Ancient Tales of Giants

from Qumran and Turfan

Contexts, Traditions, and Influences

Edited by

Matthew Goff,
Loren T. Stuckenbruck,
and Enrico Morano

Mohr Siebeck
Author’s e-offprint with publisher’s permission.
MATTHEW GOFF is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism in the Department
of Religion at Florida State University.
LOREN T. STUCKENBRUCK is Professor of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism in the
Protestant Faculty of Theology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
ENRICO MORANO is retired teacher of Classics in High Schools and the current President of the
International Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS).

ISBN 978-3-16-154531-3
ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie;

detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2016 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by
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Printed in Germany.

Author’s e-offprint with publisher’s permission.

 Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V
List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

Matthew Goff
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part One

Gibborim and Gigantes

Antecedents, Reception, and Comparative Contexts
from the Hebrew Bible and Greek Literature

Brian R. Doak
The Giant in a Thousand Years: Tracing Narratives of Gigantism
in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Samantha Newington
Greek Titans and Biblical Giants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Michael Tuval
“Συναγωγὴ γιγάντων” (Prov 21:16): The Giants in the Jewish Literature
in Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Part Two

Tales of Giants in their Ancient Jewish Context

The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Watchers, and Daniel

Joseph L. Angel
The Humbling of the Arrogant and the “Wild Man” and “Tree Stump”
Traditions in the Book of Giants and Daniel 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

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VIII Table of Contents

Amanda M. Davis Bledsoe

Throne Theophanies, Dream Visions, and Righteous(?) Seers:
Daniel, the Book of Giants, and 1 Enoch Reconsidered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Ida Fröhlich
Giants and Demons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Matthew Goff
The Sons of the Watchers in the Book of Watchers and the Qumran Book
of Giants: Contexts and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Loren T. Stuckenbruck
The Book of Giants among the Dead Sea Scrolls: Considerations of
Method and a New Proposal on the Reconstruction of 4Q530 . . . . . . . . . . 129

Part Three

Enochic Traditions in Central Asia and China

Exploring Connections and Affinities between
Giants in Ancient Judaism and Manichaeism

Gábor Kósa
The Book of Giants Tradition in the Chinese Manichaica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Enrico Morano
Some New Sogdian Fragments Related to Mani’s Book of Giants and the
Problem of the Influence of Jewish Enochic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

John C. Reeves
Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Jens Wilkens
Remarks on the Manichaean Book of Giants: Once Again on Mahaway’s
Mission to Enoch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Index of Citations of Ancient Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Modern Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants?

John C. Reeves
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

In 1997 Dirk Kruisheer published a short essay1 wherein he presented English

translations of three scholia (‫ )ܣܟܘܠܝܐ‬to certain passages from the early chapters
of the biblical book of Genesis by the Syrian polymath Jacob of Edessa (d. 708),
an influential Christian translator, historian, and biblical exegete whose extant
literary corpus exhibits a wide acquaintance with the intellectual currents flour-
ishing in the East during the late seventh and early eighth centuries.2 They
constitute the initial fruits of a more ambitious project whose larger goal is the
preparation of a complete edition of this facet of Jacob’s exegetical oeuvre, a
work which (to this author’s knowledge) has yet to appear. A number of Jacob’s
scholia, which presumably once comprised a “Book of Scholia” (‫)ܟܬܒܐ ܕܐܣܟܘܠܝܐ‬
which is no longer extant in this integral form,3 have been excerpted, abbreviated,
or selectively quoted in a variety of interpretative formats by later commentators
or copyists, of which only a handful have been published to date.4 Lists and
1 Dirk Kruisheer, “Reconstructing Jacob of Edessa’s Scholia,” in The Book of Genesis in

Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation: A Collection of Essays, ed. Judith Frishman and
Lucas van Rompay (TEG 5; Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 187–96.
2 William Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature (London: Adam and Charles Black,

1894), 141–54; Rubens Duval, Anciennes littératures chrétiennes II: La littérature syriaque, 3rd
ed. (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1907), 374–77; Anton Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen
Literatur (Bonn: A. Marcus u. E. Webers Verlag, 1922), 248–56. For recent collective assess-
ments of Jacob’s importance, see the essays assembled within Bas ter Haar Romeny, ed., Jacob
of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day (MPIL 18; Leiden: Brill, 2008); Gregorios Yohanna
Ibrahim and George A. Kiraz, eds., Studies on Jacob of Edessa (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010).
3 Baumstark, Geschichte, 250–51. He calls attention to the varying rubrics used for citations

from several of Jacob’s exegetical works in Ms. Brit. Lib. Add. 12144 as transcribed by William
Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired Since the Year 1838,
3 vols. (London: The British Museum, 1870–72), 2:910.
4
 Lucas van Rompay, “Development of Biblical Interpretation in the Syrian Churches of the
Middle Ages,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, Volume I:
From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300) … Part 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Magne
Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 559-77 (561).
It has been recently suggested that our extant numbered scholia from Jacob emanate from
one or more early “abridgements” of a much larger “Book of Scholia.” See Bas ter Haar
Romeny, “Ephrem and Jacob of Edessa in the Commentary of the Monk Severus,” in Malphono
w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, ed. George A. Kiraz (Piscataway:
Gorgias Press, 2008), 535–58 (543–44).

