Who are the Nephilim, anyway?

A good place to meditate, or just walk the hills.

“When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Then the LORD said, ‘My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-4, NIV)

Type the word nephilim into Google search and watch as preachers and theologians turn themselves inside-out in attempts to exegete Genesis 6:1-4. Nephilim are either the product of the coupling of the “sons of God” with human women, or they’re not. The “sons of God” are either angels who abandoned their place in heaven and are copulating with women, or they were the heroes of old, men of renown. But in verse 5, God is in despair of the wickedness of mankind and decides to flood them all (save Noah and his kin) to death.

I’m reminded of Neanderthal Man, and without going into a lot of detail (Read all about it here), they were a species of humanoid that arose as a branch from Heidelberg Man, maybe as much as 500,000 years ago. I remember seeing signs along the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Cologne pointing out the Neander River and also, of course, its valley, the Neandertal. Here remains of humans both similar to and different from modern humans were first found but have since been excavated in numerous locations throughout Central Europe and Asia. Their Genomes have been charted and if you are of European origin, it’s likely that 1.5% to 2% of your genome will show up as a gift from the Neanderthal.

Modern Humans or disease, food shortage or climate change may have wiped out Neanderthals. The evidence is undisputed, though; Modern Man and Neanderthal Man interbred. Also, Neanderthal were stouter, stronger, although with brains suited more to physical than intellectual pursuit, less likely to have developed a complex language.

At the writing of Genesis, the tools of archaeology and anthropology we now have at our disposal simply didn’t exist. If we take the Matthew Genealogy that begins with Abraham seriously, we can easily show that when Abraham claimed the promised land, Chinese civilizations were already old, and Cree people had already been hunting bison around Rosthern for thousands of years. What the scribes gathering Genesis into a coherent whole had, though, would have been oral stories and legends, tales that had undergone the natural alteration we’d expect over hundreds of years.

Is Genesis 6:1-4 one such legend? Did the memory of the Neanderthal people survive and become adapted slowly over time, and was it then rewritten to meld into the Hebrew people’s understanding of creation?

I’m interested in genetics, but am obviously not a geneticist. It seems to me, though, that so much of what we ponder, so much of what confuses us could be made much clearer if we were to look at ourselves through the windows science and mathematics have opened up for us. Take sexuality, for instance: for me it’s been biology and evolutionary science that have helped me understand better why there’s so much tension around sexual subjects, why sexual behaviour of humans remains stuck in the stage of “best chance of species survival,” why it manifests as it does even though we’re long past the time when survival was enabled by frantic procreation. (More on this some other time.)

Part of the problem with Genesis 6:1-4 is that it’s so illogically placed; it appears to have nothing to do with the immediately preceding or immediately proceeding narratives. The same applies to its content; it appears to be talking about a time in the mysterious fog of the past, even before the creation narratives which follow a recognizable sequence from Adam to Noah. Then a host of problems—some of which I’ve already noted—present themselves: who are these “sons of God” in light of 1 John 4:9, for instance: “God showed His love for us when He sent His only Son into the world to give us life.” They are not human, otherwise the text would not read, “ the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.”

Although none of the commentaries I consulted mention it, the possibility that Genesis 6:1-4 is in part a borrowing from Greco-Roman mythology can hardly be ignored.

"Many of the gods consorted with humans, though Zeus is perhaps the most notorious for abducting unsuspecting humans for sexual gratification (…) The Greek gods often elevated their mortal children or grandchildren to the status of heroes, or even to the status of gods.”

Suffice it to say, if you’ve never heard a sermon based on Genesis 6:1-4, well, is it any wonder?