Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Book of Giants and Gilgamesh PDF
The Book of Giants and Gilgamesh PDF
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
A Colleague’s Appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Nili S. Fox
A Student’s Appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Richard S. Hess
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Publications by Dr. Samuel Greengus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Jeffrey L. Cooley
Introduction
In 1976, Milik published the Aramaic fragments of Enoch from Qum-
ran. 1 One of the surprising discoveries of his work was that two fragments
of the Book of Giants contained the name of the Mesopotamian hero Gil-
gamesh. Another fragment, he claimed, referred to the hero’s dreaded en-
emy from the epic, Humbaba. This was exciting news indeed: everybody’s
favorite king of Uruk survived the disappearance of traditional Mesopo-
tamian culture. The discovery reinforced the generally accepted notion—
asserted by Milik, among others—that many themes and motifs found in
Jewish apocalyptic literature in general, and Enochic literature in particu-
lar, had a Mesopotamian background. 2
The Book of Giants (BG) is a piece of Jewish Second Temple litera-
ture that largely disappeared from the Jewish and Christian traditions. 3 The
book was adopted by members of the Manichean religion, who seem to
have adapted and translated it into a number of languages. 4 Milik, who was
Author’s note: It is with deep gratitude that I thank Professor Greengus for his years
of kindness, encouragement, and sage counsel. I would like to thank Martin Schwartz
(UC Berkeley), Yonder Gillihan (Boston College), Nancy L. Erickson (Zondervan Aca
demic), and an anonymous reviewer for their outstanding advice on this work. In addi-
tion to this, I am in debt to Matthew Richey for his significant assistance transforming
this from a lecture script to a formal article. Any outstanding errors remain, of course,
my responsibility.
1. J. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976).
2. See most recently H. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and
Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
3. Though significant elements of the storyline have been preserved in the Mid-
rash of Shemhazai and ʿAzaʾel.
4. Middle Persian, Uygur, Parthian, Coptic, Sogdian. The Manichean texts were
published beginning in the mid-20th century; see W. B. Henning, “The Book of Gi-
ants,” BSOAS 11 (1943) 52–74; and later W. Sundermann, Mittelpersiches und parth-
ische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer (Schriften zur Geschichte und Kul-
tur des Alten Orients 8. Berliner Turfantexte 4; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1984); and
67
68 Jeffrey L. Cooley
working on the Enoch fragments from Qumran, noted that some of the bits
that mentioned Enoch did not come from the book of Enoch in any of its
surviving versions. Milik realized, however, that they did correspond with
some of the details of the later Manichean work.
The BG is painfully fragmentary in both the extant Manichean and
Qumran texts. Nonetheless, a general storyline can be reconstructed. 5
The story revolves around the giants, who are the children of the watch-
ers, themselves the sons of God who descended from heaven and mated
with the daughters of men (based on Gen 6:1–4). These giants are really
quite terrible beings; they are guilty of all sorts of violent acts against plants,
animals, and humanity. The antediluvian sage Enoch is informed of their
behavior, and the giants talk among themselves about what they have done.
The giants (it is not clear which ones) experience a pair of dream visions,
and one of them, Mahaway, travels to Enoch for assistance in interpreting
them. The giant is sent back with two tablets, which relate their impending
judgment by God. Of course, this judgment is not good, and the giants
ponder their situation and discuss their fate. It is not clear why, but some-
thing then appears to dissuade them from such a bleak view of their fate.
The giants have another pair of dream visions (again, it is not clear who
has them), and again they send Mahaway to Enoch for interpretation. He
announces the clear and certain punishment of the Flood. The giants will
not escape a soggy-bottomed fate. The story seems to conclude with an an-
nouncement of humanity’s impending postdiluvian contentment.
In light of the realization that Enochic literature seems to have been in-
fluenced to some degree by Mesopotamian traditions, several scholars have
since reexamined the Gilgamesh passages with a focus on what the author
of the BG may or may not have known about the original Babylonian epic.
Did he have a copy of the text in Akkadian or even Aramaic? Did he know
about the story through oral tradition? Scholars also question the motiva-
tion for including the Mesopotamian figures among the giants in the Jewish
work. Is the characters’ inclusion polemical? Satirical? Something else?
Stuckenbruck has argued that the author of the BG borrowed motifs
and themes from the epic, but with no real trace of polemic, while Reeves
has asserted that the author of the BG actually had an Aramaic transla-
tion of the epic and deliberately transformed the hero into a demon for po-
his intentions not only to his own people but to foreigners, including his
people’s adversaries (For example, Genesis 20, 39–41; Judges 7). In the bib-
lical tradition it is often God’s righteous servant who has to interpret the
dream for the foreign potentate (for example, Joseph and Daniel). 16 That
oneiromancy is a native Israelite tradition and one that is not necessarily
adopted in exile is clear from the fact that it occurs as a feature in other
West Semitic works at Ugarit. 17 The most parsimonious explanation is that
the use of oneiromancy in the BG has a native rather than a foreign origin.
