Join us in this intriguing episode of Real Science Radio as we delve into the world of giants from biblical times. Our special guest, Dino Dave, shares insights from his years of research on the topic, exploring whether these legendary figures were real and what evidence exists to support their existence. Alongside Fred and Doug, Dave breaks down the concepts of the Nephilim, post-flood giant races, and discusses whether giants had a significant role in human history.
These giants had six fingers and six toes. This is common. We see it mentioned multiple times in the Bible.
SPEAKER 05 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country.
SPEAKER 1 :
Welcome to Real Science Radio. I’m Fred Williams. And I’m Doug McBurney.
SPEAKER 05 :
Fred, what do we have going this week?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, today we’re going to talk about giants in the Bible. Are they real? Is there actual evidence for them? We have a special guest who’s going to enlighten us on this fascinating topic. It’s researcher, explorer, and author, Dino Dave, David Wetzel of Genesis Park, and that’s genesispark.com. He’s known for his field expeditions and his work compiling scientific and historical evidence for dinosaurs and man living together. And today he joins us to talk about giants. Welcome to the show, Dave.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thanks so much. Good to be able to visit with you guys, Fred and Doug. And this is an exciting topic, one that people are very interested in. And I’m just thrilled to be able to share with you some of what my research has led me to and some of how the Bible and modern science can tie together and show that the Bible is more up to date than tomorrow’s Google headlines.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, I love it. And I love the fact that you start with the Bible and then you mentioned science after that. I really like that. So, you know, Dave, we’ve all heard about giants and legends, not just from the Bible, but from cultures around the world through all of history. I’ve heard stories about alleged, you know, giant fossilized remains, some of them this big, some of them this big, some of them even really bigger. So what’s the truth behind these stories about giants? I want to know, and I know that you’ve been researching this topic for years. You’ve gathered some sources and material that I’m sure most of our audience has never heard of. I know it’s going to be fascinating.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, guys, I wasn’t terribly interested in giants several years ago, but I had somebody give me a book on it and said, you need to do some research on giants. Well, I’m a creation speaker. I talk about creation and evolution, science and the Bible, and my specialty is, of course, the dinosaurs. So I kind of set it aside thinking, well, it really isn’t necessarily pertinent to the origins debate. And then I was doing a speaking trip to the St. Louis area, and I didn’t have anything to read particularly. So I grabbed this book, and it’s a book entitled The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America, The Missing Skeletons in the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up. Well, it sounds fun, right? So I thought, well, let me throw it in. with my luggage and I’ll read it along the way. And come to find out, as I was reading the book, I’m reading that the headquarters of this mound builder civilization is Cahokia. We’ll talk more about this as we go. And Cahokia is in St. Louis. I’m flying into St. Louis to speak for the week. And so as God would have it, these things just kind of came together and I began to research this topic of giants.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Dave, let’s lay the foundation. So what do you mean by giants? I know when people hear the word giants, they imagine everything from cartoon characters to NBA players to the football giants. I know you’re up in New England. You’re apparently a Patriots fan. That’s okay for now. We’ll still have you talk about giants. And then the Nephilim in the Bible. So I want to know when you talk about giants, what do you really mean? What exactly do you mean? Are we dealing with giants? biblical groups, post-flood people, or simply very tall humans?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s a great question. The word giant is, of course, a relative term, right? You know, some people would look, if you’re a pygmy in Africa, you might look at me and think I’m a giant. You know, of course, I stand next to some of these NBA players. I would call them giants. But what we’re talking about really are the giants in the Bible and then how that ties in with some of the historical and scientific evidence and And you know, guys, we read through the Bible. I’m a Christian and you guys are Bible believing Christians. We read through the Bible and sometimes our eyes just kind of pass over verses. And until I began to study it out, I didn’t realize how much the Bible talks about giants. It’s all over the place in the Old Testament. And so this is something that is very interesting. And I think your audience is going to enjoy how the history and the science just all fits together and confirms exactly what God’s Word says. So if you’re all right with it, why don’t we dive into our presentation and we’ll start talking about the giants a little bit.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, absolutely. And just so you know, I did a little bit of research before the show, Dave. And I have two, maybe three dozen biblical references to giants or clans of giants, families of giants, incidents involving giants, almost all in the Old Testament. But there are even a couple of references in the New Testament. So let’s hear it, Dave. I’m on the edge of my seat.