To some degree. We're all wrong right to some degree that no matter what
you believe about the world, you're going to need to leave space to change
that belief because we're always getting new information. The world is always changing,
interpretations are always changing, and new evidence presents itself. So we want to
make sure we're leaving space for that, because to be really dogmatic in a
particular position, to hold that dogmatism makes you inflexible, It makes you unwilling
to truly listen to what other people are saying. The Bible doesn't say a
lot about nepheline, but this is in Genesis chapter six, when people began
to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them.
The sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives
for themselves, of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, my
spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh. Their days
shall be one hundred twenty years. The Nethelem were on the earth in those
days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went into the daughters
of humans who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of
old warriors of Renown. As I was riding along the road on my mule,
I suddenly noticed a very strange person walking beside me. His head was
about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no
clothing but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked
him where he dwelt, and he replied that he had no home, and
that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro. He
said he was a very miserable creature, and his mission was to destroy the
souls of men. I'd like to welcome Nathan to Bigfoot Crossroads. We're going
to talk about an aspect of Bigfoot, and the unexplained that it's something that
interested me for a long time. You certainly hear a lot about it.
It's kind of a certain I guess, a belief system at this point whenever
it comes to these subjects, especially in regards to Bigfoot. But we're going
to finally talk about the idea of Bigfoot being Nephelim from the Bible or possibly
demonic in nature. Nathan, first of all, welcome to Bigfoot Crossroads.
Thanks for joining me. Great to be here. Matt looking forward to this
I've had it on my calendar for a while and I just can't wait to
get into it. Yeah. So I met you through a mutual friend,
DJ, who's also been on the show. You co host a podcast with
him called Calling All Beans Where, And that's beans as in beans, not
beans as in what you put in Chile For anyone that if you make a
good silly though, we're all about it. Bring it. Yeah, sure,
Calling All Beans. But you guys, what I thought was a UFO
podcast is really much more than a UFO podcast. Would you mind just telling
people what that podcast is about a little bit? Yeah? Absolutely. So
we've been doing Calling All Beans now for years. And DJ and I met
really kind of by accident. He used to do podcasting focused on the NBA
and MMA. I had never podcasted before it all, but I had a
strong interest in the UFO phenomenon, and so through just a series of random
accidents, we got connected to each other and decided to create a podcast together.
And we wanted to have a space where we could talk about UFOs,
talk about the paranormal, talk about Bigfoot, talk about weird things that people
experience in their life, and have that be a space that can be comfortable
and welcoming and validating and also thought provoking. So we tried very hard to
have a good time on the show, to make space for weird things and
weird ideas. We bring on some folks that neither he nor I necessarily always
agree with, But the goal is just to have an interesting conversation, and
the best way to do that, at least for us, was to do
that through a podcast, particularly when you live in a world now where we
can easily connect with folks from everywhere through these digital tools. So we're doing
that and it has taken us into some interesting territory, certainly not the traditional
UFO only focused podcast. We're looking at that wide range of phenomenological experience,
and I think that's important because for me these personally, if you can't have
an approach to reality that tries to incorporate or make sense of the weird things
that are happening in human experience, then you're just by default you're leaving something
out. So we're trying not to leave something out. We're trying to have
a cast a wide net and try to make sense of that. And it's
difficult, particularly if you want to sort of pigeonhole everything into one theory,
which we try hard not to do. So we're kind of doing a wide
collection and fun talking about it and leaving space for different theories, different ideas,
different guests. It's a fun format and we're really kind of just getting
started, even though we really we just finished our one hundred and second episode.
Yeah, congratulations on reaching that one hundredth episode milestone and just cruising right
on by it. Yeah. Thanks. You know, I've spent some time
sitting in with you guys on the podcast, and it was an amazing experience
for me, first off, being able to kind of put my feet up
and relax a bit whenever I'm on a podcast. Don't get to do that
much whenever you're hosting. But you guys really do a fantastic job of keeping
an open dialogue and allowing people to express their beliefs and their theories and their
opinions without making them feel defensive or challenged by expressing those things. And that's
very difficult to do because these topics can be very personal, I think,
to people, and because of that, they form their own opinions and theories
and their own beliefs, and they get kind of caught in that rut of
just staying in that lane and putting those blinders on and in turn a lot
of times get angry whenever somebody challenges that. But on your show, like
I said, you do a great job of having that open dialogue where people
don't get into those areas and get the feelings hurt and turn it into a
brawl on air like it happens a lot of times in other areas. Yeah,
I appreciate that we do try hard to do that. It's not easy
all the time. Sometimes you have to kind of small mile through it if
you're hearing something that you strongly disagree with. And that's not to say that
we're not willing to have a constructive dialogue about it. I think we are
willing to do that. But there's a recognition that we have anyway that to
some degree we're all wrong right to some degree, that no matter what you
believe about the world, you're going to need to leave space to change that
belief because we're always getting new information where the world is always changing, interpretations
are always changing, and new evidence presents itself. So we want to make
sure we're leaving space for that, because to be really dogmatic in a particular
position. At least, this is my position to hold that dogmatism makes you
inflexible, it makes you unwilling to truly listen to what other people are saying.
And that's something that we're really lacking a lot of in the world today,
listening. We're really wanting to get our points in and not listen to
what others are saying. So we're trying hard to do that, to listen
first and get into a dialogue and hopefully grow in that process of exchange.
