I. Name

The ‘warriors that were of old’ (gibbôrîm ʾāšer mēʿôlām) mentioned in Gen. 6.4 and identified with a special class of superhuman beings (the Nephilim) in the antediluvian period are clearly a race apart from David’s champions (gibbôrîm) listed in 2 Sam. 23.8–39 (= 1 Chr. 11.10–47). The further definition mēʿôlām is important here because it locates the activities of the gibbôrîm in the primeval period and not in the recent historical past. The first named gibbôr on earth was Nimrod and the meaning of this epithet, like the Akk. g…