The Nephilim: Fallen Angels or Alien Beings?

Whatever one's beliefs about the Bible as a religious book, it certainly must be acknowledged as a great
source for the early belief systems of our ancient ancestors, and through its telling of both Hebrew
mythology and its re-telling of even earlier stories, it can provide some insight into the possible history
of our evolution.

An interesting part of the earliest stories recounted in the Bible, those immediately following the
Creation story, involves creatures referred to in the Bible as the Nephalim.

Here is the Biblical passage that refers to the Nephilim first:

"Now it came about, when men 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 men were beautiful; and they took wives for
themselves, whomever they chose... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,
when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the
mighty men who were of old, men of renown.-"Genesis 6:1-4

There is a great deal of controversy over who these 'Sons of God' were who appear to have been the
fathers of the Nephilim, giants and mighty men. Most theologians and authors have claimed that they
were fallen angels, who broke God's rule by coming to earth and having sexual relations with humans.
Others have claimed that they were a particularly pure race of humans called the Sethites, who had kept
their blood line totally pure and some of whom then rebelled and went down and took wives from
among the less-pure "daughters of men."

The commentary in the New American Bible parallels this passage and a passage in Jude 6:7, which
states:

"And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation...giving themselves over
to fornication, and going after strange flesh…"

This, according to the New American Bible, indicates that heavenly beings came to earth and had sex
with human women, and became the fathers of the Nephilim, who were powerful giants.

How much of a leap, for us, is it to define these "heavenly beings" who come down to earth and breed
with earth women as aliens, that is, ancient astronauts from another planet?

Let us look at some of the words used in this description.

First, the term used for the paternity of the Nephilim, which is translated in the King James Bible as
"Sons of God," is literally translated, according to Wikipedia, as "Sons of the Powers," a much more
interesting translation.
The Hebrew word Nephilim is sometimes translated, again according to Wikipedia, as "Those who cause
others to fall."

In The Watchers, Raymond E. Fowler states:

"The Hebrew word for giants (nephilum) literally means the fallen-down-ones because these tall
celestial beings fell from the sky. Their half-breed progeny and their descendants are often mentioned in
the early books of the Old Testament until the last of them were finally killed off...Some scholars
speculate that this tradition of giants born from the union of gods and humans formed the basis for the
demigod of Greek mythology."

Robert Graves, in Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis, Also states that Nefilim (his spelling) means
"Fallen Ones."

Among the ancient Aramiac people, Nephila referred specifically to the constellation Orion, and
nephilim were the semi-divine offspring of Orion.

There are other terms for giants in the Bible. Wikipedia lists these:

Emim ("the fearful ones")

Rephaim ("the dead ones")

Anakin (the long-necked ones,") (and logically associated with the Annunakah)

Robert Graves, again in Hebrew Myths, defines the Emim as "Terrors", and Repha'im as "Weakeners,"
and adds Gibborim ('Giant Heroes'), Zamzummim ('Achievers')and Awwim ('Devastators' or 'Serpents').

Footnotes in the Jerusalem Bible claim that the author of the Genesis passage meant the Nephilim to be
an 'anecdote of a superhuman race.'

Let's look further at some of the descriptions of these 'superhuman' giants in the Bible and other extra-
Biblical sources.

In Deuteronomy 3:11, we get a description of one of the Rephaim, who appear to have been the original
inhabitants of what became Canaan, who were dispossessed and some of whom took refuge among the
Philistines. The only remaining Rephaim in Canaan was Og, the King of Basham.

"Only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was
more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide."

Later, in Numbers, Jewish spies are sent on a mission, and they describe the inhabitants of the land they
are passing through:

"The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the
people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who
come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."
Numbers 13:32-33

The Book of Enoch is an ancient text that was first discovered in Ethiopia in 1773 and is believed to be
one of the oldest manuscripts in existence. In addition to the Ethiopian translation, more than twenty
fragmented copies of the original Aramaic have been discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.
Robert Sepehr of Planet X Video writes in The Annunaki and Nephilim that The Book of Enoch relates
that around 200 angels came down to earth to mate with the human females. Their leader was a high
angel named Azazyel, and their offspring were giant men. According to Enoch, at this time the angels
taught the humans to make ‘swords, knives, shields, breastplates, mirrors, jewelry, paints and dyes,
make cosmetics, and use valuable stones. The people also learned sorcery, use of roots and plants for
medicine, astronomy, astrology and other "signs", and the importance of the motion of the celestial
bodies. (Sepehr, The Annunaki and Nephelim)

Another "apocryphal" book, The Book of Jubilees, gives more description of this occurrence. In Jubilees,
the Nephilim are fallen angels who know they are going to be punished for having sex with human
women, so they make a pact that they will all do the deed and they will all share the punishment.

