Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature more

Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature Matthew Goff (Florida State University) Abstract In different ways the Book of Watchers, the Animal Apocalypse, Jubilees, and the Book of Giants present the insatiable appetite of the giants as the key for understanding their crimes, which include murder, anthropophagy and the consumption of blood. Blood plays a major role in the retribution by the angels against them. The appetite of the giants affects their recompense in that their bodies, not their spirits, are destroyed. In this form they can no longer eat; but, this essay suggests, their overwhelming hunger remains. The ancient Near Eastern background of depicting violence and death with language of eating is also explored. The theme of appetite is critical for understanding the giants and their crimes on earth. “I only sacrifice to myself – to the gods never – and to this belly of mine, the greatest of all the gods.” – The Giant Pantagruel (Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 4, Chapter 58 [citing the Cyclops Polyphemus from Euripides, Cyclops 334–35]) Introduction Scholarship on the Book of Watchers, and 1 Enoch in general, has paid a great deal of attention to the actions of the Watchers on earth, such as their sexual relations with human women and their disclosure of heavenly secrets to them.1 Commentators generally focus on their offspring the giants as a consequence of the transgression of heavenly-worldly boundaries represented by their parents.2 There has been much less consideration of a related key point – what the 1 See, for example, J. J. Collins, “The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic Roman-Judaism (JSJSup 54; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 287–99; P. Sacchi, Jewish Apocalyptic and its History (trans. W. J. Short; JSPSup 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); A. Y. Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 84–121; D. Suter, “Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest: The Problem of Family Purity in 1 Enoch 6–16,” HUCA 50 (1979): 115–35 (esp. 116–17). In this article I use the common parlance of referring to the offspring of the Watchers as “giants.” The term is vague. It is used to signify a bewildering variety of monstrous but somewhat humanoid creatures in the folklore of cultures across the world. Since the word generally refers to creatures who are violent and powerful, its usage with respect to the children of the Watchers is justified. For more on the broad topic of giants, see J. J. Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); K. Schulz, Riesen: Von Wissenshütern und Wildnisbewohnern in Edda und Saga (Heidelberg: Winter, 2004); W. Stephens, Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History, and National- 2 Journal of Ancient Judaism, 1. Jg., 19–42, ISSN 1869-3296 © 2010 Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen 20 Matthew Goff giants actually do on earth. Their crimes, which include murder, cannibalism and the consumption of blood, are driven by their insatiable appetites. In this article I demonstrate that this is not only the case in the Book of Watchers but also that the twin themes of appetite and consumption are important in other Enochic texts that reformulate the Watchers story, including Jubilees, the Book of Giants and the Animal Apocalypse.3 The importance of the theme of eating is also reflected in the punishment of the giants, who are forced to exist as spirits that cannot eat. I also speculate about the ancient Near Eastern literary background of the trope of destructive consumption. Destructive Giants in 1 Enoch 6–11 According to the Book of the Watchers, soon after the giants are born they begin to eat insatiably, which leads to a cycle of increasing violence. The versions of the core text for this issue, 1 En 7:3–5, are notably different from one another.4 4QEna 1 iii 17–21 by itself is too fragmentary to yield a full translation but contains the following information:5 ism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); L. Motz, “Giants in Folklore and Mythology: A New Approach,” Folklore 93 (1982): 70–84. See also A. T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits (WUNT 2.198; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 22, 138–65. I use the term “Enochic” here loosely, as a designation for Early Jewish texts that draw extensively upon Enochic tradition. Scholars have observed that the giants have an extraordinary appetite but this motif has not been explored at length. André Caquot, for example, observes that the giants have “une faim monstrueuse.” See his “Les prodromes du déluge: légendes araméennes de Qoumrân,” RHPR 83 (2003): 41–59 (esp. 41). Note also M. Delcor, “Le Myth de la chute des anges et de l’origine des géants comme explication du mal dans le monde dans l’apocalyptique juive: Histoire des traditions,” RHR 190 (1976): 3–53 (esp. 29–30); Suter, “Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest,” 119. The eating habits of the giants in the later reception of Enochic tradition are examined in E. Tigchelaar, “Manna-Eaters and Man-Eaters: Food of Giants and Men in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies 8,” in The Pseudo-Clementines (ed. J. N. Bremmer; Leuven: Peeters, 2009 [forthcoming]). This pericope is generally regarded as part of the layer of tradition associated with Šemihazah  rather than Asael. See, for example, G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36, 81–108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 165; C. Molenberg, “A Study of the Roles of Shemihaza and Asael in 1 Enoch 6–11,” JJS 35 (1984): 136–46 (esp. 137). Consult the survey of scholarship on the source criticism of the Book of the Watchers in Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits, 11–50. The key book on the Aramaic Enoch material remains J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). See also M. A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1978); M. Sokoloff, “Notes on the Aramaic Fragments of Enoch from Qumran Cave 4,” Maarav 1 (1978–79): 197–224; K. Beyer, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer (2 vols.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 1.225–58 (= ATTM); idem, Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer. Ergänzungsband (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 117–18 (= ATTME) (his 2004 supplement to ATTM will be referred to as ATTM II); G. W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Books of Enoch at Qumran: What We Know and What We Need to Think about,” in Antikes Judentum und Frühes Christentum: Festschrift für Hartmut Stegemann zum 65. Geburtstag (eds. B. Kollmann, W. Reinbold 3 4 5 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 21 – The offspring of the Watchers and women were born (!ydlytm) upon the earth – They eat the “toil” (lm[) of all of humankind (the word “eat” is reasonably reconstructed) – They begin to kill (hljql) people6 – They sin against animals7 – They eat flesh (!h]rXb lkml) but whose exactly, on the basis of the Aramaic ֯ alone, is not clear No extant portion of 4QEna 1 iii states that they drink blood. “They were] drinking [the] blood” (a]md !ytX [awwhw), however, is one of the few visible phrases in the corresponding section of 4QEnb 1 ii (l. 25a). Whose blood is imbibed is not clear in the Aramaic. It is reasonable, however, to posit that the giants sin by consuming animals and drinking their blood. This is supported by the Greek text of Watchers from Panopolitanus (Akhmim) (GPan). According to this manuscript, 1 En. 7:2–5 reads: The women became pregnant and gave birth to great giants, 3,000 cubits tall (γίγαντας μεγάλου ἐκ πηχῶν τρισχιλίων). They ate the labors of men. As they were unable to supply them, the giants grew bold against them and devoured the men. They began to sin against birds, animals, reptiles and fish, and to eat the flesh of each other. And they drank the blood.8 and A. Steudel; BZNW 97; Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 99–113; M. Langlois, Le premier manuscript du livre d’Hénoch: Étude épigraphique et philologique des fragments araméens de 4Q201 à Qumrân (Paris: CERF, 2008). I read !yrXw rather than !yrXq (“conspired”) in 4QEna 1 iii 19 with Sokoloff and Beyer, contra Milik, The Books of Enoch, 150. See Beyer, ATTM, 1.236; Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.79; Sokoloff, “Notes on the Aramaic Fragments of Enoch,” 199; S. Bhayro, The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative of 1 Enoch 6–11 (AOAT 322; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2005), 243; E. W. Larson, “The Translation of Enoch: From Aramaic into Greek” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995), 265. From the Aramaic it is clear that the giants transgress against the animal kingdom but the word “sin” is reconstructed (on the basis of