TEN

GIANT: Word derived from the Greek (in LXX.), denoting a man of extraordinary stature; in the English versions the rendering for three Hebrew words: (1) “Nephilim” (see Fall of Angels), Gen. vi. 4a, an extinct (mythological, only semihuman) race, inhabitants of the earth before the flood, the progeny of the Bene Elohim and the daughters of men. In Num. xiii. 33 this name is used of the pre-Israelitish population of Palestine. Gen. vi. 4b calls them the (2) “Gibborim” = mighty men. In the singular in Job xvi. 14 this word is translated “giant” (but R. V. margin, “mighty man”). (3) “Refa’im” (A. V. “Rephaim”), a collective appellation for the pre-Canaanite population settled both east and west of the Jordan and described as of immense height (Deut. iii. 11; II Sam. xxi. 16–21); the singular occurs as “rafah” (with the definite article, “the giant”; II Sam. xxi. 16, 18, 20, 22) or “rafa” (I Chron. xx. 4, 6, 8). In the account of the war of the four kings (Gen. xiv.) the Rephaim are mentioned among the defeated (verse 5), along with the Zuzim (= Zamzummim), the Emim, and the Horim, peoples cited in Deut. ii. 10, 11, 12, 20, 21 as autochthons of Palestine; with the exception of the last-mentioned, they were said to be “powerful and numerous and tall,” and considered to be Rephaim like the Anakim, the context showing that the Horim as well as the Avim (Deut. ii. 23), even if not explicitly described as such, were also deemed to have belonged to these prehistoric Palestinian tribes. In Gen. xiv. the Rephaim are enumerated along with the Kenites, the Hittites, etc., as being in the land in Abraham’s time. Before the conquest, OG, the King of Bashan, is mentioned as the only survivor of the Rephaim (Deut. iii. 11) east of the Jordan, while the Anakim were located west of the river (Num. xiii. 22; Josh. xiv. 12–15, xv. 13; Judges i. 20), as well as among the Philistines (Josh. xi. 21, 22). Even near Carmel (Josh. xvii. 15) they were settled, and the name “valley of Rephaim” (Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16) indicates their early presence near Jerusalem (comp. “Avim,” a Benjamite city, Josh. xviii. 23). Under David these giants are connected with Gath (I Chron. xx. 6–8). Goliath (I Sam. xvii.), Ishbi-benob, Saph (= “Sippai”; I Chron. xx. 4), Goliath the Gittite (“Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite”; I Chron. xx. 5), and a man of great stature with 24 fingers and toes (II Sam. xxi. 16, 22; I Chron. xx. 4–8), are mentioned as born to “the giant.” This giant may have been the Goliath that was slain by David, or the phrase may mean that these men were of the breed of the giants living at Gath.

—Emil G. Hirsch, M. Seligsohn

By the time they arrived in Phoenix, it was night, they were exhausted, and they needed a place to crash. They stopped at the Rainbow Motel off of West Encanto. White stucco and single story, the place looked like it had seen its heyday when JFK was president. One room had a board across the window. Another had a padlock on the door. It was the sort of place where people wouldn’t ask a lot of questions. They paid cash for the room, and while Shannon scrounged Mexican food from around the corner, he lugged their stuff inside. When she returned, they ate burritos in silence, and then she went into the bathroom and took a shower.

Ethan got online, making sure to use the proxy server application to anonymize his presence. Then he sent his mother a simple email from a new Yahoo! account he created. It had been bothering him more and more. There was no telling what she thought of him. He was sure his brothers and sister had already rendered their judgment. He wanted to try to balance it as best he could.

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I had to leave. I’m taking care of a few things Dad asked me to do. I’m sure you’ll understand. Please don’t ask where I am. I can’t tell you. Just know that I love you and I hope to see you soon. Stay strong.

Love,

Ethan

After that he used a mapping program to view the location of Matt’s home based on the address his father had scribbled. It was dead center in a trailer park about ten miles away from them. Ethan wasn’t sure what they’d do or what they’d find, but he felt he had to check. He noticed that a Way of Life Church was nearby.

