The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim

by Scott Alan Roberts

  The Gnostics claimed to possess the “hidden mysteries” as relayed to them by Jesus Christ himself. And according to their “heretical” teachings, Moses constructed the entirety of the Genesis account of creation on his early influence in Egyptian teachings of the Ogdoad. Irenaeus sets about in his writings to present and dissemble the writings of the Gnostics regarding Moses and creation, first referring to them as the development of “mighty fictions.”9

  According to Irenaeus, Moses followed the pattern of the Ogdoad in the fashion in which he wrote the account of creation. This can get a little sticky, so stay with me here….

  At the beginning of Moses’ account of creation in the Book of Genesis, he starts out in verse one of Genesis chapter one, by saying that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). And by creating a numerical number of four elements to the first staement of creation—God, created, heavens, earth—Moses was establishing the first Tetrad (grouping of four) of the Gnostics and hailing back to the initial four elements of the four god couples of the Egyptian Ogdoad. See where this is going, now? Fascinating stuff! Read on….

  Moses went on in his creation account by stating that the creative act was invisible and hidden nature—a reference to the “invisible egg” of creation; a visible physical creation birthing from an invisible spiritual dimension: “Now the earth was invisible and unformed” (Genesis 1:2). Then, by naming an abyss and darkness, in which were also water, and the Spirit moving upon the water, Moses is referring to the second Tetrad that births out of the first: “invisible, unformed, Spirit, moved.”

  Then, proceeding to mention the Gnostic Decad, Moses names light, day, night, the firmament, the evening, the morning, dry land, sea, plants, and, in the 10th place, trees all as a part of the initial creative act. Thus, by means of these 10 names, he indicated the 10 Æons of the Gnsotic structure, again based on the Egyptian Ogdoad.

  Moses then reiterates the power of the Gnostic Duodecad and names the sun, moon, stars, seasons, years, whales, fishes, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds, wild beasts, and, after all these, in the 12th place, man. In this, the Gnostics taught that the Triacontad (the Triacontad (30) exist in a tripartite division of an Ogdoad (8), Decad (10), and Duodecad (12)) was spoken of through Moses by the Spirit. Further, man was also being formed after the image of the power above, had in himself that ability that flows from the one source: the invisible force. This ability was seated in the region of the brain, from which four faculties proceed, after the image of the Tetrad above, and these are called sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Moses also hails to the Ogdoad in stating that man has four sets of two: two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, and two senses of taste: bitter and sweet.

  Moses continues on with his Ogdoad construct in that the sun was created on day four; the tented courts of the Tabernacle were made of fine linen, blue, purple, and scarlet. Again, the long robe of the priest falling over his feet, was adorned with four rows of precious stones. Moses also shows the influence of the Ogdoad, again, in that man was formed on the eighth day, his earthly part was formed on the sixth day, but his fleshly part on the eighth. Multiples of four.

  And then Moses states that the ark of Noah was 30 cubits high—again the Tricontad—and that eight persons were saved inside most clearly indicates the Ogdoad, which brings salvation.

  Now, for the record, I know very little about Gnosticism and how it works. However, it appears that they at least believed that Moses was writing in multiples that revealed a heavy influence of the teaching of Egyptian Ogdoad creation.

  Why Is Moses Important to the Nephilim?

  The place we draw our primary source for the Hebrew word, Nephilim is in a book authored by Moses, a historical character drenched in the waters of Judeo-Christian, biblical tradition. In many circles of non-religious thought, this sinks Moses deep into the pond of religious mythology, where even his existence as a real person falls under the voluminous waves of skeptical attack. So, having even a brief understanding of his history and a “lite” touch on the probable history surrounding his existence and interaction with the people living in the known historical courts of Egypt lends some credence to the things he is said to have traditionally written.

  When there is scholarly controversy even over the lives and deeds of royal Egyptian figures who are established in the historical record, how can we even begin to establish the credible existence of someone who by mention of his name alone, casts him in the shadowy light of religious mythology? Moses’ presence in established Egyptian history is, for all practical purposes, anonymous. So it is ultimately important, in researching works that are traditionally held to be authored by him, to establish who he was, when he lived, what he experienced, and from where he drew his foundational abilities and philosophies, in order to lend some modicum of concrete foundation for the things about which he wrote.

  And I believe I have accomplished that goal in the preceding words. Defy the auto-psychological response to discount anything that goads you to offhandedly dismiss something simply because it is entrenched in religious or mysterious belief systems, and open your eyes to the reality that even religious writers with hugely miraculous events ascribed to them, have their place in real history.

  Moses wrote the books of the Law of the Hebrews; there is no question in my mind. He penned the passage in the Book of Genesis regarding the Nephilim, though, I believe, as an abridged retelling of already widely accepted events sourced in already-ancient texts of his day in the 15th century BCE. His later mention of the Nephilim, the descendents of Anak, who the spies said were living in the land of Cana’an, may have been a later edit by Moses or his successor, Joshua, but the passage still reveals hints and clues as to the existence of these beings. Moses relied heavily on the original accounts of Enoch (as rewritten after the Babylonian captivity in the third century BCE) and on his early religious education as a “son of the pharaoh” in 18th Dynasty Egypt.

