Category: Nephilim

Confused About Giants-Based Christianity? Ask an 11th Grader

5/24/2015

Is there such a thing as a brand of Christianity that revolves around the existence of giants? Yes . . . well . . . maybe kind of. The notion that evil giants are central to understanding the world, the human condition, and the future is out there for sure. While giants-based Christianity has some vocal proponents that are apparently making a living by selling it, however, I'm not sure how widespread the idea actually is. How many people believe this stuff? I have no idea. And I'm not sure how one would find out.

I looked at a lot of elephant car photos (mostly from Burning Man) and decided that this one best represents the thrown-together ridiculousness of giants-based Christianity (source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/susanafs98/2313166391/)

If you're not sure how someone could build a "Christian" religion around giants, you're not alone. It is a monstrosity constructed from all kinds of parts that don't initially seem to fit together. What do the stones at Baalbek and Stonehenge have to do with Jesus? How is Noah connected to Hitler? How are the pyramids of Egypt, genetic engineering, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the serpent gods of Mesoamerica related to one another? Giant enthusiasts weld all these elements together, but it is difficult to find a clear, concise treatise that explains how. I have arrived at my understanding of giants-based Christianity -- still far from complete, I'm sure -- in the same haphazard way that the blind men examined the elephant and that Johnny Cash built his '49-'59 automobile: one piece at a time.

If you want a path of less resistance to understanding this stuff, I recommend a paper titled "The Truth About Giants" written by Adam Schwartzbauer, an 11th grader (in 2010). I found it on the website of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association (TCCSA), a Minnesota organization whose mission is to "present evidence for creation and a young earth." Schwartzbauer's paper is a 24-page document (there is also a 10-page version) that lays out many elements of the modern, giants-based Christianity, including:

The assertion that giants and fallen angels were involved in genetic manipulation of plants, animals, and humans (pp. 3-5);

The assertion that giants and fallen angels brought about the Flood by corrupting the Earth (p. 4);
The assertion that giants were created by the devil to corrupt the human bloodline so that Jesus could not be born (p. 7);
The assertion that the Israelites committed genocide in Canaan to wipe out giants (pp. 9, 12);
Fascination with the nuts and bolts and angel-human reproduction (pp. 10-11), including:

            - angels having forcible sex with human women;
            - giant babies being cut out of women during childbirth;
            - speculation about what an angel's DNA would be like;

Specifying that giants had six fingers, six toes, and double rows of teeth (p. 11);

Confused arguments against evolution (p. 6);
A nod to Hitler (p. 12);
Blaming archaeologists for hiding evidence (p. 12);
The assertion that structures built with large rocks must have been built by giants (pp. 12-15);
The assertion that evil giants were homosexual (p. 19);
Supporting the existence of giants based on:
    - texts, including Genesis and a variety of extra-biblical religious sources (e.g., pp. 2-3);
    - tales of pre-1900s "giant skeletons" from the Old World and the New World (pp. 11, 16-19);
    - world mythology (p. 2);
    - accounts of purported giant human footprints in ancient rocks (pp. 19-20);

The alert reader will notice that many elements of this new strain of Christianity contradict mainstream Christian teachings. I'm no theologian, but here are few that jump out at me:

The doctrine of Original Sin (the idea that humanity has inherited the consequences of Adam's rebellion again God in the Garden of Eden), for example, is at least undermined, if not completely contradicted, by the idea that it was fallen angels and their evil offspring that caused wickedness in the world and brought about the Flood. Problems with being human? Blame the giants! A giants-based Christianity places responsibility for the troubles of humans squarely on the shoulders of giants.

The idea that angels could mate with humans and produce fertile offspring is also opposed to most mainstream Christian thinking. The Living Church of God website, for example, states that "To claim that angels had the ability to create flesh (the giants) from spirit is not only illogical—it is blasphemy." Angel DNA? What does angel DNA look like? And doesn't the idea that the mating of two different "kinds" (angels and humans) can produce something novel (giants) contradict a basic argument of Young Earth Creationists that different species can only be divinely created?

The mixture of biblical and extra-biblical sources used for creating this giants-based framework of belief is also different, I think, from what most Christians would accept. You won't hear quotes from the Book of Jasher in Sunday School, but the Church of Giants accepts as legitimate anything that seems to support the relevance of large, evil beings to the history of the world. The Nephilim whirlpool provides equal weight to biblical, New Age, occult, political, cultural, and historical currents. It's an idea in search of positive evidence, not the other way around.

