdiluvians” but we’re told five times how that happened and it’s due to the 8 people on the ark: Nephilim aren’t mentioned in any of those lists (Genesis 7:7, 23; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; and 2 Peter 2:5).
Wilson’s biology has biological corruption continuing right past the flood as if God missed that loophole. He merely asserts, “some people on earth, besides Noah’s family, survived the flood” which, again, contradicts the Bible five times.
He asserts that due to misreading, misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and misapplying one single post-flood sentence and making a rookie pop-Nephilology error: reading all the way to Num 13:33 (ignoring the narrative but just reading one single sentence, uncritically picking it up, running with it, and applying it) which then becomes a worldview, a hermeneutic whereby to then misread, misunderstand, misinterpret, and misapply other single verses or even fragments of verses.
See, he asserts, “If everyone on earth apart from Noah’s family had died, then there would be nobody left who was descended from (min) the Nephilim—but the Anakim show that this is not the case.” Indeed, biblical doctrine is, “everyone on earth apart from Noah’s family had died” but then it’s: period, full stop. Yet, centuries post-flood 10 unfaithful, disloyal, unreliable guys just made up a fear-mongering, scare-tactic, “evil report” wherein they made five assertions unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible and contradicted Moses, Joshua, Caleb, God, and the rest of the whole entire Bible. But this pastor tells us that if the biblical doctrine is the case, “then there would be nobody left who was descended from (min) the Nephilim—but the Anakim show that this is not the case.”
Again, no, it’s not, “the Anakim show” but that a non-LXX view of Anakim in one single sentence from an utterly unreliable source.
Now, even though, again, we’re told five times—five—who survived the flood and Nephilim aren’t on any list, the pastor tells us, “even from the perspective of Israelites in the Bronze Age, the cataclysmic flood did not wipe out every single person on planet earth outside the ark.” Yet, the logical, bio-logical, the theo-logical conclusion would really be, “even from the perspective of merely 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked (and undiscerning people who actually believe them to this date), the cataclysmic flood did not wipe out every single person on planet earth outside the ark.”
Andrew Wilson then gets into attempting to poke holes not in the, “evil report” but in the reliable Gen 6-7 records since the apparently infallible evil report, “suggests that the scope of phrases like ‘the whole land’ (qol erets) and ‘all mankind’ (qol adam) is limited to the ancient Near East…” etc. Yet, 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.
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See my books:
Noah’s Flood, the Deluge, Global or Local?, Vol I: A Historical Survey of Views from BC to AD
And:
Noah’s Flood, the Deluge, Global or Local?, Vol II: A Historical Survey of Commentaries from the 1500s to the 2000s
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Now, the moment that my eyes alighted on the term kherem in the article I knew what, at least, part of the problem was, he continued by writing that (supposedly alleged) post-flood Nephilim, by any other name, I suppose:
…provide vital context for the kherem warfare that took place in Canaan under Joshua. This is a point I had never seen until I read Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm recently, and in particular his description of the “Deuteronomy 32 worldview,” in which Yahweh has disinherited the nations and assigned them to the rule of lesser gods (Deut 32:8 etc). Heiser explains:
Israel is Yahweh’s elect portion of humanity, and the land of Canaan is the geography that Yahweh, as owner, specifically allotted to his people. In the view of the biblical writers, Israel is at war with enemies spawned by rival divine beings. The Nephilim bloodlines were not like the peoples of the disinherited nations … the target of kherem was the Anakim.
Well, the pastor really should have read the Bible rather than Heiser, on this point. Dr. Heiser was credentialed and experienced but not infallible, his Nephilology wasn’t biblical, and he tended to create more problems than he solved—search online for 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”
I also featured Heiser in my book, The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants: What do Scholarly Academics Say About Nephilim Giants?
In my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and NephilologyI included an entire chapter just on this issues and quoted the many times that God told us why He commanded such things and, hint, He never said one single word about Nephilim, nor relation to them, not biological/genetics/bloodline issues—never, ever.
Andrew Wilson then reviews some of Heiser’s points, “Heiser offers a number of clues that he is right about this. (1) The emphasis on giantism in the initial spying mission (for all that this has since been domesticated in contemporary preaching, the point is not just that the people are large, but that they are descended from rival deities).”
