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What about the Giants? · Scripture-ish

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher, and I am reading an essay called What About the Giants?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: A few people have recently asked me a question about the Nephilim in the Bible,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: which are often identified as giants.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And fortunately, I've actually written something about these characters, these Nephilim.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so in this post, I'm just I'm presenting an excerpt from what I've previously written.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is from chapter 11 of my book called Satan and His Friends.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a book that was published last year by Abilene Christian University Press.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: The chapter as a whole,
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  SPEAKER_00: chapter 11,
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  SPEAKER_00: as a whole deals with the theme of rebel angels,
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  SPEAKER_00: which are mentioned in the New Testament and often But anyway, the
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The section excerpted here is called,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: from that chapter, chapter 11, the section is What About the Giants?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I'm not going to read to you the footnotes from that section.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And on Substack, I haven't included the footnotes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want the footnotes, you'll have to get the book.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, here is If the sons of God, in Genesis 6-2,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Were just human beings and not angels, why would their offspring be gigantic?
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  SPEAKER_00: Or actually, was the offspring gigantic?
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  SPEAKER_00: Is that the right way to interpret the terminology in Genesis 6-4?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for that matter,
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  SPEAKER_00: are the beings that are possibly described as giants in Genesis 6-4 the offspring of
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  SPEAKER_00: the unions mentioned two verses earlier?
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  SPEAKER_00: I already admitted at the beginning of this discussion,
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  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
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  SPEAKER_00: that's a reference to the beginning of the chapter,
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  SPEAKER_00: which I have not reproduced here,
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  SPEAKER_00: at the beginning of this discussion of Genesis 6,
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  SPEAKER_00: that I do not know the answers to these questions,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it might be valuable to explore the possibilities,
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  SPEAKER_00: the evidence, and the proposed interpretations.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The word giant It does not appear in most English versions, I think.
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  SPEAKER_00: The KJV and the New King James are exceptions.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: That interpretation that they are giants goes back to the Septuagint,
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  SPEAKER_00: which has the Greek word giant, or in Greek it's gigas.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it shows up twice in verse 4.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right at the point where the King James Version has the word giants and where
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: the King James has the term mighty men.
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  SPEAKER_00: For the Septuagint, the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men were giants.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the Hebrew text reads differently.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The NRSV, New Revised Standard Version, represents the Hebrew well.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, This is Genesis 6 verse 4 in the NRSV.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons
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  SPEAKER_00: of God went into the daughters of humans who bore children to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown, end quote.
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  SPEAKER_00: No giants here unless the Nephilim are giants.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's also not clear from the Hebrew whether the Nephilim were the offspring of
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: the sons of God or whether they were just around back then at the time of the sons
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Also, are the Nephilim the same as the heroes?
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  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew term is giborim, the Hebrew term for hero, giborim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Are the Nephilim the same as the heroes later in the verse,
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  SPEAKER_00: or are the offspring of the sons of God the heroes,
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  SPEAKER_00: or are they all one and the same?
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  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew allows for three possibilities.
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  SPEAKER_00: Possibility number one,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Nephilim is the same as the gibberim,
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  SPEAKER_00: the heroes,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is the same as the children of the sons of God with the daughters of men.
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  SPEAKER_00: Possibility number two,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Nephilim are the same as the Giburim,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they are not the same as the children of the sons of God with the daughters
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  SPEAKER_00: of men.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are different people.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or possibility number three,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe the Giburim are the same as the children of the sons of God with the daughters
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  SPEAKER_00: of men, but the Nephilim are something different.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first option,
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  SPEAKER_00: that they are all three the same,
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  SPEAKER_00: Seems to be the interpretation of both the Septuagint and the Targumim.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Targumim are the ancient Aramaic translations.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Septuagint is often interpreted as indicating more clearly than the Hebrew that
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: the offspring of the marriages are giants.
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  SPEAKER_00: Certainly Philo,
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  SPEAKER_00: our earliest interpreter of the Septuagint version of this story,
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  SPEAKER_00: regarded the giants as offspring of the marriages, as did Josephus.