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let’s talk about it. So here’s a little bit of why this, I think, is important. It’s obviously interesting. It’s fascinating. But I was wrong initially in my approach in thinking it didn’t have anything to do with the origins debate. If you were to take the origins debate and kind of Take both models, the creation model and the evolution model, and boil it down to a couple of three key points. We would say it’s origin by design versus natural origin, right? That’s a pretty big difference. And then you have this concept of evolution. decreasing order, that is in the creation model, God made things good and at best they’ve held level, at worst they degenerate, they go downhill. On the evolution model, you’ve got to get from molecules to man. If you’re not, then you need to have a creator somewhere. So there has to be an increase in order. It has to be goo to you via the zoo. And then on the creation model, there’s catastrophism. Of course, the Genesis flood forming the great geological formations. And on the evolution model, long eons of time, uniformitarian gradualism. So I’ve been talking about these two models for a long time. But where the giants fit is right there on that second point. When we look at people and organisms that were bigger in the past, That is evidence for the creation model. And so we’ll develop this a little bit more as we go along, but I just want to kind of set the table by saying this is definitely important in the broader origins debate. So three things. We want to talk about the pre-flood Nephilim. We want to talk about the post-flood giant races. And then we’ll have a little bit of fun and talk about American mound builders, a civilization called the Mississippian civilization, the American mound builders. But let’s start off with talking about the pre-flood world. And here’s a verse that probably a lot of folks are familiar with. This is the first reference to giants in the Bible. And there’s a little kind of a rule of biblical interpretation that the first mention of anything in the Bible is really important and kind of sets the foundation biblically for that particular topic. And so this is Genesis chapter 6 and verse 4 is the first mention of giants. And this is just a really fascinating verse that has a number of interesting phrases in it. But let’s read it. There were giants in the earth in those days and also after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and they bare children to them. The same became mighty men which were of old men of renown. And this is the Nephilim. People are familiar maybe with the word Nephilim and just the old Hebrew word there for giants, these giant people. And so that’s obviously a fascinating word. But then we see this phrase and also after that, and this just is a really significant phrase because it means that this occurred at least twice. There were two important times in biblical history where we had these giants that are going to play just a really key role in biblical history. And then we see this phrase, the sons of God. And there’s been some controversy about who exactly these sons of God are. And of course, they marry these daughters of men. And so who are the sons of God and who are the daughters of men? But they have this offspring, which they’re mighty men. or men of renown. And if we think about historically, who are the men of renown? Who are the people that fill our history books? And guys, it’s primarily two groups. There are rulers, there are kings, right? We read a little about lineages of kings. In fact, there’s a whole two books of the Bible that are entitled kings. But then also generals, you know, the Napoleon Bonaparte, the Alexander the Great, the people that conquer, that build empires, that subdue nations. And so generals and kings probably more than anything else. And so when we think about these giants, okay, the Bible kind of lays this down that they’re going to be men of renown. They’re going to be men of history, mighty men, and we’re going to see that play out as we talk about the giants here in the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, Dave, can I ask a quick question? I know there’s plenty of Christians who think that this also may have a tie-in with the legends, you know, of the Greek gods. Is that part of your thinking on this? I know I’ve heard that before.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a lot of these ancient cultures have traditions of giants. And you could say, well, okay, maybe it’s just coincidence. Maybe they’re just kind of inventing gods. And of course, the gods have to be big. And so they’re going to have these giants. I think there’s more to it than that. I think this is something that’s well known in the ancient world. As Noah comes off the ark, this isn’t that long after this Genesis 6 event. It’s just literally just right before the flood. And so his descendants carry these stories, these stories of giants really throughout the ancient world. And as we’re going to see, there is a second story. instance where these giants play a huge role. Either the sons of God and daughters of men happen again, or somehow just genetically, but these giants are going to be, the Nephilim are going to play a second major role. But let’s talk for just a minute about the sons of God, because this is something that there’s been some disagreement on. And I’m not going to land on just one interpretation, but I do want to mention all three interpretations of this, this idea of who are these sons of God. And so three common interpretations. The first is, that I’m going to mention is the royalty view. And this is actually the newest. This goes back probably to the time of the Reformation or so. But the royalty view says that these sons of God are a dynasty of kings. They considered themselves to be divine. They considered themselves to be sons of God. They fancied themselves to be sons of God. They weren’t in any unusual sense. They