Guest article by Ken Ammi
Unraveling Misconceptions: Nephilim and Pop-Level Nephilology
The reason for seeking to discern Systematic Biblical Nephilology is that Nephilology, especially at the pop level, typically consists of taking texts out of context to make pretexts for prooftexts so that it is hardly an ology at all—not strictly a study of.
Jesus’ Words on the Days of Noah
For example, Jesus’ reference to His return being like unto the days of Noah is said to mean that we can expect more sons of God mating with more daughters of men and producing more Nephilim. While that a is a very, very popular assertion, it ignores Jesus’ actual words, His actual emphasis, His actual meaning since what He said is:
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed
Luke 17, ESV – from which I will be quoting hereinafter unless otherwise noted.
Thus, He was offering examples of people being unconcerned/unaware of coming judgment and just going about with a business as usual attitude, “They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage…they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building” and that was, “until the day…but on the day…”
Systematizing Biblical Nephilology: Examining the Texts
But let us take a step back, consult every single biblical text about Nephilim, and delve into how to systematize biblical Nephilology.
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose…
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Genesis 6
…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.
Numbers 13
Who Were the Nephilim? Exploring the Genesis Account
For the specific ancient Hebrew word, “Nephilim” some versions, such as the KJV, employed the vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage modern day English word “giants.”
This, along with the Numbers verse, has led to millennia’s worth of tall-tales. Also, the Numbers verse has led to the proposing of the existence of post-flood Nephilim/
Note how a few mere verses in Gen lead to the consideration of issues such as when was it that, “man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them”? Who were the, “sons of God”? Who were the, “daughters of man”? When were, “those days, and also afterward”? Why did such marriages and the resultant offspring serve as the premise for the flood?
Moreover, the Numbers text begs the questions of how Nephilim made it past the flood, how, “the sons of Anak” (the Anakim) are related to them, and issues regarding their height.
All of these questions, and more which encircle them by implication, will be answered hereinafter.
Linguistically speaking, there are differences between the meanings (plural) or definitions (plural) of any given word versus the usages (plural).
This also means that the etymology of a word, consulting the root word, may not elucidate anything about the word in question—especially when the word in question will ultimately derive its meaning/definition and usage form the context in which it is found.
The Sons of God: A Linguistic and Theological Analysis
The phrase sons of God, for example, appears in various biblical texts. In the New Testament, it refers to Adam, to Jesus, and to Christians in general (Luke 3, Mar 1, Rom 8). This has led some so assert that the Gen 6 sons of God were holy, righteous, Godly, men of the lineage of Seth and the problem was that they married unholy, unrighteous, and ungodly women of the lineage of Cain.
This view, known as the Sethite View, is not only a historical late-comer but is based on myth. The myth is the assertion that Sethites were a lineage of holy, righteous, Godly personages as opposed to the Cainites who were a lineage of unholy, unrighteous, ungodly personages.
Arguments in favor of these myths are that, “To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4) and that two individuals in Cain’s lineage are recorded has having sinned: one of Cain’s sins and two of Lamech’s (Gen 4). Thus, this view praises an entire lineage as well as condemning an entire lineage based on virtually nothing but literal prejudice.
This view also implies that the Sethite were not so holy, righteous, and Godly since, after all, they sinned so terribly that their sin served as the premise for the flood.
Ponder also why it was exclusively male Sethites and exclusively female Cainites.
Job 38 offers a very direct example that sons of God can refer to non-human beings (which the Septuagint/LXX has as “Angelos”) since they witnessed the creation of the Earth—at the very least.
Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined place the time of the sin of Angels to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin—and there is only a one-time sin of Angels in the Bible.
…the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [Tartarus] and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked…the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
Jude
Another aspect of this to consider 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.
But how, some have asked, can Angels mate with humans since Angels are disembodied spirits and even though they can take on human form, they are sexless and do not get married?
The problem with that question is not the how but that it merely a list of assertions: common knowledge as they may be.
