Why should we study the Nephilim
Why are most Christians so afraid of studying Genesis 6 and investigating the identify of the Nephilim and ‘sons of God’?
Chances are that you’re asking these questions because you came across the tale of the Nephilim at church, in your bible reading, or by going down too many fringe rabbit holes on the internet that left your head spinning…
Looking for real answers to those questions?
So am I, and I have been for the last 20 years. But it hasn’t been an easy journey.
How I got here
It all began when I was in high school, and I was doing a school paper on legends related to the antediluvian age. Since most cultures have flood legends, I figured that many would have stories of what happened before the flood.
And that’s when, of course, I stumbled across these four verses in Genesis 6 – verses that I had read before, but had ignored since that’s what everyone else did with them.
As I’ve tried to delve into these verses, I’ve found equal levels of absurdity and resistance among fellow believers on the topic.
What does Genesis say about the Nephilim?
Tucked between the stories of Cain and Abel and Noah’s flood, Genesis 6: 1-4 are both enigmatic and controversial, and they have been for at least 3,000 years (see what ancient Jews and Christians wrote about the Nephilim).
1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,
2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”
4 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: 1-4 (ESV)
These verses generate many questions. Just who are the ‘sons of God’ and the Nephilim? Was the writer of Genesis just reworking pagan mythologies into the Jewish antediluvian story, or was this an actual historical event that really happened in time and space? (Answers research journal has an excellent paper on this question)
What isn’t in dispute is that according to these verses, the writer is saying that the ‘sons of God’ (whoever they were) took wives from among the ‘daughters of men’, and the inference seems to be that these Nephilim that appeared were the results of this intermingling.
The writer knows that his readers have heard tales of these ‘men of renown’, and is identifying this event as the origin of these men and the stories that have endured about them.
Confronting Genesis 6
These verses were written and preserved for a reason. Both Christians and Jews for millenia have asserted that these short verses form the basis of pagan mythologies and many ancient gods (Philo and Josephus as two examples).
To ignore this passage, or to swing the opposite direction and sensationalise it past its original meaning are mistakes and missed opportunities.
So that was the start of many years of research, sifting through the mountains of discussion on this topic to find nuggets of truth that comport with the Bible. I found it to be fascinating, and new research is being done all the time that adds more flavor to the conversation.
I’ve been chasing the giants all this time.
why we should study the Nephilim
It seems that in every church, you’ll usually have one ‘Nephilim nut’ who people try to avoid at Bible study…
As a result, few take it seriously. We’re going to try to liberate this topic from being a fringe topic of conversation.
We need to recognize that:
- The early church fathers often spoke about this passage
- This story is inextricably linked with ancient mythologies and religions
- Excellent research on the Nephilim is being done by scholars from a variety of fields & backgrounds
- Modern Christian commentators are also addressing these questions
We should not be hiding our heads in the sand and painstakingly avoiding this topic. Let’s engage with it with open minds and see how these verses were understood through history and why.
We have a responsibility to understand it better and help others to understand it better as well.
Next in the series
I was always frustrated that although there is a lot of good research on this topic, those always seemed to be overshadowed by an overabundance of conspiratorial garbage to sift through.
In this series, we’re going to do our best to investigate the story of the Nephilim and ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6. Together we can separate fact from fiction and get biblically grounded, non-conspiratorial answers, addressing the most common questions:
- Why we should study the Nephilim
- The Story of the Nephilim in five Minutes
- Who were the Sons of God in Genesis 6? Text Analysis
- Who were the Sons of God? Ancient Myth Parallels
- Who were the Sons of God? Ancient Jewish Views
- Who were the Sons of God? NT Authors
- Who were the Sons of God? Early Church
- Who were the Sons of God? Modern Scholars
- Common objections
- Who were the Nephilim?
- Giant myths
- Giants after the Flood?
- Warnings and Cautions
- Extra-Biblical Texts – Enoch
- Relevance and Conclusions
- THE SON vs the sons… two incarnations contrasted