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200 John C. Reeves

occasional textual samplings of extant scholia appear in some early manuscript

catalogs.5 Twenty-four scholia attributed to Jacob were culled from two ninth
century manuscripts held by the British Library and published by George Phil-
lips in 1864.6 Other scholia belonging to Jacob are found in manuscripts or print
editions containing the so-called Catena Severi,7 a biblical commentary asso-
ciated with Severus of Edessa (d. 861), where they are sometimes combined or
even confused with material from Ephrem or other church fathers,8 or they are
occasionally cited in the course of a larger argument.9 The pseudo-Hippolytus
scriptural catena published by Paul A. de Lagarde from a Karshuni manuscript
contains approximately thirty citations of biblical exegesis explicitly attributed
to Jacob, most of which are probably based upon his scholia.10 Finally, as has
been stressed by Kruisheer, the extant correspondence of Jacob furnishes exam-
ples of scriptural interpretation which serve as functional equivalents to the kind
of interpretative activity exemplified by his scholia.
The three scholia by Jacob recently published by Kruisheer include one (ad
Gen 4:7) that had been earlier identified and published by Phillips,11 but the
remaining two (ad Gen 4:15 and 6:1–4) were translated into English for the
first time. It is Kruisheer’s third scholion, the one explicating Gen 6:1–4, which

 5 Giuseppe Simone Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana, 3 vols. (Rome:

Typis Sacrae Congragationis de Propaganda Fide, 1719–28), 1:489–93; Wright, Catalogue, 2:591,
996–97.
 6 George Phillips, Scholia on Passages of the Old Testament, by Mār Jacob, Bishop of Edes-

sa, Now First Edited in the Original Syriac, with an English Translation and Notes (London:
Williams and Norgate, 1864).
 7 Kruisheer has identified Ms. Vatican Syr. 103, Ms. Brit. Lib. Add. 12.144, Ms. Birmingham

Mingana 147, Ms. Harvard Syr. 116, and Ms. Harvard Syr. 123 as examples of such manuscripts.
Note also idem, “Ephrem, Jacob of Edessa, and the Monk Severus: An Analysis of Ms. Vat. Syr.
103, ff. 1–72,” in Symposium Syriacum VII: Uppsala University, Department of Asian and Afri-
can Languages, 11–14 August 1996, ed. René Lavenant (OrChrAn 256; Rome: Pontificio istituto
orientale, 1998), 599–605; Ter Haar Romeny, “Ephrem and Jacob,” 535–57. Several scholia from
Jacob commenting upon the first few verses of Genesis 1 as found in Ms. Harvard Syr. 123 were
published by Edward G. Mathews, Jr., “The Armenian Commentary on Genesis Attributed to
Ephrem the Syrian,” in Frishman and van Rompay, Book of Genesis, 143–61 (155–60).
 8
 See, e.g., the print edition of the Catena Severi included in Giuseppe Simone Assemani,
Petrus Benedictus, and Stefano Evodio Assemani, eds., Sancti patris nostri Ephraem Syri Opera
omnia quae exstant Graece, Syriace, Latine, 6 vols. (Rome: Typographia Vaticana, 1732–46),
1:116–93; 2:1–315; Wright, Short History, 144; Duval, Littérature syriaque, 66.
 9 E. g., Robert Schröter, “Erster Brief Jacob’s von Edessa an Johannes den Styliten,” ZDMG

24 (1870): 290–96; Eberhard Nestle, “Jacob von Edessa über den Schem hammephorasch und
andere Gottesnamen,” ZDMG 32 (1878): 481–500.
10 Compare, e.g., Paul de Lagarde, Materialen zur Kritik und Geschichte des Pentateuchs,

2 vols. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1867), 2:18.18–20, with the scholion of Jacob cited from Ms.
Harvard Syr. 123 by Mathews, “Armenian Commentary,” 156.
11 Phillips, Scholia, 1 (text); 1–3 (trans.).

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 201

should attract the attention of those scholars interested in the legends surround-
ing these biblical verses. An English rendering of this scholion reads as follows: 12
From the tenth scholion, when he (i.e., Jacob) comments about those giants regarding
whom it is written that they were born before the flood to the daughters of Cain:
Some tales about them are recorded and recounted which are ancient and which are
fuller than those belonging to the Hebrews. (These relate) that since God wished to de-
stroy them and their wickedness even prior to that total wrath (expressed) by means of
the flood, he allowed them to perish through the evil machinations of their (own) minds:
they fell upon each other as if waging war, exercising neither reason nor sense. Moreover,
according to the narrative of the tale, (this took place) so that during all the subsequent
eras of the world human beings would not experience combat, destruction, and ruin of a
magnitude comparable to this one.
Thus the destruction of those arrogant and insolent giants – the evil offspring of those
who violated their covenant, being those who were illicitly born from the daughters of
Cain – (transpired) in such a manner that many stadia of the earth were rendered putrid
by their blood and by the foul discharge from their (rotting) carcasses. Large and mighty
heaps of their bones were compiled from the corpses. These things are in accordance
with what the tale has said. It happened that the visible sign of their destruction remained
evident until the flood.
The entirety of this (destruction?) was so great and marvelous that heretical and erring
persons of a pagan orientation even composed poetical fables about them which were full
of foolishness and error. They say that the earth was compacted from their excrement and
that the heavens had been stretched out using their skins.

