Are Nephilim and Giants Related?

I wanted to do a little bit here on the Nephilim, and the reason for that is because later we will be connecting them with the Denisovan. What Nephilim and the Denisovan have in common, as far as giant hunters are concerned, is that they are both pure giant.

Many people who believe in the reality of a giant race will usually point to the Bible and the mentions in Genesis about how Giants were real. Now, of course, the problem with using the Bible as empirical proof is that most scholars will agree that the Bible is a collection of legends and myths that are used as a holy book for various religions. It’s not a factual book. There may be overlaps between the Bible and actual factual things in the world, but that does not make the Bible proof.

That being said, Nephilim are mentioned in the Bible. Particularly in the Old Testament, and I know that the translation version of the Old Testament will give you different results. Now the word Nephilim doesn’t necessarily translate to giant, but it has traditionally been done so and is used frequently by believers of Giants as historical proof that Giants existed.

***Update 3/4/20 *** Jason provided me with more context to the above statement. 

“Nephilim” have been seen as giants since at least 350 BCE. Genesis 6 lists their fathers as the “Sons of God,” which were first interpreted as angels and later, after around 100 BCE, as the descendants of Adam’s son Seth. I collected sources on them: https://t.co/2vdJXEsMHO

— Jason Colavito (@JasonColavito) March 4, 2020

So what were the Nephilim?

According to the biblical sources I have access to, Nephilim are often referred to as the children of angels and the daughters of man. I think sometimes the Angels are referred to as the sons of God. Interestingly enough, to overlap with our ancient aliens’ blog, Von Danekin likes to use this particular biblical passage as proof that aliens interbred with humans. So you see, depending on what you’re trying to prove here, your mileage may vary.

Beyond biblical sources and the Old Testament, there aren’t many mentions of Nephilim until the modern era. Only a few obscure passages, and again most of those are in Genesis, there is a mention of Goliath being a giant, but it’s my understanding that in the traditional language of the Bible, he’s not really referred to directly as a giant. It’s just a translation thing that’s held on throughout the years.

So what can we really say about biblical mentions of actual giants?

While there aren’t any, not really. Anytime we see the word giant, it’s usually a mistranslation of the original language or alliteration of the actual word being used. Does this necessarily mean people were trying to say ‘giant’? No, people describe things in all kinds of various ways, and there’s usually more than one way to describe the same thing. I’m willing to believe that Goliath was meant to be understood as a giant of a man. Regardless of the exact words being used to describe him. Do I then also believe that any mention of Nephilim is reliably translated into the word giant? No, I don’t think so, I think the Nephilim are meant to be a separate entity from humanity, and there’s never been a description of the Nephilim in the actual Bible that I’m aware of.

So setting aside biblical sources as proof of Nephilim, what do we have then?

We don’t really have anything. This whole idea that Nephilim are giants is a mistranslation, the entire notion that “there were giants in those times,” can also be translated from “there were Nephilim at the time,” is pretty much all we have.

Sometimes people like to turn to the book of Enoch and point at Enoch’s description of the angelic war in heaven. I think there’s one actual mention of this war in the canonical Bible when it’s describing the fall of Lucifer. Beyond that, I don’t believe this angelic war is mentioned in the formal Bible. Enoch describes it a little bit more in detail, gives us a breakdown of who was on what side, and tells us that the angelic host was cast out of heaven. I believe it is Enoch who also gives us the idea that specifically named angels came to earth and took wives and had children with them.

I will say that I don’t often see giant enthusiasts turning to the Book of Enoch. That’s mostly in ancient aliens thing, but, as we’ve seen earlier, the same support used for ancient aliens can be used for the idea of giants.

Again, outside of these sources, we don’t have many historical mentions of Nephilim.
So then we jump to modern-day, and we look toward pseudo-archaeology shows like The Search for Lost Giants, and Megan Fox’s show, Legends of the Lost, from 2018. Both of these shows use the idea of giant interbreeding with humans as a way of explaining why we don’t have giants anymore. Fox’s show also does something rather insidious and claims that the Nephilim interbred with Native Americans, thereby making Native Americans giant-human hybrids.

