Nephilim Stories Part 3

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby is another horror film within the sphere of Nephilim. 

This masterpiece by Roman Polanski really changed the way horror cinema was viewed. It was not gross but rather a subtle descent into madness. But at its core there is a nephilim story here too.

The film would be effective even if everything that happens to the main character turned out to be just psychological, in fact it might be more effective as a horror film. Because Rosemary turns out to be right. A coven of witches actually does live in her building and Satan actually did impregnate her. 

And that’s where the Nephilim come in. Satanic sex brigiding the gap between the spirit world and the physical world leading to demonic children.

What’s maybe most interesting, and ironically immoral, is how art imitates life in Polanski’s own life. At the heart of the Nephilim story is the intersection of the things that God found particularly abhorrent about ancient paganism: power and sex. One of the most disturbding scenes in this film is when Rosemary’s husband casually admits to raping her while she slept. He doesn’t call it that, he excuses it because they were trying to conceive and she had fallen asleep. So he just did it with her anyway. Of course she fell asleep because he had drugged her for the purpose of allowing Satan to impregnate her. 

And then what happened to Polanski? He went into european exile for rape. Yet somehow has never been held accountable by his peers, even after #metoo. 

One of the reasons the Old Testament doesn’t constantly blame everything on the Nephilim and the sin of the Watchers is that the sins of humanity are just as disturbing and sometimes just as cosmically significant. 

I’m not a rabid anti Trumper, and I think what passes as criticism of him on the American left is mostly hysterical nonsense, but it’s telling that so many Evangelicals used the sins of King David to defend him. Because David’s sins are actually theologically framed as a repetition of the sin that created the Nephilim. David is high up when the rest of the kings of the earth are off at war and he looks down and lusts after Bathsheba. Then he almost certainly (by modern standards anyway) rapes Bathsheba and engages in violence to cover up his sin by getting Uriah killed. When God confronts David about his sin via the prophet Nathan he isn’t super concerned about the sexual sins David has committed as much as the violent abuse of power. It is because of David’s “heavenly” position that his violation is so grave.

Now when Evangelical’s defend Trump’s immoral past what they are usually saying is something like this: King David was far from perfect and yet he was beloved by God. In other words Trump could be forgiven by God just as David was. But we don’t exactly have a great account of Trump’s repentance (and to be honest it’s not really any of our business).

I’m not saying that Trump’s relationship with Evangelicals is a Nephilim story, but it is easy to connect the sins of David with the sins of Trump. And Evangelicals make this connection, sometimes for unfortunate reasons. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the same kind of thing happen with Polanski and the left. If Polanski were a political figure maybe they would have had to. 

In conclusion the real thing that makes Nephilim stories disturbing isn’t really the weird sex angle, its the way that power abuses and misuses things. 

Meditation for the Day: Philippians 2:6-8

Jesus reverses the sins of David and the Watchers by not using privilege to benefit himself but rather by becoming a servant. In the good news the horrors of this world are made undone.