As I continue working on my All About History article this week, I am cutting back a bit on the blog. I’ve finished the article proper, but the magazine needs me to research three sidebars, including technical annotations of Nazi weaponry, and provide nearly two dozen high-resolution photographs. It’s a bit of a challenge just finding the time to scroll through the photo libraries for the right images. Anyway, today I will share with you Nephilim theorist L. A. Marzulli’s most recent edition of Acceleration Radio in which he discusses his belief that UFOs are not space alien craft but rather the work of “interdimensional beings that have the ability to shape-shift.” These beings are related in some nebulous way to the Watchers and the Nephilim. In the first half of the show, Marzulli interviews a Christian named Robert Miles who claims to have witnessed a V-shaped UFO “morph” into a snake-shaped one. The men assume that lights in the sky must be supernatural, though Marzulli admits that his own idea that UFOs are shape-shifting Nephilim has no basis in observed reality, since this account was, by his own admission, the first he had ever heard of someone actually seeing a flying Nephilim change shape.
In the second half of the show, Marzulli interviews a Christian author named Ryan Pitterson who said that he was inspired by Marzulli’s Nephilim research to explore the Genesis 6 story and how it serves as the keystone and focal point for all of human history. Pitterson is the author of Judgment of the Nephilim, a book about—what else?—Nephilim that Pitterson said he wrote because the all-important Genesis 6 paragraph about fallen angels breeding giants isn’t emphasized enough in today’s churches. He follows an unusual, and perhaps heretical, version of Christianity that interprets the narrative of Genesis as establishing two competing gene pools, the human one born of Eve and the Satanic one of the Nephilim. He argues, as many Nephilim theorists do, that the Nephilim are trying to “corrupt” the human genome through hot, hot demon sex. In his view, therefore, an entire group of people are not actually human but are really Nephilim and should be eliminated. “This is a real biblical doctrine,” Pitterson said. He told Marzulli that he wants the churches to “know that this is real doctrine” and not some sort of … oh, let’s say justification for genocide. Marzulli objects, of course, and he brings up the issue of genocide but claims that when the Israelites committed genocide, they did so because the men they killed were non-human Nephilim. The Flood, Pitterson said, “was an act of love” because all the other people were non-human Nephilim and God needed to preserve the pure “genetic” code of Noah. Both men agree that the Old Testament, with its violence and tribalism and the seeming cruelty of Yahweh can be justified to modern sensibilities and harmonized with the more loving view of Christ if we assume that most people are actually non-human Nephilim. As I imagine you can see, in their effort to explain the Nephilim they accidentally reveal the underlying motives behind their claims: They need to save the loving modern form of God from a literal reading of God’s Word, and they want to be able to pick and choose which people count as true humans, and which (here’s looking at you, Muslims!) are the corrupted evil demon spawn who deserve death and damnation. One of the weird things about this Nephilim business is that Pitterson and Marzulli either envision the Nephilim as all male, or simply don’t care about female Nephilim. Therefore, there is a strange layer of patriarchal concern about the purity of women’s bodies and the need to control women’s sexuality underlying many of these discussions. I don’t really want to compare this to the “incel” community, with its jealous hatred of handsome men, whom so-called “involuntary celibates” accuse of taking all the women, but it’s a little disturbing that Nephilim theorists think that model-handsome Nephilim are able to easily seduce women into out-of-wedlock demonic pregnancies while normal Christian men struggle to keep women married and pregnant. In both cases, there is sort of an underlying discomfort with the fact that modern society, in empowering women, has increased the value of men’s looks, which traditionally had taken a back seat to a man’s earning power.
28 Comments
A C
6/14/2018 10:49:23 am
Its kind of funny to see these Christians flailing around to justify the acts of their god while the Rabbinic tradition has often been perfectly happy to admit that their deity makes mistakes. Similarly the Greek philosophy influenced Christian tradition seems to want to turn all the patriarchs into role models while the Jewish tradition sees them as flawed figures to learn from. Its not even the New Testament's fault since Paul is pretty clear that the Torah's role is to teach you to think not to be used as an instruction book.
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Machala
6/14/2018 02:48:40 pm
I occurs to me, that the Christian church's obsession with the idea of God doing no wrong, comes from the early need of the Christian sects to establish authority over their acolytes and converts. If God is infallible, then by extension, those preaching the "Word of God" are likewise infallible in their teaching.
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Americanegro
6/14/2018 03:25:39 pm
It bears considering that the Church abrogated to itself the vengeful bloodthirsty capricious powers of the OT's Adonai. Since he doesn't exist he of course didn't miss them.
