Giants in the Bible and the Shanhaijing: A Study in Comparative Anthropology. (original) (raw)
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*Contact author for full offprint (https://www.mohr.de/en/book/ancient-tales-of-giants-from-qumran-and-turfan-9783161545313). The giants of the Hebrew Bible received very little independent scholarly attention during the twentieth century, and only within the last decade have these figures begun to attract serious focus. This situation is at least somewhat surprising, given the immense popular interest in giants for many readers of the Bible—though it should come as little shock to see that again biblical scholars have neglected those things most important to the readership of the church, synagogue, or general public. Indeed, the popular or even cartoonish appeal of giant or monstrous beings may have actively repelled the academy in the past, as the sheer popularity of conspiracy theories about burials of giant bones or fantastical creatures does not lend scholarly gravitas to this field of study. To put it bluntly, giants can be embarrassing. From time to time, scholars have succumbed to the lure of explaining stories of giants in the Bible through historicizing or medicalizing interpretations. One may find, for example, attempts to analyze a character like Goliath (1 Samuel 17) on the basis of hypopituitarism or other physical pathologies. Even scant examples of larger-than-normal physical remains in the Levant provoke speculation about the origins of giant stories, and Adrienne Mayor’s fascinating study of ancient folk science in The First Fossil Hunters gives a plausible etiology for at least some tales of the monstrous and gigantic: fossils of extinct animals appeared to ancient observers as “real” monsters or giants that must have once interacted with human heroes in the distant past. To be sure, along these lines the ruins of the Late Bronze Age urban centers in Israel/Palestine, whose giant walls and inhabitantless structures were visible during the Biblical period, could have appeared to later Israelites as evidence of some bygone Canaanite race. Well into the modern period, giant structures and mysterious monuments captivated romantic travelers in the region, proving the allure of the giant over millennia. One example of such a traveller, the Irish Presbyterian missionary Josias Porter (1823–1889), ornately wrote of the “memorials of…primeval giants” that he saw “in always every section of Palestine,” ranging from enormous graves to massive city architecture. Porter identified the “wild and wondrous panorama” of the Argob region in southern Syria as the site of past giant activity, and felt certain that the remains he saw there were “the very cities erected and inhabited by the Rephaim.” Neither the historicizing/medicalizing nor the fossils/ruins approach can go very far toward explaining the power these giant traditions came to have in the Hebrew Bible and in so many other literatures over such a long period of time. When taken to extremes, these interpretations can obviously become fantastical or problematically reductionist, and at best the medical-gigantism and fossil-inspiration approaches could only account for the initial motivation for giant stories in selected cases. In this paper, I would like to attempt a very broad view of the giant in the Hebrew Bible, with the goal of tracing the appearance of giants through several lenses: the giant as divine or semi-divine figure, as anti-law and anti-king, as elite adversary and elite animal, as unruly vegetation, and as the defeated past. It is precisely this kind of thematic overview that has been lacking in the literature, as giants have more typically been treated piecemeal, as mere footnotes or oddities in their narrative contexts. The very rubric of the “biblical giant” could automatically obscure the variety of gigantic figures and their roles throughout time, but it is still the case that giants appear prominently and repeatedly in the Bible, forcing us to consider whether there is something unique or uniquely “biblical” about the Bible’s giants. Though the giant has recently and justifiably received more attention from those working with the Enochic corpus and the Qumran traditions, as well as from those studying the medieval engagement with giants, we ignore the Ursprung of these later materials in the Hebrew Bible to the detriment of the field of giants in Judaism conceived as a whole. Thus, this essay is an attempt to organize the Bible’s giants by category and to continue to elevate these figures as a rightful object of scholarly attention.