The door to the bathroom opened. Shanny came out with blond hair. He had to do a double take just to make sure it was her. She’d bleached her hair blond to change her appearance, and boy did it change her. She came over and kissed him on the cheek, then went to the other bed. The smell of soap cut with a chemical tinge from the dye lingered in the air. He watched her climb into bed, turn the other way, then pull the covers up to her chin.

They hadn’t talked about it when they’d rented the room. When asked, he asked for two beds. It had just seemed prudent. Sure they were in love, and sure they needed comfort, but crossing the line they hadn’t crossed in years didn’t seem the most logical thing to do at this moment. He stared at her a moment longer, then returned his attention to the laptop.

He dialed up the information and chose a page at random.

FACT: Mal’akh is the original Hebrew Bible word for “messenger.” In the King James Bible, the noun mal’akh is translated “angel” 111 times, “messenger” ninety-eight times, “ambassador” four times. How they came to decide which was which is unknown. In modern Hebrew, mal’akh is the general word for “angel,” as it is also the word for “angel” in Arabic (malak), Aramaic, and Ethiopic. Why they chose to render a noun meaning “messenger” as a divine being is troublesome, but without angels, God has no representation on earth.

And there it is —Matt

An excerpt from a Wikipedia article on Angels in Judaism explained further:

Clues to this rendering as a divine spirit can be found in the combination of the words mal’akh Yahveh. In this case, meaning messenger of God. Almost every appearance of this figure in the Hebrew Bible complies with the following pattern:

The narrative introduces the angel;

It behaves as if he were a deity, e.g., promising fertility (Genesis 21:18) or destroying the whole army with a single blow (Kings 19:32–36);

The people the angel is dealing with address and revere him in a way reserved exclusively for a deity.

Ethan wasn’t really as culturally challenged as Shanny thought he was. He hadn’t seen the second and third Prophecy movies, but he had seen the first one, and he remembered Christopher Walken playing an angel in the movie. It had been a great role for him. The tall, pale actor had always had an ethereal quality to him, as if he were above it all, detached from our reality and living in his own. What had bothered Ethan about the angels in the movie, however, was that they seemed to have their own agendas. If they truly were working on behalf of a supreme being, one would think they’d have some sort of program or plan.

This information about the original translation of the term as a messenger rather than an angel affirmed what they’d been talking about earlier. Did the idea of angels being something other than messengers change because of translation problems? Or was it because someone was trying to introduce supernatural entities into the Bible? Without angels in the Bible, there was no physical link to God.

He searched the document for more information on angels and found a long section.

FACT: Now that we’ve established that mal’ahk is a mistranslation, look at the term Elohim. In the Jewish Bible, according to Wikipedia, the term Elohim appears more than twenty-five hundred times. Elohim translates to “God.” It’s not until later Latin versions that the term is changed to “angel” and sometimes “judge,” depending on the context. This is believed to have occurred because of the New Testament declaration that there is only one true God. Yet it’s clear that prior to the advent of the New Testament and the different translations there were many gods. Biblical scholars believe that the earliest references were taken from the Book of Enoch, which, although it wasn’t included in the Bible, informed it by incorporating divine beings from Greek mythology into a larger narrative. So who were these Elohim? Were they giants, godlike in appearance to mere mortals? Whatever they were, they didn’t start out as angels. That translation seemed to be a political necessity.

Many scholars find it interesting that the New Testament calls Jesus the only son of God, yet in the Old Testament the term son of God is used more than fifty times to refer to many different people and entities. So the sons of Elohim is the key to the entire mystery surrounding angels, giants, and the existence of God. Remember that the translation of Elohim is “God,” not “angel.” So if you read Genesis 6 without the term angel, then everything becomes clear. Note also that it refers to God, gods, and the Lord. If the Lord is the Supreme Being, then what are these other gods? The Dead Sea Scrolls have several different definitions for the sons of God but can’t seem to agree on one singular definition. The Book of Wisdom defines the sons of God as righteous men. In the Talmud the term often refers to a rabbi or holy man. Sons of God appears frequently in Jewish literature and refers to the leaders of people—kings and princes were called the sons of God. With all this disagreement, how can we be sure what it means?