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  SPEAKER_00: What are Nephilim anyway?
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  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word seems to be related to the verb nafal, to fall.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so perhaps the Nephilim are fallen ones?
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  SPEAKER_00: That is the interpretation of Aquila, the 2nd century Jewish Greek translator.
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  SPEAKER_00: Aquila rendered giburim as dunatoi, strong ones.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or, according to a different report, duciatoi, Incurable Ones.
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  SPEAKER_00: The slightly later translator,
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  SPEAKER_00: Symmachus, used the word hoibiaioi, Violent Ones, both for Nephilim and Giburim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jerome's Latin Vulgate has giants,
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  SPEAKER_00: gigantes in Latin, for Nephilim and strong ones, potentes, for Giburim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Despite his translation,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jerome understood that the Hebrew Nephilim is more easily understood as fallen ones,
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  SPEAKER_00: which he pointed out would work well as a description of the offspring of angels
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  SPEAKER_00: or righteous men who sinned, either one.
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  SPEAKER_00: In other words,
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  SPEAKER_00: for Jerome,
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  SPEAKER_00: in the description of the offspring as fallen ones,
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  SPEAKER_00: that description lends no support to the angel interpretation of the sons of God
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  SPEAKER_00: in Genesis 6.
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  SPEAKER_00: But even if the word Nephilim doesn't mean giants,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: it may be that the Nephilim, whatever the word itself means, were in fact gigantic.
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  SPEAKER_00: At least their incredible height is implied in the only other passage in the Bible
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  SPEAKER_00: that uses the term When the twelve spies returned to the camp
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  SPEAKER_00: after having scouted out the land of Canaan,
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  SPEAKER_00: they reported having encountered Nephilim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote, this is from Numbers 13,
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  SPEAKER_00: verse 33,
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  SPEAKER_00: There we saw the Nephilim,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Anakites come from the Nephilim,
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  SPEAKER_00: and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
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  SPEAKER_00: For this verse also, the Septuagint renders Nephilim as giants.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the word means,
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  SPEAKER_00: it seems that the Nephilim and Canaan were really big people and that
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  SPEAKER_00: the spies expected the other Israelites to be familiar with the group
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  SPEAKER_00: of people called Nephilim and to know that they are big people.
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  SPEAKER_00: The verse also connects the Nephilim to another label, the Anakites, the descendants of Anani.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another reference to Anak appears in Deuteronomy,
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  SPEAKER_00: where Moses reminds the Israelites about the land of Moab.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is Deuteronomy 2, verses 10 and 11.
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  SPEAKER_00: Quote, Moses is talking,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Amim,
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  SPEAKER_00: a large and numerous people as tall as the Anakim, Had formerly inhabited Moab.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like the Anakim, they are usually reckoned as Rephaim, though the Moabites call them Amim.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the verse.
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  SPEAKER_00: Again, the Anakim are tall,
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  SPEAKER_00: and other names associated with them are Amim,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is said to be the Moabite name for them, and then also the word Rephaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now that last group,
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  SPEAKER_00: Rephaim, comes up again later in the same chapter, again in reference to Moab.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is Deuteronomy 2, verses 20 and 21.
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  SPEAKER_00: Moses says, It also is usually reckoned as a land of Rephaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Rephaim formerly inhabited it,
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  SPEAKER_00: though the Ammonites call them Zamzumim,
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  SPEAKER_00: a strong and numerous people as tall as the Anakim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, there was a king named Og.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is, I finished the quote from Deuteronomy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now here's my comment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, there was a king named Og who was one of the Rephaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, their last surviving member, according to Joshua 13 verse 12.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we know that Og was big, or at least he had a big bed.
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  SPEAKER_00: So big it became a tourist attraction.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is Deuteronomy 3,
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  SPEAKER_00: verse 11, quote, Now only King Og of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, his bed, an iron bed, can still be seen in Rabbah of the Ammonites.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the common cubit, it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is also a valley called several times in scripture, the Valley of the Rephaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: A term translated in the Septuagint as Valley of the Titans,
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  SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel 5.18, or Valley of Giants, 1 Chronicles 11.15 and 14.9.
