The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

WHERE VAMPIRES COME FROM:

Vampires. Who are these beings? A clue to their identity can be found in their original name - Nephilim. They first appear on the scene in the days before the Flood in Genesis 6 where the word is first used. The New International Version of the Bible says, "the Nephilim were on the earth in those days..." (Genesis 6:4). "Nephilim" denotes that they were hurled down, tracing the word to the Hebrew root "Naphal" meaning "to fall." The Nephilim are the "fallen ones," a direct reference to rebellious angels. Their moral fall does not seem to have reduced their physical strength. Much documentation describing the super-human strength of the Nephilim exists, and is not surprising knowing that they were "fathered" by angels. Angels do "excel in strength" (Psalm 103:20). They are greater "in power and might" than men of Earth (2 Peter 2:1 1). Vampires are known to have quick reflexes and super-human strength.

The original vampire can be traced back to the existence of the "Nephilim" in the biblical record. Nephilim who were on the Earth in those days, and also after that (after the Flood), who came unto the daughters of men and they bore children to them. These Nephilim, who Enoch calls the "Grigori" or "fallen angels," were born with giant appetites. Leading up to the Flood, things deteriorated rapidly, and soon the Nephilim were practicing the most repulsive and revolting behavior ever witnessed by the depraved citizens of Earth: cannibalism. They began to "devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood." Vampires are creatures that drink blood in order to survive.

The Book of Jubilees (7:21-25) states that ridding the Earth of these Nephilim was one of God's purposes for flooding the Earth in Noah's time, but that God granted ten percent of the Nephilim to remain after the Flood. According to these texts the fallen angels who begat the Nephilim were cast into Tartarus (Greek Enoch 20:2), a place of "total darkness". This could be the origin of why a vampire cannot exist in sunlight, the ten percent of Nephilim to remain after the Flood would be cast into "total darkness," to remain as demons.

The footnotes of the Jerusalem Bible suggests that the Biblical author intended the Nephilim to have inhabited the Earth in at least two different time periods, in Antediluvian times "and afterward," - a direct reference to the Flood. The biblical passage where the word "Nephilim" occurs again, namely, Numbers 13:33 says, "We saw the Nephilim there...", and is entirely possible that the Nephilim of Canaan who appear in Book of Numbers were the direct descendents of the Antediluvian Nephilim.

According to Andrew Tomas, mythology and folklore "depict the story of vanished cultures in symbols and allegories." If this is so, do we find anything in myths and legends resembling the bizarre events of Genesis 6? When verbal traditions from early 18th century Europe were recorded and published, in most cases, vampires were considered Revenants of evil spirits, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. The Nephilim were said to "devour flesh, and drink the blood."

The original vampires would be the fallen angels who descended from heaven because they lusted after human women. In Genesis, God responds to the threat posed by the Nephilim, and sets about destroying the vast majority of them with the Flood. In the Book of Watchers the world's sinfulness is precisely due to the existence of the Nephilim. In Chapter 7, humans can no longer sustain the huge appetites of the Nephilim and are being devoured by them, "They began to do violence to and attack all the birds and beats of the earth and reptiles...and the fish in the sea; and they began to devour men's flesh, and they were drinking the blood."

Could it be, that at some distant point in history these bizarre events did take place? That the Nephilim are the precursors to modern vampires, that the vampire we know today originates almost exclusively from them?