A Tentative Look at Nephilim

They are both flights of fancy…

The Samson story is a story about a solar God that has been “sanitized” by Hebrew priests.

Jonah is an encounter with the death God Mot, sanitized by Hebrew priests.

Esther is the story of the Magophonia (told by Herodotus) which involved a Vespers-like “day of the long knives” by the Ethnic Persians against the Ethnic Magi of the Medes, sanitized by the Hebrew priests into a “turnabout” morale story. Esther, a diatribe against the Zoroastrian priesthood, is the one text not found in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls… most likely because the Essenes learned their craft from the magi.

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I think I misunderstood your original point. The “just as” at the beginning of v. 7 clearly links v. 7 to v. 6. I thought this was your concern. But you’re looking at the relative “which” after “the surrounding cities” right? If so, then your view is grammatical correct: the “which” refers back to the “surrounding cities” (both are feminine plurals, whereas Sodom and Gomorrah are not). My point was that one must decide if the comparison (from “just as”) includes the sexual component or only the judgment part (the judgment comparison is true in both scenarios). Because I think the Enochian connection (including the sex) is implied, I take it the former way. But you would be justified to argue for the latter.

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I gave the several options above:

Literally surviving the flood would mean hiding on the ark (this is actually in the Jewish literature as an option!) or one of the wives was a carrier (also in the literature).

What are these?

Group identifiers related (sometimes) to the Nephilim (see Num 14:33) - (Gen 14:5; Deut 1:28; 2:10-11, 20 21; 3:11, 13; 9:2; Josh 11:21-22; 12:4; 13:12; 14:12; 17:15). Rephaim is also a name of a valley (possibly harking back to the memory of these creatures). I add “sometimes” b/c genitlic names are fluid (e.g., Canaanites, Amorites). But notice the Deut 2-3 and Joshua references…all dealing with the wilderness years and the conquest. This provides evidence that the conquest was about these guys.

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@deuteroKJ, I took the liberty of organizing your narrative into a logic tree of sorts - -

@deuteroKJ,

I believe POINT “E” is the point I would make!

But that’s too easy, right?

So let’s follow the logical points you laid out for us!

Given point “A”, We can’t reject that they are the literal offspring discussed in Point B… because if we did, we would immediately proceed to point D… and my original innuendo (i.e. they did NOT survive).

So… from Point B, we have to embrace one or more of Points C, either in the form of Point C1 or C2!

Point C1, is rather inferior as an option… in either of its two forms!: if a wife was a Neph… then all of the descendants by her (which would include Noah’s blood as well!) would be Neph. as well. So that seems easy to set aside.

If there was a male Neph. hiding on the ark… he could marry a female granddaughter without causing too much of a ripple I suppose … but this would be QUITE the omission from the Biblical narrative!

And lastly, the problem with either form of C1 is that it is part of a global flood context that doesn’t even begin to work if you use the 6000 year timeframe (namely, that the Flood comes AFTER the Giza pyramids have been built… and yet we find no interruption in the Egyptian civilization at all! - - as well as the complete lack of fossilized Egyptians that would have been killed with the dinosaurs in the very isolated Nile Valley!).

So this leaves us with:

Point C2:
They were not in the flood zone…

This seems to fit the most facts best. For text critical analysis seriously questions whether The Flood was really global when it was first written down. If we are going to contrive some major story gaps to allow the Neph. to exist they should at least be the most reasonable of story gaps… that contribute most to the natural evidence as well.

Conclusion?: I see Point C2 as having the controlling logic for biblical and non-Biblical historical reasons.

And so I would be compelled to more precisely describe the Neph.'s survival by saying:

**“We know the Neph. survived the Flood (did to its regional scope)…”

Thanks for helping me work through the points!

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Well the first instance cited said that the Lord (or Jesus in earliest manuscripts fitting perfectly with the Christ-centered model) after leading His people out of Egypt subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. Sure they committed sexual sin but that was not the emphasis here and it wasn’t the #1 sin at the time either. The sexual immorality was a secondary effect of their unbelief. And in the example of the angels, the primary sexual nature of the sin has to be inferred from sources outside the biblical text. So I don’t want to claim people are going all Freudian here, but it seems like the emphasis on the sexual nature of all three situations is not much supported. Only in the last instance. The common thread is judgment.

