Who were the Nephilim?

“When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and they took wives from among those that pleased them. It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth – when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.”(Genesis 6:2-4, from a Jewish translation of the Torah.)

The Hebrew word “nephilim” means fallen ones, sometimes translated giant because the Greek word for nephilim is gigantes. Who you think they were depends in large part on how you were taught to interpret Genesis 6:2-4 above. In Biblical circles there are three schools of thought concerning this, but a little digging will soon have you convinced that some folks who don’t know any other passage in the Bible know this one. And if you throw in their interpretations you’ve soon got a whole bunch more. We’ll focus on the so-called Biblical ones...read more>>>...