Sure, the writing in Schwartzbauer's paper is a bit choppy, but the document is useful because it summarizes many of the basic elements of a giants-based Christianity that the "experts" dole out for money. As a free publication that is just 24 pages, your investment of time and money is much lower than if you actually read the books by Steve Quayle and L. A. Marzulli (which I have not read and cannot bring myself to purchase). The TCCSA website also includes an endorsement of the book by Joe Taylor, creator of the 47" femur sculpture. So there you go. It's not high prose, but it will save you some time groping the different parts of the elephant and understanding the emerging framework of giants-based Christianity.

Related (5/25/2015): Jason Colavito examines the claim in the paper that Nimrod built Baalbek.

Cotton Mather: America's First Nephilim Enthusiast

2/26/2015

The case of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) misinterpreting mastodon bones unearthed in Claverack, New York, as the remains of an ancient giant is commonly supplied as an illustration of how even learned individuals could make that mistake in the days when the Bible provided the primary framework by which to understand the natural world (here is one example, here is another).

Mather was not the only one to make this mistake, of course: there are many examples that pre- and post-date him. What is interesting about the Mather case is that his prodigious writings on the subject provide context as to why the idea of finding giants was so attractive. In my opinion, the appeal of giants to Mather in 1705 was much the same as it is for many Nephilim enthusiasts today.

Mather was a Puritan minister who wrote extensively about science and religion and was vigorously involved in both. Working on another post, I was interested to learn that a large, previously unpublished work written by Mather during the period 1693-1728 had become available in 2010. The book, entitled Biblia Americana, has been printed in 6 volumes with over 4,500 pages. It is the earliest comprehensive Bible commentary written in North America, containing the thoughts of Mather on a huge variety of topics related to the intersection of science and religion. The first volume alone (Biblia Americana: Genesis) costs $200, which is well out of my price range. Luckily, however, I found some sections related to Mather’s thoughts on giants reproduced and discussed in a couple of publications made available by one of the editors (Reiner Smolinksi) as pdfs.

I’m going to reproduce several passages that I think are good illustrations of Mather’s thinking about giants. These are from the annotated version of Biblia Americana that I found here. I’ll keep the emphases (italics and capitalization) as it is provided.

The first quote (pages 582-583 in the publication, section 185r) is a question and answer about whether there is physical evidence of giants that proves the Old Testament to be true, therefore refuting atheism:

“Q. Concerning the Dayes before the Flood, the glorious Historian ha’s told us; There were GIANTS on the Earth, in those Dayes. Could any undoubted Ruines and Remains of those GIANTS, be found under the Earth, among the other subterraneous Curiosities, in our Dayes, it would be an Illustrious Confirmation of the Mosaic History, and an Admirable Obturation on the Mouth of Atheism?

A. Then let the Inquisitive Part of Mankind, know that the Bones of those who were certainly some of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have been found under the Earth, in these later Ages. Below the Strata of Earth, which the Flood left on the Surface of it, in the other Haemisphere, such enormous Bones have been found, as all skill in Anatomy must pronounce to belong unto Humane Bodies, & could belong to none but Giants, in Comparison of whom, Og, and Goliath, and all the Sons of Anak, must hardly be so much as Pygmies. But that AMERICA too, as tis but agreeable, may throw something, to the Treasures of the BIBLIA AMERICANA, I will surprise you, with telling you, That the Men who were able to have Turned the World upside down, came hither also; [How! No Man alive can tell!] And the Bones, probably of the Antediluvian GIANTS, have here been met withal.”

Mather's answer to his own question is a resounding "yes!" This is a clear statement of Mather's belief that the remains of pre-Flood giants could be found in North America, supporting the idea that biblical narrative was accurate. As discussed in the footnotes to the section of the text quoted above, the interpretation of mastodon bones as the bones of pre-Flood giants neatly resolved the problem of how to account for fossil remains that didn’t appear to be those of any other creature mentioned in the Old Testament.

