Appendix 1: Does “Sons of God” in Job 38:7 Refer to Angels?
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:1-7)
The assumption that “sons of God” in Job 38:7 refers to angels is made because there seems to be no one else around during the creation of the world to “shout for joy” (though we are not told elsewhere that angels were actually around at that time.) However, there is another possibility.
First, according to the industry standard New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon (BDB), the Hebrew בֵּן (“ben” = son) can refer to inanimate objects (p. 121), and does so at least twice in the Book of Job (e.g. Job 5:7, where בְנֵי־רֶשֶׁף (“bene resheph” = lit. “sons of flame”) is used for “sparks.”
Second, we see from the structure of the text that “And all the sons of God shouted for joy” is a poetic parallel to “When the morning stars sang together.”
Third, we see that there is obvious anthropomorphism in this verse, since stars, morning or otherwise, do not sing. That raises the possibility that there is an anthropomorphism in the second part of the verse also, paralleling the one in the first part of the verse. In that case, it may be that “sons of” is used with inanimate objects here and so “sons of God” refers to the things God was creating at the time, and these “shouted for joy” in the same way as the stars of the morning, also inanimate, “sang together.” This is at least a possible legitimate alternative interpretation of “sons of God” in Job 38:7.
Appendix 2: Were There Nephilim in Canaan?
In Numbers 13, Moses sends twelve spies into the land of Canaan. When they return, ten of spies urge the people not to invade the land:
But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the nephilim (the sons of Anak from the nephilim); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:31-33)
Those who hold to the view that the nephilim were angel/human hybrids (a view that we have seen is untenable) believe that one purpose of the worldwide flood was to destroy the nephilim, and therefore there could not have been any nephilim living after the flood. They run into an obvious difficulty, then, with the incident in Numbers 13, in which the spies report that they saw nephilim in Canaan. Therefore, those who hold this view must insist that there were no nephilim in Canaan, regardless of what the spies reported. As Bates puts it,
It should be clearly noted that the Nephilim in this passage cannot refer to any people group or human beings who survived the Flood in addition to Noah and his family. Those on the ark were the only human survivors … The fact that only the Noahic line survived the Flood means that the Nephilim in Numbers 13 cannot be descended from a pre-Flood group.
Bates tries to explain the spies’ report about the nephilim in Canaan by contending that,
It should be noted that the spies brought back a bad, or evil (Hebrew dibbah, “to slander, whisper, or defame”) report. That report included a parenthetic insertion that the large people known as the sons of Anak were descended from the Nephilim … At first reading, this may seem like a factual account, but it is part of the quoted false report of the spies.
Lita Cosner doubles down on this, asserting – as if it had been proven – that
There were never Nephilim after the Flood–the spies’ report was called an ‘evil’ report, or a ‘lying’ report. They claimed that the descendants of the Nephilim were there, but there is never any sign of them once the Israelites actually invade.
Elsewhere, Miss Cosner fleshes out her imaginative explanation, contending that,
When the Israelite spies gave their lying report about Canaan, they said: ‘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 13:33).’ They were lying; there weren’t any Nephilim; they all died in the global Flood (See Who were the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis 6?). When Israel invades the land 40 years later, the Bible never records there being actual Nephilim in Canaan at any point … The Israelites knew about the pre-flood Nephilim, enough that the spies knew that reporting their presence in Canaan would make the Israelites fearful to invade.
Then in response to the question “Is there any scriptural support for this idea?” Miss Cosner avers that
The report of the spies is called an ‘evil’ report and a ‘lying’ report. What were they lying about? And there is no mention of Nephilim when they actually entered the land, or at any time subsequent.
Does any of this hold water? Let’s see.
To avoid the possibility that nephilim may have been living at the time the spies returned from Canaan, which would completely overturn the idea that the nephilim were angel/human hybrids who were wiped out by the flood, Bates and Miss Cosner resort to the assertion that the spies were lying. But simply disagreeing with CMI is not proof of lying. What proof do Bates and Miss Cosner adduce to buttress this charge?
