Q. The Nephilim, or the offspring of fallen angels and humans, mentioned in Genesis and 1 Enoch are very confusing to me. Are these so-called giants actually real, like Og, the king of Bashan, or are stories like Enoch similar to modern day fan-fictions or spin-offs? I am reading Enoch currently and it is deeply spiritual and I hope so much that it holds water like the rest of the Bible. Why was Enoch and other gnostic gospels and apocrypha considered heresy, and would it be harmful for my faith to read these, as they may not be God’s word? Would God want me to read these ancient texts? Are they intended to be taken literally?
Regarding the identify of the Nephilim, please see this post:
Regarding reading 1 Enoch and similar books, please see this post:
Why were some books removed from the Bible and is it a sin to read them?
In that post, I say, “If you belong to a community of Christians, and if this issue is important within that community, you could explain to anyone you told about reading these books that you were not reading them as Scripture, but as edifying literature that has come down to us from within the tradition of our faith. I hope no one would be upset about that.”
I might note that while 1 Enoch is not part of the apocrypha, so it is not found within the Bible that Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians read (which has a few more books than the Bible that Protestant Christians read) it is accepted as canonical by one Christian communion, the Church of Ethiopia. For more information about these differences, see this post:
Do different Christian communities really consider different books Scriptural?
Good Question 