Let us consider how Angels can mate with humans since Angels are disembodied spirits, even though they can take on human form, even though they are sexless, even though do not get married, and even though are not the same kind as humans.
Angels (not Cherubim or Seraphim) are biblically always described as looking just like human males and performing physical actions and without any indication that such is not their ontology.
This leads to the question: why would they only be missing the key features of the male anatomy?
Thus, since Angels are ontologically embodied there is no indication in the entire Bible that they take on bodies, shapeshift/morph or any such thing.
As for marriage, some actually claim that Jesus taught that it is impossible for Angels to marry, that they are sexless, etc. Yet, Jesus’ actual words, His emphasis, His qualifying terms, His meaning was, “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22) reiterated thusly, “when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12). Thus, His statements were about Angels in heaven: the loyal ones, which is why those who did marry are considered sinners, having, “left their proper dwelling”—their “first estate” as the KJV has it—as Jude put it.
Moreover, “those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20). Given the texts we just consulted, we know that neither marrying nor being given in marriage is to be like the loyal Angels in heaven. Furthermore, note that being, “equal to angels” equals being, “sons of God.”
Since Angels are always described as looking like human males, we were created, “a little lower” (Psalm 8) than them, and we can reproduce with them so, by definition, we are of the same basic kind.
But if, and since, that is the case then why was it sinful for them to marry and reproduce with humans. There appear to be, at least, two answers: 1) they wrongfully, “did not stay within their own position of authority” in order to do so and 2) merely being of the same kind does not necessarily make for a Godly relationship—for example, I am of the same kind as every woman on Earth but it would be sinful for me to mate with 99% of them since I am married to one already.
Now, the fact that Since Angels are always described as looking like human males elucidates why it was exclusively male sons of God and exclusively female daughters of men—and there is no indication those women were of any one particular lineage.
We can know from the contextual narrative focus of the Genesis 6 affair, as I term it, that the Nephilim were, in fact, the offspring of the mating of the sons of God and daughters of men. That is because the contextual narrative focus is the sons of God and daughters of men: their attraction, their marriages, their mating, and their offspring.
Otherwise, it would be on odd narrative indeed, which is ostensibly about the sons of God and daughters of men: their attraction, their marriages, their mating, and their offspring and yet is artificially interrupted by a happenstantial mention of some Nephilim guys who just so happen to have been around at the time in an unrelated manner and about whom nothing more is said.
What do we really know about the Nephilim?
It is remarkable that Nephilim have been discussed for millennia, especially considering that, biblically speaking, we know virtually nothing of them: we know roughly when they first came to be, what their parentage was, that they were mighty and renown (we do not even know how so nor for what) and two more key issues: what even came of them and what they looked like.
As per Gen 6, Nephilim came to be, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them” since that was when, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.”
When, exactly, that was seems to range from difficult to impossible to pinpoint but it may have been as early as when Adam and Eve’s children started having children and/or especially when they began spreading as they populated.
1 Enoch/Ethiopic Enoch specifies that it was in, “the days of Jared” (chap 6) but since it is a Bible contradicting folkloric text from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah which gives no indication of providing any new and accurate history then we must it with a grain of Dead Sea salt.
Post-Flood Nephilim Claims: Unraveling the Evidence
If we cut complete thoughts into fragments, then we can convincingly merely assert that there were post-flood Nephilim as evidence by Gen 6 itself. After all, it clearly reads, “Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward” with the distinction of the days being the flood.
Yet, the thought, the verse, the sentence does not reference the flood and, in fact, the flood is not even mentioned for the very first time until a full 13 verse later—verse 17.
An obsession with getting Nephilim past the flood leads to reading the flood into a text that does not refer to it and leads to missing that the text tells us exactly to what days it is referring.
Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.
Thus, “Nephilim were on the earth in those days,” which were the days, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,” and, “also afterward” of, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them”: they commenced doing it and continued to do so and yet, that was all pre-flood, the flood brought an end to it all.
Incidentally, the scope of the flood is irrelevant to Nephilology since they either did not make it past the flood because it was global or because they lived in the flooded region.
