Hat tip to Edward Babinski and Jason Colavito for this piece.
I’ve asked it before: Why do Christian “researchers” embrace highly suspect newspaper reports from the 19th and early 20th centuries so readily? The answer, of course, is to prop up a certain view of creationism with the flawed notion that finding a modern giant skeleton would do that. It wouldn’t. You’d need a village or mass grave or something from remote antiquity (at least 3000 years ago) that indicated a population (however small) of such people. The absence of such a find does not, of course, overturn that there were such groups in biblical times (and the biblical text doesn’t require great numbers, either). Basically, the skeletal remains of most every person who lived prior to the Israelite monarchy are gone — turned to fragments or dust. Why? It’s very simple. Canaanites didn’t embalm. It’s an event to find skeletal remains from the NEW Testament era, much less something another millennium or so older. The whole idea of finding a biblical giant to prove the Bible is as misguided as the assumption that finding an unusually tall skeleton from modern times would prove the Bible is true on this count.
This post also shows why researchers such as Carl Baugh or Kent Hovind cannot be trusted for sound thinking and verified data. It illustrates gullibility and academic laziness on their part to put forth a photograph that isn’t a photograph (from 1807 to boot – photography in 1807?) to defend the Bible. They obviously never looked into it.
Hi 🙂
I have a question. There’s A LOT of debunking that goes on regarding questions or newspaper articles about Giants… And rightfully so. My question is ( and this is not a rebuttal phrased as a question just for sake of argument) – can you give some examples or point to a place on the website that you consider to be ‘legit Giants’ (and I realize this is a loaded phrase). In addition – and this may be apples to oranges – why is it so hard to believe in Biblical Giants when dinosaurs were GIANT. Just a thought.
Since I believe the biblical giants were no taller than really tall people in modern times (upper 6 feet to 8 foot range), I’d say there are lots of examples in modern times. But I don’t know any examples (other than textual references) to such persons in great antiquity. I wouldn’t expect such remains to survive.
Not sure I’m following your question precisely, though.
I just meant, why is it such a stretch of the imagination to believe in giant people when there were giant dinosaurs that roamed the earth? It seemed an appropriate question to ask given the recent post. I don’t however pretend to think that giant dinosaurs on the earth presuppose giant people either. I truly ask only for informational purposes. I don’t care about being right. It’s way overrated.
I would like to comment on this idea of ridiculously tall Giants from a medical perspective. I am a physician and I feel like that I can contribute meaningfully here. There are upper limits to how tall a human being can be before it starts to wreak havoc on the body. Just from an engineering perspective, once you start to get into the 7-8 feet tall range and above the bones and joints start to really take a hit, as well as the heart, which is having to pump blood around all of that surface area, especially against gravity up to the brain.
Animals like giraffes and, yes, even dinosaurs have/had to use complex mechanisms to get blood up their necks and to their brains in order to accomdate the stress on the heart that such a situation creates. Thus, there is a physical limit to how tall a human can grow and natural selection is the mechanism that God has used to genetically determine the proper “normal” for human height.
And, I don’t care if you are a half human/half demon hybrid, the Bible still calls those Nephilim “men” (of renown) and thus their physical design from an engineering perspective was still that of an upright bipedal man. There are therefore physical limits inherent to that design. So, I agree, any Giants in the Bible were certainly within the upper limits of what is normal for human beings. We have seen some of those Giants in our day (though admittedly, usually due to disease states where either too much growth hormone is involved or too little androgens are involved during early childhood development, leading to “gigantism”) and they usually do not live full lifespans, with many medical problems devloping as time goes on (bone, joint, muscle and heart disease, etc).
People have gone absolutely crazy with this though, as they add to the Bible and imagaine all of these huge, scary hybrid creatures that this might have produced. They then try to couch this in scientific language (case in point – Tom Horn), and when they do so it is very easy to see their faulty assumptions and total lack of scientific familiarity with what they are talking about. In reality they are just simply entertaining childish fantasies with the guise of pseudo-science, making us all look like fools and damaging the furtherence of the Gospel greatly. All they are doing is further confirming what a small minority of Christians are going to think regardless of whether they publish a book or not, and all the while doing nothing to further the Gospel among the lost (who aren’t paying attention to anything that they are saying and in fact are probably being pushed further away from true Christianity because of this nonsense, the lost understandably not wanting to be associated with a religion that treats myth as fact like this), which is what they are actually tasked to do by Christ in the Great Commission.
I personally think that it is YEC with all of its crazy permutations that is part of a greater deluding influence that the Church is facing at this critical point in time. The deception involves a lack of discipline on the part of Christians when it comes to good proper biblical hermeneutics, leading to all sorts of faulty assumptions and bad ideas that then become so ingrained and interlaced with Christianiity that the lost are made to think that in order to become a Christian they have to believe in 12 foot tall Giants and a 6000 year old Universe.
What a shame.
Thanks, Dr. – much appreciated.
Hi there, just on the dinosaur thing, since no actual flesh has been found, how do we know the complex mechanisms for providing blood to the massive physical proportions of the classic dinosaurs? or do we just assume they had to have these mechanisms.
They need blood pumped; hence the calculations.
So you are pretty much saying in simple terms, we assume?
There is a good example of a’giant’ now days , his name is Hong Man Choi , he is a Korean kick boxer and he is close to 400 pounds, and 7 ft 2 inches , even now days I was amazed at his height and bulk. Seeing someone like that in real life (especially if the average person was 5 ft something) I would tell people about him as I am doing now.
yep
Also I would say this, if Hong Man Choi, had armor and a helmet that gave him extra height, he would look so overwhelming to a short person, in-fact he would be the subject of legends if the people had not much understanding of biology.
