Nephilim

AA: “When you look at Greek mythology and many of the mythologies around the world they have these stories of gods coming down from the sky and [having] sexual intercourse with these humans and [essentially] creating a new breed of human.”

AA: “When all of these encounters happened and when woman slept with those gods, which can be found in multiple texts all around the planet, those woman actually had sex with extraterrestrials, not with gods – because gods do not exist.”

But the view that this event involved lust and sex doesn’t fit too well with the Ancient Astronaut theory. They would prefer the view that what happened was artificial insemination

AA: “Today artificial insemination [is what happens]. You no longer have to have sex to have babies. We have the exact same description 1,000s of years ago where woman, without sleeping with anyone, all of a sudden became pregnant.”

The problem is that these texts are clear that a physical desire for women on the part of the angels was involved. So in order to make artificial insemination appear in the texts, Ancient Aliens stoops to a new low:

AA: “One of [the] Dead Sea Scrolls is called the Lamech scroll. [Who] is Lamech? Lamech was a shepherd. One day Lamech’s woman was pregnant and he said [to her] ‘This is impossible. I wasn’t here for months’. His woman, Bat-Enosh, swears [that no one touched her] but Lamech does not believe her and he goes to his father, Methuselah. Methuselah says to Lamech: ‘I can’t help you. I can’t understand this. I believe [Bat-Enosh in] that nobody touched her and I believe you. So what shall I do?’ [Methuselah then] goes to his father and the grandfather of Lamech, Enoch. Enoch tells Methuselah that the guardians of the sky have made an artificial insemination into the womb of Bat-Enosh, and that he should accept this child because [it shall be a] father of a new human generation – and in the Bible, this is Noah.”

They literally lie here. I suppose that Von Daniken is banking on the fact that not many people know about the text he is quoting from and so they probably won’t check his facts, so I guess he feels like he can lie to people about what it says.

Let me break down some of the deception in this clip.

AA: “And one day lamech’s woman was pregnant and Lamech said ‘This is impossible. I wasn’t here for months.”

The first big lie here is this idea that the reason Lamech doubted that Noah was his son was because he wasn’t there for months. The text clearly explains that the reason he doubted whether Noah was his son was because of the way he looked.[1] Von Daniken just inserts:

AA: “I was not here for months.”

I guess to make it seem like it couldn’t possibly be Lamech’s son, which is very deceptive, especially considering that in the text Bat-Enosh his wife actually reminds Lamech of the day they conceived the child.[2] And if you think that is deceptive on Von Daniken’s part you haven’t seen anything yet.

AA: “Now Enoch tells methuselah that the guardians of the sky have made an artificial insemination into Bat-Enosh.”

This is unbelievable. In the text Enoch says exactly the opposite and clearly confirms that Noah is the genuine son of Lamech.[3]

So not only is he bold face lying here about what Enoch said about Noah, he is inserting the idea of artificial insemination on top of this lie.

So you can see that one of the main founders of the Ancient Astronaut theory has absolutely no problem lying in order to make the crucial link they need between the nephilim and artificial insemination in ancient texts.

Although I sympathize with the Ancient Astronaut theorists in that I think the consistent details in the ancient texts about the nephilim leads us to the conclusion that something weird really did happen in the ancient past. I don’t think that the evidence points to it being extra-terrestrials from another planet.

Heiser: “Well the whole nephilim passage in genesis 6: 1-4 is admittedly weird. It’s one of those go to weird passages in the Bible that seems to come up, especially among people who would resist or not have a supernatural worldview. But, as weird as it is, the key is a supernatural worldview. If we believe that there are intelligent beings outside our own created world; our own material world, why would we limit a supernatural entity from [mating with woman]? What basis would you have to limit that property? If you’re going to allow for that, then this idea of being able to mingle with human flesh on some level or way, proceeds from those assumptions.”

I think we have already seen that they are being deceptive with the evidence they present, but I also think they are being deceptive with the evidence they are not presenting.

