Let me start off by saying that this is not salvific. There is nothing about the nature of giants that is going to determine your salvation. This is not an important topic– but it was interesting to me and it might be interesting to someone else. I’m also behind on this because the idea for this post started percolating in January when we were studying Genesis in Come Follow Me and I am getting around to writing it out.
If you have read the first few chapters of Genesis, you probably read the following verses:
Genesis 6:1-2
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they werefair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the Lord said, My spiritshall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same becamemighty men which were of old, men of renown.
The earth also was corruptbefore God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violencethrough them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
You might have wondered, who were the sons of God and the daughters of men if all of humanity came from Adam and Eve? And who are these giants and why are they important to the subject of the sons of God and daughters of men? Frequently the sons of God having children with the daughters of men is interpreted as male angels having sexual relationships with human women, with the giants being the result of such pairings. The Book of Enoch, a widely read writing from the last few centuries BC, puts forth this narrative and also says that some of these angels taught humans forbidden knowledge like metal working, weapons-making, and cosmetics. The Book of Enoch, far from being written by Enoch himself, was written in the Second Temple period from the 6th century BCE to 70 AD (Marina, 2026). The Book of Giants was part of the discoveries in Qumran (between 1947 and 1956) and it is an incomplete account of the exploits of the giants and Enoch’s interpretations of their dreams and his attempts to intercede with God on their behalf to prevent their destruction. The Book fo Giants was heavily influenced by Near Eastern mythology, which is why one of the giants is named Gilgamesh (Wise et al., 1996).
But none of this really make things clearer. Many religions believe that angels are spirits without bodies. (Latter Day Saints believe that some types of angels have bodies– see Doctrine and Covenants 129, but there is a general interpretation, which has never been discouraged or clarified, that these types of angels are not procreating. That seems to be for mortal bodies and exalted bodies.) So if angels don’t have bodies, then how would they procreate with human women?
I would like to propose a different way of looking at the Old Testament, particularly the very early books of Genesis. I understand that many Latter Day Saints (as well as other Christians) believe in the Young Earth Theory that the Earth is 7,000 years old and all of humanity falls within that timeframe as well. However, it is possible that the scientific dating of the Earth is correct and that the first humans emerged somewhere around 300,000 years ago (and quite possibly in Africa). If that were the case, then the story of humans would be much older than 7,000 years and the stories about the first humans would have been passed down for thousands and thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of years. In this case, some things might get “lost in translation” so to speak because they would be relating events that even people in antiquity would be very far removed from and have no experience with, such as an Ice Age, strange creatures like mammoths or woolly rhinos, and other human species, namely Neanderthals.
Current dating of the Book of Genesis places its writing around 500 BCE, though tradition states that Moses wrote it around the 13th or 14th centuries BCE. While Genesis and the four other books of the Pentateuch were likely written after the Babylonian captivity, they were also likely based on much older oral traditions (Schachterle, 2026). I’d also like to point out that much of the writings of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is the result of centuries of scholars copying sacred records and inspired writings so that we could have them today (Vickers, 2021). Even if we were to take the most compressed possible timeline of 7,000 years of Earth’s history and Moses writing Genesis in approximately 1400 BCE, Genesis would still be extremely removed from the first humans and have to rely on oral traditions or maybe (maybe) earlier written records. If we accept the possibility of a 300,000 year timeline, the potential for direct accounts in Genesis decreases dramatically. Latter Day Saints believe that Adam had a written language and kept records (Moses 6:5-6), but these records would have been extremely ancient, likely written in another (possibly extinct) language and discuss events of a paleolithic world that would be very hard to understand for people in antiquity.
I would like to suggest that such records by Adam may have indeed been revealed to Moses and he may have translated them similar to the way Joseph Smith described translating the Book of Mormon. Such records by the hand of Adam would run into the same problem as other scriptures that were about things far in the past or far in the future: difficulties with one-to-one translation of words and concepts, abridgement, and completely foreign objects, animals, etc. It would present a problem similar to that of current readers trying to understand the Book of Revelations: a writer from thousands of years ago trying to describe things from the future which he had absolutely no frame of reference for (possibly tanks, jets, 20th or 21st century military body armor, etc.) There was absolutely no word for something like “airplane” or “tank” for John the Revelator, so he used words that he had available to him, which don’t make as much sense to us. Likewise there seems to be no English word for a “curelom” or “cumom” in the Book of Mormon. What kind of word would a 19th century writer be able to use to effectively describe a still extant colony of Ice Age animals like a Giant Ground Sloth or an Ice Age tapir or even less exotic animals like llamas, alpacas or vicunas to a 19th century audience? So what kind of word would someone from the 13th-14th century BCE or even the 5th or 6th century BCE use to describe Neanderthals, who, if we assume accuracy in the scientific record, would have co-existed with humans for about 260,000 years? A writer in antiquity might possibly use words that would describe their physical features or the fact that they were like homo sapiens, but not of the same level of development and intelligence. So let’s now consider how “giants” and “daughters of men” might fit into such a framework.
Neanderthals lived on the Earth from about 430,000 years BCE and 40,000 BCE. They are often thought to be shorter, stockier and stronger than homo sapiens, though some more recent research indicates that they may have been not only muscular and stocky, but also a little taller than homo sapiens (Helmuth, 1998). Either way, they had wider shoulders, thicker bones and a more robust physique than homo sapiens. It also seems like their brains may have been more to vision and body control with less brain capacity left over for social interactions and complex cognition (Stromberg, 2013.) There is also evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals (Cosnefroy et al., 2025). This could have led to the rise of certain types of deadly diseases among Neanderthals and contributed to their decline (Liberski, 2013).