According to Bates, the spies’ report was “a bad, or evil (Hebrew dibbah, “to slander, whisper, or defame”) report” and therefore a “false report.” And Miss Cosner expands on this, claiming that “the spies’ report was called an ‘evil’ report, or a ‘lying’ report,” it was a “lying report … they were lying,” and “the report of the spies is called an ‘evil’ report and a ‘lying’ report.” She explains that the reason the spies lied about the nephilim was to scare the Israelites, who remembered them, and buttresses her claim that the spies were lying by pointing out that,
there is no mention of Nephilim when they actually entered the land, or at any time subsequent.
Nonsense. This is all nonsense. First, contra Miss Cosner, the report of the spies is never called a “lying” report; it is not even called a “false” report, despite what Bates says. What it is called is a הדִּבָּ (“dibbah”), translated as “bad report” in the NKJV, NASB, and ESV, and as “evil report” in the KJV.
What does dibbah mean? This word occurs only nine times in the OT. According to BDB, it means “whispering” (in Psalm 31:13 and Jeremiah 20:10), “defamation” (in Proverbs 10:18), or “evil report, specif. a (true) report of evil doing” (in Genesis 37:2; Proverbs 25:10; and Ezekiel 36:3). Included under this third meaning is the “unfavourable report of spies Nu 1332 1436,37.”
So not only does dibbah not mean a lying or false report, the context indicates that the spies were not, in fact, lying about this. They first affirm that the land is good and rich, but then warn that the people who dwell in the land, including the descendants of Anak, the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, are strong and they dwell in large, fortified cities (Numbers 13:27-29). When Caleb calls for an immediate invasion, the spies urge against it, giving
a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the nephilim (the sons of Anak from the nephilim); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:32b-33)
There are two things that are crucial to note. First, Caleb does not contradict their report about the inhabitants of the land. He does not say they are not strong or of great stature, nor does he say that there were no nephilim in the land. What Caleb and Joshua do say is that they ought not to fear the people because God is with the Israelites (Numbers 14:6-9). If the spies had been lying about there being nephilim in the land simply to scare the Israelites, as Miss Cosner suggests, one would expect that Caleb and Joshua would point that out at this time.
Bates’ other attempt to prove that the spies lied is also a failure. He asks, “How can we be sure that it was a false report?” and answers that we can be sure because those spies died in the subsequent plague sent by God (Numbers 14:37) “because they brought back an untruthful report.” No, it was because they persuaded the people that they could not trust God to give them victory over the strong inhabitants of the land; that is what the text says they did.
Finally, what about Miss Cosner’s attempt to buttress the idea that the spies lied about the nephilim by pointing out that “there is no mention of Nephilim when they actually entered the land, or at any time subsequent”? This argument is senseless. As we have seen, the best understanding of nephilim is as “mighty warriors,” so what the spies said was, “we saw mighty warriors, the sons of Anak of the mighty warriors.” So the nephilim in the spies’ report were the Anakim, who are certainly mentioned in the conquest story (Joshua 11:21-22, 14:12).
In sum, what we have seen is an example of the fact that wrong presuppositions lead to bad exegesis. Those who hold to the untenable view that the nephilim were angel/human hybrids who were wiped out by the flood must necessarily believe that they could not have been in Canaan in the mid 15th century BC. Therefore, they must explain away the spies’ report of nephilim in the land of Canaan at that time. The explanation they choose is that the spies were lying about that.
However, a careful examination of the Hebrew text has shown that that explanation is impossible, and we cannot torture the text simply to hold onto a preconceived idea. There being nephilim in the land at the time of spies is completely consistent with the explanation of Genesis 6:1-4 that has been offered in this paper, whereas it is irreconcilable with the bad sci-fi idea that the nephilim were angel/human hybrids. This is further evidence that this latter view is simply a nonstarter.
Appendix 3: Are Demons Fallen Angels?
As part of his case for seeing the nephilim as angel/human hybrids, Bates floats the bizarre idea that demons are not fallen angels but are something else entirely. He avows that,
A few apologists suggest that fallen angels are distinctly different from demons, based on the view that wherever demons are mentioned in Scripture, they seem to require embodiment in a biological creature, whereas angels do not. These apologists believe that demons are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim destroyed in the Flood.