Mather spends several paragraphs discussing what the giants actually were, remarking on what the term “Nephilim” might mean (pages 584-585 in the publication, section 185r):

“I will not go to trouble you, with the Opinions of the Ancients, who suppose the Original of those Giants, to be, The Sons of God coming in unto the Daughters of Men; and that the Sons of God, were Angels, or Divels; to which the Name of, Nephilim, which may signify, Fallen Ones, agrees well enough: . . .
An Extremity of Incredulity, ha’s led some to think, That the Antediluvian Giants were but Metaphorical Ones; That they were Giants for Quality only, and not for Quantity.”

In Mather's discussion, we can see two of the core elements that characterize the worldview of Nephilim enthusiasts today:

Hard evidence of giants proves the Bible is true, therefore showing alternatives (whether atheism or Darwinian evolution) to be false;

The term “giant” in the Bible was not used metaphorically, but rather to denote an actual human-like creature of large size (and possibly of supernatural origin?);
Biblical giants should be found in the New World as well as the Old Word.

And there is another important point of similarity between Mather's interest in finding biblical giants and the approach taken by today’s Nephilim enthusiasts. We all know how the story of Mather's giant bones ends: the bones were later shown to be those of a mastodon. His enthusiastic acceptance of the “proof” that giants existed was conditioned by his pre-supposition that they of course must exist (because they were mentioned in the Bible). Looking for evidence to support a foregone conclusion, Mather accepted as proof something that was nothing of the sort.

Modern Nephilim enthusiasts routinely commit this same error, presenting as “proof” anything that fits with the Nephilim worldview.

Not much has really changed in 300 years. It would be funny, except that it’s not.

Why Are There So Few Giants in the Book of Mormon?

2/17/2015

My last post about “Mound Builders” and mastodons made me curious what Mormons had to say about giants (more on the connection with mastodons later). The events described in the Book of Mormon (BOM) are generally thought to have taken place in North or Central America, after all, and the BOM was published in 1830 as the debate about the origin, identity, and fate of the “Mound Builders” was ongoing. Given the prominence of the Nephilim in the worldview of some at the edges of the Christian fundamentalist community, I wondered how giants and/or the Nephilim were portrayed in the BOM and how Mormons today interpret the relevance of those portrayals. How important were they?

As it turns out, not very important at all. Apparently the BOM does not contain a single mention of “giants” or use of the term “Nephilim” (please correct me if I'm wrong). The Book of Moses (see below) contains only two references to “giants” and no references to Nephilim.

As described by Mormons, the Book of Moses presents an “inspired translation” of Genesis that removes the ambiguities, contradictions, and confusion that had accumulated in the Old Testament through repeated mistranslations. “Giants” barely made the cut in the Book of Moses, appearing only twice, and the Nephilim don’t appear at all (remember that the term “Nephilim” was translated at “giants” in the King James Version). The following is a quote (taken from here) from Joseph Fielding Smith, one-time president of the LDS church and grandson of founder Joseph Smith's brother (emphasis added):

“There is a prevailing doctrine in the Christian world that these sons of God were heavenly beings who came down and married the daughters of men and thus came a superior race on the earth, the result bringing the displeasure of the Lord. This foolish notion is the result of lack of proper information, and because the correct information is not found in the Book of Genesis Christian peoples have been led astray. The correct information regarding these unions is revealed in the inspired interpretation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Book of Moses. Without doubt when this scripture was first written, it was perfectly clear, but scribes and translators in the course of time, not having divine inspiration, changed the meaning to conform to their incorrect understanding. These verses in the Prophet's revision give us a correct meaning, and from them we learn why the Lord was angry with the people and decreed to shorten the span of life and to bring upon the world the flood of purification.”

In other words: Nephilim are nonsense. Here are the passages from Moses 8:13-18 that are the re-interpretation of Genesis 6:4:

    “13 And Noah and his sons hearkened unto the Lord, and gave heed, and they were called the sons of God.

     14 And when these men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of men saw that those daughters were fair, and they took them wives, even as they chose.

     15 And the Lord said unto Noah: The daughters of thy sons have sold themselves; for behold mine anger is kindled against the sons of men, for they will not hearken to my voice.

     16 And it came to pass that Noah prophesied, and taught the things of God, even as it was in the beginning.

    17 And the Lord said unto Noah: My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for he shall know that all flesh shall die; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years; and if men do not repent, I will send in the floods upon them.

