On the BIBLICAL Nephilim question... a speculation

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Since the first thread on this has degenerated into a lopsided, though passionate, debate on unorthodox theories of the origin of civilizations, I’m trying to get back to the issue as discussed in this Staff Report, and adding some ramblings of my own…

… not really on the Nephilim, but rather on the “the sons of heaven taking the daughters of men for wives” issue. (As the report says, it’s by no means clear that the race of “Giants, who were the Heroes of old” are to be understood as the offspring of this union; but rather Genesis seems to claim that the miscegenation helped humanity decay into wickedness)

There is a possible interpretation that could tie this in with the “where did Cain’s wife, and the population with which to found a city, come from” (and the "against whom would Cain have to get a protective mark, anyway?) question…

That would involve the old “multiple creations” school – if we’re to adopt a reading of the Bible where the story is claiming to be entirely literally true, but you must fill in some blanks, it could go like…:
That there were already populations of humans on Earth, as a result of the First Creation (sixth day, simultaneous male and female, on the 7th He rests, etc.);
That in the second creation, God specifically made THE lineage of humans who will play the leading roles in the spiritual show (Adam, naming the animals, the rib, Eve, Eden, etc.);
That as Genesis does not say explicitly that First Creation was destroyed, we fill that blank with an assumption that this applies only to the Land of Eden (Mesopotamia) and elsewhere on Earth, First Creation survives;
That the daughters “of men” are the first-creation humans, and the sons “of heaven” are the second-creation humans;
That the Flood ensured that all surviving humanity is descended from the Adamic lineage, thru Noah.

If we take the Bible as divinely-inspired-but-symbolic, you could attempt to shoehorn in an evolutionary parallel: the First Creation is humans having evolved naturally; the Second Creation is God taking a sample of the preexisting human animal and “breathing soul into him”, evolving him into a spiritual being; the Flood is some sort of cataclism that wipes out all other lineages.

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All in all, it’s easier to just say, “HEY, it’s a good story and a morality tale, let’s leave it at that!”
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BTW, my WAG is that the “giants who walked the Earth” refers to the people of the Fertile Crescent coming upon evidence that at some point in the past there were other great and powerful cultures, which were now gone. Many cultures have the concept of a past Age of Heroes, anyway.

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At some risk of getting completely out of my depth, but I think Dex is on the same page with this, I’d add two words to his piece. The reading “sons of God” for Nephilim would be inconsistent with the monotheism of the later, edited text of Genesis. But apparently at the time it was edited the reference to “sons of God” and its appearance in Genesis was too widely accepted to be simply edited out. Thus the obscure reference, one of many obscure references to other gods, their offspring and their hosts that appear in the Pentateuch as it has come down to us.

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<< The reading “sons of God” for Nephilim would be inconsistent with the monotheism of the later, edited text of Genesis. But apparently at the time it was edited the reference to “sons of God” and its appearance in Genesis was too widely accepted to be simply edited out. >>

Stay tuned. Coming in a few weeks, a Staff Report (well, actually, more than one) on how the Biblical text(s) came to be.

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Gee, you mean someone didn’t just sit down with a bunch of pens and a pile of that really thin paper and start writing with “In the beginning” at Genesis 1:1 and go through until they got to the “Amen” at the end of Revelations? Everything I know must be wrong then. :wink:

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Dex,

I am upset at your treatment of the Nephilim…

The Nebrew term for “Sons of God” in Genesis 6 is “bana-elohim”. You will find the term “bana-elohim” in the first chapter of Job, when it says (and my Bible is not with me, so I do this from memory) “God was in Heaven and the Sons of God (In some translations, the phrase “Sons of God” is rendered “Angels”) were in Heaven , and Satan came among them.”

So, angels did have sex with humans to create the Nephilim.

You said in your report that the Nephilim could not have survived the flood, but you contradicted yourself without realizing it.