Even before we examine this idea, we should note that while these “few apologists” give a putative reason (which we show to be bogus) for distinguishing between fallen angels and demons, they give not a scintilla of evidence that “demons are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim destroyed in the Flood.” This is baseless fantasy, nothing more than another example of bad B-grade sci fi.
How does Bates even try to justify this outlandish idea? He tells us that,
Interestingly, the apocryphal (non-canonical) book of Enoch also describes the spirits of the Nephilim as evil spirits roaming about the earth.
Once again, the Book of Enoch is a collection of Jewish fables with no credibility whatsoever, and it cannot be used to prove anything.
Bates then actually attempts to adduce Biblical support for this view, arguing that “An account that would seem to support this idea is found in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5,” whereupon he cites the account of the exorcism of the Gadarene demoniac in Mark 5:2-13. How, pray tell, does this account support the view that demons are different from fallen angels? Says Bates,
Note how the demons requested permission to possess the pigs.
Is Bates being serious here? Does he really think that the fact that the demons asked to be sent into the pigs in any way proves that demons are different from fallen angels? At most, he can use this account to try to prove that demons “seem to require embodiment in a biological creature,” which would be only the first step towards making his view plausible. But it is a failure, as even a cursory examination of the Bible shows. Jesus Himself says that,
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)
So we have Jesus’ own testimony that demons can indeed exist and walk among us without being embodied in a “biological creature.” It is not clear how Bates missed this obvious fact. It is clear that this obvious fact obviates any attempt to draw a distinction between fallen angels and demons on the basis of a supposed need of demons for embodiment “in a biological creature.”
Bates tries another gambit to convince us that demons and fallen angels are two distinct entities, arguing that,
in the New Testament, the expressions ‘demon’ and ‘evil spirit’ (as opposed to just ‘spirit’ or even ‘ministering spirits’) seem to be interchangeable.
His contention seems to be that demons are specifically “evil spirits,” whereas angels are simply called “spirits” (or “ministering spirits”), so there must be a distinction between demons and fallen angels.
Again, a look at what the Bible actually says blows Bates’ argument out of the water. Consider, for example, Matthew 8:16:
When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. (Matthew 8:16).
Here “demons” are called simply “spirits.” Furthermore, in Luke 9:38-42, “spirit,” “demon,” and “unclean spirit” are all used of the same entity.
Bates has one more gambit to try. He appeals to 1 Timothy 4:1: “The Spirit clearly says that in latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons (emphasis mine 1 Timothy 4:1)” and suggests that,
This seems to distinguish between spirits and demons.
However, the only distinction evident in the text is between following demons directly, presumably through some form of occultic activity, and following doctrines that they themselves may not have obtained directly from demons but which did originate with demons.
Interestingly, if Bates thinks that the word “and” (Greek καί “kai”) which he emphasized indicates a distinction between the two entities that are joined by “and,” then he should take a careful look at Luke 20:34-36:
Jesus answered and said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
By the measure Bates uses, he must concede that this seems to distinguish between “angels” and “sons of God”!
Bates’ statement, then, that “The view that the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim are demons is a radical view, but it does have some scriptural support” is fatuous. The few crumbs that he offers utterly fail to demonstrate a difference between demons and spirits, and none of them even hints at a link to the nephilim. Why Bates would say there is “some scriptural support” for this view is unfathomable.
One final point on this issue: Henry Morris, a proponent of the failed angel/human reproduction fantasy says,
Whenever angels have appeared visibly to men, as recorded in the Bible, they have appeared in the physical bodies of men. Those who met with Abraham, for example, actually ate with him (Genesis 18:8).
In a similar vein, Lita Cosner writes,
Angels are spiritual beings … [who] have been known in Scripture to manifest in our realm using corporeal bodies which can eat and so presumably carry out all normal human body functions, including reproduction.
It should be glaringly obvious that Morris is correct in that if angels manifested in physical form and reproduced with human females, their physical forms must have been human, too, as only humans can reproduce with humans. CMI is stridently insistent that creatures can only reproduce according to their own created “kinds,” or baramin.”
CMI functionary Don Batten, for example, writes,
Things reproduce according to their kind, just like the Bible says (Genesis 1:11,12,21,24,25). They always have and they always will—while ever this world exists.
Similarly, Jeffrey Dykes writes,
“In the beginning” God created and programmed living things to reproduce “according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:1,20-28).
