Giants/A named giant
Son of Shemihazah
Ohyah
Brother of Hahyah, first speaker when blame is being assigned. He dreams a throne, names Azazel, questions Mahaway, and tries to hang the coming flood on someone else.
Also named Ohya, ʾOhyah, Sām (Manichaean).
- Office
- The defiant son
- Father
- Shemihazah
- Tradition
- Qumran and Manichaean
- Cited
- 4Q530; 4Q203; 6Q8
Ohyah is the book’s will. Where Hahyah sees a garden and is undone by it, Ohyah sees a court and still looks for a defendant other than himself. He tells the assembly what Gilgamesh said. He tells his brother about Azazel. He presses Mahaway without trembling. The fragments never call him king, but the politics of the camp run through him.
His dream is the least allegorical of the three. The Ruler of Heaven — also named the Great Holy One — descends. Thrones are erected. Books are opened. A sentence is written for all flesh. This is not a riddle about trees. It is a preview of the docket. Sleep leaves him.
In the Manichaean Kawān he is recast as Sām, the Iranian epic hero, just as Gilgamesh was recast as a giant. The move is the same in both directions: take a name that already means strength, and show it afraid.
He does not win the argument. The second tablet is addressed not to Ohyah but to his father and all the companions. The flood is not a personal verdict. It is a washing of a whole register.