Who were the "giants" mentioned in the Bible? I've come across several verses in the Bible that speak of &quot;giants&quot;. For example:

Gen 6:4 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 [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown.
Num 13:33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, [which come] of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Deu 2:10 The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims;
Deu 2:11 Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims.

However, I haven't been able to understand who exactly the giants were. Does this just refer to a race of men who were unusually large? Or were they not men but actually a separate species, and if so do we know anything of their origins?
Over the years, there have been many theories to explain these Nephilim.  I'm not fond of list answers, but unfortunately, there's no better way to represent all of these wildly varying theories.

Possible theories:


Giants (giantism)

Historically, there have been people who have been over eight feet tall.  Archaeologists have uncovered tombs of these people who were probably in that height range source.

Even a glance at Wikipedia, shows people solidly over eight feet tall.

This theory holds that these people were simply giants--either particularly tall or had giantism.
Offspring of women and fallen angels

Genesis 6:1-2 says the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose (NIV).  If we look at Gen 6:1-4, we see that Nephilim were the children of these "sons of God".

Job 2:1 shows that these sons of God were definitely of the spiritual realm.  In fact, other translations interpret sons of God as angels. 

Final support of this (as others have mentioned) is that the Hebrew word that "Nephilim" is based off the Hebrew word "fall" (as in "to fall" or "fallen").

These concepts put together give strong support that Nephilim were children of fallen angels that had sex with human women.
Nephilim were descendants of Cain/Seth (source)

The idea behind this is that godly men--ie "sons of God"--(probably descending from Seth) married descendants of Cain (more specifically, of Enoch).  

Enoch was a paganistic society and so the idea that the children of the offspring were "fallen" kind of fits with this as well (per the Hebrew argument above).

Other support for this is based on Matthew 5:9 where Jesus says Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.  This, the theory goes, shows that "sons of God" is a good thing and therefore, the children of Seth were righteous men.

In this theory, however, the Nephilim would have been simply "heroes", not necessarily "giants".
They're completely fictional

If you take the Pentateuch as a history of legends, then clearly the Nephilim are just another part of the legend. 


Other theories that are too far-fetched


Nephilim were descendants of Kings (source)

Since "sons of God" can equally be translated as "sons of kings", this theory holds that kings were philandering with common women, creating "heroes of old, men of renown" (Gen 6:4)
Nephilim were extra-terrestrials

Yes, some people believe this.  Yet there is absolutely no biblical or archeological basis for this.
Nephilim were Neanderthals (source)

The idea here is that the Neanderthals were stronger than humans and therefore "giants".  This is a clearly unbiblical theory (we seemed like grasshoppers in their eyes).


Primary Source

Those are some of the theories that have been used throughout time to explain these Nephilim.  The most popular is probably that the "sons of God" were fallen angels, although there are some problems with this theory. (Job seems to indicate that "sons of God" are good, not fallen; Mark and Matthew state that angels don't marry, etc. source.)

Ultimately, this is something we'll probably not know for sure until the end of the world.