These are just two examples of many in which CMI writers affirm this fact. It is not surprising, then, that CMI correctly states that Neanderthals and Denisovans were fully human, inasmuch as they interbred with other humans.
The upshot of this should be clear: if angels manifested in physical form and interbred with humans, that physical form must have been human; angels do not have the power to overrule God’s creation design according to which creatures can only reproduce according to their own kind. The offspring would be like the offspring of “modern” humans reproducing with Neanderthals or Denisovans; the offspring would be fully human. So if the offspring of angel/human interbreeding were the nephilim, as Bates maintains, the nephilim must have been fully human.
Now, as we have seen, Gary Bates seems to agree with the idea that demons are actually the “disembodied spirits of the Nephilim.” But since the nephilim had to have been fully human (according to CMI’s claims about reproduction), this view would maintain that the disembodied spirits of dead people were roaming the earth. Ironically, Bates himself has pointed out that,
A Bible-first approach will demonstrate to us that the idea of the disembodied spirits of deceased human beings roaming the Earth would contravene some very basic principles of God’s Word and would cast serious doubt on the Gospel itself.
The idea, then, that demons are the disembodied spirits of nephilim is a non-starter. There is no reason to think of demons as anything other than fallen angels.
Appendix 4: An Assessment of Jonathan Sarfati’s Case in The Genesis Account
Creation Ministries International’s Chief Scientist Dr. Jonathan Sarfati has recently published a new book entitled The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. In this book, Sarfati offers a detailed exposition of his view of Genesis 6:1-4, which is the same as that of his co-worker Gary Bates, viz. that this passage describes angels having conjugal relations with human females and spawning offspring that were the nephilim.
Since much of his argumentation is the same as Bates’, it is not necessary to respond in detail to those claims we have already examined. Accordingly, we will move quickly through his material and focus mainly on those additional contentions Sarfati offers that we have not yet considered.
Sarfati begins by rightly rejecting the view that the “sons of God” were the descendants of Seth, but then he wrongly asserts that “the correct history of what happened is explained in the next section”, where he expounds his view that Genesis 6:1-4 describes angels marrying human females and spawning the nephilim.
Sarfati starts his proof by averring that “sons of God” (b’nei hā-’ӗlōhȋm, בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים) “is consistently used of angels in the Old Testament.” (p. 475). We have already seen that this is not the case. Sarfati actually states that this term “is consistently used of angels in the Old Testament, both good and bad”, which is passing strange, in light of the fact that the expression is used only three times outside of Genesis 6:1-4, and in not one of those cases is the reference to “bad” angels. There is no apparent basis for this claim, unless one assumes that “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4 refers to bad angels, which, of course, would be begging the question.
Next, Sarfati appeals to the LXX, claiming that this ancient translation “even renders the phrase ‘the sons of God’ as hoi angeloi tou theou (οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ), ‘the angels of God … Thus the LXX reflected the common Jewish understanding of this phrase as ‘angels’.” Regrettably, he overlooks the fact that in the two occurrences in question, in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4, the LXX translators did not translate בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים as οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ, but left it as “the sons of God” (οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ). If, as Sarfati maintains, it was “the common Jewish understanding” that this phrase meant “angels,” then the fact that the LXX translators did not translate it as “angels” in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4 speaks against Sarfati’s interpretation.
Then, as Gary Bates did, Sarfati tries to dragoon passages that do not actually use the expression “sons of God,” including Psalm 29:1, 89:6, and 82:6, in support of his view. Unlike Bates, he completely ignores Hosea 1:10, which uses an expression much closer to “sons of God” than the expressions in Psalm 29:1, 89:6, and 82:6, and clearly refers to the covenant people. And, as we have seen, the expression in Hosea 1:10 is more than enough to put paid to the claim that “sons of God” always refers to angels – if indeed it ever does. Then Sarfati claims that,
Angels in the Bible are always male.
It is not clear that this is true, as it is difficult to see the “women” in Zechariah 5:9 (“Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were two women, coming with the wind in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven”) as something other than angels. But even it if is true, it is irrelevant, for Sarfati is incorrect in maintaining that the use of “sons of God” and “daughters of men” in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4 “makes no sense if it was just one group of humans marrying another”; we have shown how it makes sense. Next, Sarfati appeals to the fact that,
the oldest Jewish commentaries about this passage thought that ‘sons of God’ were angels.
