WHEN GIANTS WALKED THE EARTH
If we read the Book of Genesis, we can see just how out of place the story of the Sons of God coming unto the Daughters of Men appears to be in comparison with the rest of its eclectic contents. Indeed, if it is correct to assume that the account of the Fall of Man and the Serpent of Eden reflect an abstract rendition of the fall of the Watchers,. then the whole story is included twice.1
Adding to the mysterious nature of Genesis 6 is the fact that there are, neither before nor after these verses, any direct references to the coming of the Sons of God, the Nephilim or the Mighty Men (gibborim). Nor are there any references anywhere in the Bible to equate the bene ha-elohim with the Watchers. This information comes only from the Enochian literature of the first and second centuries BC. To add to the confusion, the term bene ha-elohim actually translates as 'the sons of the gods', while the name elohim is a female noun with an irregular plural, implying not 'gods' at all, but 'sons of the goddesses'. Never is this theological 'hot potato' sufficiently explained, and for my purposes it seemed best to stick simply with the idea that the term referred to fallen angels alone, without evoking a fixed gender.
So what about the rest of the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament, traditionally accredited to Moses the lawgiver? Could this provide me with additional clues to the origin of the Genesis chapter concerning the Sons of God coming unto the Daughters of Men, along with their subsequent incarceration and the destruction of their offspring, the Nephilim?
Glancing through the chapters of Genesis that immediately follow these enigmatic verses, we read about the generations of Noah and his subsequent role as the saviour of both humanity and the animal kingdom. It is a story that all of us learn in primary school, yet like most of Genesis it is awkwardly worded, confusing, repetitive and highly contradictory in its statements.
The Bible says that God purged the earth of its corruption and iniquity by bringing about a universal deluge, yet nowhere does it say that the Sons of God, the Nephilim or the Mighty Men, were destroyed by these global cataclysms. This fact has to be assumed by the reader simply because Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, are the sole survivors of the Great Flood. Moreover, there is much evidence to suggest that some members of the fallen race actually survived these troubled times.
Races of Giants
Scattered throughout the Pentateuch are enigmatic references to the existence of giants living in the bible lands long after the generations of Noah. These terrifying individuals almost invariably feature in wars waged against foreign raiders and the Israelite peoples by indigenous Canaanite tribes; Canaan being the name given to Palestine, Western Syria and Lebanon in Old Testament times.
If we look at the later chapters of Genesis, we will find references to giants living in the age of the prophet Abraham, a date usually fixed at around 2000 BC. Several verses deal with how Chedorlaomer, the king of ancient Elam, a country placed in the highlands of south-west Iran, encounters no less than three tribes of giants, who rise up against him and are defeated by his forces in the land of Canaan. They are listed as 'the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim . . . the Zuzims in Ham; and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim'.2
Later, in the Book of Deuteronomy, which deals with the wanderings of the Jewish tribes, following the Exodus out of Egypt at the time of Moses, the text speaks of Canaan as 'a land of Rephaim', or giants, where the 'Rephaim dwelt therein aforetime'. Because of their reported great stature, in many translations of the Bible from the original Hebrew, the word 'giants' is rendered instead of 'Rephaim'. Deuteronomy also tells us that 'the Ammonites call them Zamzummins: a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim'.3
As tall 'as the Anakim'?
Who then were the Anakim? And how might they relate to the Watchers and Nephilim? Reaching for my weighty, leather-bound edition of Hitchcock's New and Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible, I turned to its edition of Cruden's Concordance – the complete listing of all names, terms and expressions found in the Bible. There are a number of further entries for the Anakim, the most important of which is found in the Book of Numbers:
And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, which come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.4
So the Anakim are specifically cited as the descendants of the legendary Nephilim. Elsewhere the Anakim are referred to as the inhabitants of Canaan, 'a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof: and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature'.5 Reading on, it actually names the 'sons of Anak', or Anakim, as Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, although no further details are given concerning their appearance.6 They are encountered by the spies sent out by Joshua, Moses' successor, to report back on the inhabitants of Hebron, or Kirjath-arba, 'the chief city of the Anakim', situated in what is today southern Palestine,7 before they are attacked and finally defeated by one of these 'spies', named Caleb.8
So the Anakim were destroyed, but survivors of their race probably lived on, and certainly did so in the minds of the Old Testament chroniclers. They may have been three brothers from the town of Hebron, one of Palestine's most ancient cities, but there is every indication that they were also a powerful race in their own right who inhabited Canaan from very earliest times.
