The Book of Giants

The Book of Giants is an apocryphal Jewish book which expands the narrative of the Hebrew Bible. Its discovery at Qumran dates the text's creation to before the 2nd century BC.

The Book of Giants is an antediluvian (pre-Flood) narrative that was received primarily in Manichaean literature and known at Turfan. However, the earliest known traditions for the book originate in Aramaic copies of a Book of Giants among the Dead Sea Scrolls. References to the Giants mythology are found in: Genesis 6:1-4, the books of Enoch (Ethiopic, Slavonic, Hebrew, Greek), Jubilees, 3 Baruch (Slavonic), the Damascus Document, and visions in Daniel 7:9-14. This book tells of the background and fate of these ante-deluvial giants and their fathers, the Watchers (called grigori in the Slavonic 2 Enoch), the 'sons of God' or 'holy ones' (Daniel 4:13, 17) who rebelled against heaven when — in forbidden violation of the strict "boundaries of creation" — they commingled, in their lust, with the 'daughters of men.' Their even more corrupt offspring were variously called thereafter nephilim, gibborim, or rephaim, being the earthly half-breed races that fought against God and his righteous followers whose numbers diminished as the world was overwhelmed with corruption and evil; the Manichaean fragments give these wicked ones the general name demons (Greek Enoch calls them bastards). Though the terms for the Watchers and their offspring are often confused in their various translations and iterations, collectively these rebellious races are referred to as the "fallen angels" in the apocryphal sources, as also in the biblical narratives that reference them.

Origins in ancient Jewish tradition

Since before the latter half of the twentieth century, the 'Book of Giants' had long been known as a 'Middle Iranian' work (which some scholars now believe was written originally in 'Eastern Aramaic') that circulated among the Manichaeans as a composition attributed to Mani (c. AD 216 – 274) a a Parthian citizen of southern Mesopotamia who appears to have been a follower of Elkesai, a Jewish-Christian prophet and visionary who lived in the early years of the second century. Some scholars, concordant with supporting evidence for the ancient sect's geographical distribution, have posited both genetic and ritual-custom similarities between the Elcesaites and the earlier Second Temple Jewish sect of the Essenes.

During the twentieth century a number of finds shed considerable light on the literary evidence for the Book of Giants. The 1943 publication by W. B. Henning of the Manichaean fragments from the Book of Giants discovered at Turfan in Western China (in what is now Xinjiang Province) have substantiated the many references to its circulation among, and use by, the Manichaeans. Further identification of the Manichaean Book of Giants was revealed in 1971 when J. T. Milik discovered several additional Aramaic fragments of Enochic works among the Dead Sea Scrolls; he astonished the scholarly world upon announcing that the fragments bore close resemblance to Mani's Book of Giants, then added to the astonishment his belief, too, that Giants was originally an integral part of 1 Enoch itself. These fragmentary scrolls in Aramaic, which represented an Enochic tradition that was likely introduced to Mani in his sojourn with the Ecesaites, appeared to have been the primary source utilized by Mani in the compilation of his book. And for many scholars, the Qumran fragments confirmed the Book of Giants to originally have been an independent composition from the Second Temple period.

Among the fragments discovered at Qumran, ten manuscripts of the Book of Giants are identified by Stuckenbruck. These fragments (1Q23 [1], 1Q24 [2], 2Q26 [3], 4Q203 [4], 4Q530 [5], 4Q531 [6], 4Q532 [7], 4Q556 [8], 4Q206 [9], and 6Q8 [10]) were found in caves 1, 2, 4, and 6 at the site. These discoveries led to further classification of the Enochic works. In the third group of classification, ten Aramaic manuscripts contain parts of the Book of Giants which were only known through the Manichaean sources until the recognition of them at Qumran.

There has been much speculation regarding the original language of the Book of Giants. It was generally believed to have had a Semitic origin. Indeed, the discovery of this text at Qumran led scholars, such as C. P. van Andel and Rudolf Otto, to believe that while these ancient Aramaic compositions of the book were the earliest known, the work probably had even earlier Hebrew antecedents. It was of course the great R. H. Charles, translator and publisher in 1912 of The Book of Enoch, who asserted that Enoch was "built upon the debris of" an older Noah saga than that in Genesis which only cryptically refers to the Enoch myth. But Milik himself offered his own hypothesis that Enoch's 'creation story' and law of God account naturally predate the Mosaic Sinai accounts in Genesis: He saw Genesis 6:1-4 — long a puzzling passage to biblical scholars — as a quotation from what he believed ultimately to have been the earlier Enoch source. But whatever the reality, one thing remains certain: the Qumran books and their fragments are now the oldest known Enochic manuscripts in existence.