I think it’s possible that “in those days there were giants” may have referred to a time when homo sapiens and Neanderthals occupied the same lands, the Neanderthals being the “giants”. They would have been powerful hunters and fighters, which could also explain the phrase “mighty men which were of old”. However, they lacked the cognitive abilities of homo sapiens. Now, Latter Day Saints believe in theosis and that the entire human race are spirit sons and daughters of God the Father and have the potential to become like Him. So while homo sapiens have the ability to understand more complex ethical concepts and make covenants with God and become like Him, it is very possible that Neanderthals did not. Thus the phrase “sons of God” might refer to homo sapien men and “daughters of men” (“men in the King James Bible often meant “human”) might have referred to Neanderthal women. Offspring from these relationships may have been larger and stronger than homo sapien children, but also lacked the cognitive abilities to be able to participate in worshipping God and creating covenant marriages and families. But why the particular arrangement of homo sapien men and Neanderthal women? Well, genome analysis might have a clue for us about that.
About 2% of the genome of people descended from those living outside Africa is derived from Neanderthals. Courtship and also violence may have both been ways that humans and Neanderthals ended up interbreeding. The first Neanderthals and humans probably made contact with each other around 250,000 years ago, but it was not these first sporadic encounters that led to the intermingling of DNA that occurred. Between about 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, humans started making a big push out of Africa and into Europe. It was during this time that interbreeding between humans and neanderthals became relatively frequent. While humans have DNA from Neanderthals, none of it is mitochondrial DNA that is inherited from the mother. There aren't any homo sapiens genes in the genetic material from Neanderthals that has been analyzed so far. While this could be due to quirks in the availability of Neanderthal DNA samples, the fact that the passage of genetic material only seems to go one way, from Neanderthal fathers to human mothers, indicates that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were not very compatible species and that the viability or fertility of the offspring may have depended on the pairing of the parents. Female homo sapiens and Neanderthal men may have been more likely to produce viable offspring with female hybrids being more likely to be fertile and males possibly having a greater likelihood of sterility. Homo sapiens men and Neanderthal females though, may have been less likely to produce viable or fertile hybrids, thus reducing the likelihood of finding homo sapiens genes in the Neanderthal genome. The continual interbreeding between homo sapiens and Neanderthals resulted in more sterile offspring and a decline in Neanderthal populations, which may have led to more Neanderthal inbreeding, likewise resulting in more sterile offspring (Ashworth, 2022).
The specific arrangement that Genesis mentions as being a problem, sons of God and daughters of men, is reminiscent of this nonviable arrangement of homo sapiens males and Neanderthal females. I think it is possible that the record in Genesis is alluding to a time in very far distant history when the future of humanity hung in the balance because of homo sapiens pairing up with Neanderthals– and it might . The statement that “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth”, might hint at the mixing of the human and Neanderthal genomes. That “the earth was filled with violence” might also offer an insight that some of the pairings between homo sapiens and Neanderthals may not have been peaceful. There could have been a great deal of conflict that was also contributing to the potential destruction of homo sapiens. If homo sapiens were following the example of Neanderthals and engaging cannibalism on a relatively widespread scale as well, this could have likewise presented a threat to human existence.
What about the Flood?
Sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle began in the cycle of glacial and interglacial periods. By about 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle was underway, increasing the Earth’s temperature by about 10 degrees (Eldredge and Biek, 2019). Hypothetically speaking, this could have led to significant flooding in the land and that could point to the flood of Noah. A continual state of violence along with interbreeding between Neanderthals and homo sapiens could have placed humanity at a point where they were heading towards destroying themselves whether a flood came or not.
Wrapping Up
Again, none of this is salvific. You don’t need any of this. However, I think there are some relevant points to an exploration of a biblical topic in this way. For one thing, the Bible doesn’t have to be a straightjacket that we tie ourselves into. We can look at outside information from history and science to help us understand the Bible better. We can seek truths from multiple sources to help us understand the whole truth better. And it is a reminder of the importance of following the Lord’s commandments. There is evidence from science and the Bible that humanity’s history may have hung in the balance from a failure to follow the Lord’s commandments.
References
Ashworth, J. (2022 October 31). Neanderthal extinction may have been caused by sex, not fighting. Natural History Museum. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/october/neanderthal-extinction-maybe-caused-sex-not-fighting.html
Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al. (2025). Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3
Eldredge, S. and Biek, B. (2019). Glad you asked: Ice ages– what are they and what causes them? Utah Geological Survey.
Helmuth H. Body height, body mass and surface area of the Neanderthals. Z Morphol Anthropol. 1998;82(1):1-12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9850627/
Liberski, P. P. (2013). Kuru: A Journey Back in Time from Papua New Guinea to the Neanderthals’ Extinction. Pathogens, 2(3), 472-505. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens2030472
Marina, M. (2026 March 8). Book of Enoch: Summary, who wrote it, when written. Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/book-of-enoch/
Schachterle, J. (2026 March 18). When was Genesis written? (Debates and evidence). Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/when-was-genesis-written/
Stromberg, J. (2013 March 12). Science shows why you’re smarter than a Neanderthal. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-shows-why-youre-smarter-than-a-neanderthal-1885827/
Vickers, B. (2012 May 31). From the hands of scribes. Tyndale House Cambridge. https://tyndalehouse.com/2021/05/31/from-the-hands-of-scribes/
Wise, M., Abegg, M. and Cook, E. (1996). The Book of Giants: Introduction and commentary. The Gnostic Society Library (http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm
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