What Do Jackalopes and Nephilim Have in Common? by J.E. Rose

A Biblical Reflection on the Creation Order 

I think I was 12 when I saw my first “jackalope”--a weird hybrid creature part rabbit and part antelope. My grandma took me and a couple others on a road trip to California and we stopped at a truck stop somewhere in Nevada. When we went into the restrooms, there it was, right at the front door, standing and staring at me in all its frozen weirdness. I won’t say I was frightened but that’s because it was obviously not going to eat me. I knew it was stuffed. But it sure looked real and the placard in front of was another assurance that it was like a hunting trophy: no longer a threat. 

It would be many years later that I happened to learn the real story of jackalopes. They were a joke. Clever taxidermists for a hundred years had been “creating” them in their studios and inventing legends to make it all more intriguing. 

Those taxidermists are not the only ones in history who have tried to create monsters. The first known effort is described in Genesis 6–that controversial passage about the “sons of God” copulating with the “daughters of men” to create giants. That’s a whole discussion in itself and worth studying, but not my purpose here. Rather, I want to ask you, what do jackalopes and nephilim have in common? 

Before I give my answer, let me quote an important passage of scripture that lays the foundation. It’s from one of those chapters in Leviticus that we tend to speed read because it seems so strange, 

“‘You shall not cross-breed different kinds of animals. ‘You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; ‘Don’t wear a garment made of two kinds of material.” (Leviticus 19:19)

If this is your first time reading this I won’t blame you for your confusion. What could it possibly mean that God was making a law against cross-breeding and cross-pollinating, and cross-dressing–oh wait, that’s not the right term for this (though it is more germane than you might think). 

It so happens that there are a whole host of these kinds of laws in the Old Testament. Here is a summary if you are curious: 

Forbidden Mixture / Action	Scripture Reference	Covenantal/Pedagogical Intent
Common vs. Sacred Incense	Exodus 30:37–38	The specific aromatic blend for the Tabernacle incense could not be duplicated for personal or common use. Doing so resulted in being "cut off" from the people.
Common vs. Sacred Anointing Oil	Exodus 30:32–33	The holy anointing oil was forbidden from being poured on ordinary human flesh or copied for secular use, preserving the uniqueness of the office of priest and king.
Strange Fire (Esh Zarah)	Leviticus 10:1–2	Nadab and Abihu offered "unauthorized" or "strange" fire before the Lord—mixing human invention or uncommanded elements into the precise worship prescribed by God.
Leaven and Honey in Fire Offerings	Leviticus 2:11	No grain offering made by fire could contain leaven or honey. Leaven often symbolized corruption or permeating influence, while honey was frequently used in pagan sacrificial rituals.

God was using the normal things of ancient life to teach the supernatural truths of heaven. In this particular list it was items used in sacred ceremonies of the tabernacle. But, as the earlier verse describes, the mixing and comingling was prohibited not just in the tabernacle but on the farm and in the kitchen. One of the most strange kitchen warnings was, “Do not boil goat [meat] in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19). 

Huh? 

The list of forbidden mixtures goes on, and on, and on. But what does it all mean ? And what does it mean today? Will God judge us if we plant corn and beans in the same garden? 

The answer to that last question is, No. But that’s because the need for this law has been surpassed. All the ceremonial and ritual laws given to Israel were fulfilled and completed when God sent his Son into the world not to abolish the law of Moses but to fulfill all it was foreshadowing (see Matthew 5:17). 

This doesn’t get to the deeper issue with comingling, however. What all these “types and shadows” did was twofold.

First , they looked and pointed forward to Jesus. They were there to teach God's people about the big plan in history.

But they also looked back to the very beginning of time; what theologians call the “creation order.” The first chapter of Genesis describes the creation event but does so in a very important way: an ordered process of particular natural things that are strategically set in juxtaposition to eternal things: “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1).

