{"id":188,"date":"2013-01-28T01:35:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T08:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/?p=188"},"modified":"2013-01-28T14:34:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T21:34:56","slug":"study-4-the-nephilim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/?p=188","title":{"rendered":"Study #4: The Nephilim"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ERIC SIEVERS<\/em><\/p>\n

Ever since I first read about the Nephilim when I was a teenager, I was always fascinated by them.\u00a0 Indeed, the idea of a race of \u201cSupermen\u201d has always intrigued us, throughout history.\u00a0 Achilles, Hercules, Arthur, Beowulf, Romulus and Remus are all examples of this.\u00a0 The Nazi Germans were obsessed with it, and modern science to this day still strongly flirts with the idea of creating a \u201cgenetically perfect\u201d super being.<\/p>\n

So who, or what, were the Nephilim?\u00a0 There is much controversy to this day regarding this question, as the Bible itself is very unclear about it.\u00a0 Indeed, the Hebrew word itself, \u05d4\u05b7\u05e0\u05b0\u05bc\u05e4\u05b4\u05dc\u05b4\u059e\u05d9\u05dd<\/strong>, or \u201chan\u00b7n\u0259\u00b7p\u0304i\u00b7l\u00eem\u201d, \u201cThe Nephilim\u201d, is unclear, and has no approximate translation.\u00a0 The King James Bible translates it as \u201cGiants\u201d, but most modern translations just use the Hebrew word.\u00a0 The most likely origin of the word comes from the verb \u201cNaphal\u201d \u05e0\u05b8\u05e4\u05b7\u05dc <\/strong>\u201cto fall\u201d.\u00a0 It also could mean: abandon, attacked, cast down, desert, defect, downfall, fail, felled, prostrating, or topple.\u00a0 Nephilim are only mentioned 3 times in the Old Testament: Once in Genesis 6:4, and twice in Numbers 13:33.<\/p>\n

So where did they come from?\u00a0 Genesis 6 states that:\u00a0 “1<\/sup> When people began being numerous on earth, and daughters had been born to them, 2<\/sup> the sons of God, looking at the women, saw how beautiful they were and married as many of them as they chose. 3<\/sup> 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<\/sup> 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.”<\/p>\n

So they were sired by the mysterious \u201cSons of God\u201d with human females.\u00a0 Who were the Sons of God, or \u05d1\u05b0\u05e0\u05b5\u05d9<\/strong>\u05be \u05d4\u05b8\u05bd\u05d0\u05b1\u05dc\u05b9\u05d4\u05b4\u05d9\u05dd<\/strong>, \u201c\u1e07\u0259\u00b7n\u00ea h\u0101\u00b7\u2019\u0115\u00b7l\u014d\u00b7h\u00eem\u201d?\u00a0 There are three schools of thought:<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 But, in my view, this makes little sense.\u00a0 Why should such offspring be supermen?<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 In essence, the Nephilim were a result of the union of believers with unbelievers, or of Godly men with ungodly women (makes Benjamin\u2019s recent post about marrying nonbelievers all the more terrifying).\u00a0 Again, this seems unlikely in my view, as most children born today would fit this description, yet they aren\u2019t super human.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Which brings us to the third, and most commonly accepted view in Christendom.<\/p>\n

The Sons of God were angels.\u00a0 This is supported by the fact that the Hebrew phrase for \u201csons of God\u201d used in Genesis appears only 3 more times in the Old Testament, in Job.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan.\u201d Job 1:6.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother day, the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh and Satan came with them too.\u201d\u00a0 Job 2:1<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat supports its pillars at their bases?\u00a0 Who laid its cornerstone to the joyful concert of the morning stars, and unanimous acclaim of the sons of God?\u201d\u00a0 Job 38:6-7<\/p>\n

From these descriptions in Job, it is very clear that the Bene Ha Elohim \u00a0are angelic beings, as they enter before God\u2019s presence, and were present at the time of creation.\u00a0\u00a0 They could not be men, either of Seth\u2019s line, or of some class of nobility.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Numbers supports this, by connecting them with the \u201cgiants\u201d described by the scouts upon returning from Canaan.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Anakim, as also Emim, Rephaim, and Zamzummim (or Zuzim), Dt 2:10-11, 20-21; see <\/em>Gn 14:5, are legendary names for the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine and Transjordan.\u00a0 These were identified with the fabulous Nephilim of Gn 6:4 or Giants of Nb 13:33, the raisers of megalithic monuments, see<\/em> Dt 3:11.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 David\u2019s soldiers finished off the last descendants of Rapha, their eponymous ancestor, 2 Samuel 21:16-22; see <\/em>1 Chronicles 20:4-8.\u00a0 The word repha\u2019im <\/em>later became a synonym for the ghosts in Sheol, see <\/em>Jb 25:5 seq.; Ps 88:10; Is 14:9; 26:14, 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ERIC SIEVERS Ever since I first read about the Nephilim when I was a teenager, I was always fascinated by them.\u00a0 Indeed, the idea of a race of \u201cSupermen\u201d has always intrigued us, throughout history.\u00a0 Achilles, Hercules, Arthur, Beowulf, Romulus and Remus are all examples of this.\u00a0 The Nazi Germans were obsessed with it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lukehistorians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}