Nephilim

Greek, Roman, Christian, and Jewish authors described discovering enormous bones buried just beneath the earth’s surface and interpreted them through their own lenses: Greeks and Romans saw mythic heroes and monsters; Jewish writers identified them as biblical giants, especially Og, king of Bashan. These discoveries reinforced the enduring belief that ancient humans were far larger than those of today.

The stories of Enosh, Noah, Nimrod, the Tower of Babel, and the marriage of the “sons of God” to human women (Genesis 4–11) all feature the Leitwort החל “began,” signaling an attempt to be more than just human.

The Sons of Elohim sleeping with women and producing demigods (Genesis 6:1-4) is sandwiched between the birth of Noah and the flood. This juxtaposition of passages prompted 1 Enoch and Genesis Apocryphon to question whether Lamech was Noah's father or whether Noah was a demigod.

Literature and art are replete with images of angels descending to earth and joining humanity. One source for this image is a terse account in Genesis describing fallen angels, which is expanded upon in Second Temple literature. This interpretive tradition is suppressed in the classic rabbinic literature only to resurface again in the late narrative midrash, Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer.

Divine beings come to earth and have offspring with human women (Genesis 6). What is a story which sounds like a pagan myth doing in the Torah?