Our commentary
Are the Anunnaki in the Bible?
Our own look at a common question, by David Dell. The background on this page is ours, not a summary of the book.
Short answer: no. The word Anunnaki doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible; a search of the full King James text turns up nothing. The idea that the Anunnaki are hiding in Genesis comes from a twentieth-century writer, not from Scripture or from the Sumerian texts themselves. Here is who the Anunnaki were, where the claim came from, and what the Bible does say about the gods of Mesopotamia.
Who were the Anunnaki?
The Anunnaki were a group of deities worshipped by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians. The name probably means something like “princely offspring,” and the earliest texts describe them as descendants of An, the god of the heavens, and Ki, the earth. The earliest known uses of the name come from inscriptions of Gudea (about 2144–2124 BC) and the Third Dynasty of Ur. The texts don't agree on how many Anunnaki there were or what exactly they did, and the meaning shifted over time: from about the Middle Babylonian period on, the name was used mainly for gods of the underworld. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood survivor Utnapishtim describes the Anunnaki as judges of the underworld who “set the land aflame” as the flood storm approaches.
In their own texts, in other words, the Anunnaki are gods of heaven, earth and the underworld. The spacecraft reading came thousands of years later.
Where the Anunnaki–Nephilim idea came from
The modern idea traces to Zecharia Sitchin (1920–2010). In The Twelfth Planet (1976) and later books he claimed that the Anunnaki were extraterrestrials from a planet he called Nibiru, on a 3,600-year orbit, who came to Earth to mine gold and engineered humans as workers. He also claimed they are the beings Genesis calls the Nephilim (we look at that word in Nephilim and UFOs). His books sold millions of copies in more than 25 languages.
Specialists reject his readings. Historians, Assyriologists and Sumerologists dismiss Sitchin's work as pseudohistory, citing mistranslations of ancient texts. The American biblical scholar Michael S. Heiser documented many inaccuracies in Sitchin's translations. Sitchin also read the cylinder seal VA 243 as a picture of a twelve-planet solar system, while the many decoded Sumerian astronomical seals and calendars count five planets.
Is there any real link to Genesis?
There is a real conversation between Genesis and Mesopotamian literature, just not the one Sitchin described. Scholars have long compared the flood of Genesis with the flood stories in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the older Atra-Hasis epic. In Atra-Hasis, the Igigi, lesser gods forced to labor for the Anunnaki, rebel, and the god Enki creates humans to replace them. Genesis tells its creation story very differently:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27 (KJV)
Abraham's family came out of that Mesopotamian world. Genesis says they set out “from Ur of the Chaldees,” and Joshua reminds Israel that its ancestors once “served other gods”:
“And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.” Genesis 11:31 (KJV)
“And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” Joshua 24:2 (KJV)
The Babylonian gods the Bible does name
The Bible never mentions the Anunnaki as a group, but it does name gods of Babylon, and only to announce their fall. Merodach is the Hebrew form of Marduk, the patron god of Babylon. Nebo is Nabu, the Babylonian god of scribes and wisdom.
“Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.” Isaiah 46:1 (KJV)
“Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces.” Jeremiah 50:2 (KJV)
Are the Anunnaki the Watchers?
People often ask whether the Anunnaki and the Watchers are the same beings. No ancient text makes that identification. The Watchers come from Jewish tradition: the “watcher and an holy one” of Daniel 4:13, and the rebel angels of the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch (see Who were the Watchers? and Is the Book of Enoch in the Bible?). The Anunnaki come from Mesopotamian religion. Any link between them is a modern interpretation.
A Christian way to read the question
This section is our own commentary. The Bible offers a different answer from Sitchin's to the question “what were the gods of the nations?” It doesn't treat them as visiting astronauts, and it doesn't treat them as mere nothing either. It says that behind the idols stood spiritual powers:
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” Deuteronomy 32:17 (KJV)
“But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.” 1 Corinthians 10:20 (KJV)
“God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.” Psalm 82:1 (KJV)
Christians read Psalm 82 in different ways, and none of these verses names the Anunnaki. But taken together they suggest a reading some believers find more convincing than the spaceship theory: the gods of Sumer and Babylon may be understood as part of the unseen realm Scripture describes, not as a race from another planet. That's the same realm behind the debate over the sons of God in Genesis 6 and the giants that followed.
Sources: Genesis 1:27, 11:31; Joshua 24:2; Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 50:2; Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20; Psalm 82:1 (KJV) · Anunnaki · Zecharia Sitchin · Gilgamesh flood myth · Marduk · Nabu · King James Bible, full text (Project Gutenberg)