I can’t go through the intricate literary structure of the passage other than to urge you to study it structurally for yourself. There are all these “juxtapositions” in the very order of creation: morning and evening, day and night, earth and sky, animals and humans, male and female. Oh wait? “Male and female?” Yes. The juxtaposition of two sexes is just as much a part of the creation order as the other features. I probably won’t get to it in this article, but Paul relies heavily on this juxtapositional, binary reality to lay the foundation for marriage, family and church relations. It’s all connected. 

Order and Anti-Order

The point before us is this: God creates categories and then commands that we respect them by not transgressing the boundaries he made. But you no doubt can imagine there is another creative endeavor paralleling all this and very much part of the sacred story: God has a creation order. But his archenemy has his own. The devil has been building this dark kingdom from the beginning of history with an effort to disrupt and destroy God’s. And, even as God’s order requires adhering to the distinctions he decreed, Satan’s “anti-order” has always been to transgress the distinctions in every way. I suppose it would be accurate to describe it as his “order” but I prefer to call it an “anti-order” because it stands in opposition to God’s. Satan’s anti-order is not without its own distinctions and boundaries. But they are established to undermine God’s. 

This sets up an important theological and practical question for us. What are the boundaries of the creation order we are still obligated to respect and protect today? I’m not going to try and argue that it is wrong to plant beans and corn together today, or avoid buying clothes that mix wool with some other textile. What I will say is that the difference between comingling seeds and textiles for us from ancient Israel is what the purpose was then and what God's purpose is now.

I’ll just give one example: the warning about comingling wool and linen threads had the purpose for Israel of separating them as a nation from the pagan nations around them. Their "100% wool" shirt would distinguish them from the mixed blend shirts of the Philistines!

The same is true of circumcision for Israel in distinction from the uncircumcised. When Jesus came he fulfilled that promise. It was no longer necessary for God’s people to maintain an ethnic national identity. In fact, the New Testament says God has, in Christ, “broken down the wall of separation” between Jews and Gentiles! (Ephesians 2:14). This is reflective of the “new creation order” in the church. This is also reflected in how we understand “clothing” now. It is not a problem of wool and linen threads because the new clothing in the new order involves “putting on Christ” like a garment and putting off self like an old pair of clothes: 

That you take off [like clothes]  as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (Ephesians 4:23,24)

So, back to my point: what are the enduring obligations in the creation order? The short answer is they are primarily moral and ethical, not agricultural or physical as they were. Unfortunately for us, that short answer leaves many questions unanswered about the details. And as we know, the devil is always in the details.

For example, someone might try to argue that the boundary between male and female was part of the old creation order and no longer in place. That would, of course, create all kinds of questions and issues for those trying to be obedient to God. Is there no difference between husbands and wives?

However, the boundary distinction between husbands and wives is maintained in the New Testament Men are still described as spiritual heads in the home and wives to be submissive to them (Ephesians 5). In fact, in Paul’s complex argument about women’s role in the worship of the church, he appeals to the creation order itself for proof of the different duties and roles (1 Timothy 2:13,14). This is another discussion entirely and not my purpose to detail it here. I bring it up because Paul’s appeals prove that there are enduring aspects of the original creation order that have never been replaced. 

So, what do jackalopes and the Nephilim ultimately have in common? They are both monuments to the transgression of boundaries—one a lighthearted joke of human taxidermy, the other a catastrophic, historical blurring of the ethical lines God decreed at the dawn of time. 

While the ancient material scaffolding of Israel’s agricultural and textile laws has been dissolved by the fulfillment of Christ, the underlying reality has never shifted. We no longer guard the purity of our garments or gardens to bring glory to the creator. However, we are called to guard the structural integrity of the creation order itself. To collapse the God-given binaries of male and female, or to redefine the boundaries of marriage, family, and worship, is to trade the beautiful, differentiated order of the Creator for the formless chaos of the serpent’s anti-order. In the New Covenant, our clothing may no longer be a matter of unmixed linen and wool, but it is fundamentally a matter of putting on the unmixed righteousness of Christ—respecting the enduring, cosmic definitions He wrote into the fabric of reality from the very beginning. And, in the broadest theological terms, we are called to guard and reflect not even the creation order itself but what that very order portrayed: the eternal glory of the three in one God in whom both unity and diversity has always and will always be. 

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