It’s essential to understand the idea of hybridization here, mainly because it’s being targeted at a group of people that are being “othered” by people who could best be described as belonging to a Westernized Culture. It is effectively what Edward Said calls Orientalism; only this time, it’s being directed at Native Americans.

The claim, when you really look at it, is that Native Americans are not wholly human because they are the descendent’s of Nephilim, who are pure giants.

Now let’s step outside of the obvious social implications of this claim and address it as if there was some validity to it. (there isn’t btw)

What evidence is being put forward to suggest that Native Americans are not wholly modern humans?

There is an exciting thing happening in archaeology recently, the introduction of genetics and the study of ancient DNA. Dr. Jennifer Raff frequently comes on the show to talk to us about ancient DNA and what we can and can’t learn from it. The reality of what we can get from ancient DNA and the advertising that is out there about DNA, like in those little DNA kits where you spit into a test tube, and then they tell you who you are, are often very different.

Those little DNA kits are selling you an idea, and it’s a very problematic idea, about how ethnicity is decided.

A lot of times, any advertisements for these kits claim that they can tell you if you belong to a certain cultural group, for example, if are you, German,  Canadian, Mongolian, etc. These are cultural and ethnic groups, and neither culture or ethnicity can be determined via your DNA. So the DNA kit cannot tell you if you are German, what it can tell you is that you have a particular genetic marker for a large group of people who are often found in a large area of continental Europe. Does that mean you are then European if you have spent all of your life in America? No. Because again, you’re talking about cultural groups, which are not determined by genetics.

Culture and ethnicity are determined by how you were raised and into what group you were born. Culture and ethnicity are both social constructs that are fluid and change with time. For example, there is no rock-solid “white” culture, regardless of what people want you to believe. The idea of what makes someone “white” has altered throughout time, and will continue to change throughout time. The idea of what makes someone “white” will probably look quite different a hundred years from now than it looks today. Just as the concept of whiteness in the past does not look like what whiteness looks like today.

Sorry if you don’t like that, no wait, no, I’m not.

So coming back to DNA evidence for the Nephilim. This is actually where we start to overlap with Denisovan.

Ancient DNA has been able to isolate a genetic group that is called the Denisovan. The reason for the name is the discovery location of the first set of remains that tested for this ancient DNA group. I believe the cave was on someone’s property whose name was Denny. It really is that simple. For some reason, certain groups of people have latched onto the idea that the amount of Denisovan DNA in your genetic history determines how human you are.

This is an incredibly flawed idea. Because it comes with the concept of distinct species. The concept of a distinct species, when we’re talking anthropologically and genetically, used to be that you could not have viable offspring between two members of two distinct species. We often look at the mixing of horses and donkeys, they can produce offspring, that offspring is infertile or nonviable. It cannot produce offspring of itself. This was, in a nutshell, what the concept of speciation was meant to represent. To take it to an extreme, you can’t combine the sperm of a bat, with the egg of a bird, and get anything. They are two distinct species, they cannot interbreed.

When we look at Denisovan DNA, and before that, Neanderthal DNA, and its mixing with anatomically modern human DNA, we see that not only can these individuals interbreed but that they also produce viable offspring. This particular detail tells us one significant thing; Neanderthals, Denisovan, and anatomically modern humans are not separate species.

So what does this mean for the use of Denisovan DNA as proof of Nephilim interbreeding with humans?

Well, it’s pretty crappy evidence, actually. First off, not only are Denisovans not nonhuman, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that they were any larger or smaller than the Neanderthals or humans of their time. Thereby they are not giants.

So are Nephilim then Denisovans? There’s no reason to connect the two. Are Denisovan giants? No, not by any definition of the term.

But why are Nephilim and Denisovans often connected? And why are Denisovans claimed to be giants by so many outside of archaeology and paleoanthropology?
We will look at these questions in the next post where I will talk much more in-depth about Denisovans.

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