Why do we think the Rephaim were Nephilim? The sons of Anak are ID as such but I don’t see any linkage to the Rephaim. The most famous giant in the bible is Goliath, and there is not hint in the text of his being Nephilim is there? I think there was more than one race of “giants” out there.

I agree these are the best two options, though D maybe. I was trying to give all the logical options. Option E would work OK if we didn’t connect the Nephilim to those other group names. Otherwise, one would invoke some type of legend to the whole thing. My own conservative impulse drives me to a more historical reading, thus C2.

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Maybe Nephilim just meant “outsider” of various sorts?

It’s not explicit; one would have to infer it from the connections with the others. So, yes, this might be more speculative than the Anakim, but the connection of Rephaim to giants is biblical (2 Sam 21:22; 1 Chron 20:8)…not to mention the size of Og. With Goliath, I would say yes, it’s quite possible he is a descendant of the giant clans. David (the messianic type) killing one of the last giants fits the larger redemptive story perfectly (and in context, it contrasts with Saul in 1 Sam 15:2-3).

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What the term came to mean could be up for debate theoretically, but the term most likely comes from the Aramaic for “giant,” and the textual data fits this. Come to think of it, the fact that Nephilim continue beyond the proto-history of Gen 1-11 probably speaks against seeing these as those outside the garden.

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Walton and Walton’s Lost World of the Conquest does argue that “Canaanites” (all those in the land) represent outsiders in the sense of those not in covenant with YHWH. But Nephilim et al. seem to be a subgroup among the Canaanites. But you might consider their thesis (which I’m not totally on board with myself) to see if there’s some fodder for your thinking.

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Heck I think “Hebrew” means outsider of sorts, though it is also linked to the offspring of Heber, both could still be true vis-a-vi ancient Mesopotamia.

The root word means “to fall” so I think some connect that to fallen angels, but I think it is more in the sense of causing others to fall. Strong’s defines it…

giant

Or nphil {nef-eel’}; from naphal; properly, a feller, i.e. A bully or tyrant – giant.

What I see in the text making just a few connections: They were big men, but not just for being physically large. They were “big men” in the sense of doing mighty deeds. Not in the good sense of the word, but in being warlords. Men fell in battle before them. And I see them as a result of the unions of the Sons of God and the daughters of Adam, though possible the Sons of God were themselves large to start with.

Since I think the text describes a local, maybe not even a regional, flood, the answer for me is C2. Their clans drifted away from Adam’s clans over the course of time and the flood didn’t finish them all off. Some of the bad seed was still loose- until the children of Israel finished the job.

I don’t mean to harp, but want to quibble with a common error that gets into the nitty-gritty of the original language. I don’t mean this to detract from the larger issues.

This is the commonly understood etymology, and I agree it’s possible. However, the spelling of nephilim would be peculiar. One would expect nephalim. Yes, the one-letter difference matters. An Aramaic origin (from the singular naphila) is a better fit, especially given the Greek gigantes. The LXX translator clearly read the Aramaic root rather than the Hebrew (maybe he was wrong, but without good evidence, it’s best to go with someone closer to the source). The same goes for the Masoretes (Jewish scribes of the 6th-10th c. AD) that added the vowel points. I understand the need to rely on Strong’s for help, but just know it’s got a lot of problems with it. For example, if the following were correct…

it would be the only instance of a Hebrew noun with this spelling form based on the verbal root.

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Perhaps this goes back to our prior discussion about how words and their meanings change. From the surrounding text in Genesis 6 it is easy to connect the term to “big men” in the “movers and shakers” sense of the word, as well as violence and bloodshed. The physical size is not emphasized there. By the time of the Conquest, it becomes the defining characteristic.

Even if, it still argues against “fallen ones.” Also, even if one grants the “mover and shaker” idea (i.e., “men of reknown”), the physical stature/strength still is inherently present in the the word for “mighty men” (gibborim). I don’t think we disagree on much of the larger picture.

You missed out point E.

I agree. I mentioned that connection to say where other people have made a mistake, not as an expression of my position on the word. The Nephelim were not the fallen ones, the people they felled were the fallen ones. Not fallen angels, but fallen in battle. We are not far apart at all.

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The speculative/purported link between the peoples we call:

Cain-in (i.e. Cain-ites);
Canaan (i.e. Caananites); and
Ken-in (i.e. Kenotes)…

Seems more than likely an INTENDED linkage!