Finding Nephilim

Angels & Demons
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Soulsnaxx
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Finding Nephilim

Post by Soulsnaxx » Mon May 13, 2013 10:27 am

Does the Bible teach that the Nephilim (giants) mentioned in Genesis 6:4 were the offspring of angels and women? Or were they simply the children of men and women (only much bigger). Who were the "sons of God?" Were they the angels who supposedly fathered the Nephilim? And who were those mighty men of old? Are the Nephilim still with us? Well, visit YouTube even briefly and you’re likely to trip over several of them.

There is a lot of babble and too little Bible in the debate concerning the Nephilim, who are a frequent topic on Steve Gregg’s Narrow Path radio program as well.

Soulsnaxx has produced a YouTube presentation of a phone call to The Narrow Path concerning the Nephilim. A sequel will follow. Below is the link to Finding Nephilim (Part 1).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GykU--zpBu0

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steve
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by steve » Mon May 13, 2013 12:33 pm

I was unsure, in listening again, as to the real nature of the caller's final question. It may be that I misunderstood it and answered incorrectly.

I thought he was asking whether "heroes of old" was referring to "of old" from the standpoint of the timeframe of the pre-flood world. That is, were the heroes already ancient history at the time when the marriages described were taking place, or only from the standpoint of Moses, who later wrote the history? I still don't know what the caller meant, but my answer was affirming that "of old" meant ancient times long before the writer's lifetime. I thought the caller was asking whether they might have belonged to a pre-Adamic period, so that, even in Noah's day, they were already from a much earlier millennium.

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Paidion
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by Paidion » Mon May 13, 2013 9:55 pm

It is the traditional Jewish view that the Nephilim resulted from the "sons of God" (fallen angels) having intercourse with the "daughters of men" (human women).
I am inclined to agree with this interpretation.

There are several other times in the Old Testament, in which the expression "sons of God" was used to reference angels:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. (Deuteronomy 32:8)

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. (Job 1:6 )

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. (Job 2:1 )

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:7 )


John 1:12 is not an instance of the phrase "sons of God" referring to believers. The phrase in that verse is "children of God", correctly translated in the NKJV and other modern versions. However, several verses in the New Testament containing the expression "sons of God" DO reference human beings:
Matt 5:9, Rom 8:14,19, Gal 3:16.

The following verse does not seem to support the idea that the existence of Nephilim and the sexual intercourse between the sons of God and the daughters of men, were two separate matters:

Genesis 6:4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Some hold, and I tend to agree, that these giants were the "mighty men of old" who are referenced in Greek mythology as "gods" (mighty ones).
Those "sons of God" who had intercourse with the "daughters of men" may have been the ones referenced by Jude in the following verse:

And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. (Jude 1:6 )

I also think that it may have been the spirits of the Nephilim to whom Christ went, after being made alive in spirit:

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. (1 Peter 3:18-20)

Here is the reason I think these may have been the spirits of the Nephilim:

They "formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark." Why is it specified that Christ preached to the spirits who did not obey in the days of Noah? Why not to other needy spirits? My view is that human beings do not have spirits which are separate from their bodies, and when they die, they really die, and remain dead until they are resurrected. However, the Nephilim were not ordinary human beings. Their mothers were human, but their fathers were angelic. And angels are spirits. Thus the hybrid Nephilim which resulted from this unusual union had spirits which were put in "prison" after their death. I don't think this is the case with ordinary human beings.
Paidion

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Soulsnaxx
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by Soulsnaxx » Tue May 14, 2013 2:33 am

Paidion wrote:It is the traditional Jewish view that the Nephilim resulted from the "sons of God" (fallen angels) having intercourse with the "daughters of men" (human women). I am inclined to agree with this interpretation.


I clipped the following out of the Wikipedia page on Nephilim. It raises doubts that the traditional Jewish view is what you say it is.
Orthodox Judaism has taken a stance against the idea that Genesis 6 refers to angels or that angels could intermarry with men. Shimon bar Yochai pronounced a curse on anyone teaching this idea. Rashi and Nachmanides followed this. Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 3:1–3 may also imply that the "sons of God" were human. Consequently, most Jewish commentaries and translations describe the Nephilim as being from the offspring of "sons of nobles", rather than from "sons of God" or "sons of angels". This is also the rendering suggested in the Targum Onqelos, Symmachus and the Samaritan Targum which read "sons of the rulers", where Targum Neophyti reads "sons of the judges".
I am inclined to agree with this interpretation. It seems to comport with the actual text. Besides a lack of what counts as solid Scriptural evidence that the Nephilim were the spawn of angels and humans, I don't think the theory passes the common sense test. That is, we know humans have genes, and it seems reasonable and logical to assume that angels, being spiritual, do not (or, perhaps sans angel DNA they relied on angel dust). My gut tells me the angel/woman theory is incorrect. It seems long on fantasy and short on fact. In fact, it seems devoid of fact to me.
Paidion wrote:There are several other times in the Old Testament, in which the expression "sons of God" was used to reference angels:
Even if this is so, it doesn't make it so in Genesis 6:4. The Bible also refers to some humans as "sons of God," as you pointed out, and it seems unlikely they are angels (because of the DNA problem), and not men, in this passage.

That there were giants is clear (though "giant" is a relative term. Anyone over 6' is a giant to me!). That men and women produce children is a given. But that spiritual beings mated with corporal beings to produce giants is neither obvious nor solidly factual. If I thought it realistic that angels and humans produced Nephilim, I couldn't help but wonder what God's purpose would have been for such bizarre procreation. Oh wait! YouTube is jammed with speculation about that, too.