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  SPEAKER_00: So again, Rephaim had the reputation of being tall.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we put all these verses together, we can construct the following equivalencies.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Nephilim were bigger than the Anakim,
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  SPEAKER_00: which are the same as the Rephaim and the same as the Amim and the Zamzumim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Amim is the Moabite term, Zamzumim is the Ammonite term.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were all very tall.
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  SPEAKER_00: It may be these tall people and not all Amorites,
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  SPEAKER_00: but Amos has in mind when he describes the Amorites as very tall.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is Amos chapter 2 verse 9.
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  SPEAKER_00: God talking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them whose height was like the height of cedars
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  SPEAKER_00: and who was as strong as oaks.
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  SPEAKER_00: I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath them.
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  SPEAKER_00: What happened to the Nephilim or the Anakim or Rephaim or whatever?
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  SPEAKER_00: The Israelite conquest reduced their number.
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  SPEAKER_00: See Numbers chapter 13 verse 22 or Joshua chapter 15 verse 14 or Judges chapter 1 verse 10.
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  SPEAKER_00: While Joshua made war on the Anakim,
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  SPEAKER_00: Joshua 11 verses 21 to 23, he did not eliminate them completely.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some remained in towns such as Gath, Joshua 11 verse 22.
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  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of Gath before?
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  SPEAKER_00: That's Goliath's hometown, 1 Samuel 17 verse 4.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gath was also the home of other towns.
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  SPEAKER_00: Was also the home of other words associated with a certain Rafa.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so that maybe there's a person or something named Rafa, but think about Rafaim.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's similar to the word Rafaim and that word Rafa is often translated giant.
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  SPEAKER_00: So were the Nephilim giants According to biblical scholar John Day,
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  SPEAKER_00: it, quote, it is clear that the Nephilim are to be understood as giants, end quote.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that interpretation arises from the evidence we have just examined,
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  SPEAKER_00: particularly the appearance of the Nephilim in the promised land, Numbers 13.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the association of the inhabitants of the promised land with great height,
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  SPEAKER_00: Amos chapter 2 verse 9,
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  SPEAKER_00: along with the association of the Nephilim with other tall people like the Anakim
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  SPEAKER_00: and Rephaim.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: the problem with associating the Nephilim with the descendants of the sons of God
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  SPEAKER_00: in Genesis 6 is that there were still Nephilim in the land of Canaan in the time of
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: the Israelite conquest.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't they be destroyed by the flood?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
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  SPEAKER_00: it may be that Genesis 6-4 means that the Nephilim were already on the earth before
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  SPEAKER_00: the union between the sons of God and daughters of men.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: A point argued not only by that biblical scholar John Day I just mentioned
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: in recent times, but also already by Augustine centuries ago, City of God, Book 15.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 23.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Various explanations have been proffered to explain how the Nephilim survived the flood.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Michael Heiser,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: a modern scholar and proponent of the angel interpretation of Genesis 6-2,
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  SPEAKER_00: proposed either that Noah's flood was a local event,
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  SPEAKER_00: and so it did not kill all the Nephilim,
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  SPEAKER_00: Or that after the flood, more angels cohabited with women and produced more giants.
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  SPEAKER_00: Augustine's solution is just to say that sometimes there are really tall people.
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  SPEAKER_00: He acknowledges that some people think the sons of God must have been angels because
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: the offspring were giants, but he doesn't believe it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: He counters that there are still sometimes really tall people in the world.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: He mentions an example of a really tall woman in Rome in recent times.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he points out that the text of Genesis says that there were giants on the earth
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  SPEAKER_00: in those days and afterward,
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  SPEAKER_00: suggesting that the giants were not necessarily connected
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  SPEAKER_00: to this particular incident of sons of God mating with daughters of men.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: It seems that John Chrysostom in the 4th century also thought That
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: the giants had nothing to do with the marriages of Genesis 6 verse 2.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: To go a different direction,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: there's a rabbinic tradition that the giant Og survived the flood by hitching a ride
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  SPEAKER_00: on board Noah's Ark.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then again,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: giants may have survived the flood if the guy that built the Ark was himself
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  SPEAKER_00: a giant.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some people in antiquity thought that there may have been evidence for this view
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  SPEAKER_00: that Noah was a giant.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they found it in Nimrod.
