Not that 2nd Temple Judaism didn’t believe what he said, but that the original texts (clearly) say what he said.
He makes the claim that the “Canaanites that needed to be destroyed” were the Rephaim (and their descendants) and dismisses the idea of hyperbole when the spies described them as such (if that wasn’t specifically in the book (I can’t remember), it was definitely in his podcast). In my mind, that argument holds no water whatsoever, unless we believe that the spies also considered themselves grasshoppers.
Other than that (and a couple of other minor things), I really like Unseen Realm and it has influenced me significantly in my perception of spiritual conflicts throughout scritpure.
Archaeology being what it is, I don’t know if we have any bones from any Nephilim/whatever or not. It really doesn’t bug me; the importance of the Nephilim connection is it explains why some enemies were to be slaughtered to the last woman and child – it was in essence spiritual warfare by physical means.
It is possible that the Nephilim were from a pre-existing tradition of the offspring of god-like giants which the ancient Jews incorporated into Genesis as a retelling of Mesopotamian mytho-history. This is not to say that the Nephilim didn’t exist, but it is also possible that the point is less about the Nephilim than just things going wrong in the pre-flood world and the Nephilim being an example of it that would have been intuitive to ANE readers.
Well, anything’s on the table, but I think they have to exist for the demons in the Gospels to exist. The truth is though that those bones I keep mentioning could easily not be the Nephilim. It’s even possible that a race of up to 13 foot giants like King Og is described as via his bed lived a long time ago and we will never find any evidence of them. I think if you asked an Ancient Israelite why we haven’t found the bones or any evidence of giants they would say that YHWH has blotted out all memory of them under heaven which is often how they conceived of divine judgement as blotting out all memory of the people God is judging.
The Nephilim’s very existence is a transgression against God and their very bodies are likely a blasphemy. God could’ve deleted them. It’s like the Amalekites, we have textual evidence outside of the Bible written on stone that they existed but we’ve found nothing of them otherwise. Likewise we have evidence for the existence of the Anakim outside the Bible from Egypt and I’ve heard that we have Goliath of Gath mentioned in Gath outside the Bible but no physical remains of great giants though Goliath was only like 6’6 to 7’6 depending on what is meant by a span because Hebrew measurements weren’t standardized back then.
The only problem with this is that the Canaanites themselves did not describe their Rephaim as giants but as chariot warriors though Egypt has a satirical document called Papyrus Anastasi I that depicts a group of Canaanites as being from 6’10 to 8 feet tall, so the legend of giants being in Canaan was not limited to Israel. It’s just that the Canaanites themselves don’t make any reference to giants in their land. But then again we only have Canaanite documents from one city Ugarit. There’s so many different things to consider regarding the Nephilim.
I can think of another reason why his bed might need to be that large.
Gen 6:2 … the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
Interesting detail. The platform of the chariot may be about 1.5’ to 2.5’ off the ground. The standing height of the warrior (average height of 5’-5") in the chariot would then be 7’ to 8.5’ high off the ground.
Gen 6:4 (NLT) …whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.
One detail to realize is that the conditions of the Near East do not usually preserve bodies, except in very dry conditions and perhaps some caves. If the bodies were not mummified or preserved in dry desert conditions, they are gone, no matter if they were dwarfs or giants.
Very large beds or sarcophagi do not reveal the real size of a king or hero. Larger-than-life rulers, or someone wanting to be such, were presented as larger than the other humans. A large bed would be good propaganda, or a spacious furniture if the person did not sleep alone.
Even today, you can buy extra large beds if you feel that an ordinary bed is not enough. Such a bed does not reveal your true size.
I know. But they do have skeletons of many elites in the regions where the Nephilim were said to rule and the Rephaim ancestor cult was at it’s strongest which is why I made this thread. As for King Og’s bed it is true that a large bed or sarcophagus does not prove the person’s size and that in Canaan specifically they created beds and sarcophagus’s much larger than the rulers were but many scholars say the Bible presents the size of the bed as proof of Og’s size . Though reading the original verse arguments can be made that this is not true. Michael Heiser says the bed matches the ritualistic bed in Marduk’s temple used for the Heiros Gamos sex ritual which has all kindsof implications.
There’s this Orthodox priest and Ancient Near Eastern scholar named Stephen De Young who ties the sins of the Watchers and the Nephilim to these sex rituals. To make the message compatible with Orthodoxy he says that the Watchers possessed the kings of old to engage in these sexual rituals to produce the next heir. He takes the view like your Graft2vine that the term referring to them as giants means that they were tyrants or bullies. He says that the spirits of the children of these offspring were completely demonized and became demons after death in an opposite process to Orthodox theosis. There’s no evidence that any of these ancient kings used these sex rituals to produce the next heir so his theory is kind of on shaky ground but it’s interesting nonetheless.