For example, in many ancient texts from the ancient near east to the ancient Americas this hybrid or nephilim-related event is spoken of in conjunction with a great flood. [4]

These stories, with slight variations, describe the flood coming because the hybridization was against the creators will.[5]

Heiser: “There are these flood stories in all these ancient cultures, so [it’s likely] some sort of [legitimate] collective memory. The problem is that a lot of those same sources and apologists will forget to include the other details that come along with those flood stories. One these things would be things like cohabitation and some sort of interaction between the divine world and the human world that resulted in strange offspring such as the nephilim.”

It’s complex and pretty strange, but it is consistent, and it is the story that many diverse cultures have passed down to their descendants.

They really believed this unnatural union produced giants, but again because the consistent stories of ancient cultures conflict with the Ancient Astronaut theory, they literally just throw out the evidence.

AA: “Were they giants or is that the wrong word and [should] the correct word be an extraterrestrial?”

But the word Nephilim really does mean giantvi, and the context of the various stories clearly reinforces this idea. Their height is often described, or the dimensions of their weapons are given, things like that.

Heiser: “The term nephilim really most accurately means giants. This is the way the ancient translators themselves understood it – translators of the Septuagint and Aramaic translations of the Bible. It gets pretty complicated to understand why that is the case. If you visit my website sitchiniswrong.com and click on the tab labeled ‘nephilim’, you’ll find an explanation.”

Part of the problem in my opinion, is the differences in the definition of an angel according to ancient texts vs. the definition according to modern pop culture.

If you wanted to determine what an angel was using the bible or other near east texts alone you would conclude that they have fully functional bodies; they can have meals with people; they grab hold of people; they are often mistaken as humans, and in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah the people wanted to rape the angels.

We find in the bible that the angels that decided to rebel and have sex with human women had to leave a certain type of body and exchange it for another one[6]. The type of body they were said to have left is described in this verse as a habitation:[7]

Jud 1:6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

The word “habitation” there is a rare Greek word called oike?te?rion which is used only one other time in the New Testament to describe the type of bodies followers of Christ will attain at the resurrection of the dead.[8]

So basically the angels were said to have left one type of body for another type and, according to the Bible, the second type clearly was capable of sex and reproduction

AA: “There is biblical precedent for the idea that their flesh can do things that our flesh does. In other words, if you’re going to assume flesh then it’s going to bring forth its possibilities and, in some sense, it’s limitations too”.

In other words the bible in detail explains what angels are and what their capabilities with their bodies are, which makes the following line from Von Daniken even more deceptive.

AA: “How can angels have sex? This is impossible. In our view, angels were something spiritual not something that has a body and the feeling of sex…but they had sex.”

Von Danilieks idea of an angel is defined more by hallmark cards than ancient texts. Obviously ancient cultures including the writers of the Bible believed that angels could and did have sex with human women.

The various elements of this story are too common in ancient cultures to be chalked up to coincidence in my opinion. But the details of these consistent reports do not benefit the Ancient Astronaut theory.

In fact, if anything it supports the idea that the narrative of the Bible is true, or at the very least that the specific details of that narrative were believed by cultures as geographically diverse as the Americas, the middle east, Asia, Europe and Africa.

The idea of the nephilim is a strange idea, but the idea that the texts which describe them are referring to ancient extraterrestrials does not fit the evidence. This is probably why Ancient Aliens has to misrepresent the evidence in order to make their point.

[1] “TRANSLATION OF 1Q GENESIS APOCRYPHON.” .

[2] “Then Bath-Enosh my wife spoke to me with much heat and said, “O my brother, O my lord, remember my pleasure, the lying together and my soul within its body. And I tell you all things truthful.”

[3] Col 5 1Q GENESIS: Enoch…not from the sons of heaven, but from Lamech your son… I now tell you… and I reveal to you… Go tell your son Lamech… When Methuselah heard this… And with his son Lamech, he spoke… Now when I, Lamech, heard these things… Which he got out of me

[4] 

[5] Ibid.

[6] James Montgomery Boice. “Notes on the Nephilim: The Giants of Old.” Notes on the Nephilim: The Giants of Old, 1988. .

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.