just were people, but they were this dynasty of kings, very powerful, and they would take these huge harems. And so where they take the daughters of… of man, the only significance the royalty view would say is that they’re just taking a huge harem. And this view, like I say, it’s been popular, it’s the most recent view of it, but it really fails to explain why they would be giants. It doesn’t really explain why they would have these really unusual offspring. And some might say, well, they just fancied themselves to be God and they became rulers as well. Yeah, but that word Nephilim, it really is that they are giants. They’re huge people. That is the best interpretation of that. The second view is the Sethite view, and this one’s older, goes all the way back at least to St. Augustine, but to the time of the early church. And this view says that there was two lines that stayed pretty distinct. There was the wicked line of Cain. and then after Cain kills Abel, we read that Adam and Eve have this son, Seth, and the Bible says men began to call upon the name of the Lord. So it would seem that some of the descendants of Seth maybe were a more godly type, and so if there were some men in Seth’s line that kind of looked over at this other wicked group and said, hey, there’s some good-looking girls there, and took some of these daughters of Cain, You might say that, well, why doesn’t the Bible say daughters of Cain as opposed to daughters of men, which is a much more general phrase. So that’s kind of a problem for the Sethite view. But the Sethite view might explain, because of genetic diversity, why they might be a little bit larger. Because if you had a lot of inbreeding in these two lines and now you bring in that genetic diversity, perhaps it might do a better job explaining that. The third view is the oldest view. And this is the view that was taken by the Jews all through the years. And this is called the fallen angel view. And this is the belief that there were angels, demons really, who took on human form and they married angels. daughters of men. So they married women, earthly women, and they were able to produce offspring, kind of this hybrid offspring with this angelic seed. And these became these monsters, these Nephilim, these giants. And that view, as I say, was the view of the Jews. And even at the time of the apostles and most of the people in the early church took that view. So that is the oldest view, this fallen angel view.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s fascinating because Doug and I always learn something new on this show. If you asked me, I would have guessed number three, the fallen angel view was the newest, you know, because it’s the one that kind of gets more sensationalized. But that is super interesting that this is actually the oldest view that has Jewish traditions to it, even back to the time of Christ. That’s really interesting, Dave.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and the book of Enoch kind of talks a lot about the sons of God. And of course, it’s apocryphal, right? It’s not inspired, but it does talk a lot about these Nephilim. They figure prominently in the book of Enoch. There’s been a resurgence of this fallen angel view. There’s a particular book out that’s actually helped in that regard. It’s a book by Tim Chafee called Fallen. And it really talks about the Nephilim. So if some of your viewers might want to look into it, it’s a very thick book on it, but it talks a lot about this, the Nephilim and this whole interpretation. Now, some people might say, now, wait a minute, isn’t this just a little crazy? Like how can demons take on human form? How could they cohabit with women? And so in some ways, it’s a little bit of a challenge because they’re spirits, right? Angels are spirits. But there is a reference in the book of Jude to there being some angels that did something. And it’s in the context of talking about the flood. And so this term, sons of God, is often used to describe angels in the book of Job and But then also in Jude, we have this particular verse, Jude 1, verse 6, “…and the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of that great day.” So what did these angels do? We don’t know for sure. It doesn’t say. But they left their own habitation. They left where they should be dwelling and took on some kind of a different habitation. And they did something that was so bad. that God doesn’t allow them to do the normal demonic thing. They don’t go around and tempt people and do what normal demons do, even inhabit people, possess people and stuff. No, no, no. They’re actually in a particular chains. They’re like in a jail. They’re imprisoned until the day of judgment. They don’t have any liberty at all So they did something. And it’s, again, in that context of the flood. Again, I’m not going to land on any one view, but I want to mention all three views. And as I say, that third view, the angelic view, is the oldest and has seen a bit of a resurgence lately. So let’s talk about giants, right? So we have this Nephilim. How big are they? Well, again, I say the word giant is relative. So they would be bigger than even the people in the pre-flood world. I mentioned earlier that I’ve been to Africa and the pygmies look at me like I’m a giant. If I stand next to some of these tall NBA players, I would look at them as giants. By the way, the tallest guy ever to play pro ball was a guy named Sun Mingming. He’s a Chinese player who was recruited by the Harlem Globetrotters in 2007, and he was 7’9″. So about an 8-foot guy. Now, that’s a tall guy. Here’s a picture of Sun Mingming playing on a Chinese basketball league. And, boy, I wouldn’t want to be the guy trying to block this fella. He’s…
SPEAKER 02 :
He’s just enormous, just very, very tall. Yeah, that picture you’re showing, he’s almost twice the size of the guy guarding him. That would be a tough task.