So DJ found me through the Bigfoot World, listening to the podcast and just
being DJ and not being Batchel at all and just reaching out and talking to
him. Now, if I remember correctly, DJ actually got into bigfoot stuff
because of you. That's right, So I apologize, Yeah, thanks for
unleashing him on the Bigfoot world. Of course the nature. But you know,
it wouldn't be fair of me to do a Bigfoot podcast without asking why
the interest in bigfoot on your part. That's a really good question. It's
something a lot like UFOs in the sense that it's something I had a lifelong
interest in. Certainly as a young person, I was fascinated by stories about
Bigfoot. I've not had a bigfoot experience myself. I've been camping, been
out in the wilderness, never had something happen that I could kind of put
into that bucket. But I was fascinated by these stories that were shared in
my childhood, both in literature that i'd pick up from the school library and
also on TV. You know that those episodes that we all kind of grew
up with of mysterious things that had been reported in the world, and I
kind of did what a lot of people do. You know, you have
that fascination, you put it kind of back on the shelf as you get
a little bit older, unless you have a personal experience with it. That's
kind of where it stays. Well getting into UFOs for me, some correlation
here is that I take very seriously what people say, and doesn't mean I
take it at face value, but I do take it seriously. And when
I know people who've had experiences, whether they've had an experience of something strange
in the sky or strange beside their bed, or strange in the forest,
and I know these people personally and I know their character, their history,
I take it very seriously. I think you have to there was certainly a
time in my life where I didn't do that, and I would kind of
brush it off. And I think we're all pretty good about brushing off things
that sort of fall outside that consensus reality that we all share. You know,
that doesn't make sense for me. Nobody that I know has that experience,
so therefore it cannot be true, or I'm just ignore what you just
said. That's kind of what we typically do, right, But I had
someone that shared experience with me, a very profound one that he had had,
and I couldn't ignore it. And he then sent me an episode.
I forget exactly which one it was or what show was on, but it
was about the vocalizations. It was about the man who had the training in
languages and listening to these vocalizations. And I'm sure you know what I'm talking
about. Your listeners probably do as well. I mean, it was absolutely
riveting to me just listening to that content. And so I was in the
airport when I was listening to this episode, coming back from a trip,
and I sent that to DJ and you got to listen to this man.
This is this is a tense and he has caught the bug even bigger than
I had it man. He as you know, he is bigfoot all the
way gassed down. He's very into it. Yeah, for sure, contacts
me several times a week to have me either listen to something or ask me
about someone or a story, get my take on it, you know which
geez, I feel like the bitter old man sometimes, you know, having
been involved in this for so long, and you know, you build up
pretty strong callouses whenever it comes to anecdotal stories and podcast episodes, and it's
just like I don't always give him the opinion that he wants to hear,
which has led to some fantastic debates. But I'm glad that I've met DJ
in a time of my life whenever I have, because honestly, ten years
ago, I would have just said, hey, you're an idiot. You
don't know what you're talking about. I know more than you. Shut up.
Now, sometimes he does get me to start thinking about things and looking
at things from a different perspective and kind of opens my eyes a bit.
So it's nice to have people like DJ take an interest in the subject who
aren't viewing it, you know, with just a negative angle all the time
and allowing for conversations to take place. So I'm glad you introduced him to
the topic. All kidding aside, I'm glad he reached out to me.
I've become very good friends with him. I consider you a friend. I
feel very benefited by the introductions that he has made in my life and the
input he has added. But enough about DJ Jeez, Yeah, exactly,
He's so yeah. Whenever you're talking about people being firm in their beliefs and
not wanting to listen, and it doesn't get anymore so than whenever it comes
to religion. It's such a strong topic for people, an emotional topic.
It's to me, always been a dangerous area to discuss openly. At least
over the recent years, it has started becoming more and more popular in the
Bigfoot world. I even see comments on my own episodes where I'm not talking
about anything religious, I'm not proposing anything, and I see in the comments
sometimes people saying these things are demons or these things are this, and just
making these matter of fact statements. And whenever it comes to that stuff.
I do consider myself a Christian. That's my own personal faith. I don't
talk about it a lot on the podcast, but I will be the first
one to admit that whenever it comes to specific things in the Bible and certain
questions and things, a lot of times my opinions don't line up with fellow
questions in terms of interpretation and what certain things mean. And so I thought
it'd be a good idea to default to someone like yourself. So, starting
out, if you don't mind, could you give a little bit of your
background in terms of religious studies and everything as it pertains to this subject matter
and why I might have someone like you on the podcast to talk about this.
Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. So I grew
up in a Christian family. My father was a Baptist minister. So I
like to joke that before I was born, I was going to church Sundays
and Wednesdays every week. And as I grew up in that culture, being
a fixture of the church and heavily involved doing all the youth group activities and
choir, and I was all in in the church life. My dad,
I mentioned he was a Baptist minister. How many folks realized that the Baptist
tradition in the United States has kind of a complex history, and in the
late nineteen seventies. I guess this was probably right around before I was born.
