Nephilim

In this week's episode, we're looking at a monster from Biblical mythology, the Nephilim! How do these creatures link back to Adam and Eve? Can you kill a Nephilim? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

For the first time in ages we’re heading to something a little different this week and looking at a religion based monster - one that actually, you might not know very much about. 

DESCRIPTION:

This week we’re looking at the earthly Nephilim - if you know what these are - golden stars for you, it’s an oldie. If not, no bother - I’ll tell you all about them.

The Nephilim are the children of both angels, and either demons or mortal men - either way, they’re half breeds of angels and another race of humanoid. They were mortal even though descended from angels, and only lived for 120 years, although that doesn’t seem like a particularly short time. There’s a great description here actually that kind of summarises them from Genesis 6:1-4;

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown

It is kind of implied in this quote that it was only the male angels who mated with the human women, but it could actually be any nature of couple with an angel that could produce a Nephilim, but they could be drastically different in their appearance and abilities depending on their family tree. 

Nephilim were considered abominations or mutants, and angels were strictly forbidden by the laws of heaven to mate with humans - in some tellings, Nephilim and their celestial parents were tracked down and executed by God himself.

Anyway, if successful, this angel and human combo would produce a giant. It’s said they’re the height of cedar trees, which can grow to be 120 feet, so that’s pretty big. Alongside this, they had powerful abilities such as immunity, invulnerability, healing, resurrection, telekinesis, telepathy and teleportation, alongside the traditional super strength, hearing, and all that jazz. 

There’s a great quote actually from the Hebrew bible in Genesis that says;

‘And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them’

There were technically four different types of these giants, the Anakites, the Emites, the Amorites and the Rephaites - all monstrous and feared throughout the regions of Canaan, which was an ancient Semitic kingdom around where Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey sit now or was previously southern Mesopotomia, including Babylon. They were all considered giants, but depending on their ‘clan’ they would differ in height and aggression towards their neighbouring civilisations. It’s actually believed that modern people around this area are descendants to these mighty giants. 

Fun fact is that some of these old cultures believed that these ‘old heroes’ as they were called explained any ancient heroes such as Gilgamesh, Achilles or Heracles - which is a pretty fun concept as they were almost considered demi-gods within the Bible.

Can you kill one though? I mean, they are mortal - so they can definitely die, however, they’re said to be immensely strong warriors, sometimes invulnerable, so I would say your best bet is to leave them alone if I’m completely honest here.

In other adaptations, they can also be the offspring of angels and demons, or demons and men - and they’re still gigantic but are also beautiful, strong and incredible warriors with increased strength, intelligence and the ability to become sorcerers. They were really the epitome of fallen angels, in the most traditional sense, with immense powers and beauty, but stuck on the earth as mortals and with mortals.

ORIGIN:

This does lead us nicely onto etymology - as this is where these two definitions really came from. The word Nephilim wasn’t actually figured out until the 1900’s where it was determined to mean ‘giants’. However, before this, it was believed that Nephilim was close to the Hebrew word root naphal which means to fall - so people assumed it meant fallen, and linked it to angels. However, there are a few translations such as ‘those that cause others to fall down’ or ‘ones who have fallen’, ‘the fallen ones’ or ‘ones falling upon their enemies’ - so there are quite a few, which is why I guess their description is a little hazy from time to time. 

Nephilims were first mentioned in the book of Genesis, which we know as it’s the Old Testament or the first book of the Torah, it's ancient - so I can’t give you a date people started believing in these I’m afraid. But we do know, it’s super old - and there’s no official date anyway so I don’t feel too bad. We do also know though that at this point in the Bible, Adam and Eve have been chased out of the Garden of Eden, and the Grigori, or Watchers, who are angels, have been placed to keep tabs on humanity - that’s important later.

However, in those quotes I read above from Genesis, which is before Noah and the ark and the flood and all that - this passage implies that ‘the sons of God’ are angels and the ‘Daughters of men’ are exactly what they say they are. Although some scholars believed that the ‘Sons of God’ were actually lustful angels who coveted the women of the earth, and so took them for their own and reproduced with them.

There are some interesting responses to this story. Firstly, modern Jewish and Christian people believe that Angels cannot reproduce, meaning that they could not be the parents of the Nephilim, and so the story falls to that of the Biblical creation myth, and Adam and Eve. 

