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ButlerianJihad • today at 9:16 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

It is really not far-fetched that these passages describe some ancient memories of coexisting with another quasi-human race. And certainly the narrative of interbreeding is tantalizing. Perhaps if it did not actually happen this way, we believe it now, because many Christians would need to interpolte truth about the past and reconcile these passages.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/6?1

  1 When human beings began to grow numerous on the earth and daughters were born to them,
  2 the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of human beings were, and so they took for their wives whomever they pleased.
  3 ...
  4 The Nephilim appeared on earth in those days, as well as later, after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of human beings, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/ezekiel/32?27

  27 They do not rest with the warriors
  who fell in ancient times,
  who went down to Sheol fully armed.
  Their swords were placed under their heads
  and their shields laid over their bones;
  For there was terror of these warriors
  in the land of the living.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/numbers/13?33

  33 There [in Canaan] we saw the Nephilim* (the Anakim are from the Nephilim); in our own eyes we seemed like mere grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed to them.”
It can be no coincidence that George Lucas chose to name his antagonist "Anakin", taking this Hebrew word from the ancient race of quasi-human adversaries. Perhaps the very narrative of Darth Vader's fatherhood and clash with the peace-loving, spiritual Luke and rebels, is a recapitulation of humanity's own struggle with our brutal Neanderthal past.

Replies

bregma • today at 9:37 AM

Neanderthals were fully human. They were the same species (Homo sapiens) as us. We could interbreed and produce viable offspring and we often has similar customs (burial of the dead, lithic art, tool manufacture and use). There was no coexistence with a quasi-human "race", there was just coexistence with different peoples.

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