A Jewish author could have easily composed such a narrative without any
knowledge of the epic’s themes or individual pericopes. It goes without say-
ing that the use of dreams in the BG would have been wholly understand-
able to an ancient Jewish reader familiar with solely biblical and Jewish tra-
ditions without any recourse to foreign literature.
Several other features of Gilgamesh in the BG are cited as evidence
of direct knowledge of the epic on the part of the author. One potential
connection is Gilgamesh’s semidivine status; in the epic the king is consid-
ered two-thirds divine, just as the BG’s giants are said to be the offspring
of the sons of God, the watchers, and the daughters of men. A second cor-
respondence is Gilgamesh’s gigantic size. A recently published fragment
of the Standard Babylonian epic from Ugarit now shows that, in the most
widely known tradition in Mesopotamia, the king was considered a giant. 18
Third, the Gilgamesh of the epic is considered a tradent of antediluvian
knowledge; this is pointed out in both tablets I and XI of the SB text. 19 As
a giant in the Enochic tradition, one of Gilgamesh’s sins is revealing such
forbidden knowledge to humanity. One possible difficulty involves the BG’s
application of all of these characteristics to giants in general, regardless of
the individual characters’ origins. That is to say: in the Book of Giants, as a
giant, Gilgamesh is a giant. This characterization would still be the case if, as
George maintains, Gilgamesh comes into the BG tradition simply because
24. For 4Q530 2, see E. Puech, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXXI. Qumrân
Grotte 4 XXII. Textes Araméens. Première Partie 4Q529–549 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001)
28–38 (text, translation, and commentary) and plate 2 (photograph).
25. Ibid., 74–78 (text, translation, and commentary) and plate 4 (photograph).
26. In either case, it appears that the sound indicated by the šin/śin is undoubtedly
an /s/ rather than a /š/, as per the first attestation of the name in 4Q530 2 ii 2.
74 Jeffrey L. Cooley
32. See citations in ibid., 1:145–46. There are a few OB variants including ḫu-bi-bi
(A fragment from Harmel; ibid., 1:256 line 48) and dḫu-wa (OB tablet in the Shøyen
collection; ibid., 1:234 line 16).
33. Ibid., 1:358 line 19′.
34. E.g., Tablet 2:221; ibid., 1:556.
35. Puech, DJD XXXI, 28–32.
36. Stuckenbruck does not reconstruct the name here, nor does his reading end
with samek: בה.] [.˚( וThe Book of Giants from Qumran, 205).
37. Stuckenbruck, “Giant Mythology,” 320–32, 335–36.
38. Note that the only morphological commonality of some of these names is the
ending –yš which Milik, as mentioned above, thought indicated the composite animal
nature of חובבׁש. Milik’s suggesting has fundamental problems, as discussed (Stucken-
bruck, “Giant Mythology,” 327–28).
76 Jeffrey L. Cooley
The names of the other giants in the BG, ʾOhyah, Hahyah, Mahaway,
ʾAhiram, and (only partially preserved) ʾAdk? (אוהיה, ההיה, מהוי, אחירם, and
)?אדכ, show no consistency and have heretofore remained unexplained as a
group. I suggest, however, that most of these names, in addition to חובבׁש,
are simply invented. Though it could be that אחירםwas intended to refer
to a king of Byblos, it is more likely that the meaning of the name is trans-
parent and particular to the cast of characters in the BG: “My brother is
tall.” This is, after all, a perfectly legitimate name for a giant. 39 אוהיה, ההיה,
and מהויare significantly more opaque, but, as Stuckenbruck has pointed
out, it is possible that the three are somehow derived from the verb “to be”
in either Hebrew ( )היהor Aramaic ()הוי. Perhaps the three names are de-
liberate corruptions of the Tetragrammaton, or even playing on Yahweh’s
self-identification to Moses in Exod 3:14 in which the verb היהis used in
the first-person imperfect three times: ויאמר אלהים אל־מׁשה אהיה אׁשר אהיה
ויאמר כה תאמר לבני יׂשראל אהיה ׁשלחני אליכם, “‘I am who I am,” and he said,
“Thus you will say to the Israelites, ‘I am sent me to you.’” This proposal is,
of course, highly speculative. The name ?אדכis at the edge of the fragment
and the final letter is not entirely preserved, so I will not speculate here as
to what it might have been. 40
Reeves further argued that the flood hero himself, Utnapishtim, appears
in a later Manichaean version of the BG; the name is preserved in Middle
Persian as ʾtnbyš, vocalized as At(a)nabīš. 41 However, this name does not
appear in any of the Aramaic fragments. While the suggestion is appealing,
a flood hero with this particular epithet is not very well-attested even in the
native Mesopotamian tradition. 42 Outside the Epic of Gilgamesh and, more
importantly, in the tradition that travelled internationally, it seems the flood
hero was known by his Sumerian name, Ziusudra. This name is attested in
both Berossos as Ξίσυθρος and Abydenus as Σίσουθρος/Σείσιθρος. 43 It is tell-
39. Compare with similar wordplays in Genesis, such as the name of the first
mighty man in Gen 10:8–9, נמרד, “We will rebel,” undoubtedly foreshadowing the
Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11; so too the names of the kings of Sodom and Gomor-
rah in Gen 14:2, ברעand ברׁשע, “wickedly” and “evilly,” respectively.
