Myth #42:

All living creatures not on the ark perished.

The Myth: And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. (Gen. 7:23)

The Reality: A race of giants, called nephilim in the Bible, survived the flood.

Before the flood, the Bible says that there was a race of giants (see Gen. 6:4). The Hebrew word translated as “giant” is nephilim. In Numbers 13:33, we learn that after the Exodus the Israelites “saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants.” Again, the word translated as “giants” is nephilim. So, we have a race of nephilim before the flood and a race of nephilim in the time of Moses. Since there were no nephilim aboard the ark, how did the race survive? Some folk traditions hold that the nephilim grabbed onto the ark during the flood and floated alongside it, but the biblical passage specifically states that only Noah and those aboard the ark survived. If the nephilim survived the flood, perhaps others did also.