Monthly Archives: January 2013

By ERIC SIEVERS

Ever since I first read about the Nephilim when I was a teenager, I was always fascinated by them.  Indeed, the idea of a race of “Supermen” has always intrigued us, throughout history.  Achilles, Hercules, Arthur, Beowulf, Romulus and Remus are all examples of this.  The Nazi Germans were obsessed with it, and modern science to this day still strongly flirts with the idea of creating a “genetically perfect” super being.

So who, or what, were the Nephilim?  There is much controversy to this day regarding this question, as the Bible itself is very unclear about it.  Indeed, the Hebrew word itself, הַנְּפִלִ֞ים, or “han·nə·p̄i·lîm”, “The Nephilim”, is unclear, and has no approximate translation.  The King James Bible translates it as “Giants”, but most modern translations just use the Hebrew word.  The most likely origin of the word comes from the verb “Naphal” נָפַל “to fall”.  It also could mean: abandon, attacked, cast down, desert, defect, downfall, fail, felled, prostrating, or topple.  Nephilim are only mentioned 3 times in the Old Testament: Once in Genesis 6:4, and twice in Numbers 13:33.

So where did they come from?  Genesis 6 states that:  “¹ When people began being numerous on earth, and daughters had been born to them, ² the sons of God, looking at the women, saw how beautiful they were and married as many of them as they chose. ³ Yahweh said, ‘My spirit cannot be indefinitely responsible for human beings, who are only flesh; let the time allowed each be a hundred and twenty years.’ ⁴ The Nephilim were on earth in those days (and even afterwards) when the sons of God resorted to the women, and had children by them. These were the heroes of days gone by, men of renown.”

So they were sired by the mysterious “Sons of God” with human females.  Who were the Sons of God, or בְנֵי־ הָֽאֱלֹהִים, “ḇə·nê hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm”?  There are three schools of thought:

The first, held by Orthodox Jews to this day, is that the Sons of God were actually a class of nobility, who took common girls as concubines and begot the Nephilim.  But, in my view, this makes little sense.  Why should such offspring be supermen?

The second, held by some Christians (The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and notable historical figures such as St. Augustine, John Chrysostom, and John Calvin) holds that the Sons of God were of the line of Seth, and that the Daughters of Men were of the line of Cain.  In essence, the Nephilim were a result of the union of believers with unbelievers, or of Godly men with ungodly women (makes Benjamin’s recent post about marrying nonbelievers all the more terrifying).  Again, this seems unlikely in my view, as most children born today would fit this description, yet they aren’t super human.  Nor is it logical to assume that all of the descendants of Seth would be Godly, as Yahweh floods the Earth and kills all of them soon afterward.  Which brings us to the third, and most commonly accepted view in Christendom.

The Sons of God were angels.  This is supported by the fact that the Hebrew phrase for “sons of God” used in Genesis appears only 3 more times in the Old Testament, in Job.

“One day when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan.” Job 1:6.

“Another day, the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh and Satan came with them too.”  Job 2:1

“What supports its pillars at their bases?  Who laid its cornerstone to the joyful concert of the morning stars, and unanimous acclaim of the sons of God?”  Job 38:6-7

From these descriptions in Job, it is very clear that the Bene Ha Elohim  are angelic beings, as they enter before God’s presence, and were present at the time of creation.   They could not be men, either of Seth’s line, or of some class of nobility.

As for the Nephilim themselves, Genesis 6 explicitly states that they existed after the events described there, which would mean that some of them either survived the flood, or more likely, others were born in the same manner after the flood.  Numbers supports this, by connecting them with the “giants” described by the scouts upon returning from Canaan.

Curiously, my New Jerusalem Study Bible has quite a bit to say about the Nephilim, or at least, the men who were assumed to be descended from them, and I included some of it below, with the cross references.