There was a sort of schism in the Baptist denomination in the US between
kind of the more fundamentalist Baptists and those who I guess would call themselves progressive
Baptists or more liberal Baptist minded folks. Anyway, bring that up because my
father, when he went to seminary got his degree, is a PhD in
New Testament, So he got his degree from a Baptist institution. That institution
was more firmly within the progressive liberal perspective, and when this schism took place,
the church really sort of fragmented. The leadership changed within the denomination to
more of that fundamentalist perspective, and that was kind of a pretty sad moment
in his life. And I think from then on had to deal with the
consequences of a Baptist community that not always understood its past, but was wrestling
with some of those issues below the surface, sometimes on the surface. So
I grew up in that context, going to church regularly, but getting a
very kind of academic perspective on the faith. You know, my dad can
read the Greek New Testament, so I would always get interesting tidbits about well,
in the Greek this is what it means. It's a little bit more
sort of robust than it is in the English translation. And we'll get into
some of that too, I think when we talk about the nepheline. So
that was my childhood. I went to school, got it are in finance,
totally unrelated to do religion, but you know, very practical and if
I I should have something that would be useful in the world. But as
I kind of got toward the end of my college experience, I really felt
like I needed to understand my faith in a deeper way. I felt if
you're a Christian, I felt called to pursue that further. So I went
to seminary after I finished my undergraduate So I went to a Baptist seminary in
Georgia, but a progressive Baptist seminary, and my professors were in some cases
colleagues of my father who went to the same schools that he went to,
and even some of his own professors were teaching me. So it was a
small seminary and we got that kind of education and I really enjoyed it.
I love talking about religion, theology, ideas philosophy. But I realized pretty
early on into that experience that the Christianity that that I thought was so important
to me was kind of one aspect of a larger picture. When you study
Christian theology, you realize that what these theologians are doing over the centuries is
they're taking the world that they live in and the world that they were born
in, and they're trying to bring the Christian text into that world and really
translate it in a way that the world of their day can understand. So
these theologies, some of which if you are a Christian believer, no matter
what church you go to or denomination you go to, you have a theological
perspective that is influenced by these thinkers in the past. And a lot of
people don't think that. They think, oh, well, no, no,
that's not true. I just I just look at the Bible and that's
my theology. But the reality is there is very much a cultural, you
know, sort of lensing happening between you and the text, and that's something
that we cannot really escape. We're going to try, and many people try
it through various different means and methods, but that is truly inescapable, So
we're bringing ourself into the conversation with that material. That's just what we do.
So I left the church behind. It wasn't something that I felt like
I needed to continue to pursue and just got a normal career, which I've
had now for quite some time, almost twenty years. And oddly enough,
the UFO topic has kind of brought me back into and helped me sort of
reclaim or redeem aspects of my religious upbringing. I don't consider to myself to
be Christian now, but I do absolutely make more room for Christianity and the
perspective of Christianity in my worldview. So my history is a little bit complex
there. I wouldn't call myself a believer in the traditional sense, but I
also acknowledge that there are aspects of Christian belief that I believe are quite true.
So again, all part of that larger story which we're all trying to
figure out. My introduction to this theory or belief, whatever you want to
call it behind Bigfoot being one of these biblical entities was a story that I
heard very early on. It was actually the Mormon Church that started this belief,
believe it or not, and I actually found the story, so let
me read that real fast. It comes from a church apostible by the name
of David Patten when he described an encounter he had with Cain in eighteen thirty
five, so that's a long time ago, especially for bigfoot information. As
I was riding along the road on my mule, I suddenly noticed a very
strange person walking beside me. His head was about even with my shoulders as
I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing but was covered with hair.
His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt, and
he replied that he had no home, and that he was a wanderer in
the earth and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable
creature and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. So this apostle
is talking about Cain based on his belief and everything. And this entry was
included in Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness, which was originally published
in nineteen sixty nine. So here's where it gets interesting. In nineteen eighty
there were actually sightings of Bigfoot reported in South Weber, Utah. So basically,
the Mormons the Mormon community in Utah at the time of those sightings in
nineteen eighty made the connection between Bigfoot and the description of Bigfoot to what this
apossible apostle described as his meeting with Cain, and thus the idea of Bigfoot
being Cain, Bigfoot being included in the Bible Bigfoot being evil was born.
The Mormon Church definitely wanted a way to say, oh, well, Satan
is doing this, Satan is behind this, He's coming after us, So
that means we're doing something right. That means our you know, religion is
confirmed based on the actions of Satan. So that's actually where it came from,
a story from an apostle in eighteen thirty five. In the Mormon Church,
it was just a story, you know. It was an interesting one,
but it didn't have any traction. Really, I never heard anyone talking
about it or anything until I would say, within the past five years or
so, it has become a very popular belief that Bigfoot are biblical and evil
in nature. So my first question in regards to Bigfoot being nehlem, nepheline,
whatever the correct pronunciation, is what does the Bible actually say about them?
Like, is this something that like, does the descriptions actually match Bigfoot
in your opinion? Well, no, the Bible doesn't say a lot about
Nephiline. They're not mentioned often in the Bible. But I do have some
passages that I think we should read and get into a little bit related to
the mention of the nephileine. But in no example I'm about to read,
are they described as covered in hair? And even the link between these Nephileine
and Caine is a little bit tenuous at best. I also find it interesting
that in the Apostles story that you shared, it's a very it's a very
sort of like just kind of not cordial, but you know, calm conversation
is happening with this being on the side of the road who's apparently meant to
torment human beings. So not a lot of tormenting happening there, just more
of a conversation, but nevertheless of fascinating, fascinating account. So why don't
I start with the first instance of where the nepheleem are mentioned in the Bible,
And that's in the Book of Genesis, so very early on those of
who don't know, that's the first book that's Genesis. It's the very first
one. So this is in Genesis chapter six, and I'm going to read
the first four verses of this chapter, and the translation that I'm using is
the new Revised Standard version, so those of you who care about those things,
all right. So it starts when people began to multiply on the face
of the ground, and daughters were born to them. The sons of God
saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves, of all
that they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in
mortals forever, for they are flesh. Their days shall be one hundred twenty
years. The Nephalim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward
when the sons of God went into the daughters of humans who bore children to
them. These were the heroes that were of old warriors of renown, all
right. So there's a lot to unpack in that little passage there, and
there's some I think fairly clear ambiguity. You kind of put those two words
together. It's not clear which what the Nephalm actually are in this passage.
