A hebrew scholar Michael Heiser says in a article that nephilim can not mean
the falling ones. In the Mechanical Translation of Genesis 6:4 it is translated
as falling ones. How can we know what is the proper translation?
This is an except of the article.
Hebrew scholar Michael Heiser explains this quite clearly:
Sitchin assumes "nephilim" comes from the Hebrew word
"naphal" which usually means "to fall." He then forces the
meaning "to come down" onto the word, creating his "to
come down from above" translation.
In the form we find it in the Hebrew Bible, if the word
nephilim came from Hebrew naphal, it would not be
spelled as we find it.
The form nephilim cannot mean "fallen ones" (the spelling
would then be nephulim).Likewise nephilim does not mean
"those who fall" or "those who fall away" (that would be
nophelim).
The only way in Hebrew to get nephilim from naphal by
the rules of Hebrew morphology (word formation) would
be to presume a noun spelled naphil and then pluralize it.
I say "presume" since this noun does not exist in biblical
Hebrew unless one counts Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:
33, the two occurrences of nephilim - but that would then
be assuming what one is trying to prove!
However, in Aramaic the noun naphil(a) does exist. It
means "giant," making it easy to see why the Septuagint
(the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible)
translated nephilim as gigantes ("giant").
Why does Mr Sitchin want us to believe that nephilim means
"those who CAME DOWN from heaven"? For no other reason
than to make the nephilim sound like ancient astronauts