SPEAKER 03 :
He’s a tall player. Now, he’s not the tallest guy on record when we think about Guinness Book of World Records. We have guys that are even taller, but these folks… had a disease that’s called giantism. Maybe you guys are familiar with it, but it’s a malfunction at the pituitary gland called hypertrophy. And what happens is basically we all have this growth spurt, right, where we hit puberty and it kind of levels out and we don’t grow that much more after that. But these folks, they never stop. They just keep growing and growing and growing. And it’s a disease. It’s called giantism. And so this is a little different from the biblical giants we’re going to talk about, where you have whole clans of giants and it’s a genetic thing. And it’s, of course, different from somebody like Sun Mingming, who’s very athletic. These people with giantism are sick people. They have problems with their joints. They have problems with their heart. They have a lot of issues, but they’ll get very, very big. And so when we look at Guinness Book World Record, it’s Robert Wadlow. He’s not eight. He’s eight foot eleven, almost nine feet tall. And so here I am standing at Ripley’s, believe it or not, next to a mock-up of Robert Waddle. The guy had a 37 AA shoe. But here’s a picture of him, Alton, Illinois. There’s his home, and you can see him. But, you know, look at his siblings. They’re all normal size. Look at his dad and mom. They’re normal sized. But Robert just towers over them. Even as a young man, he was just really, really tall. Wow. But again, these guys don’t live real long. Robert, you know, didn’t even live into his 30s. He just died young. He had to have braces on his feet. Nice guy, but very sick. He’s a sick man. And so these giants in the past are different. These giants in the past, we read about them being warriors and being just these really strong guys, people that can do warfare. And it’s not just people, okay? This is the sneaky little secret of the fossil record. Okay, evolutionists don’t talk about this much. But all the organisms… that are fossilized, this is pre-flood organisms that were fossilized, are bigger, healthier, and lived longer than today’s organisms. So yeah, people are living hundreds of years in the pre-flood world, but these organisms are all getting much bigger. And there’s been a decline in giant organisms due to genetic mutations and environmental degradation. But this whole thing fact, truth, reality that organisms were bigger in the past, giant organisms in the past, fits in really well with the creation model as opposed to the evolution model. See, evolutionists want you to think that primitive is smaller. No, no, no. That’s just not true. Primeval was larger. You had monster millipedes, behemoth bunnies, stupendous sharks, guinea pigs the size of rhinoceroses, and rhinoceroses as tall as three-story buildings. So everything was bigger, healthier, and lived longer in the past. But even among their large peers on the early earth, the Nephilim stood out and they were deemed giants. They were exceptionally big and tall. So if most people were larger in the pre-flood world, how tall were the Nephilim? And the truth is, we don’t know. We just don’t know. Do we have any bones from the Nephilim, any fossilized bones? Again, nothing that we can absolutely for sure put a stick in the ground and say, yeah, here’s one. Okay, I’ve got a degree in biology and I’m a scientist and I’ll mention something here, but I’m going to tell you that be cautious with this stuff. In the 1960s, a construction crew in Turkey ran into an ancient burial ground. Engineer reportedly found giant fossilized human bones, and they had this 47-inch femur. A friend of mine, Joe Taylor, he’s passed on now, but Joe famously modeled this, and he scaled it up and figured this fellow would have been 14 feet or taller. Supposedly, some similar bones have been found in the Middle East. So 14 feet, maybe, possibly. We got some reports, anecdotal evidence that that might be pre-flood Nephilim remains. But again, I would say just be cautious with this.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, Dave, just on that topic, we do have considerable fossil evidence that I’m convinced are pre-flood organisms. Yeah, most everything fossilized is. Right, right. But do we have fossilized evidence of all the organisms? Probably not. No. And so what are the odds that the human creature, the human being, that we just haven’t found any of those yet? Or we have found fossilized human remains. There’s no doubt about that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
