Nephilim

The Nephilim ( Hebrew נְפִילִים nephilim "giants", plural of naphíl ) were gigantic hybrid beings in ancient Israeli mythology , begotten by divine beings and human women . The Nephilim were bigger and stronger than humans and, according to the accounts of the Apocrypha, of great wickedness.

Nephilim in the Bible

The first evidence for the word "Nephilim" in the Bible can be found in 1 Mos 6,4 EU : Divine beings of the male sex (Hebrew בני האלהים benej ha ' elohim " Sons of God") desired human women and they were impregnated by them. The descendants were the giants of the past.

The word "Nephilim" appears again in 4 Mos 13,32-33 EU , where the sons of Anak , the gigantic Anakites, are compared with them.

Whether “Nephilim” is a general term for giants or simply gigantic people or whether “Nephilim” only refers to the beings begotten by the sons of the gods is not clear from the passages mentioned. In the Septuagint the word was simply translated as “giant” ( ancient Greek γίγαντες gígantes ).

Nephilim in the Apocrypha

The Nephilim are not otherwise mentioned in the canonical texts, but their history is detailed in the Apocrypha, namely

in the 1st book of Enoch ,
in the anniversary book and
in the giant book .

In these writings, the sons of the gods are usually referred to as Egregoroi (Greek for "guardians"). The content can be summarized as follows:

The sons of gods / guardians descend into the world of men.
There are 200 guards, their leaders are 20.
Shemichaza is the chief.
Other leaders are Baraq'el and Azazel .
Impressed by the beauty of human women, they have fellowship with them.
They teach the children of men forbidden things and heavenly secrets.
The children born of fellowship with human women are the giants, the Nephilim.
The Nephilim are huge, eat everything, cattle and man, and are an oppression to the earth.
Shemichaza has two sons, Ohajah and Hawajah.
Ohajah and Hawajah dream:
- A dream: a huge stone tablet. Everything is wiped out except for four lines. One version: the board sinks into the water. The other version: An angel comes and erases the lines of the board, except for four lines, words or names.
- The other dream: a heavenly garden with numerous trees. An angel comes and knocks down all the trees except one with three branches.
The dreamers cannot interpret the dreams. A messenger is sent to Enoch the scribe. The messenger is Mahawaj, son of the guard Baraq'el. He makes a long journey, because Enoch is no longer in the world.
Enoch interprets the dreams: All the Nephilim will be destroyed, the watchmen will see the downfall of their children. The four remaining words or the tree with the three branches stands for Noah and his three sons.
Ultimately, the Guardians will be bound until the end of the world and their descendants will be destroyed in the Flood.

Nephilim in popular culture

In some pre-astronautical theories, Nephilim are extraterrestrial, highly civilized beings who visited Earth several millennia ago, bonded with humans, and fathered children. This interpretation comes from Zecharia Sitchin , who claimed that the Nephilim and the Sons of God were the same, which is contrary to biblical tradition. In Gen. 6.1 The Nephilim are not the beings who came from heaven and fathered children, but the children who were born from such relationships. The word Nephilim was also reinterpreted in this way by Sitchin. He claimed that the word nephil ("giant") was not the tribe of Nephilim, but the word naphal ("to fall"). In this context, the meaning of the name is interpreted as "fell from the sky" or "crashed". But if you were to make a noun out of naphal , that is, the fallen , it would be called naphulim , a word that does not appear in any dictionary. This interpretation was later taken up by other authors such as Erich von Däniken , Jan van Helsing or David Icke .

They are received very differently in fantasy and mystery literature. For example, they appear in Cassandra Clare's Chronicles of the Underworld or in Danielle Trussoni's Angelus as a hybrid between humans and angels, in Andreas Brandhorst's Aeon as demons and in Trussoni's Angelus they are depicted as fallen angels . Their role does not follow any scheme, they can be on the side of the “good guys” as well as the “bad guys”. In cinematic implementations, they mostly appear as hybrid creatures, for example in the film series Fallen Angels , the film God's Army III - The Decision or the series X-Files (5x17 All Souls ). The Neyaphem, a race to which the Mutant Nightcrawler and other characters from the Marvel universe belong, is loosely based on the Nephilim.