There are several features of Jacob’s exposition of Gen 6:1–4 which invite further
comment. The introductory incipit, which identifies this particular interpretative
effort as forming part of “the tenth scholion of Jacob,”13 explicitly signals that
Jacob intends to discuss “those giants” (‫ )ܓܢܒܪܐ ܗܢܘܢ‬who belong to the antedi-
luvian age of biblical mythology and who are verbally referenced in Gen 6:4.
In identifying their biological mothers as “the daughters of Cain,” the author
of the incipit – who is not Jacob but a later compiler – unsurprisingly follows
a demythologized reading of this passage which was extraordinarily popular
in eastern Christian circles, whereby “the sons of God” and “the daughters of
mortals” of Gen 6:2 and 6:4 encode the progeny of the righteous Seth and the
wicked Cain respectively. Yet to judge from the language of the scholion, Jacob
himself also seems to accept this particular reading of these ambiguous syntagms
when he flatly refers to the giants as “the evil offspring of those who violated

12
 Translated from Ms. Brit. Libr. Add. 17.193 fol. 61v–62r. See John C. Reeves, Prolegomena
to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism (Sheffield/Oakville: Equinox, 2011), 112–13. Note also
Kruisheer, “Reconstructing,” 194–95. I remain grateful to Dirk Kruisheer for kindly providing
me with a copy of this still unpublished text.
13 The previous two scholia published by Kruisheer from the same manuscript are numbered

“fifth” and “sixth” respectively. All three are rendered consecutively on fols. 61r–62r, and the
last one (“tenth”) is followed immediately by a scholion labeled “thirteenth” pertaining to Gen
7:11.

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202 John C. Reeves

their covenant, being those who were illicitly born from the daughters of Cain.”
The covenant (‫ )ܩܝܡܐ‬violation at stake here is presumably the one that figures in
renditions of antediluvian “events” such as are exemplified in the Cave of Trea-
sures cycle of tales, a textual network of biblically infused stories which attain an
exegetical hegemony in the Christian East during the final half of the first mil-
lennium CE. According to this plot line, an oath of ancestral fealty was imposed
by the pious Seth upon his descendants to remain physically separate and not
to intermarry with the licentious offspring of Cain, the murderer of his brother
Abel. This state of affairs prevailed for a few generations. However, during the
lifetime of Yared, the father of Enoch, members of Seth’s family began to break
this oath with increasing frequency, and by the time of the flood only Noah and
his immediate family were left of the line of Seth who remained faithful to the
original agreement.14
But Jacob’s scholion is not simply a reproduction of a Cave of Treasures-like
source. The vivid details which he provides about the militant behaviors of the
giants, their violent demise, the deleterious effects of their rotting corpses on the
natural environment, and the fact that “certain heretical and erring persons of a
pagan orientation” exploited these episodes for their own “foolishness” demon-
strate that Jacob had access to one or more collections of traditions about the
giants of Gen 6:1–4 which extend well beyond what is available in earlier exeget-
ical comments, or what is contained in the Cave of Treasures cycle of stories. His
recourse to such an expansive set of traditions is clearly signaled in the opening
lines of the scholion: “Some tales (‫ )ܬܫܥܝܬܐ‬about them (i.e., the giants of Gen
6:4) are recorded (‫ )ܟܬܝܒ‬and recounted which are ancient and which are fuller
than those belonging to the Hebrews.” Kruisheer has rightly recognized that
Jacob here “clearly points to an apocryphal tradition”;15 and what is more, it
appears to be a written repository of lore that recounts tales about the giant
progeny of “the sons of God” and “the daughters of mortals” of Gen 6:1–4.
What might Jacob be referencing?

14 Syriac Cave of Treasures §§ 7.15–10.15; 16.1–3, according to the edition and stichometry of

Su-Min Ri, ed., La Caverne des Trésors. Les deux recensions syriaques, 2 vols. (CSCO 486–87;
SS 207–08; Leuven: Peeters, 1987). Important components of the “Cave of Treasures cycle”
include (1) the several Syriac versions of the so-called Cave of Treasures; (2) the Syriac, Arabic,
Ethiopic, and eventually Greek forms of the Testament of Adam; (3) the Arabic work chris-
tened by Margaret Dunlop Gibson as the Kitāb al-majāll (“Book of Rolls”); (4) the Ethiopic
Gadla ʾAdām (“Strivings of Adam”); and (5) the Arabic and Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter and
Qalēmenṭōs (i.e., Pseudo-Clementine) literature, an enormous mass of exegetical and traditional
lore which possesses little if any overlap with the more familiar Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
and Recognitions long associated with minority Syro-Palestinian forms of Christianity. See also
the specific texts flagged by Albrecht Götze, “Die Nachwirkung der Schatzhöhle,” ZS 2 (1923):
51–94; 3 (1924): 53–71, 153–77.
15 Kruisheer, “Reconstructing,” 195.

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 203

It has often been recognized that Jacob was conversant with the kinds of tra-
ditions found in certain Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works.16 One
of the most important testimonies to his knowledge of such sources is in one
of his epistles addressed to the stylite monk John of Litarba, where he provides
lengthy responses to eighteen questions which the latter figure had previously
posed to him with regard to a variety of theological and interpretative issues.17
Among the diverse array of topics he discusses therein, Jacob provides us with
some fascinating reflections on the antiquity of Hebrew language and literature,
speculations about the identities of certain biblical prophets, and discussions
surrounding the authorship of certain biblical compositions. He appears to be
familiar with a number of non-canonical legends featuring primary biblical char-
acters and authors like Ezra, Jeremiah, Baruch, Solomon, Abraham, and Moses.
But perhaps most importantly for our present inquiry, Jacob is also cognizant
of the kinds of traditions that are also found in Second Temple era productions
like the Book of Jubilees,18 an influential pre-Christian account of the formative
events and personalities in early Israelite history that roughly mirrors the nar-
rative sequence and some of the content of what will eventually be enshrined
by some biblically allied communities in the “canonical” books of Genesis
and Exodus. Jacob even defends the authenticity of a Jewish “book of Enoch”
(‫ )ܟܬܒܐ ܕܚܢܘܟ‬by first invoking its citation by “the apostle Jude” (cf. Jude 14–15,
which quotes from a text like that now found in 1 En. 1:9), and then further de-
claring that it is a true literary artifact from the pre-Mosaic age “in which there
are no counterfeit passages.”19 Both the Book of Jubilees and the extant Enochic
literary corpus contain important articulations of the fateful encounter between
“the sons of God” and “the daughters of mortals” which feature a number of
graphic details “which are ancient and which are fuller” than their biblical coun-
terparts. Might Jacob be referring to works such as these?
A close comparison of the details supplied by Jacob in his tenth scholion with
the stories about the giants found in Jubilees and Enochic literature shows that
the answer to this question is more complex than it might first appear. Take for

