So Genesis 6:1-4, the mentions of of Giant Rephaim later in the Torah and elsewhere, the Book of Enoch and other Enochic literature, and the statements in Second Peter and Jude about angels being chained up, sexual indiscretions by angels, and quoting from the Book of Enoch, are part of a tradition of angels in the Antediluvian world and afterward lusting after human women, having sex with them, and siring giant warrior demigods called the Nephilim who upon their deaths in the flood became the unclean spirits in the gospels. The tradition also has the angels corrupting humanity by teaching the arts of Mesopotamian civilization to mankind.
So this is a polemic against the Apkallu myth in Mesopotamia where they claimed their superiority on account of divine wisdom given to them by supernatural gods before the flood called Watchers or Apkallu who later reproduced with human women producing giants after the flood. The kings of the Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia claimed descent from these Apkallu justifying their rule. The Canaanite giants are also a polemic against the deified kings that founded the royal houses in Canaan and were worshipped as underworld figures. The Israelites were saying that these kings and warriors, men of renown, heroes who the Mesopotamians and Canaanites worshipped were really the result of a boundry crossing between the human and divine worlds that led to the corruption of the earth.
The thing is we have skeletons from the elite of these areas that were being polemicized against, those the Canaanites called Rephaim and elite burials in the Transjordan, Hebron, Gaza, Gath and otherwise as well as well as burials in the Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamia from a royal court that was reckoned by later Mesopotamians to be giants descended from the gods. These people were only slightly taller than the average population, they had human Y DNA whose mutations could be traced back for thousands of years and contrary to the Biblical accounts that have them being wiped out in the conquest and during King David’s time they have millions of descendants today.
One could just write it off as theological history and saying that the stories are a polemic against Canaanite and Mesopotamian royal ideology and say that they shouldn’t be taken literally but this causes problems in other parts of the text. For instance the unclean spirits are said to come from these people because they were the bastard offspring of spirits. The word “unclean” in unclean spirits refers to ritual uncleanliness by illegitimate mixture and the only place outside of the Bible in Greek texts that the term unclean spirit is used is in Apocryphal biblical texts like Jubilees to refer to the bastard spirits of the Nephilim. So they have to be of divine descent for this to work, and if they aren’t what is the event referred to in Second Peter and Jude where it refers to the book of Enoch and angels in chains because they sexually transgressed with human women? Likewise if they have millions of descendants of their lineage which is illicitly from the angels do those millions of descendants become demons after they die?
Perhaps these people aren’t the Nephilim because in Mesopotamia the Early Dynastic period would take place after the flood in their mythology, and the Bible does differentiate between the warrior elites in Canaan, normal humans and actual giants which are the Anakim (an actual historical people we know from the record but we don’t have solid proof they were giants.) It’s still strange that in elite burials in Canaan we don’t find giant skeletons, but then the Israelites would have probably said that YHWH reduced them to dust anyhow and wiped out all memory of them because their very bodies were unclean.
Disregard what I said about the Bible making a distinction between Rephaim and normal human kings in Canaan. This was because normal human kings were not thought to be of divine descent while the Rephaim were. These skeletons we have of these royal and military castes are the historical Nephilim.
I know there are some, maybe many, who try to accept and rationalise the existence of the Nephilim, but they only occur in the grey area of Genesis. Grey, as in, Oral Tradition, myth, Legend and all those words that have detrimental or inaccurate connotations and popular meanings that threaten faith.
I am reluctant to suggest that they are scientifically improbable, but…
It would seem that the author is trying to justify human behaviour as being affected spiritual beings manifested as physical entities and the flood as being thee removal of their influence. People are also keen to make the flood a real event and to claim that God would just wipe out humanity and then get second thoughts and save a few “faithfuls”
Humanity does not need angelic beings to fall, or muck up. Beautiful women are not gullible or susceptible to the influence of fantastic or “Supermen” contrary to popular culture and legend (well there might be exceptions, I guess).
As this is ancient History or pre-history perhaps we need not dwell too much on the physical aspects and try and discern why the Nephilim are mentioned at all.
Michel Heiser has discussed interpretations about the ‘Nephilim’ and giants in his book ‘The unseen realm’, pp. 225-239. I have not read the book yet (waiting on my desk) but I glanced the pages and there seemed to be many interesting observations.
The starting point to interpreting the passages about the ‘Nephilim’ is that the story is told to an audience in the Ancient Near East (ANE). The basic assumptions and what was considered ‘normal’ and expected was different for them than it is for us grown in modern societies with a materialistic worldview. (materialistic = what exists is either observable matter or measurable energy [except God]). That makes the story sound strange for us.