So we know that it mentions the Nephalim were on the earth in those days,
and this was by the way, right before the flood happened. This
was right before Noah was building the Ark and the flood came along the the
in that passage, so they were on the earth. They're on the earth
in those days and afterward. But separately, it says when the sons of
God went into the daughters of humans who bore children to them. So it's
not necessarily clear that the nephalim are also these sons of God who went and
had children with the daughters of humans. Right, So there's a little bit
of it's not clear there. Some people like to make those two things the
same, right, but if you really look at it, it's not entirely
clear. Then it says these were the heroes that were of old warriors of
renown, so so that that phrase seems to be related to the children who
were born to the women and the sons of God, not necessarily to these
nephiline. So again, these nephiline kind of stand on their own to some
degree. So that's the first passage. Before you get to the second one,
I want to talk a little bit about the word nephilim and how it's
sort of translated or understood. So it's a Hebrew word. And when it
was when the when the Hebrew text was translated into Greek. This happened in
the some people think the third second century, before Christ, so before the
Common Era, if you don't use a different way of saying it. And
the reason why the Bible was translated into Greek at that time is that the
rulers of the day, you know, they decided they wanted to have this
text, but they wanted to have it in the language that they could read.
Hebrew was not a widely used language at that time. It was a
Greek sort of cultural world at that point, and the phrase of that is
Hellenism. So Hellenism was sort of the culture of the region of the world,
and if you're in that region, you're sort of steeped in Greek culture
in various different ways, even if you come from other traditions that aren't at
their beginning Greek in nature. So Greek ways of thinking, Greek philosophy,
Greek mythology permeates all these aspects of culture in that Mediterranean basin where these things
are happening. And so the ruler of the day apparently decided to gather up
these Hebrew scholars, these Hebrew elders, and the saying is that he basically
got six scholars from the twelve tribes of Israel, so seventy two Hebrew scholars
who could translate into Greek into coin a Greek, which is the common Greek
that was used at the time, and he just sort of asked them all
to create translations of the Hebrew text, and he asked them to do this
sort of separately. And so the mythology here is they are all doing this
separately, and they all kind of came to similar translations. Why do I
bring all that up? I bring that up because the the the word nethylene
and Hebrew tends to have a connotation of fallen or fallen ones or causing causing
ones to fall. So it's interesting there's a fall component with that word.
But when they did the translation into Greek, they're there again. They're thinking
about that Hellenistic culture I just mentioned. And the only thing that they could
kind of come up with as a parallel to this fallen notion is sort of
this idea of giants these uh you know in Greek and mythology, you know,
you've got these kinds of titans and giants. And that's the sort of
parallel that was made then between nethhyaline being fallen and nethylene being giants. Right,
So that and that that kind of stook a little bit, and obviously
we're still talking about it because it did. There's that giant connotation there.
I mean, how many stories in Greek mythology do you have where you know,
a god basically mated with a human and produced you know, this half
hybrid offspring that was some sort of you know, warrior hero or you know,
exceptionally strong, you know, things like that. The parallels between the
two are really kind of fascinating, exactly, And I think that's the interesting
thing. We should come back to that, because that is something that we're
still talking about today, this sort of hybridized quality, right right. So
the other passage I want to read is from the Book of Numbers. This
is really the only place it's mentioned in the Bible outside of some other non
canonical texts of the Bible. So number chapter thirteen. This is where Moses
is basically just deciding to send out some spies into the land of Canaan because
he's all these people. Remember he took all these people out of Egypt.
He's going to get them somewhere. So He's like, all right, go
scout out this land of Canaan, and let's see if maybe this is a
good place for us to go. So these spies go out there and they
gather intelligence. They come back and they talk to Moses, and they kind
of share what they have learned. And so what they say this is numbers,
chapter thirteen, verse twenty seven. So and they reported to him and
said, we came to the land to which you sent us. It flows
with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Get The people who
live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large.
And besides, we saw the descendants of a knock there. The Amalekites
live in the land of the Negeb, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and
the Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live by the sea
and along the Jordan. But Caleb quite of the people for Moses, and
said, let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are
well able to overcome it. So Caleb's like, we can do this whatever.
Then the men had gone up with him and said we're not able to
go up against these people, for they are stronger than we. And so
they brought back this kind of unfavorable report of the land that they spied,
saying that the land that we have gone through as spies is a land that
devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of
great size. There we saw the Nephalim, and in parentheses it says the
Anakites come from the Nephalm, and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and
so we seemed to them. So that's a long passage, but just essentially
to say they went up, they looked around, they saw these giant people
kind of with well fortified towns and whatnot, and they gave a report back
to Moses saying, we're not sure we can take this land. We're really
small by comparison to who they are and the nepheleemer mentioned in this passage.
How would we even get to that point? Yeah? How do you get
from there to Bigfoot? Right? I think it's a it's a bit of
a stretch to say that. I mean, all we really have here are
our giant, you know, beings of giant size, but this is where
this is where it really gets interesting to me. As I started looking into
this more, I think there are tie into what we're seeing in the world
today as well. And what I want to sort of throw out here as
an umbrella to think about this is that we are still wrestling with the mysterious
past of of of humanity. So the world we live in today, both
the world that we know and the world that the people of the Bible knew.
