The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim (7 page)

Looking west from the slopes of Mount Hermon, Israel
.
Copyright Rama Yappy Kawitarka
mannaismayaadventure.wordpress.com
. Used with permission.

According to Enoch, the Sons of God were created, bequeathed angelic beings who descended (fell down) to the earthly realm, and on the slopes of Mount Hermon made a pact to produce offspring with human women. To ascribe malevolence to these angels would not be wholly accurate, but Enoch’s book does intimate that should they carry out their plan, they were in fear of being held responsible for enacting a “sinful” deed in the eyes of God. Enoch goes on to tell of the attributes they brought down to the human race with them: enchantments, the making of weaponry, meteorology, astrology, astronomy, interpretations of moon phases, herbology, and the signs of the sun, stars, and moon. With these angelic-taught skills, mankind delved to the lowest common denominator by developing the art of warfare and pursued wickedness to the point of stirring up Jehovah’s wrath. And the Sons of God were, indeed, held to blame; Shemjaza, their leader, somehow overlooked, and Azazel held as the main culprit for introducing weapons and warfare to mankind.

And then there was their “giant” offspring.

According to scripture, the offspring of the Sons of God and human women were the Nephilim, but I do not believe the term is solely attributable to the offspring only. The Sons of God who descended from the heavens were known as the Nephilim once they took up residence in the earthly realm. So they and their offspring together became known as the Nephilim. It is similar to the scenario you have when an Irish immigrant moves his existence to America. He is Irish, but his emigrating act has given him the new title of American, and he and his offspring are now known by both titles: Irish and American, possessing a dual identity. But the children born to him in America bear the stronger title.

The writers of the 1611 King James Bible indirectly translated the word
Nephilim
as “giants,” yet the preferred scholarly translation is “fallen ones.” Giant can be better understood when you ascribe the values of height, distance from the ground to the top, descending from the heights, falling from the heavens, and so forth. Although there are many scholarly views on the identity of the Nephilim, you have to take into consideration the interpretation of the word based on the surrounding textual context, as well as the audience for whom the text is written.

The root Hebrew word for Nephilim is the verb
nephal
(Hebrew text
), meaning: 1) to fall (to the ground); 2) to fall (in battle); 3) to be cast down; 4) to desert a location; 5) to fail. The “im” (Hebrew text
) denotes plurality, giving us the “fallen down ones,” or the “ones who descended.”

The Sons of God can best be defined as a race of beings who descended—or “fell”—to the earth, abandoning their existence and habitation in the heavenly realms. According to the Bible, they were angelic in origin, birthed/created by God
(Elohim)
, and they brought to the human inhabitants of the earth special skills, as well as an unearthly libido. Their offspring bore the title of Nephilim, and the propagation of their mixed race on the earth led to the judgment of God in the form of a flood, as described in Genesis and other ancient accounts. Also mentioned in the Book of Enoch is the fact that these beings descended to the earth during “the days of Jared,” the father of Enoch. His name means, literally, “descent,” and he was named thus because the descent of the Sons of God to the earth took place during his lifetime.

It is interesting at this point, to note that both Jared and Enoch are also mentioned in the Genesis account:

“18 When Jared was 162 years old, his son Enoch was born. 19 After the birth of Enoch, Jared lived another 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. 20 He died at the age of 962. 21 When Enoch was 65 years old, his son Methuselah was born. 22 After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived another 300 years in close fellowship with God, and he had other sons and daughters. 23 Enoch lived 365 years in all. 24 He enjoyed a close relationship with God throughout his life. Then suddenly, he disappeared because God took him.”

(Genesis 5:18-24)

In the older archaic English of the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, that last verse is worded
“And Enoch walked with God, and was not, for God took him.”

Digest all of that. Then take a deep, cleansing breath.

Elohim begat the
bene haElohim
, who begat the Nephilim. But that is simply one version of events. The question that still begs to be asked and answered is: What if the Nephilim, as defined by other cultural writings of the day, are something completely different? What if the Jewish Bible is only a version of events as understood and written by a monotheistic culture who recorded these events from within their framework of understanding, from within a monotheistic, mono-theocratic structure? What if these angelic beings were anything but angels? As is always the case, the uncovering of the basics only leads to deeper questions. As we move forward we will tackle the issue of extraterrestrial origins and the seeding of mankind.

But first, let’s move to an all-important historical examination of Moses, the author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible or, as the Jewish religion calls it, the Torah. Once you have an understanding of this man’s origins and why he wrote the things he wrote, you start to gain a clearer picture of just who the Nephilim really are, and why Moses wrote what he did.

“Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”

(Exodus 33:11)

“27 They gave Moses this account: ‘We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there…. 33 We saw the Nephilim there, the descendants of Anak of the Nephilim. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.’”

(Numbers 13:27-28, 33)

As I state in my public lectures on the topic of the Nephilim, we are now going to “rabbit trail” a bit. But it is a vitally contextual, highly relevant side-track to understanding the bigger picture of the Watchers and the Nephilim. It’s going to include a lot of history, but remember:
History is fun, passionate, and exciting!
This isn’t the stuff of sitting in a boring high school classroom; this is the stuff that opens the door and sheds the light. Understanding the past gives illumination to the present. We all have personal histories and things that have happened in our
pasts to make us who and what we are today. The same applies to this outstanding character in history. Understanding that he is much more than a Bible story, but rather a real person who lived and breathed and experienced life, will help us to greater understand the things he wrote about and why he said what he said.

Of great importance to understanding the Genesis account of the Nephilim is having an understanding of the author of the book and the education he would have experienced in the royal courts of 18th Dynasty Egypt. The first five books of the Bible’s Old Testament—Genesis, Exodus, Levitcus, Numbers, and Dueteronomy—are collectively known as the Pentatuech, the books of the Law, and their authorship is attributed to Moses, that most well-known lawgiver and Hebrew leader of Judeo-Christian tradition.

First of all, Moses is the author of the Book of Genesis. Just because he is a biblical character whose story is made up of fantastical deeds and miraculous events, does not mean he is simply part of myth.

It is Moses who, the Book of Exodus tells us, was born a Hebrew slave living under captivity in the slave city of Goshen in the delta region of the land of Egypt. The Hebrews had been living in Egypt as a family since the time of their ancestor-patriarch Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob/Israel, who migrated them to Egypt during a time of great famine in Cana’an, present-day Israel. The family grew into an expatriated people, numbering nearly two million by the time of the Exodus, and suffered a gradual captivity imposed on them by the Egyptian pharaohs during a period of four centuries.

It is important to point out that, although the story of Moses is rife with faith-story tradition, many of the deeds of the historical man Moses cannot be found anywhere in recorded history, other than the pages of holy scripture and religious writings. And one has to dig very deeply to find the scant mentions that do exist, and even then there is the monumental task of discerning the man from the legend. The historical treatment of his life, as it appears in the Old Testament books of Exodus through Deuteronomy, are events written from the perspective of the man himself, comprising major context within four of the five
books of the Law in the Old Testament. Moses was a powerful man striving—as would any leader of a new nation that was the product of invasion, rebellion, or coup—to establish his authority and base of power. It is important to understand that Moses was the product of 18th Dynasty Egypt, where he was part of a ruling dynasty that held absolute power over its subjects, and this is where he learned the royal skills necessary for national leadership. This is where Moses learned that he was a “son of the Pharaoh God.” This is where he learned to impose the will of a god-man over the people he ruled.

In reading the pages of religious scripture, one must ask whether Moses was a mere figment of the pious imagination of Jewish rabbis and Hebrew historians, a mere adjunct to religious sentimentality and Judeo-Christian mythos? Or was he a real personality of some stature and substance in Egypt as the Jewish Scriptures claim? During the biblical account of the Ten Plagues of Egypt and the “let my people go!” audiences Moses had with, arguably, the most powerful monarch in the known world, we are given the distinct impression that Moses has absolute dominance over the Pharaoh, the government, and the people. In fact the biblical record states explicitly:

“The man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.”

(Exodus 11:3)

During the period of the Ten Plagues, the very word of Moses became as
law
in the courts of the Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. Take note of what most commentators on the biblical account have overlooked:

“And all these your servants” [Moses is addressing the pharaoh] “shall come down to me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, “Get you out and all the people that follow you: and after that I will go out!” And he went out from Pharaoh in the heat of a great anger.”

(Exodus 11:8)

Moses minced no words, but rather dictated with power and authority to the most powerful ruler of the ancient world. Moses was notable, exceptional, talented, and no ordinary man by any standard, past or present.

This is also where I am sure to draw a bit of heated criticism from my old Bible School classmates and fellow seminarians, as well as leaders and friends from the evangelical Christian circles in which I spent many years of my life. For to question the absolute authority of the Bible in its application to faith, practice, theology, or history is to question the very nature and attributes of God, Himself. Yet, there are gaping holes in the scriptural historical accounts that can be filled only with extrapolation of historical data, and the squeezing of size 13 feet into size 10 1/2 wide Egyptian sandals.