16 Van Rompay, “Development,” 562; William Adler, “Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Jacob of

Edessa’s Letters and Historical Writings,” in Ter Haar Romeny, Jacob of Edessa, 49–65.
17
 William Wright, “Two Epistles of Mār Jacob, Bishop of Edessa,” JSLBR 10 (1867): 430–60.
The relevant epistle is “Epistle 13,” transcribed and published by Wright from Ms. Brit. Lib.
Add. 12172 fols. 111b–121b. This epistle was later translated by François Nau, “Traduction des
lettres XII et XIII de Jacques d’Édesse,” ROC 10 (1905): 197–208, 258–82.
18
 For discussions of these “Jubilean” parallels, see Sebastian P. Brock, “Abraham and the
Ravens: A Syriac Counterpart to Jubilees 11–12 and Its Implications,” JSJ 9 (1978): 135–52;
and especially William Adler, “Jacob of Edessa and the Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Syriac Chro-
nography,” in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. John
C. Reeves (SBLEJL 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 143–71; idem, “Jewish Pseudepigrapha,”
49–65.
19
 Ms. Brit. Mus. Add. 12172 fols. 114b–15a, transcribed by Wright, “Two Epistles,” 8–9
(text); Nau, “Traduction,” 206–7.

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204 John C. Reeves

example Jacob’s notice about the senseless warfare that breaks out among the
giants when God becomes displeased with their wicked deeds. The eruption of a
ferocious internecine conflict among the giant progeny of “the sons of God” and
“the daughters of mortals” prior to the arrival of the cataclysmic flood waters on
the surface of the earth is a motif which is likewise present in both Jubilees (5:7–
11; cf. 7:21–25) as well as two early Enochic booklets known today as the Book of
Watchers (1 En. 10:9–10, 12) and the Animal Apocalypse (88:2), where the geno-
cidal slaughter is instigated and fueled by divine anger at the giants’ disruption
of the created order. These instances provide Jacob’s narrative about the demise
of the giants with an impeccable Enochic pedigree. With one important excep-
tion, which we will examine below, this gory motif does not figure in the other
narratives or comments we have about the fate of these antediluvian giants. We
also learn from Jacob’s epistle that he knows at least one Enochic writing – whose
value he champions – and other “Jewish stories” (‫ )ܬܫܥܝܬܐ ܝܘܕܝܬܐ‬whose content,
when closely examined, aligns with traditions also found in Jubilees.20 It there-
fore does not seem far-fetched to conclude that Jacob’s notice about the fighting
among the giants is probably connected to Enochic and/or Jubilean sources.
But Jacob’s further observation that this gruesome divinely supervised massacre
was designed “according to the narrative of the tale” (‫ )ܐܝܟ ܬܘܢܝܗ ܕܬܫܥܝܬܐ‬to
dissuade future human generations from engaging in warfare does not seem to
have a verbal analogue in these particular Jewish sources.21 A further discrepancy
distancing Jacob’s scholion from a simple repetition of the contents of Enochic
literature and the Book of Jubilees is the latter sources’ common adherence to the
older supernatural understanding of “the sons of God” – the ones who fathered
the giants – as angelic entities.
Jacob’s details about the pollution of the biosphere due to the contaminating
effects of the shed blood and the rotting corpses of the giants – details which
again reportedly are “in accordance with what the tale has said” (‫ܕܐܝܟܢܐ ܕܐܡܪܬ‬
‫)ܬܫܥܝܬܐ‬ – are again not matched by anything found in Jubilees or the Enochic
corpus. But they are clearly related to the traditions about the demise of the
giants that are found in the fourth century Syrian Christian Pseudo-Clemen-
tine literature, an enigmatic corpus of writings whose affinities with important
streams of Palestinian and Syro-Mesopotamian religious communities are being
increasingly recognized.22 One might compare, for example, Jacob’s statement

20
 E. g., Wright, “Two Epistles,” 5.4 (text). As for Jacob’s rubric as a marker for the Book
of Jubilees or narrative content similar to that therein, see Brock, “Abraham and the Ravens,”
146; Adler, “Jacob of Edessa,” 144; Albert-Marie Denis, Introduction à la littérature religieuse
judéo-hellénistique, 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 1:385.
21 Jubilees 7:27–29 might be the closest we come to such a sentiment.
22
 An exhaustive survey of the issues and scholarship surrounding this corpus is supplied by
F. Stanley Jones, “Introduction to the Pseudo-Clementines,” in idem, Pseudoclementina Elcha-
saiticaque inter Judaeochristiana: Collected Studies (OLA 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 7–49.