  1. In order for there to be a reference to the Nephilim in the book of Numbers, some Nephilim had to survive, since the book of Numbers was written after the flood.

  2. Genesis 6 starts off by saying “In the days of Noah, AND afterward. the Sons of God…took for themselves wives…” Noah’s lifetime included the flood.

How did the Nephilim survive? I have two theories.

  1. Since their fathers were angels, they simply continued taking human wives after the flood.

  2. The angels had sex with other creatures that survived the flood, i.e. animals. Before you laugh (or send Uncle Cecil after me), consider this:

The Nephilim settled in the towns that the Israelites had to go through to get to the promised land.

God told the Israelites to kill every living thing in those towns as they marched through.

This would explain the mythology behind half-human, half-animal beings like centaurs and lamias, and mermaids.

In any case, the “Sons of God” is not in conflict with the monotheistic nature of the Bible. God said “let US make man in OUR image…” US implies more the one divine being was involved. Or “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”.

There are more gods, but YHWH has the best retirement plan :slight_smile:

Ministryman

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I’m not sure why you’re upset, ministryman, but welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards.

On the “Sons of God”: The Staff Report did say that one interpretation of “bnai ha-elohim” is angels, some sort of heavenly court to parallel the courts of earthly kings. However, most commentators shied away from that interpretation in Genesis (although they may accept it for the Job references.) For one thing, the ha- implies that the literal translation is “children of the gods”, which was counter to the main biblical message and would have implied a pagan mythological connection. There were plenty of pagan myths about gods having intercourse with mortals to produce heroes and monsters, etc.

To avoid the biblical account as being seen as such, most commentators – like Rashi (11th Century) – interpret the phrase to mean “sons of the great ones” or nobility, so the descendents of Seth (noble) intermarrying with the descendents of Cain (the “daughters of the Adam”), for instance. Hence, the Staff Report mentioned both the simple reading of the text and the other readings of the text.

And the traditional biblical commentators would tear you to shreds on the use of “us” or the plural noun to refer to God. However, there are certainly many scholars who contend that the bible evolved over many centuries, and that the earliest traditions simply have God as the most powerful of all the gods, while the later traditions discarded the existence of other gods. Most modern translations take “other gods” to mean “things worshipped as gods.”

The ancient Hebrew text is very sparse, and does not waste words. A legalism like “Thou shalt not worship any other object, person, concept, animal, plant, material thing, non-material idea, …” would have been viewed as silly. The final edited biblical text recognizes that people worship many things as gods, and it calls them “gods” without assigning divine attributes to them.

On the Nephilim: If you want to contend that they survived the Flood, you will stand pretty much alone.

You said: << In order for there to be a reference to the Nephilim in the book of Numbers, some Nephilim had to survive, since the book of Numbers was written after the flood. >>

I guess I don’t follow your logic. There are 21st century books written about ancient Pharoahs, but that doesn’t mean that the rule of Pharoahs survived into the 21st Century. The Staff Report is very clear, that almost all commentators say the spies did NOT see actual Nephilim, but that they reported that they did to exaggerate their claims/fears. The Staff Report uses the similar example of the Brits calling the Germans “Huns” during WWI, although there were no Huns anymore. We describe late 19th century industrialists as “robber barons” to make a reference to feudal times. So, it’s perfectly reasonable for the spies to have made a reference to mythological pre-flood times in using the term Nephilim. It does not imply that Nephilim existed at the time the spies made their report, nor at the time the book of Numbers was written.

And your notion that the Nephilim gave birth to centaurs and unicorns is a flight of sheer fantasy. You’re certainly welcome to your beliefs or imaginings, but you won’t find any serious biblical scholars sharing them.

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While by no means a biblical scholar, I had always assumed a link between the account of the Nephilim and the story in the pseudepigrapha Book of Enoch.

Enoch 6:1-2
And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.

And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’

Enoch 7:2
And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells:

8

I thought those were the Titans.

ducks and runs