The world that preceded them and preceded us had a lot of mystery in
it that was lost to time that they didn't understand, and just as we
don't understand. So I find this interesting because this is a connection point between
us and the people of the time of the Bible as well. And what
I'm getting to here is that there were ancient megalithic structures throughout the world.
I mean, we're all familiar with these, and they're the subject of how
many shows on the History Channel or whatever. These ancient megalithic structures that were
still puzzled by to this day. Well, they were puzzled by them as
well. And what's the most logical thing you would conclude if you saw megalithic
structures or remnants of megalithic structures in the land. You would think, well,
I mean I can't lift this, so therefore something bigger than me but
like me, would have lifted this and or created this, right, So
right then you have an instant well, these must be the giants that did
whatever, you know, that created these things. To me, it seems
like a lot of people that talk about this particular belief system in terms of
Bigfoot take a lot of liberties and freedoms with the interpretations. And one of
the main problems I have is the story of the flood. Is there anything
to say that if Bigfoot are the Nephelene, they would have survived the flood?
I know that in Genesis it says, you know they were there then
and after. Is it talking about after the flood? I think it is.
I think that in those days, and when we look at that passage
the earth in those days and then also afterward, it's really foreshadowing that that
flood is. You know, it's on the way in the in the passage
later on in the in the in the book, So yes, there is
a hint that these beings, these Nepheline these fallen ones are on the earth
in some capacity, and you know, you bring up the flood story.
That's a common part of most of the major myths in human history, is
a flood of some kind, you know. I was taught that that was
you know, more mythological, less literal, or if there was a flood,
it wasn't global in nature. It was I don't know, some sort
of localized blood that just impacted that region. The older that I've gotten,
the more that I've had experience and looked at these other stories, the more
I tend to think that, you know, there was some catastrophic flood that
occurred, and that it got recorded in human history by the survivors. I
don't know that the survivors were just descendants of Noah. I think that might
be a little bit of a stretch, but clearly this event left an imprint
on humanity, and we see it, we see the signs of that in
all of these different traditions. I'm particularly interested in this fallen concept, you
know, because there's also ideas that the Nephelim are sort of fallen angels,
or the progeny of fallen angels having intermarried or having children with human women.
So there's some evidence in for example, the Book of Enoch that is not
in the Bible, it's not in the canon, but there's mentioned in the
Book of Enoch that fallen angels, you know, had children with women,
and you know these were potentially these you know, hybrid beings. And you
talked about hybrids before, so here we had that concept coming up again.
But also what I mentioned just not only when I talked about may Or,
I talk to the umbrella concept about wrestling with our past. Our human past
not only contains mysteries in terms of structures, but there was a time in
our human history where we lived with other kinds of humans, right, And
this is something that I think modern humans typically just don't think very much about
because we're the only humans that are here, right, But if you look
at history itself, there was a time where you know, Homo sapien sapiens
lived alongside Neanderthals, lived alongside Denysovan's other species of human. So if you
think about a lot of our mythology, it has these imprints of that complicated
human family. And so you have really strong beings, you have really small
beings, you have you know, all these different sort of fate flavors,
varieties of humanoid beings. And that's I think a remnant of this time in
our history or ancient history, where we were really occupying the same space with
these other human species. Well, they often say, whoever, when's the
war gets the right history? Right? That's it. And obviously modern humans
survived, you know, we won whenever it comes to those other types of
humans. But it is interesting to note that we do have all this folklore
about other humanoid beings that might be ways of people just talking about some of
those other types of humans that once existed, you know, whenever it come
to even bigfoot. Over the years on this continent, at least, the
descriptions of bigfoot have changed. Whenever they were first being reported, the way
that they were reported were mostly as wild humans, you know, wild men,
hairy men, things like that. And then you had the global we'll
say, global discovery of the gorilla and these other you know, as we
started venturing farther out into the wilds and discovering new animals and creatures, and
people started learning more about you know, great apes and primates and things like
that than the story of bigfoot sightings. The descriptions in the newspapers, and
everything started to match that and became more of you know, this mystery great
ape. And then in the seventies you get more and more science based for
the most part, and people start pursuing this thing as some sort of undiscovered
primate. And now it seems to be going back into a supernatural realm where
you have this biblical belief you have, you know, the paranormal bigfoot hopping
through portals and cloaking itself and things of that nature, psychic abilities. Do
you see a reflection of that in religious texts over the years as it comes
forward? Is that par for the course whenever it comes to people's beliefs,
Because I'm under my own opinion that beliefs systems are oftentimes coping mechanisms in a
sense, to try and explain something that we don't have an explanation for.
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, No, I completely agree.
I think my perspective on it has also changed a little bit, you know,
over my life as well. So when I grew up, I was
really looking at religion more purely from an allegorical standpoint. So these are you
know, these are stories that are helping us understand larger truths. They're not
themselves actual true things, right. That's a very modern way of looking at
texts from the Bible or any mythological tradition. These are just miss allegory stories,
right, They're not literal. But there are certainly others and many others
who do look at these as literal things. And I never really shared that
particular perspective, in part because I just sort of reflected on my own life
experience. Right. So if I were to, you know, use some
of the idioms of the day, and I were to put that into a
letter to you, and let's say you were going to, you know,
have a podcast, and I was saying, you know, Matt, good
luck with that podcast, break a leg or whatever. And then two hundred
years from now people were to look at this document, you know, would
they think I'm asking you to break your leg? I mean that they wouldn't
understand potentially what it is I'm saying there. So, just like that,
as a simple example, that's happening with these ancient texts as well. There's
so much context around these stories that really, quite frankly, is just lost
to us. So we're doing the best we can by taking our own experience
of life, both that and what we know about history, which we just
talked about is a little bit fuzzy, and we're we're bringing that to bear
on this material and hoping that we can glean from that some truth to it.