Thanks for your response. But I can’t dismiss it as a myth because I take the supernatural elements of the Bible very seriously and the main problem with all of this is the unclean spirits in the Gospels and where they came from. Furthermore everyone on earth just because of sheer mathematics descends from the people that the Bible calls Nephilim, the ancient populations Ive mentioned, and the populations of the Levant have their DNA. So the question is everyone becomes am unclean spirit when they die because they’re descended from the Nephilim. This obviously isn’t true but why? The Bible assumes their lineage was wiped out completely but that’s literally impossible for elite people like this who had loads of children and great sexual access to women. The idea that 6 foot 9 warrior elites Goliath in Gath (as described in the Bible) or people like him didn’t have descendants is laughable. For that to be true the Nephilim would have to be 100% percent endogamous and thats pretty much impossible.
Yeah, the problems with the story are even evident in how Michael Heiser frames it. Michael Heiser believed that there was a tribe of six foot to 7 foot giants that walked the places in question who were invisible on the archeological record, and that their lineage was wiped out. The Nephilim would have been a military and warrior elite in these areas in question Mesopotamia and Canaan and for them to leave no descendants they would have had to have been 100% endogamous. That is laughable. Even under Heisers formulation everyone on earth today is mathematically descended from the Nephilim. The real question is not why they have human DNA or why they aren’t literal giants. The church fathers said that angels took human form to mate with women and gigantism was used as hyperbolic symbolic way of describing ones enemies in that culture. The real problem involves demononology. The Unclean Spirits in the Gospels came from them.
Nice comment! I found Heiser’s ideas interesting…possible (as far as that can be!)…and for most of us a shift in thinking. It is not unreasonable to assert that we do not look at these stories the way ancient people did. People in those days were, on average, shorter than we are As for the giants in Genesis…I don’t know.. The text of 1 Samuel 17 describes Goliath --whom some consider a leftover from the Nephilim etc —as over “nine feet tall” per NIV…but the Dead Sea Scrolls used the Septuagint and said 6’6". So they were “literal giants” by comparison to 20-year-old men with slingshots.
The explanation that the unclean spirits came from Nephilim or their descendants (the giants) is not based on the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. IIRC, it comes from another tradition, the Enoch tradition. How we deal with the claims based on the Enoch tradition is a matter of opinion.
What seems to be a fact is that the people in ANE believed that there were spiritual creatures that lived in Heaven (above the firmament), the realm of God/gods. The Heavenly Council is part of that group, as are the messengers of God (angels). A claim of such creatures as the Nephilim was ‘normal’ and expected for the ANE people.
The idea of the heavenly creatures mixing with humans fits also well to the worldview of the ANE people. In the Greek world, half-gods (children of gods) were just such: persons born from the mating of the gods and humans. In the OT, we see examples of angels or other heavenly beings visiting on Earth in the form of humans. It does not take much imagination to invent stories about matings of the heavenly beings and humans.
What is perhaps a more controversial issue is whether there were actual reproduction between the heavenly creatures and humans? Enoch tradition and some other stories in the ANE claim that. I do not know whether those stories were simply fairy tales or whether there was some truth in the core of those stories.
A family of (relative) giants in the past is believable based on possible mutations in human genes. An alternative explanation might be the ancient tradition of stressing the greatness of the rulers and heroes by painting them (or their enemies) as superior to the others: larger, stronger and long-lived.
In the OT stories, the Anakim are described with two deviating features: larger than the others and having six fingers and/or toes. If the latter feature is part of a syndromic condition, a deviating body growth pattern is possible. Mostly it does not lead to gigantism but it is one possibility. ‘Gigantism’ does not necessarily mean as large as the Masoretic version tells but larger than the other contemporary humans anyway. Assortative mating would enhance such features; it is likely that the largest persons took spouses that were larger than the average size.
You seem to be confusing demonology and superstition.
Whether demons exist is one question. Whether everything assigned to them by Scripture (ANE) is another.
Our knowledge of the Spiritual world and the tensions or dynamics within it our limited as much as the physical presence of God. There is a ying/yang logic to the existence of evil beings, so that if you ae going to believe in an angelic host then the demonic one becomes probable.
My experience is that if you do not chase or identify it, evil will let the Christian be. We are already lost to them and any attempt to sway us is met with faith. However, as Christians we have a certain obligation to fight evil and put ourselves in harm’s way (spiritually). To dismiss demons or evil as fallacy is precisely what they want, which is why they will leave you alone.
I have a fondness for the Screwtape letters by C,S, Lewis.
We can happily accept that the Biblical understanding of demonology was affected by their ignorance of science, and illness, but there is still a spiritual battle that we need to be aware of and not ignore.