He cites Josephus and the Book of Enoch, and quotes Fruchtenbaum, who appeals to the Genesis Apocryphon and the Zadokite Document (which were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls); the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and seven pseudepigraphical books. The obvious problem with this line of argument is that “the oldest Jewish commentaries about this passage” are not nearly old enough; the earliest was written well over one thousand years after Genesis, so there is no reason to think the writers had any access to reliable information about what was happening in Genesis 6:1-4. Why Sarfati thinks that these Jewish fables are to be trusted on this matter is not clear.
Fruchtenbaum, by the way, embarrasses himself by actually appealing to Canaanite religious mythology (yes, that Canaanite religious mythology that was roundly condemned by the one true God), saying that,
In the Ugaritic texts, the god El married the daughters of men by whom he had two sons, Shcht and Shim, who both became gods.
For some reason, Fruchtenbaum misses the fact that “gods” are not “angels,” so while he might want to conclude that “the term sons of God in Genesis 6:2 refers to ‘angelanity,” a more appropriate term for his suggestion is “inanity.”
Sarfati continues by appealing to 2 Peter 2:4-8 and Jude 6-7; we have already seen why these fail to make the case for his view. Sarfati tries to make a point of Peter’s use of the Greek term ταρταρόω (“tartaroō”, “cast into Tartarus”), suggesting that “Tartarus seems to have been a section of Sheol or Hades, the abode of the dead, where these evil angels were confined until the final judgment, hence ‘bound in chains’,” and then argues that the sin of these angels who married human females “was so grievous that they were not free to roam for a time as other sinning angels were.” The problem with this is that we see at least one example in the New Testament of the fact that demons can be cast down to Sheol and no longer allowed to roam the earth, in Luke 8:31, and it has nothing to do with angels marrying human females.
Incidentally, after telling us that “the Greek myths likewise had a Tartarus, an extremely deep pit where the worst enemies of the Gods were combined”, Sarfati states that,
Rather than Jude borrowing from the Greeks, it’s more likely that the Greeks borrowed from a Jewish tradition.
His sole support for that claim is the bald assertion of a Bible scholar who lived in the 18th/19th century. However, the fact that Hebrew had only one word, לשְׁאוֹ (“she’ōl”), for the abode of the dead, whether good or evil, and Greek distinguished among παράδεισος (“paradeisos” = paradise), ᾅδης (“hadēs” = Hades), and τάρταρος (“Tartaros” = Tartarus, “hell”), makes it highly unlikely that the Greeks got the idea of Tartarus from the Jews. Finally, Sarfati insists that,
If Genesis 6 is not referring to sinning angels, 2 Peter and Jude are left dangling without any prior biblical referent.
Yet as we saw earlier, these passages are quite intelligible without any resort to the idea that angels married human females.
Sarfati then turns his attention to “Objections to angelic theory,” and here he commits his cardinal error; like Bates, he does not take Jesus’ words in Luke 24:39 into consideration. As we have seen, Jesus proves His bodily resurrection by appeal to the fact that spirits (and angels are spirits) do not have flesh and bone, a proof that is destroyed if angels could indeed conjure up physical bodies for themselves so that they could have conjugal relations with human females. Yet the word of Jesus trumps all other arguments, and so the view championed by Sarfati and Bates and others is a non-starter. After all, it is needful to give more weight to the words of the Lord than to “Jewish fables” and pagan religious myths.
Yet even in the objections Sarfati does address, there are some blunders. Regarding the objection “The NT uses the phrase ‘sons of God’ for beings other than angels’,” Sarfati argues that “the common feature of these usages is direct creation by God” – which is clearly not the case in Matthew 5:9 (“Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God”). He asserts that,
in Jesus’ genealogy in Luke 3:38, Adam is called ‘the son of God’, precisely because he was directly created by God, lacking any parents.
