A question about Nephilim

by whyizit 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  whyizit

  It seems like the Nephilim are a favorite subject of my JW friend. It's one of the first things she likes to bring up with people to show how much she "knows" about the Bible.

  Of course, many Christians also believe that the Nephilim are the result of a sexual union between fallen angels and humans. Many others believe that the Sons of God are followers of God (Adam's descendants), and the Sons of man are those who turned against God (Cain's descendants).

  I tend to believe they are giants, yes. That they are offspring of angels- X -humans, no. I really don't care which side of the fence anyone is on when it comes to that issue. There are probably exhaustive arguments for and against how the Nephilim came to be. People could probably split hairs on that all the day long. (And if that's what you want to do, then have at it.) But please answer this for me first!

  Here is what I don't understand. Do JWs teach that any of the Nephilim survived the flood? I'm quite certain JWs teach that angels were never allowed to "breed" among humans again after the flood. (Right?) Since Noah and his family were considered righteous enough to be on the ark, I am assuming they didn't have anything to do with the Nephilim. So it wouldn't make sense that anyone in his family would be married to one.

  The reason I ask, is because there were Nephilim mentioned in the Bible AFTER the flood (Numbers 13:33). (Yes, even in the NWT.)

  I just wondered how a JW explains this? I've thought about asking my friend, but then I figured I would get about 200 pages of WTS literature, and it would get stretched way off topic, etc.... You know the drill.

  Got any idea what kind of response I would get if I do decide to ask my JW buddy this question?
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  LtCmd.Lore

  From the 'Insight on the Scriptures' book, under the heading: "Giant".

  ***

  it-1p.929Giant***

  The faithless spies reported to the Israelites that in Canaan they "saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who are from the Nephilim; so that we became in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and the same way we became in their eyes." (Nu 13:33) These men of extraordinary size, called the sons of Anak (probably meaning "Long-Necked [that is, of tall stature]"), were not actually Nephilim, as reported, but were only unusually tall men, for the Nephilim, the offspring of angels and women (Ge 6:4), perished in the Flood.

  In other words: "This doesn't fit our understanding of the scripture, so they must have been mistaken."

  Because, after all, who would know more about it. The people who where actually THERE at the time? Or the people who read about it thousands of years later?

  It's amazing how the Bible can say something extremely specific, and religious people just ignore it.

  Lore - W.W.S.D?
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  VoidEater

  I think the official stance is that the "giants" of numbers are just large men, while the Nephilim of pre-flood days were the offspring of fallen angels (who apparently have external genitals) and human women. There may be "new light" on this, but this is what I was taught. The explanation? Well, obviously the giants of Numbers couldn't have been the same Nephilim, because those were all destroyed in the flood (ipso facto).
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  Leolaia

  Check out my post on the subject, I talk about how the tradition of the Nephilim (which definitely involved the union the divine beings and men, in both the OT and in early Jewish texts) was originally independent of the "Flood narrative" which intrudes in several ways in this tradition:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx
• 

  Zico

  In the Book of Enoch the angels got bored with humans and started sleeping with the animals:
  
  Enoch 7
  1 And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms
  2 and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they
  3 became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed
  4 all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against
  5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and
  6 fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
  
  I wonder what your JW friend would think of that text!
• 

  LtCmd.Lore

  Here's another one:

  ***

  it-2p.493Nephilim***

  A

  ReportIntendedtoTerrorize. The ten spies who brought back to the Israelites in the wilderness a false report on the land of Canaan declared: "All the people whom we saw in the midst of it are men of extraordinary size. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who are from the Nephilim; so that we became in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and the same way we became in their eyes." No doubt there were some large men in Canaan, as other scriptures show, but never except in this "bad report," which was carefully couched in language designed to strike terror and cause panic among the Israelites, are they called Nephilim.

  Here are the scriptures in question:

  (Numbers

  13:30-33)30 Then Ca´leb tried to still the people toward Moses and went on to say: "Let us go up directly, and we are bound to take possession of it, because we can surely prevail over it." 31 But the men who went up with him said: "We are not able to go up against the people, because they are stronger than we are." 32 And they kept on bringing forth to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying: "The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in the midst of it are men of extraordinary size. 33 And there we saw the Neph´i·lim, the sons of A´nak, who are from the Neph´i·lim; so that we became in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and the same way we became in their eyes."

  And here is a scripture NOT quoted. It's true that they are not reffered to specifically as Nehpilim again. But they are called the 'sons of Anak':

  (Deuteronomy

  9:1-3)9 "Hear, O Israel, you are today crossing the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified to the heavens, 2 a people great and tall, the sons of An´a·kim, about whom you yourself have known and you yourself have heard it said, ‘Who can make a firm stand before the sons of A´nak?’ 3 And you well know today that Jehovah your God is crossing before you. A consuming fire he is. He will annihilate them, and he himself will subdue them before you; and you must dispossess them and destroy them speedily, just as Jehovah has spoken to you.

  So, if Anak is a person, then this would have the same meaning as the report from the spies. And this one came from Joshua.

  The WTS assertion that Anak, means 'long-necked' seems completely unfounded and arbitrary to me. According to this verse:

  (Joshua

  15:13)13 And to Ca´leb the son of Je·phun´neh he gave a share in the midst of the sons of Judah at the order of Jehovah to Joshua, namely, Kir´i·ath-ar´ba ([said Ar´ba being] the father of A´nak), that is to say, He´bron.

  A'nak definately seems to be a name, not a descriptor.

  As a side point: The Book of Enoch goes into more detail about the Nephilim. I believe that is where the WTS gets their idea that the nephilim were evil. Since that is not mentioned in Genesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch

  Here is what Genesis says about them:

  (Genesis

  6:4) . . . The Neph´i·lim proved to be in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of the [true] God continued to have relations with the daughters of men and they bore sons to them, they were the mighty ones who were of old, the men of fame.

  They were mighty men of fame, but not bullies as the WTS says. The only way they would get THAT idea is from the book of Enoch, which they disregard as noncannonical.

  Lore - W.W.S.D?
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  Jim_TX

  Not sure if this fits in with this fits in with this topic or not - but there were also giants in David's time - Goliath? There were also others. It was not just a 'genetic' abnormality either, as there was a whole race of giants mentioned.

  I am not sure if these were referred to as 'nephilim' though or not.

  Regards,

  Jim TX
• 

  startingover

  You might be interested in this:

  http://www.stevequayle.com/books/gen.intro.html

  This is what I meant to post:

  http://www.stevequayle.com/Giants/index2.html
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  Gregor

  Nephilim are still around today and most of them are in the NBA. But seriously, this is another Bible story that defies even the pretzel like reasoning of believers. Why were spirit creatures horny for flesh and blood women? Do spirit creatures have testosterone? Why? How did these low level fallen angels aquire the ability to create a human body, right down to the reproductive equipment ( with real sperm) to procreate with a real human? Makes as much sense as the flying spaghetti monster.
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  Hortensia

  weren't the Greek and Roman gods always doing the same thing - sex with human women? It's just an old theme - maybe they wanted an explanation for really tall people, and that made sense to them. Or maybe some women used the story to explain unexpected pregnancies? Who knows - but what really counts is that it is all fiction.