Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
we see that these giants were also to be found in the wooded province of the Perizzites,
which embraced all the country north of Jerusalem, from the Jordan to the coast.
Their own name (Pe-Or-Is), and those of their hills and towns, belong to a Phallic,
Fire and Serpent-worshipping race. Prominent and central were the bare, rocky, sterile,
but holy mounts of Ebal and Gerizim, on which last the Paskal sacrifice is still held; 1
and separating them was the sacred vale of Moreh, Ephraim, Shiloh, Tapuab, and
Ba-al-hazor—all marking the faith of the country.
From Gen. vi. 4, we learn that “the sons of God came in unto the daughters of
men,” and begot Nephelim, which the LXX call giants, also Gibborim or “mighty men,”
The word Nephelim comes from (lpn) Nephal, “fallen,” or “thrown down.” In Gen. xiv.
5, we have Rephaim (\yapr) usually conidered as a giant race; the word being from
rapha (apr), ‘to heal;’ it may mean strong and healthy men. This then, with what I have
said at page 522, is all we have to guide us in trying to make out the meaning of Gen. vi.
4, and no comments which I have seen are satifactory. The language seems to be metaphorical,
and to refer to inter-marriages with Aithiopians, Khets, and other Turans, or
to wintry solar phenomena, as so much of the very early biblical books do; although I
can by no means agree in going to far in this respect as Sir William Drummond. 2
Nephal is “to fall;” like clouds during rain, as we may understand when we
read that the blood of the Titan giants fell in the great war, and fertilised the earth.
And here I must approach subjects and countries which at first sight may seem
foreign to the topic in hand; but the fact is,
that the Jewish writer of the first eight verses
of Gen. vi. (a Jehovist, and not Elohist)—
in his anxiety to explain the cause of the
various flood-legends, which the simplerminded
Elohist had described briefly, 3
and in his efforts to find some graphic
incidents as to the cause of the flood—has, undoubtedly,
combined various floating allegories
of solar phenomena which the more learned
peoples around him understood in no mundane
or concrete form, such as he quaintly
depicts in verse 2 and 4. The Nephelim, \ylpn,
or giants seem to have sprung from the same
idea as Skandinavian Nipheim 4 which
is the nebulous or cloudy home of their
Fig. 193.—THE NEPHILIM; TOR ATTACKS THE GIANTS
“giants.” Jötun-heim, or “giant-land,” surrounds our world, said our northern ancestors,
and they brought all this lore from north Asia. It is a northern land of ice-bergs and evil
elements, surrounding and ever and again bursting in upon the fertile energies of earth,
1 2
Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine. Œdipus Judaicus
4
[More usually Niflheim (“dark world”). — T.S.]
3 As from verses 9 to 14, and 17 to 22
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