Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video, we’re
going to discuss the Nephilim: primordial giants of incredible size and strength,
hybrid sons of fallen angels and mortal women, abominations despised by God,
colossal corpses obliterated in the great flood that consumed the earth.
We’re going to start off by looking at two of the passages in which the Nephilim are mentioned
in scripture. Following that, we’re going to explore the Nephilim insofar as they are discussed
in apocryphal works, specifically, The Book of Enoch and The Book of Jubilees.
Let’s get into it
One understanding of the word Nephilim is to mean “the fallen ones”, derived from the Hebrew naphal,
meaning “to fall”. Frequently, though it is directly translated as “giants”,
a word used instead of Nephilim in Greek, Latin, and English versions of the Old Testament.
One of the oldest translations of the Hebrew bible is the Septuagint, a Greek translation.
The name Septuagint was given to this Greek translation on account of a story surrounding
its creation. The word for 70 in Latin is septuaginta, so the name Septuagint was supposedly
derived from there being 72 translators, six representing each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
It is thought that the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew bible), was translated around the
middle of the third century BCE, and that the subsequent two divisions of the Hebrew bible
(the Nevi’im and the Ketuvim) were translated sometime in the second century BCE. In this
translation, the word Nephilim was rendered to gigantes, the Greek word for giant, a change that
was similarly embraced by some Latin translations (such as the Vulgate, which became the definitive
Latin version used by the Catholic Church) that followed in the centuries to come. Continuing this
trend were many of the English translations, these also favouring the word giant. However, as said,
the adoption of the word giant as a substitute for Nephilim wasn’t universal, as can be seen
in the English Standard Version of the bible, which uses Nephilim, not giant. Furthermore,
English translations of the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible) still use the word Nephilim, as well.
The first mention of the Nephilim in either the Tanakh or the Old Testament
is in Genesis 6:4, but we’re going to begin the passage at Genesis 6:1; for the preceding
verses offer some much needed context and, added in, paint a more complete and coherent picture.
Basically, what’s described is a group of “divine beings” - probably fallen angels - taking women
as mortal wives - going on to recount how the Nephilim were the offspring produced
from these unnatural unions. Although, to be fair, other readings - we’ll expand on them
later - are far more prosaic, keeping a healthy distance from any notions
that involve interspecies breeding. Here’s the passage from the JPS Tanakh:
“When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine
beings saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them.
The Lord said, “My breath shall not abide in man forever,
since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years. It was then,
and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth when the divine beings cohabited with
the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.”
The second mention of the Nephilim in either the Tanakh or the Old Testament is in Numbers
13:32-33, when the Israelites prepared to enter the land of Canaan, the name of the
land the Israelites conquered after their exodus from Egypt. Once the Canaanites were defeated,
their appropriated land was where the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were founded. Along the way,
the Israelites encountered giants, the Nephilim, next to whom they appeared diminutive, miniscule,
as insects juxtaposed with full-grown men. Here’s the passage from the JPS Tanakh:
“The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people
that we saw in it were men of great size; we saw the Nephilim there - the Anakites are part of the
Nephilim - and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”
While the idea of half-divine, half-mortal giants sired by fallen angels on mortal
women is intriguing, to say the least, not every interpretation ventures into divine
or supernatural territory. In other translations, such as that of the Old Testament in the English
Standard Version of the bible, “divine beings” is absent from the text, substituted for “sons
of God”, a more equivocal appellation, one that could reasonably refer to either angels or men.
The alternative version just alluded to holds that the Nephilim were simply men who strayed
from the righteous path, falling prey to sin. A more fleshed out form of this version purports
these sinful men to be the descendants of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. This explanation,
called the Sethian view, was maintained by St Augustine, who lived from the mid 4th to the
early 5th century CE, as well as numerous Jewish Theologians. Taking this further, the “daughters
of men” referenced in the Genesis passage, said to have copulated with the descendants of Seth, have
been thought to be depraved women that came from Cain’s, the world’s first murderer’s, bloodline.
Several Apocryphal works, meaning works of dubious authenticity, expand on the version
in which angels sire the Nephilim, making the Nephilim half-angel and half-human.
One such work, the Book of Enoch, perhaps the most influential pseudepigraphal work in existence,
is thought to have been written sometime in either the third or fourth century BCE.
It is one of, if not the, oldest known work of Jewish origin not included in scripture,
and though it doesn’t feature in the Tanakh or the Old Testament, its importance is undeniable.