That does not make him a lie, as I believe the biblical giants were not lies.
Michael I know you have, over and over taught people, to try and understand the Biblical writers mindsets,cultural backgrounds and philosophical understandings. Yet constantly , so many ‘Christian’ teachings now-days are lacking in all of these (if not more).
Can you please simplify you question.
If you want proof of “giants” in any era ,can you please define “giant” and the time you want proof from.
Maybe one day there will be a collection of “Giant” skeletal remains, found in one place, but it is most likely that, a race of quite tall people,plus a few examples of extremes (probably used by such races as intimidating war examples) will be found. all I can determine so far is only the extremes (like Mike said {6+ to 7 ft range) have been found and, That does not take away from, or falsify the Scriptures at all.
To answer your question-why not giants if dinos-there is a myriad of reasons. The largest ground dwelling primate in the fossil record is Gigantopithecus longLONG extinct and its remains could never be mistaken for a human,of any size. There is not a shred of fossil evidence of human like giants and we have a huge amount of proof for huge dinosaurs in the past and even huge creatures like the whale alive today. In short its about proof,dinosaurs have it giant humans don’t.
While I appreciate the desire to “defend” the histories recorded in the Old Testament, I think it reflects errant assumptions about faith, which lead to errant thinking and practice.
Ultimately, choosing the wrong place to think FROM can lead to “research” meant to justify faith or scripture… which actually give people excuses NOT to believe scripture and even a mocking spirit because of shoddy research.
The idea is if Christians can’t PROVE any particular aspect of the Bible, then the faith of masses of Christians will crumble and nonbelievers won’t come to faith. That’s just wrong and a bad place to think from, although I used to accept variations of that (for me, it was young earth creationism, and thinking any other version of origins would lead to collapse of the Bible, faith, and Christianity).
Today, I believe that’s an errant place to think from.
Our starting place is not scientifically proving creationism or archaeological proof of the existence of giants or David or the site of the Exodus or Noah’s ark or whatever. While all those events were important to the identity of the Hebrews in exile or in the inter-testamental period, today, our starting place is Christ.
The Hebrew scriptures ultimately point to Jesus, and so he establishes the place we should think from. Everything pales in comparison to the awesomeness of Yahweh in the flesh and everything he accomplished, and the culmination of his plan set in motion in Gen 3.
When we start with Jesus, then we can take scriptures at face value (from their own context), while keeping first things first.
Would it be interesting to find a mass grave of 7 foot tall skeletons in Palestine that somehow date to the 9th Century BC? Sure.
Would my faith be strengthened by such a discovery? Nope.
Would I worry it was faked in an effort to “prove” scriptures and thus take people’s eyes off Jesus? Yep.
Jesus proves scriptures.
I couldn’t agree with you more here. I didn’t come to Christ knowing anything about giants, ufos, Nephilim, the divine counsel, etc. I excepted Jesus when I was 10 years old at a Carmen concert of all places, and then began to read the New Testament over and over in a practical cursory fashion. As I got older, I began to look beneath the text, read the Old Testament, and applied it to the New Testament and That made me curious. I began not to except the normal Church babbling. So really my question only comes from my exploratory adventurous spirit. I don’t care about proving anything or defending any views by asking it. I want to know what really happened.…
But if I never find out what really happened, or if I find out that what I thought was absolutely wrong, I still trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I still Believe He was born of a virgin, I still Believe He was brutally murdered on a cross according to Scriptures, and I still Believe He rose from the dead. I just enjoy understanding how the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of it all points to Him in detail 🙂
Thanks; I always like to hear testimonies, too, so that snippet was interesting.
Mike,
I’m naive, I assume they are trying to prove the goofy “6000 year old earth” view. If so, what use would it be IF they could find a giant skeleton from 3000 years back?
It could prove there were giants, but, I don’t get the nexus with the YEC view?
no idea.
It is quite hard to place our perceptions upon a being that is beyond them.
Hi again, I think the main motivation for the wanting of Giants to be proved, has nothing to do with the YEC view’apart from, Many Young Earth Creationists(if we should call them that) like the idea of proving the bible to be literally factual and Historically correct.
My problem with this whole situation is(as one can see from my above comment) this,.. We as humans(not knowing all) are learning, and learning is being humble enough to accept the prior fact (we do not know all). Therefore, what I call (post-pre history) relies on observing the observable and assuming ‘uniformitarianism’ and the non-observable.
This giant stuff is massively counter productive. Alongside the return of the Nephilim it really makes we Chritians look like gullible goofballs. The bible really does not need spicing up, and I have never required proof of giants to strengthen my faith. In fact I’m pretty sure that if they did happen to find a 33ft tall giant it would do nothing for the faith and church. The new agers could hijack that stuff just as easily.
Yep; agreed. It’s actually Christian “researchers” who are hijacking new age material. That’s part of the problem.
Ah Doc,
This article reminds me of what I tell my Grandkids about giants.
My parents were both taller than both their parents.
Me and my siblings are taller than both our parents.
All of our children, my sons and daughters, nieces and nephews are taller than myself, and their dad, and my brothers and sister.
So I ask my grandkids if they know what that means.
Their eyes get big and they say, “What grandma what, tell us!?
And I say with much enthusiasm, “It means ONE day, giants will roam the earth!”
No kidding.