I trow not. 1) there is no, “emphasis on giantism” which is a genetic disorder and 2) the only emphasis on subjectively unusual height for Nephilim is well, guess where: in one sentence form an evil report by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
Let’s succinctly review. We’re told that Rephaim, by any of their a.k.a., were, “tall” in general and with that being a vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage term which, in this case, means taller than the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Then the more to the point issue is that the 10 unreliable guys where part of the 12 spies who reconnoitered the land of Cannan before moving into it. The original report in the narrative of Num 13 has the problem being various, “strong” people groups (living in large, well-fortified cities). The 10 chimed in to dissuade the Israelites from doing that God commanded them and agreed that the problem was that the peoples were, “stronger.” Yet, since Caleb went on to encourage the Israelites (with Joshua siding with him), the 10 took it up a notch—many tall-tale notches, actually—and only then did they embellish the original report and contradicted it.
Only then did they merely assert something that’s unknown in the whole entire rest of the whole Bible: that Nephilim somehow made it past the flood, that (in non-LXX versions) Anakim were related to them (in some impossible way), and that Nephilim were very, very, very tall.
Wilson complains that, “this has since been domesticated in contemporary preaching” but any and all biblical-doctrine preaching must include that conclude that Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form but centuries post-flood some guys merely asserted seeing them and were rebuked, to death.
Wilsons’ next Heiserian point is, “The explicit statement that the Israelite spies had seen the Nephilim in the Land (Num 13:33).” Yet, one reason for having written the Rebuttal to Dr. Michael Heiser’s “All I Want for Christmas is Another Flawed Nephilim Rebuttal” article was that Heiser admitted that he only reluctantly interacted with that verse due to critical pressure to do so. Think about it, there are only two sentences in the Bible about Nephilim and a scholar who specialized on such issues admitted that he ignored a full 50% of the data only until enough people noticed and critiqued him about it.
In any case, Heiser committed the post-flood Nephilologists 101 level error: he merely picked up that one sentence, ran with it, force-fitted other sentences or fragments of sentences into the mess that one sentence makes, and applied it as if it’s reliable.
And note how this was presented to us, in a generic manner of that it was stated as, “the Israelite spies” in general. Thus, this was really as case of the statement that is explicitly told to us to be a statement within an evil report that 10 of the Israelite spies, the unreliable ones who were rebuked, had seen the Nephilim in the Land when it’s literally impossible that they had.
This point continued with, “The giant-like descriptions of enemies of God who live in the land, from Og (Deut 3:11) to Goliath (1 Sam 17) and beyond (2 Sam 21; 1 Chr 20).” It would appear that rather than sussing out biblical doctrine, the pastor read Heiser, liked it, and uncritically repeated it.
How could there be, “giant-like descriptions of…Og” when we’ve no physical description of him?
Also, just what is, “giant-like” when the term, “giant” is just as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as, “tall”?
For Goliath, we actually have a measurement yet, the pastor fails to inform us that the Masoretic text has him at just shy of 10 ft. Yet, the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft.: so that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
As for, “beyond” well, the cited texts speak about Rephaim.
So, we have zero reliable correlation to Nephilim and the only reason to even imagine that tall or, “giant-like” has anything whatsoever to do with Nephilim is one single unreliable sentence.
The next point is, “Joshua’s kherem conquests (Josh 11:21-23) focuses on the obliteration of the Anakim.” Indeed, and we know they’re named after Anak who was Arba’s son with zero reliable indication that it’s even possible Arba has related to Nephilim in any way, shape, or form.
The next point is, “the ongoing presence of giants in the land of the Philistines.” Now, notice what has happened here: he has jumped from the specific and ancient Hebrew terms Nephilim and Anakim to the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants.” When one does that, they can then chase that English word around a Hebrew Bible and think they made connections between text that actually have no correlation whatsoever.
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Wilsons’ and/or Heiser’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Well, biblically contextually, “the ongoing presence of giants in the land of the Philistines” reads as, “the ongoing presence of Rephaim in the land of the Philistines.” Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
Wilsons’ conclusion is, “why should we care about the Nephilim and the Anakim? Partly because they help us think through the question of the global/local flood” and we see that he opted for a local flood due to reading all the way to Num 13, exclusively verse 33, and turning that into an infallible hermeneutic—when it is really just eisegesis.
Also, “they provide crucial context for our understanding of kherem warfare” yet, his and Heiser’s assertions about that fail in every possible way.
Plus, “we should care about things that are in the Bible. There’s always that” and what’s in the Bible is that God didn’t fail, He didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, He revealed five time who survived, and He rebuked the guys who merely asserted what Wilson and Hesier take as being infallibly true.
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