Enoch says that the Nephilim were cast into a place called Tartarus, which is sometimes translated as
Hell, for their sins. The translation of this word is actually "place of darkness," or, according to Christian
author Charles Missler, "the pit of darkness in the unseen world." Missler points out that Homer, in the
Illiad, defined Tartarus as "...as far beneath hades as the earth is below heaven."

But while Enoch says that all the Nephilim were tossed into this pit in the 'unseen world," the author of
Jubilees claims that 10% of the Nephilim were allowed to remain on the earth to roam about the earth,
acting as demons and tempting men. Some Christian writers have made the claim that all ghosts and
spirits are actually Nephilim, and evil. Others claim that only those who haunt churches and other sacred
Christian locations are Nephilim. This, of course, is patently untrue to any objective observer. Many
churches, monasteries, etc., have had reported hauntings by monks, nuns, pastors, and other obviously
non-evil entities. The majority of these hauntings are no doubt residual, as are the hauntings elsewhere,
and are neither evil nor benign, but have no more meaning than holograms on breakfast cereal boxes
might have, other than the glimpses of past history they can provide.

Nevertheless, this is the explanation that some Christians choose to give for any church haunting.

In the above section concerning Og, King of Basham, we have seen that he must have been in excess of
10 feet tall, since his bed had to be thirteen feet long and made of iron. Indeed, giant bones have been
found all over the world over many years, and while some of these have turned out to be hoaxes, some
are unexplained.

The Bible says these were "mighty men of old, men of renown."

Yet, according to anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould,

"Our skills and behavior are finely attuned to our size. We could not be twice as tall as we are, for the
kinetic energy of a fall would then be 16 to 32 times as great, and our sheer weight (increased eightfold)
would be more than our legs could support. Human giants of eight to nine feet have either died young
or been crippled early by failure of joints and bones. At half our size, we could not wield a club with
sufficient force to hunt large animals (for kinetic energy would decrease 16 to 32-fold); we could not
impart sufficient momentum to spears and arrows; we could not cut or split wood with primitive tools
or mine minerals with picks and chisels. Since these all were essential activities in our historical
development, we must conclude that the path of our evolution could only have been followed by a
creature very close to our size. I do not argue that we inhabit the best of all possible worlds, only that
our size has limited our activities and, to a great extent, shaped our evolution."

- Stephen Jay Gould, "Sizing Up Human Intelligence," Physical Anthropology 96/97, pp.150-51

This would certainly seem to argue that the giants in the land in those days must not have been of
purely human origin.

Many Christians believe that the return of the Nephilim is going to be a prerequisite for the End of Days
before the return of Christ. They see UFOs and alien abductions as signs that that time is near. Of
course, they are filtering all of the possible historical facts through their own belief system, and thus the
information is necessarily biased. See the website, “The Return of the Nephelim,” if you want to read
more about this viewpoint.

These Christian authors who have embraced the idea that the Nephilim may have been an alien race
often suggest that the purpose of alien abductions and other alien visitations may be to create a hybrid
race here on earth. One of the authors, Chuck Missler, points out that while the Bible seems to indicate
that one purpose of the flood was to destroy the hybrid race then in existence and return men to their
"purity," at least some of the Nephilim seem to have survived even after the flood, as in Daniel's
prophetic dream when he says, in Daniel 2:43,

"And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of
men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."

Since this was allegedly a prophetic dream, Missler speculates that this mixing of seed by creatures who
were not of "the seed of men" could still be going on.

I do not know why it is so easy for Christians to believe in heavenly creatures if they call them "angels,"
and not if they call them "aliens," but it seems to me that the ancient historical records and the
knowledge we have today make a very good case that the Nephilim were an other-worldly, not entirely
human race of mighty giants, and that sounds like a good case for alien DNA to me.

Sources: Wikipedia

The New Jerusalem Bible

 The King James Bible

The New America Bible

The Book of Enoch

The Book of Jubilees

Raymond E. Fowler, The Watchers

Robert Graves, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis

Robert Sepehr, “The Annunaki and The Nephelim”

Stephen Jay Gould, "Sizing Up Human Intelligence," Physical Anthropology 96/97, pp.150-51

Chuck Missler, “ The Return of the Nephelim, ” and “Mischievous Angels or Sethites?”