the Greek) and not in the extant Aramaic texts. For most of this passage there is no corresponding material in Syncellus. This manuscript, however, attests a distinctive version of 1 En 7:2: “the giants gave birth to the Nephilim and to the Nephilim were born Elioud. They grew in accordance with their greatness. They taught themselves and their wives charms and enchantments.” While the word Nephilim (Ναπηλείμ) indicates that this text relies on a Semitic source, the text is strikingly different from the corresponding Aramaic Enoch material from Qumran. In 4QEna 1 iii 15–16 there is not enough space to reconstruct the text of GSync 7:2. Knibb and Milik both reasonably see the Aramaic as closer to GPan. In the Syncellus text the giants are divided into “three kinds” (γένα τρία; 7:1) and are given a lead role in the introduction of illicit revelation to the world. GSync 8:3 includes a reference to the giants eating human flesh, the placement of which is attributed by Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.83–84, to the editorial activity of Syncellus. One explanation, voiced by Bhayro, The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative, 141, is that Syncellus or one of his sources (such as Annianus and Panodorus) glossed the information from Jub. 7:22, which preserves a variation of the threefold format: “The giants killed the Naphil and the Naphil killed the Elyo, and the Elyo mankind.” This is possible but would not explain why the three generations of giants are in Jub. 7:22. As discussed below, the three kinds may be alluded to in the Animal Apocalypse, an interpretation that would argue against reading 6 7 8 22 Matthew Goff The Aramaic texts do not give the height of the creatures, much less the extremely large stature of 3,000 cubits, or approximately 1,500 meters, in height.9 The crime of anthropophagy is explicit in GPan but not as evident in the Aramaic. The Greek text states that they ate (κατησϑίοσαν) men. The Aramaic here is extant; it says rather that they began to kill men (4QEna 1 iii 19).10 In GPan (and the Ethiopic) it is clear that they eat the flesh and drink the blood of one another. It is reasonable to posit that the word γίγας (Eth. ra’ayi) is a translation of rbg. This term, however, is not extant in the corresponding passages of the Aramaic Enoch texts.11 Despite their differences, the Aramaic and GPan versions of 1 En 7:3–5 both emphasize one important point: the giants’ appetite is the key factor motivating their destructive activities. They begin by eating the toil of the humans.12 When this is insufficient, they eat the humans themselves. This does not satGSync 7:2 as a late gloss derived from Jubilees. It would suggest rather that the Animal Apocalypse and Jubilees attest an Enochic tradition preserved in Syncellus. While the significance of GSync 7:2 is not fully clear, it is reasonably considered a witness to a variant ancient Enochic gigantological tradition. The identity of the “Elioud” remains obscure. This may be a name given to “the men of renown” of Gen 6:4, as suggested by Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 185 (following Charles). The view that Jub. 7:22 should be considered the source for this tradition is also endorsed by D. Bryan. Consult Milik, The Books of Enoch, 240; Delcor, “Le Myth de la chute des anges,” 40; M. Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (JSJSup 117; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 148; W. Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (DOP 26; Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989), 132–58; Larson, “The Translation of Enoch,” 115–64; D. Bryan, Cosmos, Chaos and the Kosher Mentality (JSPSup 12; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 92; R. H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch: Edited from Twenty-Three MSS. Together with the Fragmentary Greek and Latin Versions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 17. This extraordinary height should probably be understood as a narrative embellishment of the author. If one takes the height recorded in 1 Enoch 7 literally, it becomes difficult to imagine the giants drowning in the flood, since, according to Gen 7:20, the height of the water reached (only) fifteen cubits above the mountain tops. According to 1 Enoch 10 the giants die physically in a war against each another rather than perish in the flood, as discussed below. Given that many Second Temple works show familiarity with the trope that the offspring of the Watchers die in the flood (e. g., Bar 3:26–28; 3 Macc 2:4; Wis 14:6), it is reasonable to imagine that the author (or authors) of the relevant material in Watchers expanded and reformulated an older tradition about the giants in which they perish in the flood, embellishing the story to the point of changing key aspects of the tale. See also H. S. Kvanvig, “The Watcher Story and Genesis: An Intertextual Reading,” SJOT 18 (2004): 163–83 (esp. 164). The Ethiopic agrees with the Greek, using the verb “to eat” (bal‘a). ayrbg is common in the Book of Giants (e. g., 4Q530 2 ii 3, 13, 15) but not prominent in the extant Aramaic of the Book of the Watchers. The “toil” (lm[/κόπους) of 1 En 7:3 of the humans which the giants consume is not specified. It presumably refers to agricultural produce, following the view that the consumption of meat did not begin until after the flood (Gen 9:4–5; but see 4:20). In Qoheleth the Hebrew lm[ repeatedly refers to everything that a person produces during his or her lifetime and the effort therein involved (e. g., 2:18). The term signifies labor associated with eating and drinking (as in 3:13, 5:18 and 8:15). Qoh 6:7 could easily be applied to the giants: “All human toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied.” 9 10 11 12 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 23 isfy their appetites. So, as suggested by GPan, they eat creatures from all categories of the animal kingdom – beings that fly, walk, creep and swim – and, their appetites still not sated, they proceed to eat one another. Watchers interprets Genesis in a way that expands the scope of the threat posed by the offspring of the sons of the Watchers.13 They threaten all creatures of the world, including fish, which are (reasonably enough) not mentioned in the catalogue of animal life to be wiped out in the flood in Gen 6:7.14 The consumption perpetrated by the giants threatens not only humankind but the entire natural order.15 Not surprisingly, their appetites are a factor in their own destruction. The angels do not punish the giants by overpowering them militarily. Rather Gabriel is dispatched to instigate them to destroy one another in a “war of destruction” (!dba brq; 4QEnb 1 iv 6; 1 En 10:9). Since they were already eating one another, ֯ Gabriel’s task does not seem particularly difficult. The destructive tendencies of the giants are inextricably linked to their appetites – they harm the world and each other because they cannot control their appetites. This has disastrous consequences for both them and the world. The Crimes and The Appetite of the Giants in Other Enochic Texts The destructive appetites of the giants are prominent in other Enochic texts that attest versions of the Watchers myth. This is the case, for example, in the Book of Giants.16 4Q531 1 5–6 attests the phrases “it did not suffice for them” 13 14 15 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 166–68; Bhayro, The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative, 258–59; J. C. VanderKam, “The Interpretation of Genesis in 1 Enoch,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (ed. P. W. Flint; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001), 129–48. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 186; Langlois, Le premier manuscript du Livre d’Hénoch, 361. Also see the discussion of 4Q531 2+3 below. The universal scope of the threat posed by the giants is reflected in 4QEna 1 iii 18 (cf. 1 En 7:3), which states that the giants consumed the toil of all humankind. The word “all” is not in the Greek. The term does, however, appear in the Ethiopic, but before “toil” instead of “humankind.” The Aramaic does not endorse Charles’ conjecture that the Ethiopic kwello was corrupt. See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 1.18, 2.78; J. C. VanderKam, “The Textual Base for the Ethiopic Translation of 1 Enoch,” in From Revelation to Canon: Studies in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 380–95 (esp. 387); Charles, The Ethiopic Version, 16. The main manuscripts of the composition are generally considered to be 1Q23, 1Q24, 2Q26, 4Q203, 4Q530, 4Q531, 4Q532, 4Q533, 4Q206a 2–3 and 6Q8. These texts are available in S. J. Pfann et al., Qumran Cave 4.XXVI: Cryptic Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1 (DJD 36; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 8–94; É. Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4.XXII: Textes Araméens, Première Partie (4Q529–49) (DJD 31; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 9–115 (the relevant fragments in these volumes are edited, respectively, by Stuckenbruck and Puech). Major studies of the work include L. T. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran: Text, Translation, and Commentary (TSAJ 63; Tübingen; Mohr Siebeck, 1997); J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (MHUC 14; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992); F. García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic (STDJ 9; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 97–115; Beyer, ATTM, 1.258–68; Milik, The Books of Enoch, 298–339. 16 24 Matthew Goff and “they sought to consume much.”17 This text probably stated originally that the giants’ excessive eating began just after they were born. Line 3 attests the word “they begat” (wdlwa), presumably referring to the engendering of the giants (cf. 4Q203 7b i 3). Several commentators reasonably understand 4Q531 as the beginning of the composition or at least as the earliest part of the narrative that is extant.18 As in Watchers, the impression is that soon after the giants appear on earth they begin to consume excessively. Also as in Watchers, in the Book of Giants the giants’ eating is associated with murder. Unfortunately, the key texts are highly fragmentary. In the line immediately after the reference to the birth of the giants (4Q531 1 3), there is the phrase “in its blood.” The full context of this statement is not clear but, since lines 5–6 emphasize that the giants are not satisfied and eat much, it seems that the “blood” in line 4 is a reference to murder and perhaps anthropophagy, although this is never explicit in the Book of Giants. There is no surviving reference in the composition to the giants drinking blood. Nevertheless, 4Q531 1 provides an impression of the destructive rampages of the giants on the earth.19 This is also evident in 1Q23 9+14+15 4: “they killed man[y.”20 4Q532 1 ii + 2 associates the crimes of the giants with their eating, although the text is too fragmentary to provide a full narrative. Line 10 mentions that “they” did not find enough food to be satisfied, as in 4Q531 1.21 This parallel and 1 Enoch 7 strongly suggest that the antecedent is the giants. This is also 17 18 A form of the word “suffice” (qpX) is reasonably reconstructed by Milik, The Books of Enoch, 166, in the Aramaic of 1 En 7:3 (4QEnb 1 ii 22; cf. 4QEna 1 iii 18). Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 21, 152; Reeves, Jewish Lore, 62; Beyer, ATTM, 1.260. For a different arrangement, consult García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic, 112. Note also L. T. Stuckenbruck, “The Sequencing of Fragments Belonging to the Qumran Book of Giants: An Inquiry into the Structure and Purpose of an Early Jewish Composition,” JSP 16 (1997): 3–24. Puech, DJD 31, 52, reconstructs the word (a)tmw]h©m (“tur[moil”) in 4Q531 1 4, as is suggested by Reeves, Jewish Lore, 73. This is possible and would suit the context. In this case it would be a parallel, as Puech notes, to 1 En. 9:9, which states that the earth is full of “blood and violence” (GPan). However, not enough of the word survives to reconstruct it with full confidence. See also Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 149–50; Beyer, ATTM II, 2.155 (who reconstructs !ynmy]hm [which he translates as Vertrauenswürdigen, “those who are trustwor֯ thy”]). That the antecedent of this phrase is the giants is suggested by the following line (l. 5), which includes the phrase “one hundred giants.” Other references to the violence and the bloodshed of the giants include 4Q531 7 5–6; 4Q533 4 2; 4Q206a 1 i (= 4Q206 3 i) 6. Cf. 4Q531 28 1; 4Q531 32 2. The text, following Puech, DJD 31, 100–03, is lk]aml !hl qpX [al. Instead of !hl Stucken֯ ֯ bruck, The Book of Giants, 180, and Beyer, ATTME, 124, read hl. Examination of the original manuscript in June 2009 confirms without a doubt Puech’s transcription. On the photo at this point the text is obscured by what appears to be a large smudge. This is not on the original. Rather, there is a hole in the manuscript that, presumably because of the lighting when the photograph was taken, looks like an ink spot. The key letters are thus obscured on the photo. Just below the hole on the original it is easy to discern the bottom of a final nun. This helps establish the view that the giants in general (not just one) did not find satisfaction when eating. 19 20 21 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 25 indicated by 4Q532 1 ii + 2 9 which states that “they” caused extensive damage: ֯ “great damage they inflicted on [the] ea[rth” (a[r]a©b wlbnx br lb x) (cf. 4Q203 8 11). Line 8 mentions destruction and death. As Stuckenbruck has aptly argued, this fragment, while not preserving a full account, describes the violent activities of the giants.22 Although little of the relevant text survives, the Book of Giants establishes a clear association between the violence of the giants and their appetites.23 The theme of the insatiable appetites of the giants is also attested, I suggest, in 1Q23 1+6+22.24 The surviving portion of this composite text lists large quantities of animals and produce: “two hundred donkeys, [two] hundred wild asses … two hundred sheep, t[w]o hundred rams … field from every living creature, and thousands from a gr[apevine” (ll. 2–4). Reeves understands this text as referring to the cargo of Noah’s ark.25 No surviving portion of the composition, however, mentions Noah directly or gives an unambiguous account of the ark or its contents. Stuckenbruck, following Milik, suggests that the text refers to the “post-diluvian fertility to occur following the destruction of the giants” in the tradition of 1 Enoch 10.26 However, post-diluvian abundance is never unambiguously a theme of the Book of Giants. I propose that 1Q23 1+6+22 is a remnant of a list of the animals and produce that the giants consumed. The theme of excessive eating by the giants in the Book of Giants and Watchers makes it reasonable to understand 1Q23 1+6+22 in this way. Two later compositions support this interpretation. The late rabbinic compilation, “The Midrash of Šemḥazai and ‘Aza’el,” which is attested in the The Chronicles of Jerahmeel and other works, attests giant traditions found in the Qumran Book of Giants.27 This work contains a list of animals that two giants, the 22 23 Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 178–82. Note the interesting but brief mention of “flesh” in 4Q532 1 ii + 2 2. The word is prefaced with the bet preposition. This is presumably not a reference to the cannibalism of the giants because generally the verb “to eat” is not accompanied by this preposition in Aramaic (e. g., Dan 4:30, 7:5, 23). The line could be a remnant of a reference to the giants’ rampages against all humankind. For the official edition, see Stuckenbruck, DJD 36, 49–52. For the original edition, consult D. Barthélemy and J. T. Milik, Qumran Cave 1 (DJD 1; Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), 97–98. Reeves, Jewish Lore, 122. Stuckenbruck, DJD 36, 51–52; idem, The Book of Giants, 57; Milik, The Books of Enoch, 301. The edition of this text in Milik, The Books of Enoch, 321–29, is primarily taken from a manuscript at the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Ms. Heb. d. ii. fol. 21v), with variants recorded from other sources such as Bereshit Rabbati and the anthology Yalqut Shimoni. An English translation is also available in M. Gaster, The Chronicles of Jerahmeel Or, The Hebrew Bible Historiale (Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2007 [orig. pub., 1899]). Reed, Fallen Angels, 258–59, argues that “The Midrash of Šemḥazai and ‘Aza’el” (contra Milik) is a late compendium of traditions regarding the Watchers that developed in the gaonic and early medieval periods. The affinity between this work and the Qumran Book of Giants suggests that it may preserve Early Jewish traditions regarding the Watchers as well. Reed aptly cautions that “The Midrash of Šemḥazai and ‘Aza’el” should not be thought of as a composition preserved throughout much of rabbinic Judaism but as a late medieval effort to “narrativize” older traditions and legends into a single coherent account. For more on Chronicles, 24 25 26 27 26 Matthew Goff brothers Heyya and Aheyya, would consume daily.28 In the composition their father Šemhazai says: “How shall my children live, and what shall become of  my children, for each one of them eats daily a thousand camels, a thousand horses, a thousand oxen, and all kinds (of animals)?”29 This list, which claims that the two brothers ate a total of 2,000 of several types of animals daily, can be understood as a later elaboration of an older tradition that is preserved in 1Q23 1+6+22, which enumerates a catalogue of smaller (but still large) numbers of animals that the giants consumed.30 The fragmentary Manichean