Space For Doubt

Legends of giants have captivated people since the beginning of our ability to describe them. Legends exist in more than just the bible. Many cultures have stories of these inhumanly tall creatures.

Since I was a child I was fascinated by the stories, albeit rather skeptical on their veracity. How would we not have any actual evidence of them if they actually existed?

Let’s peel back the curtain as much as possible on this. What do we know?

The first mention we get of giants in the bible is in Genesis as follows:

Now it came about, when mankind began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with man forever, because he is also flesh; nevertheless 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 mankind, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. – Genesis 6:1-4 NASB

This is a notable and important mention in two ways. Let’s discuss the first way, and then I want you to put a pin in this and know we’ll come back to discuss the second way later.

We see (in bold) this author’s take on the origin of these giants, the Nephilim. It appears that whoever the sons of God are, they came into the daughters of men, and the result was the giants.

So the daughters of men makes sense. Who are the sons of God though?

If you happen to be SDA, you’re stuck with Ellen White’s opinion the matter. She claims they were the descendants of Seth (righteous line of people) and that the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain (wicked line of people).

This is, in all ways, demonstrably false. The descendants of either Seth or Cain were humans. Equivalent to each other in height, weight, and ability. You don’t “cross breed” a normal human with a normal human and get a warrior giant that is clearly and definitively taller, mightier, and wiser than the parents of the same. If you want to play apologist and say “They were taller before the flood,” you still have a major issue.

Genesis says they existed AFTER the flood too. That’s a real problem. According to this same book, all the descendants of Cain died in the flood. None were on the ark. So again, this in no way, shape, or form, is a logical argument.

For the rest of us, we are left with contending with this verse on its own merits. The sons of God. Who are they?

Examining the words used here, we see bēn ‘ĕlōhîm used as “sons of God.” This, in full OT context, can meaning nothing other than literal divine beings. (See Deut 32:8, Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7)

These could be angels or some other supernatural being who is in close relationship with God. There is no logical or coherent case to be made here for these being humans.

What is interesting to note, is that Genesis doesn’t imply anything negative about the Nephilim. In fact, it seems to view them rather positively. Later in Numbers, in the report of the spies, it also says nothing negative about the Nephilim. In numbers we see an additional phrase linked to the Nephilim, and that’s the “sons of Anak,” who apparently came from the Nephilim.

Let’s take a look at the numbers mention.

So they brought a bad report of the land which they had spied out to the sons of Israel, saying, “The land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are people of great stature. We also saw the Nephilim there (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight. – Numbers 13:32-33 NASB

Here we see that post-flood existence of the Nephilim as the author of Genesis notes for us, and it’s here I want to come back to that first mention. Many scholars, in fact I would say most scholars at this point, believe Genesis in large part was written during/post Babylonian exile by the Israelites.

The theory is that this insertion or creation of Gen 6:1-4 was done to go back and retroactively explain the inconsistency in the text where giants are still alive after the flood. In Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, the Nephilim (and their descendants) are somehow still around.

Having covered the Nephilim, let’s now move on to the Anakim (sons of Anak) and the Rephaim. They get the lions share of giant mentions in the OT.

As shown above, the lineage of the Anakim is clear, but the Rephaim are a bit different. In Deuteronomy we find out a little more detail on these Rephaim.

That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. -Deuteronomy 2:20-21 NIV

They appear to be as tall, powerful, and numerous as the Anakim. We can’t discern the origin of the Rephaim from the bible alone, but if we look at the Ugaritic texts (a very influential source for the OT authors) we find quite a bit more.

In these texts, the Rephaim are heroes, warriors, judges, kings, and demigods. After death, they also occupied a special place the underworld.

I’ll quote biblicalarchaeology.org here.

The Rephaim can be found in various places throughout the Levant, including Canaan, Philistia, Judah, Ammon, Moab, Bashan, Syria, and Phoenicia. This suggests a shared concept, which likely originated in a single place and then spread to different societies in the ancient Levant. The concept identifies a beloved ruler as a part of an ancient divine bloodline of mortal heroes, which provides justification for his own bloodline to rule.