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 205

about the defilement of the earth “by their blood and by the foul discharge from
their (rotting) carcasses” (‫ )ܡܢ ܕܡܗܘܢ ܘܒܪܗܐܠ ܕܡܢ ܫܠܕܝܗܘܢ‬with what is recounted
in Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 8.17.1–2: “Due to the shedding of much blood,
the pure air became defiled with impure fumes and produced disease in those
breathing it, making them sick, so that from then on humans died prematurely.
Being greatly defiled by these things, the earth produced poisonous and harmful
animals for the first time.”23 In both instances, we learn that bloodshed associ-
ated with the giants leads to the pollution of the created order, even though the
source for the toxic blood differs.24 Similarly, Jacob’s reference to the huge piles
of bones visually commemorating the era when the giants terrorized the earth’s
inhabitants has its thematic echo in Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.29.3–4:
After that in the ninth generation (i.e., from Adam) the giants were born, famous from of
old, not with the feet of a dragon as the stories of the Greeks say, but having huge bodies.
Up to the present time immense bones of enormous size are still visible as proof in several
places. However, against these the just providence of God brought a flood upon the world
so that the surface of the earth might be washed clean from their pollution … 25

As with the earlier Pseudo-Clementine analogue, there are subtle differences

between these two reports, but the shared element of the visual impressiveness
of the skeletal remains of the giants makes it seem possible that Jacob knows, if
somewhat imperfectly, the Pseudo-Clementine renderings, or that both Jacob
and the Pseudo-Clementine “giants-narrative(s)” may be independently drawing
upon and adapting a common source for their respective “fuller” renditions of
this biblical episode. Neither possibility is implausible. Syriac translations of

23
 Bernhard Rehm and Georg Strecker, eds., Die Pseudoklementinen I: Homilien, 3rd ed.
(GCS; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), 128.12–16: ἐπὶ δὲ τῇ πολλῇ τῶν αἱμάτων ῥύσει ὁ καθαρὸς
ἀὴρ ἀκαθάρτῳ ἀναθυμιάσει μιανθεὶς καὶ νοσήσας τοὺς ἀναπνέοντας αὐτὸν νοσώδεις ἀπειργάζετο, ὡς
τοὺς ἀνθρώπους λοιπὸν ἀώρους ἀποθνῄσκειν. ἡ δὲ γῆ ἐκ τούτων σφόδρα μιανθεῖσα πρῶτον τότε τὰ
ἰοβόλα καὶ λυμαντικὰ ζῷα ἐξέβρασεν.
24 In Homil. 8.17.1–2, the polluting blood is produced by the violent behaviors of the giants,

while in Jacob’s scholion it is the blood seeping from their corpses that is deemed poisonous.
25 Bernhard Rehm and Georg Strecker, eds., Die Pseudoklementinen II: Rekognitionen in

Rufins Übersetzung, 2nd ed. (GCS; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 25.5–10: exin nona gen-
eratione nascuntur gigantes illi qui a saeculo nominantur, non dracontopodes, ut Graecorum
fabulae ferunt, sed inmensis corporibus editi, quorum adhuc ad indicium in nonnullis locis ossa
inmensae magnitudinis ostenduntur. Sed adversum hos iusta dei providentia diluvium mundo
introduxit, ut orbis quidem terrarum ab eorum contagione dilueretur. The parallel Syriac version
of this text reads: “And from those who were in the ninth generation were born those giants
famous from of old. They did not have the legs of dragons, like the tales of the Greeks say;
rather, they were huge, and they were like massive mountains in the size of their bodies. Now
their bones are deposited in many locales at those places I mentioned to you at another time,
where they are a sign to counter against unbelief. The righteous providence of God brought
the flood against them, and the world was made pure by the flood.” Translated from Paul A. de
Lagarde, Clementis Romani Recognitiones syriace (Leipzig/London: F. A. Brockhaus/Williams
and Norgate, 1861), 20.2–9 (text).

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206 John C. Reeves

significant portions of both the Homilies and the Recognitions survive in manu-
scripts stemming from the fifth and the sixth centuries, and Jacob was perfectly
capable of working with any Greek witnesses from the Pseudo-Clementine
circle of writings that may have been available to him. Interestingly, in light of
our previous observations about Jacob’s attested familiarity with a Jewish book
of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, it should also be noted that scholars have long
acknowledged that Jubilees, or at least traditions analogous to those also found
in this work, undergird the alternate rendering of “biblical history” visible in
Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1 and Homilies 8.12–20.26
A final clue for perhaps identifying Jacob’s source(s) appears in the final
paragraph of Jacob’s scholion where he invokes “poetical fables” (‫ܫܘܥܝܬ‬
‫ )ܦܘܐܝܛܝܬܐ‬which certain “heretical and erring persons of a pagan orientation”
(‫ )ܐܢܫܝܢ ܗܪܤܝܘܛܐ ܘܛܥܝܐ ܚܢܦܐܝܬ‬composed about the giants which “were full of
foolishness and error” (‫)ܡܠܝܢ ܒܕܝܐ ܘܛܥܝܘܬܐ‬. He then goes on to cite a parade ex-
ample of such foolishness found in these “fables”: “They say that the earth was
compacted from their excrement and that the heavens had been stretched out
using their skins” (‫)ܘܢܐܡܪܘܢ ܕܡܢ ܦܪܬܗܘܢ ܐܬܪܩܥܬ ܐܪܥܐ ܘܡܢ ܓܠܕܝܗܘܢ ܐܬܡܬܚܘ ܫܡܝܐ‬.
This particular set of cosmogonic accomplishments is one that is unusual, dis-
tinctive, and fortunately well attested, and it leaves no doubt that the “heretical”
people Jacob has in view are the Manichaeans. To his credit, Kruisheer already
suspected that the Manichaeans might be the target of Jacob’s jibes, but re-
frained from pronouncing a definitive verdict, stating that “[f]urther research
will be needed to establish … whether Jacob was in fact combating Manichaean
thought.”27 The fabrication of certain components of the physical universe,
like the heaven(s) and the earth, from the flayed skins, skeletons, and bodily
effluvia of a group of butchered victims is an authentic Manichaean mytheme,
one characterized by Franz Cumont as “un des épisodes les plus surprenants de
cette cosmogonie étrange,”28 and it appears in both Manichaean writings and in a
wide number of chronologically and geographically dispersed heresiographers.29