Right. So, So, where I'm at now in thinking about these
things is that there's really a blended quality to these to these texts, right.
So, Yes, there are aspects of them that are allegorical. Yes,
there are also aspects of them that are literal. It's it's really parsing
that between the two. That's that's the challenge. And I think because it's
so difficult, we have to be willing to suspend our our judgment, our
snap judgment into wanting to make it one or the other. I think we
have to sort of kind of loosely hold both that, Yes, this could
be literally true, but it might not be. Yes, this could be
allegorically true, but it might be literally true. So it's a challenge.
And certainly to your point, people's beliefs and perspectives do change over the years.
And if you look at the history in the in the Bible as the
Bible, and by the way, wasn't one single document for most of its
history. But the understanding of the world does change in the text itself as
you move into the New Testament. And we talked about Hellenism, that Greek
culture. It has a huge influence on the New New Testament, and it's
written in the Greek language. But if you look at the New Testament and
look at it from that perspective, you're going to see a lot of Greek
influence throughout the text, and that changes the way you think about notions of
what is God? You know, what are demons? What our angels?
You know? What is the Messiah? What is the end of time?
So all of these things are going to change based on that cultural reference point,
but some of them might still will be literally true, right, So
that again, that's that weird suspension we have to have. Is just not
easy to do right. Cultural explanations, I think, play a huge part
in the language, and trying to apply words of understanding to things that aren't
understood can cause a lot of this stuff. And then, of course,
you know something that's been argued and debated forever, you know, just languages
that don't translate properly, or opinions on translation. I mean, just take
that passage about the spies, for instance, I had read where you know,
it's kind of interpreted as these spies delivered bad information, as in,
this is bad news. And then there's another interpretation that says, well,
this Hebrew word was used and it actually means slander, so we believe that
by bad we mean lies, that it was untrue. So then you take
that information, well, it's either bad news because it was just bad news
that they didn't want to hear, or it's bad news because it's lies and
it's not true at all, and there weren't actually giants seen by the spies.
But based on your own beliefs in what you're choosing to believe about Bigfoot,
you could use either one of those interpretations to support your own argument for
them either being these nepheline or not being And I think a lot of times
that's done because just the idea of I mean, we're doing a podcast about
it right now. This nephiline have become extremely popular in modern encryptid folklore,
and we're talking about there barely anything even mentioned in the Bible. There's not
really information out there about them, and most of the information that I ran
across, you know, came from the stories from the Book of Enoch,
and like you said, that's not canon. So whenever it comes to biblical
canon and you've got like the Book of Enoch, how does it fit in?
And let's just go off the rails for a second and say all of
this is actually true? You know, is this something like does the Catholic
Church really suppress and hide information and you know, things of this nature.
Is that something that you believe that they would actually do, and like,
why would they do that? Like it's often speculated as to you know,
the cover up of Bigfoot and UFOs and everything done by the government, But
what if it's being covered up by the church, And is that something the
church would do? And why? Yeah? Well, I love the opinion
that all official truths from whatever organization you want to look at, whether that's
the Church or the state, is to a certain degree a kind of propaganda,
right, And and that's not necessarily saying that it's done in an nefarious
way. I'm not saying there's some secret council, you know, deciding,
hey, we want to tell everyone that this is the truth when we know,
you know, as as secret keepers we know it's something else. Entirely.
I think it's it's a little bit less sinister than that. I think
that we all have to wrestle with the fact that when we're looking at the
world, we're born into a world that we you know, we sort of
stumble into and it functions in a certain way, and when we're thinking about
how to explain it, we're going to have to cut some corners. We're
going to have to say, you know, I'm going to shave off this
piece of experience. I'm going to shame off this piece, and I'm going
to create this crafted object that is the truth, and we're going to kind
of ignore the fact that these outliers don't really fit into fit with whatever that
object happens to be. So I think that the church and the state,
they've absolutely done this. I think that they I don't believe that they've done
that necessarily in an evil, sinister way. There's just a byproduct of how
we are in the world. And unfortunately, because of things like you we
can talk about the pros and cons of this, but because of things like
the written word, the printing press, we've placed a higher degree of importance
on written material than spoken oral tradition kind of material, right. And that's
interesting too because in the ancient times when writing wasn't everywhere, and writing to
write you had to be you had to have means, you had to have
uh, you know, skill education, training, Like it's not something that
everybody could could do and understand. So the spoken word, the oral tradition
is much more prominent in ancient world than it is for us today. And
what that means is that people had to by very nature, like they had
to have a deep ability to memorize and to listen and to hold oral tradition
in their mind at all times. And we've actually kind of let that part
of ourselves atrophy. Right, So we marvel at people who can memorize,
you know, all these kinds of things. Well, I think that the
ancients were much better at that. That they could they could listen to someone
give a speech and they could hold all that content in their head way better
than you and I can. And the person giving the speech also knows that
they can do that. So how does that change the way that you're using
language? I mean, it changes it quite a lot. Because we we
with our written focus, we're going to go back and go, oh,
here's a citation. You know here, you said this on this day,
and therefore, you know, I'm not going to let you get off the
hook on that because you said it on that day. Whereas when you're doing
this in an oral tradition sense, it's much more of a suspension and you're
you're playing with these ideas in a more living way, a more kind of
active way than than this. What we've taken is basically a very scientific approach
to language. You know, It's it's something very exact, it's something very
quantifiable, precise, and interestingly enough, we brought that. You know,
if you if you come from a more of a a more of a fundamentalist
perspective on the Bible, you're bringing that kind of scientific perspective to the text
more so than that, you know, sort of living document perspective. So
it's it's just all very fascinating and absolutely, you know, our perspective change
on these things. And if you're having an experience of a bigfoot, you
kind of have a couple of choices, right, I Mean, one choice
is how do I fit this into a worldview that I already have? Right?