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  SPEAKER_00: You remember Nimrod in Genesis chapter 10,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: verses 8 through 12, there is a man named Nimrod, a mighty hunter or mighty warrior.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here, the term gibor is used for Nimrod.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which earlier had been used in connection with the Nephilim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remember they were also called giburim.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is the text telling us that Nimrod is a giant?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, the Septuagint translates gibur this way in Genesis chapter 10, gigas, giant.
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  SPEAKER_00: But remember, Nimrod is the great grandson of Noah.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if Nimrod is a giant, Is it in his genes?
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  SPEAKER_00: Did he inherit it?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some ancient Jewish sources speculate that Noah may have been
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: or may have been thought to be the offspring of an angelic father and
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: a human mother.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: There has also been the belief that Abraham was connected to giants.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all kinds of traditions about this.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: What about giants outside the biblical tradition?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ancient pagan myths included tales about giants or Titans.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Titans were the divine beings who preceded the Olympian gods,
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  SPEAKER_00: more familiar to us, that include Zeus and Hera and others.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: According to this mythology,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: the father of Zeus and Hera,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: and remember that Zeus and Hera are siblings,
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: but they're also married to one another.
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  SPEAKER_00: So their father was a titan named Cronus,
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  SPEAKER_00: whom Zeus defeated and imprisoned in a place called Tartarus.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: In the 7th century BC,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: the Greek poet Hesiod described the battle of the Olympian gods against the Titans,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: and this is in Hesiod's work called The Theogony.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Olympian gods won that battle, and here's a Long quotation from Hesiod.
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  SPEAKER_00: They sent them down under the broad pathed earth and bound them in distressful bonds
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  SPEAKER_00: after they had gained victory over them with their hands,
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  SPEAKER_00: high spirited though they were as far down beneath the earth as the sky is above
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  SPEAKER_00: the earth.
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  SPEAKER_00: For it is just as far from the earth to murky Tartarus.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: For a bronze anvil falling down from the sky for nine nights and days on
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: the tenth day would arrive at the earth.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in turn, it is the same distance from the earth to murky Tartarus.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And again,
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  SPEAKER_00: a bronze anvil falling down from the earth for nine nights and days on
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  SPEAKER_00: the tenth would arrive at Tartarus.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Around this a bronze barricade is extended,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: and on both sides of it night is poured out threefold around its neck,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: and above it grow the roots of the earth and of the barren sea.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the Titan gods are hidden under murky gloom by the plans of
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: the cloud gatherer Zeus in a dank place at the farthest part of huge earth.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot get out for Poseidon has set bronze gates upon it and a wall is extended
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: on both sides.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote from Hesiod.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some Christians saw a connection between the giants descended from angels
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: in Jewish tradition and the giants in pagan Greek tradition.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: For example,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: in the late second century,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Athenagoras,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: a Christian writer in the second century,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: explained that the offspring of the angels and humans were the giants written
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: about even by Greek poets.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt Athenagoras found compelling the stories about giants,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: not only because of the testimony of the Enochic writings,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: first Enoch and such,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: and other Jewish and Christian traditions,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: but also because they find a close parallel in Greek accounts.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's proof of the giants.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's the end of the excerpt from my book,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of the chapter similarly tries to document different traditions
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: about fallen angels and whether the sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The main point of the chapter is to document these opinions because that's what I find helpful.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to know what I really think about whether the sons
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: of God were angels and whether their offspring were giants, I'll tell you.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: What I really think is, I don't know.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the kind of book you want to read, then let me recommend Satan and His Friends.