If you didn’t know, Adam and Eve went on to have lots of children, but the three you need to know here are three brothers, Seth, Cain and Abel. Cain was the first of their sons and was chosen to be the first ever farmer, whilst Abel, the first ever shepherd by God’s will. When it came to show God of their harvest, obviously God was more impressed with a top dollar sheep than some wheat. So Cain flat out murdered Abel out of jealousy and was cursed to wander eternally. However, then there was Seth - who was born after the murder to replace Abel as the first shepherd. Both Cain and Seth went on to have separate races of children, and it was believed that anyone from Seth was a son of God, whilst from Cain, the daughters of men. When these two races mixed, obviously ignoring the blatant incest - it’s said that these were the Nephilim originally. 

However, there is another origin story for these monsters. Using the same sons of God and daughters of men storyline, it’s believed sometimes that only one human woman, Aster, seduced two angels Samyaza and Azazel, then gave birth to the first Nephilim. These two Angels were considered part of the Grigori, or the Watchers, with Samyaza being the leader of the angels who lusted over human ladies - and Azazel one of said group, but also being a Prometheus type figure in Biblical mythology and teaching humans how to make weapons. However, Aster was known by several different names including Astaroth and Lilith, so was HA, literally no angel herself. 

Astaroth was one of the original trinity of evil alongside Beelzebub and Lucifer in the Hebrew bible - and would cause trouble by shapeshifting and seducing anyone in his path, this could explain Nephilim as a mixture of both angel and demon. However, if we consider Aster to be Lilith, who if you’ve listened to other episodes, you would know is considered the mother of all demons and the first wife of Adam. Either way, not the best parental figures on either side here - but you get my gist, they’re half angel, half something else. 

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Okay so moving onto Nephilim in popular culture, firstly for art, I would recommend my favourite paining of them in The Fall of The Rebel Angels by Hieronmyus Bosch from 1514 or you can see the beautiful Nephilim statue called The Sons of God saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair by Daniel Chester French from 1923, who’s the same guy who made the famous Lincoln statue at the memorial in Washington DC. 

In movies, we have very few, like; Prophecy, Noah, The Devil’s Advocate, City of Bones and The Devil’s Tomb.

For TV, we have a couple such as; X-Files, Supernatural, Hex, Shadowhunters, Lucifer, Wynonna Earp, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Fallen.

In video games, we have the most, as per usual with ones such as; Devil May Cry, Champions Online, Darksiders, Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Exile, Avernum, Xenosaga, Payday 2, Guild Wars Factions, El Shaddai, Disciples Liberation, Drowned God, Elsword, Dominions and Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse.

Although, I need to talk about my favourite which is Diablo, where you play as a demon/angel hybrid who are badass demon butt kicking warriors. It’s probably one of my favourite games of all time and I have the fondest memories of playing D2 with my dad back in the nineties, so this will always be close to my heart. 

For books, I would recommend A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits by Carol and Dinah Mack as it’s a great summarised version of all the demon/angels and hybrids in between! Or for more visual people, Pandemonium by Ed Simon is a great one for daemonology with gorgeous illustrations attached.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

I’m going to say probably not for this one, but as I’m not a believer of said religion or in Angels - it makes it a bit tricky with a less clear answer as religion is quite black and white sometimes.

When I asked my sister this question, she flat out said with no hesitation, ‘yeah because some people are too nice’ and I get that - but do I think they’re almighty angel/human hybrid warriors, probably not. Although shout out to my mum for being pretty close ya know - she’s a good angel/demon hybrid sometimes. 

But what do you think? Did Nephilim roam the earth? Let me know on Twitter!

OUTRO: 

I’ve been so excited to do this one because of my life-long love of Diablo - so this was a really good one to cover. As you’ll know if you listen to this podcast a lot, I tend to shy away from those monsters a little too ingrained in modern religion, but this one was just enough for me to not get too into it. I’m really glad it was something we can cover, and I’m really excited to cover more religious monsters in future.

Next week, we’re not really leaving the Nephilim behind and heading back over to the UK where we’re looking at our favourite animated monsters, Ogres! Get outta my swamp next Thursday to find out about how Shrek got to the UK in the first place and how they relate to this week’s episode. How mysterious!

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

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But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.