calling the Hebrew-literate

[cellio]

A friend asked me about the word "n'filim" (or sometimes "nefilim"), which is the noun for the giants talked about in Gen 6:4 and Num 13:33. Or is it? ORT asserts that the former is literally "fallen angels", but armed with a dictionary, 501 Hebrew Verbs, and the knowledge that "angel" is usually a completely different word, I'm not seeing it. Oh, and there's a slight difference in the Hebrew in the two places cited, a small matter of an extra yud, and I don't know if that's a root change or some grammatical transformation.

The discussion is here (and specifically here). We'd welcome further clues from you folks who know a lot more of this language than I do. :-)

Comments

[the-never.livejournal.com]

The meaning of 'angel' changes over time, too. In Greek 'angel' (angelos) is used interchangeably to designate a celestial entity and/or to siginify the original meaning 'a messenger' (which can also be an absolutely ordinary, mortal messenger).

[eub.livejournal.com]

I know nothing, and I'm doubtful how useful a page without the Hebrew is likely to be, but <Geocities>this page</Geocities> (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Capsule/6859/Texts/nephilimroot.html) also thinks it's related to "fall", saying its root sense is "one who fells".

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Nfilim would be "those who fell," usually understood as angels or angelic beings, but that's an extrapolation based on the context, i.e. the strange things the Torah says about them and their appearance out of the blue in Genesis. It's often understood as the complement to the reference to "the sons of God and the daughters of man." The references in the Torah are probably fragments of some other mythic tradition that wasn't otherwise preserved. Very rich midrash stuff, as you can imagine.

The extra yod -- there's a technical term for it that I forget -- basically the yods and vavs in many words indicate an ee, ay, or oh sound, and there is no hard and fast rule for them being there or not being there when there's that sound. Essentially at some point (long before the Masoretic notation system (all the dots)) people figured out that these "vowel" thingees were useful, so sometimes they used 'em. Like how in modern Hebrew sometimes the dots are put in, but often not, because if you're a native speaker you can figure out the meaning and pronunciation from the consonants. But the extra yod in nfilim wouldn't affect the meaning.