Legends of the Fall
Growing up, I was fed a steady diet of Old Testament stories. A wise decision by my parents to soak me in many foundational sections from the OT at a young age. Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, King Josiah, sort of like a greatest hits of the Old Testament. I have a fuzzy memory of sitting in a Sunday School and watching the teacher illustrate the story of Namaan being healed of his leprosy by dipping in the river seven times. As we were lacking a convenient river, the teacher resorted to performing seven squats.
Little did I suspect there was far more to these stories than I could have ever imagined. I had read the book of Genesis dozens of times, but it wasn’t until I became a young adult that I realized the significance of a strange account in Genesis 6;
“The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.”
Genesis 6:2
The ‘sons of God’? Hmm… I really don’t know how I read this for years and never once wondered what that could have meant. As it turns out, the answer lies in verse four;
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
Genesis 6:4
Monsters Among Us
The Nephilim. There’s a subject I was never told about in Sunday School. A monstrous hybrid creation. We’re talking the stuff of nightmares. According to the Bible what happened is that human DNA was mixed with the fallen spiritual entities (who somehow assumed physical form, a process we aren’t given any details on). The children of this unholy union were called The Nephilim. Every nightmare personified, every monster legend brought to life. Somehow this never came up in my children’s story book Bible.
More than that, many Christians are unaware of this important moment in Old Testament history. It’s too bad considering without understanding this key moment, we end up missing a lot of the significance of the Old Testament, and even world history.
I like monster tales, always have. I’ve always had an interest in ancient legend of supernatural monsters. Everything from the Loch Ness Monster to the vampire legend of St. Germain. It was interesting to think that the ancient world was populated with dragons, sea serpents, giants and immortal creatures. As it turns out, these legends, aren’t as legendary as I thought.
Ancient Myths and Legends
The Bible explicitly mentions that these Nephilim, were ‘mighty men of old, men of renown’. Rather than give us concrete examples, the writers assumed that readers would automatically understand. Well if we go back to ancient legends, what do we have? There is the Epic of Gilgamesh, about a king who claimed to be part god, and recounts an extraordinary tale of giants and massive sea serpents. The Cannanites had legends of winged serpents. No matter where you look, nearly every ancient culture depicted the primeval world as a place of horrors. Monsters terrorizing and devouring the sons of men.
Please understand, I’m not in any way suggesting we take these legends and myths at face value. That would be foolish. There is no doubt in my mind that these tales have suffered a great deal of embellishment. After all, we aren’t the only ones to enjoy a good story. What I am suggesting is that these stories had some basis to them. We have to wonder, why do we tell these sorts of stories? Who installed a highly imaginative gothic novelist in our brains? Is it just barely possible that maybe, just maybe, there really were monstrous creatures roaming the primeval world?
From Back and White To Technicolor
This could change our entire understanding of the world. What if the primeval world was far more than the cartoonish depictions of stupid cavemen? This may sound fanciful, or just straight up looney, but this has radical implications for our understanding of theology. One example would be explaining the ‘difficult’ parts of the Old Testament. So many people struggle with understanding why God would command the eradication (or extinction if you prefer) of entire cultures. In fact, there were various philosophers throughout the centuries that argued there were two separate deities in the Old and New Testaments. As far as I’m able to understand, this absurd idea comes from an ignorance of what REALLY happened in the Old Testament. If we realize that this was not a war against a peaceful culture, but a war between men and monsters, then this could clarify our understanding, and also help us unify the Old and New Testaments in a way that makes sense.
I want to point out that this is a very different understanding than what you probably learned in Sunday School. It means that we will have to take some ideas and revise them, or in some cases, discard them entirely. I also would point out that this has very serious implications for today as well. There are still discussions of spiritual warfare, but so often we forget what this term really means. We are at war with very real entities, with malevolent intentions towards mankind. These entities have been here for millennia, ever manipulating the events of history, influencing some of the worst incidents in history, and still wreaking chaos today. We would do well to bear this in mind.
That will be the focus for this latest series: ‘Monsters and gods of The Old Testament’. A theological and historical look into ancient legends and myths, and seeing if the Bible has anything to say on the matter. We’re going to take the Old Testament into technicolor. What we find just might reshape our understanding of the Bible and world history.