Giants in Myth, History and Religion
2015
All cultures and religions speak of giants in one form or another. The Muslim, Christian and Jewish religions are the ones discussed here. This is the logic used to arrive at the conclusions that follow. About the giants of old: 1...The Bible, Quaran and Torah all speak of Giants in the distant past "Mighty men of old" and sons of God mating with daughters of man and the "Giants born to them". 2...These religious works were done thousands of years after those early giants were gone and the historical flood that all cultures speak of. 3...The prophet Mohamed (during his journey to heaven) met with God and many other past prophets, Moses, Jesus and many more including "our father Adam who was very tall". 4...I have seen it reported in multiple locations that The prophet Mohamed said Adam was about 90ft tall (60 cubits) and we all enter heaven at that scale. [Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: "Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, created Adam in His own image with His length of sixty cubits, and as He created him He told him to greet that group, and that was a party of angels sitting there, and listen to the response that they give him, for it would form his greeting and that of his offspring. He then went away and said: Peace be upon you! They (the angels) said: May there be peace upon you and the Mercy of Allah, and they made an addition of" Mercy of Allah". So he who would get into Paradise would get in the form of Adam, his length being sixty cubits, then the people who followed him continued to diminish in size up to this day. (Translation of Sahih Muslim, Book 040, Number 6809)"] (1) 5...Enoch spoke with God directly and writes 1st person accounts that include dealings with the 200 sons of God and the consequences of their actions. He speaks of the giants that were 3000 ells tall. 6...There is physical fossil evidence (recent discovery) in support of these early historical statements in the ancient texts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutkhbHut-Y and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmXF\_3Tv9ZU) About the "Sons of God and Daughters of Man": 1...God said lets make man in "our" image. Therefore God was the likeness of the other 200 "sons of God". 2...Everybody speaks of giants but Mohamed specifically denotes Adams height, lets say 90ft. (60 cubits). 3...Adam was created in Gods image so God and all the angels and Adam and Adams' daughters and close offspring would all be about 90ft tall. 4...Sons of God (90fters) went into daughters of man (90fters) and they produced "Giants 3000 ells tall" according to Enoch who was there and speaks directly about it in 1st person "Book of Enoch". BTW Enoch was supposedly good friends with God and it appears God liked him so much he let him into heaven early (actually God took him).
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004
This little book is not what its title purports it to be. It is not in any sense a balanced presentation of everyday life in mankind's oldest literate civilization; instead it is a compilation of articles culled from various recent issues of L'histoire, a historical magazine published in France. All touch to a greater or lesser extent on that life. They are written for the most part by acknowledged masters of Assyriology and underpinned by decades of scholarly engagement with the enormous and intractable mass of cuneiform texts (the word used is 'dossier') that permit an intimate insight into all aspects of human activity that is unrivalled in the study of ancient civilizations. Georges Roux begins with two perplexing matters of prehistory, the questions of where the first settlers of Mesopotamia came from (Chapter 1: 'Did the Sumerians emerge from the sea?') and of what actually took place in the extraordinary mass graves ('death-pits') excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley (Chapter 2: 'The great enigma of the cemetery at Ur'). Both questions remain unanswered. Jean Bottéro takes over with two subjects of universal interest, food and love, on both of which he has written extensively over the course of a long and distinguished academic career (Chapter 3: 'The oldest cuisine in the world', Chapter 4: 'The oldest feast', Chapter 6: 'Love and sex in Babylon'). The second of these touches on an important feature of Mesopotamian mythology, that the gods often make decisions when drunk. But the point is not elaborated, though the theological implication is a serious one: that many of the faults in the world can be blamed on a less than sober divine assembly. Sandwiched between cooking, eating and loving is wine, another favourite topic, written up by André Finet (Chapter 5: 'An ancient vintage'). Beer was a staple in ancient Mesopotamia but sophisticated people developed a taste for wine and other imported liquor. The place and role of women are still fashionable topics. Jean Bottéro's study of feminist issues in a culture where women generally were owned by men (Chapter 7: 'Women's rights') appears in tandem with André Finet's chapter on some very up-market chattels, a royal harem of the early second millennium BC (Chapter 8: 'The women of the palace at Mari'). Appended to these is Georges Roux's investigation of an unusual Mesopotamian queen who, by virtue of wielding real power as her son's regent, became in Graeco-Roman antiquity the vehicle of a fascinating legend (Chapter 9: 'Semiramis: the builder of Babylon'). The rest of the book deals with intellectual topics. Ancient techniques for the treatment of disease and other physical and mental disorders, and the rationales that informed them, practical and theological, are analysed by Jean Bottéro (Chapter 10: 'Magic and medicine'). The same writer next gives an 230 REVIEWS Treasure comes from Takht-i Sangin, as opposed to the nearby site of Takht-i Kavad as suggested by nineteenth-century English and Russian sources (see now, on the provenance of the Oxus Treasure, M. Caygill and J. Cherry (eds), A.W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum, London, 1997, pp. 230-49). Then, although there are drawings of both the Eshmunazar sarcophagus and the Alexander sarcophagus, and references to them in the text (pp. 209, 490, 503, 608, 912, 952), he nowhere discusses the cemetery now in the suburbs of Sidon from which they come. All he says of the Eshmunazar sarcophagus (p. 952) is 'on the date and the circumstance of the allocation to Sidon, see Kelly 1987...'. Nor is there any mention of the impressive sanctuary of Eshmun on the outskirts of Sidon, which is one of the best examples of an Achaemenid stone building outside Iran. On the grounds that such a valuable book will surely be reprinted and updated from time to time, it may be useful (and the author of this review hopes he will be forgiven for doing so) to draw the attention of the author and publisher to a few areas where modifications might be considered. The references or footnotes are presented in 174 pages of 'Research notes' at the back of the volume which are gathered in sections following the order of the main text. They are not further linked to the text, which makes them difficult to use. It is also difficult to find out more about the illustrations. For example, the information that the Cypriot-Phoenician bowl illustrated in fig. 50c comes from Praeneste in Italy is buried in the notes on p. 983. The overall quality of the illustrations, which are all in the form of line-drawings, is regrettably poor. This criticism also extends to the maps. The translation on the whole is excellent, although there are a few slips-e.g. gold 'plate' for gold 'plaque' on p. 501, and Oxus 'Treasury' for Oxus 'Treasure' throughout (on pp. 215, 254, 501, 954, 1025). These are minor blemishes, however, and do little to detract from what is a magnificent achievement.