Content of The Book of Giants in the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Book of Giants consists of a grouping of Aramaic fragments which began to be unearthed at Qumran in 1948. Because of the book's fragmentation, it was difficult for the documents' linguistic researchers and specialists to know, in its subsequently varied permutations, the exact order of the content. The 'Giants' work is closely related to the 1 Enoch analogue, which also tells a story of the giants, but one which is far more elaborate. The Qumran Book of Giants also bears resemblance to the Manichaean Book of Giants that came after it. Scholars, beyond their many questions of the Enochic tradition's oral or written transmission, still don't know why the Qumran community considered the Enochic texts so important that they possessed and retained so many copies in comparison to other textual traditions found there.

The Book of Giants is an expansive narrative of the biblical story of the birth of 'giants' in Genesis 6.1-4. In this story, the giants came into being when the Watcher 'sons of God' (who, per the story's corroborative Jubilees account, God originally dispatched to earth for the purpose of instructing and nurturing humanity "in proper ritual and ethical conduct") were seduced by and had sexual intercourse with mortal women, who then birthed a hybrid race of giants. These Watchers and giants, the nephilim, engaged in destructive and grossly immoral actions which devastated humanity, including the revealing of heaven's holy "secrets" or "mysteries to their wives and children" and to mankind generally. When Enoch heard of this, he was distressed and petitioned God, who in his longsuffering and by divine revelation and counsel called Enoch to preach repentance unto them, that the earthly races might avoid God's wrath and destruction. In his mercy, God chose also to give the fallen Watchers an additional chance to repent by transmitting dreams to several of their giant-sons, including two brothers named Ohyah and Hahyah who relayed the dreams to an assembly of their nephilim companions. This assembly of nephilim associates were perplexed by the dreams, so they sent a giant named Mahway to Enoch’s abode and to the places of his preaching (for Mahway had been instructed that he must first "hear" the prophet speak before petitioning him for the "oracle"). Enoch, in his attempt to intercede on their behalf, provided not only the oracle that the giants had requested, but also twin "tablets" that revealed the full meaning of their dreams and God’s future judgment against them. When the giants had at last heard heaven's response, many chose, in their transcendent pride and arrogance, rather than to turn from their evil ways, to act in defiance against God.

While the Qumran fragments are incomplete at this point, the Manichaean fragments tell of the hosts of God subduing the fallen-angel races of nephilim in battle.

Much of the content in the Book of Giants is similar, and most closely relates, to 1 Enoch 7:3-6, a passage which sheds light on the characterizing features of the giants. It reveals that the giants were born of the Watcher 'sons of god' and the 'daughters of men.' The giants, as their 'prostituted' half-breed offspring, began to devour the works of what they perceived to be a lesser race and went on to kill and to viciously exploit them in slavery and sexual debauchery. They also sinned against nature, in the most defiling and violent of ways against the beasts and birds of the sky, creeping things and the fish of the sea, but also against one another. They murdered on a massive scale, and also aborted their own children. The Qumran documents also mention that the giants devoured the flesh of those they exploited and of one another, and drank the blood [7]. This act of drinking blood would have horrified the people [8]. Evidence of such extreme offence is found in Leviticus 17:10-16, wherein strict rules are laid forth regarding the blood of animals and all living creatures; verses 10 and 11 warn, “I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of the creature is in the blood.”

Fallen Angels among Men: a genesis of evil

The Qumran texts that make up its so-called Book of Giants seem to offer, for various faiths, a more complete picture of the beginnings of evil than perhaps its rather truncated counterpart — the biblical Eden story — is able to give. The Genesis story we read today, as is well known, was greatly altered by ancient Deuteronomist scribes and historians (and others) according to their own religious and political agendas and does not, therefore, represent the pristine form of whatever may have been its primordial message. And while the Book of Giants cannot, by any means, heal that breach, it does begin to answer questions, fill in gaps, and make more clear, perhaps, what was originally intended.

