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goldengoose05

on Jan. 12, 2022

It all began when I took a course entitled “Judaism in a Hellenic World” during my senior year in college. In the course, we read various texts, including the Book of Enoch. A good portion of that book was an extrapolation of Genesis 6:1-4

1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

The Book of Enoch described how the sons of God, the Watchers, came down to earth and fathered giants with human women before the Flood. I found the text fascinating. Years later, when I looked at the preface to Enoch in H.F.D. Sparks’ “The Apocryphal Old Testament,” I saw that there was mention of a Book of Giants. After some internet searching, I found that there was a great deal of scholarly literature related the various fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been dubbed “The of Bppk of Giants.” The fragments are incomplete and their exact order is unknown. Various scholars have translated the text and come up with various sequencing of the fragments, though all admit that parts of the story have certainly been lost. I’ve used these scholars’ work, most notably that of Loren Stuckenbruck, for translations and the general sequencing. However, I’ve made some of my own assumptions about the sequencing, adding some short transitions between certain fragments, as well as my own speculation about what the missing words were in the extant fragments. I’ve also incorporated parts of the Manichaean Book of Giants, which the scholars believe was based on the Aramaic original.