The Unforsaken site posted an article titled Giants in the Bible: A Comprehensive post of the Nephilim and Their Descendants which begins by noting:
Giants are a fascinating and often mysterious part of biblical hiaccount [sic.], woven into the fabric of ancient texts and folklore around the world. In the Bible, the term Nephilim refers to the offspring of a union between divine beings and human women, described in Genesis 6.
These giants and their descendants played significant roles in various biblical narratives and seem to be linked with specific people groups known for their formidable stature and strength.
In this study, we will explore their origins, the famous giants of the Bible, their connection to certain tribes, and how their existence might have been one of the main catalysts for the Great Flood.
Just as the title, this statement jumped from the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” to the specific ancient Hebrew word “Nephilim” and back again.
Thus, the key questions are:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s the author’s usage?
Do those two usages agree?
For one, biblically contextually, it would read, “Nephilim are a fascinating…These Nephilim and their descendants…the famous Nephilim of the Bible…” etc.
The author takes the “Angel view” of the Gen 6 affair, as I term it.
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.
We are then told:
Goliath of Gath: Perhaps the most famous giant in the Bible, Goliath is introduced in 1 Samuel 17. He was a champion of the Philistines, described as being “six cubits and a span” tall, which translates to approximately nine feet and nine inches…
Goliath’s armor is described in detail in 1 Samuel 17:4-7. He wore a bronze helmet and a coat of mail that weighed about 5,000 shekels of bronze, which is approximately 125 pounds (57 kilograms). His legs were protected by bronze greaves, and he carried a bronze javelin slung across his back.
The shaft of his spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam, and the iron spearhead itself weighed 600 shekels, or about 15 pounds (7 kilograms). Goliath’s impressive and heavy armor highlighted his formidable stature…
It seems that by “giant” the author is implying something about subjectively unusual height. In that case, the answer to the third key question is “No” since the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles is that it merely renders (doesn’t 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.
For some odd reason, the author didn’t bother noting that the Masoretic text has Goliath 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. (compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days) so that’s the preponderance of the earliest data.
He had a guy assisting with the equipment.
Regular guy Benaiah took a spear like a weaver’s beam, just like Goliath’s, from a 7.5 ft. Egyptian and successfully wielded it against him in hand-to-hand combat (2 Sam 23). Also, you can search for strongman or weightlifting competition vids and see guys who are around 6 ft. lifting 1,000 lbs.
Next up is:
Og, King of Bashan: Another notable giant is Og, king of Bashan. Deuteronomy 3:11 provides a remarkable detail about him: “For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead. (Is it not in Rabbah of the people of Ammon?) Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width, according to the standard cubit.” This would make Og’s bed approximately thirteen feet long and six feet wide, indicating his massive size.
That whole statement is premised on the qualifying term, “indicating” and since that’s subjective—it may appear to indicate that to the author—it’s dismissible.
We don’t have a physical description of Og but “giant” obsessed people make them up where they’re nowhere to be seen (I term that phenomena “Gigorexia Nervosa”) and merely asserting we can know an approximation of his height based on his “bed” is a non-sequitur based on various mere assumptions, see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant? Hint: the “bed” was a ritual object, not something on which Og slept.
We’re then told of, “Tribes and People Groups of Giants” such as:
The Anakim were a race of giants known for their intimidating stature. Numbers 13:33 records the report of the Israelite spies: “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Note the—purposeful or not—manipulation here when desperation to find “giants” leads to quoting a version that has “giants” for “Nephilim” and what read “There we saw the Nephilim (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim)…” was turned into, “There we saw the subjectively unusually tall personages (the descendants of Anak came from the subjectively unusually tall personages)…”
Well, for one: that’s quoting an “evil report” by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked so there’s no reason to believe any of it in any version: see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Also, for some odd reason, the author didn’t quote a text that does tell us something relevant: Deut 2 notes that they were generally “tall” on average and/but that’s subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
As we keep waiting for “giants” to be noted, we are told:
Mentioned frequently in the Old Testament, the Rephaim were considered giants. Deuteronomy 2:10-11 states: “The Emim had dwelt there in times past, a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim. They were also regarded as giants, like the Anakim, but the Moabites call them Emim.” The Rephaim appear to have been spread across different regions and were known by various names.
The Zamzummim: Another group linked with the Rephaim are the Zamzummim. Deuteronomy 2:20-21 says: “That was also regarded as a land of giants; giants formerly dwelt there. But the Ammonites call them Zamzummim, a people as great, numerous, and tall as the Anakim.”