The Anakim, as also Emim, Rephaim, and Zamzummim (or Zuzim), Dt 2:10-11, 20-21; see Gn 14:5, are legendary names for the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine and Transjordan.  These were identified with the fabulous Nephilim of Gn 6:4 or Giants of Nb 13:33, the raisers of megalithic monuments, see Dt 3:11.  In the days of Joshua, the Anakim still constituted an aristocracy in the highlands of Hebron and in the coastal region, Jos 11:21 seq.; 14:12-15; 15:13-15; 21:11.  The Rephaim persisted in the country known as Bashan, Dt 3:13; Jos 12:4 seq.; 13:12, while in Judea their memory was preserved in the Valley of the Rephaim, south-west of Jerusalem, Jos 15:8; 18:16; 2 Samuel 5:18.  David’s soldiers finished off the last descendants of Rapha, their eponymous ancestor, 2 Samuel 21:16-22; see 1 Chronicles 20:4-8.  The word repha’im later became a synonym for the ghosts in Sheol, see Jb 25:5 seq.; Ps 88:10; Is 14:9; 26:14, 19.

By ERIC SIEVERS

“Ye shall not surely die.” One of my favorite quotes from the King James Bible, but also one that has confused me, because of the way it is translated. Every version of the Bible has this phrased differently. The NIV has it as ““You will not certainly die.” The NASB has it as ” “You surely will not die!” And my New Jerusalem Catholic Bible has it as ‘No! You will not die!”

But in English, “You will not surely die” and “You surely will not die” can have a subtle difference in meaning. The first could be interpreted as, “You could die, but it isn’t certain”, and the second is much more definite; death will NOT happen. The reason it confused me so was because I often wondered whether Satan was lying outright, or just trying to plant doubt in Eve’s mind by telling a half-truth. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because Satan deceived her and caused the fall, but it’s still fun to contemplate. So let’s look at the Hebrew:

The phrase in question is לֹֽא־ מ֖וֹת תְּמֻתֽוּן׃ or “lo mot tamut”. According to Strong’s Concordance, this is translated as “Not surely die”. A more literal translation of “mot tamut” is “Dying, you shall die”. Both words mean “to die”, but this phrase combines the infinitive absolute (mot), and the imperfect verb (tamut), thus adding emphasis, which is why mot (die) is translated into English as “surely” or “definitely”.

From what I can understand, by adding לֹֽא־ (no, or not) before “mot tamut”, the more accurate translation into English would be the more definite “surely not die” instead of the more ambiguous (but more literal) “not surely die”. Satan, therefore, wasn’t twisting words around, but was simply lying.

For reference, “mot tamut” occurs also in Genesis 2, 20, and 26. The phrase, or variants of it occur 49 times in the Old Testament.

By GRACE LEONA WORCESTER

Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

This familiar Christmas greeting has been written, read, sung, and heard by thousands of Christians throughout the generations. Today, I will challenge you to reconsider your understanding of this verse for the very simple reason that the above translation is not an accurate translation from the Greek. Here is the verse in Greek:

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας.

The translation error centers around the word εὐδοκίας. Prior to that word, the sentence is translated thusly: “Glory in the highest to God and on earth peace to men….” As you might have guessed, εὐδοκίας means “good will”. Since it is the last word in the sentence you might think that the sentence should read the same as the English version presented at the start of this post.

However, word order does not matter in Greek. Instead, the word order in the English is determined by the word ending in Greek. εὐδοκίας comes from the word εὐδοκία. The ending in our sentence is –ίας meaning that the word is in the genitive case. This basically means that the word is the object of a prepositional phrase. Translated correctly, the sentence would read in this way:

“Glory in the highest to God and on earth peace to men of good will.”

For the Greek to read in the English presented at the beginning of this post εὐδοκίας would have to be εὐδοκία. Using the -ία ending would put the word in the nominative case. This would make the word the subject of the sentence (or in this case the subject of the second independent clause in the sentence) on equal footing with the word εἰρήνη (peace) resulting in the translation “peace and good will to man”.

So why the discrepancy?

The answer is simple: there are just as many manuscripts utilizing the nominative as there are manuscripts utilizing the genitive case. However, textual criticism indicates that the genitive case translation is more correct than the nominative case translation. It is much more likely that over time the sigma (ς) at the end of the word was mistakenly dropped than that it was mistakenly added. This is made further probable by the interesting fact that sigmas (ς) were the final letter in so many words that scribes took to denoting them with a small dot similar to an apostrophe to speed the scribal process.

Therefore, the familiar Christmas card greeting is incorrect and the verse should be translated:

“Glory in the highest to God and on earth peace to men of good will.”

Having faithfully translated this verse for you, my readers, I leave you to decide: what are the theological implications?