Right? The other choice is how do I fit this into a worldview
that I'm going to try and create, or I'm going to adopt that is
not what I have right now. Those are the two primary choices, and
I think that's what we're seeing here people that are proposing this nepoleine concept,
you know, they're wanting to fit it by any means necessary, into this
biblical worldview, not necessarily willing to adopt another one that might make better sense
of it. I totally agree with that. I think that happens with pretty
much the majority of Bigfoot theories out there. Is the experience someone has and
the way they interpret it is again a coping mechanism to make it fit into
their worldview and their belief systems that already exist. And that's not to say
that anyone is right or wrong. I'm certainly in no place to say that,
no, this person's wrong and this person's right, because I don't think
we know. I'm not sure we'll ever know. But Nephiliam is not the
only Biblical thing that gets attributed to Bigfoot demons. This is another thing that
has come up time and time again in Bigfoot is the idea that bigfoot are
actually demons. And I know that this is something thing that has started to
play out a little bit in the UFO world as well, aliens being demonic
entities. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a big one.
Getting a lot of traction now, I mean, a very similar thing
is happening, right, So we're taking experiences that occur at the fringes of
human perception and experience, things like Bigfoot, like UFOs, alien beings,
whatever and sort these are things that are not in common human experience, and
we're thinking, what is a you know, what corollary can I think of
here that that happens in that fringe, shadowy space that I can kind of
readily call And that's going to be more often than not in the West anyway,
in some Eastern traditions as well. The these demons, these are not
things that occur in the light quote unquote, They don't occur in you know,
waking experience. They occur in this shadowy realm. You know that this
We can use different words for that, you know, we can use subconscious,
we can use uh, you know, sort of hell as this subsurface
world. You know, shield is a word in the Bible that is this
subsurface world. Ah, these are things happening below normal human experience, and
so I think it makes a lot of sense while we would want to jump
to that because that's the only category that is uh supernatural that kind of maps
into some of these fringe experiences. So if it's not happening where I can
easily see it, if it's not willing to be seen and interact with us
in a in an obvious over way, that it must be by its very
nature, sinister, dark, demonic, anti human. So I think that's
where we're going with this. And what I would say is we need to
work to examine that perspective. If that's something that we are jumping to,
so we need to work hard to I think look at the evidence for that.
You know, what are the actual experiences that we're talking about that we're
mapping onto demons? You know, are they actually if we look at those
experiences themselves and the interactions that have been reported about the experiences, are are
there demonic qualities to those interactions? And and here I'm not using the word
demonic in a literal sense, but just in a is it anti human being?
Is it? Is it a negative experience? Right case, It's not
just going back to that first story of the Apostle meeting Kane, who's like,
I'm here to destroy the souls of men and carry on a decent conversation.
Exactly, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. And I still,
you know, I remember getting so frustrated whenever I was younger, because
I don't know necessarily that it's anything new, but it was new to me
the idea that there were Christians out there who were trying to say that dinosaurs
were just acts of Satan. Dinosaur fossils were just things created by Satan to
make us think that dinosaurs used to exist and they didn't actually ever exist.
And I remember being so frustrated by that because I'm just I'm one of those
people who's just like, well, I can see it, I can touch
it. It's real, it exists, it's right here. But I think
a lot of people want to live in one world, have this belief system,
but well, how can I include this other stuff that I'm interested in
that you know, may kind of question some of the things that I believe,
And so they look for ways to explain them and incorporate them, which
seems to be the ongoing theme. And I think the belief that Bigfoot or
aliens or any of these things are demons or demonic in nature is another way
of doing that, another way of explaining it with an already existent belief system
that you're not willing to stray away from. But you still want to play
around in this pool too, you know. Right, I was going to
ask, you know something that I know you're constantly on top of and talking
about, you know, is the government coming forward and acknowledging you know,
hey, aliens and UFOs are real. It's all over the news headlines and
anything. Do you think that's something that the church and by the church,
I guess I'm talking about the Catholic Church. I assume that the Catholic Church
is in charge of religion as we know it. Is that something that you
ever think they will do? Do you think they will come forward and make
an official statement or address these things that are happening? I mean I think
that they If the government does come forward with a more clear statement on this,
then absolutely the Catholic Church and other church leaders will respond in kind.
And the question becomes is how do they incorporate that information into their theological perspective?
