@occasnltrvlr You are welcome!
There is one thing that I still don't quite see. Is there evidence, today, of the implied "Event A"?Yes, the many remains of their bodies, that is why I added the last picture up there.
What I mean specifically is this: today, now, are there any living, breathing, flesh-and-blood offspring of current-day acts of bestiality between men and non-human mammals?Not that I can see, but I think there are some of them in facilities, hidden from public knowledge.
If not, what is different between our time and the time written of in Genesis 6 that would have made such a hybrid present then, but absent now?I think there are some genetic corruptions in certain population, but from when, I don’t know (this process is repeatable as long as there are chimps and men on earth), certainly not from the first biblical Nephilim.
I will put a picture at the end showing a striking resemblance between a Nephilim (or close to a Nephilim) and a modern Australian.
God killed the Nephilim with the flood because they were incompatible with His plan, and to prevent the corruption of the whole humanity.
After the flood, when a first generation of initial monsters were re-created, and were genetically disseminated into several generations during a couple of centuries, God found a way to eliminate the people partially genetically corrupted by even a somewhat small degree of simian ancestry.
Step 1: the flood.
Step2: another extermination.
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Step 1: the flood.
Genesis 6
The
Nephilim appeared on earth in those days,
as well as later, after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of human beings, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
5 When the LORD saw
how great the wickedness of human beings was on earth, and how every desire that their heart conceived was always nothing but evil,
the LORD regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved.
7 So the LORD said: I will wipe out from the earth the human beings I have created, and not only the human beings, but also the animals and the crawling things and the birds of the air, for I regret that I made them.
But Noah found favor with the LORD.
9 These are the descendants of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man.
tā·mîm in his generation;
*(
תָּמִ֥ים tā·mîm is an adjective used repeatedly to describe an animal without defect of any type. Perfect conformation, perfect skin, fur etc. It refers only to the body, employed also for men, it means the same thing, also not having a curved spine (vertebral column). By extension, one can mean a man standing upright, very straight; like in Samuel and Psalms.
So, scholars are deducting that such individual in this context is not ashamed of himself or blameless.
Therefore, my thinking is that the meaning
tā·mîm may be lost in translation, and we must not rule out his fundamental meaning and accept the possibility that Noah had a normal human physical conformation; not corrupted by simian DNA, especially since the Nephilim are mentioned just four verses before Genesis 6:9.)
Noah walked with God.
11
But the earth was corrupt in the view of God and full of lawlessness.
12
When God saw how corrupt the earth had become, since all mortals had corrupted their ways on earth,
13 God said to Noah: I see that
the end of all mortals has come, for the earth is full of lawlessness because of them. So
, I am going to destroy them with the earth.
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Step 2: another extermination.
Deuteronomy 7
1When the LORD, your God, brings you into the land which you are about to enter to possess, and
removes many nations before you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—
2 and when the LORD, your God, gives them over to you, and you defeat them,
you shall put them under the ban (original Hebrew:
utterly destroy them). Make no covenant with them, and do not be gracious to them.
3
You shall not intermarry with them, neither giving your daughters to their sons nor taking their daughters for your sons.
Deuteronomy 12
29 When the LORD, your
God, cuts down from before you the nations you are going in to dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and are settled in their land,
30 be careful that you not be trapped into following them
after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire regarding their gods, “How did these nations serve their gods, so I might do the same.”
31 You shall not worship the LORD, your God, that way, because
they offered to their gods every abomination that the LORD detests, even burning their sons and daughters to their gods.
Leviticus 18
The LORD said to Moses:
Speak to the Israelites and tell them: I, the LORD, am your God.
3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you once lived,
nor shall you do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you;
do not conform to their customs.…
23
You shall not have sexual relations with an animal, defiling yourself with it; nor shall a woman set herself in front of an animal to mate with it; that is perverse.
24
Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, because by them the nations whom I am driving out of your way have defiled themselves.
25 And so the land has become defiled, and I have punished it for its wickedness,
and the land has vomited out its inhabitants.
…
27
because the previous inhabitants did all these abominations, and the land became defiled;
28 otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it, just as it vomited out the nations before you.
29
For whoever does any of these abominations shall be cut off from the people.
30 Heed my charge, then,
not to observe the abominable customs that have been observed before your time, and thus become impure by them. I, the LORD, am your God.
(note: I don’t think the Anakites are fictional just because they were giants, it is written that Joshua killed them.
We can observe the same phenomenon with the breeding of different species today even at the first generation: Lion + Tigress = Liger, they can measure between 9.8 – 12 ft (3 to 3.6 m) in length and weigh anywhere from 705 – 1,220 pounds (320 – 560 kg)!)
Professor Ronald S. Hendel:
‘’Another problem that Trimm glosses over is Joshua’s destruction of the indigenous giants of Canaan, called the Anakim, Nephilim, and other ethnonyms. Joshua 11:21 describes their utter destruction along with the people of Canaan. Trimm suggests that the annihilation of the Nephilim is not a moral problem. But is the destruction of fictional giants wholly different from the destruction of fictional Canaanites? There is clearly a moral difference between actual and fictional genocide, including monsters and humans.
A final critique is that Trimm does not address the one text where the biblical writers take a position on the moral problem of the destruction of the Canaanites: Deuteronomy 20. In his laws of war, Moses contrasts the total destruction of the Canaanites with the more compassionate rules for war against other peoples. The normal rule of war that applies to all the towns beyond the territory of Canaan is to first offer terms of peace (Deuteronomy 20:10). In Canaan, however, the Israelites are commanded to “not let anything that breathes remain alive” (Deuteronomy 20:15-16).’’------------‘’I will put a picture at the end showing a striking resemblance between…’’