     18 And in those days there were giants on the earth, and they sought Noah to take away his life; but the Lord was with Noah, and the power of the Lord was upon him.”

Giants are only mentioned in the Book of Moses in one other place that showed up in my search:

“And the giants of the land, also, stood afar off; and there went forth a curse upon all people that fought against God;” (Moses 7:15)

That appears to be it for the giants.

The apparent unimportance of giants in the Book of Moses and the BOM contrasts starkly with the Nephilim-centric view of the world espoused by the Christian fringe, where matings between fallen angels and humans brought on the Flood, provided a rationale for genocide in Canaan, threatened the birth of the Messiah, and continue to endanger humanity today.   It is difficult to see how both of these accounts – one in which there is no such thing as a human-angel hybrid (BOM) and another in which there’s a Nephilim lurking behind every rock – could be reconciled. As you might guess, this discrepancy is not lost on the Nephilim enthusiasts.

As far as I can tell, the Nephilim enthusiasts have developed two explanations remedying the absence of the Nephilim in the BOM and the Book of Moses. These may not be mutually exclusive:

The Nephites (one of the groups of settlers of ancient America) of the BOM actually are the Nephilim. This claim (here is one example) seems to rest on the similarity between the words “Nephite” and “Nephilim.” Here is Fritz Zimmerman’s take on it. This idea seems favorable to those who want to attribute a biblical origin to the existence of "giant" skeletons in the New World.

The angel that appeared to Joseph Smith to reveal the plates containing the text of the BOM was actually a Nephilim. In other words, the BOM was indeed inspired, but it was inspired by a fallen angel rather than an angel of the Lord. This position is articulated in this video by someone named Penny:

“There is a direct connection between the Nephilim, the fallen angels, and Joseph Smith. I believe that it was a fallen angel that appeared as an angel of light to Joseph Smith and this whole Mormonism thing and the beliefs that they have . . . Mormonism basically suggests that you can be a god, which is the lie, I mean that’s the lie that the serpent told Eve in the Garden of Eden. . . . So, um, if you’re Mormon and you’re watching this, please do not be offended, um, but please wake up and recognize what’s really going on here – that all of your beliefs are based on a lie.”

Here is an account that seems to blend the two.

Tally of number of "giant" reports by decade in my database as it currently stands (n = 449). Some of the counts will decrease when I add a provision for not counting multiple stories associated with the same primary account.

Both of these ideas about the real role of the Nephilim in Mormonism appear to attribute some supernatural origin or historical validity to the BOM, rather than arguing it is simply a recent fabrication. In other words, Christian Nephilim enthusiasts do not dismiss the BOM but rather try to fit it into their construction of the world. That deftly serves the dual purpose of getting more Nephilim into the world and demonizing (literally) another religion.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the BOM publication date of 1830 falls just before the 100-year time period when discoveries of “giant” skeletons were most frequently reported from eastern North America (~1840-1940). If you believe that those BOM texts are inspired, time period perhaps makes no difference. If you believe they are not inspired, however, the cultural context of their production becomes relevant.

Creation, Corruption, and Salvation: Are Giants People Too?

2/6/2015

A woodcut by Gustave Dore showing an angel delivering God's instructions to Joshua prior to the siege of Jericho. Nephilim enthusiasts will tell you that the Israelites slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the city as part of their ongoing (and ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to wipe out the Nephilim bloodline, save humanity, and thwart Satan's plot.

In a previous post, I discussed one connection between creationism (the idea that the natural world is the result of a divine act) and the belief in giants. What I termed a “Biblical theory of prehistory” (BTOP) specifies that human, animal, and plant life were created perfect but have been degenerating though time. As the clock “winds down” on creation and mutations accumulate, plants, animals, and humans have gotten smaller and less perfect. Bigger is better, and humans were both bigger and better in the past.

That “bigger is better” view of giants is rather uncomplicated and, I think, a minority view among those who take an active interest in the topic. It enjoys little direct support from the Bible itself, which makes no statements about the height of Adam or Noah or any other key pre- or post-Flood humans. (Attributing a large stature to Adam – “more than twice as tall as men” living today – was one of Seventh Day Adventist Ellen White’s controversial additions to the Bible). But the idea is out there. This forum has an informal discussion of the origin and popularity of the idea that Adam was 15’ tall and that humans have degenerated since creation (note the similarity to the size of the giant human suggested by Joe Taylor’s 47” femur sculpture based on an anonymous letter from Turkey, or Egypt, or Syria, or somewhere over there).