The Turkic speaking Uygurs-with their Khaganate in modern day Mongolia which flourished from 744 until 840 CE when it was destroyed by the Kyrgyz-embraced Manichaeism as a court religion in the early 760s CE. 2 Even after the Uygurs migrated to the Eastern Tianshan region and the Gansu corridor where they founded the West Uygur Kingdom and the Uygur principality of Gansu respectively, they continued to adhere to Manichaean beliefs and ethics. It was only under Uygur suzerainty that Manichaeism received official support and patronage. Next to the environmental conditions so favorable for preserving manuscripts and artifacts this is why specimens of Manichaean literature and art have survived in large quantity in this part of Central Asia, although more often than not in a fragmentary state. The Uygurs translated Manichaean texts from Middle Iranian languages into their own vernacular, but it is almost certain that their electi and electae copied, read and recited works in Middle Iranian as well. This might well be the reason why some important texts are unknown in Old Uygur. The Book of Giants tradition and the Manichaean myth One of the most important doctrinal works of Central and East Asian Manichaeism, the Sermon on the Light Nous also known as the "Traité Pelliot" in its Chinese version, is not only attested in Parthian (the 1 A draft version of this paper was read at the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Berlin (August 7-11, 2017). I would like to thank Zsuzsanna Gulácsi for her comments and suggestions. 2 On the conversion of Bügü Khan and the dating of this event, see Clark 2000. 3 Cf. also Wilkens 2011. 4 Kósa 2014, pp. 71 ff. 5 This can be inferred from several textual accounts as well as from an artistic depiction in a Chinese Manichaean silk painting, which was identified in parts by Yutaka Yoshida in 2008 (lower part) and Gulácsi in 2015 (upper part). For a detailed discussion, see
Reading the Book of Giants in Literary and Historical Context
Dead Sea Discoveries 21 (2014): 313-46
This article offers some new suggestions regarding the background and purpose of the Book of Giants in the light of recent scholarship emphasizing (1) the shared features and interrelatedness of the Aramaic works discovered at Qumran and (2) the need to ground our understanding of early Jewish apocalyptic literature within the socio-political context of Hellenistic imperial domination. While this intriguing composition has been located correctly within the orbit of early Enochic tradition, the present study broadens the lens in order to consider the significance of its striking parallels with Danielic tradition, beyond the well-known shared tradition of the throne theophany (4Q530 2 ii 16-20 and Dan 7:9-10). Due attention is given both to the Danielic parallels and the transformations in Giants vis-à-vis the Enochic tradition upon which it depends (the Book of Watchers), which are interpreted in relation to recent research emphasizing that the early Enochic and Danielic writings constituted expressions of resistance to imperial rule. In line with this literary and historical contextualization, the study argues for a paradigmatic interpretation of Giants, according to which the monstrous sons of the watchers symbolize the violent, arrogant Hellenistic rulers of the author's day.
Asiatic Lions versus Warriors: Archaic Motifs in Biblical Texts
Semitica et Classica, 2010
To sum up, before ‘Israelite-Judean’ culture splitted up in two separate religious identities –Samaritan and Judaic – and before it produced, on the basis of various materials, the textual complex that we now call the Hebrew Bible – before that event, the lion, brave animal par excellence (Pro 30,30), was associated with the ‘warrior function’ represented by heroic giants. These giants are not to be confused with young warriors (bahûrîm) that use tricks to win in battle , as did Ehud in Judges 3. Instead, these giants were great warriors (gibbôrîm) capable of defeating any opponent with their mighty power. If we consider the two lists placed at the end of 2 Samuel, certain allusions involving Shamgar and the Samson narratives, the exploits of these warriors can be classified into three main categories: 1. Battle against a giant (Rephaim, Ariel?): 2 Sam 21,15-22 [1 Sam 17] ; 2 Sam 23,20 (?).21. 2. A single-handed combat against an army (‘Philistines’): Jdg 3,31 ; Jdg 15,9-19 ; 2 Sam 23,8-12.18. 3. A fight against an adult lion or some kind of a divine being (Ariel?): Jdg 14 ; 2 Sam 23,20.