Yet Adam is not actually called “the son of God” in Luke 3:38. The Greek reads, “τοῦ Ἐνὼς τοῦ Σὴθ τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ θεοῦ,” which is “of Enos, of Seth, of Adam, of God”; the word “son” does not appear in the verse. Even more careless is the assertion that,
Christians are “all sons of God” (Galatians 3:36). Note that although Paul is explicit that this includes both male and female believers (3:28), it is important to retain the reading ‘sons’, not use ‘inclusive langage’ like ‘children.’ That’s because believers are “heirs according to the promise” (3:29), and only sons in Paul’s culture had inheritance rights. So when Paul uses ‘sons’, he is actually emphasizing that believing women are joint-heirs with believing men.”
It is difficult to discern how these CMI functionaries missed the fact that the NT actually uses the expression “children of God” more often than it uses “sons of God.” It seems that John and Paul – and the Holy Spirit – did not get Sarfati’s memo that “it is important to retain the reading “sons”, not use ‘inclusive language’ like ‘children.’“ What is particularly droll is that Sarfati says that,
it is important to retain the reading ‘sons’, not use ‘inclusive language’ like ‘children’ … because believers are ‘heirs according to the promise’ (3:29), and only sons in Paul’s culture had inheritance rights.
Yet the word of God says,
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ … (Romans 8:14-17a)
Paul uses the the term “sons of God” in 8:14, but uses “children of God” in 8:16, and specifies that we are heirs because we are “children” of God, not because we are “sons” of God. This is a salutary reminder that the word of God is not subordinate to the culture of the day.
Having failed to establish his contention that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4 were angels who had conjugal relations with human females, Sarfati goes on to discuss the nephilim as if they were the hybrid offspring of such relations. We have already debunked the arguments for this view, so here too we will move quickly through his material and focus mainly on any additional contentions he may offer that we have not yet considered.
For example, Sarfati turns his attention to the LXX translation of nephilim in Genesis 6:4 as γίγαντες and asserts that this word “could be a word play, from Gē (earth) and gennaō (γεννάω give birth to)” and that the translators “chose a term that emphasized beings of a quasi-divine parentage – born from the earth goddess, and beings in rebellion against the gods. These factors, more than huge size, were likely responsible for the choice.” Then, because the nephilim are described in Genesis 6:4 as “the mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” Sarfati suggests that,
the LXX translators also knew of the Greek legends of renowned heroes who were half men and half god. One famous example is Heracles … Heracles actually fought against the Giants and the Titans, but it’s understandable that the LXX translators conflated them in their translation.
That is a lot of assumptions to be making without any evidence. The singular of γίγαντες is γίγας, which actually doesn’t look much like it came from γεννάω; indeed, “Derivation from gegenes ‘earth-born’ is considered untenable.” The Greek γίγαντες were not of “quasi-divine parentage,” as Sarfati puts it, but of divine parentage, which would make them gods, not angel/human hybrids.
And Sarfati’s attempt to put a negative spin on the term “mighty men” (הַגִּבֹּרִים “ha-gibbōrim,” sing. and without the article רגִּבּוֹ “gibbōr”) by passing on a suggestion that they were mighty in their rebellion against God (when there is no hint in Genesis 6 that they were, in fact, rebelling against God) and that “the same word in its singular form gibbōr is used to describe the early post-flood tyrant Nimrod” is embarrassing. There is no hint in the Bible that Nimrod was a tyrant, but even if he was, the same term is used of the Messiah Himself, in Isaiah 9:6:
For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God (רגִּבּוֹ לאֵ, “El gibbōr”), Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
That would seem to negate the idea that the connotation of this term is negative.
Sarfati then discusses the meaning of the term nephilim, insisting that,
the Hebrew word means “fallen ones” or “those who fall upon others”.
As we have seen, this is possible but by no means certain. But even if it correct, it does not indicate that the nephilim were angel/human hybrids, rather than believers who fell away from the faith.
Next, Sarfati discusses the mention of nephilim in Canaan in Numbers 13:33, and, like Bates and Miss Cosner, asserts that,
we should not presume that those 10 spies were telling the truth.
The only support Sarfati supplies for this bald assertion is a bald assertion by Fruchtenbaum that,
the reported existence of the Nephilim after the Flood was a lie of the ten spies, as they tried to discourage the people.