What's more popular than this Sunday School version of giants?

One word: Nephilim.

A Google search on "Nephilim" returns over 3.7 million results. I have not had the opportunity to read all of these pages, but I've seen enough to take a stab at a summary of what's going on.

The Nephilim are first mentioned in Genesis 6:4. The term was translated as "giants" in the King James Version of the Bible:

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Later translations left the term "Nephilim" in place. The New International Version reads:

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”

There are some additional mentions of the Nephilim and/or giants in the Old Testament, particularly in the stories about the conquest of the Promised Land by the Israelites (in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua).

The few ambiguous mentions of Nephilim in the Old Testament have provided ample room for speculation about what they were, where they came from, and what happened to them. In more pedestrian interpretations, the Nephilim were badly behaved humans who were doing ungodly things. Nothing supernatural was involved. An article on the website Answers In Genesis (a fairly mainstream Young Earth Creationist site) considers some possibilities for the Nephilim and states that “Answers in Genesis officially doesn’t take a particular stand on this issue as a ministry.” Further, this site also clearly states that the Nephilim don't really matter in terms of biblical teachings. The Nephilim were wiped out and have no bearing on our world today.

That’s boring. And boring, for Nephilim enthusiasts, is just not acceptable. Boring doesn't sell books and DVDs.

In the interpretation most favored by proponents of giants, the Old Testament Nephilim were inhuman hybrids produced by matings between humans and fallen angels (or demons, or extraterrestrials). Well, hey, that's not boring. And you can sell books about it. Here is a description from the website Rapture Forums:

    "Many folks today try to dismiss the Nephilim completely by attributing this assault on humanity as the result of the co-mingling of the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain. Try and support that idea using Scripture. An acrobat would be hard pressed to perform such a stretch.
    There were Nephilim (giants) in the land in those days and also after that. The procreation of human beings can create little monsters, but they aren't monstrous. The Nephilim hybrid – the offspring created from the union of fallen angels and human women – brought about the most evil the world had ever experienced. To this very day we've not been subjected to such evil – but it is coming."

It is the corrupt nature of the mating – the union of a supernatural entity and a human, so the story goes -- that was responsible for the inhuman size of the Nephilim. These giant creatures did not have a soul and were part of Satan’s plan, not God’s. And multiple attempts to annihilate them failed. They're either already here or on their way.

This is not mainstream Christan teaching. Here is how a website that is concerned with “revealing heresies and false teachings affecting the Church today” summarizes the Nephilim-centric view of the Old Testament:

"Demons/ angels (sons of God) had illicit relationships with women (the daughters of men) and these perverted relations produced genetically mutated beings known as nephilim (giants). God then imprisoned some of the angels who did this and in order to purify the bloodline of man God brought on the Flood. Through genetic engineering these Nephilim will be resurrected, one of which will be the Antichrist. To these people, the Nephilim are also tied up with so-called extra-terrestrial forms of life."

There are some variations out there among those 3.7 million web pages about the Nephilim, but that’s the general idea. Some Nephilim enthusiasts think that the Nephilim are being created by new matings with aliens, demons, or angels. Others think they (or their genes) were never really wiped out and have been with us all along.

It is that continued or future presence makes them still relevant. Contrary to the position taken by Answers in Genesis that the origin and identity of the Nephilim is immaterial to Christian teachings, many creationists believe strongly that the Nephilim/giant issue is actually very important to what the Bible means in terms of understanding God’s plan in the past, present, and future. I learned this quickly during my brief tenure as Visiting Assistant Professor of Giantology on the Facebook page “REAL GIANTS.” The Nephilim issue is now a significant part of the belief system of many creationists (at least the ones who want to talk about giants). I was kicked off the site before I could really get a handle on the spectrum of beliefs on the issue or get a sense of how many people believe this stuff. Maybe I'll design an online survey.

