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| Image: The Nephilim? |
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4, ESV)
“The Nephilim” came up in a sermon I heard at church today and I did a little research on it after I got home. Personally, I don’t believe fallen angels copulated with human women and produced offspring. Thomas Aquinas held the same opinion (see below, at bottom).
But the Nephilim as a half-angelic/half-human species is a very popular myth, which, it would seem, originated with the Jews.
Nephilim: Fallen Angels, Giants or Men? https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1987422/jewish/Nephilim-Fallen-Angels-Giants-or-Men.htm
I use the King James Version of the Bible, which translates the Hebrew word נְפִיל (nephilim) into English as “giants.” Most modern versions, however, transliterate the Hebrew word into English as “Nephilim.” Both the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint translate the Hebrew word נְפִיל (nephalim) as gigantes and γίγαντες (gigantes) respectively. So the English “giants” and Latin “gigantes” is simply a transliteration of the Greek γίγαντες.
The modern versions’ use of “Nephilim” is, I think, problematic, as it can lead people to think of “The Nephilim” as a hybrid race of half-angelic (= half-demonic!) half-human mighty men of renown who existed both before and after the flood, perhaps having even escaped the flood. Whereas the truth is more likely that these (100%) human giants existed, both before and after the flood, as part of the human race in those ancient times.
The giants before the flood drowned in the flood, and the giants who appear in Numbers 13:33 were different giants who came to exist after the flood, being descendants of Noah and his family.
“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:33, KJV)
“And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” (Numbers 13:33, ESV)
Who are the Nephilim in Genesis 6? https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/who-are-the-nephilim-in-genesis-6
Who Were the Nephilim? Genesis 6 and Numbers 13—a Fresh Look https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/who-were-the-nephilim/
“Nephilim: giants, name of two peoples, one before the flood and one after the flood. Properly, a feller, i.e. A bully or tyrant -- giant. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon (1908) gives the meaning of nephilim as 'giants', and holds that proposed etymologies of the word are all very precarious.” (Strong’s) https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5303.htm
“As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xv): "Many persons affirm that they have had the experience, or have heard from such as have experienced it, that the Satyrs and Fauns, whom the common folk call incubi, have often presented themselves before women, and have sought and procured intercourse with them. Hence it is folly to deny it. But God's holy angels could not fall in such fashion before the deluge. Hence by the sons of God are to be understood the sons of Seth, who were good; while by the daughters of men the Scripture designates those who sprang from the race of Cain. Nor is it to be wondered at that giants should be born of them; for they were not all giants, albeit there were many more before than after the deluge." Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes, as Augustine says (De Trin. ii.), so that the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man.” ( Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Part 1, Question 51, Article 2, Reply to Objection 6)
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