26 Hermann Rönsch, Das Buch der Jubiläen, oder, Die kleine Genesis (Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag,

1874), 322–25, 376; Robert H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, or, The Little Genesis (London:
Adam and Charles Black, 1902), lxxx, 84, 96; J. Bergmann, “Les éléments juifs dans les Pseu-
do-Clémentines,” REJ 46 (1903): 89–98 (93–94); Klaus Berger, Das Buch der Jubiläen (JSHRZ
2.3; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981), 298, and the numerous references cited there s. v. “Clem
Recog,” 574.
27
 Kruisheer, “Reconstructing,” 196.
28 Franz Cumont, Recherches sur le manichéisme I: La Cosmogonie manichéenne d’après

Théodore bar Khôni (Bruxelles: H. Lamertin, 1908), 26.

29
 Henri-Charles Puech, Le manichéisme: Son fondateur–sa doctrine (Paris: Civilisations du
Sud, 1949), 170–71 nn. 319–20; Werner Sundermann, Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogo-
nische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer (BTT 4; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1973), 45–46; John
C. Reeves, “Manichaean Citations from the Prose Refutations of Ephrem,” in Emerging From
Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources, ed. Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 207

We find, for example, the fourth century Prose Refutations of Ephrem ridicul-
ing one of Mani’s teachings in a similar manner:
Have you understood this nonsense? Come (and) listen (to some) that is (even) more ri-
diculous! (Mani says) when Primal Man captured the sons of dark­ness, he skinned them
and made this heaven from their skins (‫)ܡܢ ܓܠܕܝܗܘܢ‬, and he spread out the earth from
their excrement (‫)ܘܡܢ ܦܪܬܗܘܢ ܠܡ ܪܩܥ ܐܪܥܐ‬, and some of their bones he even melted down,
and erected and heaped up mountains …30

Similar testimonies, allegedly culled from Manichaean writings, are also extant
in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Middle Iranian, and Arabic language sources. This the-
matic, even verbal, correspondence between Jacob’s citation and these Manichae-
an analogues confirms that Jacob had the Manichaean religious community in
view when he spoke about “heretical and erring persons” who had composed
“poetical fables” which were “full of foolishness and error” about the giants
of Gen 6:1–4. Further sealing the Manichaean identity of Jacob’s citation is its
distinctive conflation of what are typically two distinct categories of characters
within these stories; namely, an assimilation of the rebel watchers/archons with
their offspring giants/monsters/abortions, a conflation that is ultimately rooted
in the ambiguous syntax of Gen 6:4 surrounding the mysterious Hebrew term
nǝphîlîm and its intended contextual referent.31 As was perceptively observed
by Guy Stroumsa, Mani “practically identified the watchers themselves with
the abortions.”32 Jacob’s citation – when read alongside its parallel occurrences
in Christian, Zoroastrian, and Muslim literature, where the rebel archons (“sons
of darkness”) are the ones who are flayed and butchered – perfectly exemplifies
this same tendency.
Which “poetical fables” of Manichaean lineage about the antediluvian giants
might Jacob have in mind? Given the subject matter of his scholion (“about
those giants …”) and of the Manichaean specimen which he thoughtfully pro-
vided, one obvious candidate which springs to mind is Mani’s Book of Giants,
an important doctrinal work purportedly authored by the heresiarch himself,
but which has been shown to be rooted in the pre-Christian Aramaic Enoch
literature of the Second Temple period of Jewish history. Thanks to the brilliant

(NHMS 43; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 217–88 (281–83 nn. 78–87); idem, Prolegomena, 99, 148–49,
160, 192.
30 Julian Josephus Overbeck, S. Ephraemi Syri, Rabulae episcopi Edesseni, Balaei aliorumque:

Opera selecta (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1865), 65.10–15; C. W. Mitchell, S. Ephraim’s Prose
Refutations of Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan, 2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912–21),
1:11.5–19 (text). Translation adapted from Reeves, “Manichaean Citations,” 241–42.
31
 John C. Reeves, “Manichaeans as Ahl al-Kitāb: A Study in Manichaean Scripturalism,” in
Light Against Darkness: Dualism in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and the Contemporary
World, ed. Armin Lange et al. (JAJSup 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 249–65
(256–64).
32
 Gedaliahu A. G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (NHS 24; Leiden:
Brill, 1984), 160.

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208 John C. Reeves

perspicacity of J. T. Milik, who recognized fragmentary copies of an Aramaic

predecessor to the later Manichaean scripture among the manuscript remains of
the Dead Sea Scrolls,33 one can now confidently speak of at least one tangible
literary nexus that links the third century Babylonian prophet with some of the
parascriptural lore produced in written form within Second Temple Judaism.
Portions of the Manichaean edition(s) of the Book of Giants have been identi-
fied among the multilingual Manichaean manuscripts retrieved by explorers and
archaeologists from Central Asia,34 and although they too – like the Qumran
finds – are extremely fragmentary, sufficient material has been accumulated to
permit some rudimentary observations about the structure and content of this
Manichaean book. Like its Jewish archetype, the Manichaean Book of Giants
transmitted stories featuring the rebel watchers, their monstrous giant progeny,
and the biblical forefather Enoch as dramatis personae in a series of events asso-
ciated with antediluvian history. Unlike its Jewish archetype (insofar as we can
tell), the Manichaean Book of Giants also appears to have contained significant

