What is Man?

Introduction to the Nephilim and the Foundation of Biblical Human Evolution

Without a firm foundation to understand the concept of man, there is no way to define what is ‘not man’. When identifying the Nephilim, it’s impossible not to open with a discussion juxtaposing them with mankind, known as “adam” in Hebrew. This is actually the highest spiritual term for man, with the Hebrew words “ish”, “gever” and “enosh” as the descending levels of self-actualization of mankind. Adam is related to the first man, but also the basic term for ‘earth’, or soil. Books could be written on the connections for this term, but an important one from a historical context is Adam as a man of the earth, or soil, whose changing nature with the land he lives on becomes the central narrative of his life story.

While adam is the highest term, ‘ish’ is another higher term meant to describe the emotional layer of man, with adam being the intellectual layer. It is interesting that the term for ‘female’ is Ishah, placing Ish as the respective ‘male’ in this dichotomy, and from this angle, Adam becomes the term meant for ‘human’ in reference to the collective humanity. What is important is that the ish, man, has two parts both male and female, something contrasting with the angelic genderless species.

From the first chapter of Genesis “And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God, creating them male and female.”¹ According to Rashi we learn from Midrash Aggadah that He (God) originally created them with ‘two faces’² using the term ‘partzufim’ to describe these faces - an illusion to the multi-dimensional realms connecting the varied Sefiros Trees in Kabbalah that actualize the self-development of the soul. The term ‘ish’ is related also to the word for ‘fire’, with the human soul being alluded to as a fire contained inside the ish, man.

Gever has the connotation of ‘manhood’ in the most simplistic sense, being bound to the quality of strength that is typical of a macho, or masculine individual. Interesting is its connection to the word ‘Gibor’ used for the giants such as Nimrod, showing these figures even when described in the greatest of terms only reached this second level. It is at this interlacing between Gever and Gibor that we see an emergence of a pseudo-humanoid race of giants leading us to future clues for an investigation of these races.

Enosh on the other hand is the opposite of gever, rather than being connected to notions of greatness, and power, the word enosh is connected to weakness and fragility. As the lowest level of man, enosh can be taken as the English term ‘mortal’. In a deeper sense there is the obvious connection to the biblical figure Enosh, son of Seth, whose descendants - with the exception of Noah - are wiped out along with all of the Cainites in the days of the flood. 

Much of the reason for this was triggered by Enosh himself, whose role as a leader oversaw an era where “it became common to call by the name of the Lord”³ taken to mean that Enosh profaned the name of God by calling other things ‘gods’, one of the earliest forms of idolatry. We can see the difference here between Adam, who names the animals without profaning God, and his grandson Enosh who with the same act ends up misusing the name of the Lord.

Critical in the story of man is where God instructs man to make use of all seed bearing plants and fruits for food, but later excluding animals and meats from consumption. The interconnectedness of every single word, letter, and even shape of the letters is impossible to even describe, but within this narrative arises the story of man’s evolution in social trends, showing the developing categorization difference between varying levels of man's soul. At different points, the human ‘soul’ developed and branched off from more primitive mortalities. This is not unlike how science delineates varying species of life, including Hominids and Homo Sapiens - showing how both of these systems, when properly understood, synchronize in interesting ways. We will unravel this chain of connection between the differing groups in order to better process how these altered states of man might help give us clues for the Nephilim.

In this opening narrative of creation we only see mankind partaking in the plants and trees, but still ‘tending’ to the care of the Garden, given clear instructions by God to be careful in which trees they eat from, avoiding the well known Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is a much broader ethical narrative about man’s self-awareness to his responsibility that I deal with in my book “Illuminating Theologies”, but principally shows us the relationship between early man and nature.

While there is harvesting, and gathering, there is no planting, or working of these trees. There are no animal products like milk, or wool to even clothe themselves, and of course a complete lack of sacrifice despite Adam having named the animals, showing a tight relationship. Man in this period was in a sense living quite similar to the other animals, still lacking many of the human-like experiences that classify our own lives triggered post first sin.

What is immediately interesting is that the very first result of the sin is not man being tossed from the Garden, but man realizing his nakedness and using fig leaves as clothes. This is the first time man ‘manipulates’ his environment in a way that leads to a sort of resource extraction of his environment. We can see man’s removal from the Garden in the lens of his inability to balance and sustain himself due to his inner yetzer hara, evil inclination, disconnecting him from God’s words and ultimately forcing him to find other methods of survival. Effectively the central location for man was no longer fixed upon Eden - wherever the location might be - and man would begin a phase of geographic nomadism.

We can view this earliest phase as the branching point between man and animal even within a secular understanding of the chimpanzee-human relationship - there were humans and there were now apes, and chimps, with their original Hebrew equivalent named as such by Adam. Chimps do not travel, and live in the same forests their entire lives able to dwell in their own sort of ‘paradise’ unable to really effect their environmental circumstances contrasting with the human who now, after leaving the Garden, can change his fortunes.

Quoting Ramchal’s Derech Hashem where he outlines the various distinctions of the soul we learn that humans contain an ‘animal soul’ much like all other animals: “One type of soul that man has is the same as that which exists in all living creatures. It is this [animal] soul that is responsible for man’s natural feelings and intelligence. This type of soul also exists in all living creatures, and is a very ethereal entity. It is transmitted through the genetic material at the time of conception, and then continually spreads, constructing a body appropriate for each particular species. As the creature matures, it continues to grow, and it is responsible for the existence of its senses, as well as the intelligence appropriate for the particular species. As a result of this, the intelligence of different animal species can vary greatly. The intellect of man, however, is very different from that of animals.”⁴ Very clearly, we see that within man there exists an ‘evolved’ nature similar to that present in animals, in addition to the heavenly soul that enables a different conscious understanding of reality than other creatures.