In biblical texts, however, the idea of a semi-divine monarch or a leader cannot be tolerated. The concept of the Rephaim needed to be eradicated from the belief system of Israel and Judah, and this explains the negative treatment they receive in the Bible, which is the complete opposite of how they are viewed in Ugaritic and Phoenician sources.

To finish up on the biblical history, and as an interlude into the reasonableness of these giants, let’s look at Goliath.

Then a champion came forward from the army encampment of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath. His height was six cubits and a span. – 1 Samuel 17:4 NASB

Goliath was from Gath. Despite not being explicity mentioned here, the author and readers of that day would have understood that he was one of the Anakim. Gath is one of the three cities in which the scriptures previously testify that remnants of the Anakim remain living (See Joshua 11:22).

His height is listed at six cubits and a span, which is about 9ft 9in. That is definitely giant territory. It also goes on to describe the considerable weight of his armor and weaponry.

There’s just one problem. Most of our modern English translations are based on the Masoretic text. That’s important because the Septuagint, the Dead Sea scrolls, and the writings of the first century AD historian Josephus, describe Goliath’s height as being four cubits and a span. In normal numbers, that’s 6ft 9in. The Masoretic text comes later and stands alone, so scholars overwhelmingly prefer the shorter height here. After all it’s pretty easy to imagine how a story grows over time. It’s pretty hard to see a giants height being decreased.

That’s a massive difference from 9ft-9in to 6ft-9in. To the people of the time though, this would still be a giant.

Hafthor Bjornsson, the Icelandic strongman and actor in game of thrones, is 6 ft 9 in tall at a very proportionate 400 lb body weight. To the average male of that time period, standing just over 5 ft tall and weighing ~120 lb, that would be a giant.

Having got a pretty good feel for these giants, it would make sense to talk a little about the lack of real-world evidence we have for them existing.

In short, there is none.

Archaeologists have discovered zero evidence for any super-humanly tall beings having existed at any point in human history. No skeletons, no bed frames, no giant suits of armor, nothing.

Physiologically, it also strains credulity that they could exist. From what we know about the human body, it just cannot support anything over about 8ft. That those that DO reach that height of 8ft most certainly are not well proportioned warriors. They are gangly, feeble, sick, and slow, and it is always a result of a pituitary tumor.

What’s interesting here is the amount of conspiracy theories floating around on the internet about giants. People apparently really desperately want them to be real, whether this is because they are dogmatically convinced the bible has to be right, or whether they just like conspiracy theories and love giants. In either case it usually follows the same tact.

Somehow all around the world, the Smithsonian Institution (they really hate those guys) has agents at the ready, waiting to buy/steal/cover-up any discoveries of giant remains. They then store any evidence underneath the Smithsonian in a vault. All in pursuit of a goal to discredit the bible.

There’s some real tin-foil hat wearing folks out there.

The lack of evidence becomes an even bigger problem if you ascribe to EGW’s opinion that ALL pre-flood people were double the height of the average man today, and that the height of people gradually shrunk after the flood.

In that case you’d not only have the races of giants that we lack evidence for, but you’d have essentially all of humanity for a certain time period being at super-human heights. We’ve not found one person at 11ft tall, and yet they supposedly all were?

Super-humanly tall Giants didn’t exist. Let’s call a spade a spade here. People back then were just little. They had terrible diets, high mortality rates, and high rates of disease and arthritis. Anything over 6ft tall would have been a giant to them.

They also had surrounding cultures full of myths and legends they borrowed from on many occasions. People back then were just as fascinated with them as we are today. How can you not be? We still have a non-zero % of our population that really wants Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster to be real.

We’re never going to stop the stories, and over time, stories inevitably grow. In light of the verifiable scriptural changes to Goliath’s height, we should take a moment to reflect on human story telling tendencies when thinking about the legends of these ancient giants.

Peace