But we haven’t found the giants, which would have been a very small subset of the human beings before the flood. And so just I’m just kind of talking it through statistically. It’s not unusual that we haven’t found any of those yet if there weren’t very many of them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right. So we don’t have any even for sure pre-flood human remains. We do have fossilized humans, but this is, I mean, people can be fossilized today. I mean, fossilization is more rare today, but it happens, right? And we do have some fossilized humans that are possibilities. You know, you’ve got Malachite man, you’ve got the Guadalupe skeletons. I talk about these on my website, genesispark.com, but again, I’m tenuous about
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, this is good stuff, good stuff, because I like to clarify things for the audience because there’s so much that I don’t know. It helps me. So we don’t know that we have pre-flood human beings. In fact, it sounds like you would lean toward we probably don’t, or at least we don’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we don’t know. That’s the bottom line. I put some candidates on my website, and people ask, well, okay. How come we don’t have these? And it’s a valid question. And it might just be, you know, God’s purpose for that flood, the purpose for the flood was to destroy that wicked pre-flood civilization. That was the whole point. So perhaps God allowed the fountains of the great deep just to really erupt there and it just pulverized everything. all those people. Perhaps people were smart enough to get to the high ground and they weren’t covered with the waves that carried the debris that covered a lot of the animals. And so they just became fish food, right? Or they drowned and just deteriorated. Perhaps the area that was the Garden of Eden and where these guys are buried and where any fossilized remains might be is in Antarctica. And so it’s all in the deep freezer under a mile of ice. So there’s a lot of possibilities here. And the short answer is we don’t know why we don’t have more. Maybe we’ll find some. Maybe we’ll find a whole bunch someday. But then if you do find them, what are the odds of them actually being Nephilim? I mean, it might be that they’re just the normal people, which might still be bigger. I mean, maybe they’re 10 feet is normal, you know, and then the Nephilim are, you know, 14 or 16 feet tall. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m speculating at this point. Yeah, and I think if people understand that the odds of finding, you know, mammalized fossil bones, when you find a dinosaur bone or any kind of mammal, it’s worth money because they’re so rare. I remember seeing a graph for like 99.5 of the fossil record, 99.5% is marine life. And that’s something that’s just more easily going to be buried in the type of global catastrophe that we saw. And humans, like you said, would be able to, you know, they would be able to seek higher ground. They’re going to get washed out. They’re not going to fossilize. So for me, it would be pretty amazing to ever find fossilized humans. It’s possible, but it’s more unlikely. People need to understand that the fossil record really is a testimony to judgment that really buried a ton of marine life, and it would have been pretty hard. And I’m sure there are humans that were buried somewhere, but the odds of finding them are so low that maybe we will someday. Good points, good points.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let’s talk about the post-flood giant races because, guys— We know a lot more about these. This is where it gets kind of interesting. Giants didn’t just appear in the pre-flood world. They appeared again very prominently after the time of the Exodus. So you think about Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, of course, Shem. And then eventually Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. So we’re going, you know, multiple generations. We’re going centuries down from the flood. Jacob’s descendants would be then in Egypt for, you know, a number of years, again, generations. And then they’re coming out of Egypt. And all of a sudden they encounter Jacob. this group of warlike giants in the region of Canaan, especially a group called the Anakim. Now, it seems that they were named after a particular fellow, a particular giant named Anak. And we’ve got the names of several of these giants. You know, people think of Goliath. Okay, yeah, but you got Arba and Anak and, you know, there’s others here that we got several of the names of these different giants. And we’ll talk about more as we go. But there’s one guy who’s Arba. And Arba seems to be like maybe a father of a clan of giants. And his most famous son is Onik.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That’s Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