The Catholic Church has already stated in certain ways that you know, if
they are extraterrestrials or whatever, that they can be baptized and they can be
uh Christian just like a human being. And so they're they're they're you know,
interesting just to imagine the exactly you know, I forget this new new
culture here which is going to fit you into ours. So it's they're making
space for that. And I think you know, this gets to your point
right that you just made about the demons, and that's that, you know,
how how flexible or inflexible is your theological perspective, because if it's if
it's incredibly rigid, then what you're going to do is you're going to say
exactly what you pointed out, that this new reality doesn't doesn't conform or fit
with my perspective on the way the world is and who God is and and
all these things, and therefore it's anti that. So what goes in the
anti that bucket that's you know, demons and Satan. You know, it
falls into that category, which by the way, can be a very luck
The bucket continues to grow the more and the more things that we discover.
You know, you brought up the dinosaurs and things like that, Well that
goes into the bucket. You know, you bring up things like other habitable
worlds, well that might go into the buckets as a deception. You know,
maybe we're the only habitable world and I'm believe in that stuff, So
that goes into this bucket as well. So you can maintain that rigid perspective
or you can make room for it. And I think that's really what we're
what I'm trying to get at here, is that we have this choice,
this opportunity to make room for experiences that occur in the world or to reject
them outright. And I get it. Rejecting them outright is in some ways
easier because it doesn't you're not forced to sort of work through the complexities of
having to incorporate this experience. You're just like keeping what you know and it's
safe. But I would encourage folks to try to do the opposite, you
know, to journey into that unknown a little bit more, be a little
more flexible, and see what that will reveal to you about your core beliefs.
And if your core beliefs are still strong, that's a good thing.
Right. Ultimately, that's a good thing. If your core beliefs change,
well, that could be a good thing as well. It could be very
transformative. I think that the religions of the world have elements within them that
can easily adapt to this reality. And religion, by the way, has
been adapting to reality every century. The more that we know about the world,
et cetera, et cetera, the more these theologies change. I don't
see that, you know, changing at all, will continue to do do
so these theologies will just incorporate whatever this new reality is. But man,
it's going to get a lot more complex if that happens. And I think
it's going to cause a lot of people to really have some dark knights of
the soul about what they believe, because you don't find, uh, you
know, explicit mention of these things in the religious text, at least in
the way that we would want with them to. And let's say they even
show us a being at some point, if we see an actual being,
man, won't that be a shock to the system. So I don't know,
we live in interesting times, my friend, we do. Have you
studied many other religions outside of Christianity a little bit, so I've studied a
little bit of Hinduism, Buddhism, let's see Shintoism, a little bit of
Islam, but not as much. And I've studied some Judaism as well,
so, but most of my study has been in the Western religions. Do
similar items like the nepheleam and demons and everything pop up in those texts as
well that you've noticed, well, yeah, in some in some respects,
so there are mentioned of giants in Hindu In Hindu scripture, there are certainly
lots of mentions of demons, uh, some of which could be construed to
be similar to the nephelm concept in these other traditions. In the Japanese religious
history, there's a lot of you know, demonology there, but you know,
I don't know how explicit they are, and certainly with like the the
qualities of the bigfoot, you know, I think that's what's kind of lacking
in most of these accounts is like that, you know, when we're talking
about giants and other traditions, they're usually like really really tall, like way
taller than a nine foot big big foot or whatever. And they're not talking
about them being you know, crazy hairy. You know, they're just talking
about them being just giant beings. So yeah, it's interesting, and the
same thing goes in hand with the demon belief system. A lot of the
properties that I understand about demons don't really play out in like you were saying,
in Bigfoot experiences. So it's kind of a contradiction there and beliefs.
But I could be wrong. No, But I mean your point is really
really valid. I mean, if we're talking about demonic I mean, they're
not very good demons if that's what they are, right, They hide from
us, they don't communicate. Yeah, and apparently whenever they do communicate,
it's nice. So I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't really fit the
mold there. But you know what's interesting about that too, though, is
that you know, people can also say that things that are highly persuasive or
appear to be nice are actually not right. So there's right. It's always
interesting how people kind of bucket their experiences in terms of this is, you
know, sort of angelic or godly and this over here is demonic or satanic
or evil? What are the lines we're drawing there? And why are we
drawing them? Sometimes it's completely arbitrary. Yeah, I just saw a comment
the other day about a person who was responding to somebody else had said something,
and they were talking about again, these things are evil. You know,
they try to lure children into the woods so they can take them.
They you know, sexually assault livestock and kill dogs, and they're just pure
evil. And then you have on the flip side of that, people making
comments about how you know they're friendly forest giants. There are friends, they're
protectors of the earth. And then again you have the Nepheline demonic belief system,
and all of these different viewpoints come in and just collide with one another
constantly. And I don't it's not just in the Bigfoot community. It's in
all these different aspects of the unknown. It just comes across as coping mechanisms.
That's the only I know. I keep on saying that, but it's
the only thing that makes sense. Not everybody can be right, not everybody
can be wrong, And like you were saying, nobody is going to be
completely right about any of it, and it's something that we really just have
no grasp of understanding right now. Right So, again, the whole point
of this conversation was not to tell anybody that they're right or wrong that Bigfoot
aren't this, or Bigfoot aren't that. It's just to have an open discussion
about this particular train of thought and belief system and kind of break it down.
So, Nathan, I preciate you coming on and helping me do that
with such a complicated, entangled up subject as this. I truly truly appreciate
it, sir, My pleasure, Matt. This is a ton of fun.
I hope gets do again sometimes. Yeah, for sure. If you
have encountered something you can't explain, like Bigfoot or something else, email me
at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. If you get a chance, check
out the website Bigfootcrossroads dot com. You can find links to social media,
past episodes, merchandise, everything you need, all in one place. And
until next time, remember there's something in the woods.