The word Anak is generally taken by Jewish scholars to mean 'long-necked',9 or 'the men with the necklaces',10 conjuring an immediate image of the ring collars worn even today by certain tribes of central Africa. Was this yet another physical feature of the original fallen race – long necks bearing ringed necklaces?
The enormous size of the Anakim is, of course, to be taken with a large pinch of salt; yet why were the Anakim seen as direct lineal descendants of the Nephilim, the progeny of the fallen angels who were supposedly wiped out at the time of the Great Flood? No explanation is given, and the reader is left to assume that they must have been linked in some way to the family of Noah, who himself bore the traits of the Watchers and Nephilim.
King Og of Bashan
Most renowned of the giants of Canaan was the legendary King Og of the land of Bashan, who with his brother Sihon controlled vast areas of land that stretched for many hundreds of miles in every direction. Being himself a descendant of the Rephaim,11 Og is said to have resided 'at Ashtaroth and at Edrei',12 the latter being a giant city identified with the modern Jordanian town of Der'a, some thirty miles east of the southern end of the Sea of Galilee. Here archaeologists have uncovered a vast subterranean city, cut deep into the bedrock, beneath the existing buildings of the town, although how it might be linked with King Og is uncertain.13
The kingdom of Bashan, the so-called 'land of the Rephaim',14 or giants, supposedly extended from Mount Hermon in the north of Canaan to Gilead in the south, a region geographically placed on the east side of the Jordan river.15 It was here that almost six hundred years before, according to the Bible, the Elamite king Chedorlaomer apparently 'smote the Rephaim', King Og's own ancestors, in the age of the patriarch Abraham.16 It is also interesting to note that Og was said to have reigned 'in Mount Hermon',17 the most northerly point of his kingdom and the location where, according to the Book of Enoch, the rebel Watchers 'descended'.
Various Hebrew myths outside the Bible cite King Og as the progeny of Hiya, a son of the fallen angel Shemyaza, and a woman who subsequently became the wife of Ham, the son of Noah.18 Og was said to have escaped the Deluge by clinging to a rope ladder attached to the Ark and being daily fed through a port hole by Noah himself He took pity on the giant after he swore to repent and become his slave! Afterwards, however, Og apparently resumed his wicked ways.19
Quaint as the story of Og's survival of the Deluge may seem, it makes nonsense of biblical chronology, for if this giant king had existed at the time of the Great Flood – which is seen by theologians as having taken place in '2348 BC'20 – then he would have been around 1,100 years old at the time of Moses. Stories such as this were almost certainly concocted at a very late stage in the development of Hebrew myth and legend, their purpose being to account for the existence in Canaan of outsized indigenous tribes such as the Anakim, the Emim, the Rephaim, the Zuzim, as well as the peoples under the leadership of King Og, who were encountered by the first Israelites when they entered this foreign land from Mesopotamia at the beginning of the second millenium BC.
Many of these giant races were quite obviously looked upon as actual lineal descendants of the Nephilim, whose existence must still have been entrenched in the minds of the first Israelites. Yet there is very little evidence whatsoever outside Jewish religious literature for the existence of these giant races, either from other contemporary sources of the time or from archaeological discoveries made over the past hundred years or so of biblical exploration. At first sight this may seem a disconcerting realization, and one which has grave implications for the historical reality of the Watchers and Nephilim in more distant times. However, there is no reason why 'giants' should not have existed in the bible lands in distant ages. Variations of anything up to eighteen inches between individuals of different races or cultures were not unusual in prehistoric times. Indeed, such differences are still common today. One has only to look at an American basketball team to see that seven-foot tall 'giants' exist, and from a mythological context it is this distinction alone that leads us to evoke terms such as 'giant' and 'dwarf', not the specific size of cultures or races as a whole.
Mention must also be made here of the most famous giant of all in biblical tradition, and this is Goliath, David the shepherd boy's gigantic opponent, who is said to have belonged to the tribe of Gath and to have fought alongside the Philistine army. In the wellknown story, presented in 2 Samuel, this enormous figure of a man was said to have been ten feet tall and to have worn a copper coat of mail weighing an incredible 120 pounds.21 He also carried a spear weighing 15 pounds, which apparently possessed a shaft 'like a weaver's beam'.
Could a person of this size and strength ever have walked the earth?
The answer is very possibly yes, for despite the lack of archaeological evidence for the presence in the past of actual giant races, there is compelling evidence to suggest that individuals of this size did once exist. Too many outsized human remains, worked tools and stone coffins have been unearthed in different parts of the world, from ancient times down to the present era, for such traditions to be dismissed out of hand.22 These accounts, often published in sane and sober journals and books, refer mainly to isolated discoveries and therefore do not constitute hard evidence for the existence of whole races of giants.
