A. Nyland - Nephilim and Giants

A s I said in the previous book, What were the Watchers, wrong information is easily spread. Here is an example from the Bible for you. Just think of the nativity scenes we all see everywhere at Christmas. They all have three wise men peering at the baby Jesus in a manger, dont they? And if you have ever been to a school Christmas play, you will no doubt see Mary and Joseph, along with the three wise men and the shepherds, all looking at the newborn Jesus in a manger.

I challenge you to get your Bibles, no matter which English Bible version you have, and see if there were three wise men, and see if the wise men were present at the manger. No, they were not.

The facts are that the Bible never mentions the number of the wise men, and never states that the wise men were present when Jesus was newborn. It does state that they visited Jesus in a house. At no time does the Bible, in any translation, suggest or imply that the wise men were present soon after the birth of Jesus. Further, not one Bible version states the number three. This is purely unfounded tradition based perhaps on the number of different types of gifts, not even the number of gifts.

Another Christian myth is the antichrist (literally, anti-anointing). Did you know that any antichrist is not mentioned in Revelation? In fact, there is no mention of a single antichrist figure anywhere in the Bible. The word only appears in the First and Second Letters of John, only briefly, and is identified as those people (plural) who do not agree that Jesus Christ (literally, Jesus the Anointed One) has come in human form. Many have said that a figure called the Antichrist is the Beast of Revelation. Sure, believe that if you like, but bear in mind that the Bible does not state or imply that they were one and the same. There is a difference between opinion and fact.

As the misconceptions are so persuasive in Christianity, it is not hard to realize that the situation pertaining to non Biblical works is just as bad.

As I said in Book 1, What were the Watchers, the Watchers were a class of angel. According to the ancient texts, some of the Watchers came to earth and, against Gods orders, taught weapons, spell potions, root cuttings, astrology, astronomy and alchemy to the humans living on earth. Some of the Watchers had sex with human women.

Nephilim were the progeny of these Watchers and the human women.

Author Zechariah Sitchin incorrectly said that the word Nephilim meant fallen ones: those who came down from above, those who descended to earth, but Nephilim does not come from the word naphal, to fall. Besides, it was the Watchers, not the Nephilim, who came down to earth. All accounts tell us that the Nephilim were born on earth.

Rather, the word Nephilim is from the Aramaic word naphil, giant.

The ancient Greeks translated the word Nephilim as Giant in the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dated to the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE. The Septuagint is quoted in the New Testament by Jesus and Paul. It was used by the early church.

The English translation Giant can be somewhat misleading, as the term Giants in those days did not refer simply to very tall people, as we think of Giants today. Sure, the evidence suggests that they were very tall, but this is not the sole meaning of the word. People of these times did consider Giants to be very tall and very strong. More importantly, they considered Giants to be an ethnic race (whether of quasi-humans, humans, or supernatural beings).

The Watchers who slept with the human women and taught the humans are sometimes referred to these days as Fallen Angels. However, not all the Watchers disobeyed, only certain Watchers. These disobedient Watchers were the fathers of the Nephilim. It is important to note that Watchers and Nephilim were not the same beings.

By the way, Sitchin confused the Nephilim with their fathers, the Watchers. He went so far as to state that they were one and the same, even quoting an Aramaic text (which he wrongly stated was a Hebrew text) and stating the word Watchers does not occur in the text, when it fact, it does.

As I said, Nephilim is translated in the Septuagint by the word gigantes, from which we get our English word giants, but to the Greeks the Giants were a race of supernatural beings that had been destroyed by the Olympian gods, and interestingly, like the fathers of the Nephilim, the Giants were also thrown into Tartarus. Sure, these beings were said to be very tall, but that was not the actual meaning of the word. It was just one of their characteristics.

Some English Bible translations translate the ancient Greek word gigantes with the English word giants. However, several Bible versions have the original word Nephilim.

The Problem. Today, we think of giants as very tall people, such as the giant in Jack in the Beanstalk. To Greeks, however, Giants were not simply tall people, but were exceptionally strong, supernatural beings.

In ancient Greek writings, the Giants were a savage, arrogant, aggressive race destroyed by the Olympic gods. The ancient writer Hesiod says they were earthborn: sons of Gaia (earth).

Language, word meaning, changes. For example, the Greek word hupokrites is today our word hypocrite, and modern English Bible translations usually translate hupokrites as hypocrite. Whats wrong with that? Plenty. In ancient Greek times, a hypocrite was not a two-faced person, as it means today, but an overly critical (of matters, not people), very legalistic type of person. Our modern meaning hypocrite can only be traced back to the 13th century AD. You can see why it is misleading to translate this word as hypocrite in todays Bible versions it is not at all what the word meant at the time when it was written.

Here are some examples of words whose meaning has changed in more recent times. These words did not have our modern meaning back in the day.

Naughty - used to mean to be in poverty.

Awful - used to mean something wondrous and magnificent.

Girl - used to mean a young person, both males and females.

Nice - used to mean a silly, ignorant person.

Pretty - used to mean a sneaky, cunning person.

Fantastic - used to mean something that existed only in fantasy land.

Sly used to mean a clever, skillful and wise person.

This is simply the standard and very typical way in which word meanings change over time. A few years ago, if someone said they were gay, it meant they were happy. These days, gay means homosexual. Thinking that the song in Westside Story, the words of which were I feel pretty and witty and gay, means that Maria is a lesbian, is precisely the same mistake as thinking that the Giants mentioned in Biblical times were the same as the Giants we think of today (as in Jack and the Beanstalk). Of course, we know the original word meaning of Westside Story, as we are only sixty or so years away from the original, unlike thousands of years away from the original in the case of the Giants.