Turning to the currently developing scientific discipline, we can see a sort of agreed scholarly consensus arising for the evolution of the Hominina Subtribe that split off from chimpanzees about five million years ago. Chimps and Hominina represent two branching Subtribes within the wider Tribe of Homini, having yet to totally form into their own Genus with persistent bipedalism - walking on two legs - being the primary trait differentiating the next branch. Assuming a Garden-like environment, bipedalism would only become a more critical development after being tossed out of Eden. We would also not consider ‘chimps’ to be humans in a technical sense despite a scientific inclusion in the same family, but we can’t necessarily place bipedalism as the critical trait to define “Adam”, and mankind. For example, the other groups of Nephilim and human-like beings also clearly were bipedal; thus we can say that neither ‘Adam’ nor humankind had yet to emerge, and sort of shared an existence with these other groups.

Sometime within a roughly two million year period - precise time frames don’t matter since science shifts these every few years and the Torah makes no attempt to date these events prior to Noah’s life - the Hominina Subtribe of Homini have a probable split between the Australopithecus and Ardipithecus Genuses prior to the emergence of the Homo Genus. Both of these are sort of brother groups to humans, with a wider dispersal around Africa showing a non-centrality (they were spread around) for these groups' location.

Below are two maps for these respective groups showing the wide range of primate-like species. In the first map we see the Australopithecus Genus, while the second map shows the Ardipithecus along with a variety of other simians, or primates such as the Aegyptopithecus - a small new-world monkey-like Genus living along the Nile. There were a variety of simians, primates, and apes, but none from the Genus Homo had spread from their central location. It is helpful to understand other related groups such as the Graecopithicus had reached Europe, but only shared the Homini Family, rather than Tribe, Genus, or Species making them decidedly non-human.

Many of these related groups varied in size, like the small Aegyptopithecus, but some like the Graecopithicus were almost Gorilla-like. Ardipithecus for example was something similar to an Orangutan giving rise to a range of competing sizes and heights for these ‘familial relatives’ of Humans. Orangutan’s, and possibly Ardipithecus, spent much of their time in the trees causing the evolution of large forearms, necessary for grasping at branches. This contrasts to chimps, or gorillas who walk on their knuckles in a sort of dual-phase bipedalism showing Ardipithicus really hadn’t developed the classical human-like characteristics.

One of the major differences between Australopithecus and Ardipithicus is probably the emergence and usage of complex stone tools. The earliest sites all correspond to the eastern african highlands around modern Ethiopia and Kenya⁵, with sites around the Lower Awash valley containing some of the oldest examples.⁶ Like humans, Australopithecus was using stone tools, but there is some debate surrounding which group first developed this usage given bones and skeletal fragments from Australopithecus and Homo are found near the sites.⁷ Helpful to bookend the development of these tools is the later development of metallurgy traditionally associated with the Cainite known in the bible as Tubal-cain born right before the age of Noah’s Flood. The earliest scientific knowledge of metallurgy comes from between the 6th and 5th centuries BCE around the archeological zone known as the Vinča culture in modern Serbia.⁸

Turning back to the development of Stone Tools, it was during this time, possibly as a result of further engineering in tool design, the Homo Genus first began to arise alongside the Australopithecus around Ethiopia. One of these notable groups are the Homo Habilis, translated as “Handy Man” due to their association with the Oldowan tool complex industry. There is much debate surrounding categorization of these groups, with some believing the “Habilis” should be within the Australopithecus grouping. Whether, or not they were morphologically separate, a critical difference is that Homo Habilis was the first species to live in a monogamous, not polyamorous, society.⁹ Other Australopithecus like the ‘Sediba’ Species developed hairless, almost human feature sets showing a clear emergence of humanity within the Homo-Australopithecus tool complex.

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This is actually the opening section to what serves as an insertion into the Book of Nimrod, and provides key background identifications for the various antediluvian Flood beings, such as the Nephilim. For the next few sections, we will continue to explore the evolution of mankind leading up to our identification for Nimrod.

1. Genesis 1:27

2. Gen. Rabbah 8:1, Ber. 61a, Eruvin 18a

3. Genesis 4:26

4. Derech Hashem, Moshe Cham Luzzatto (Ramchal) Part 3:1

5. Harmand, Sonia; et al. (21 May 2015). "3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya". Nature. 521 (7552): 310–315.

6. "Oldest tool use and meat-eating revealed | Natural History Museum"

7. Rogers, Michael J.; Semaw, Sileshi (2009). "From Nothing to Something: The Appearance and Context of the Earliest Archaeological Record". In Camps i Calbet, Marta; Chauhan, Parth R. (eds.). Sourcebook of paleolithic transitions: methods, theories, and interpretations. New York: Springer.

8. Radivojević, Miljana; Roberts, Benjamin W. (2021). "Early Balkan Metallurgy: Origins, Evolution and Society, 6200–3700 BC". Journal of World Prehistory. 34 (2): 195–278.

9. Werner, J. J. (2012). "Mating Behavior in Australopithecus and Early Homo: A Review of the Diagnostic Potential of Dental Dimorphism". University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology. 22 (1): 11–19.