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Goliath has gotten so much attention when it comes to the story of David that some people think he’s the only giant spoken of in the Bible. But there are two other passages in 1 Chronicles, with parallel passages in 2 Samuel that explain the giants defeated by David and his Mighty Men.

1 Chronicles 11:22–23

²² And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel… And he struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. [7 1/2 to 8 feet] The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam.

1 Chronicles 20:4–8

⁴ And after this there arose war with the Philistines at Gezer. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai [or Saph: 2 Sam. 21:18], who was one of the descendants of the giants... ⁵And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. ⁶ And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants. ⁷ And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea, David’s brother, struck him down. ⁸ These were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

2 Samuel 21:16–22

¹⁶ And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. ¹⁷ But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him.

So in addition to Goliath, we have five other giants being killed by David’s men. 1) Benaiah killed an Egyptian giant, 2) Sibbecai killed the giant Sippai [Saph], 3) Elhanan killed the giant Lahmi, brother of Goliath, 4) Jonathan killed an unnamed giant, and 5) Abishai killed Ishbi-benob the giant.

But these are not mere chronicling of random deaths of a few tall bad guys. There is meaning and deliberation behind these facts. There is deliberate intent by the author to link these giants to the Nephilim of Genesis 6 whose diabolical plan was thwarted by God with the Flood.

Firstly, most are summarized in the same context, indicating a literary and theological purpose behind combining them together. Secondly, except for the Egyptian, they are all Philistines fighting Israel. In Joshua 11:21-22 we read that Joshua deliberately sought out the Anakim giants in Canaan and cut them off everywhere in the hill country. But then it gives this qualification: “There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.”

So, some giants were left by Joshua – in the land of Philistia. The very cities from which came the giants David would fight, including Goliath. It was almost as if God was deliberately keeping the last of the giants in order to finally destroy them through his messianic king. They were the leftover giants from Joshua’s conquest, and they were linked back to the evil Nephilim before the flood (Num. 13:32-33).

And there is strong indication that the giants were trying to kill David specifically as well. Ishbi-benob is said to explicitly have been trying to kill David (2 Sam. 21:16); another one “taunted Israel” (1Chron 20:7), the same phrasing used of Goliath; and of course, Lahmi, Goliath’s brother, would no doubt have revenge against the slayer of his sibling on his mind.

But there is still more to this picture.

The English phrase used of the giants in these passages is that they were “descendants of the giants.” It is used three times in 1 Chron. 20 and four times in 2 Sam. 21. The authors go out of their way to stress these warriors as connected to that special group of giants that were theologically tied to the Nephilim of Genesis 6.

This narrative theological thread of giants from the Nephilim of Noah’s day to the Rephaim of David’s time conspires to imply a deliberate summary of climactic conflict between the titan Seed of the Serpent in Canaan and the Seed of Abraham from Eve.

But a closer look at the original Hebrew behind the translation “descendants of the giants” in 1 Samuel and 1 Chronicles reveals much more then merely being linked to those oversized warriors left alive by Joshua in Philistia.

Biblical scholar Conrad E. L’Heureux examines this Hebrew phrase, yalid ha rapha, that translates as “descendants of the giants.” He explains that the word rapha, is the specific word for the Rephaim giants and warriors in the Bible. But the word yalid, “never refers to genealogical lineage. Rather, the yalid was a person of slave status and dedicated to the deity who was head of the social unit into which he was admitted by a consecration.”[1]

This religious devotion indicates that the “descendants of the giants” can be translated as the “devotees of Rapha.” L’Heureux concludes that this was probably some kind of reference to an elite cult of warriors religiously bound to their Rephaim code. What was that code? Was it to hunt down and destroy the Seed of Eve, the messianic king?

The discoveries of Ugarit in relation to the Bible shed light on the Rephaim as deified dead giant warriors,[2]. Thus, the origin of my elite corps of giants in David Ascendant called the Yalid ha Rapha or my colloquial adaptation, the “Sons of Rapha,” bound by oath to their own Seed (of the Serpent) to destroy the messianic Seed of Eve, David.

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[1] Conrad E. L’Heureux “The yelîdê hārāpā’: A Cultic Association of Warriors,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 221,(Feb., 1976), pp. 83-85.

[2] See Brian Godawa, Enoch Primordial Appendix on the Rephaim,( Los Angeles, CA, Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2012), pp 364-366.

An epic road movie. Based on a true story that was probably plagiarized by author Slavomir Rawicz as his own experience. A handful of Polish prisoners in the Russian Gulag in Siberia during WWII, escape their prison in the freezing tundra and travel 4000 miles to freedom in India, going through the Gobi Desert AND over the freezing Himilayas.

This survival story was most amazing to me in that it is probably the first Hollywood movie about the Russian Gulags. There are dozens and dozens of movies and television stories about the German concentration camps in WWII, but what most of the public does not know is that the Soviet Communist Gulag system makes the Nazi camps look like children’s play pens. Problem is, they didn’t get the exposure they should have. It reveals how uneducated many people are about the truly evil empire of Soviet Russia and the atrocities that dwarfed the Nazi machine by 3x. Stalin starved over 20 million of his own people. 20 million of his own people. And that is not counting the other 30 million killed in the entire Stalin era for a grand total near 50 MILLION PEOPLE – savagely and brutally killed, many of them tortured as “political dissidents” because they were not Communist party members. Yet, this is the FIRST movie about the Soviet Gulags? All I can say is Peter Weir is a heroic filmmaker to bring out this essence of Communism in an era that seems to deny it was even a threat.