Despite such shortcomings, it does not follow that the bold accounts of giant races roaming the earth in Old Testament times are completely worthless. Far from it, they appeared vital to my understanding of the roots behind the terms and expressions used by the chroniclers of Genesis to recall the former existence of the angelic race who fell from heaven.
Source of the Nephilim
The Book of Numbers specifically refers to the Anakim as descendants of the Nephilim – not the Watchers, or the Sons of God, but the Nephilim. This is important, for it implies that at the time of Moses, when the core material for the Pentateuch was being established and recorded for the first time, only the term 'Nephilim' was used to denote the giant race who had fallen because of its lust for mortal women in antediluvian times. If, for a moment, we disregard the contentious lines of Genesis 6 as much later interpolations (see below), it would appear that other terms for the fallen race, such as Watchers and Sons of God, were clearly unknown to the Israelite tribes at the time of Moses, c. 1300 BC.
This implies that nephilim, a word meaning the 'fallen ones', or 'those who have fallen', was the original name given by the Israelites to the fallen angels. Strange confirmation of this suggestion comes from rereading Genesis 6. Verse 2 speaks of the Sons of God coming unto the Daughters of Men, while in contrast verse 4 states firmly that: 'The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men [author's emphasis].'
Map 1. Principal biblical locations associated with the early patriarchs and giant races of biblical tradition.
The meaning was clear enough: there were two quite separate traditions entangled here – one concerning the fallen race known to the early Israelites as the Nephilim, and the other concerning the bene ha-elohim, the Sons of God, who are identified directly with the Watchers of Enochian tradition.
So was this assumption correct? Could I find some kind of scholastic support for such a contention? Once again, I would not be the first person to point out the seemingly paradoxical reference in Genesis 6:4 to two quite independent fallen races, for theologians have long pondered over this puzzle. Yet only one modern-day Hebrew scholar has attempted to explain its presence. In an important article published in the Hebrew Union College Annual of 1939, under the rather uninspiring title of 'The Mythological Background of Psalm 82',]ulian Morgenstern came to the quite astonishing conclusion that there must have been two quite separate occasions when the angels fell from heaven – once through lust and a second time through pride.23
Despite the originality of this solution, in my view it simply muddies the picture, for the easiest answer would be to accept that two separate renditions of the same story somehow became confusingly joined by the compilers of Genesis. On the one hand, there was the story of the nephilim, the fallen race seen by the early Israelites, and perhaps even by the indigenous tribes of Canaan, as the progenitors of the much later giant races of the Bible; while on the other, there were the quite separate stories concerning the bene ha-elohim, the Sons of God, the Watchers of the Book of Enoch. In some way the two traditions had become fused as one to form the enigmatic verses of Genesis 6, while in the Enochian literature the Nephilim were demoted to being purely the giant offspring of the Sons of God. Everything pointed towards the fact that the lines of Genesis 6 had either been added to the Bible at a much later date, or else that they had been seriously tampered with to include the two quite independent origins of the Nephilim and Watchers.
For the moment, it was important to examine the rest of the Pentateuch to see whether it could throw further light on the origins and age of the story of the Watchers.
A Goat for Azazel
Only one other possible reference to the fall of the angels is to be found in the Pentateuch. According to the Book of Leviticus, each year on the feast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Israelites would sacrifice two he-goats. One animal was offered up to God, so that he might absolve the Jews of their sins, while the other was set aside 'for Azazel', who is named as a leader of the Watchers in the Book of Enoch.24 During this sacrificial rite the priest is said to have placed both hands on the head of the goat 'for Azazel' and to have confessed 'over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins'. He would then send the animal away 'by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness',25 where it would plunge to its death over a steep cliff, recalling the plight of the fallen angel Azazel, who was seen as perpetually bound and chained in the wilderness. In much later times, a red or scarlet ribbon was apparently tied to the goat's head to represent these sins, since it states in Isaiah that 'though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow'.26
Further expanding on the barbaric ritual of the 'scapegoat', as the goat is referred to instead of 'Azazel' in the Authorized Version of the Bible, are the words of rabbi Moses ben Nahmen, who in the twelfth century AD wrote:
God has commanded us, however, to send a goat on Yom Kippur to the ruler whose realm is in the places of desolation. From the emanation of his power come destruction and ruin . . . His portion among the animals is the goat. The demons are part of his realm and are called in the Bible seirim (legendary he-goats fostered by Azazel).27
Whether or not this suggests the survival into the Middle Ages of the scapegoat ritual is not specified, although it does show the importance it must still have held for the Jews of medieval Europe.
