Likewise nephilim does not mean those who fall or those who fall away (that would be nophelim). The only way in Hebrew to get nephilim from naphal by the rules of Hebrew morphology (word formation) would be to presume a noun spelled naphil and then pluralize it. I say presume since this noun does not exist in biblical Hebrew -- unless one counts Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33, the two occurrences of nephilim -- but that would then be assuming what one is trying to prove! However, in Aramaic the noun naphil(a) does exist. It means giant, making it easy to see why the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) translated nephilim as gigantes (giant) youtu.be/SmnxEbNcwhw?t=30s The verb to go down in biblical Hebrew is not naphal; it is yarad. The verb naphal can mean something approximate to came down under one condition: it must occur in the Hiphil (causative) stem in Hebrew grammar. If you know Hebrew, you know this is because the Hiphil stem adds either a prefixed letter to the verb and an a-class vowel (or both) in the verb conjugations, and any such occurrences in the Hebrew Bible are therefore not spelled nephilim. Lastly, I want to discuss what is still to me an amazing error in Sitchins printed work. Granted, I do not believe Sitchin knows much about the ancient languages in which he claims expertise, but this error is especially shocking. Why? It shows Sitchin cannot tell the difference between Hebrew and Aramaic--and they both use the same alphabet. In his book Stairway to Heaven, Sitchin quotes from a Dead Sea Scroll called the Genesis Apocryphon 110-112. In an effort to defend his idea that the nephilim and the sons of God are the same, he writes: But as we examine the Hebrew original, we find it does not say watchers; it says Nephilim. The quotation shows that Sitchin did not know the Qumran text was written in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and he also mistranslated it, for the word Watchers is actually in the text he quotes AND has pictured in his book!
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 06:37:45 +0000
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