Wes Huff on Enoch, Nephilim, and Demons
Anthony reacts to Wes Huff’s comments from The Shawn Ryan Show by pulling out the “weird” biblical themes—because “if it’s weird, it’s important”—and frames the episode around five linked topics: ethics of technology and Watcher “secret knowledge” (connecting modern tech questions to 1 Enoch 8 and Azazel’s teaching of warfare and seduction), the Dead Sea Scrolls as a major confirmation that the Old Testament we have today is materially the same text Israel had then (while also clarifying that real textual variants existed before Christ, especially Deuteronomy 32’s “sons of God / angels of God / sons of Israel,” with implications for Psalm 82), Astronomical Enoch (1 Enoch 72–82, “Book of the Luminaries”) as an ancient stream of thought that helps explain the conceptual world New Testament authors wrote within, the Nephilim/giants debate (Genesis 6; LXX “giants”), pressing for taking Peter and Jude’s angel-sin framing seriously (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6) against the Sethite view, and finally demons as disembodied spirits of the Nephilim/giants (a major Second Temple thread) with biblical touchpoints in the Rephaim passages (Job 26:5–6; Psalm 88:10; Isaiah 14:9) and Jesus’ “abyss” language (Luke 8:30–31), arguing that what scripture “whispers” may be whispered because it was assumed, and that reading Enoch—without treating it as canon—can still illuminate how early Jewish and Christian readers made sense of the Bible’s supernatural worldview and storyline.
Anthony Delgado: All right. Welcome to Biblical Reenchantment. Today we're gonna talk about Wes Huff and the Nephilim. He was recently on the Shawn Ryan Show. Now I definitely think everyone should watch the full episode. It's pretty long, but it's really cool. I'm gonna go over a couple of things that are kind of fringe topics that came up in that interview. There was only like 10 minutes of it in the whole, you know, three plus hours, which I think the trailer that Shawn Ryan put out was a little bit misleading on that point, but there was some interesting stuff in there. So I want to kind of give you some of the highlights for those of you guys who follow sort of biblical theology and some of the fringe topics that show up in the scriptures.
First, though I wanna say this upfront, I was totally taken by how pastoral Wes Huff can be in his approach to really sensitive topics, even sort of as Shawn Ryan was being vulnerable about some of his own struggles with scriptures and the Christian life. I just really felt like as a pastor, that I wanted to say thanks to Wes for that. It’s the real meat of what we do as ministers, and I appreciate that even though he kind of has like an online presence and apologetics ministry, that he still knows how to be very pastoral and to counsel and to guide and to do so using the scriptures. So just loved that.
But yeah, so the trailer that Shawn Ryan put out, it kind of lets on that we're gonna find out about Wes' view of the Nephilim and the actual episode takes kind of a long time to get there and it's not much discussion to be honest. So I'm gonna replay some of the clips, some of the things that did show up in the Shawn Ryan show and kind of comment on the best of the weird stuff. Remember, if it's weird, it's important. It's not just because it's fun and interesting that we dig into these things. I think there's some real important applications to 'em.
So we're gonna look at tech and Watcher knowledge. We're gonna look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. We're gonna talk about astronomical Enoch. We're gonna look at a clip about Nephilim and Giants for sure. That's sort of, you know, the claim of the video, and we're definitely gonna talk about demons and their relationship to the Nephilim.
So let's say this upfront, there's more to first Enoch than I think Wes lets on in this video. Actually, I kind of looked at some of Wes' other things that he said about it, and he could be more confident about some of the things that he's talking about. I think the evidence leads us to a greater confidence in some of this narrative. But there is some skepticism on his part, and so, you know, we'll talk about that as we go through as well.
I'm gonna reference my book here. It's The Watchers and the Holy Ones. And for more on that, look at amazon.com or my website. My website's AnthonyDelgado.net. And these are themes that I discuss regularly on my channel and in my writing, articles, things of that sort. And so encourage you to go there, get on my mailing list, and then you'll see what I mean as those start to come out.
But I very much appreciate what Wes wanted to do and to comment on some of the great things that he said. And so I hope not to get into a habit of doing clip videos all the time. But we're gonna look at some of the high points of the Shawn Ryan interview today and get some of my brief thoughts in between. Alright, let's get into the first clip.
Technological Ethics and Watcher Knowledge
Wes Huff: AI alone, right? When we're talking about, there are all sorts of questions about consciousness in regards to what we're looking at with ai. Like, is ai solving the Turing test? Can it recognize its own existence in reality? There have been examples, I think, all throughout history of things that are spoken to directly within scripture.
When we were talking about moral prescriptions, to just go to the place where the moral prescriptions apply and do this, don't do this, that kind of thing. But there are so many things that are in these weird gray areas that like, whether you're talking about pastors or counselors or theologians or whoever, it's really hard to try to pin down. There isn't just an easy do this, don't do this. Here's what the outline says.
You know, off air I was saying you don't open to Second Opinions chapter three and you have that section on the exact thing you're looking for. But I think what's interesting about the Bible is that despite it being, you know, its most recent book being 2000 years old, it's still informing our moral basis for so many things. We're still using it in some ways as the guiding principles because it provides an objective framework to understand, you know, whether that's when life begins or things like consciousness or purpose or meaning or identity and how we understand things.
So I think that though there are issues that aren't spoken to directly, we can look at examples that relate to some of the very different, very, not even within the consciousness of a first century author, but, and yet morality hasn't changed. Good is good and bad is bad, and there's still things that we need to parse through and figure out how do we figure out the intricacies of that. And I think that's where something like scripture can give us guiding principles to the best of our ability, try to speak into those situations.
Anthony Delgado: Alright, so the question that Wes was asked really had to do with ethics of technology and things of that sort. I want to kind of jump into one big glaring idea here and say where does human knowledge come from, specifically, where does technological knowledge come from? Obviously humans have knowledge of many things. We explore the creation, we learn lots of things in our exploration of God and of God's design.
But I think that when it comes to technology specifically, somewhat in the scriptures, there's hints of this, but also in some of the ancient near Eastern thinking, specifically as we see in Enoch, I think there is some real dangers to technology that technology shouldn't be seen as purely amoral, and only about how we use it. And I think if we understand some of those underpinnings, then we can learn how to use technology well.
Obviously this is a YouTube video. We're using technology, so I'm not anti-technology. That said, please like and subscribe. If you like this discussion, we're about to jump into First Enoch. I'm actually gonna read some to you here in a second, and this is gonna help me as you like, subscribe, watch the video to get more of this type of stuff out. I'm only getting started. I've only got a handful of videos out at this time. I got lots more in the tank.
Okay, so let's get into this big idea. So First Enoch—I’m gonna go there actually in my book, I've got some excerpts of this in here. And on page 30 we're gonna learn a little bit about how and why, according to, you know, this Second Temple text, technology came into the world. So this is after sin enters the world.
"And Azazel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, and breastplates to make war. He taught humans about the metals of the earth and the art of metallurgy to make silver bracelets and ornaments for women to wear. He taught women to beautify their eyes with colored makeup and wear all kinds of costly stones. So, the sons of men made these things for themselves and their daughters. They sinned and led the holy ones astray. So, there was much godlessness on the earth."
And there it goes on. But I just wanted to read you that excerpt just to see how it kind of mirrors Genesis 6. In Genesis 6 you have the giants enter in, and they're these mighty men, these mighty warriors, the gibborim. And then it says that human wickedness was widespread on the earth, that every thought and intention of every man's heart was only evil always. And you go, well, how does that type of sinfulness enter in?
Well, the explanation given there, if you caught it in First Enoch 8, just verses 1 and 2 there, I think it is, you get this idea that it’s the Watchers—after they've been condemned to the earth—they begin to teach their children, the Nephilim—and also, which we'll talk about more, and also humans—the arts of war and the arts of seduction. Notice the first thing they were teaching was, hey, let's make armor and let's make weapons. And then they're teaching about makeup and ornamentation for women. And so they're teaching the arts of war and the arts of seduction to humans.
And so one of the things that comes up in the Shawn Ryan interview is, you know, he's reflecting on some investments he made. He has a military history, some things like that. You know, investing in defense tech and stuff like that. And I think there is a real ethical concern there that these are not just amoral things. They're not just about—I understand, I'm not a complete 100% Christian non-violence type of guy. I think that if somebody comes into my house and immediately threatens my family, that there's something to be said for that.
But when it comes to like developing technologies for war, I think there's something to this idea that even in the ancient world, as much war was about self-preservation and preserving our country and things like that—I guess not much different than today—but as much war was about that, and it was like defending myself and my family very directly, then at the same time, they just looked at it and went, you know, this is really evil. And so they equate this to sort of the insights of spiritual beings.
And so I've often sort of defined sin as the misuse of that which God created good. Okay. And just think about that for a minute, 'cause that's what's happening in this narrative in Enoch, and that's also the danger of technology, that we can take what we have learned. And it's hard to tell sometimes: is this Watcher knowledge or is this humans exploring the earth or are those one in the same? Might be an interesting question to ask as well.
But whatever it is, as we start to take this knowledge that God has embedded in this creation and we start to learn and we start to explore, and we develop things like artificial intelligence and all of this medical technology that's out there and all of these different things—how are we using it? What are we doing with it?
Because as we begin to use it in ways that sometimes very subtly are to benefit the self, to elevate the self, then I think we're leading into some dangerous territory.
I'm just thinking about this coming Sunday, being Transfiguration Sunday and leading into the season of Lent where we want to humble ourselves as Philippians 2: Christ even humbled himself, that he didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped, that he humbled himself becoming obedient, even to the point of death on a cross. And for that humility, that extreme ultimate humility, he was exalted to the right hand of the Father where every knee bows before the great name Yahweh that is given to Jesus.
And so you look at that narrative and that's setting a pattern because Paul says in Philippians 2:5, have this mind among yourselves. And then he tells us, and you know, it recites this Christ hymn to us about Jesus' humility. And we need to be very careful as we start to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and we start to take this knowledge that wasn't for us—this, you know, you could say this Watcher knowledge—and we begin to use it to put ourselves on the throne that you can be like God and knowing good and evil. And you start to do this, right, and you start to build yourself up.
And we go, oh, well, you know, it's right for me to go and get what I can for myself in the world and for my family and my tribe, right? And we tell ourselves these things and what we're really doing is we're climbing higher and higher on to the top of God's throne. And we just need to be careful.
And the season of Lent is all about stepping down off that throne. It's about making sacrifices to grow in our knowledge of God and our love of God and our submission to him and to revel not in our glory now, but in our glory eternal.
And so I think that this Watcher narrative really helps us in that it really brings us a spiritual framing to keep ourselves that we're gonna use the things that are in the world. It's unavoidable, but to make sure that our relationship to these technologies is always Christ exalting. It's never in the middle. It's never amoral. It's always Christ exalting or it's self exalting. It's Christ exalting, God exalting, or it's man glorifying.
Okay? So we need to keep those in the right place.
Okay, now let's see what Wes has to say about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Wes Huff: The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish writings. They were discovered between 1947 and 1956. We have discovered some since then, just fragments. But the story is that there were some Bedouin on the northwest side of the Dead Sea, between the border of Israel and Jordan, and they were herding some sheep. And they discovered these jars full of documents.
So in the Roman Jewish wars, which happened kind of into the mid, late first century, right after Jesus, which also ultimately culminated in 70 AD when Rome, they march into Jerusalem and they sack Jerusalem and they destroyed the temple, these Jews went and they hid—kind of maybe knowing that danger was coming—they hid these documents in these caves in the hills along the coast of the northwest side of the Dead Sea. That's why they're called the Dead Sea Scroll, just 'cause that's the location. Eleven caves altogether that they were discovered in, probably with the intention to come back and get them when things were a little bit—like, mm-hmm—that simmer down, but they got wiped out and so they never had the chance to go back and get them.
So ironically, the arid environment of the region there preserved these things for close to 2000 years, right. We discovered them in, like I said, the late 1940s, I mean into the 1950s, and they revealed a ton of around 970 documents in between 10,000 and 11,000 fragments. So some of them are, you know, entire books. Others of them are very, very fragmentary. They need to be pieced together.
So all of the books of the Bible, apart from one prophetic book and Esther, were found within amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's also in a number of different languages. So about 75% of it is written in Hebrew, but some of it is written in Greek and some in Aramaic, and a minority, a very small minority in Natine.
So that's where it's like, it's kind of a grouping. The Dead Sea Scrolls is an umbrella term for all of these writings. They just happen to be discovered in these 11 caves on the northwest side of the Dead Sea.
But they're incredibly important and shed light on even things like there's one particular manuscript which talks about the Messiah and talks about the Messiah in divine terms. And so this kind of sheds light on our understanding of accusations that early Christians are imposing a foreign idea onto Jesus, you know that the Messiah was gonna be a divine figure. Well, we have actually some texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which actually do kind of indicate that the Messiah who's about to come, this anointed one, he's actually going to have a divine quality to him that exceeds just a mere man. They're writing about this before he came.
Mm-hmm. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was the expectation that the Messiah was gonna come. Mm-hmm. So that, that's going on all throughout, you know, the Old Testament period, but the Essenes, they have an understanding that there's gonna be two Messiahs, one from the line of Aaron who's gonna be a priestly Messiah, and one from the line of David who's gonna be a kingly messiah, and that these people are going to fulfill the expectation of making all things right with the nation of Israel, particularly their kind of sect of Israel that they see as the pure one.
Part of that was gonna be, they were gonna drive out the Romans and make all things right, and they have a lot of writings about them being the children of light, and it's gonna, they're gonna defeat the children of darkness, which could be assumed as, you know, the Greeks or the Romans or whoever. But either way, they're very apocalyptic in their understanding of these things.
Anthony Delgado: Okay, so I wanna say this upfront, and I think Wes would agree with this, that the Dead Sea Scrolls, the biggest contribution they have made to the world of biblical studies and to Christianity, is that what we've always believed about the scriptures is already there. I mean, that's been the big thing is like, there's always been questions about like, well, how come we can, how can we trust this Bible? It's been translated and reproduced and everything else, and yet the Dead Sea Scrolls really show us that this very ancient faith that many of us practice today—and by the way, many churches are not practicing an ancient faith. Many, many churches are practicing sort of an invented faith, but many churches are faithfully practicing the faith of the scriptures. And some are practicing just less than the script, than everything that we, I think, you know, should be practicing. But they're doing it. And others are doing it wrong, and many churches are making great effort to practice the ancient faith presented to us by the Apostles.
And so the Dead Sea Scrolls, what they really do is they show us some stuff from the Old Testament, obviously, most specifically, that lets us understand that what we have today is really the Old Testament they had then. And then that gives us greater confidence in our New Testament writings as well.
Alright, but there are some clarifying elements here, and a big one for me is this controversy about the sons of God versus the sons of Israel. And without going into too much detail here, I've done this in other places a little bit more detailed, but the Dead Sea Scrolls clearly demonstrate that some textual variance existed before Christ.
Alright, what textual variants? Well, one of the ones that I'm very interested in is in Deuteronomy 32, where it says that the nations were divided according to the number of the sons of God. The Massoretic text says sons of Israel and many other far more ancient fragments, that they say sons of God. Well, we've known that this is controversial for a long time because if you look at the LXX, which is, you know, our colloquial term we use for the Greek translations of the Old Testament, and if you look in there it says, angels of God. There definitely the translators of the Greek text, you know, long time ago—they thought that probably 300 BC or so—they thought that it was talking about divine beings there. And so they translate sons of God as angels of God.
Well then we get this other thing in the Massoretic text that says, sons of Israel. And so then translations like the ESV, which is the one that I'm using here today, not because it's the best translation, but because it's a really accessible and good one. There's lots of apparatuses to use with it, but it says sons of God. And then there's a little footnote that says, well, the Massoretic text says sons of Israel. And they have favored the sons of God because it appears to be older.
Well, what's actually interesting is that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find all three variants. We see the Greek text saying, angels of God. We see the sons of God translation and we see the sons of Israel translation, which means that this variant predates Jesus himself, like it predates the New Testament. So, yeah, you get some understanding into some of these things when you understand this textual variant and even Jesus is going to remark on the sons of God in Psalm 82 and remark on that textual variant. And so understanding that this difference existed even then helps us to kind of frame what we're thinking about there now.
I think for sort of just internal narrative reasons, as you just read the Bible narratively, that really sons of God makes far more sense there. When Moses said that in Deuteronomy 32 there wasn't an Israel yet as like a nation, so it didn't make sense to do that there. Also, it doesn't make sense that there would be 72 or 70 sons of Israel, like what's that even referring to? It's a lot of people have tried to guess at that, what that means, because we know that there are 12 tribes of Israel. And so all of that becomes very confusing when you try to figure out what it means that the nations were divided in that way.
So, yeah, so what we're looking at here in the Dead Sea Scrolls, though, is an insight sort of into that ancient mind and just helping us frame this discussion about textual variance, where we see some of these very famous ones show up.
Alright, the next thing that Wes talks about that I want to hit is astronomical Enoch. And not everybody's heard that. It sounds very, very fringe, very woowoo. But anyway, let's see what he has to say about that.
The Book of Enoch
Wes Huff: There's the Book of Enoch. Oh, okay. So there's actually three books of Enoch, First, Second, and Third Enoch. The one that's typically referred to as the Book of Enoch is First Enoch and some—it's an amalgamated group of different literature. The Book of the Watchers, the Book of the Giants, the Book of Parables, these kinds of things that we all put into one book that we call First Enoch. Some of it's really old. And actually right now on display at the Museum of the Bible, you can see a fragment of Astronomical Enoch, which is on display, I think for the first time ever. I don't think it's ever been displayed, this fragment of Astronomical Enoch.
Anthony Delgado: All right, so astronomical Enoch—First Enoch is divided into three sections. The first book is The Book of the Watchers. That's what my book covers, is just that first part. This is just a primer on the Book of Enoch to help sort of Christians who haven't been exposed to it think rightly about what it even is. And so it's just kind of an introduction really, but it includes the full text of chapters 1 through 36, the Book of the Watchers.
When he refers to the astronomical Enoch, he's referring to chapters 72 through 82 of the book of 1 Enoch, and this is sometimes called the Book of the Luminaries. And so it's looking at the stars and the divine beings and the heavens and things like that.
And we've always known that First Enoch was older than the New Testament because it's quoted verbatim in the book of Jude, for example. But now we know that it predates the New Testament by perhaps as much as three centuries. And that's what's so amazing about like having this ancient copy of Astronomical Enoch and love it that it's on display at the, I think he said it's at the Museum of the Bible. And so you can go see that and if you read any Greek, which I, I read some Greek, but I'm not really, I've never spent time with much manuscript so every time I go see like the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which I did recently, or you know, I see these other things, I go to museums and things and I see the Greek and I'm like, man, I can't, I can't understand half of it. But anyway, it's cool to go and just see it and just try to read some of it if you can, you know.
But anyway, so that, that's on display and it really just reminds us that there are things out there that are very ancient and that we're framing the way that the New Testament authors wrote.
Okay, so what do you do with that? Well, one of the things that I try to do when I'm writing something more on an academic level is I like to know—and part of this is just my perspective on biblical theology, my exposure to covenant theology—I believe that truths of God are gonna follow the narrative throughout the scripture from Old Testament through the New. I do believe, 'cause I'm, you know, covenant theology, I do believe that we're reading the Old Testament christologically. So we are looking for Christ as we as really not like trying to supplant him in every verse in that, in some sense, I see some preachers do some weird stuff. But really just understanding that the pinnacle moment in the redemptive arc of the Old Testament is the coming of Christ, right? So we can see the anticipation of the Christ narrative all throughout the Old, and point to that, and that's what biblical theology does, is it's reading for the Christ narrative to see how the Old Testament is setting up all of this giant plan of redemption that God has that ultimately culminates in, you know, Revelation 21 and 22 when all things are made glorious, and so we've got that there.
Now when we look at the scriptures, we can read something in the New Testament and then we can go and we can find at least an anticipation of this in the Old Testament. You can often find the actual—like, actual like, hey, Jeremiah said this, Moses said this, and here Jesus says this. Paul elaborates on it this way, sort of theologically, we see the culmination of it here in Revelation.
One of the other things that I think is not a vain effort in which I've started to work with is to say, well, if the Jews in Jesus day were reading First Enoch and let's say many other works, different apocryphal works and things of that sort, we know that things like Tobit and Judith and all these things existed in that time. And so if we know that those existed and we, you know, they're not in the 66 book sort of Protestant Bible that most of us use. They're called the Apocrypha or the second canon, the deutero canonical books. But if we know that those existed, then they should in some way frame the thinking of that society.
Think about how much news media and social media frames the thinking of our society. And so I love to take and go, hey, here's how the Old Testament is flowing into the New. But then to just take a break and see are there ways that the Second Temple Jews were thinking about this in these extra biblical writings that we can see are framing their thinking to prepare them for the Messiah.
And what I find more often than not is when it comes to things like the divinity of the Messiah and things like themes like that, you bet they do. And so many of these things, I believe God was working through texts that we don't consider canon, that we don't consider authoritative scripture, and yet he's working through these things to frame the thinking of the Jews, to prepare them for the coming of their Christ. And so wonderful stuff.
I think that, again, things like the Book of the Luminaries or Astronomical Enoch, they're helping us to frame that discussion and so love that. Love that he brought that up.
Next I want to talk about, and we're finally getting here, the Nephilim and the Giants, so let's watch this next clip.
The Nephalim and Giants
Wes Huff: But what the documents that make up what we call First Enoch are trying to extrapolate on is what's going on before the flood. So you have in Genesis chapter 6 this very, you know, cryptic passage of the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and they came and they slept with them. And these women gave birth to these children that were the Nephilim, that were the heroes of old, men of renown.
And so there's a bunch of different interpretations in the ancient world as to what this means. The Greek translation of the Old Testament translates Nephilim as gigas, which is giants. And so there's one particular understanding of that. And there's both a kind of naturalistic explanation that the sons of God weren't necessarily angels. But then there's another stream of interpretation that's fleshed out in something like the Book of Enoch, where it talks about, okay, well who are these sons of God? And so why were they, why, why, what were their progeny? What were the Nephilim and how did this come into being? And so it kind of does this through a narrative about the great-grandfather of Noah, Enoch, and fleshes some of these things out.
Anthony Delgado: So this is an area where I kind of want Wes to dig in a little bit more and just kind of say, what is the evidence? You know, what kind of evidence do we have? 'Cause he seems to not want to touch this. And we have what's very common in the West, it's sometimes called the Sethite view, I think most commonly called the Sethite view. And it's trying to say that the sons of God are humans and it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with fallen angels or anything like that.
What's really funny about that is I remember being very young. I don't even think I was in Bible school yet, but I was starting to collect some books and stuff on in my library at home. And I had this old, I think it was an Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, but it was old, I think it was like from the seventies. And so, you know, the pages creaked when you opened it up. But in that book, when you looked up giants, you know, it would tell you basically what we would consider today to be the very classical view that the sons of God are angels, divine beings who came down and had children with the daughters of men. The offspring of those unions was giants, and that was what it put forth as like the dominant primary view. And it is just very interesting to me, 'cause you know, I read that and studied that and blah, blah, blah as I was going through Genesis one time when I was probably, I don't know, 22, 23. And so that stuck in my mind and it wasn't until later that I sort of found out, oh, actually most Christians aren't being taught that and a lot of scholars aren't teaching that.
And you know, as I've studied this, it sort of goes back to Augustine. I think it has to do—it's speculative to a degree—but it has to do with like how much language of the ancient language, Augustine himself being a Latin speaker, really understood what he had access to scripturally and things like that. And so he sort of really enforces this. I don't know that—I don't think it's unique to him by the way. I think it is probably the tradition of the Pharisees to think about it that way, and I, that's a discussion for another day. But, so I think it actually does go back far farther into perhaps even before Christ. But this idea that the sons of God are fallen angels in this view, I think is about right.
Now what I do like that Wes says is he says that Nephilim comes from the Hebrew naphil which means fallen ones. Now, some of you guys, if you're Michael Heiser fans or something like that, which I am by the way as well, he was pretty adamant that there is not a relationship between naphil and Nephilim because he doesn't want to make that about fallen humans. I actually think that it contextually makes a lot of sense that there can be some kind of relation between naphil and Nephilim. It’s very clear in the—when you look at it—translated into English from what I understand. And I'm not great with Hebrew. Hebrew, from what I understand in the Hebrew, there are good arguments to separate them, but I just think it makes contextual sense to say that the Nephilim are sort of a reference or a call out to the fallen angels. We often call them fallen angels. And so I just think it makes a lot of contextual sense.
But then there's also an interplay. The translators of the Greek text took it to mean giants. We see that again as early as like 300 BC that the Greek speaking Jews were translating this giants where it said Nephilim. And that's rather interesting. Again, Wes notes that it's like, why did they think that? Well, are we gonna say that they only thought that because they read First Enoch. As if First Enoch wasn't written by somebody who was already thinking about what this text meant. I don't think First Enoch just appeared as some sort of bizarre fan fiction. No, it certainly had to have come out of a tradition of understanding. So we can believe that there are multiple traditions as indeed we can see multiple traditions presented in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
But to kind of just go, ah, the Greek text, you know, that's not inspired scripture. It's just somebody's translation that they, you know, wanted to put their own thoughts in. And by the way, we see this all the time. We see, you know, a pastor of some church makes their own translation and obviously everything accords with their theological leanings, right? Is that what's happening in the Septuagint?
Well, if we follow the tradition of the LXX, there were at least 70 scholars that were working on that, and what we actually know from the historical record is that it's not even like one guy translating one text, it's multiple people translating the same text and comparing notes and things like that. And so I just think it makes very little sense to say that this wasn't the consensus view when the Greek texts were translated. I think it was probably the consensus, probably the majority view, and that some of the pharisaical crowds, some of the rabbinic tradition were teaching otherwise.
And so First Enoch is really a detailed accounting, at least the Book of the Watchers, that first 36 chapters. It's a detailed accounting of the event of Genesis 6, where we get this birth of giants, and it goes into great detail on what the author of First Enoch thought about Genesis 6. Okay.
But people say it has no credibility because it's not scripture. And again, I just want to poke at that because the same people who say that are gonna go to their bookshelf and pull off a commentary from a scholar they love, and they're gonna treat that as credible and their understanding of scripture, and then they're gonna turn to something like First Enoch and say, well, what did this guy know? And so I think we really need to read all things a bit more realistically and in context and say, yeah, not inspired scripture in a technical canonical sense, and yet clearly came from somewhere, right? That there's some social implications at the very least as to where First Enoch comes from, and this narrative about the Nephilim being giants.
Okay? So it's all fair enough. I would just point you to, if you want some canonical evidence, I fully cannot understand the Sethite view because Jude and Peter both clearly refer to the sins of the angels in Genesis 6, and 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6. So the only explanation for the Sethite view is that people just don't like supernatural things and they are going to cling to the materialistic expectations. I just think if you're gonna say that the scriptures are authoritative, then aren't Peter and Jude authoritative and don't we take their view of Genesis 6 as authoritative?
So I don't know if anybody doesn't like that description. You know, and you go, but the archeological record all—we found all these giant skeletons and then found out that they're just dog bones or whatever. I don't know what they found, but like, people are always trying to manufacture giant skeletons. I don't think they're all real. I sort of want it to be real. I want, like, I want to find out that all the conspiracy is true, you know, but I don't think so. I'm not convinced of that, but I don't need that.
What I'm really looking for is what is scripture teaching? And whether we find a giant skeleton and prove that it's a giant skeleton or not, I don't think archaeology is a reason for us to reject anything.
Alright, so that's the giants. I think that's what I think the giants were. I think the giants are taught in scripture.
Alright. And then let's go to a last clip because we definitely want to talk about demons as disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. So let's take a look at this.
Demons as the Spirits of the Nephalim
Wes Huff: This goes into like a long history of leading up to the New Testament where there's a, you know, the demons kind of show up in the New Testament. There really isn't all that much said in the Old Testament about demons, but in some of this ancient Jewish literature that's incorporated and found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have some of these discussions of things like, what are the demons?
Well, there was a pretty strong threat of thinking within ancient Judaism that demons were disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. So the Nephilim, if you're taking a supernatural understanding of who they are, their fathers are angels and their mothers are humans. So they're kind of these half supernatural, half carnal things. So when they die, their spirits don't have anywhere to go. So now they're trapped and they're wandering the earth. They're aimless and they're constantly trying to get back into a physical form. And so they possess people and because they're not really meant to do that, because they're these wayward, supernatural beings, it never really works out. And they end up making people do all sorts of crazy things and they're cursed because they're unholy, they're the progeny of fallen angels. And so there's all this stuff. So some of this literature is fleshing that out.
Now is that really what's going on? I don't know. I think some of it makes sense. I think on things that scripture whispers about, I don't want to yell too loudly. I'm very cautious. I think it's entirely plausible given what we see within scripture and the fact that it's not a hundred percent clear exactly what demons or even angels are, but that's what something like the Book of Enoch is trying to flesh out.
Anthony Delgado: All right. So you know, Wes has this idea that like if scripture kind of whispers something—I forget exactly, I already have forgotten how he said in the video—but if scripture whispers about something that we don't want to yell about it, I don't know.
I kind of feel like, if it's weird, it's important that part of what is being whispered in the scriptures is only whispered because it was normal. Many things. Many of our doctrines, you know, we say that we are commanded to be baptized, for example. And actually if you read the New Testament critically, the church is commanded to baptize people, but people are actually not commanded to be baptized. So then why do we put so much weight? We call it a sacrament of the church or in some traditions they say an ordinance thing, which is funny 'cause ordinance means it was commanded. But anyway, so we call it like an ordinance or a sacrament. We put all this weight on it, and yet there's not an actual command to be baptized there.
You'll notice the same thing with the Lord's Supper. It says, well, as often as you do this in 1 Corinthians 11, but there's not a do this, and yet we call it a sacrament. Well, because when we look at history, we see the weight of it, and the expectation of baptism in the Lord's Supper is so great that nobody actually felt like they needed to say, hey, by the way, thou shalt. And so I actually think that sometimes when the scriptures whisper about something, it's not because it's unimportant or insignificant, it's actually because it's extremely significant.
And lots of things are taught in the Bible about demons and about angels. I don't know where Wes gets that from that, you know, nothing's entirely clear in the scriptures regarding demons or even angels. I think there's lots that are said. Entire books have been written, lots of scholarly works about what internally the Bible testifies about, about these things.