One might ask, "Well, how is it that regular humans could possibly have produced giants before the flood? It had to have been the influence of angels." I would ask, "Well, after the flood, when there were only eight humans beings left on earth, how did a profusion of races, sizes, and shapes of human beings develop from them? All humanity since the Flood comes from one tiny genetic pool: Noah and his family. And we're not told there was a giant among them, or a Negro, or an Algonquin. Yet such diversity did develop. Do we attribute that biological differentiation to angels? No. God was well-able to make diversity happen through normal human biology."

And he didn't need angels to make giants, either.

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Paidion
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by Paidion » Tue May 14, 2013 3:51 pm

Soulsnaxx wrote:I clipped the following out of the Wikipedia page on Nephilim. It raises doubts that the traditional Jewish view is what you say it is.
Orthodox Judaism has taken a stance against...
How do you understand "traditional Judaism"? Do you understand current Orthodox Judaism as "traditional Judaism"? That's not what I had in mind when I used the expression. I meant traditional Judaism as it was expressed throughout the centuries. What follows is a quote from Antiquities of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus:
Josephus wrote:Now this posterity of Seth continued to esteem God as the Lord of the universe, and to have an entire regard to virtue, for seven generations; but in the process of time they were perverted, and forsook the practices of their forefathers, and did neither pay those honours to God which were appointed them, not had they any concern toward justice towards men. But for what degree of zeal they had formerly shown for virtue, they now showed by their actions a double degree of wickedness, whereby they made God their enemy; for many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength, for the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call "giants". — Antiquities, Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 1
A footnote concerning this passage from "Whinston's Josephus" states:
This notion , that the fallen angels were, in some sense, the fathers of the old giants, was the constant opinion of antiquity.
Paidion

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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by steve » Tue May 14, 2013 5:14 pm

How far back are we thinking of as antiquity? I think the notion of angels consorting with women had its roots in the book of First Enoch, which dates a century or two before Christ. I wouldn't mind being corrected (i.e., if there were earlier sources of this interpretation).

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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by J9 » Tue May 14, 2013 8:46 pm

Even if this is so, it doesn't make it so in Genesis 6:4. The Bible also refers to some humans as "sons of God," as you pointed out, and it seems unlikely they are angels (because of the DNA problem), and not men, in this passage.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
But why does DNA continue to be seen as a problem? Don't angels have the ability to "manufacture" human bodies in order to interact with this physical dimension? Remember the two that with God visited Abraham, and went on to destroy Sodom.

Remember also Satan's own HUMAN operatives in Pharaoh's court that turned two dead wooden STICKS into living breathing SNAKES (along with snake DNA). Wouldn't that be considered "child's play" for an angelic being?

It seems to me that if angelic sons of God did copulate with human females, that would be just another in a long list of miracles within their scope of power.

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steve
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by steve » Tue May 14, 2013 10:13 pm

I know of no reason to believe that angels appearing in the shape of men resembled men down to the genetic level (genetic information, if analyzed, will reveal ancestry. Would the DNA in these angels also show such a genetic history from human ancestors?). DNA contains more technical information than all the volumes combined of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It would take incredible intelligence for someone to program it...and it has to be exactly specie-specific. I am not aware of angels having such powers as to create it.

Angels are spirits. What makes men sexually attracted to women is chemistry. Do angels have chemistry?

No snake DNA is mentioned. If the snakes were seen to reproduce with other snakes, it would be the dead giveaway.

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Soulsnaxx
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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by Soulsnaxx » Wed May 15, 2013 6:36 pm

Paidion wrote:How do you understand "traditional Judaism"? Do you understand current Orthodox Judaism as "traditional Judaism"?
I think orthodox Jews are more likely to be aligned with traditional Judaism than modernist Jews are. My referring to the Wiki page, however, was intended point out that among Jews (traditional, orthodox or otherwise) there is probably not consensus about the Nephilim.

Regardless, I give little credence to Jewish opinion about Scripture, whether it be traditional, orthodox or modernist. Jesus sternly rebuked them for replacing His Word with their traditions. God used a remnant of believing Jews to preserve the Scriptures, but the Jewish nation (through nearly all of its history) did a very good job of corrupting God’s Law, and a very poor job of obeying it. Leaning on Jewish traditions for help in understanding Scripture provides feeble support, in my opinion.

I think highly of Josephus. His histories don’t have the status of Scripture, of course, but I think they must have been divinely timed and protected. I think he did a good job of reporting accurately. In your quote from Josephus, we should remember that he was reporting Jewish traditions (much of which Jesus condemned) and not exegeting Scripture. I don’t think that just because a trustworthy historian reports that such-and-such tradition existed gives that tradition merit. A good historian very well may accurately report falsehoods, and at times even agree with them.

If Jews of old traditionally believed that angels produced giants by impregnating women, that may be interesting, but their opinion carries scant weight in my attempt to exegete Scripture. In fact, it may deflect me from it. Speculations and traditions often do that. Scripture is the bridle that controls suppositions. I try to assess traditions in terms of Scripture (which I think you are careful to do) and not the other way around.

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Re: Finding Nephilim

Post by steve7150 » Wed May 15, 2013 7:16 pm

After the flood evil soon returned so what could the purpose of a worldwide flood have been? If a mutated race had been created through angels mating with women a worldwide flood might make sense to completely wipe them out but if these women mated with men then i think that would suggest a regional flood.

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