The Book of Genesis mentions mysterious beings who existed before and after the Flood: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” The Book of Numbers reports they were giants, with spies for ancient Israelites saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
I’d never heard of the Nephilim till my research into tech and politics made me aware of suspicions about an effort to bring them back: “Why is a growing subgroup of evangelical Christians promoting the idea that secular scientists are attempting to reconstruct the DNA of the giant Nephilim mentioned in Genesis 6.1-4, understood as the hybrid offspring resulting from sexual encounters between humans and fallen angels?” My first thought: “Because they’re nuts!” Yet dismissing the spiritual, miraculous and apocalyptic runs a risk of obliviousness to the motivations of large sections of the populace.
The Nephilim, I now learned, have figured in various pop culture offerings and were recently mentioned on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Rogan said that widespread cultural references to giants suggest these have some basis in truth, not just as exaggerations of tall humans. However, he argued, if someone were to discover fossils of a race of giants, and brought this to authorities’ attention, the information would be squelched. “The scientists are going to kill you,” Rogan said. “They’re going to run you off the road.” I’ve doubts about that, given the incentives of academic publishing and science journalism. As it happens, the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a diminutive species of hominins (a group containing humans and their extinct relatives), was not concealed from the public, instead touted as a finding of “hobbits.”
Even so, the Nephilim carry potential to elicit theological and political controversy, as there’s little consensus among biblical scholars as to who or what they were. By some accounts, they were humans, albeit big ones, though versions differ on whether they descended from Seth, Adam and Eve’s third son, or from Abel’s murderer Cain. An alternative view is that they were non-human giants who were unrelated to humanity. The non-canonical Book of Enoch, however, proposes the troubling possibility these giants were the offspring of fallen angels and human women. This could weaken the coalition of Christian nationalists and transhumanist tech executives supporting Donald Trump, as it suggests putative technological efforts to resurrect the Nephilim are the work of Satan.
The literature addressing such possibilities includes the book Giants, Fallen Angels, and the Return of the Nephilim: Ancient Secrets to Prepare for the Coming Days, in which author Dennis Lindsay states: “Genetic engineering will provide the way for genetic hybrids. Unfortunately, the dark side of this science is that it involves fallen angels and the coming deception associated with them.” Noting recent developments in biotechnology, such as insertion of human genes into animals and efforts to resurrect extinct species, Lindsay writes that “it may not be long before the Nephilim return to planet Earth,” and warns: “Satan failed to stop the birth of the Messiah. But now he can still work to prevent the people of Earth from being redeemed through genetic engineering.”
A more laid-back view is possible, though. Impact Video Ministry, a Christian organization, has produced a video giving an overview of the Nephilim, which recognizes uncertainties about their origins but emphasizes that the ancient Israelites triumphed over enemies such as Goliath, who evidently were descendants of the Nephilim. “Regarding spiritual warfare, the battle against the demonic is already won,” the narrator states. “You see, when it comes to the story of the Nephilim, it’s a historical account of God overcoming powerful enemies, no matter what their nature was. So, despite their size, their physical power or their status, God and his people defeated them, and they are no longer here.”
—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky