The Book of Giants is an apocryphal book which expands upon the Genesis narrative of the Hebrew Bible, in a similar manner to the Book of Enoch. Together with this latter work, The Book of Giants "stands as an attempt to explain how it was that wickedness had become so widespread and muscular before the flood; in so doing, it also supplies the reason why God was more than justified in sending that flood.""Genesis notes that corruption and violence were widespread and that human thoughts were continually evil, but it does not explain how that had come about"; VanderKam (2008/1995), pp. 41, 128. The text's composition has been dated to before the 2nd century BC.
The Book of Giants is an antediluvian (pre-Flood) narrative that was received primarily in Manichaean literature and known at Turfan. However, the earliest known traditions for the book originate in Aramaic copies of a The Book of Giants among the Dead Sea Scrolls. References to the Giants mythology are found in: Genesis 6:1-4, the books of Enoch (Ethiopic, Slavonic, Hebrew, Greek), Jubilees, Genesis Apocryphon, 2 and 3 Baruch (Slavonic), the Damascus Document, and visions in Daniel 7:9-14. This book tells of the background and fate of these antediluvial giants and their fathers, the Watchers (called grigori in the Slavonic 2 Enoch),Milik, J. T., ed. (1976). The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 . London: Clarendon Press. pp. 43, 58, 92, 109-110, 113, 158, 171, 254, 300-316, 320, 328, 336-338. the sons of God or holy ones (Daniel 4:13, 17) who rebelled against heaven when—in violation of the strict "boundaries of creation"—they commingled, in their lust, with the "daughters of men."
Their even more corrupt offspring, the giants, were variously called thereafter nephilim, gibborim, or rephaim, being the earthly half-breed races that fought against God and his righteous followers whose numbers diminished as the world was overwhelmed with corruption and evil; the Manichaean fragments give these wicked ones the general name demons (Greek Enoch calls them bastards).Reeves, John C. (1992). Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in The Book of Giants Traditions. Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press. pp. 2-3, 9, 22, 30-32, 65, 67, 69-72, 76, 81-102, 109-110, 114, 118-121, 124-127, 130, 133-134, 138-139, 147, 154, 156-158 notes 334, 347 and 353, 207-209. Though the terms for the Watchers and their offspring are often confused in their various translations and iterations, collectively these rebellious races are referred to as the fallen angels in the apocryphal sources, as also in the biblical narratives that reference them.Stuckenbruck, Loren T. (1997). The Book of Giants From Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 24-28, 31, 72-74, 79, 81, 83, 90, 105, 114, 125-127, 143, 164-167, 182.
Origins in ancient tradition Since before the latter half of the twentieth century, The Book of Giants had long been known as a Middle Iranian work (which some scholars now believe was written originally in Eastern Aramaic) that circulated among the Manichaeans as a composition attributed to Mani (c. AD 216–274)—a Parthian citizen of southern Mesopotamia who appears to have been a follower of Elkesai, a Jewish-Christian prophet and visionary who lived in the early years of the second century. Some scholars, concordant with supporting evidence for the ancient sect's geographical distribution, have posited both genetic and ritual-custom similarities between the Elcesaites and the earlier Second Temple Jewish sect of the Essenes (Essaioi "Saints").
During the twentieth century a number of finds shed considerable light on the literary evidence for The Book of Giants. The 1943 publication by W. B. Henning of the Manichaean fragments from The Book of Giants discovered at Turfan in Western China (in what is now Xinjiang Province) have substantiated the many references to its circulation among, and use by, the Manichaeans. Further identification of the Manichaeans edition of The Book of Giants was revealed in 1971 when Jósef T. Milik discovered several additional Aramaic fragments of Enochic works among the Dead Sea Scrolls; finding that the fragments bore close resemblance to Mani's The Book of Giants, he concluded that Giants was originally an integral part of 1 Enoch itself. These fragmentary scrolls in Aramaic, which represented an Enochic tradition that was likely introduced to Mani in his sojourn with the Elcesaites, appeared to have been the primary source utilized by Mani in the compilation of his book, in which he made the legend of the Watchers and the giants "a cornerstone of his theological speculations." For many scholars, the Qumran fragments confirmed The Book of Giants to originally have been an independent composition from the Second Temple period.
Among the fragments discovered at Qumran, ten manuscripts of The Book of Giants are identified by Loren Stuckenbruck. These fragments (1Q23, 1Q24, 2Q26, 4Q203, 4Q530, 4Q531, 4Q532, 4Q556, 4Q206, and 6Q8) were found in caves 1, 2, 4, and 6 at the site. These discoveries led to further classification of the Enochic works. In the third group of classification, ten Aramaic manuscripts contain parts of The Book of Giants which were only known through the Manichaean sources until the recognition of them at Qumran.Nickelsburg, George W. E.; VanderKam, James C., eds. (2001). 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch . Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress. pp. 8-11, 81-108, 137, 174, 180, 188, 215, 221-222, 225, 234, 237-247, 250-251, 276, 297, 300, 536-537, 560.
There has been much speculation regarding the original language of The Book of Giants. It was generally believed to have had a Semitic origin. Indeed, the discovery of this text at Qumran led scholars, such as C. P. van Andel and Rudolf Otto, to believe that while these ancient Aramaic compositions of the book were the earliest known, the work probably had even earlier Hebrew antecedents.Van Andel, C. P. (1955). The Structure of the Enoch-Tradition and the New Testament: An Investigation into the Milieu of Apocalyptic and Sectarian Traditions within Judaism in their Relation to the Milieu of the Primitive Apostolic Gospel. Domplein, Urecht: Kemink and Son. pp. 9, 11, 43, 47, 51, 69-70. It was R. H. Charles, translator and publisher in 1906 of The Book of Enoch, who asserted that Enoch was "built upon the debris of" an older Noah saga than that in Genesis which only cryptically refers to the Enoch myth.Charles, R. H. (1913). . The Book of Enoch. London: Oxford University Press. pp. ix (note 1), 305. Centenary Edition by Weiser Books. But Milik himself offered his own hypothesis that Enoch's 'creation story' and law of God account naturally predate the Mosaic Sinai accounts in Genesis: He saw Genesis 6:1-4—long a puzzling passage to biblical scholars—as a quotation from what he believed ultimately to have been the earlier Enoch source.Milik maintains, further, that the Qumran Damascus Document (at CD 2:17-19) "quotes from The Book of Giants (in Hebrew!)." Milik (1976), pp. 57-58; Reeves (1992), pp. 52-53, 129 note 17. More recent scholarship, such as that of Klaus Beyer, indicates that The Book of Giants (parts of which have been found in Hebrew at Qumran) was "originally composed in Hebrew during the 3rd century BCE, while the names of the giants Gilgamesh and Hobabish betray a Babylonian provenance"—which Babylonian-origins claim based on the name appearances, however, is refuted by Martínez.Stuckenbruck , pp. 5 note 22, 30, 208 note 273, 220 note 27; Martínez [2018/1992], p. 114
Contents Dead Sea Scrolls version The text unearthed at Qumran in 1948 was composed of fragments in Aramaic. Because of the book's fragmentation, it was difficult for the documents' linguistic researchers and specialists to know, in its subsequently varied permutations, the exact order of the content. The Giants work is closely related to the 1 Enoch analogue, which also tells a story of the giants, but one which is far more elaborate. The Qumrannic The Book of Giants also bears resemblance to the Manichaean edition of The Book of Giants that came after it. Scholars, beyond their many questions of the Enochic tradition's oral or written transmission, still don't know why the Qumran community considered the Enochic texts so important that they possessed and retained so many copies in comparison to other textual traditions found there.Barker, Margaret. (2005) . "The Origin of Evil," "The Cosmic Covenant," and "Postscript," in The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its Influence on Christianity . London: SPCK; Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 33-48, 77-90, 105-113.
The Book of GiantsSchiffman, L. H., & VanderKam, J. C., eds. (2008). Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 2 Vols. New York: Oxford University Press. is an expansive narrative of the biblical story of the birth of "giants" in Genesis 6.1-4. In this story, the giants came into being when the Watcher "sons of God" (who, per the story's corroborative JubileesJubilees intimately connects with Enoch's story. Jub 4:17-23 presents, for example, the perspective of the heavenly archangels who direct and instruct Enoch in Wisdom: "We told him"; "we taught him"; "we led him". See VanderKam (2008/1995), pp. 112-114, 128-129. account [Jub 4:15; 5:6], God originally dispatched to earth for the purpose of instructing and nurturing humanity "in proper ritual and ethical conduct," "to do what is just and upright upon the earth") had sexual intercourse with human women, who then birthed a hybrid race of giants. These Watchers (grigori) and giants (nephilim) engaged in destructive and grossly immoral actions which devastated humanity, including the revealing of heaven's holy "secrets" or "mysteries to their wives and children" and to mankind generally.
When Enoch heard of this, he was distressed and petitioned God, who in his longsuffering and by divine revelation and counsel called Enoch to preach repentance unto them, that the earthly races might avoid God's wrath and destruction. In his mercy, God chose also to give the fallen Watchers an additional chance to repent by transmitting dreams to several of their giant-sons, including two brothers named Ohyah and Hahyah who relayed the dreams to an assembly of their grigori and nephilim companions. This assembly of Watcher-giant associates were perplexed by the dreams,Nickelsburg, George W. E.; VanderKam, James C., eds. (2012). 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 2 Enoch . Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press. pp. 49-50, 95, 111, 119, 130, 148, 153, 166, 180, 187, 194, 198, 224, 233, 243, 247, 254-255, 273-274, 297, 311, 315, 320. so they sent a giant named Mahway to Enoch's abode and to the places of his preaching (for Mahway had been instructed that he must first "hear" the prophet speak before petitioning him for the "oracle"). Enoch, in his attempt to intercede on their behalf, provided not only the oracle that the Watchers and giants had requested, but also twin "tablets" that revealed the full meaning of their dreams and God's future judgment against them.
When the Watchers and giants had at last heard heaven's response, many chose, in their transcendent pride and arrogance, rather than to turn from their evil ways, to act in defiance against God. The Qumran fragments are incomplete at this point.
The Qumrannic edition of The Book of Giants, like its Manichaean counterpart, affiliates the names of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh and the monster Humbaba with the Watchers and giants.
Manichaean version