Any concept of post-flood Nephilim implies that God failed: He meant to be rid of them via the flood but could not get the job done, He must have missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc. And this is the case not matter what story is literally invented for the purposes of getting Nephilim past the flood.
Post-flood Nephilologists have to just invent un-biblical tall-tales about how they made it past the flood.
This describes 100% of pop-Nephilologists and many scholarly ones. And those who claim they survived the flood contradict the Bible five times (Genesis 7:7, 23; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20; and 2 Peter 2:5.).
But how could that be since, after all, in Numbers 13 God says, the Bible says, the spies said that there were post-flood Nephilim.
I wrote, “God says, the Bible says, the spies said” because that is the generic manner in which post-flood Nephilim believers tend to speak. Just how are you to disagree with what God said? After all, He inspired the Bible. The Bible says so, so you must deny it if you deny post-flood Nephilim. And, the spies that Moses himself, at God’s behest, reported that they saw Nephilim, so that settles it.
Did the Bible say it? Technically, that is a reification fallacy. Also, no Bible believer should believe that every word in the Bible is true since, after all, a lot of deceptive lies are recorded in the Bible, such as Satan’s, and may people’s statements are rebuked therein. But what of the spies?
Some key questions to ask of any text are: who said it, why was it said, what was the reaction to it, was it accurate, etc.
The narrative of Numbers 13 elucidates that twelve spies were sent to reconnoiter Canaan. Upon their return a report is presented that is accepted as is—the original report. This report does mentions who was seen, “the descendants of Anak [Anakim]…Amalekites…Hittites…Jebusites…Amorites…Canaanites” and describes them as generally, “strong.”
A bifurcation then develops in that ten of the spies take the side of discouraging the people from doing that which God commanded them to do versus Caleb and Joshua (thus, be weary of those who assert that, “the spies,” as a generic whole, saw Nephilim).
The ten unfaithful spies the concoct a fear-mongering scare-tactic statement in the style of, “Don’t go in the woods…” so as to buttress their fearful disloyalty which is terms a, “bad” or, “evil repot.”
Therein, they contradict and embellish the original as is report. Two key points are that they add that they also saw Nephilim, that Anakim are related to them (in some unknown manner and FYI: Anakim are not mentioned in the Septuagint/LXX of that verse), and that Nephilim were very, very, very tall.
The result was that they contradicted Moses, Caleb, Joshua, God, and the whole rest of the entire Bible since none of these say even one single word about Nephilim (and in Deut 1 when Moses relates this event, he also does not even mention them: he is more concerned about the real dangers on the ground, like the notorious Anakim, and not about some tall-tale).
The result is that the ten unfaithful, disloyal, contradictory, embellishers are rebuked by God—to death (Numbers 14).
For many more details on the Numbers 13 issue, see my Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
Thus, the one single verse upon which the post-flood giant Nephilim theory is premised is merely one sentence quoting unreliable assertions.
The only physical description of Nephilim that we have is in Numbers 13 which means that we do not have any reliable biblical physical description of them. As author Gary Wayne put it during his debate with me, “we don’t know how big Nephilim were…we don’t know how tall that they were”: you can view the debate here.
Now, Wayne is an interesting case since when put on the spot, he admitted that which he stated but that came after many years of referring to Nephilim as giants and was followed by years of referring to them as such as again (and by giants he, un-English biblically, means subjectively unusually tall).
After all, Nephilim are referred to as giants. A word-concept fallacy is reading a specific implication into a word. By definition, words carry implications and yet, this is where the difference between meanings/definitions and usages come into play. For example, I have been referred to as a giant many, many times but I am only 6.0ft tall which is not very parochially tall.
Terms such as tall, big, huge, massive, giant, etc., are all subjective—as well as being vague, generic, and multi-usage—and ultimately derive their meaning from that against which they are compared. I am a giant compared to some but not compared to others.
The key questions are:
What is any given person’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants?
What is the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles?