40. Stuckenbruck notes that the next letter in the name “could be dalet, waw, yod,
or reš,” (DJD XXXVI, 14). In light of the name אחירם, one is tempted to read the dalet
in ?אדכas reš, allowing a combination with the root ארך, “long” (again, appropriate for
a giant). Nonetheless, the ductus in this manuscript is quite clear and the reading of the
dalet seems to be in little doubt.
41. J. C. Reeves, “Utnapishtim in the Book of Giants?” JBL 112 (1993) 110–15. See
also R. V. Huggins, “Noah and the Giants: A Response to John Reeves,” JBL 114 (1995)
103–19; and Stuckenbruck, “Giant Mythology,” 333–34.
42. See discussion in George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, 1:152–55.
43. For Berossos, see FGrH 680 F 4 (15); for Abydenus, FGrH 685 F 2b–3b.
The Book of Giants and the Greek Gilgamesh 77
ing that Berossos chose to use the Sumerian name to relate his story rather
than either of the Akkadian possibilities (that is, Utnapishtim or Atraḫasis),
and I argue that this, the Sumerian name, was the primary form that was
used popularly and was consequentially the most likely to have been re-
ceived by neighboring cultures. 44 The ʾtnbyš preserved in the Manichaean
texts has nothing to do with the flood hero, and, if it does actually derive
from the Aramaic BG, is most likely an Aramaic name, perhaps incorporat-
ing אתן, “you,” and ביׁש, “evil, bad.” Again, it is an invented name intended
to reveal the insidious nature of the giants.
If my understanding is correct, the names of the giants do not all fall
into a single pattern. They are not all borrowed from foreign literary tra-
ditions, nor are they all the names of the great pagan monarchs of hoary
antiquity, nor do they all follow a single morphological type. Nonetheless,
it is possible that the names represent a single agenda, that is, labeling the
giants as a group whose existence and character are contrary to God’s in-
tentions for humanity. Stuckenbruck, among others, was at least partially
correct in noting that the giants were conceived of as hybrids of a sort, but
they are not necessarily animal-human Mischewesen. 45 We must remem-
ber that they are not the offspring of humans and animals, but rather, the
spawn of the daughters of men and the sons of God (Gen 6:1–4). The giants
are living metaphors, reminding readers of the perils of crossing sacrosanct
boundaries and the ways in which that upsets God’s objective; their names
reflect this. The human-divine boundary is represented by a perversion of
the human form, originally the image of God: ( אחירםcontra Gen 1:26–27).
Similarly, a reversal of God’s declaration of the goodness of humans as an
element of creation (Gen 1:31) is evident in ( חובבׁשand perhaps )אתנביׁש.
The divine-human boundary is represented by corruptions of the divine
name יהוה, playing on the three-fold repetition at the disclosure of the
Tetragrammaton in Exod 3:14: אוהיה, ההיה, and מהוי.
P. Buttmann’s emendation of the name of the flood hero in Lucian’s De Dea Syria (12)
(Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σκύθεα, “Deucalion the Scythian,” to Δευκαλίωνα τὸν Σισυθέα) in
light of the name in Berossus and Abydenus has gained wide acceptance among schol-
ars (Mythologus, oder Gesammelte Abhandlung über die Sagen des Alterthums [2 vols.;
Berlin: Mylius, 1828–1829] 1:191–92). Nonetheless, as J. L. Lightfoot has argued, Butt-
mann’s suggestion has fundamental problems that make it rather unlikely (Lucian: On
the Syrian Goddess [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003] 342–43). Thus, Lightfoot
maintains the reading which the text preserves though he is admittedly at a loss to fully
explain the epithet.
44. Is it possible that the two forms of the name attested in Berossos and Abydenos
attest to two separate occasions when the flood hero’s name crossed the Semitic-Greek
linguistic border?
45. Stuckenbruck, “Giant Mythology,” 335–36.
78 Jeffrey L. Cooley
other giants’ names argue that they are corruptions of the human form, of
divine intent for humanity, and of the divine name. As part of this agenda,
Gilgamos’s name is representative of forbidden Hellenistic technical wis-
dom (that is, magic, divination, and so on); he represents an aberrancy of
divine wisdom that humans, the Jews in particular, were meant to have.