And so let's just go to one more spot. I want to talk to you about First Enoch, and you know, one of the things that comes from First Enoch we would say, and regarding the origin of demons.
Alright, so this is on page 51. And in First Enoch it says, "the Lord continued. I gave humans wives to impregnate and have children with so that they would not need anything on the earth. But you were formerly spiritual, living in the eternal life and eternally immortal. Therefore, I did not appoint wives for you." He's talking about the angels or the Watchers. "I did not appoint wives for you. Your proper dwelling is in heaven because you are the spiritual ones of heaven because you are the spiritual ones of heaven."
"But now," so we've got this conflict, "but now the giants produced from the spirits and flesh will be called demons on the earth because the earth will be their home." So because giants are born on earth, even though they're divine, earth is their home because they were born here. "Demons proceed from their bodies because they are born from men and the Holy Watchers as their beginning and primal origin. Since they will be demons, they will be called demons on the earth. As for the spirits of heaven, heaven is their home, but for the spirits of the earth, which were born out of it, the earth is their home."
It's really interesting to me. It's saying it's, it's saying that where sort of where you're born, that's your home, and so angels are from heaven. Demons are from earth because they come from the giants who were born on earth. And it's just a very basic rationale that it lays out. I think it's really interesting and people go, well, I'm actually not done with that.
People go, well, where do we see that in the Bible? And this is one place where, again, the Bible does whisper. This is not something completely outside the Bible. And so if you look at, for example—this is one of the things I do in the book as I provide some of the biblical context for each of the discussions. I don't teach much about it. I just say, hey, here's a connection for you to think about.
And so consider, for example, Job 26:5–6. Here it says the departed spirits tremble beneath the waters and all that inhabit them. Sheol is naked before God and Abaddon has no covering. Now that word departed spirits. There is the Hebrew word rephaim is the common Hebrew word for giant, it's translated almost universally in the Greek text as gigantes, which is giant in English. And so it doesn't make sense though, to read this, that the giants tremble beneath the waters because beneath the waters is speaking of like death, a place of death.
And so as they are dead, what are these rephaim here? Well, they're the dead rephaim as really the history and how these are interpreted. So many people have said these are human ghosts. So again, what do you think giants and Nephilim are? Well, if they're just humans, then these are some kind of human ghosts or something like that, which I think isn't too far off. Like no matter how you take the Sethite or the other view, you're actually gonna come to a certain understanding of departed spirits as being demonic. But anyway, that's another conversation. But you just have to see that there. And it's not only the one place.
Psalm 88:10. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do giants, rephaim, departed spirits rise up to praise you?
You can see here that there is, when you look at the Hebrew, a consistency here.
Isaiah 14:9. Sheol below is eager to greet your coming, stirring up the demons, stirring up the shades, stirring up the giants, the rephaim, for you. And so, and there's a bunch of other references.
And then you get to like something like Luke 8:30–31. This is where Jesus is talking to the demon named Legion. "What is your name?" Jesus asked him, the demon-possessed man. "Legion," he said, because many demons had entered him, and they begged him not to banish them to the abyss, to banish them back to beneath the waters, to the abyss, to the watery grave that Jude and Peter both speak of as the home of their fathers, the Watchers who are chained there.
So, I don't know. There's lots to that, lots more that could be said. I just wanna say that once you have read Enoch, you start to understand some of the things that are said in scriptures.
So where scripture whispered, to use, you know, Wes' words, we can then say if there's anything to Enoch, as there must be, otherwise this text wouldn't still exist and it wouldn't have inspired things in the New Testament, then if there's anything to Enoch, then we should see that reflected back into the Bible.
And if you don't, if you just want to completely reject this idea of the origin of demons being the spirits of the giants, well then what on earth do those mean? Because I don't think that departed spirits is a natural understanding of 'em even remotely. And yet the Bible translators, they have to do something with it. And so what do they do? Well, they try to make it make sense contextually, but they're making it about humans and not about the rephaim, the giants as it is more naturally.
Okay, I've said a lot here. I hope this was helpful. If you have questions about these things, drop 'em down there in the comments.
I hit five pretty hot topics there and wanted to thank Shawn Ryan again for his video, Wes Huff for all of his insights. I appreciate you and you know, hope you had a good time with this video. I think there's some interesting things.
Again, check out AnthonyDelgado.net. Find me on Facebook, like, follow, subscribe, share, and all of that. Get this to some friends. I want to get more stuff out for you guys and that means you guys helping me out with some reach.
So love to know your feedback in the comments.
God bless!
Christ is King and that changes everything.
