Texts in Conversation
The Damascus Document in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Testament of Reuben share a tradition of an interpretation of Genesis 6 that the children of the Watchers were literal giants, described as tall as cedar trees or reaching the heavens.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Testament of Reuben 5:7
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
Pseudepigrapha, Testaments
5 So flee from sexual immorality, my children, and tell your wives and daughters not to dress up their heads and faces to deceive, because every woman who uses these tricks has been set aside for eternal punishment. 6 This is how they seduced the Watchers before the flood. As the Watchers kept seeing them, they lusted after them and plotted the act in their minds. They transformed themselves into the shape of men and appeared to the women while they were with their husbands. 7 The women lusted in their minds after the appearance of the Watchers, and they gave birth to giants, for the Watchers had appeared to them as reaching all the way to heaven.
Date: 100 BCE – 100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
CD 2:17
Damascus Document
Dead Sea Scrolls, Sectarian and Community Texts
14 And now, sons, listen to me, and I will uncover your eyes to see and to understand the works of 15 God, and to choose what pleases him and to reject what he hates, to walk perfectly 16 in all his ways and not to stray after the thoughts of a guilty inclination and eyes of fornication. For many 17 have gone astray through them, and mighty warriors have stumbled through them, from of old until now. Because they walked in the stubbornness of 18 their heart, the Watchers of heaven fell; they were caught by it, because they did not keep the commandments of God. 19 And their sons, whose height was like the height of cedars and whose bodies were like mountains, fell. 20 All flesh that was on dry land perished, and they were as though they had not been, because they did 21 their own will and did not keep the commandments of their maker, until his anger burned against them.
Date: 100–80 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Search:
Notes and References
"... The reference to the giants' great size will serve as a transition to the subject of their voracious appetite, described in verses 3-5. It specifies their height as 3,000 and 300 cubits, respectively, but this reading is probably a secondary gloss. According to the Damascus Document 2:19, the watchers' sons were as tall as cedar trees with bodies like mountains. This excessive height, vastly out of line with the height attributed to Og (9 cubits, Deuteronomy 3:11) and Goliath (6 cubits, 1 Samuel 17:4), may well be related to the tradition that ascribed immense height to angels (Testament of Reuben 5:7; 2 Enoch 1:4; Gospel of Peter 40) ..."
George W. E. Nickelsburg, A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 1-36, 81-108 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 185–186.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.
User Comments
,