In games, the templates are dealt with more freely, whereby the pre-astronautical Nephilim are also processed here. In the pen & paper role-playing game Nephilim by Feder & Schwert , they are considered to be the founders of earthly culture whose souls need to be saved; in the computer game Wing Commander: Prophecy , they appear as insectoid aliens. In the computer game series Darksiders , the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are assigned to the Nephilim, a people that arose from a connection between demons and angels. Also in the Diablo series from Blizzard they play here Nephalem called an important role. Nephilim can also be specially created , as in the computer games Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness or Lineage II , or, as in the trading card game Magic: The Gathering, simply stand for above-average strength. In the game Devil May Cry , Nephilim are hybrids, created by mating a demon and an angel. They appear in human form, have supernatural powers, can decide for themselves between good and evil and only they can kill a demon.

The Nephilim are occasionally referred to in music, mostly by gothic rock , black metal or death metal bands. So named Carl McCoy's band Fields of the Nephilim and The Nefilim after them and there were a number of songs with reference to the Nephilim of bands like Behemoth , Melechesh , Pantocrator or Katatonia added. But bands from other genres also refer to them, such as Abingdon Boys School or AFI .

Alleged skeletal finds

Historically, there have been repeated reports of such skeletons being found. At the beginning of the 18th century, it was believed that the remains of a biblical giant could be seen in the large bones and teeth excavated near Claverack near Albany in 1705. At first, a farmer had only found one giant tooth, which came into the possession of Edward Hydes , the governor of New York and New Jersey , who immediately sent notification of the find to the Royal Society in London. Further excavations uncovered large bones, newspapers reported about them, and the finds and reports sparked the imagination of New Englanders, including the poet Edward Taylor , who saw in them the remains of a giant from Indian mythology. The Puritan preacher and witch hunter Cotton Mather, on the other hand, saw the bones of one of the biblical giants in the Antediluvian finds. In fact, the incognitum and also known as the "giant of Claverack" were fossils of a mammoth .

The need to prove the physical existence of biblical giants still exists today. Alleged photos of archaeological excavations of giant skeletons are circulating on the Internet again and again. However, these are perspective tricks or forgeries, e.g. B. the giants of Cardiff .

literature

PW Coxon: Art. Nephilim. In: K. van der Toorn; B. Becking; Pieter W. van der Horst (Ed.): Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Leiden, Boston, Cologne, ² 1999, 618-620.
Johann Heinrich Kurtz: The marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men. A theological investigation for the exegetical, dogmatic and practical assessment of the biblical report Gen. 6.1-4. Berlin, 1857 ( Google Books ).

Web links

Markus Risch: Nephilim. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.

Individual evidence

↑ Marcus Jastrow : Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic. 1926, p. 924.
↑ Zecharia Sitchin: The Twelfth Planet. When, where, how the astronauts from another planet came to earth and created Homo sapiens. Unterägeri 1976, p. 128ff.
^ Wilhelm Gesenius: Hebrew and Aramaic concise dictionary on the Old Testament. Springer, Berlin 1962
^ The Servant: Marvel Comics and the Golem Legend . In: Visualizing Jewish Narrative: Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels . Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, ISBN 978-1-4742-4879-2 , doi : 10.5040 / 9781474248822.ch-008 .
↑ Nephalem in the Diablo Wiki
↑ Paul Semonin: American monster. How the nation's first prehistoric creature became a symbol of national identity. New York University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8147-8120-9 , pp. 15ff, digitized .
↑ Luis' Illustrated Blog with examples of photo forgeries (English)

[1] Marcus Jastrow : Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic. 1926, p. 924.

[2] Zecharia Sitchin: The Twelfth Planet. When, where, how the astronauts from another planet came to earth and created Homo sapiens. Unterägeri 1976, p. 128ff.

[3] Wilhelm Gesenius: Hebrew and Aramaic concise dictionary on the Old Testament. Springer, Berlin 1962

[4] The Servant: Marvel Comics and the Golem Legend . In: Visualizing Jewish Narrative: Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels . Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, ISBN 978-1-4742-4879-2 , doi : 10.5040 / 9781474248822.ch-008 .

[5] Nephalem in the Diablo Wiki

[6] Paul Semonin: American monster. How the nation's first prehistoric creature became a symbol of national identity. New York University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8147-8120-9 , pp. 15ff, digitized .

[7] Luis' Illustrated Blog with examples of photo forgeries (English)