The Book of Giants

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==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. The Book of Giants 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 Jubilees 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. 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. This version also contains a complete ending, telling how the forces of the Light, led by four angels identified with Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Istrael, subdue the demons and their offspring in battle. Other texts Much of the content in The Book of Giants is similar, and most closely relates, to 1 Enoch 7:3-6, a passage which sheds light on the characterizing features of the giants. It reveals that the giants were born of the Watcher "sons of God" and the "daughters of men." The giants, as their "prostituted" half-breed offspring, began to devour the works of what they perceived to be a titan or giant (mankind) and went on to kill and to viciously exploit them in slavery and sexual debauchery. They also had sexual intercourse with animals, and raped one another. They murdered on a massive scale, and also aborted their own children. ==Interpretive issues between Qumran and Turfan==

The authorship of the Qumranic edition of The Book of Giants is still a question among scholars. The Qumran discoveries decidedly ruled out any possibility that the Manicheans were the composers of The Book of Giants, for their work followed later. When J.T. Milik first proposed the late date of the Book of Parables in 1 Enoch, he proposed that the section that had been replaced was the Book of Giants. One of the recovered fragments of the Book of the Giants from Qumran was written by the same scribe who transcribed a portion of the Book of Enoch, and it is thought that they could belong to the same manuscript (4QEnGiantsaar and 4QEncar). Although it is not certain, this would make the Book of Giants the missing piece of Qumran’s Enochic pentateuch, later replaced by the Book of Parables in the version of 1 Enoch that was translated into Ge’ez. As far as comparisons that might be made with canonical texts, the books of Daniel and 1 Enoch both have similarities; for example in their visionary elements. Stuckenbruck suggests that "these similarities ... allow for the possibility that the author of Daniel 7 knew the early Enochic traditions well enough to draw on and then adapt them for his own purposes. Nowhere is this clearer than in the throne-theophany itself". All of these Enochic writings would have held significance from the beginning of the first century. Indeed, the early Christian church treasured Enoch and few early Church Fathers quoted from and held it as divinely inspired or authoritative, even when it was never included in the church canon list. However, due in no small part to the influence of the Alexandrian philosophers who ill-favored it—its contents thought by many of the Hellenistic era to be foolish or strange—the overall Enochic work rapidly ran afoul of ideas held by the Christian and Jewish doctors, who considered it a tainted product of the Essenes of Qumran. The book was soon banned by such orthodox authorities as Hilary, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth century and it gradually passed out of circulation, == See also ==