The Qumran fragments that began to be discovered in 1948 relate how a small cadre of giants – offspring of the 'fallen angels' called Watchers – named Ohyah and Hahyah (alternately, 'Ohya' and 'Hahya'), who were both sons of Semihazah, chieftain of the Watchers, and also Mahway, giant-son of the Watcher Baraq'el, experience dreams that foresee the biblical Flood [9]. These disturbing omens are told to the assembly of fallen angels that had originally organized their secret society upon Mount Hermon as a body of 200 members, bound together by a dark combination of clandestine oaths and operational pacts by which they might ruthlessly achieve their personal and collective aims. A brief mention of the giant Ohya (Ohyah), is found in the Babylonian Talmud (Nidah, Ch 9), which gives the following: "סיחון ועוג אחי הוו דאמר מר סיחון ועוג בני אחיה בר שמחזאי הוו" ("Sihon and Og [from the Book of Numbers] were brothers, as they were the sons of Ohia the son of Samhazai [alternately, 'Semihazah' or 'Semiazus,' chieftain of the fallen angels in the Book of Enoch].") Thus are provided, it would seem, the names of the sons of Ohyah, grandsons of Semihazah.

The giant Mahway, an associate of Ohyah, is summoned to the assembly of the fallen angels and put under secret oath 'under pain of death' to approach Enoch, the distinguished scribe and "apostle from the south" (see Jubilees 4:25-6), in order to obtain prophetic interpretation of their sons' ominous visions of what appears threateningly to them as an imminent catastrophe: "An oracle [I have come to ask you] here," declares Mahway, after listening to Enoch's message to the people. "From you, a second time, [I] ask for the oracle: [We shall listen to] your words, all the nephilim of the earth also. If God is going to take away ... from the days of their [existence] ... that they may be punished ... [we, of these portents,] should like to know from you their explanation."

The elements of Hahyah's troubling dream include 200 garden-trees, an Emperor, mighty winds, water, and fire. Enoch obliges the messenger of the Semihazah-led assembly with his interpretation of the dreams: the 200 trees watered by corrupt angelic 'gardeners' are, against their original nature, demon-defiled and unfruitful (producing bad fruit) — representing the Watchers (once-good 'protector' or guardian angels gone bad) and their bad-seed giant progeny — upon whom the "Emperor of heaven" will descend as a "burning Sun" (as upon a mighty "whirlwind" of fury) in great judgment: "O ye lamentable ones, do not die now prematurely, but turn quickly back!" is the declaration Mahway claims to have heard in his own dream. The other visionary elements, as interpreted by Enoch, represent future exterminations by fire and water (sparing only "three shoots" — which Milik explains is an ancient Hebrew expression for Noah's sons). Mahway had also claimed to have heard Enoch "speaking my name very lovingly" in his desperate plea and call that the giant follow Enoch to safety.

Later, after the fallen angels of Watchers and giants had asked Enoch to make petition and to intercede for them before God, Enoch (who takes his ascent in the northern land of Dan, at the foot of Mount Hermon) returned from that heavenly attempt (as from also his universal visions and cosmic journeys, guided by the archangel Uriel) with two tablets — an 'Epistle' written in 'the distinguished scribe's own hand' from the Lord of Spirits and 'the Holy One,' giving God's answer "to Semihazah and all his companions":

Let it be known to you that ... your works and those of your wives and your children by your prostitution on the earth [the giants themselves being the 'sons of prostitution'] ... It now befalls you [that] the earth complains and accuses you [for your works], and the works of your children also, and her voice rises to the very portals of heaven, complaining and accusing you of the corruption by which you have corrupted her. [But she will mourn] until the coming of Raphael [Metatron-Enoch]. For lo! a destruction upon men and on animals: the birds which fly upon the face of heaven, and the animals which live on the earth, and those which live in the deserts, and those which live in the seas. And [thus does] the interpretation of your [dreams come upon] you for the worst.

Whereupon, after the assembly of fallen angels are read the words of the Epistle (see 1 Enoch 13:3-5), the giants and Watchers, gathered together at the place Abel-mayyâ ('the spring of Weeping' between Lebanon and Senir), straightaway 'prostrated themselves and began to weep before Enoch,' for their request to heaven for clemency had been rejected, and God had cast them off (it is significant that they weep at the foot of their own mountain of blasphemous oath-taking): all was now 'for the worst.' The only solace that Enoch could therefore offer them at that point, for theirs appears to have been a point of 'no return,' was to "loosen your bonds (of sin) which tie you up ... and begin to pray."