Book of Giants (Kawān) also contains traditions preserved in the Qumran Book of Giants.31 Fragment l of the main text of this composition (M101) contains a list of several kinds of animals, two hundred in number, as in 1Q23 1+6+22.32 It is not stated specifically, but the mention of wine in the passage suggests that the animals in the list are considered food. The evidence is not conclusive but 1Q23 1+6+22 can be reasonably interpreted as a remnant of a catalogue of the kinds (and amounts) of animals and produce consumed by the giants.33 see H. Jacobson, “Thoughts on the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, Ps-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, and their Relationship,” SPhil 9 (1997): 239–63. Two important giants in the Book of Giants are the brothers Hahyah and ’Ohyah. The translation is from Milik, The Books of Enoch, 325, 328. See also Chronicles of Jerahmeel 25:8, in Gaster, The Chronicles of Jerahmeel, 53. The extraordinary amount of food and drink consumed by the Canaanite king Og, who is regarded as a giant (Deut 3:11), is described in the late rabbinic work Tractate Sopherim (43b; Soncino edition). See A. Kosman, “The Story of a Giant Story: The Winding Way of Og King of Bashan in the Jewish Haggadic Tradition,” HUCA 73 (2002): 157–90 (esp. 171). If the two brothers Heyya and Aheyya eat 2,000 of several kinds of animals daily in the midrash, then 1Q23 1+6+22, which mentions no giant by name, may describe Hahyah and ’Ohyah eating 200 of several kinds of animals daily. J. T. Milik was the first to identify a connection between the Qumran Book of Giants and the Manichean Kawān, the original version of which is generally understood to have been written by Mani in the third century CE. See his “Turfan et Qumran: Livre des géants juif et manichéen,” in Tradition und Glaube: Das frühe Christentum in seiner Umwelt (eds. G. Jeremias et al.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 117–27; idem, “Problèmes de la littérature hénochique à la lumière des fragments araméens de Qumrân,” HTR 64 (1971): 333–78 (esp. 366–72); idem, The Books of Enoch, 298–303; W. B. Henning, “The Book of Giants,” BSOAS 11 (1943–46): 52–74; Reeves, Jewish Lore, 30. “You shall see the destruction of your children … wild ass, ibex … ram, goat (?), gazelle … oryx, of each two hundred, a pair … the other wild beats, birds, and animals … and their wine [shall be] six thousand jugs … of water (?) … and their oil [shall be …” See Henning, “The Book of Giants,” 61. It is also possible that the consumption of creatures is discussed in 4Q531 2+3. This, however, cannot be stated conclusively. The fragment relies on Genesis 1. The moon is mentioned in line 1 and “the gr[ea]t fish” in line 3 (a[yb]r©br aynwn), echoing Gen 1:21. The birds ֯ of heaven, plants and animal life of the earth are discussed, including creatures that creep (a[rac©rX) (ll. 4–7; cf. Gen 1:21). The phrase “male and female” in line 9 (h©bqnw rkd) could refer to humankind or to the animals (cf. Gen 1:27; 6:19; 7:16). It is not evident from the fragmentary 4Q531 2+3 why it enumerates elements of the natural world. For Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 144, the key to this text is line 7, which he translates as “And they burned all/every …” He transcribes wrxa, which he takes, following Beyer, ATTME, 119, as ֯ an Af ‘el of rrx (“to burn”), although he grants that the word could be the preposition yrxa. 28 29 30 31 32 33 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 27 The tropes of excessive eating and cannibalism are present but reformulated in the Book of Jubilees.34 The text associates these themes not only with the giants but rather the creatures of the earth in general. Jub 5:2 reads: “And injustice increased upon the earth, and all flesh corrupted its way; man and cattle and beasts and birds and everything which walks upon the earth. And they all corrupted their way and their ordinances, and they began to eat one another” (cf. 11Q12 7; Sib. Or. 1.77–78, 154–56). The author of Jubilees 5, which shows extensive reliance on the Book of Watchers (in particular 1 Enoch 10–11), presumably knew the Enochic motif of the giants’ horrific acts of consumption and transferred it to animal life in general to legitimate the introduction of the flood.35 Familiarity with the cannibalistic giants of the Watchers story is evident in Jub 7:22, in which the Watchers beget sons who eat one another.36 In Jubilees the giants’ propensity towards violence is a factor in how archangels punish the giants for their crimes, as in the Book of Watchers. One of the archangels (probably Gabriel; cf. 1 En 10:9) sends his sword against the giants.37 They are not destroyed, however, by being slain by the angel. Rather they kill one another and fall upon the sword (Jub 5:9). Reminiscent of the revelation of weapon-making in 1 En 8:1, the introduction of the sword among the giants foments their own violent tendencies. They proceed to destroy one another. The dangerous appetites of the giants also play a role in the allegorical formulation of the Watchers myth in the Animal Apocalypse. The giants are reconfigured as elephants, camels and asses (1 En 86:4; cf. 89:6).38 In the Animal The problem with this interpretation, as Puech, DJD 31, 56, recognizes, is that in the giants tradition pyromania is not among the crimes they commit. Puech transcribes y©rxa. This makes sense. It is not clear that rampant burning would cause damage to the “great fish” or the birds. As mentioned above with regard to 1 Enoch 7, the giants consume creatures in all categories of life on earth – animals that fly, swim, walk and creep. It is possible to understand 4Q531 2+3 in a similar way. The reliance of the fragment on Genesis 1 sharpens the perspective that the giants threatened the entire natural order and thus creation itself. J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); J. T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, Primeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1–11 in the Book of Jubilees (JSJSup 66; Leiden: Brill, 2000); idem, “The Interpretation of Genesis 6:1–12 in Jubilees 5:1–19,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees (eds. M. Albani, J. Frey and A. Lange; TSAJ 65; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [P. Siebeck], 1997), 59–75. So also Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 109 (see also 115–16). The theme of antediluvian cannibalism in Jubilees suggests that the spread of evil constitutes a disruption of the vegetarianism that characterized life in Eden (cf. 3:16). This trope is here connected to the crimes of humans. They are portrayed not as victims of the giants but rather as accomplices who commit the same deeds as the giants. After describing the threefold division of the giants (discussed above), each generation of which kills the next, it states that men began to kill their neighbors. See VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 40. For further treatment of the different accounts of primordial history in Jubilees 5 and 7, see Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 145–54. See the discussion of 1 En. 88:2 below. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 240, suggested (as did Charles before him), that each of the three kinds of animals corresponds to one of these three generations of giants described in GSync 7:2 and Jub 7:22 (see above). The elephants (aylyp), for example, correspond to the Nephilim (aylypn). (Note the “kings, mighty and the exalted” in 1 En 67:8 whose flesh is destroyed.) 34 35 36 37 38 28 Matthew Goff Apocalypse the crime of the giants is not, ironically, that they consume the animals of the earth.39 In a Freudian twist on the consumption trope, the text envisions a violent scene in which the giants fight with and eventually eat their fathers the Watchers, who are imagined as bulls once they descend to earth: “And all the bulls feared them [the elephants, camels and asses] and were terrified before them, and they began to bite with their teeth and devour and gore with their horns. And they began to devour those bulls, and look, all the sons of the earth began to tremble and quake before them, and to flee” (1 En 86:5–6). The motif of the fear of the angels towards their own children is not in Watchers.40 Tiller understands the goring as carried out by the Watchers against the giants.41 The violence is perpetrated by animals using their horns, he argues, and none of the three “giant” kinds of animals have horns, whereas bulls do. But in the passage the bulls are devoured.42 This suggests that they are the victims, not the agents, of the goring. Moreover, the phrase “with their horns” (Eth. ba’aqrentihomu) in 1 En 86:5 does not necessarily denote the horns of bulls (in which case the image would signify the Watchers). “Horn” in Ethiopic (qarn) is the word used for elephant tusks.43 Contra Tiller, it is plausible to understand 1 En 86:5–6 as describing the actions of the animals that represent the giants, committed against the Watchers. The camels and asses bite the bulls with their teeth and the elephants gore the bulls with their tusks (“horns”). Then the animals “began to gore one another and devour one another” (1 En 87:1). This corresponds to 1 En 7:5 – the giants consume each other. They terrify the entire earth (86:6) but in terms of what they eat they stick to fare with a heavenly origin – the Watchers and themselves. The Animal Apocalypse recounts an archangel giving a sword to the giants, with which they destroy one another: “And one of these [archangels] drew a sword and gave it to those elephants and camels and asses. And they began to strike one another, and the whole earth quaked because of them” (88:2). The animals’ use of the sword strains the allegory of the text, suggesting that this is an image that was part of the tradition received and adapted by the author of the Animal Apocalypse, rather than an innovation on his part. This is also Milik may be right, but certainty is difficult to achieve because it remains an unsolved problem as to why GSync 1 En 7:2 makes this threefold distinction in the first place, as discussed above. See also P. A. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch (SBLEJL 4; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 242–43; Bryan, Cosmos, Chaos and the Kosher Mentality, 81–97; R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2002 [orig. pub., 1893]), 229. The version of the Watchers story in the Animal Apocalypse also shows no interest in the theme of illicit revelation of secrets by the Watchers to their wives. See Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse, 86–87. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 374. Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse, 241. Bryan, Cosmos, Chaos and the Kosher Mentality, 172. This makes it difficult to sustain the viewpoint in Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse, 241, that “an elephant’s tusks are not really horns.” The Ethiopic for “ivory” and “elephant tusk” is qarna nage (literally, “the horn of the elephant”). See W. Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge‘ez (Classical Ethiopic) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 442. 39 40 41 42 43 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 29 indicated by Jub 5:9, which, as mentioned above, describes the reception of an angelic sword by the giants (cf. 4Q531 7 5).44 The animals of the world perish in the flood (89:6) rather than because of the activities of the giants.45 The reformulation of the theme of the giants’ consumption in the Animal Apocalypse presents the crimes of the giants primarily as a supernatural issue, in that the harm they inflict is against the Watchers and each other. Their damage perpetrated against creatures of the earth is minimized. The gargantuan appetite of the giants is most clearly evident in the GPan text of Watchers but is attested more broadly in other Early Jewish writings that recount the Watchers story. Despite the different ways they present this motif, the Animal Apocalypse and the Book of Giants connect the giants’ rampages on the earth to their insatiable appetite. The Book of Jubilees shows familiarity with the trope that the giants caused destruction by eating but, in its reformulation of primordial history, associates cannibalism with antediluvian creatures in general rather than just the giants. Blood, Xpn and the Retribution against the Giants The conception of blood in priestly law and the flood story is important for understanding the crimes of the giants in the Book of the Watchers and other Enochic texts. The consumption of blood is prohibited in Genesis 9. The universal importance of the ban on blood consumption is highlighted by its inclusion in the covenant given to Noah. It is, literally, the first law promulgated in the Hebrew Bible.46 There is also a ban against the consumption of blood in Leviticus 17.47 In both of these texts (and in Deuteronomy 12) the rationale for not ingesting the blood is its association with the “life” or Xpn of a living being. Gen 9:4, for example, reads: “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (wlkat al wmd wXpnb rXb $a). Lev 17:11 asserts: “the life of the flesh is 44 To explain why an angel gives the giants a sword with which they destroy each other in both Jubilees and the Animal Apocalypse, a key text, it seems, is 1 En. 10:9. According to this text, as discussed above, Gabriel is to foment a “war of destruction” among the giants. But 1 Enoch 10 is frustratingly vague. Basic issues such as how he does this and what kind of war it is are never explained. Jubilees and the Animal Apocalypse appear to appropriate the story now preserved in this chapter of 1 Enoch. In 1 Enoch 10, however, no archangel gives the giants a sword. I suggest that these two texts attest a tradition that developed to provide answers to questions left unanswered in 1 Enoch 10 about the war. The sword in Jub. 5:9 problematizes the opinion of Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse, 254, that “the sword is original” to the Animal Apocalypse. Tiller, ibid., 264. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 705. Cf. Lev 3:17; 7:26–27; Deut 12:16, 23–25. See D. Biale, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 9–43. Consult also J. Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); H. K. Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993). 45 46 47 30 Matthew Goff in the blood” (awh ~db rXbh Xpn; cf. Deut 12:23). In Genesis this prohibition is associated with retribution for murder, an unlawful spilling of human blood. The one who sheds human blood (~dah ~d $pX) will have his own blood shed because people were created in the image of God (Gen 9:6). That element of the human being that is similar to God (“in his image”) is that which demands retribution when the person is unjustly killed – the shedding of his blood and subsequent release of his Xpn.48 A similar mindset is at work in Lev 17:11, which, as Milgrom has argued, depicts killing for food “as a capital, nonexpiable crime” with God conceding that it is allowable if the life (Xpn) in the animal’s blood is drained upon the altar, a ransom for the charge of murder.49 Animal flesh may be consumed once the blood has been drained, the “life” of the creature having been returned to its source, God.50 Blood, so understood, has a mythological power or force – it contains divine potency and its shedding constitutes a transgression not just against the victim but against God, who endowed him with life by giving him a Xpn.51 This attitude towards blood is evident elsewhere in the primeval history of Genesis. When God confronts Cain about the murder of his brother he points to the blood of Abel, “crying out to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10). The subsequent curse of Cain comes “from the ground” which has received the blood of his brother.52 The text does not state so directly, but it seems that the Xpn of Abel is exposed in the blood on the ground, crying out for justice. 48 49 50 51 52 The connection between the creation of humankind and their endowment with a Xpn is evident in Gen 2:7. When God blows into the dust, he makes the first human a “living being” – a hyx Xpn (cf. 9:10). J. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22 (AB 3A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 1477–78. He understands Leviticus 17 (commonly ascribed to H), and its stipulation that the blood is to be drained on the altar, as an innovation and reformulation of the position of P on the subject, as exemplified by Genesis 9. M. Douglas aptly attributes the presentation of blood in the Hebrew Bible to a “feudal” conception of the relationship between God and his creation – he ‘owns’ the world and its contents, and thus people are not allowed to harm each other or other creatures, being God’s property. See her Leviticus as Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 136. Consult also Biale, Blood and Belief, 17–28; B. J. Schwartz, “The Prohibitions Concerning the ‘Eating’ of Blood in Leviticus 17,” in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (eds. G. A. Anderson and S. M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 34–66; J. Milgrom, “A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11,” JBL 90 (1971): 149–56. See also V. Noam, “Corpse-Blood Impurity: A Lost Biblical Reading?” JBL 128 (2009): 243–51. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1470. It is possible that the prohibition against the consumption of blood developed because this act played a role in divination. Divination and the consumption of blood are banned together in Lev 19:26 (cf. 1 Sam 14:31–35). See Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1490–93; Biale, Blood and Belief, 21–23; Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits, 148. Consult also P. T. Reis, “Eating the Blood: Saul and the Witch of Endor,” JSOT 73 (1997): 3–23. Gen 4:11 depicts the spilling of Abel’s blood on the earth as if the earth is ‘eating’ the blood. This key part of this verse can be translated: “the ground, which opened its mouth to take the blood of your brother.” See Biale, Blood and Belief, 14. Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 31 Early Jewish literature likewise attests a “dread of blood” – a respect and fear for its potency as containing the life given by God.53 This is evident, for example, in the Temple Scroll’s retelling of Deuteronomy 12. This chapter allows one to pour out the blood of a slaughtered animal on the ground like water when the killing occurs far from the sanctioned altar of God. In the Temple Scroll’s rendering of this text, when one pours out the blood it is to be covered (11QT 53:5–6) – an addition that harmonizes Deuteronomy 12 with Leviticus 17, according to which one must cover the blood (v. 13; cf. Deut 12:24, 27).54 The intent is not simply to prevent contact with blood. The Xpn in the blood would cry out for atonement.55 This awkward problem is solved by covering the blood, an act that smothers the complaint of the Xpn. Jubilees also highlights the theme of blood pollution in its retelling of Genesis along the lines of Leviticus 17.56 Jubilees expands the universality of the prohibition against drinking blood, even though the giants themselves are never depicted as drinking any. In an embellishment of the Genesis story, after God gives Noah and his sons commandments they swear not to eat blood.57 There is also an aside to Moses explaining that this story in the Torah was written so that he could enjoin the children of Israel not to eat the blood of animals (6:10–14; cf. l. 7; 1QapGen 11:17). In Noah’s death-bed testament, he urges his sons to neither shed nor ingest blood (7:27–33). The mindset of the book towards blood is well expressed in Abraham’s death-bed statements to Isaac: “Be careful, my son, be extremely careful of blood. Cover it in the earth” (21:17; cf. 7:31). The Aramaic Levi Document similarly stresses that one should cover the spilled blood of an animal before it is consumed so that one does not eat “in the presence of blood” (10:9).58 Presumably because of the flood story, this commandment is legitimated by an appeal to a “book of Noah concerning the blood” (l. 10).59 This “dread of blood” evident in Early Jewish literature, shaped by the view that the Xpn resides in the blood, operates in Watchers, even though the word 53 54 55 56 57 This apt phrase is from C. Werman, “The Rules of Consuming and Covering the Blood in Priestly and Rabbinic Law,” RevQ 16 (1995): 621–36 (esp. 635). Werman, “The Rules of Consuming and Covering the Blood,” 635. See also Isa 26:21; Ezek 24:7. For rabbinic literature on the covering of blood (e. g., m. Hul. 6:1), consult ibid., 623–  35; Biale, Blood and Belief, 21. Werman, “The Rules of Consuming and Covering the Blood,” 628. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1503. VanderKam; The Book of Jubilees, 40; van Ruiten, Primeval History Interpreted, 219–46. Note also D. M. Peters, Noah Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 73–93; Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 183; W. K. Gilders, “Blood and Covenant: Interpretative Elaboration on Genesis 9:4–6 in the Book of Jubilees,” JSP 15 (2006): 83–118; idem, “Where Did Noah Place the Blood? A Textual Note on Jubilees 7:4,” JBL 124 (2005): 745–49. J. C. Greenfield, M. E. Stone, and E. Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document (SVTP 19; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 90–91, 180. See also Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1483. There is an extensive literature on a putative Book of Noah, which is to some degree attested in extant ancient compositions. See, for example, M. E. Stone, “The Book(s) Attributed to Noah,” DSD 13 (2006): 4–23. 58 59 32 Matthew Goff is never explicit in the text.60 It is reasonable to understand the giants drinking blood as an exegetical expansion of Genesis. Watchers provides an answer as to why Genesis 9 bans the consumption of blood – it is one of the heinous crimes that the giants committed before the flood.61 Since Watchers assumes that ingesting blood is a deplorable act, this presumably reflects some understanding of the treatment of blood in biblical law. To comprehend the perspective in Watchers it is important to understand the blood as the seat of the Xpn. Drinking it is not simply a social taboo nor is its ingestion just a heinous act that accompanies murder. It is a violation of the natural order established by God and thus constitutes a challenge against his dominion.62 Blood plays an important role in God’s retribution against the giants. According to GPan, after the transgressions of the Watchers’ children in 1 En 7:3– 5, v. 6 states: “then the earth brought an accusation against the lawless ones.”63 The angels learn of the injustice by hearing the cry of humans as they are murdered (8:4).64 It is not explicit in the text, but it can be understood as stating that the Xpn in the spilled blood of the murdered victims is crying out.65 This would explain why the earth brings the accusation in 1 En 7:6 – it has been defiled by the Xpn in the blood, not unlike Genesis 4 (cf. 1 En 10:20).66 It is possible that it is not the earth per se making the accusation but rather the ‘souls’ of the victims that have been spilled on the land. In Watchers there is a connection between the cries of the victims and the spilled blood. The Aramaic of 9:1 does not emphasize that the angels hear the cry (8:4) but rather that they look down from heaven and see the blood (4QEna 1 iv 6–7). They discern that “much blood [wa]s spil[led upon [the] ear]th” and that “all [the earth] was filled with the wi[ckedness and] violence (hsmx) that was [comm]itted (lit. “sinned”) against it” (ll. 7–8).67 The violence (smx) that fills the earth in Genesis 6 is understood 60 The word Xpn is reconstructed several times in the Aramaic texts of Watchers (e. g., 4QEna 1 iv 11; 4QEnc 1 vi 1) but is not once unambiguously attested (see below the discussion of 4QEnb 1 iii 11). In the Book of Giants the term Xpn is used in reference to the giants (4Q530 2 ii 1, 2). The composition never explicitly attests the trope that the Xpn is in the blood. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 186. The Damascus Document associates the drinking of blood with turning away from God. The text recounts the wickedness of the Israelites in Egypt, claiming that they drank blood and committed other heinous acts (3:6). This statement is preserved in a somewhat different form in 4QEnb 1 ii 25. See Milik, The Books of Enoch, 166; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 183. GPan reads: τῶν οὖν ἀνϑρώπων ἀπολλυμένων ἡ βο[ὴ] εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἀνέβη. Note 4QEnb 1 iii 6: “And the cry [went up before] he[aven]” (cf. 4QEna 1 iv 5–6). The word, according to Milik, The Books of Enoch, 171, occurs in 4QEnb 1 iii 11 (1 En 9:3), in which it refers to the Xpn of the victims making an accusation against the giants. It is reasonable to posit that the term is in this line on semantic grounds but the poor physical condition of the line prevents conclusive readings. Milik transcribes ‫. ֯נפ ש]ת‬ ֯ ֯ Note 1 En 22:5–7, in which the spirit of the slain Abel complains against Cain. See Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 305. GPan 9:1 emphasizes that the angels look down upon the earth, as does GSync, which also stresses that the angels hear the cry. See Bhayro, The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative, 78; Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.84. 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 33 not simply as the crimes of the giants (vv. 11, 13; cf. 1 En 93:4) but also as the defiled, blood-stained condition of the earth as a result of their conduct.68 The motif of the earth bringing an accusation is also in the Book of Giants. This is most clearly attested in 4Q203 8: “through your fornication on the earth and it has [risen up ag]ainst y]ou … raising an accusation against you [and ag]ainst the activity of your sons” (ll. 9–10). The feminine form of the participle hlbq in line 10 suggests that its subject is “earth,” as Stuckenbruck has argued.69 4Q203 8 purports to be a copy of a proclamation written by Enoch to the giants that recounts their judgment (ll. 3–4). The text directly addresses the Watchers. Their sons the giants are invoked as well. The particular charges against the giants are not specified, but obvious references address their violent crimes on the earth. 