Chris Weimer

Well, I didn't draw my conclusions from experts, but took my own linguistic knowledge. In Latin, the word cado means "to fall", yet it also means, metaphorically, "to die". The Hebrew word Nephel means "abortion, miscarriage". So that ties two examples together. The third and final tie comes from the very passage of Enoch, where the Nephilim are angels that came down to Earth to teach humanity knowledge, they didn't "fall." In essence, the two mean almost the same thing!

www.geocities.com/nephilimnot/nephilim.html
http://www.mystae.com/restricted/str.../nephilim.html

Those websites aren't entirely reliable, so I will ask my Israeli friend. After all, he speaks the native language... I'll get back to you on that.

spin

More usual would be DECADO.


This is merely a a development on the meaning of NPL to fall, the baby fell at the wrong time.

You're right that they didn't fall to earth; they fell from heaven, from God.

Reconstituted soup is not the real thing.

(This might be hard to understand, but there were no native speakers of Hebrew for many hundreds of years. Liturgical use doesn't count: it is not generative, and few people actually used it, just like kathlik Latin. What is spoken in Israel today is a modern reconstruction, with modern pronunciations which are obviously not based on the pronunciation of biblical Hebrew (as indicated partially by the way Hebrew names were transliterated into Greek). Grammatical notions of the language are modern and unrelated to what they were doing over 2000 years ago. The adoption of Hebrew is a feat of modern sociological engineering more spectacular than the development of Nynorsk.)


spin

rostau

Well, it seems that when I Google on Nephilim, almost every single web page has a different interpretation of what they are, from the utterly bizarre to the completely quotidian. Even those that agree on the derivation of the word differ in its application: for instances, is it "fallen ones" literally, or "fallen ones" morally, or "ones who fall upon (attack) others", or "abortions, miscarriages, ie mutants or something"? No one seems sure.

I personally think the two references in the canonical Bible (Gen 6:4 and Num 13:33) are references to the same grouping, ie nephilim is used as a proper noun, referring to a specific group of people. This would indicate that the Nephilim's descendants were living in Canaan at the time of the Exodus, according to the biblical tradition. So that still leaves the question of how come the descendants of the Nephilim (or anything else) were around after the flood?

My guess is that the Genesis passage is actually part of some much bigger, unwritten tradition. So in 1000 BC or whenever, if someone was telling this story and they mentioned 'the nephilim', the listener would be able to provide all the context and so on. But when it got written down, it got written down without any of the context (because it was considered so widely known that writing it down was unnecessary) and then over time, people forgot the context. So today we're left with this enigmatic reference (not to mention the KJV mistranslation as 'giants') which adds up to a mystery, when in fact the reference is probably quite ordinary, to some tribe of people known to the proto-Israelites.

This still makes the rest of Gen 6:4 completely confusing. Still no idea who the sons of god are, nor even whether that's a correct translation. The 'god' part in Hebrew is given as 'haElohim', which I have seen translated as 'the one God' as well as 'the gods' as well as 'the elevated ones' (which could just be referring to people with social status).

Edit: typos

lulay

i know i know, i sense you probably all dis-count Allegro's hints about all of this........but what else have you got. ceaseless wonderings about 'Giants' and 'sons of god'...and i am afriad you will round in ever decreasing increasing circles trying to fugure this out, unLESS you admit to the E N O R mous relevance of hallucinogens in our species' history, and the secret cryptic references to them.

like i said, the awe we feel for them--ie., in their taboo status (which includes, ridicule by some), was shared by ancient ancestors, so one can see mytholgy as kind of circumventing their presence, although their presence is hidden, but can be find through understanding the leyers and associations to do with them and the experiences to do with them

take the term 'son of god'. Dionysos pronounces in Euripedes' play, The Bakkhai, I am the Son of God......this was taken on by the Christian myth.

hear Professor Allegro:

"The "Rephaim", as their name can now be seen to mean, were those "cast down from heaven", the fallen angels of the sixth chapter of Genesis, and a common theme of Jewish mythology. As the morning dew brought forth the sacred mushrooms, so, in the eyes of the prophet, would it give life to these denizens of the underworld. Pliny draws a further coonection between dew and the Holy Plant when he says that even the demonic
power of the Mandrake is increased when touched with morning dew.
In a very special way, then, the sacred fugus was the offspring of the Morning Star, as Jesus prclaims himself to be to the mystic. It thus had the unique ability of forming a bridge between man and god, being not entirely divine nor yet merely mortal. It gave men the power to become for a little while like the gods, "knowing good and evil". Like the mushroom itsel. it allowed mortals to become "Dioscouroi", as the Greeks understood the name of the sacred fungus, "sons of God"......"(The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, by John M.Allegro)

gregor

I suspect the Nephilim did not "survive" the flood, because in this particular mythical story there was no flood.

Chris Weimer

Hm... Has anybody read "The Etruscans Begin to Speak" by Zacharie Mayani. In the book, he describes the people living in Canaanites as IndoEuropean, not Canaanites themselves, but the Philistines, Jebusites, Hittites etc... He mentions the wall of Jericho and the tunneling as related to the walls of Etruscan cities and how Romans tunnelled under Etrusan walls to topple the city. I suspect that maybe the Nephilim were tall IndoEuropeans...

Shameless Hussy

Scholars don't agree on "sons of God", so if you're confused you're in good company. I haven't heard that "sons of God" is an incorrect translation, or even disputed, just that there is no consenus on what is meant. I just grabbed the NIV (not saying it's the best bible, just the one I've got handy) and here is a brief summary of their text notes. If you want me to give the references (chapters and verses) for some of these assertions, I will, but briefly:

The phrase sons of God here [6:2] has been interpreted to mean either humans or angels. In Job it refers to angels,; some appeal to Jude as well as Jewish literature in translating this as angels. Elsewhere, equivalent expressions refer to human beings, though in different contexts from the current passage. Sons of god possibly refers to godly men, and daughters of men to sinful women, probably from the line of Cain, thus the intermarriage of the Sethites with the Cainites. Another possibility is that it refers to royalty (kings were often associated with gods in the near east) who kept harems.

Nothing about martians.

As for haElohim, it is a plural form, but also used as a singular. It can mean either "the gods" (of the pagans) OR "The God" (of the Israelites), and the only way to tell which meaning to use is by looking at the context of the passage. Which doesn't help with 6:2, because the context has apparently been lost.

Chris Weimer

here's an interesting article about the subject...

Chris Weimer

and here is the answer I posed earlier. I do wish you would at least check this one out... and maybe ask questions of your own. There is no good in no questions.

rostau

I'm beginning to suspect something similar. I've not got a lot of time to do serious research on this, but my guess is that the Nephilim of Genesis tie in with the Philistines via Anak and the Canaanites. Ie, the Philistines, much reviled in the Bible, are 'descendants of the Nephilim'. Now, I read somewhere that the Philistines of the Bible were related to or in fact were the Phoenicians. Is that true? Has anyone else heard this?

If the Philistines were the Phoenicians, and descended from the 'Nephilim', then perhaps the reference to 'giants' and 'wondrous things' and the whole mystique of the Nephilim is explained simply by scientific/technological superiority over the Semitic people?