Enoch’s Giants
The Book of Enoch
The book of Enoch refers to giants living alongside men. Hang on, the book of who? Giants? But there is no Book of Enoch I hear you say. Correct, well, not in our Bible at least. But there are giants in our Bible. Hold that thought.
The Book of Enoch did not make the cut when the Bible was being put together. But interestingly, there are references to giants in our Bible too. More about that later. For now, lets just enjoy the ride and ask the obvious questions later. This from 7:2-14:
It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them… Then they took wives, each choosing for himself… And the women conceiving brought forth giants, whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labor of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them, when they turned themselves against men, in order to devour them; And began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood.
This passage tells of angels who got human women pregnant. The offspring of this union was giants who basically ate everything available.
This sounds pretty far-fetched. Let’s do some digging. Enoch was the seventh man after Adam. He was taken up to heaven alive, and had Noah was his grandchild. Scholars agree that the Book of Enoch was in fact not authored by Enoch, but by at least two unknown writers likely between 300 BC and 100 AD. This is one of a number of late Jewish/early Christian writings ascribing incorrect authorship. It thereby falls into the category of pseudipigrapha; writing with suspect or anonymous origin. While some pseudipigraphical texts may be wholly accurate, they cannot be fully trusted due to their suspect origins. The Bible does not use these texts, but they still hold some value.
Tests of Reliability
So can we believe any of the Book of Enoch? And what about the giants? Hang on a minute, one step at a time. If we can’t rely on the Book of Enoch, how do we know we can rely on any of the Bible?z Without going into great detail, there are three good ways to check the trustworthiness of the writings in our present day Bible.
1. The Bibliographic Test is used to check the quantity, quality and age of original manuscripts.
In 1946, a worried goatherd searching for a stray stumbled across a series of cliffside caves. Concealed within, lay a series of mysterious clay jars which later laid bare a total of 981 scrolls dating from 200 BC to 68 AD. This quantity of ancient manuscripts, now called the Dead Sea Scrolls, has been used to verify the Bible’s content.
Homer's Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, is the second best-preserved literary work of all antiquity, with 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date. In those copies, there are 764 disputed lines of text, as compared to 40 lines in all the New Testament manuscripts. In fact, many people are unaware that there are no surviving manuscripts of any of William Shakespeare's 37 plays (written in the 1600's), and scholars have been forced to fill some gaps in his works. This pales in textual comparison with the over 5,600 copies and fragments of the New Testament in the original Greek that, together, assure us that nothing's been lost. In fact, all of the New Testament except eleven minor verses can be reconstructed outside the Bible from the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries AD. (http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/bible-manuscripts.htm)
2. The Internal Test is used to cross-check claims within various books of the Bible against those of other books.
All the evidence inside and outside the New Testament runs contrary to the claim made by form criticism that the early church distorted the life and teachings of Christ. Most of the New Testament was written between A.D. 47 and 70... And the multitudes of eyewitnesses who were alive when the New Testament books began to be circulated would have challenged blatant historical fabrications about the life of Christ. (https://bible.org/article/how-accurate-bible)
3. The External Test is used to verify the Bible’s claims against extrabiblical sources such as ancient historians like Flavors Josephus. Claimed locations of rivers and cities, dates of political events, kings or wars for example can all be easily cross-checked.
These were some of the tests used by rabbis and scholars in times past in order to verify and assemble what we now know as the Bible. An evening could be devoted to this discussion. Regardless, the Bible wholly and credibly passes these three tests.
How have you responded, or how might you respond to statements like:
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Real Giants
We can’t rely on pseudepigraphical texts, but we know we can rely on both the present Old and New Testaments. So, back to the giants. Let’s check out Genesis 6:
In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites [giants] lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.
No longer are we reading pseudipigraphical texts. We know that Genesis is wholly reliable. We can’t rely on the Book of Enoch but we can rely on this. Roll up your sleeves.
We’ve all heard of Goliath. 1 Samuel 17:4 tells that he was over 9 feet tall and from a town where giants lived. If Goliath was not a giant, he was at least, descendant from giants. Speculation among interpreters suggests that the nephilim would have been between 6-30 feet tall. Check out these scriptures:
Numbers 13:32b-33 - The Anakites
and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in their eyes. (That area was once considered the land of the Rephaites, who had lived there, though the Ammonites call them Zamzummites. They were also as strong and numerous and tall as the Anakites.
Amos 2:9b - The Amorites
...people whose height was like the height of the cedars and was as strong as the oaks.
2 Samuel 21:22
Yet again there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; and he also was born to the giant.
Deuteronomy 3:11
King Og of Bashan was the last survivor of the giant Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide.
So it seems that while the Book of Enoch may not be accurate, there were in fact giants living on this earth. And they were strong, numerous, and as tall as cedar trees (which a quick google suggests grow to 50 feet tall). So tall in fact as to make normal humans feel like grasshoppers. And some of them had funny looking feet. More curiously, it seems that some of these giants existed after the flood. But that’s a question for another night.
While none of this talk of giants would appear to impact much on modern-day life, it has been a fun ride, and more importantly, we have learnt that our present Old and New Testaments are both completely reliable. A final thought:
In Numbers, Moses’ spies returned saying “it is indeed a... land flowing with milk and honey... but the people living there are powerful... We even saw giants there.” Caleb responded “Let’s go at once to take the land, we can certainly conquer it!” But the other spies said “we can’t go up against them, they are stronger than we are!”
What are the giants in your life preventing you from?
How can you have a Caleb attitude toward your giants?
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