33 For the Jewish Book of Giants recovered from Qumran, see Józef T. Milik, “Problèmes

de la littérature hénochique à la lumière des fragments araméens de Qumran,” HTR 64 (1971):

333–78 (366–72); idem, “Turfan et Qumran: Livre des Géants juif et manichéen,” in Tradition
und Glaube: Das frühe Christentum in seiner Umwelt, ed. Gert Jeremias, Heinz-Wolfgang
Kuhn, and Hartmut Stegemann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 117–27; idem,
The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976),
298–339; John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Gi-
ants Traditions (HUCM 14; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992); Loren T. Stuck-
enbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary (TSAJ 63;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); Stephen J. Pfann et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4.XXVI: Cryptic
Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1 (DJD 36; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 8–94 (the Giants frag-
ments are edited by Stuckenbruck); Émile Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4.XXII: Textes araméens,
première partie: 4Q529–549 (DJD 31; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 9–115. See also the essay
by Matthew Goff in this volume.
34
 Walter B. Henning, “The Book of the Giants,” BSOAS 11 (1943–46): 52–74; Sundermann,
Kosmogonische und Parabeltexte, 76–78; idem, “Ein weiteres Fragment aus Manis Giganten-
buch,” in Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin Emerito Oblata (Acta Iranica 23; Leiden: Brill,
1984), 491–505; idem, “Mani’s ‘Book of the Giants’ and the Jewish Books of Enoch: A Case
of Terminological Differences and What It Implies,” in Irano-Judaica III: Studies Relating
to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture Throughout the Ages, ed. Shaul Shaked and Amnon
Netzer (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1994), 40–48; Jens Wilkens, “Neue Fragmente aus Manis
Gigantenbuch,” ZDMG 150 (2000): 133–76; Enrico Morano, “‘If They Had Lived …’: A
Sogdian-Parthian Fragment of Mani’s Book of Giants,” in Exegisti monumenta: Festschrift in
Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed. Werner Sundermann, Almut Hintze, and François de
Blois (Ira 17; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009), 325–30; idem, “New Research on Mani’s
Book of Giants,” in Der östliche Manichäismus. Gattungs- und Werkgeschichte. Vorträge des
Göttinger Symposiums vom 4./5. März 2010, ed. Zekine Özertural and Jens Wilkens (AAWG
17; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 101–11. Note also Jens Wilkens, “Funktion und gattungsges-
chichtliche Bedeutung des manichäischen Gigantenbuchs,” in ibid., 63–85. The recent valiant
attempt to identify some Manichaean Syriac papyri fragments as possibly coming from the
Book of Giants must be labeled a failure. See Nils Arne Pedersen and John Møller Larsen,
Manichaean Texts in Syriac: First Editions, New Editions, and Studies (CFM.SS 1; Turnhout:
Brepols, 2013), 214–44.

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 209

adaptations and expansions of the parascriptural episodes involving the conflicts

among the rebel watchers, the Enochic archangels, and the giants designed to
serve the larger homiletic purposes of the Manichaean mission. A later copy of
an epistle from an unnamed correspondent – perhaps Sisinnios, who succeeded
Mani as archēgos of the Manichaean community after the latter’s death35  – to
the early missionary Mār Ammō in Khurāsān mentions the manufacture and
distribution of multiple copies of the Book of Giants and the Ārdahang or
“Picture-Book,” a scribal mobilization that was presumably motivated by these
books’ proven utility in proselytization efforts.36
The surviving fragments of both the pre-Christian and Manichaean fragments
of the Book of Giants unfortunately do not seem to preserve a cosmogonic pas-
sage like the one cited by Jacob. Given the piecemeal state of the evidence and
the poor state of our knowledge about the actual contents of Mani’s writings,
this is not necessarily damning. We would not expect to find such a passage
in the Jewish Aramaic evidence since this peculiar cosmogonic mytheme is a
distinctively Manichaean one, and it is simply impossible in the present state of
the evidence to reconstruct the size and scope of Mani’s “new” version – leaving
aside the question of subsequent Manichaean editorial interventions  – of this
older narrative source. While the vast majority of the extant prose cosmogonic
fragments of Manichaean writings have been assigned by modern editors to the
Shābuhragān, that special digest of Manichaean teachings which Mani specially
prepared for the Sasanian imperial court, that taxonomic labeling does not pre-
clude the presence of similar or even duplicate passages pertaining to cosmog-
ony, prophetology, or eschatology in the other Manichaean works.37 What one
does notice however when surveying this material is that an important linkage
can be established between the presently known content of the Manichaean
Book of Giants and an earlier section of Jacob’s tenth scholion. According to the
latter, God wanted to destroy the giant offspring of “the sons of God” and “the
daughters of mortals” prior to the onset of the flood. He therefore provoked
them “through the evil machinations of their (own) minds,” and “they fell upon
each other as if waging war, exercising neither reason nor sense.” As noted above,
the notion that the giants were killed before the flood as the result of a divinely
instigated savage conflict is one that is almost unique to earlier Enochic sources
and Jubilees: most of the texts that explicitly address the manner of the giants’

35 Friedrich C. Andreas and Walter B. Henning, “Mitteliranische Manichaica aus chine-

sisch-Turkestan III,” SPAW.PH (1934): 846–942 (857 n. 3).