In the First Book of Enoch (entitled The Book of Watchers), there is a group of angels known as the
watchers. 200 of their number, led by Semjaza, became infatuated with the veritable cornucopia
of mortal women, beautiful and fertile, roaming the land. They took mortal women as wives,
thus defiling their own purity and collectively siring a brood of giants, the Nephilim. These
angels unleashed sin into the world. They taught men how to craft weapons and wage war, and they
taught women charms, enchantments, and techniques to beautify themselves, making them wanton
and lascivious. Their progeny, the Nephilim, grew to a prodigious size - their appetites insatiable.
They devoured everything people could produce, but even such plentiful nourishment couldn’t satisfy
them; so they started eating people, the birds in the sky, the animals that roamed the land,
and the fish that swam the sea; they even turned on each other, ingesting the flesh and imbibing
the blood of their own kin. Chaos and Mayhem consumed the world. The Nephilim roved and ravaged
the land, and humanity degenerated, becoming wicked creatures bent on war, lust, and deceit.
Eventually, cries of anguish carried forth, and the piercing sound of these laments rose so that
all the world was enveloped in a din of misery that reached even the utopic realm of heaven.
Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel watched in horror, and they brought what
they witnessed before the seat of the Lord; and by him, all four of them were dispatched,
sent forth to cleanse the land, scouring corruption and ushering in righteousness.
Here’s a passage from the Book of Enoch that recounts how each angel was instructed by God:
“Uriel … [Go to Noah] and tell him in my name “Hide thyself!” and reveal to him the end
that is approaching: that the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come upon the
whole earth … And again the Lord said to Raphael: ‘Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the
darkness: and make an opening in the desert … and cast him therein. And place upon him rough
and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his
face that he may not see light … And to Gabriel said the Lord: Proceed against the bastards and
the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy … the children of the
Watchers [the Nephilim] from amongst men … send them one against the other that they may destroy
each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have… And the Lord said unto Michael:
‘Go, bind Semjaza and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled
themselves with them in all their uncleanness. And when their sons have slain one another,
and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy
generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgment … the abyss of fire …”
Judging from this, the Nephilim - despite their enormous size and them being a scourge
upon the land - were beset by peril: from both the angels sent to eradicate them,
seemingly either through force or manipulation, and from the impending flood set to imminently
drown the earth and all the inhabitants who don’t find salvation aboard Noah’s Ark.
Here’s another passage from the Book of Enoch, this one the decree of God delineating the fate
of the watchers who copulated with mortal women, sired monsters, and brought sin into the world:
“Ye have wrought great destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin:
and inasmuch as they [the Watchers] delight themselves in their children … The murder of
their beloved ones shall they see, and over the destruction of their children shall they lament,
and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy and peace shall ye not attain.”
Upon hearing the fate that awaited them, the Watchers are stricken by fear - a death
warrant must have seemed a trivial slap on the wrist compared to being on the receiving end
of God's proclamation. They beg for forgiveness, but then the implacability of God’s words sets in:
no supplication for them or their children will affect God’s resolve,
and they’re to be shackled to the earth and banned from heaven for all eternity.
Some have hypothesised that demons, as potentially alluded to
in the Book of Enoch, are in fact the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim.
Here’s the passage that inspired this line of thought, however fringe:
“And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh,
shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling.
Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies because they are born from men,
[and] from the holy watchers is their beginning and primal origin; [they shall be evil spirits
on earth, and] evil spirits shall they be called. And the spirits of the giants afflict,
oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble.
Another apocryphal work that discusses the Nephilim is The Book of Jubilees, which is
thought to have been written around the year 100 BCE. Purportedly, an angel acts as a medium
through which a revelation is imparted on Moses by God. The history communicated through this work,
which spans from the beginning of creation to the life of Moses,
is structured by jubilee-periods of 49 years.
What is told of the Nephilim in The Book of Jubilees is much the same as the Book of Enoch,
as can be surmised by this passage that details the wickedness of the Nephilim
and their ultimate destruction by the great flood that washes over the land:
“For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth, namely, owing to the fornication
wherein the watchers against the law of their ordinances … [lusted after] the daughters of men,
and took themselves wives of all which they chose: and they made the beginning of uncleanness.
And they begat sons the Nephilim, and they were all unlike, and they
devoured one another … and the Lord destroyed everything from off the face of the earth.”
And that’s it for this video!
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