Q&R: What is your take on the Nephilim? Brad Jersak

RESPONSE:

The brief mention of the Nephilim in Genesis is quite a mystery. The gaps in this fantastical story led to loads of creative fan fiction (the Jewish genre called ‘midrash’) and, more recently, bizarre conspiracy theories. Let’s start with the initial text itself:

Genesis 6:

• ¹ When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. ³ Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ 
  ⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

That’s the last we hear of them until Moses sends an advance party into Canaan to spy out the land and its inhabitants.

Numbers 13:

• ³⁰ But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.’ ³¹ Then the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we are.’ ³² So they brought to the Israelites an unfavourable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, ‘The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. ³³ There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’

That’s all we hear of them in the Bible. However, some non-canonical books written between our two testaments develop the story further:

• The Book of Enoch: This apocalyptic Jewish text expands on the Genesis account, describing the Nephilim as the offspring of the “Watchers” (fallen angels) and human women. It portrays them as giants who brought violence and corruption to the Earth, leading to the Great Flood.
  
• The Book of Jubilees: Sometimes called “Little Genesis,” this text also mentions the Nephilim, linking them to the Watchers and their transgressions.
  
• The Book of Giants: Found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, this text provides a vivid narrative about the Nephilim, their origins, and their eventual destruction. It includes dialogues between the giants and Enoch, who warns them of impending judgment.

I mentioned the Jewish genre we call midrash. This type of literature creatively expands our Old Testament stories into legends that are fascinating and fantastical. If we distill the various Nephilim accounts into one narrative, we get the following story arc :

• Two or six (depending) entities called Satan tempt a class of angels called the Watchers – see Daniel 4:17) to copulate with human women. Their offspring are giants called the Nephilim. The Nephilim are so destructive that they threaten to make the world uninhabitable and bring humanity to extinction. Noah recognizes the inevitable and calls on God to rescue the human race. Thus, God sends the great flood to drown all the Nephilim, save humanity, and recreate the world. God intends to consign the disembodied spirits of the drowned Nephilim to chains in Tartarus (the Greek mythological prison where the gods confined the Titans). But the spirits of the Nephilim beg to be spared. God decides to send 90% of the Nephilim to Tartarus, but allows 10% of these spirits to return to earth as the demons, who perpetually roam about looking for living human bodies to possess and inhabit. 

See what I mean by fantastical? The midrash version is like fan fiction of the Genesis account (on crack and hallucinogens!).

As for the Genesis story itself, it is what it is… a strange aspect of Jewish oral history preserved in the final editions of the Torah for us to puzzle over. We might ask how that story functions in the story world of Genesis. Perhaps it is meant to set up readers for the flood story, helping us see that unlike other flood stories, the biblical account is how God saves humanity rather than destroying it. This article may help for those who would like to dive deeper: https://bradleyjersak124315.substack.com/p/flood-stories-as-social-theodicies

Nephilim after the Flood?

Presumably, the Nephilim all drowned in the flood, though some folks note two hints of their resurgence. First, Genesis 6:4 mentions that “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards…” After what? Possibly the flood? But if they all drowned in the flood, does this mean they Watchers had a second go at impregnating human women?

Second, we have the report of the spies from Numbers, which seems to tie the Nephilim to the Anakim, a race of giants descended from Anak. However, a close reading of that story narrates the exaggerated perceptions and faithless fears of the spies, rather than a literal claim that the Nephilim survived the flood.

While these passages seem to leave some wiggle room for locating the Nephilim post-flood, both of Peter’s epistles may cut off that possibility:

1 Peter 3:

• ¹⁸ [Jesus Christ] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. 

2 Peter 2:

• ⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [Tartarus] and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; ⁵ and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly…

These passages seem to be explicit references to the imprisonment of the spirits of the Nephilim but also the Watchers with them. We should therefore not expect to see them after the flood. The spies’ report is therefore best interpreted as a projection of their paranoia. Even if there were giants in the land, they were not literally the offspring of the Nephilim because according to the Torah, only Noah’s family survived the flood and none of them carried angelic DNA.

Sidenote on 1 Peter 4:6

The author of Peter’s epistles (I suggest his protege, Mark, who gives us Peter’s perspective in his Gospel) is well aware of these legends and quite playful with them… but for a purpose. He uses them rhetorically to offer warnings and hope to God’s people under pressure. He also reframes them around the saving work of Jesus. So in 1 Peter 4:6, we have seeds of the phrase used in the Apostles’ Creed, “he descended to the dead [literally, from the Latin, the Inferno!]:

• ⁶ For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.

The Greek term for “preached” here is εὐηγγελίσθη (euēngelisthē), meaning “evangelized” or “proclaimed good news.” Other than gloating, why would Jesus enter the place of the dead to preach the gospel? It may be controversial, but in Peter’s own words, those who were ‘judged in the flesh’ (through death) are ‘made alive in the spirit.’

That’s the very same language used for Jesus back in chapter 3:

• ¹⁸ For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison,…

It’s the language of gospel, of death, and of resurrection! And this may indicate that our first reading of 1 Peter 3 as referring to the Nephilim was incorrect. These are the spirits of people who perished in the flood… and if Christ can even preach good news to those rotters–if there is hope even for them–then his victory over sin and death is magnified beyond imagination! Enoch’s imagination has nothing on Peter’s epiphanies! Peter says the ark’s passage through the waters of the flood prefigures our baptism… but if grace extends even to those who perished, the flood is transfigured by the resurrection from a global cataclysm into a mass baptism!

As I said, Peter is playful with the story. Do we take him literally? Does it matter? He’s simply picking up a pop-legend and employing it to preach Christ. And that’s the model: even when some conspiracy theorists become obsessed with the Nephilim, Peter firmly turns our gaze back toward Christ.

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