This is a story of a widowed astronomy professor played by Nicolas Cage, who has a young son that receives upon a cryptic pattern of numbers from a grade school “time capsule” written by a young school girl fifty years earlier. Cage stumbles upon the key to the numbers as a prophecy of important disasters around the world and their death tolls for the next fifty years up until this very year, when it indicates everyone will die in the last catasrophe. He soon realizes that it is a prophecy of the end of the world that will occur from a freak solar super flare that will burn up all life on earth.

The story is Cage’s spiritual journey from one of unbelief to belief in a purposeful meaning to life. I am careful not to add “God” in the equation, because even though the movie uses Christian concepts and imagery, I believe a convincing argument can be made that the movie is ultimately a humanistic demythologizing of the Faith similar to what Stargate and Planet of the Apes did.

The story begins with Cage unable to get over his wife’s recent death. He masks his own unbelief when he tells his son that he never said there was no heaven, “but if you want to believe there is a heaven and mom is there, that’s fine.” Of course Cage’s statements about the size of the universe and how “we are all alone” indicates his real belief and we soon see him in class addressing the classic question of randomness versus determinism in the universe. He brings up the galaxy and the anthropic principle of how life is so finely tuned to the precision of the universe that some people say this indicates a purposeful design. When he concludes with the other view he indicates that it may all be chance, “the result of a complex yet inevitable string of complex biological mutations. There is no grand meaning, there is no purpose.” It’s clear, the death of his wife has brought him to this conclusion and when a student asks him what he thinks, he says, “I think shit just happens,” indicating his despair.

We also learn that Cage is estranged from his pastor father because of his father’s religious beliefs. Cage tells his sister not to pray for him. Meanwhile, Cage’s son, Caleb is being stalked by strange men in trenchcoats, as if they are waiting for just the right time. When Cage figures out the prophecy is about the solar super flare, he calls his religious pastor father and talks about the gift of prophecy and that the end is near. Cage brings his son to a safe place, only to discover the trenchcoat beings are angels, with what appears to be wings who shed their human disguise, and come from an object that resembles the spinning wheels of Ezekiel’s visions in the Bible (This Ezekiel passage is clearly referenced in the film). We hear the kid explain that he and others are “chosen” to be taken away to start a new world. “Only the chosen can go. Those who heard the call.” Obvious New Testament language. We then see Caleb and other children from around the earth “raptured” off the earth as the solar super flare burns up all life in an apocalyptic “judgment” scenario reminiscent of Revelation.

Cage explains that he now believes and knows that he will be in heaven with mom and Caleb someday. He drives out to his parent’s home, makes his reconciliation with them. Dad says, “This isn’t the end, son.” Cage replies, “I know,” and he is now spiritually reunited as they burn up in a ball of fire. We then see Caleb and another little girl arrive on a pristine new planet like an adolescent Adam and Eve and run over to a huge tree that is an obvious metaphor of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden spoken about in the Book of Revelation at the end of the world. At least this is what one interpretation of the Bible says it means. Anyway, the Christian imagery is blatant throughout the film, making this an outright Christian metaphor.

But is it a Christian worldview? Or is it a humanistic demythologizing of Christianity? I think that there is enough indication for one to argue that the “angels” were actually aliens in physical starships just as Stargate argued, making religion a superstitious interpretation of scientific facts. This of course is a very common cliché in movies ever since the book “Chariots of the Gods” in the 1970s that posited that the angelic manifestations in the Bible were actually “ancient astronauts” in flying saucers that were misinterpreted by ignorant religious people as spiritual beings. The fact that the “angels” in Knowing are in very physical spaceships seems to indicate this secularizing demythologizing. But of course, one may argue that it is simply the same “wheels within wheels” that Ezekiel saw in his heavenly vision (and pointed out in the movie), making it ultimately biblical. I think there is just enough ambiguity for either interpretation.

In the DVD special features a documentary about apocalypticism in history addresses it as an element of all religions and an anthropological phenomenon of coding society’s fear. An anthropologist claims that the nuclear age created the “Rapture theory” in the Bible and birthed the UFO craze out of our social fears. They try to show commonalities in all religions regarding the deity and destructive identity of the sun and then explain the scientific possibility of solar super flares. They end on the “alien mythology” of aliens bringing us out of our self destruction to give us another chance, so the documentary at least is more a demythologizing than a scientific support for religious belief.

The Director, Alex Proyas seems to deny the imagery used in the film as being exclusively Christian. He explains on the director’s commentary that to him, the Christian mythology in the film is a part of our cultural imagery, but are more symbolic shorthand for a “bigger story” of humanity coming to peace with its mortality and finding hope beyond it. Anthropologized faith. Proyas addresses the presence of physical spaceships in the film as aliens and that the Ezekiel vision would be exactly how an ancient religious person would interpret an alien. Proyas, claims he is definitely showing the religious impulse as an interpretation of scientific reality, yet was deliberately making it ambiguous so that anyone could bring their own interpretation to the imagery. When the interviewer exclaims that the religious interpretation (over the alien science one) is the central image of the story, Proyas balks and says that that is what the interviewer brought to the film, rather than the film exhibiting.

For Proyas, the meaning lies in Cage’s son surviving him as the hope of how we survive our mortality. Humanistic demythology. Proyas wanted the movie to be relative in its meaning to the viewer. He explicitly says he deliberately wanted the imagery to be ambiguous so that they could be interpreted as either angels or aliens. Angels or Aliens? You decide.