The scapegoat was conceived as embodying the spirit of Azazel, and in so doing it was able to carry away the sins of the Jews, a role which Jesus Christ was voluntarily to undertake in much later Christian tradition. The association of the scapegoat with both sin and impurity eventually led to it becoming an animal of Satan and the Devil in early Christianity – a figurative connection it sadly retains to this day. Even the inverted, or reversed, pentagram, seen by Western society as embodying ultimate evil, stems exclusively from this strange association between Azazel and the scapegoat ritual. Since Victorian times, this abhorred symbol has been seen as a sign of the goat of the witches, the two upright points signifying the animal's horns 'attacking the heavens',28 an empty and meaningless legend that has no basis in ancient religious law, either Jewish or Christian. How so simple a design can have come to be so reviled by so many people is a mystery in itself. Yet knowledge that this association between the Devil and the goat stems back to the punishment administered to Azazel makes the inverted pentagram one of the only symbols actually to preserve the memory of the fall of the Watchers.
To Act Like Angels
Although the scapegoat ritual is no longer practised, the Day of Atonement is still revered as the holiest festival in the Jewish calendar. It forms the climax of a ten-day period that begins with the Jewish New Year – a date that usually falls during either late September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. For Jews worldwide, Yom Kippur is a time when all sin is renounced and everyone has to make the choice between either obeying or disobeying the divine sovereignty of God. The day is marked by a twenty-four hour period of prayer and fasting in which a Jew must not eat, drink, anoint with oil, wear sandals or have sexual intercourse. Instead he or she must continually praise God in emulation of his angels, for it is on this one day of the year that Jews must attempt to serve God 'as if they were angels [author's emphasis]'.29
'As if they were angels?'
Was this simply a metaphorical statement, or could there be some more deep-rooted assertion behind this tradition?
Throughout the twenty-four hour period that constitutes Yom Kippur, it has always been believed that Satan possesses no power over the life of a Jew, and because of this God invites his adversary to look in on the homes of Jewish families to see what they are doing. Satan will hopefully find them fasting and praying like angels 'dressed in white garments', upon which he is forced to admit: '''They are like angels and I have no power over them." Whereupon God binds Satan in chains and declares to His people: "I have forgiven you all".'30
That Satan should be annually bound and chained while the Jews themselves attempt to emulate angels 'dressed in white garments' is difficult to understand in conventional theological terms. To a non-Jew, such curious and somewhat naïve beliefs and customs are baffling, to say the least, yet since they relate to the very day on which the rite of the scapegoat once took place, it seems likely that the original adversary in this story was not Satan at all but Azazel. Moreover, the practice of becoming 'like angels' on the Day of Atonement is almost certainly a distant echo of the fall of the Watchers and the punishment supposedly suffered by Azazel because of his corruption of humanity, prior to its destruction at the time of the Great Flood. If this theory is correct, it provides solid evidence to suggest that the traditions concerning the fall of the angels existed in both Judaic myth and ritual as far back as the establishment of the Israelite tribes following the Exodus out of Egypt, the period when the scapegoat ritual presumably first entered Mosaic tradition.
Yet are the contents of the Pentateuch really to be trusted? How are we to know that the references to the scapegoat ritual were themselves not much later interpolations?31 Furthermore, how are we to know that the verses concerning the existence in Canaan of indigenous giant races were also not added at some later date in its construction? For example, much of Deuteronomy, in which these references appear, is thought to have been compiled, not at the time of the Exodus of Moses, but by Jewish scribes living in Jerusalem as late as the seventh century BC.32
Moses is supposed to have left the Pentateuch to the Jewish peoples as its Torah, or Holy Law. And yet it was only after the time of the so-called Babylonian Captivity in the sixth century BC that much of what we know today as the Old Testament was first set down in writing.33 Indeed, other than a small rolled silver amulet,34 inscribed in Hebrew with a form of the Priestly Blessing found in the Book of Numbers (one of five books of the Pentateuch)35 and dated to the sixth century BC, there is no hard evidence whatsoever for the existence of the Bible before post-exilic times. Emphasizing this rather disconcerting situation may, I realize, look rather cynical, though I certainly accept that large tracts of the Old Testament are not only period set but also contain invaluable information concerning the history of the Middle East from its very earliest times through till the establishment of the Christian era. It was, however, with this more sceptical view at the forefront of my mind that I was going to have to continue my search for the original sources behind the story of the Watchers, for only by establishing how and when this tradition first entered Hebrew myth and legend could I begin to understand its true implications.