The Nephilim and the Flood

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By Petros Koutoupis

Who are the Nephilim and what do they represent? Are they biblical giants? What does the term literally translate to, and why does the brief mention of them in the Book of Genesis show resemblance to other mythologies? The Nephilim have been a topic of great controversy. Many scholars, both independent and accredited, have dedicated much of their lives to answer these questions. It wasn’t until the discovery and translation of the Book of 1Enoch that we were finally given a better understanding of these Nephilim, but is it a proper understanding?

This detailed analysis will incorporate the theology during the proposed time of writing for the verses, grammatical study in Hebrew and Aramaic word forms, and even external influences that would have played a role in the region.

Some Grammatical Clues

In the past century, many independent scholars have taken the opportunity to exploit the Nephilim to their advantage. Zecharia Sitchin was one of those individuals, who proposed that the Nephilim were nothing more than a god-like race with the knowledge and technology to navigate the heavens, who came to earth and created mankind as slave labor mining rare materials. Sitchin had jumped on the chance to translate the Nephilim as: (1) those who came down from above, (2) those who were cast down, and (3) people of the fiery rockets. These made-up epithets are clearly ridiculous and groundless. The Hebrew verb for ‘to go’ or ‘to come down, descend’ is yarad which shows no relation to the term in question. He then goes on to identify the Nephilim with the Sumerian deities, claiming that the Sumerians knew of their existence and that they came from a planet called Nibiru. According to Sitchin, Nibiru completed its rotation around our sun every 3600 or so earth years. The sources cited came from his mistranslated Mesopotamian inscriptions and cylinder seal impressions. Many others have tried to follow in Zecharia Sitchin’s footsteps, such as Alan Alford, but have quickly repealed their theories, claiming it was too outlandish of an idea. It was in his second book, The Phoenix Solution, that Alan Alford retracted his ancient astronaut theories. Apparently, this made such a powerful impact that Zecharia Sitchin threatened Alan Alford with a 50 million dollar lawsuit on the grounds that Alford’s comments discredited Sitchin’s theories and destroyed his reputation.

Then there was Andrew Collins, using the sons of God and the Nephilim to hint at a forgotten race. This race allegedly knew and shared all the forbidden arts and sciences with humanity, thus leading them to their corruption and the Flood of Noah. Much of what Collins proposes, it seems, may be based on earlier works, such as that belonging to Sitchin. For example, Collins uses translations similar to Sitchin’s for the noun Nephilim.

In his book, From the Ashes of Angels, Collin’s clearly displays his lack of knowledge in biblical Hebrew; confusing the Nephilim with the sons of God, when it was the sons of God who supposedly had fallen (unto the daughters of men) and not the Nephilim. It would seem that most of these authors attempt to link the root word for the plural Nephilim with the Hebrew singular word of naphal. naphal means ‘to fall’ or ‘to fall in battle, by the sword’, ‘to be killed’, ‘to be fallen’ and also ‘to fall unto/ upon.’ All of these definitions display characteristics not held by the Nephilim or, as I will point out later in this article, the sons of God.

We first read of the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4. This is one of two verses to mention the Nephilim three times throughout the entire Pentateuch. Genesis 6:4 reads:

The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

The biggest clues to the identification of the Nephilim will come from Numbers 13:33:

And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Taking an interpretation of the Nephilim as the ‘people of the fiery rockets’ again holds no credibility when examining the term itself and the surrounding grammar of Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. The word was left untranslated by the Revisers, the name of one of the Canaanite tribes. The Revisors have, in fact, translated the Hebrew gibborim, in Genesis 6:4, as ‘mighty men,’ which will be a key point in the coming conclusions. When the Old Testament was first translated to the Greek language, the word for Nephilim read gigantes, the Greek word for giants. This is confirmed in Numbers 13:33 with the description of the Israelites when compared to the race of giants.

It is extremely important for the reader to understand that in Hebrew grammar, the singular naphal cannot form the plural Nephilim. If we were to follow grammatical rules within the language, we would end up with the plural nophelim. Clearly this is not the same as Nephilim, and we can now see that it is impossible for naphal to be the root word used. A detailed analysis of the characteristics held by the Nephilim will further prove this in the section below. One other area of concern is that nophelim is not in the plural passive (perfect) form, but instead a plural active (imperfect), indicating that these beings are ‘falling’ and have not ‘fallen’. Now what have the Nephilim fallen from? The answer is nothing. If a link were to be established for someone(s) falling from God’s grace it would have to go to the sons of God as is apparent in the post-Exilic and not in the pre-Exilic literature. The biggest clue to the identification of the word’s root can be found in Numbers 13:33. The word Nephilim is used twice in this verse, but oddly enough, is spelled differently. Many have wondered what this could mean. In the first occurrence we find:

NFYLYM

The spelling comes with the matres lectiones throwing in an extra y (yod) to give us a proper pronunciation of the word nef-ee-leem. This is the only instance of this spelling found throughout the entire Old Testament. The second spelling holds (which is consistent with Genesis 6:4):

NFLYM

This is without the extra yod. It is important to understand how these matres lectiones (or mother of words) work and Hebrew orthographical analysis to see the evolution of these matres lectiones. The purpose of the matres lectiones was to preserve the proper pronunciation of words in the consonant-only Hebrew language. Specific characters are used to act as vowels. For example, a yod, depending on the structure and form of the word, can be used to indicate an ‘ey’ or ‘ee’ sound. In this case we see the ‘ee’ forming the second syllable’s vowel. Orthographical analysis of the evolution of these matres lectiones show that the Israelite script, which evolved from the Phoenician, did not originally use some of their characters as vowel markers. We do not see this until the 9^th century BCE in the surrounding regions.[1] Literary evidence seems to indicate that the role of the matres lectiones originated from regions to the south of Phoenicia and Israel, more specifically Moab, Ammon and Judah. Our earliest examples of it come from the Mesha Stela. Scholars studying Hebrew orthography in the Old Testament have noted attempts by many scribes, when copying texts over time, to rewrite older words with newer spelling forms so that they may be able to preserve pronunciations for future readings. There have been cases where we have seen that scribes would overlook words to rewrite, and it would seem that the verses containing the Nephilim were no exception. This is why we see a modified spelling in Numbers 13:33. Oddly enough, all three occurrences of the Nephilim in the Samaritan Pentateuch preserve only the original form of spelling. This may hint at a revision of the spelling taking place during the post-Exilic period and after the Samaritan adoption of the Pentateuch; believed to have taken place ca. 400 BCE. On top of that, the Septuagint (hereafter, LXX) preserves none of this miniature genealogical tree. The Masoretic Texts (hereafter, MT) and Samaritan Pentateuch reading of Numbers 13:33 corresponds to Numbers 13:34 in the LXX, and the verse translates as follows:

And there we saw the giants; and we were before them as locust, yea even so were we before them.