The primary reason for the implausibility of this explanation is that the narrative in Numbers 13 is the account of hysterical people coming back to convince the Israelites that the Canaanites are too strong to be conquered. While it is critical for us to get an explanation for the reasoning behind the picture of God commanding the genocide in the conquest narratives, this is not a plausible explanation. The argument from some is that the reason behind God’s command of the Israelites to slaughter all the Canaanites is because the land was filled with this hybrid humanity of the Nephilim. Second, another well-meaning twist to this scripture comes from Numbers 13. These types of manufactured hysteria are just one big demonic distraction in the midst of a world with slavery, homelessness, terror, and hunger. Our encouragement and calling is to not waste any time with these conspiracy theories since as kingdom people we should be too busy with the work of the kingdom to bother with these bizarre ideas. First, these seemingly bizarre, confusing and short verses have been used to create hysteria and strange conspiracy theories. These few verses have been twisted in two main ways. The flood then becomes a desperate rescue mission by God to keep his plans for humanity on track and to salvage all that can be salvaged. This is the reason behind God removing his Spirit to allow the flood to envelop the earth. The main issue with this story in Genesis 6:1-7, and the reason for the coming flood narrative, is that the birth of these hybrid creatures was on the verge of derailing the whole creation process by overpowering humanity in its present state. This is defended through ancient stories of giants along with the account of the Israelite spies in Numbers 13:33 where they note that the inhabitants of the promised land were descendants of the Nephilim and large in stature. Greg also spends time arguing that the Nephilim were also giants. We are forced, based on the evidence, to continue along this same line of thinking to interpret this bizarre passage. The interpretation of this passage by the early church up until the 5th century was that this passage is describing fallen spiritual powers (sons of God) who came and had sex with daughters of humans that produced these hybrid creatures called the Nephilim. There is also no reason to believe that the offspring of evil people and righteous people would produce an offspring like the Nephilim that have a greater size or power than other offspring. Greg argued that Augustine’s interpretation of this passage was flawed by noting that the Bible does not specifically describe the descendants of Seth as particularly righteous or the descendants of Cain as particularly evil. Augustine argued that the sons of God are the righteous descendants of Seth and that the daughters of humans are the wicked descendants of Cain and that this relationship was deluding the righteous blood of Seth. Much of this goes back to Augustine’s platonic thread of thinking through his work. Saint Augustine argued that since the sons of God (mentioned in Genesis 6:2) are spirit beings they could not have any sexual interaction with the daughters of humans. The first issue to be tackled in this sermon is to deal with the confusion on the identity of the Nephilim. The story of the Nephilim within the book of Genesis is the precursor to the flood narrative and describes the reason for the flood. The majority of these books and theories have very little to support them and certainly do not take into account the broader application of the Nephilim within the canon of Scripture. The Nephilim have grown in popularity over the last number of years, but most of the discussion has been surrounding apocalyptic and fantastical novels and predictions. The focus of this final week of our Twisted Scripture series is the account of the Nephilim in Genesis 6:1-7.
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