This article looks at Bernard J. Bamberger’s Encyclopaedia Judaica entry “Nephilim”, republished by the Jewish Virtual Library, and how it handles Genesis 6, Numbers 13, and later Jewish traditions about the Nephilim.
On the basis of that reference entry, which surveys biblical texts and later Jewish literature, the answer is careful and layered: the Nephilim are described in biblical passages as giants, but Genesis 6:4 remains ambiguous, and the fuller fallen-angel story belongs to later interpretation rather than to Genesis itself. Bamberger distinguishes the brief biblical notices from Second Temple fallen-angel myths, then shows how Targum, Midrash, Talmud, medieval commentators, and later mystical sources moved in different directions rather than preserving one unified Jewish view.
Bamberger’s answer: biblical giants, but an ambiguous Genesis 6
Bamberger opens by defining the term and fixing the main biblical anchors. He describes the Nephilim as “NEPHILIM (Heb. נְפִילִים), a race of giants said to have dwelt in pre-Israelite Canaan (Num. 13:33).” That definition ties the entry first to Numbers 13:33, where the spies claim to have seen Nephilim in Canaan, and then to Genesis 6:1–4.
On Genesis 6, Bamberger reads the “sons of gods” as divine or angelic beings who took mortal wives. He then gives Genesis 6:4 in a translation that places the Nephilim on earth at the time when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men and had offspring.
The key issue is how Genesis 6:4 relates the Nephilim to the offspring and to the gibborim, the heroes or mighty figures of the verse. After giving his translation, Bamberger comments on what the Hebrew grammar may allow: “This could mean that the Nephilim were contemporaneous, but not identical, with the offspring of divine beings and earthly women, who were called gibborim (so, e.g., Morgenstern, in HUCA 14 (1939), 85ff.).”
That grammatical point prevents the entry from becoming a simple proof-text for any one later system. Genesis 6:4 can be read as identifying the Nephilim with the children of the divine-human unions, but Bamberger explicitly notes that it can also place the Nephilim in the same era without making them the same group.
At the same time, Bamberger says his translation follows an ancient tradition that equates the Nephilim and the gibborim as the offspring of angels and mortals. So the entry holds two points together: it reports the ancient fusion of Nephilim, gibborim, and angel-human offspring, but it does not present that fusion as the only possible reading of the Hebrew.
| Layer in the tradition | Identification | Function in Bamberger’s entry |
|---|---|---|
| Biblical data | Nephilim as giants; in Bamberger’s Genesis translation, the “sons of gods” are divine or angelic beings; Genesis 6:4 remains ambiguous | The starting point, but sparse |
| Ancient fusion reading | Nephilim and gibborim understood as angel-human offspring | The tradition Bamberger’s translation follows |
| Second Temple apocrypha | Rebel angels father giant, wicked offspring | A major expansion beyond Genesis |
| Targum and Midrash reading described in the entry | “Sons of God” as young aristocrats who married commoners | A human-centered alternative |
| Medieval commentators | Human marriages, with some explanations involving social, physical, or moral distinction | A generally non-mythological line |
| Later mystical and post-talmudic sources | Sometimes fallen angels, sometimes other human lineages | Divergent revivals and reinterpretations |
Second Temple literature expands Genesis into a fallen-angel myth
Bamberger next describes how Second Temple writings developed the brief Genesis notice into a larger story. He says apocryphal writings of the period elaborated and reinterpreted the fragmentary biblical narrative, depicting the angels as rebels against God who fell, defiled their heavenly purity, and introduced sinfulness to the earth.
What I find most useful in this entry is not that it flattens the traditions into one answer, but that it keeps asking which layer of evidence we are actually dealing with. Bamberger is not denying that these traditions are ancient or important; he is placing them downstream from the biblical text. In these writings, the “sons of God” become rebel angels, the Nephilim are identified with giant and violent offspring, and the Flood is tied to the corruption associated with those beings.
He states the boundary with unusual directness: “Their giant offspring were wicked and violent; the Flood was occasioned by their sinfulness. (None of these ideas is in the biblical text.)” That parenthetical is one of the most important controls in the entry. It allows Bamberger to report 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and related traditions without treating their expanded plot as the content of Genesis 6.
Even within the Second Temple cluster, he notes variation. Some versions connect the destruction of the giants with later evil spirits; others differ over how the giants died. Bamberger writes, “Because of their evil nature, God decreed that the Nephilim should massacre one another, although according to another view most of them perished in the Flood.” The entry’s point is not that all early Jewish texts taught one fixed Nephilim doctrine, but that a family of mythic expansions developed around a brief biblical passage.
Bamberger then evaluates the later status of that myth within Jewish tradition: “As this dualistic myth does not appear in the apocalypses of Baruch and Esdras nor in the aggadah of the talmudic period, it was apparently rejected as incompatible with Jewish monotheism.” His wording is measured. He says “apparently rejected,” not universally erased, and he identifies the problem as the myth’s dualistic structure.
Rabbinic and medieval sources move Genesis 6 into human categories
Classical rabbinic interpretation, as Bamberger presents it, tends to move the passage away from angelic unions and toward social abuse among humans. His summary is concise: “The ‘sons of God’ are explained in the Targum to Genesis 6:4 and the Midrash (Gen. R. 26:5) as young aristocrats who married the daughters of commoners.”