36
 Reeves, Prolegomena, 75.
37 “… it is clear that other canonical scriptures [i.e., other than the Shābuhragān] must also

have included a cosmogony similar to those preserved, albeit not completely identical with
them.” Quoted from Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from
Central Asia (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 225.

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210 John C. Reeves

demise flatly state that they drowned in the surging waters of the flood.38 Jacob’s
scholion thus displays his familiarity with an old narrative motif, one which is
restricted to some tales “which are ancient and which are fuller than those be-
longing to the Hebrews.” It is certainly possible that Jacob has borrowed this
plot detail directly from a Jewish Enochic work or from Jubilees,39 for as we
have already seen, he knew a “book of Enoch” as well as “Jewish stories” which
display overlaps with those found in the Book of Jubilees. This same restricted
motif, however, of the genocidal strife among the giants coupled with angelic
presence or supervision is also present within the Manichaean Book of Giants.
One might compare some representative texts like that of M101j line 26: “there-
upon the giants began to kill each other and …”;40 the recto and verso sides of
M5900 preserve a very fragmentary account that mentions the homicidal deaths
of both giants and angelic watchers;41 and the Old Turkic remnant U217 frag.
3 verso provides a description of the death of the giants and a possible notice
of them “killing each other.”42 In light of Jacob’s proven cognizance of Man-
ichaean “poetical fables” about the giants, it seems attractive to at least consider
the possibility that Jacob may be indebted to some form of the Book of Giants,
even in its Manichaean version, for this unusual narrative detail about the gory
circumstances surrounding the deaths of the antediluvian giants. His ridicule of
the Manichaean cosmogony need not extend to certain sequential aspects of the
plot line followed by these “poetical fables” or “fuller” renderings of the tales
about the giants which might simply mirror or be modeled on those also found
in apocryphal Second Temple era literature, a literature for which he elsewhere
professes respect.
Jacob’s exposure to traditions like those in Enochic literature, Jubilees, or even
a pre-Manichaean Book of Giants may involve the same channel of transmission
through which many of these ultimately Palestinian compositions may have like-
wise reached Mani. Scholars have hypothesized that Mani owes his knowledge of
this literature to his youthful tutelage among the “Jewish Christian” Elchasaite
sect,43 a community following the teachings promulgated by the early second
century prophet Elchasai. Christian and Muslim heresiologists situate Elchasaite
communities in Palestine, Syria, the Transjordan, Arabia, and southern Meso-
potamia,44 and both Hippolytus and Theodoret speak about a Syrian Elcha-

38
 E. g., 4Q370 1 6; Wis 14:6; 3 Macc 2:4; Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 4.36.4; 3 Bar. 4:10; Ps.-Clem.
Homil. 8.17.3–4; Ps.-Clem. Recog. 1.29; Acta Andreae et Matthiae 20; Bereshit Rabbati (ed.
Albeck), 30.10–31.2.
39
 Cf. 1 En. 7:2–5; 10:9, 12; 86:4–87:1; 88:2; Jub. 5:7, 9–10; 7:21–25.
40
 Henning, “Book of the Giants,” 60.
41 Sundermann, Kosmogonische und Parabeltexte, 77–78.
42
 Wilkens, “Neue Fragmente,” 163.
43
 Reeves, Jewish Lore, 207–9.
44 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.38; Epiphanius, Pan. 19.1.1–2; 19.2.2; 20.3.1–2; 53.1.1; John of Da-

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 Jacob of Edessa and the Manichaean Book of Giants? 211

saite missionary named Alcibiades who traveled to Rome during the early third
century45 in order to counter, as one scholar has intriguingly argued, the “false
gospel” that had been spread in the West by figures like Paul and Marcion.46 We
have already seen that Jacob seems to know traditions about the giants that are
similar to those found in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, a
knowledge that is hardly surprising for a polymath of his linguistic skills and
geographic situation, and we have also called attention to the likely use of the
Book of Jubilees, or at least one (or more) sources allied with its historiograph-
ical interests, by this same corpus of Syrian Christian literature. Now there has
been a persistent thread visible in Pseudo-Clementine scholarship over the past
two centuries that has sought to detect the presence of an Elchasaite hand in the
production and dissemination of this literature;47 if these scholars are correct in
their suspicions,48 this might also assist in explaining why the Pseudo-Clemen-
tine corpus intersects in such fascinating ways with earlier Jewish literature, or
even how Jacob acquired his knowledge about a “book of Enoch” and ancient
“Jewish stories” like those we find recounted in the Book of Giants.

mascus, De haer. 53; Theodore bar Konai, Scholion (ed. Scher), 2:307.1–7; Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist
(ed. Tajaddud), 403–4.
45 Hippolytus, Ref. 9.8; Theodoret, Haer. fab. comp. 2.7.
46
 F. Stanley Jones, “Clement of Rome and the Pseudo-Clementines: History and/or Fiction,”
in idem, Pseudoclementina, 189.
47 Gerhard Uhlhorn, Die Homilien und Recognitionen des Clemens Romanus nach ihrem

Ursprung und Inhalt dargestellt (Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1854),
391–404; Fenton John Anthony Hort, Notes Introductory to the Study of the Clementine
Recognitions: A Course of Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1901), 83–87, 131; Hans Waitz, Die
Pseudoklementinen, Homilien und Rekognitionen: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung (TU-
GAL 10.4; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1904), 74–75; Gerd Lüdemann, Opposition to Paul in Jewish
Christianity, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 191–92.
48
 For the dependence of the Pseudo-Clementine Adjuration on the so-called Book of Elcha-
sai, see now F. Stanley Jones, “The Ancient Christian Teacher in the Pseudo-Clementines,” in
idem, Pseudoclementina, 194–203.

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