"Okay, so you're writing some books about Nephilim. Great--What are Nephilim?" This is usually the first question I get when I tell people about the books in my Nephilim Series.
נפלים (Hebrew for Nephilim)
Nephilim are a group of people, mentioned in the Bible. Depending on which version of the Old Testiment you read (or have but don't read), the Hebrew word is often just translated as "giants".
Nephilim also translates as "the fallen ones". Other names mentioned in the Bible for these people are: Emim (the fearful ones), Rephaim (the dead ones), and Anakim (the long-necked ones).
There is a lot of speculation about what is really meant by these groups of people. Some claim that they are the offspring of Cain, some believe that they are demons or angels or the offspring of those supernatural creatures that wanted a little fun with mankinds' women. After all in Genesis 6:4, it states that the "sons of God" basically came in unto the "daughters of men" and their children were the mighty men of renown known as giants or nephilim. A lot of people also believe that Noah's flood was meant to destroy them, but the children of Israel saw them and were fearful of them when they were being led from Egypt. When they decided not to fight, God punished them by making them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. For those of you who didn't pay attention in Sunday school, this was after Noah's flood.
What's the real story? Nobody really knows for sure. You'll find all sorts of pictures of people exhuming grossly over-sized skeletons, but most of these are fakes. I think there are two or three possible explanations. One is that the giants encountered were a prosperous nation. One that ate very well, and their diet reflected their stature. Look for instance at Americans today vs two hundred years ago. We are much bigger than we used to be. If an average American were to go back to the days of Christ, I think we'd be surprised how little everyone would be. If any of you are like me, and have spent much time in Asia, you know the feeling of being tall. I'm under 5'10, and I was at least a head taller, often more, than most people I encountered. I was a giant over there.
The next option is that these people had a high percentage of their population with the genetic disorder known today as Gigantism. A condition where a person has too much of a particular hormone, causing them to be well above the normal height of even a tall person. They often have heart problems, but just like we see communities of "little people" who may share the common traits of dwarfism, perhaps back then, there were communities with a high percentage of people with gigantism.
The third and last explanation, though highly improbable, is that these "sons of God" were really refugees from another world. Theologically speaking, if there were aliens out there, they wouldn't be the green-skinned, bulgy eyed beings that are popularized in media. They would be more like us. After all, if God is all powerful, and the Universe is infinite, then it makes sense that our god is not the god of just one world. And if we are all made in His image, then it would suggest that aliens from another world would still be human. Differences in gravity and environment might cause minor differences, like size. But for the most part, we'd be no more different than say a white person vs a black person, or an Asian vs an Aborigine.
In the Nephilim Series, I chose to go with this third explanation. I like it because I can make sense of it. I don't have to turn the Bible into a fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good fantasy. But for a book anchored in the Bible, I feel better writing things that don't conflict greatly with my personal beliefs about God. The idea came to me to write these books as I contemplated the idea of people, not of this world, coming to Earth, and how that would really have played out. So I hope this sheds some light, not only on a Bible quandary, but also on where I started writing from. Please enjoy the Nephilim Series, starting with my first book, the Nephilim Device, available for FREE, here.