Do those usages agree?
These questions are key for various reasons including that many Nephilologists go on and on and on about giants without ever defining the term and also using it to refer to various things.
For example, the answer to the first question tends to be that it is a reference to subjectively unusual height. Yet, even then it could refer to inches taller than the subjective average, or feet, or entire body lengths. In linguistics, the term giant is categorized as a flaccid designator: it is only given meaning from the context in which it appears.
Biblically, the term giants has utterly nothing to do with height whatsoever, it implies no such thing, and that is why answering the first question as I just noted constituted a word-concept fallacy.
English Bibles that employ that term are following the lead of the Septuagint/LXX which for some unknown reason(s), rendered (did not even translate) Nephilim and also Rephaim and also gibborim all as gigantes or gigas. Contextually, any Greek term which includes gi, as in giga and is followed by gantes or s refers to the false Earth goddess Gaia. Ergo, gigantes merely means earth-born, as in born of Gaia, and with gigas likewise referring to correlating to Gaia.
And we can know that it implies nothing about height whatsoever also because gibborim is merely a descriptive term for might and might has no height since it is a concept and not a being. Some pop-Nephilologists teach about the Gibborim as if that refers to a people groups but there is not indication of any such thing.
Nephilim are referred to as gibborim, as is Nimrod, as are some of David’s soldiers, as is Boaz, as is God, “El Gibbor,” etc. (Gen 6, Gen 10, 1 Ch 7, Rth 2, Isa 9).
Due to the utter lack of reliable references to post-flood Nephilim, and that there is only one unreliable sentence in the favor of that assertion, post-flood Nephilologists play the name game. They assert that post-flood Nephilim are referred to as Rephaim.
Yet, that is merely an argument from silence due to lacking act connective data.
There is no indication that those two people groups have any relation whatsoever. Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, as it were, and Rephaim were strictly post-flood 100% humans.
Out of desperation, some demand that we side with unreliable, unfaithful, contradictory, embellishers whom God rebuked to correlate Nephilim with Rephaim. Yet, even then: they are forced to only appeal to non-Septuagint/LXX versions and then jump to that since one clan of Rephaim, the Anakim, are related to Nephilim then the entire Rephaim tribe was related to them.
We know that Anakim are named after Anak who was Arba’s son (Jos 21) but not much more and especially not that Abra nor Anak had anything to do with Nephilim whatsoever.
Also, post-flood Nephilologists/Rephaologists focus on only one aspect of the etymology of the term Repha, the root rapha, and assert that they were some sort of living dead beings who, somehow, are related to Nephilim or are possessed by the spirits of dead Nephilim, etc.
These, et al., are merely desperate appeals employing arguments from silence to attempt to prop up a failed theory. The concept of post-flood Nephilim began by a motivation of rebelling against God, not relying on Him, urging others to not obey him, etc. Thus, it grew as a failure in spiritual warfare and has continued to negatively affect its adherent ever since. As I have noted regarding the implication that God failed: poor Nephilology leads to poor theology proper.
It also results in misreading, misunderstanding, misrepresenting, misinterpreting, and misapplying texts which are pulled into the black hole of the Numbers 13 bad/evil report.
The Misconception of Biblical Giants: Goliath and King Og
Yet, regardless of that, post-flood-giant-Nephilologists claim that such are just fancy arguments but they go against the Bible. After all, they will counterargue, Goliath and King Og, most oft cited, are post-flood Nephilim-giants.
Note that the term Nephilim giants is very popular (so popular that I have used it in some of my book titles due to its recognizability as a troupe) and yet, biblically contextually Nephilim giants reads as Nephilim Nephilim.
Goliath and Og were both of the Rephaim and so have no relation to Nephilim whatsoever.
