The Nephilim are enigmatic figures named in a handful of passages in the Hebrew Bible. Genesis 6:1–4 places them on the earth when the "sons of God" took human wives, just before Noah's flood, and links them with "the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown," leaving unclear whether they were those beings or their offspring. In Numbers 13:33, Israelite spies say the sons of Anak descend from the Nephilim. Early Greek translators rendered the word as gigantes, which made "giants" the traditional reading, though the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon calls the proposed etymologies "all very precarious."

The Genesis fragment was greatly expanded in the Book of the Watchers, the opening section of 1 Enoch, composed around the fourth or third century BCE and preserved in Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls. In it about 200 angels called Watchers descend on Mount Hermon, take human wives, teach forbidden arts and father violent giants, crimes that help bring on the flood. Interpreters long divided over the "sons of God": an angelic reading runs through early Jewish sources and much Christian commentary, while Augustine, John Chrysostom and John Calvin took them to be men of the righteous line of Seth. Modern scholars study the Nephilim within ancient Near Eastern mythology and the history of biblical interpretation.

UFO writing has reread the same texts in opposite ways. Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods (1968) recast the Nephilim as "skyfallers," part of the ancient-astronaut idea. Some Christian writers instead treat today's entities as the fallen angels of Genesis 6. Author Timothy Alberino argues that the Book of Enoch supplies a biblical framework for modern disclosure, and on NewsNation in October 2026 he said demons are the spirits of dead Nephilim from before the flood. Both are modern overlays on texts that scholars read as religious literature, not records of contact.

The idea reached congressional UAP politics in 2026. Representative Anna Paulina Luna told followers to "Read the book of Enoch," Charisma magazine reported in April. After the Pentagon's first release of UAP files in May, Representative Lauren Boebert cited "fallen angels and Nephilim" and said, "I do believe that this is more spiritual, and, if you really want to go there, demonic," according to Courthouse News; Representative Eric Burlison said Christians should "just stick to what the Bible says." A short, puzzling passage in Genesis has become a central vocabulary of UAP and religion for lawmakers, podcasters and preachers who read official disclosures through scripture.