  A final thought on Moses, as a result of my 30 years of study, research, and contemplation on this remarkable man, is that he was establishing himself as the “Pharaoh-God” of the Israelites. Everything he had learned in the royal courts, he incorporated into establishing his leadership. His “talks with God” gave him the seal of Divine kinship and approval before the people—something that most leaders of coups or rebellions strive very hard to accomplish. His word was law. And his kingly arrogance could only have found its roots in the leadership styles and qualities he learned from the best, the Thutmoses/Hatshepsut family of Egyptian monarchs.

  Of all this, he gave us the Nephilim, though borrowed from other faith writings of his day, blended with the gods of Egypt.

  chapter 4

  The Pan-Cultural Effect

  In 1872, George Smith, pioneering English Assyriologist and noted archaeologist and researcher with the British Museum, laboriously reconstructed the puzzle-piece-like fragments of Babylonian tablets dating to 1700 BCE found at excavations of the city of Ninevah. One night, Smith came across a large fragment with only one side legible. He was stunned to read the story of a man who built an ark to escape a devastating flood, who brought on board animals of all types, who sent out birds to see if the water had receded. If you are thinking that Smith found an ancient tablet recounting the flood of Noah, you would be incorrect. Smith had stumbled across one chapter of the much longer, long forgotten tale, of the Epic of Gilgamesh,1 a “mirrored” account of the Noah and the Ark story found in the Book of Genesis. Only the account of Gilgamesh had a completely different cast of characters and a recounting of other events not found in the Noah story.

  In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, toward the end of the He Who Saw the Deep version by Sîn-lēqi-unninni,2 there are references to the great flood (Tablet XI). Many scholars believe that the flood myth of Gilgamesh was added to Tablet XI in the “standard version” of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who plagiarized the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis.3 A short reference to the flood myth is also ment
ioned in the much older Sumerian Gilgamesh poems, from which the later Babylonian versions drew much of their inspiration and subject matter. This was a late addition to the Gilgamesh cycle, largely paraphrased or copied verbatim from the Epic of Atrahasis.4 In this account, the hero Gilgamesh, seeking immortality, searches out Utnapishtim in Dilmun, a kind of paradise on earth. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh how Ea (equivalent of the Sumerian Enki) warned him of the gods’ plan to destroy all life by means of a great flood. Utnapishtim then passes on instructions he had been given on how to build an enormous barge-like vessel in which he could save his family, his friends, and his wealth and cattle. After the deluge subsides, the gods repented of their action and granted immortality to Utnapishtim and his wife.

  Short of historical and comparative religious and mythological research, there is no scientific methodology that can be applied to a study of the Nephilim and the disastrous deluge that killed a world of living beings as a result. You can’t ring up a spirit, angel, demon, or some other form of extra-terrestrial being on the telephone, lure it into a laboratory and coax it to have sex with a human woman for the purposes of observing conception and birth of offspring. There is no means to have the ability to hypothesize, study, and repeat the procedure to gain quantifiable data. You can, however, look to the ancient annals. There is a certain scientific methodology at play when you consider that nearly every culture of the ancient world has its version of these phenomena as mentioned in the Books of Genesis and Enoch.

  Including the Genesis account of Noah’s Flood, in which we have the introduction of the Sons of God and their mixed-blood offspring, there are more than 600 ancient tribal legends from around the world giving account of the global deluge that consumed the antediluvial (pre-flood) world. And every major civilization of the ancient world has its corresponding mythological gods, demigods, and star children that all seem to have common source points. Despite mainstream anthropological explanations of these ancient accounts as referring less to a global flood than localized rivers over-spilling their banks, nearly all of the ancient tribal legends comprising the 600 tales speak of a “world covering” flood. And most of those tribal histories mention the intercourse between spirit beings and human women as partial cause for a deity to send flood waters to wipe them out.

  The various accounts of a great, ancient flood come from hundreds of tribes in Europe, Asia, the Near East, Africa, Australia, the Pacific islands, and the Americas. To enlist them all here would require a volume of its own, so suffice it to say that these various tales are found not only in what we would consider the major, well-known cultures of antiquity, such as Greek, Roman, Celtic, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern, but also from tribes such as the Masai, Yoruba, and Mandingo of Africa; the Vogel, Samoyed, Yenisey Ostyak, Tibel, Lepcha, Sagaiye, Ifugayo, Bahnar, and Kammu tribes of Asia; the Australian tribes of Maung, Gunwinggu, Gumaidje, and Manger; North America’s Inuit, Kwakiutl, Kootenay, Cherokee, Mandan, Choctaw, Navajo, and Lakota; the Tarascan, Yaqui, Tlaxcalan, Chol, Toltec, and Maya of Central America; and the South American Acawai, Yaruro, Arawak, Murato, Toba, and Selk’nam. The list is so vast that even the scant few shown here are barely the tip of the iceberg.