But one bald assertion cannot be proven by another bald assertion; we have already seen that the claim that the ten spies lied is utterly unsustainable. Fruchtenbaum goes on to say, “When Joshua conquers the land, he never runs into any Nephilim. Therefore it seems apparent that these Nephilim were the product of the intermarriage of the fallen angels and human women”; it would be hard even to imagine a more blatant non sequitur than that offered here by Fruchtenbaum.
Sarfati concludes his case with a section entitled “Comparing the different views,” though he doesn’t really do that here. What he does is offer two quotes from different writers. Gordon Wenham tells us that view championed by Sarfati is “that of most modern commentators … The Sethite interpretation … has few advocates today.” If that is true, it is irrelevant, inasmuch as truth is not determined by majority opinion.
Sarfati’s other quote is from Robert C. Newman, who also agrees with Sarfati’s view of Genesis 6:1-4. While he allows that “part of the evangelical resistance to the supernatural interpretation is exegetical and part is theological,” he suggests that,
some resistance [to this view] seems to be due to rationalistic assumptions. Especially in the fields of science, history and Biblical studies, a ‘minimal-miracle’ stance may be adopted …
No, Newman, it is not due to “rationalist assumptions.” It is due to the fact that this view is flatly contradicted by Jesus’ own words that spirits (and angels are spirits) do not have physical flesh and bone bodies – ever. If they did, then Jesus’ own proof for His resurrection was deceptive and invalid. That should settle the matter.
Sarfati has spilled a lot of ink defending his view of angels having conjugal relations with human females. He had appealed to Scripture, though he has failed to make his case from it; he has appealed to bald assertions (his own and others); to Jewish fables; and even to pagan religions. But through it all, he has not considered Luke 23:39. This omission is inexplicable, and it is the reason that his case is wrong.
Sources
1. Bates, Alien Intrusion, p. 390
2. ibid., p. 392
3. ibid., pp. 393-394. (Bolding and underlining added.)
4. Cosner, Lita. Answer to Kevin B., Canada, 23 February 2014, in Carter, op. cit.
5. Cosner, Lita. “The use of creation in the Old Testament.” Posted on September 10, 2013, at http://creation.com/genesis-ot. (Bolding added.)
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. Bates, Alien Intrusion, pp. 393-394
9. Cosner, Lita. Answer to Kevin B., op. cit.
10. Cosner. “The use of creation,” op. cit.
11. ibid.
12. ibid.
13. BDB, p. 179. It should be noted that there are perfectly good words in Hebrew for “lie” if that is what one wishes to say. The most common is בכָּזָ “kazab.” Also very common is רשֶׁקֶ “sheqer,” which is used mostly in Psalms and especially Jeremiah. Words that are used a few times include כַּחַשׁ “kachash,” which appears only in Hosea and Nahum; דבַּ “bad,” which appears only in the plural and means idle or empty talk; and שָׁוְא “shav”, which means vanity. “False report” in Exodus 23:1 is שָׁוְא שֵׁמַע “shēma’ shav’.”
14. Bates, Alien Intrusion, p. 394
15. Cosner, “The use of creation,” op. cit.
16. Even if we want to see nephilim as a separate ethnic group, we should note that the Israelites did not enter Canaan until forty years after the spies’ report, so if there had been such a group they could have died off (or been exterminated by their neighbours) in the forty years between the time the spies made their report and the time Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan. In such a case, they would not have been mentioned at any later time.
17. Bates, Alien Intrusion, p. 389
18. ibid.
19. ibid.
20. ibid. (Bolding added.)
21. ibid.
22. ibid.
23. ibid., p. 390
24. ibid.
25. One example given in the passage is “forbidding to marry,” a doctrine that is contrary to God’s design for humanity and therefore seems to be demonic in origin, but candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood do not get the doctrine directly from demons but from the magisterium of the Roman Catholic church.