If you’re knowledgeable or interested in the Bible and this all sounds bizarre to you, you’re not alone. Mainstream Christian websites point out that much of the “theory” about the Nephilim is based on non-biblical sources, including Apocrypha (especially the Book of Enoch), occult teachings, New Age spirituality, modern conspiracy theories, stuff about aliens, etc (one example here). In other words, many thoughtful Christians will tell you that this emphasis on the Nephilim is not really Christian at all: it's dependent upon all kinds of other information to interpret the few ambiguous mentions of Nephilim in the Bible. The resulting conclusions, therefore, really have very little to do with the Bible.

The mixture of information from biblical and extra-biblical “sources” has created a tangle of ideas, sentiments, and "evidence" that can only be described as bizarre. It is a whirlpool that is fueled by paranoia and uncertainty, but, somewhat ironically, its devotees show no signs that they are afflicted by any doubt about their conclusions or convictions. Nor are they troubled by the implications of their beliefs or worried that there is a lack of hard evidence to back up any of their claims. If you’re looking for people who embrace the concept of healthy skepticism as a path to producing a credible interpretation, you’re going to need to keep looking. The fetish for the supernatural in this crowd overwhelms any inclination toward critical thinking that might be present. If the "I wonder if this could be wrong" question is a hermit crab, the desire for validation of a pre-existing notion is an incoming tsunami.

That's because Nephilim enthusiasts attribute a much more important role to these creatures than mainstream Christians. The Nephilim-centric view of the world sees the Flood as an attempt to rid the world of these abominable giants, for example, whose population had grown dramatically and threatened the human bloodline. In other words, God did not bring on the Flood because humanity had degenerated, but because Satan had fouled His creation by creating the Nephilim. That's definitely not the lesson I was taught in Sunday School.

Nephilim enthusiasts also dispute the idea that the Flood successfully exterminated the giants, because the post-Flood Israelites encounter "giants" inhabiting the Promised Land of Canaan. This presents a bit of a problem: where did the giants come from if they were not aboard Noah's Ark? Old Earth Creationists can explain this by postulating that the Flood was only regional rather than global; other interpretations, such as this one, speculate that Noah’s sons must have married women that were carrying “the Nephilim gene."   This blog post claims that lineages of giants can be traced from pre-Flood to post-Flood times. At any rate, Nephilim enthusiasts assert that giants were common in the post-Flood world at least until the time of David, and that there is plenty of scripture to back that up.

In the Nephilim-centric view of the world, the nature of the interactions between the Israelites and the giants in Canaan again highlights their importance: the Nephilim were not a sideshow in either the pre- or post-Flood world. In Deuteronomy (20:16-17), God ordered the Israelites to “utterly destroy” the peoples living in the Promised Land: every man, woman, child, and animal was to be killed. This command was carried out as Joshua and his armies swept through Canaan, burning, slaughtering, and making every attempt to commit genocide (Joshua 6-10). The bloody siege of Jericho was described in detail (Joshua 6:21):

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

The genocide committed by Joshua and his armies is a common subject of discourse among Bible believers and scholars, as it seems difficult to reconcile with the characteristics of a compassionate God. Christian apologists typically frame the discussion in terms the morality of committing murder and our inability to understand God’s plan (here is one example). Nephilim apologists, however, see no ambiguity and claim that God’s orders to massacre the residents of Canaan were special precisely because of the Nephilim heritage of the people of Canaan. That heritage posed a threat to humanity. The residents of Canaan were not fully human and had to be exterminated. Why? Because the products of the abominable inter-matings between humans and fallen angels were, in fact, key to Satan’s plan to corrupt the human bloodline and prevent the eventual birth of the Messiah (Jesus). In this view, the Nephilim are critical to understanding Satan’s determination to undermine God’s plan.

The brutal struggle for the Promised Land is important to Nephilim enthusiasts for two reasons: 1) it illustrates God’s determination to exterminate the Nephilim; and 2) it specifies that not all the Nephilim were killed (Joshua 11:22). This sets up the rationale for a worldwide search for evidence of Nephilim outside of the Near East (especially in the Americas) and foregrounds the question of what should be done if living descendants of the Nephilim are located. The Nephilim are not just something to understand historically, but something relevant to today’s war between good and evil.

Here’s one statement of the issue:

“First you have to deal with the idea of monstrous giants, giants who may still exist today hidden somewhere, because Israel did not kill all of them off as ordered, and giants were reported by the explorers of the Americas, as well as the Native Americans. These are historical records, not fictional books. It opens the door to the idea that there are angelic hybrids that may not be so human still around.”