The archangel Raphael (Metatron-Enoch) was, according to Milik, charged by God to bind Asael (or 'Azazel': Satan, the ultimate fallen angel whom the others worshipped) hand and foot, and to heal the earth which the fallen angels had corrupted. He notes the word-play on the double meaning of the verb rafa 'to tie' and 'to heal.' Reflecting upon God's decree in rejecting the fallen angels' petition, Milik says that "the Watchers seem to be already chained up by the [arch]angels; [for] in order to be able to pray, to lift their arms in the gesture of suppliants, they have to have their bonds loosened."

[Thereupon] the roaring of the wild beasts came and the multitude of the wild animals began to cry out... And Ohyah spoke ... My dream has overwhelmed me ... and the sleep of my eyes has fled ... Then God punished ... the sons of the Watchers, the giants, and all [their] beloved ones [who would] not be spared ... [Then Ohyah said to Hahyah, his brother:] he has imprisoned us and you [as in your dream] he has subdued [tegaf: seized, confined; see Jubilees 10:5 and 1 Enoch 10:11-15] ...

In the Manichaean Book of Giants, Milik explains, Raphael (Enoch's 'heavenly double') is the conqueror of Ohyah and of all the other Watchers and of their giant-sons. The same work intimates that all four archangels (Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Sariel) were engaged in the struggle with the 200 Watchers and their offspring: "and those two hundred demons fought a hard battle with the four angels, until the angels used fire, naphtha, and brimstone..." The Enochic literature records the collusion of the archangels with the righteous (both seen and unseen - see 2 Kings 6:16) against their demon-foes: "Four hundred thousand Righteous ... [came] with fire, naphtha, and brimstone ... And the [fallen] angels moved out of sight of Enoch" (see Reeves, pp. 160-161 note 389). Then, after the course of many years, when the patriarch-warrior-king suddenly "was not; for God took him" (Genesis 5:24; see Reeves, p. 77), the archangelic Raphael-Metatron sent to Semihazah a warning-message that brought complete fulfilment to heaven's former decree: "The Holy One is about to destroy His world, and bring upon it a flood" (Milik, pp. 316 note 12, 328).

The archangel Uriel, beyond his role of instructing Enoch among the stars, directs Noah to prepare his escape from the Flood, and figures prominently in the final Judgement of the world in the end times that will be administered by the 'Son of Man' figure as foretold in Enoch's Book of Dreams and Apocalypse of Weeks. Two other archangels, Raguel and Phanuel (sometimes confused with the archangelic name-corruption 'Remiel' > Eremiel > Jeremiel), are also mentioned in the Enochic material. But with respect to Sariel, it is the Manichaean tradition, drawing on the Book of Giants, that preserves that archangelic name more faithfully than do the Greek and Ethiopic traditions.

The Qumran Book of Giants, like its Manichaean counterpart, affiliates the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh and the monster Humbaba with the Watchers and giants.

Interpretive issues between Qumran and Turfan

Although we can glean much information from the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls narrative, there are still many unknowns and issues that scholars heavily debate. First, the authorship of the Qumran Book of Giants is still a question among scholars. Some believe the manuscript (despite so many extant copies from Qumran of the overall Enochic work) to have been little used among the desert sectaries, which leaves scholars with many queries. The Qumran discoveries ruled out the Manicheans as being the composers of the Book of Giants, for their work followed later. However the usage of 1 Enoch assumes that the basis of the text would likewise fall under an unknown author, or tend to the idea that it was a pseudepigraphon text. For some scholars, this lends itself to questioning the originality and legitimacy of the book.

The books of Daniel and 1 Enoch both have similarities (to give just one of many comparisons) to the visions of giants Ohyah, Hahyah, and Mahway. The biblical and apocryphal accounts speak of a king of heaven sitting upon his throne, and the Aramaic text A12 has other similar elements. The texts differ, however, in that in the giants' account, God comes down from heaven. Even so, the many textual variants of the different 'Book of Giants' versions raise many other points of debate among scholars and experts. And although all are said to derive in some measure from the same 'script,' they are, ultimately, very different in their content, particularly in the way that the Manichaean and Aramaic versions differ, even from later Jewish midrash retellings, in the elements of the giants' dreams or visions.

