Library/Enochic corpus
Book of Giants
A companion to the Book of Watchers. Giants named Ohyah, Hahyah, Mahaway (and a Gilgamesh) dream of a washed tablet and an uprooted tree, and send to Enoch for the meaning. The meaning is erasure.
Open the reconstruction- Status
- Dead Sea fragment
- Date
- 3rd–2nd century BCE
- Languages
- Aramaic (Qumran) · later Manichaean versions
- Setting
- The giants’ own camp, before the flood
What it contains
- Birth of the named giants
- Violence and the cry of the slain
- Dream of the washed tablet
- Hahyah’s garden of two hundred trees
- Ohyah’s throne and the opened books
- Mahaway’s flight to Enoch
- The second tablet, to Shemihazah
Why it sits outside most canons
Known at Qumran; not transmitted by later canons. Manichaeans kept a version.
Themes
- Nephilim
- Dreams
- Flood
- Enoch as interpreter
Passages
4Q530 ii (Hahyah)
In this very night I watched: gardeners were watering, and great shoots came from the roots. Tongues of fire came down. Water covered the dirt, and the fire burned the garden.
4Q530 ii (Ohyah)
The Ruler of Heaven came down to earth. Thrones were set, and the Great Holy One sat. The books were opened, and a sentence was written for all flesh.
4Q203 frag. 8
A copy of the second tablet of the letter which Enoch, the noted scribe, sent — in the name of God the great and holy one — to Shemihazah and all his companions.