Here’s another:

“We have no idea of what a being that is half angelic and half human may have been (or still may be) capable. . . . We know that Israel did not kill off all the giants. Some of them took refuge in other cities, and no doubt migrated. In fact there seems to be records that show that they moved north and also into the Americas. These Mayan and other ruins can be easily explained if you think of tremendous giants with incredible strength and advanced technology as having built them. . . . .
. . . As we now know that they were indeed hybrids or nephilim, it becomes clear why God mandated that they must all be killed. He could not allow this contaminated bloodline to enter into Israel's bloodline, as the Messiah needed to come from pure human blood. They were an evil people and their genetics were corrupting mankind again.. . . "

Steve Qualye, self-identified “leading authority on giants,” offers this conclusion in his book Aliens and Fallen Angels: Offspring of the Gods, the Sexual Corruption of the Human Race (emphasis added):

". . . this would seem to indicate that the Nephilim, as well as their fallen-angel fathers, can father children, thus continuing the line of the Nephilim without need for genetic input from an angelic being. This is further proof of the need for these monsters to be killed in order to prevent them from continuing to multiply."

(Disclosure: I didn’t buy Quayle’s book and I don’t intend to. I found this quote on a website. I am assuming it’s accurate.)

While giant stature was the main way to identify the Nephilim in the Old Testament, most contemporary Nephilim hunters do not expect that the bloodline is still revealed by large size (as their numbers increased through time and there was more interbreeding with humans, the rationale goes, their bloodline was diluted and their size decreased). Thus while the Nephilim of the past may be identified through the remains of “giants” (giant-sized skeletons, artifacts, architecture), today’s Nephilim may be hiding in plain sight. They may appear human but are carrying “the Nephilim gene,” the stamp of corruption that is part of Satan’s strategy to fight God.

Identifying those individuals and populations associated with the Nephilim is a priority of Nephilim enthusiasts.

But how can this corrupted bloodline be recognized in the absence of obvious physical markers like large stature? Here is where it really starts to become troubling. Want to find Nephilim? According to Nephilim hunters, you might want to look at the Rh-negative blood type, peculiar eye color, autism, strange body language . . . Here is a post discussing Nephilim genetics (and promoting a book you can buy). This forum contains a post from someone who claimed to see a Nephilim with a morphing face at the grocery store. And of course, the litany of "6 fingers and toes, very large male genitalia, awkward rows of teeth or two rows of teeth" comes up. Some people claim to have identified Nephilim DNA in elongated skulls from Peru. It goes on.

My sense is that this debate about the Nephilim is percolating mostly at the fringes of Christian creationist communities, fueling at least some of the current wave of interest in giants. While these ideas may seem silly and inconsequential, they are a symptom of something that is decidedly not inconsequential. Submerged just under the surface of this interest in giants is a resurgence of the idea of that people can be classified as “more” or “less” human based on their physical characteristics and a bizarre interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis propped up by information gathered from a range of extra-biblical sources.

Does this trouble you? It should. Here’s why:

The idea that the peoples of the Earth can be separated into “more” or “less” human groups has precedent: it was a central principle underlying some of the greatest brutalities perpetrated in the 19th and 20th centuries by self-identified Christians. A central tenet of polygenism – the idea that “races” are the result of separate creations – was that only one of the races is the product of God’s special creation. Conveniently for white people, the chosen race was determined to be . . . wait for it . . . white people. The rest of the people on the earth, all the non-white people, were supposed to be somewhat less than human. This was a European idea that picked up steam in the 1500s as Europeans encountered and interacted with non-white populations in different parts of the world. It provided s a tidy justification for colonialism. In America, the polygenism and Scientific Racism of Samuel Morton was used as a justification for slavery. In Europe, Ernst Haeckel’s ideas about polygenism, eugenics, and racial superiority contributed to the rise of Nazism.

While polygenism is no longer a part of mainstream Christian theology (or evolutionary thinking), it has not disappeared. The doctrinal statement of beliefs of the Kingdom Identity Ministries, a white supremacist Christian church, for example, specifies that white people are the “chosen” race, standing “far superior to all other peoples . . .” The Christian Identity movement, of which the Kingdom Identity Ministries is a part, is associated with the “serpent seed” doctrine that specifies that some peoples of the earth are descended from a mating between Satan (a fallen angel) and Eve. Those (non-white) people are not fully human, and mixing between the races is forbidden.