That interpretation keeps the moral problem of Genesis 6 but changes its category. The issue is no longer a crossing of heavenly and earthly kinds. It is the conduct of powerful men who marry women from lower social ranks. The phrase “sons of God” becomes a title of status rather than a description of heavenly nature.
Bamberger is also careful with talmudic references that preserve names associated with the Enochic myth. He says the Babylonian Talmud mentions Shamhazzai, Uzza, and Uzziel, but does not say that they were angels. He specifically notes that Yoma 67b alludes to the sins of Uzza and Uzziel, while Niddah 61a states that Sihon and Og were descendants of Shamhazzai.
I found that qualification important because a name can survive without the full angelological framework attached to it. Bamberger therefore treats the talmudic material as evidence that older mythic elements were known, but not as evidence that the Talmud simply adopted the Enochic fallen-angel story.
Later material becomes more varied. Bamberger says that in post-talmudic literature the long-suppressed myth came to the surface again, but not always in the same form: “The Palestinian Targum gives the orthodox rendering of Genesis 6:1, but translates verse 4 as: ‘Shamhazzai and Uzziel fell from heaven and were on earth in those days’–identifying the Nephilim as the fallen angels rather than their children.”
That is a different identification from the ancient fusion reading in which the Nephilim are the offspring of angels and women. In this later rendering, the Nephilim can be the fallen beings themselves. Elsewhere, Bamberger notes other explanations, including a passage in the same late Midrash that says the Nephilim were descendants of Cain, and he says the Zohar also identifies the Nephilim with fallen angels. The result is not a restored consensus, but a set of divergent post-talmudic and mystical uses of older motifs.
For the standard medieval commentators, however, Bamberger sees the human-centered approach continuing: “The standard medieval Bible commentators generally followed the classical aggadah in rejecting the mythological interpretation and asserting that the marriages in Genesis 6 were human.” He names Nahmanides and Abrabanel in this context, presenting their readings as part of a broader effort to explain Genesis 6 without making the “sons of God” fallen angels.
In that medieval line, the Nephilim can still be exceptional or notorious, but the explanation has shifted. Their identity is worked out through human genealogy, social rank, physical stature, or moral failure rather than through a heavenly descent myth. Bamberger reports these strategies descriptively; he does not collapse them into one meaning of the word.
What Bamberger leaves certain, probable, debated, and unsupported
Bamberger’s entry is most useful when its levels of evidence stay separate. The Bible gives the name, the giant association, and the difficult Genesis 6 setting. Second Temple writings supply the dramatic fallen-angel expansion. Targum, Midrash, and medieval sources often resist that expansion. Later sources sometimes revive it in altered forms.
| Confidence level | What can be said from Bamberger’s entry | What should not be overstated |
|---|---|---|
| High confidence | Genesis 6 and Numbers 13 are brief; later traditions add much more detail. | That 1 Enoch, Jubilees, or the Zohar simply reproduce what Genesis already says. |
| Probable from the entry’s argument | Bamberger argues that the dualistic fallen-angel myth was apparently rejected in the talmudic period, and that standard medieval commentators generally preferred human-centered readings. | That every Jewish source rejected angelic readings or that no mythic elements survived. |
| Debated | Genesis 6:4 may identify the Nephilim with the offspring, or it may place them in the same period. | That grammar alone settles whether the Nephilim are the direct offspring of the “sons of God.” |
| Later tradition | Stories about how the giants died or how evil spirits arose belong to later traditions described by the entry. | Using those details as established biblical teaching. |
| Unsupported | The entry surveys competing interpretations. | Claiming it presents the full fallen-angel myth as the official Jewish reading of Genesis 6. |
The caution built into that table comes from Bamberger’s own distinctions, not from a desire to minimize the supernatural elements. He reads the “sons of gods” in Genesis 6 as divine or angelic beings and says his translation follows an ancient tradition that equates Nephilim and gibborim. Yet he also flags the grammatical ambiguity of Genesis 6:4 and repeatedly marks when later sources have moved beyond the biblical text.
Conclusion
Takeaways: Bamberger treats the Nephilim as giants in the biblical passages, but not as a simple doorway into the entire later fallen-angel myth. Genesis 6 is brief and grammatically open at the key point; Second Temple texts greatly expand it; Targum, Midrash, and medieval commentators often reframe it in human terms; later Jewish sources revive mythic elements unevenly. The central claim is therefore restrained: Bamberger maps a history of interpretation, not a single settled doctrine of the Nephilim.
For broader background, see the guides to the Nephilim, the sons of God, and the Book of Enoch.
Jake Mooney is a lay researcher and the author of the novel The Descent of the Gods, with 25+ years studying Genesis 6. Chasing the Giants is where he brings Bible-first research together on the topic to help separate what we can really believe vs what is purely sensationalism.
This article drew on Bernard J. Bamberger’s Encyclopaedia Judaica entry “Nephilim,” reading it closely alongside Genesis 6 and Numbers 13 and following the specific interpretive layers he identifies from Second Temple literature through rabbinic, medieval, and mystical sources.
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