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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 348559" data-attributes="member: 4937">I agree regarding paraphrases.As to the meaning of the verse, I'm hesitant to speculate.  I'm sure it hasn't been clear to anyone in thousands of years what it is supposed to mean.  It probably wasn't even clear to the Leviticus editors, they just dutifully copied it down and argued over its meaning just as we do now.  However, since we are specifically talking about using the theory in a fictional context...WARNING: THEOLOGICAL SPECULATION FROM HERE ON OUT IS JUST THAT AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A BASIS FOR SERIOUS FAITH OR TAUGHT AS SUCH TO NEW CONVERTS.A personal theory of mine is that thier were multiple creation events.  That is to say, that creation was and is an ongoing process.  This would agree with the palentological record and our observations of the world around us.  It would also convienently explain how multiple creation accounts slipped into genesis (leaving aside the specific difficulties that entails), and why the Leviticus editors saw no need to try to reconcile multiple accounts (which they could have easily done).  The world has not been static since creation, and even a few thousand years (if we want to be fundamentalist without good cause IMO) is a very long time.  Four and a half billion years is a very long time, and more than enough time for a creative God to (if it is not too anthromorphic to think so) 'playfully' experiment before getting down to more 'serious' business.  In this light, the notion that God started out with several branches of humanity is not so startling.  Exactly what happened to the others isn't my business (I suspect we killed them), but it is possible that the Nephillim reference refers to a time when humanity could remember that it had several distinct branches - labeled by the author 'Sons of God' (decendents of the Adam creation), and 'daughters of men' (decendents of earlier creation events which the author could not fully comprehend).  (BTW, its pretty obvious that the author came from a patriarchal culture isn't it.) People being people, and the 'Sons of God' and the 'daughters of men'  apparantly concurring that people are people, put aside racial differences that make the minor differences between modern humans seem trivial, hybridized, with the result being certain genetic disorders, the most notable of which being giganticism.  The likely hybrid in question would have been the Neaderthals who coexisted with us for, well, a very long time.  Given the fact that there is some scientific speculation about hybridization, and what we know about Neaderthal physical traits, this makes a very intriguing theory to me.Of course, its just that, and has no real textual evidence, just as any speculation on this subject is pretty baseless.   However, as a theory to introduce into a role playing fictionalization, it has its merits.</blockquote>

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