The Nephilim, of course, are also not fully human. If you Google "can Nephilim be saved" you will find evidence of a debate about whether descendents of the Nephilim can receive salvation. Are they people? Do they have souls? Here is a "no salvation" answer. Here is a pdf explaining that "Nephilim CANNOT be saved nor do they have any desire to be saved because they are not human; they do not have a human soul." Here is a website devoted to assuring people who think they are "modern Nephilim hybrids" that they can be saved. Here is another blog exploring the question. And another.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all Nephilim enthusiasts are racists. I am saying, however, that seeking some kind of biblical justification for classifying people based on their physical characteristics is a dangerous path to go down. Especially when mixed with the idea that those physical characteristics mark a "race" that is somehow polluting or less human than the "good" people that God created. We've seen that movie before. The Nephilim story is modern polygenism in the making with an updated cast of characters.

I’m curious as to how Nephilim enthusiasts define "race." I'm also curious as to what answer you’ll get if you ask the “so what” question to someone who is actively seeking out living persons with Nephilim heritage. More good questions for my survey.

For the record, here again is Steve Quayle’s answer to that last question:

"This is further proof of the need for these monsters to be killed in order to prevent them from continuing to multiply."

That is disturbing.

I became interested in understanding the modern fascination with giants because I didn't see an obvious explanation for the resurgence. The Nephilim whirpool, with its strange mix of biblical, New Age, occult, political, cultural, and historical currents, is significant to the phenomenon. I am not a theologian or a social psychologist, so I can't offer a well-informed or nuanced idea about the ultimate source of the kinetic energy powering that whirlpool. But it is clear that many Christian fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists are interested in the Nephilim because they feel they’re key to God’s plan and what it means to do God’s bidding on this planet. And they're not shy about drawing on sources and ideas from well outside of the biblical realm. If you scratch the surface of those ideas, they can get pretty ugly pretty quick. That’s something to be explored, not ignored.

The answer to the question posed by the title of this post is clear: Nephilim enthusiasts generally do not regard giants or their descendants as people. Giants, the products of corruption, are agents in Satan’s plan to thwart God. These beings (rather than human wickedness) were the reason for the Flood. When they persisted after the Flood, God commanded that they be wiped out. That failed also, and Nephilim heritage lived on. What are these Nephilim theorists going to do if they find a Nephilim today? God has tried to wipe them out twice, so what should our course of action be? How many steps away are these Nephilim enthusiasts from seeing themselves as God’s agents of wrath in this life?

Those are legitimate questions to ask given all the statements about killing these "monsters."   Are people like Steve Quayle being serious? Do they really think that the quality of their "research" justifies those kinds of statements? What will they say if one of their followers takes that rhetoric to heart and does something stupid? I'm not the first to ask these questions.

But those are hypotheticals. One thing that we know is that the Nephilim whirlpool sells books. I would like to read those books someday, but I'm not giving those guys a dime. Maybe they'll send me review copies. I won't hold my breath.

I am bothered by this aspect of the resurgent interest in giants. It seems to be based on creating and promoting a doctrine that weaves together the past, present, and future with threads creating oppositions between "us" and "them." The Nephilim narrative resonates with 19th century views of "race" (that different groups of people are the result of separate creations), and I suspect that that legacy (or ignorance of it) is one of the reasons that giantologists so often use the term "race" when describing what they are looking for. I attribute part of the current popularity of the Nephilim concept to its simplistic understanding of the world as the product of a struggle between good and evil. While that idea may initially seem quaint, that quaintness evaporates when one examines the menacing notions that accompany it. So far, that menace has remained rhetorical (as far as I know).

In the Nephilim-centric view of the world, giants are most certainly not people. And the discussion about them is not an academic one, but one centered on crafting a plan of action. That is something worth paying attention to.

Forward>>

Confused About Giants-Based Christianity? Ask an 11th Grader

Cotton Mather: America's First Nephilim Enthusiast

Why Are There So Few Giants in the Book of Mormon?

Creation, Corruption, and Salvation: Are Giants People Too?

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