The Nephilim and the Flood

In the past century, many independent scholars have taken the opportunity to exploit the Nephilim to their advantage. Zecharia Sitchin was one of those individuals, who proposed that the Nephilim were nothing more than a god-like race with the knowledge and technology to navigate the heavens, who came to earth and created mankind as slave labor mining rare materials. Sitchin had jumped on the chance to translate the Nephilim as: (1) those who came down from above, (2) those who were cast down, and (3) people of the fiery rockets. These made-up epithets are clearly ridiculous and groundless. The Hebrew verb for ‘to go’ or ‘to come down, descend’ is  yarad which shows no relation to the term in question. He then goes on to identify the Nephilim with the Sumerian deities, claiming that the Sumerians knew of their existence and that they came from a planet called Nibiru. According to Sitchin, Nibiru completed its rotation around our sun every 3600 or so earth years. The sources cited came from his mistranslated Mesopotamian inscriptions and cylinder seal impressions. Many others have tried to follow in Zecharia Sitchin’s footsteps, such as Alan Alford, but have quickly repealed their theories, claiming it was too outlandish of an idea. It was in his second book,  The Phoenix Solution, that Alan Alford retracted his ancient astronaut theories. Apparently, this made such a powerful impact that Zecharia Sitchin threatened Alan Alford with a 50 million dollar lawsuit on the grounds that Alford’s comments discredited Sitchin’s theories and destroyed his reputation.