The story in Gen 6:1–4 of the Nephilim, the offspring of angels and human women, was an important text in the development of apocalyptic Judaism and early Christianity, but its influence began to wane in late antiquity. Until relatively recently, American evangelicals have shown little interest in Gen 6:1–4 and its reception in non-canonical Jewish sources, but toward the end of the twentieth century, partly in response to the appropriation of the Nephilim myth among advocates of the so-called “ancient aliens" hypothesis (e.g., von Däniken; Sitchin), certain evangelicals began promoting a distinctively Christian interpretation of the UFO phenomenon and ufology, and presenting Gen 6:1–4 as the forgotten key to understanding the ancient past and the eschatological future. We will describe this increasingly popular “evangelical Nephilim conspiracy,” elucidate its hermeneutical and epistemological assumptions, situate it within American evangelicalism, and analyze it within the broader context of scholarship on conspiracism and religion.
Searching the term “Nephilim” on YouTube will produce results that may surprise most scholars of religion and historians of American evangelical Christianity. The past two decades have witnessed the proliferation of self-proclaimed “Nephilim researchers,” who increasingly argue that the myth of the Nephilim in Gen 6:1–4 contains the key for understanding the entire Bible and the coming eschatological age. In books, documentary films, podcasts, and sermons, these self-proclaimed “Nephilim researchers” blend elements of fundamentalist Christian eschatology (e.g., dispensational premillennialism) with conspiracy and fringe theories about alien abductions, megalithic architecture, the New World Order, cryptozoology, transhumanism, etc. In this paper, I will describe the basic contours of this “evangelical Nephilim conspiracy theory,” as reflected in the foundational writings of figures like I.D.E. Thomas, Chuck Missler, Thomas Horn, Stephen Quayle, and L.A. Marzulli, before situating this conspiracy and its proponents within the broader intellectual and institutional history of American evangelicalism.
Genesis 6:1–4 recounts the sexual union between divine beings and human women and the birth of their hybrid offspring, the Nephilim. Biblical scholarship has long recognized that this tradition likely reflects a late redactional adaptation of older Mediterranean mythological motifs. Despite its seemingly marginal place in the Hebrew Bible, Gen 6:1–4 occupies a central role in the writings of modern “Nephilim researchers” and Christian conspiracy theorists. According to I. D. E. Thomas, the passage “could prove to be the missing clue in solving the UFO mystery” (2008, 23). This paper examines the Nephilim tradition within this interpretive framework. First, it analyzes Thomas’s The Omega Conspiracy (1986), a foundational text for this interpretive community, in order to outline the epistemology and hermeneutics that structure this conspiracy discourse. It then considers how such readings of Gen 6:1–4 circulate in contemporary online “Nephilim researcher” media and generate broader political and cultural implications.
Matthew’s Jesus says the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah (Matt 24:37). What will this look like? The late evangelical Christian, Chuck Missler, claims, “UFOs and alien intrusions appear to be a big part of what’s coming” (2003: 234). For biblical scholars, Missler’s suggestion seems non-intuitive. But for an increasingly influential group of “Nephilim researchers,” this conclusion makes sense of the Bible, ancient literature, and current events. In this paper, I examine how Nephilim researchers read Matthew 24 and Luke 17, the process by which they connect these passages with other ancient texts, and the assumptions that guide this process. I also consider which features of the biblical texts can provide justification for the methods employed. I close by positioning their approach within larger discussions of Christian interpretation, asking whether their approach represents a fringe movement or simply one manifestation of common Christian reading practices.
Evangelical conspiracism is part of a broader sociopolitical pattern of conspiratorial thinking with a long history, and which is critically analysed by an established community of scholars in the social sciences and humanities. This presentation will contextualize Nephilim-related evangelical conspiracism in the broader scholarly discussion of conspiracy theories and society (e.g., Butter, Knight, and Thalmann). Drawing on the specific literature on conspiracism and Christianity, this paper will show how the Nephilim serve a specific, instrumentalized, but no less spiritualized function in the rhetorical and persuasive milieu of “Nephilim research” where a focus on biblical literalism collides with the symbolic capital found in uses of scholarly language without scholarly accountability. By focusing on the Nephilim as a functional stand-in for a variety of other concerns about the relationship between Christianity and civil society, this presentation shows just how patterned and revealing this particular embodiment of conservative American Christianity is.