4Q530 1 4 reads “the souls of those kil]led are complaining against their murderers and crying out …” (cf. 4Q531 22 8). In the Book of Giants the cry of the earth, and the accusation that is made, cannot be separated from the complaints of the murdered humans. The victims, presumably in the form of their “souls” (Xpn) that reside in the spilled blood, plead for retribution. Their cry comes from the earth in 4Q203 8. The cry of the earth should probably be understood as that of the souls lying on the ground in the blood, in this text and 1 En 7:6 (and Genesis 4 as well).70 Bloodshed is a major element of the crimes of the giants. Not surprisingly, the shed blood plays an important role in how the angels learn of their rampages on earth and their decision to stop them. 68 69 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 186; Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits, 144; Kvanvig, “The Watcher Story and Genesis,” 176. Stuckenbruck, DJD 36, 33. This may also be the case with the perfect twh (“it/she was”) in line 9, which is read by Stuckenbruck and others (Beyer, ATTM, 1.261; Reeves, Jewish Lore, 59). This transcription may be correct but I have less confidence than Stuckenbruck that the final tav can be read. A hole in the manuscript makes it very hard to discern any trace of the bottom leftward hook that is characteristic of this letter. This is, presumably, why Milik, The Books of Enoch, 315, reads hwh (“it/he was”). It is plausible on semantic grounds to read ֯ twh with Stuckenbruck and thus to reconstruct line 9 as stating that the earth was rising up against you (or something else to that effect). But I do not see enough physical evidence to confirm this reading. Also note that the term “earth” occurs a great deal in the Book of Giants, although often in highly fragmentary contexts (e. g., 1Q23 9+14+15 3; 1Q23 19 1; 1Q23 25 5; 1Q24 2 2; 4Q533 4 1). The similarities regarding blood in 1 Enoch 7 and Genesis 4 problematize the view of Kvanvig, “The Watcher Story and Genesis,” 179, that “all the correspondences between Enoch and Genesis can be explained on the basis of the P source,” if one follows the traditional view that the Cain and Abel story should be assigned to the Yahwist source. Paul Hanson regards 1 En. 8:4 as paraphrasing Gen 4:10. See his “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6–11,” JBL 96 (1977): 195–233 (esp. 200); cf. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 186–87. The idea that the blood defiles the earth is also important in the Book of Jubilees. Like in Genesis, in Jubilees God responds to the crimes of the giants (and the humans) after seeing that the earth was corrupt (5:3). People shed blood, a detail not in Genesis 6 itself, and this fills the earth with injustice (7:23). Drawing on Genesis 9, Jubilees affirms that when blood has been poured on the land only the spilling of the murderer’s blood upon the earth will restore it (7:33). See van Ruiten, Primeval History Interpreted, 299; Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 146–54. 70 34 Death Eating Life Matthew Goff The giants are not just murderers – they eat people and drink their blood. One reason for this is exegetical, as mentioned above. Positing such gruesome antediluvian crimes explains why the flood narrative ends with prohibitions against murder and the consumption of blood. This is a valid view but should not be understood as the only reason for the inclusion of this motif in the Book of Watchers or the Book of Giants. Neither text, in contrast to Jubilees, includes a retelling of the prohibition regarding blood that is given to Noah. Also, appealing to Genesis itself does not explain the motif of anthropophagy. This trope is not in the biblical flood story.71 One must look beyond Genesis to explain the trope of cannibalism in Watchers and other Enochic texts. The literary combination of murder and consumption of human beings can be understood as an elaboration of an older tradition, attested in the Bible and the ancient Near East, of describing violence and death with language of eating. There is a tradition in the ancient Near East of depicting death as a force that ‘eats’ life. Môtu is the Canaanite god of death and the netherworld.72 In the Ugaritic Ba‘lu Cycle the regular extinguishment of life on earth is attributed to him.73 This theme is expressed by his insatiable appetite. He wants to eat virtually everything that is alive: My throat is the throat of the lion in the wasteland, and the gullet of the ‘snorter’ in the sea; And it craves the pool (as do) the wild bulls, (craves) springs as (do) the herds of deer; And indeed, indeed, my throat consumes heaps (of things), yes indeed, I eat by double handfuls; And my seven portions are in a bowl, and they mix (into my) cup a (whole) river (CTA 5 i 9).74 71 However, if one understands the blood as containing the Xpn of a person, eating the blood could in a sense be understood as a form of anthropophagy. Note Jub 7:27–28, which elides the shedding of blood and the consumption of blood (cf. 6:7–8). Consult van Ruiten, Primeval History Interpreted, 300–01; Werman, “The Rules of Consuming and Covering the Blood,” 622; Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 183. S. U. Gulde, Der Tod als Herrscher in Ugarit und Israel (FAT 2.22; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, “mt ‘Môt, Tod’ und mt ‘Krieger, Held’ im ugaritischen,” UF 22 (1990): 57–65; J.-L. Cunchillos, “Le dieu Mut, Guerrier de El,” Syria 62 (1985): 205– 18; U. Cassuto, “Baal and Mot in the Ugaritic Texts,” IEJ 12 (1962): 77–86. This is in contrast to Ba‘lu, who is associated with the rain and the fertility of the earth. See M. S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume 1: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1–1.2 (VTSup 55; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 19; B. Margalit, A Matter of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’: A Study of the Baal-Mot Epic (CTA 4–5–6) (AOAT 206; NeukirchenVluyn and Kevelaer: Neukirchener Verlag and Verlag Butzon & Berker, 1980), 102. This translation is from W. W. Hallo and K. L. Younger, Jr., eds., The Context of Scripture: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1.265. For other treatments of the Watchers story in relation to older literature of the ancient Near East, 72 73 74 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 35 This text is from a passage in which Môtu tauntingly asks Ba‘lu to invite him to a banquet. The metaphor of consumption also describes Ba‘lu’s descent into the netherworld: “(So) you must (for your part) descend into the throat of Môtu, son of ’Ilu, into the watery depths of the beloved warrior of ’Ilu.”75 Môtu also roams the earth, looking for humans to devour.76 The presentation of death as gluttonously devouring life appears in the Hebrew Bible as well. Hab 2:5 describes wealthy and arrogant people, for example, by asserting: “They open their throats wide as Sheol; like Death they never have enough.”77 Psalm 73 describes the violence of the wicked by depicting them, like Môtu, as devouring the entire cosmos: “They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth” (v. 9). Numbers 16, which recounts the earth swallowing up the rebels of Korah in the wilderness, can be understood as a variation on this theme of death consuming life. There is also extensive biblical imagery that depicts military violence as a form of eating. Killing people with swords is commonly referred to in the Bible (more than 70 times) as slaying “with the edge of the sword” or literally “with the mouth of the sword” (brx ypl).78 While this root meaning of the preposition might not necessarily have been alive in the mind of Early Jewish authors, they had ample biblical tradition to draw from that construes violence with ‘mouth’ terminology and metaphors of eating. A double-edged sword is described as having “two mouths” (e. g., Judg 3:16).79 The image of the ‘mouthed’ sword appears in Prov 5:4. This is explained by Michael Fox, who writes: “The blade of the sword is thought of as a ‘mouth’ that ‘eats’ its victims.”80 The Hebrew Bible also contains metaphors that depict military viosee, inter alia, Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven,” 202–18; H. S. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man (WMANT 61; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988); J. C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS 16; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984). CTA 5 ii includes “[He puts (one) lip to the] earth, (the other) lip to the heavens … (his) tongue to the stars. Ba‘lu will enter his insides, (will go down) his mouth like a roasted olive.” See S. B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 143; Gulde, Der Tod als Herrscher, 115–17; Hallo and Younger, The Context of Scripture, 1.266. “I went searching every mountain to the heart of the earth, every hill to the heart of the fields. There were no humans for me to swallow, no hordes of the earth to swallow” (CTA 6 ii); “Now I eat [men], I finish off the hordes [of the earth]” (CTA 6 v). Gulde, Der Tod als Herrscher, 130–33. The expression is often used with the verb twkhl (“to smite”). E. g., Josh 8:24; 19:47; Judg 1:8. J. Berman, “The ‘Sword of Mouths’ (Jud. III. 16; Ps. CXLIX 6; Prov. V 4): A Metaphor and Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” VT 52 (2002): 291–303. M. V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9 (AB 18A; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 192. See also Berman, “The ‘Sword of Mouths,’” 293, 300. For another view consult Meek, who argued that the “mouth” refers to carvings (of a lion head) that have been found on sword hilts from Israel and elsewhere in the ancient Near East. Note also Prov 30:14: “there are those whose teeth are swords, whose teeth are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth.” See T. J. Meek, “Archaeology and a Point in Hebrew Syntax,” BASOR 122 (1951): 31–33; M. V. Fox, Proverbs 10–31 (AB 18B; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 509–10. 