Alright, so the only place in Greek outside of the New Testament in all of literature that the term translated, “Unclean Spirit” is used is in Second Temple Jewish apocryphal books like Jubilees to describe the spirits of dead Nephilim. By using this term the Gospels are not being ambiguous, they’re saying that it’s those specific unclean spirits from the Enochic tradition. There’s also the fact the Enochic tradition is referenced throughout the New Testament in Second Peter and Jude where in Jude the book is quoted. There’s no question that the unclean spirits are the ghosts of dead Nephilim. As for the rest of what you said. People are making comments here speculating on tribes of seven foot giants and wondering if it’s possible but they’ve skipped over the main premise of my original post. The people that the Nephilim story in the Bible is targeting, meaning the people that the Israelites called Nephilim, the Early Dynastic Mesopotamian Royalty, the people the Canaanites called Rp’hum or Rephiam, and the elites of Hebron, Bashan, and other places that were said to be ruled by Anakim in the Southern Hillcountry’s skeletons have been found and they are only slightly taller than the average person in the local population, they are 100% human genetically including in Y DNA which were from the local population and had mutations that could be traced through human populations going thousands of years. Now does this debunk angelic ancestry? Not necessarily, the could have taken on the exact DNA of the local population to breed with their women. Angels don’t have DNA and so when taking human form must manifest it from somewhere. Theres no reason their DNA would be something unheard of from earth.
Their DNA would have to be a close enough match to produce offspring. So there is no reason why they would “have” to match the DNA of the locals. But when you are talking about angelic beings I guess anything is possible. Including scanning and replicating local DNA.
The term angels, means messengers, and the giants or nephilim are just tyrants or bullies. 2 Peter says that the flood was brought upon the “ungodly” who sinned. This gave Noah, who was righteous, and his family a fresh start in the region of Mesopotamia.
Book of Enoch and other related literature are uninspired texts that should not be brought into our interpretation of the Bible.
Goliath was a warrior of Gath that stood out and his stature is not out of line with modern giantism. There is nothing said about him being descended from nephilim.
I agree that depicting enemies as giants could be Ancient Near Eastern way of describing people as tyrants. I’m not sure what angel being a word for messenger has to do with anything though.
Yeah except those uninspired texts and the sin of the Watchers is directly alluded to in 2nd Peter and Jude and is quoted in Jude and alluded to many times in the Bible. The New Testament writers were steeped in texts like 1 Enoch and Jubilees and it very clearly informed their theology, hence the unclean spirits. I didn’t bring Enoch into our interpretation of the Bible, the New Testament writers did.
Numbers 13:33, “And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Joshua 11:22, “**22 **No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.”
Goliath was a giant man from Gath, do the obvious math. Other giants are said to be killed in the same books that mention Golaith and they are explicitly told as descendants of Rephaim, the Nephilim.
Well a messenger called to carry the word of God. Those who hear are also called. These angels or messengers referred to by Peter and Jude are the sons of God who are called to spread the word of God which is the seed (Luke 8:11). As sons of God, they corrupted His word with the words of men… sons of God corrupting themselves with the daughters of men.
The sons of God who are called are represented by the line of Adam:
Gen 4:25-26 …God has granted me another seed in place of Abel… At that time men began to call upon the name of the LORD.
The daughters of men are represented by the line of Cain who like to put their own words in place of God. These are the words of a tyrant:
Gen 4:23-24 Then Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech. For I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
The word of God is not a biological seed but a righteous seed (uncorrupted word)… and yet who listens to you better than your own children?
Alluded to or perhaps your reading it into? Those uninspired texts are written to work with and often fill in details that “daughters of men” would like to tickle our ears with. Ok, so Jude quoted 1 Enoch… There was inspiration in that particular passage which talks about the end times, not other fantastical things presumably written by Enoch.
I will give that the New Testement writers did have a lot to navigate without an established canon at the time. As Jude said, certain men crept in unnoticed.
Nephilim should not be capitalized as a proper name. It is an untranslated Hebrew word that should be read as a descriptive noun. Again it is not a biological seed. The KJV translates it as giants.
- 5303 נְפִיל Nephilim: (properly) a feller, i.e. a bully or tyrant.
Goliath can certainly be described as a bully or tyrant, and being from Gath is likely a descendent of Anak who was a Canaanite… Canaan the son of Ham who was on the Ark, was not wiped out in the flood, but the “Nephilim” were.
In addition to the direct quotes from Enoch there are many theological themes that are shared between Enoch, portions written before the NT, and the rest of the NT. So while it may be considered “uninspired” it did seem to influence the NT authors. Perhaps it is better to say Second Temple Judaism had an impact on the formation of Christian thought.
In Judaism since the book was written late and obviously not by Enoch it wasn’t considered authoritative.
For Christianity it gets messy. Some early church fathers went along with the Jewish judgement and didn’t consider it inspired. Problem is it was found at Qumran so it is hard to judge exactly what people thought of it. Some of the ideas in it did make it into the NT and some modern people hold beliefs from it that they think came from the NT.