Via his YouTube channel, The Weird Christian Podcast, Samuel Delgado posted a video titled, The Nephilim Myth Q & A Live Stream Episode which is about his book The Nephilim Myth.
Typically, the book about Nephilim has a back cover that refers to giants which begs these key questions:
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s your usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
Let us see if Delgado answers them.
He gets to the point on the back cover by stating about the view that, “angels and women procreated to create the giants known as the Nephilim,” that, “We will make a solid case that this age old story is nothing but a fantasy.”
One thing with which he has to contend is 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.
His reference to, “giants known as the Nephilim” seems to imply that his usage is something generic about subjectively unusual height. Biblically contextually, “giants known as the Nephilim” would read as, “Nephilim known as the Nephilim.”
Within the video, he makes it clear that he holds to the Sethite view—which is a late dated view based on myths and which creates more problems than it solves.
Samuel Delgado refers to, “the physical limitations, uh, of the, uh, the Nephilim” but that’s a non-issue since we’ve no reliable physical description of them and so his implied usage of giants is uncalled for.
He notes that he, “couldn’t find a guest, uh, to come onto my show to defend the Sethite view. In
Fact, I couldn’t even find really any books that even covered the topic”: well, I certainly don’t defending it but I dealt with it in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology.
Delgado notes, “probably the most influential, um, things that I read on, on the Angelic view was probably Michael Heiser’s work” about which I have reservations since 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 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.
Delgado notes that he changed his view from the Angel view to the Sethite view and that, “teaching through Genesis 6…I realized, boy oh boy, um, if I’m just teaching this” Angel, “view it’s not so easy, um, to teach it really without bringing in the Book of Enoch.”
Well, I hold to the Angel view and have noted many, many, many times that 1 Enoch is Bible contradicting folklore from millennia after the Torah, see the book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch.
He felt compelled to do that since, “I’d rather use the Bible and, uh, and improve, uh, the Angelic view just through the Bible alone and I just don’t think there’s enough there to do that” so then, pray tell, how do I manage it? Well, I’ve elucidated that in articles, books, and videos.
I’m empathetic with Delgado as he notes that, “what grounded me into the Angelic view of the Nephilims, I’d hear these accounts, uh, Doug Riggs in particular, um, and Dan Duval…I thought, ‘Man, um, I’m hearing his account he’s such a genuine guy, he’s so truthful…who am I to say that they’re lying” yet, “I found that, kind of, once you open that door, um, to something being truth and you’ll kind of grasp on to any teeny little thing and the next thing you know there’s like just kind of absurd teachings where, you know, there’s a rumor about CERN opening up uh the pit and it’s gonna happen in 2012 or 2023 and, um, it just kind of gets snowballs and gets more and more absurd and so it’s really easy to get caught up and to, sort of, chase that rabbit” as in down holes.
I have noticed that some seem to not accept the Angel view because the top-pop-Nephilologists are making a living by selling un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales and that, rightly, turns rational people off.
For my part, I wrote a book titled Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales and one titled Nephilim and Giants as per Pop-Researchers: A Comprehensive Consideration of the claims of I.D.E. Thomas, Chuck Missler, Dante Fortson, Derek Gilbert, Brian Godawa, Patrick Heron, Thomas Horn, Ken Johnson, L.A. Marzulli, Josh Peck, CK Quarterman, Steve Quayle, Rob Skiba, Gary Wayne, Jim Wilhelmsen, et al.
I did so in order to show that one can hold to the Angel view whilst rejecting the sci-fi-tall-tales—even ancient ones such 1 Enoch.
Since the Angel view has Nephilim as hybrids, Delgado notes of the Bible that, “about hybrids, um, it, I think that’s absent…there’s no talk of hybrids.”
Interestingly, someone in the comments section someone noted, “I would love to go live on your show sometime and do a friendly debate with you. I would be taking the literal view that says giants did exist” and Delgado replied, “I said in this live that I refute hybrids, not giants”—of course, the reply should have included the key questions. This is the statement in the Q&A, “I don’t deny giants in the Bible, um, I do deny hybrids.”
As for, “the theory of Angels mixing with women” he notes, “it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, myth…it is a myth, it’s mythology.”
He notes, “It’s really silly to say that God judged the world, uh, with the flood because Angels were having sex with women and then they just did it again on the other side of the flood or, uh, Ham’s wife was carrying the, the Nephilim gene. I mean, that’s, that’s a huge weakness in the view, um, and something I knew all along that any, any way you slice it, you know, God’s judgment is a complete failure if it just happens again on the other side of the flood.”
Well, he’s confusing and confounding the Angel view with the post-flood Nephilim view. Just as with 1 Enoch, I take the Angel view but reject the post-flood Nephilim view.
I’ve noted this many, many, many, many times:
Any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed: He meant to be rid of them via the flood but couldn’t get the job done, He must have missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc.
Post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent an un-biblical tall-tale about how they made it past the flood.
This describes 100% of pop-Nephilologists.
Delgado continued directly with that, “once you peel back the onion, um, yeah, I, I just, I would describe it as a house of cards: the kind of whole thing just kind of comes falling down.”
Yet, thus far he has only referred to things that some people add to their Angel view and the Angel view can be firmly held without them so he has not remove any layers of an onion nor toppled any cards.
Thus, appealing, as he does as he continues, to, “all that crazy stuff…a lot of crazy stories…those stories…some stories that they made up…delusional…crazy stories” don’t pertain to the biblical data and so don’t pertain to the Angel view nor to biblical Nephilology.
For some reason, he notes, “Ezekiel who, um, is talking about the, the Cherubim…Isaiah 6 has similar descriptions, um, so those are Guardian Angels” yet, that’s a category error: Angels are Angels, Cherubim are Cherubim, and Seraphim are Seraphim.
I will leave off by elucidating why I referred to the Sethite view as being mythological and that is because it’s premise on the un-biblical myth of a wholly righteous, holy, Godly lineage/bloodline/genealogy of Seth and an un-biblical myth of a wholly unrighteous, unholy, ungodly lineage/bloodline/genealogy of Cain.
And, by the way, the wholly righteous, holy, Godly lineage/bloodline/genealogy of Seth were so very wholly righteous, holy, and Godly that they sinned so very badly that their sin served as the premise for the flood—go figure.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.