In the giant Ohyah's dream, for instance, he apparently sees a large inscribed-stone representation of the 'cosmic covenant' (which the Watchers and their offspring, by their defilement, have broken) that covers the whole earth "like a table." In the midrash retelling, a great angel descends, but in the Qumranic version, the Lord of Heaven himself descends with a knife to scrape and efface all of its character-rows, save one, at the end of which only four words remain (the names of Noah and his three sons).

J.T. Milik believed the Book of Giants originally to have been a part of the entire Enochic work, the five-sectioned 'Enochic Pentateuch' as it is sometimes called, including the Book of Watchers, the Astronomical Book, the Book of Dreams, and the Epistle of Enoch (with its Apocalypse of Weeks); Milik felt that the Qumran Giants had actually been replaced by the Ethiopic 1 Enoch's 'Similitudes' (or 'Parables') section.

All of these Enochic writings would have held significance from the beginning of the first century. Indeed, the early Christian church treasured Enoch and held it canonical. However, during the Christian era after the Apostles, the collection was altered and part of its narrative (Giants, it is thought) replaced by the Book of Parables. Due in no small part to the influence of the Alexandrian philosophers who ill-favored it — its contents thought by many of the Hellenistic era to be foolish or strange — the overall Enochic work rapidly ran afoul of ideas held by the Christian and Jewish doctors (who damned it forever as a tainted product of the Essenes of Qumran). The book was soon banned by such orthodox authorities as Hilary, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth century and it gradually passed out of circulation, finally becoming lost to the knowledge of Western Christendom — only sundry 'fragments' remained. The few copies left of the Enoch literature, if indeed they could be found, was therefore attributable, it is thought, to the Christian doctors' suppression of it and their partial replacement with the Book of Parables.

A 'Book of Moses' connection

The name of the giant 'Mahway' — the messenger figure from the Qumran Giants fragments who, by the 'fallen angels' assembly, is bound by a secret oath 'under pain of death' to secure from Enoch the interpretation of their sons' troubling visions — coincides with a name of very similar spelling that is assigned to this same 'Mahway' story-figure as he appears in the Enochic account found in The Book of Moses — a canonical work of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That account, consisting of two brief chapters within the greater 'ascension' story of Moses, and claiming to be only an extract from Enoch's larger prophetic record, was 'translated' by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1830 and later published in 1851.

In that rendition of the Enochic story, the spelling of the name of the 'Mahway' character who inquires after Enoch appears as 'Mahijah' (Moses 6:40). The Masoretic Hebrew text name 'MHWY' written in its transliterated Aramaic form in the Qumran Book of Giants, bears semi-vowels w and y that appear very similar in the Aramaic script (confused at times by scribes). Attributable to this, and because the name as written equates in fact with the name MHWY-EL (appearing in Genesis 4:18 as 'Mehujael,' who was a descendant of Cain and grandfather of the wicked Lamech, his name appearing a second time in the same verse as 'MHYY-EL'), scholars of this 'Mosaic' tradition of Enoch assert it to be the very same name.

Similarly, it appears in Smith's account again, not as the place-name 'Mahujah' as has previously been thought, but rather as another iteration of the personal Mahway name — because the verse-use of the second-person plural "ye" suggests (by placing the comma before the name instead of after) that Mahijah was with Enoch when God directs them to 'turn aside' to pray upon mount Simeon (Moses 7:2). In this prayerful context, it is conceivable that 'Mahway' (who recalls from his dream the prophet's loving plea to him) could have been one of Enoch's proselytes, perhaps even a citizen of his later mountain-city refuge. Enoch's grandfather, it should be noted , bore a similar name to MHWY — 'Mahalaleel' (Genesis 5:12-17). MHWY-EL is transliterated in the King James Bible as Mehuja-el, which name also appears in the Greek Septuagint as Mai-el and in the Latin Vulgate as Mavia-el.

Mehujael's grandson, the evil Lamech, and other Cainites like him, in the practice of their forebears, "entered into a covenant with Satan after the manner of Cain" wherein they — mimicking the oaths of the giants and Watchers — would constrain one another to "Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die" (Moses 5:49, 52, 55), similar to 1 Enoch 6:5, where "all swore together and bound one another with a curse." Lamech, who reveals to his exogamous wives "the secrets of their wicked league" (Moses 5:44, 47-55; 1 Enoch 8:3) also kills his great-grandfather Baraq'el/Virōgdād/Irad when this "prominent member of the secret combination [the ninth chief under Semihazah - 1 Enoch 69:3] revealed their secrets in violation of deadly oaths he had taken" (Moses 5:49-50).