The Philistine Giants: Beyond Goliath, 2 Samuel 21:15-22 mentions battles between David’s warriors and other giants from Gath, showing that the Philistines harbored more than one giant in their midst.
This is another word-game since “regarded as giants” means “regarded as Rephaim” and not something about height. Rephaim were aka Zamzummim (who weren’t “Another group”) and Emim and Anakim were like clans of that tribe.
Thus, the only thing we’re contextually told about Rephaim is that they were generally “tall” on average and/but that’s subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
Now, when you write in vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage manners such as employing the modern English word “giants,” you can then throw virtually any myth or legend into the mix since there are no specifics that disqualify them.
Thus, the author tells us of, “The Global Presence of Giants in Ancient Cultures…Greek Titans…Norse Jotnar (frost giants) and the giants of Native American lore,” etc., which is how tall-tales are told: keep everything watered down and assert correlations where there are none.
The author merely asserts, “Nimrod, described in Genesis 10:8-9 as ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord,’ has intrigued scholars for generations” without offering even one name, quote, or citation to any such scholars.
We’re told, “Some have speculated that the term ‘mighty man’ aligns with the language used for the Nephilim and their descendants, suggesting that Nimrod could have been part of this legacy.” No, that’s literally logically, bio-logically, and theo-logically impossible since Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape or form: lest God failed, He missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
Also, that “‘mighty man’ aligns with the language used for the Nephilim and their” merely implied, “descendants” is utterly myopic since the term in question is “gibbor” which is just a descriptive term referring to might/mighty so that it’s used of Angels and Nephilim and Gideon and some of David’s soldiers and Boaz and God, etc. Thus, that was a merely linguistic fallacy: chasing a word around (only to very specifically selected locations of usage) and merely asserting correlation where there is none.
But the author discerned weakness in doing that so admitted it but still pushed, “while there is no direct biblical evidence stating that Nimrod was a giant, the association with the term ‘mighty man’ warrants consideration” so I considered and debunked.
One section is titled, “Giants and the Reason for the Flood” and notes:
The introduction of the Nephilim in Genesis 6 is immediately followed by God’s decision to bring the Great Flood…
The presence of the Nephilim, resulting from angelic-human unions, is often linked to this judgment. The idea is that these unions corrupted the human gene pool and contributed to an increase in wickedness that necessitated divine intervention.
Did you notice what just happened? Nephilim are correlated to, “the Reason for the Flood…God’s decision to bring the Great Flood…often linked to this judgment…provoke God’s judgment” but, again, God failed, He missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc., since we’re going to play game about that unnamed, unquoted, and uncited scholars merely assert Nimrod was a post-flood Nephil—see my book The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants: What do Scholarly Academics Say About Nephilim Giants?
Since we’re chasing the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” around a Hebrew Bible we can appeal to anything that any English version from MILLENNIA after the Hebrew merely rendered as “giants.”
Thus, we’re told of, “Giants in the Conquest of Canaan” which in this case were, “tribes of giants. Joshua 11:21-22 notes: ‘And at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim…’…remnants of these giants continued to exist in regions like Gath, where Goliath later emerged.” And we already know how unimpressive all of that is when we understand that here “giants” is merely rendering “Rephaim” and that we know there’s zero indication they were much taller than the average.
We’re then told of, “Characteristics and Traits of Giants” which a mere assertion since “Giants” can, biblically speaking, refer to Nephilim, for whom we’ve zero reliable physical description, or Rephaim which we already covered, “tall.”
Yet, we’re told by the author, “The biblical accounts of giants describe them as exceptionally large and powerful beings. Their physical descriptions imply a scale that dwarfed ordinary humans, as in the case of Goliath and Og.” These are obviously uncalled for and hyperbolically misinformed assertions.
We’re then told of, “The Continuing Legacy of Giants” which mentions utterly generic things such as, “folklore and archaeological curiosities…alleged findings of giant skeletons.”
The author’s “Final Thoughts” include, “The giants of the Bible, from the Nephilim to Goliath and beyond, represent more than just tales of larger-than-life beings. They are part of a complex narrative involving divine beings, human disobedience, and God’s judgment.” And yet, that’s incoherent since Nephilim would fit that but not Goliath so that’s a category error.
And the author ends with a bit of sermonizing.
Sadly, over all we were supposed to learn about “giants” in terms of well, some sort of impressive height above average but we got Nephilim and Og for whom we’ve no physical description, only the taller option of Goliath’s height, Rephaim/Zamzummim/Emim/Anakim who were subjectively merely “tall” and vague assertions about “giants” here and “giants” there but actually nowhere to be found.
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