26. Bates, Alien Intrusion, p. 389
27. Morris, p. 166
28. Cosner, “The global flood,” op. cit.
29. Batten, Don. “Dogs breeding dogs? That’s not evolution!” Creation 18:2 (March 1996). Posted at http://creation.com/dogs-breeding-dogs
30. Dykes, Jeffrey. “Aye-aye: Madagascar’s mysterious ‘one-of-a-kind’.” Creation 31:1 (December 2008). Posted at http://creation.com/aye-aye
31. Wieland, Carl and Robert Carter. “Not the Flintstones – it’s the Denisovans.” (January 25, 2011). Posted at http://creation.com/denisovan
32. Bates, Alien Intrusion, pp. 389-390
33. We have already shown from Jesus’ own words that demons do roam the earth.
34. Bates, “Are ghosts real?” op. cit.
35. Sarfati, Jonathan D. The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11. Powder Springs, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2015.
36. ibid., pp. 473-488
37. ibid., pp. 474-475
38. ibid., p. 475
39. ibid.
40. ibid. (Bolding added.)
42. ibid., p. 476
43. Sarfati (ibid., p. 476) also appeals to Daniel 3:25, in which a fourth man appears in the fiery furnace, and Nebuchadnessar opines that this one is like “the Son of God” (בַר־אֱלָהִֽין in Aramaic). Yet Sarfati himself admits that this may not be an angel but a Christophany, undercutting his conclusion that “the OT and cognate languages uses ‘sons of God’ to mean ‘angels’ everywhere else.” As if one example from Aramaic (which is in the singular, not in the plural, as in all the Hebrew examples), could establish what “cognate languages” do “everywhere” else!
44. ibid.
45. ibid., p. 477
46. ibid.
47. ibid.
48. Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G. The Book of Genesis. San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2009, p. 146; cited in ibid.
154. ibid.
49. ibid., pp. 478-479
50. ibid., p. 478
51. ibid.
52. ibid.
53. ibid.
54. ibid., p. 479
55. ibid., pp. 479-480
56. ibid., p. 479
57. ibid.
58. ibid.
59. ibid. He cites Lita Cosner’s “The ‘gender neutral’ Bible: Emasculating Scripture for political correctness,” posted on September 10, 2009, at http://creation.com/gender-neutral-bible-translations for this tidbit.
60. “Sons of God” is used in Matthew 5:9; Luke 20:36; Romans 8:14, 8:19, and Galatians 3:26. “Children of God” is used in John 1:12, 11:52; Romans 8:16, 8:21, 9:8; Philippians 2:15; 1 John 3:1, 3:2, 3:10, and 5:2
61. ibid. (Bolding added.)
62. ibid., p. 484
63. ibid.
64. ibid.
65. Harper, Douglas. “Online Etymology Dictionary” at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=giant. Harper lists a plethora of good sources that he uses.
66. Sarfati, The Genesis Account, pp. 484-485
67. ibid., p. 485
68. Sarfati (ibid., pp. 659-660) cites a claim to this effect by Josephus, but we have no way of knowing whether Josephus, writing thousands of years after the events, was correct about this.
69. Sarfati, The Genesis Account, p. 485
70. ibid., p. 486
71. Fruchtenbaum (op. cit., p. 150), quote in ibid.
72. ibid., pp. 486-487. (Bolding added.)
73. Sarfati, The Genesis Account, pp. 487-488
74. Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1-15 Taco, TX: 1987, pp. 139-140; cited in ibid., pp. 487-488
75. Newman, Robert C. “The Ancient Exegesis of Genesis 6:2-4.” Grace Theological Journal 5:1 (1984), pp. 13-36; cited in Sarfati, The Genesis Account, p. 485
76. Regarding the Sethite view, Sarfati asks (Sarfati, The Genesis Account, p. 475), “If it were merely human intermarriage, then one would expect it to go both ways. That is, why not ‘the sons of men’ (Cainite men under this theory) and ‘the daughters of Elohim’ (Sethite women)?” This question could be asked of our view as well, and the answer is that it seems the decision making was made by the men, not by the women, as has been the usual case in most cultures and at most times in history. He also asserts that, ““The theory is self-refuting: if the ‘sons of God’ meant ‘godly people’, then why were they intermarrying with godless women in the first place? While Paul would not write ‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers’ (2 Corinthians 6:14) until thousands of years later, this seems to be a moral law written into the hearts of believers much earlier.” According to our view, the “sons of God” are the believers, and the fact that believers can indeed fall into such sins should be obvious to Sarfati; why does he think that God repeatedly warns against this if it can never happen?