And I took him ... and I appointed him (that is) Enoch, the son of Jared, whose name is Metatron ... my servant who is one (unique) among all the children of heaven. I made him strong in the generation of the first Adam. But when I beheld the men of the generation of the flood, that they were corrupt, then I went and removed my Shekina [radiant Presence] from among them ...

And I took [Enoch] from among the children of men and made him a Throne over against my Throne ... And I lifted him up with the sound of a trumpet and with a [shout] to the high heavens, to be my witness ... I made (of) him the prince over all the princes and a minister of [my] Throne of Glory ... (and I have committed unto him) the Secrets of above and ... of below ... And I committed to him Wisdom and intelligence more than (to) all the angels ... I made him higher than all ... I made his Throne great by the majesty of my Throne. And I increased its glory by the honour of my glory ... I made honour and majesty his clothing ... and a royal crown ... (his) diadem. And I put upon him ... the splendour of my glory ...

And I called his name "the Lesser YHWH [Yahweh, 'little Jeu'], the Prince of the Presence, the Knower of Secrets: for every secret did I reveal to him as a father and all mysteries declared I unto him in uprightness ... to abase by his word the proud to the ground, and to exalt by the utterance of his lips the humble to the height; to smite kings by his speech, to turn kings away from their paths ... and to give Wisdom unto all the wise ... and understanding (and) knowledge to all who understand knowledge ... to reveal to them the secrets of my words and to teach the decree of my righteous judgement ~ 3 Enoch 48:1-2, 4-5, 7, 9

And Metatron [Enoch] said: All these things the Holy One ... made for me: He made for me a Throne similar to the Throne of Glory. And He spread over [i.e., clothed] me [with] splendour and [glory, a wrapping of radiance and Light] ... of beauty, grace and mercy similar to [that of] the Throne of Glory ... And He ... seated me on it. And [a] herald went forth [and proclaimed in all the firmament of the heavens], saying: This is Metatron [Enoch], my servant. I have made him ... a prince and a ruler over all the princes of my kingdoms and over all the children of heaven [a divine King]! ~ 3 Enoch 10:1-3

As portrayed in other Enochic literature, the Enoch figure in the Book of Moses account is also a prophet acknowledged as priest and king by his people, but the founder, too, of their sacred society on earth. For after God has delivered to Enoch his verdict upon the unrepentant nephilim (who had "trembled" before him; Moses 6:47), the righteous retire with their leader to a place of safety in the mountains as God fights their battles for them ('Yahweh as warrior'). By his power (and the mouthpiece of his prophet-king), mountains fled, rivers altered their courses (Moses 6:34), and all nations feared the people of God (Moses 7:13-16). Their refuge city lasted 365 years (Moses 7:17-20, 68) until it, with its king, was taken from a wicked world whose destruction was "sealed" and 'translated' to heaven — a blessed 'City of Zion' that according to Enoch's prophecy would return again to the earth in the last days (Moses 7:62-69)

Very like the 'Mahway' character of the Qumran account, the 'Mahijah' of Smith's Enochic account also puts "bold direct questions to Enoch," which similarly give the patriarch (who is viewed by the nephilim as "a strange thing in the land" - Moses 6:38) "an opening" for calling upon them to repent. The name MHWY, moreover, whether transliterated in its 'Mahway' or 'Mahijah' or 'Mehujael' forms, is not to be found elsewhere in the world among the various incarnations of the Enochic texts — as neither is the 'Mahway' story itself: the mission of MHWY to Enoch (and of Enoch to MHWY) is peculiar to the Enochic accounts as found in Qumran's (1948/1976) Book of Giants and Smith's (1830/1851) Book of Moses.