As for their height, which are non-issues even if for whatever reason interesting, the Masoretic text is typically and myopically referred to since it has Goliath at 6 cubits and 1 span—just shy of 10 ft—but the earlier Septuagint/LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus, which is the preponderance of the earliest data, all have him at 4 cubits and 1 span—just shy of 7 ft—subjective to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
As for Og, we have no physical description of him (not until wild folklore from millennia after the Torah) and those who attempt to derive his height from his bed are doing so based on various mere assumptions—and out of desperation since there are people who suffer from that which I term Girorexia Nervosa: an obsessive desire to see giants and just making them up where they are nowhere to be seen. For details, see my book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
Addressing Height Discrepancies and Misinterpretations
Given all of the pop-talk about giants in the Bible one may assume that it is saturated with specified height and yet, Goliath’s is only one of two: the other is that of an Egyptian who was 5 cubits/7.5 ft tall (1 Chronicles 11). Anything else height related is told to us via vague statements or metaphors.
Not that it matters since subjectively unusual heigh has no demonstrable correlation to Nephilim, but some opt for the latter taller range of Goliath’s height due to the heaviness of his equipment and weaponry. However, he had someone assisting with his equipment and you can view weightlifting or strongman competitions anytime and see men who are right around 6 ft lifting 1,000 lbs.
Moreover, the case of the Egyptian is interesting since he carried a spear that is described as being like unto Goliath’s, “a spear like a weaver’s beam” and yet, regular guy (yet, “valiant”), “Benaiah the son of Jehoiada…struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.” Thus, an average guy, was able to successfully wield such a spear in hand-to-hand combat.
The Enduring Influence of Nephilim Mythology and Tall Tales
Nephilology has become that which I term un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales which get more and more exciting with every telling, with keeping it fresh, with click-baiting, with making a name for oneself, and is a very lucrative cottage industry.
There are reasons which many top-pop-post-flood-giant-Nephilologists have published otherwise produced sci-fi novels, comics, and cartoons and one of those reasons is that what they are teaching as biblical doctrine is, in reality, already sci-fi so it is no giant stretch to go into the realm of admitted sci-fi.
Of the relevant biblical and Bible related literature, we only get post-flood Nephilim in the book of Jubilees wherein they are artificially manufactured via following a recipe—and they only survive until the time of Noah’s grandsons.
1 Enoch/Ethiopic Enoch is very often appealed to for support of giant post-flood Nephilim. It has Nephilim being 3,000 ells tall, which is miles tall, which is great folklore but poor reality (see my book In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch). Also, it only has them surviving, as it were in a manner of speaking, the flood in spirit form (so it does not even have physical, giant, post-flood Nephilim). Hence why those who are enamored with that text claim that unclean spirits-demons are the spirits of dead Nephilim but, again, that is folklore from a few centuries BC. For a biblical view, please see the article, Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
So what are we left with?
Thus, we are back to that systematic biblical Nephilology gives us some idea of when they came to be, who their parents were, that they lived during a time of terrible corruption, that they were mighty and renown, that they did not make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form, and that centuries post-flood some unreliable guys whom God rebuked told a tall-tale about them—a tall-tale that haunts us to this very day.
About Ken Ammi
Ken is an Argentinian-American with Jewish roots. Previously heavily involved in the New Age Movement, he practiced Reiki, Tai Chi Chuan, Chi Kung, and the I’Ching.
For nearly a decade, Ken has been a Christian apologetics researcher and lecturer. He’s published articles in apologetics journals and appeared on radio and podcasts. Ken is also an independent researcher and lecturer, specializing in systematic Biblical paranormology, with hundreds of articles on his website.
For more details from Ken’s perspective on the issue of the Nephilim and the Sons of God, please see his related books:
- What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology
- The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts
- Bible Encyclopedias and Dictionaries on Angels, Demons, Nephilim, and Giants: From 1851 to 2010
- Nephilim and Giants in Bible Commentaries: From the 1500s to the 2000s
- The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants: What do Scholarly Academics Say About Nephilim Giants?
- The Pastoral Nephilim And Giants: What Do Pastors Teach and Preach?
- 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.
- Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales
- Nephilim and Giants: A Library of Congress Reader
- 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
- In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch
- The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant?