Alan deWaltom
4/22/2019 04:26:07 am
Enter The Nexus
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Noah
6/14/2018 11:31:55 am
Don't you know what the flood is
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John
6/14/2018 11:33:38 am
Yes, I know
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Americanegro
6/14/2018 01:08:27 pm
Lord Jason abu Jason's Kid, I prithee cool thy jets! "Perhaps heretical"? Belief in the Nephilim is not one of the famous heresies and the Catholic Church at least has enough weird ideas about angels and Satan to have room for it. "Heterodox" might be a better term.
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6/14/2018 02:49:31 pm
You know those are not my opinions but my admittedly humorous caricature of Marzulli's. Yes, they believe that Nephilim are walking around impregnating women with serpent seed.
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Americanegrol
6/14/2018 03:18:14 pm
I just worry that it's easy to fan the anti-anti-Muslim flames. The first genocide of the 20th century was Muslim Turks killing largely Christian Armenians. The real problem in the Middleast is Israel, the first huge mistake made by the United Nations. Muslims in the Mideast historically haven't minded a boot on their neck as long as the foot inside the boot belongs to a Muslim, even one in name only like Erdoğan (Alawites not being real Muslims). Prof. Ed Said would no doubt take me to task for that. 6/14/2018 04:36:54 pm
I mentioned Muslims because Marzulli rants about them frequently and basically argues that their faith is Satanic.
Americanegro
6/14/2018 05:37:47 pm
And if I believed in Satan I might agree with him. Just checked my Bible and there's no Book of Plutarch. 6/14/2018 06:05:23 pm
That's why I used "Cf." -- "Compare." The point is the cross-cultural similarity.
Americanegro
6/14/2018 06:43:27 pm
The point is you kind of who are we kidding, actually dodged the question "Are there female angels in the Bible?" Christians don't care what Plutarch had to say, nor I venture do Juice. While I can't vouch for the Silmarillion, there are also no female Maiar in The Lord of the Rings. Plutarch is also talking about "gods". Cf. that to angels in the Bible. If it doesn't fit you must acquit.
Bob Jase
6/14/2018 01:36:11 pm
So the Nephilim are aliens - then shouldn't Yahweh have flooded their planets to kill them off before they discovered space travel and came to Earth? Poor planning old deity.
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John
6/14/2018 02:07:24 pm
Grow up, people. Yahweh was an alien, but no more deity than all of us are deities.
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Americanegro
6/14/2018 02:38:24 pm
And Noah wasn't even Jewish!
Shane Sullivan
6/14/2018 03:08:31 pm
"Grow up, people. Yahweh was an alien, but no more deity than all of us are deities. "
An Anoymous Nerd
6/16/2018 10:13:00 am
[[Well, Psalm 82:6.]] Context. Looking at this in context I don't see how it could be literally taken as "humans are gods" in the sense some folks mean. Here it is. It's pretty short.
Shane Sullivan
6/16/2018 12:56:46 pm
I'm only reasonably confident John was joking, so I wanted to offer something that would 1.) subvert his claim if serious, or 2.) play along humorously if not.
An Anonymous Nerd
6/16/2018 08:45:04 pm
[[I'm only reasonably confident John was joking, so I wanted to offer something that would 1.) subvert his claim if serious, or 2.) play along humorously if not. ]]
Shane Sullivan
6/17/2018 11:16:16 am
No, I don't recognize the name either, that's why I wasn't fully committed to the joke angle. But I admit I may have been overly generous. "Grow up" just didn't strike me as something an AAT would say; if I may overgeneralize for a moment, most of them don't seem to realize there is such a thing as growing up.
Bezalel
6/14/2018 11:44:57 pm
What do some religious people do when confronted with their ignorant and bewildering, effed up distinction between human beings and "demons/aliens/others"?
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Bezalel
6/14/2018 11:46:45 pm
*conflation
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An Anonymous Nerd
6/16/2018 10:23:41 am
It falls to me to ask the obvious but unpleasant questions.
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An Anonymous Nerd
6/16/2018 11:22:57 am
So I listened to the portion of he video with Mr. Pitterson. It was basically Mr. Marzulli's usual greatest hits. Ancient Aliens with a different twist, but the same basic narrative.
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Boomerdude
6/20/2018 12:27:44 pm
I always thought of Angels as being asexual. Also, IIRC there are two different apocryphal stories about the Nephilim. One story relates how God sent them, or at least seven of them to rule as Governors over mankind before the flood. The other is the standard bad guys relegated to Tartarus until judgement day.
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Danske
8/4/2018 08:43:05 pm
Jason, you completely misrepresent the views of Marzulli regarding Nephilim; he nowhere claims in any of his presentations, articles or books that the 'majority of mankind' are descended, at least in part, from Nephilim. Also, he has never demonized Muslims; you created a straw man here that is easily burned down by opponents.
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Jguyout
8/9/2018 06:15:43 pm
They attempt to say you are on their website and they rule you through their terms which is false. They try so hard to subjucgate you because they are demons who want you under their rule and I escape through Him.
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