Smith's account of Enoch's prophetic 'call' (Moses 6:26-32) parallels the pattern of other biblical 'prophetic call narratives' (e.g., Moses in Exod 3-4, and Jeremiah in Jer 1) in its prophetic confrontation with the divine (Moses 6:26-28, 32, 35), the call-commission (6:27), the prophet's objection (6:31), followed by God's reassurance (6:32, 34) and 'sign'. The sign God manifests in 'opening' Enoch's eyes in the Ethiopic account (1 En 1:2), which allows the seer to experience the heavenly vision, mirrors Moses 6:35-36, wherein Enoch's eyes are 'anointed' and opened that he might 'see' the visions of heaven and "also things which were not visible to the natural eye" (similar to the calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah, both spokesmen for God, wherein, however, it is their lips, instead, that are touched). Of particular note are several points at which the Enoch account in the Book of Moses aligns with the Book of Giants (Aramaic) and 2 (Slavonic) Enoch accounts that first came to light in 1948 and 1896, respectively, many decades after Joseph Smith's lifetime. The prominence of the Metatron-Enochic title 'lad' in 2 Enoch and 3 (Hebrew) Enoch matches its appearance in the Moses chapters, with Enoch's self-descriptive use of the 'lad' title at Moses 6:31. The prophet is similarly called 'little Enoch' in the Mandaean pseudepigraphon text, Livre d'Adam, wherein, moreover, in its tale of Enoch (and similar to Smith's account at Moses 7:13), heavenly powers protectively turn "the source of the waters ... from its course."

On the heels of the description in the Book of Giants of the battle between the earthly and heavenly hosts, "the roaring of wild beasts" from out of the wilderness is said to have been heard. Barker [1987] equates these 'beasts' of antiquity with the archangelic or 'supernatural' adversarial powers that mark similar biblical passages (pp. 131, 139-40 note 24). In the Book of Giants, as witnessed in the words of the rebellious Ohyah to his brother Hahyah, the Watchers and nephilim are bound by the archangels and confined to their prison ("until the day of their judgment" — such is Ethiopic Enoch's description of their punishment in "the valleys of the earth" where they are "led away to the fiery abyss" of recompense and imprisonment). At these same points in the Enochic literature, Smith's Moses account matches the Book of Giants remarkably, for therein, too, "the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness" (Moses 7:13) and the earth's profane inhabitants relegated by God to "perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them" (Moses 7:38).

Moreover, the Moses and Ethiopic/Slavonic accounts agree that Enoch envisions the impending Flood (Mos 7:43; 1 En 91:5), foresees after several generations (a time mercifully afforded to allow the wicked a final chance to repent) that Noah and his posterity survive (Mos 7:23-27, 43, 52; 1 En 106:18; see Reeves, pp. 157-158 note 353), knows Noah's future through a God-directed eschatological vision (Mos 7:44-45, 51; 1 En 106:13-18), and witnesses and weeps with God for a suffering 'Mother Earth' who bemoans the rebellious 'children' that have issued forth from her (Mos 7:28-33, 41, 48-50; 1 En 7:6; 8:4; 9:2-3, 10; 90:41-42; 95:1; 107:3; and 2 En 1:2-4; see Reeves, p. 82). Finally, in the 'mystical ascent' tradition of 3 Enoch (10:1, 3), the antedeluvian prophet of the Book of Moses account is given the "right" to the throne of God (7:59; a Mosaic parallel to this symbolic act of deification is seen in Meeks [2017]; but see also Orlov [2005], pp. 262-276, which relates, in an ancient work called the Exagōgē, how Moses, in his 'prophet-king' ascent to God's throne, meets the archangel Raguel — thought to be that prophet's 'heavenly double').

Another striking similarity between the Apocalyptic stories of the 1 Enoch literature and the Book of Moses is the consistent use of the peculiar title 'Son of Man,' referring to the great figure of Judgement that is referenced in the 'Similitudes' of the Ethiopic account. The identity of that figure, who in the Pre-existence before Creation was, in the sanctuary of the Heavenly Temple, "named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits" (1 Enoch 48:2-3, which Elyon-'Lord' or heavenly-king figure is identified in the Book of Moses as 'Man of Holiness' — Father of the 'Son of Man' - Moses 6:57, 7:35), has been "hidden," but will, according to the prophecy of 1 Enoch, be revealed at the end of days. In the one brief Enochic 'extract' of two chapters found in the Book of Moses, the 'Son of Man' reference is used no fewer than eight times (Moses 6:57; 7:24, 47, 54-56, 59, 65). Other titles common to this 'single referent' figure both in 1 Enoch and the Book of Moses account are 'Chosen One' (Mos 7:39), 'Anointed One' (i.e., Messiah; see Mos 7:53), and 'Righteous One' (elsewhere, 'Holy One'; Mos 6:57; 7:45, 47, 67).

Sources

• Henning, W. B., tr. "The Manichean text." (1943).

External links

• The Book of the Giants
• Detailed discussion of contents of Book of Giants at Encyclopædia Iranica
• Book of Giants- Manuscripts