  All this illustrates is that every culture, every tribal system, every clan, region, city-state, and religion had its version of the Genesis Flood and the events surrounding its purpose, from the utilitarian to the obscurely mythological.

  Although I list here only a few of the cultural variants on the flood story, take note of how most of them reference the gods, giants, and anger of a deity against the corrupt and sinful inhabitants of the earth.

  Lithuanian

  From his heavenly window, the supreme god Pramzimas saw nothing but corruption, war, and injustice among mankind. He sent two giants, Wandu and Wejas (water and wind), to destroy the earth. After 20 days and nights, little was left. Pramzimas looked to see the progress. He happened to be eating nuts at the time, and he threw down the shells. One happened to land on the peak of the tallest mountain, where some people and animals had sought refuge. Everybody climbed in and survived the flood floating in the nutshell. Pramzimas’s wrath abated, and he ordered the wind and water to end their devastation. The people left the nutshell and dispersed, except for one elderly couple who stayed where they landed. To comfort them, Pramzimas sent the rainbow and advised them to jump over the bones of the earth nine times. They did so, and up sprang nine other couples, from which the nine Lithuanian tribes descended.5

  Celtic

  Heaven and Earth were great giants. Heaven lay upon the Earth so that their children were crowded between them, and the children and their mother were unhappy in the darkness. The boldest of the sons led his brothers in cutting up Heaven into many pieces. From his skull they made the firmament. His spilling blood caused a great flood that killed all humans except a single pair, who were saved in a ship made by a beneficent Titan. The waters settled in hollows to become the oceans. The son who led in the mutilation of Heaven was a Titan and became their king, but the Titans and gods hated each other, and the king titan was driven from his throne by his son, who was born a god. That Titan at last went to the land of the departed. The Titan who built the ship, whom some consider to be the same as the king Titan, went there also.6

  Roman

  Jupiter, angered at the evil ways of humanity, resolved to destroy it. He was about to set the earth to burning, but considered the possibility that the flames might set heaven itself afire, so he decided to flood the earth instead. With Neptune’s help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood everything but the summit of Parnassus, where Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha came by boat and found refuge. Recognizing their piety, Jupiter let them live and withdrew the flood. Deucalion and Pyrrha, at the advice of an oracle, repopulated the world by throwing “your mother’s bones” (stones) behind them; each stone became a person.7

  Scandanavian

  Oden, Vili, and Ve fought and slew the great ice giant Ymir, and icy water from his wounds drowned most of the Rime Giants. The giant Bergelmir escaped with his wife and children on a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk. From them rose the race of frost ogres. Ymir’s body became the world we live on. His blood became the oceans.8

  Chaldean

  According to accounts attributed to the great Babylonian priest-historian Berosus (whose writings about Oannes we will see in Chapter 5), the antediluvians were giants who became impious and depraved, except one among them who reverenced the gods and was wise and prudent. His name was Noa, and he dwelt in Syria with his three sons Sem, Japet, Chem, and their wives Tidea, Pandora, Noela, and Noegla. From the stars, he foresaw destruction, and he began building an ark. Seventy-eight years after he began building, the oceans, inland seas, and rivers burst forth from beneath, attended by many days of violent rain. The waters overflowed all the mountains, and the human race was drowned except Noa and his family who survived on his great boat, which came to rest at last on the top of the Gendyae or Mountain. According to legend, remnants of the enormous boat still remain, which men take bitumen from to make charms against evil.9

  The list of cross-cultural accounts of the flood and the giants could fill volumes of books, so I merely noted a handful to illustrate the point that nearly every culture has its own version of the Flood of Noah and the elements that brought on the great deluge. Again, the absence of recorded history becomes a near-irrelevancy when stacked against the innumerable cultural accounts that all seem to hail back to a singular common event. This is by no means the final word on the matter, but merely a start in sifting through the many mythological evidences that seem to point to a great historic event.

  As mentioned, there are many cultural references to “giants” and “visitors from the sky,” whom most tales refer to as angels, demons, or spirit beings. These “spirits who descended” are found in nearly every account of the ancient deluge, and are found in innumerable ancient accounts such as the Anaaye (Diné/Navajo), the Nunhyunuwi (Cherokee), the Cawr (Welsh), t
he Dev (Turkish), the Velikan (Russian), the Yak (Thai), the Rephaim (Hebrew), the Famangomadan (Spanish), the Wrnach (Welsh), Fomorians (Celtic), Dasa Maha Yodayo (Sri Lanka), the Puntan (Micronesia), the Azrail (Armenian), the Gigantes (Greek), and many, many others.

  The notion that the accounts of the Nephilim reached every culture of the world is not as far-fetched as we might think. Though the story of the descent of the Watchers to the top of Mount Hermon is the Hebrew version, other cultural mythologies have their own variations on the tale. Whether borrowed and incorporated into their own mythologies and legends, or experienced firsthand by their own ancient inhabitants, it is clear that the Nephilim in one form or another affected the populations of nearly all ancient cultures, exponentially spreading around the globe.