If this isn’t the smoking gun, then I don’t know what is —Matt

SUPPOSITION: This is Jonas. I think I figured it out. Bear with me. I’ve been compiling some ideas I got from different blogs and sites on the internet. What follows is the English Standard Version of Genesis 6 followed by an informed translation.

ESV—“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”

Looking at the context of this section of the Bible and rendering all we’ve learned into it, the most logical change would be this.

What it really means: As the population of man grew, the giants saw that the women of man were attractive. They took who they wanted as wives. The supreme giant commented, “Man will not live as long as we can for they are a weaker flesh. They shall only live for 120 years.” Because of this interaction, half giants were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when more giants took the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These half giants were the mighty men of the old tales, the men of renown, the heroes who put their imprint upon history.

See where I took Nephilim and translated it as half giant? I’m not the first. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, the standard desk reference for biblical scholars, uses the term Nephilim to mean “giants.” Assumptions that the word Nephilim is a derivative of the Hebrew verb “fall” is the father of many assumptions. According to an open-source Wikipedia article on Nephilim, eighteenth-century British Methodist biblical scholar Adam Clarke took it as a perfect participle, “fallen” or “apostates,” but then he was on record as being disdainful of the Hebrew Bible and other Hebrew texts, calling them vain and deceitful. University of California, Berkeley professor Ronald Hendel stated that it is equivalent grammatically to “one who is appointed.”

A majority of the ancient texts indicates that the word should be translated as “giant.” So then why do modern biblical texts and theologians insist on calling them fallen angels? Isn’t it easier to believe that there used to be very large humanoids (there were giants in those days) than beings with wings from a heaven somewhere in the sky or another dimension who fly down to impregnate pretty women? Then again, if you disprove angels and start to believe in giants, the entire text of the Bible becomes one in which we were helped along by the vestiges of a giant race, instead of a super being that created the earth in seven days.

A lot of supposition here. Not sure this is accurate —Matt

Wow! Just Wow! —Steve

Ethan sat back, realizing he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in a long, slow release.

These words that had been gathered, these thoughts on the screen, were enough to shatter the very idea of God. It was no wonder the Six-Fingered Man wanted them dead. It was no wonder there’d been so much secrecy surrounding it. That all the information had been hiding in plain sight all this time was stunning. It was as if the entire world wanted to believe in God and his host of angels despite the continued references to a race of giants.

First the term angel, then the sons of god, and now the term Nephilim. They didn’t mean what everyone thought they meant. For a brief moment Ethan shook his head and disbelieved what was on the pages before him. Maybe it was all wrong. Maybe Jonas of this document had taken too many liberties with facts and come to the wrong conclusion. It happened in math all the time when multiple operations were in the same equation, such as multiplication, addition, and subtraction. If the equation was solved in the order that the factors appeared, then the answer would be wrong. There was an established order of operations, which he taught as PEMDAS—parentheticals, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. The only way to solve for X accurately was to solve using the PEMDAS order. What if there was a critical element in the text that had been missed and which caused all of it to be wrong?

Shannon moaned in her sleep. She cried out softly. “No. No, stop.”

Ethan hurried across the room and sat on the bed beside her. He gripped her shoulder with one hand and stroked her still-damp hair with his other.

After a few moments, she stopped moaning. Then she opened her eyes. She stared at him, imploring, hungry.

He took her into his arms and kissed her like he’d never kissed another woman before. He felt desperate yet satisfied that this was where he should be. She was staring into his eyes. He wanted desperately to make love to her but worried that it might change things between them. So he kept his clothes on, kissing her, holding her.

“Don’t you want me?” she whispered finally.

“More than before.”

“I still love you, too, Ethan. I thought I wouldn’t. I was afraid to call, but your dad…”

“I’m glad you did call,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“I thought I’d lost you, too.”

He held her for a long time until she found sleep.