75 76 77 78 79 80 36 Matthew Goff lence as a form of consumption. A clear example is in Daniel 7. The second beast of this chapter is a ferocious bear with large teeth who is told (by God, presumably): “Arise, devour many bodies” (7:5). As is well-known, this was not intended to be understood literally but rather as a symbolic depiction of the second kingdom in the book’s four kingdom sequence. The bear is usually interpreted as a reference to the Median kingdom, which is urged to conquer Babylon.81 Its consumption of humans is a metaphor for the military violence carried out by this kingdom. The violence and power of the fourth beast is also conveyed by eating: “It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces and stamping what was left with its feet” (v. 7). The beast eats with its powerful iron teeth.82 Zechariah 9 also contains a good example of violence described as consumption. In this text God is the divine warrior who marches into battle. He sounds the trumpet and appears against the assembled Gentile enemies (vv. 13–14). While he is on the battlefield, his people “shall devour and tread down the slingers; they shall drink their blood like wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar” (v. 15).83 In Daniel and Zechariah images of eating flesh and drinking blood convey the totality of destruction that is inflicted by an army.84 Texts such as Daniel 7 and Zechariah 9 place the consumption of the giants in Watchers and the Book of Giants in a broader literary context. The ferocious consumption in these chapters is to be understood as a metaphor, as mentioned above, that denotes military violence. In Watchers and the Book of Giants the violence of the giants is not explicitly intended to signify the violence of an actual army, although it could be understood in this way.85 The cannibalism and blood drinking were intended to be interpreted in a much more literal way – the giants’ crimes are not described as if they were eating bodies and drinking blood. Rather that is the form their violence takes. These narratives contain stories about what ‘actually’ happened in the primordial period. The Enochic depiction of the giants as ravenous murderers and cannibals can be reasonably understood as an intensification of a trope attested in ancient Israel of construing violence as a form of eating. This embellishment of an older 81 82 83 J. J. Collins, Daniel (Hermenia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 295. This can be reasonably understood as a reference to the violence of the Seleucid kingdom, expressed to no small degree with swords. The book of Revelation construes Roman violence against Christians as the whore of Babylon drinking blood (17:2–6; cf. 16:6). See also Isa 9:19; Ezek 33:25–26; 39:17–20; Zech 11:16; 12:6; Jud 6:4. See further F. King, “Travesty or Taboo? ‘Drinking Blood’ and Revelation 17:2–6,” Neot 38 (2004): 303–25. Note the later Early Jewish tradition that the ultimate defeat of evil in the final judgment involves the consumption of Leviathan and Behemoth by the righteous (1 En 60:7–9, 24; 2 Bar 29:4; 4 Ezra 6:49–52). K. W. Whitney refers to this as the “Combat-Banquet” tradition. See his Two Strange Beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth in Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Judaism (HSM 63; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 31–58. So Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 170; idem, “Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6–11,” JBL 96 (1977): 383–405 (esp. 391). Note also J. J. Collins, “The Apocalyptic Technique: Setting and Function in the Book of Watchers,” CBQ 44 (1982): 91–111 (esp. 98). 84 85 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 37 literary trope produces a gruesome tale of cannibalism that gives the story of the giants more appeal as a narrative. The biblical tradition may itself derive from older West Semitic conceptions of imagining death as insatiably hungry to consume life. The destructive consumption of the giants can be considered an example of the recrudescence of ancient Near Eastern tradition in Early Jewish literature.86 There is another reason, I would suggest, that the Enochic giants eat flesh and drink blood. As discussed above, the insatiability of their appetites drives their violence and destructiveness. I have also argued that the trope in the biblical flood story and priestly law that blood should not be consumed because it is the seat of life (Xpn) is important in both Watchers and the Book of Giants, even though neither of these texts states that the Xpn resides in the blood. The meaning of Xpn as “life” or “soul” is related to its signification of “throat” or “appetite.”87 Prov 27:7 reads, for example, “The sated appetite (h[bX Xpn) spurns honey, but to a ravenous appetite (hb[r Xpn) even the bitter is sweet.”88 This double use of the term as the ‘life’ that resides in the blood and as appetite is never explicit in Watchers or the Book of the Giants. Yet the characterization of the giants as ravenous for blood can be easily understood as additional evidence of the literary creativity of the author of 1 Enoch 7. At some point in the transmission of the Book of the Watchers, an author exploited and developed, it seems, the linguistic connection between Xpn as the life of a person that resides in the blood and Xpn as appetite. The Appetite of the Giants and their Recompense The punishment of the giants fits the crime. As is well known, they physically die but continue to exist as spirits. They remain on the earth as “evil spirits” (πνεύματα πονηρά) which came forth from their bodies, presumably after they have been killed.89 The GPan of 1 En 15:9 explains that these spirits arise because “from above (ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνωτέρων) they were created; from the holy Watchers was the origin of their creation and the origin of [their] foundation.” For ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνωτέρων, GSync reads ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνϑρώπων. Following the latter variant the verse explains the spirits of the giants as a product of their human and angelic 86 87 88 89 F. M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 343–46; J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd mans, 1998 [orig. pub., 1984]), 18–19. Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, 1472, writes “Since the throat contains both the esophagus and the trachea, one can readily understand that nepeš denotes both ‘appetite’ … and ‘breath, life.’” Cf. Ps 107:9; Prov 10:3; Qoh 6:2. For the meaning “throat,” see, for example, Jon 2:6; Ps 69:2. Note also Fox, Proverbs 10–31, 509–10. GPan 1 En 15:8, unlike the Ethiopic, also states that they are “powerful spirits” (πνεύματα ἰσχυρά; cf. GSync 16:1). See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 1.59. 38 Matthew Goff parents. This reading is favored by Nickelsburg.90 But the former is supported by the Ethiopic (’em-mal‘elt) and expresses more clearly the viewpoint that Nickelsburg and others have articulated – the “spirit” of the giants comprises the part of their being that originates from their angelic fathers.91 Their flesh was a consequence of their fathers’ sleeping with human women. Their physical bodies are destroyed, but their angelic “spirit” remains.92 The Book of Giants does not provide a full narrative on this issue but also attests the idea that the giants will perish physically but remain in spiritual form. 4Q531 19 2–4 reads, for example, “many [dee]ds of violence on the dry land … n[ot] bones are we and not flesh … and we shall be wiped out from our form.”93 If the spirits of the giants represent the non-corporeal part of their being, acquired from their angelic fathers, their spirit should not be understood as Xpn, since this term generally signifies the ‘spirit’ or lifeforce of a human being. It seems rather that the spirits of the giants would have been denoted by xwr, signifying that these spirits are in continuity with their heavenly fathers rather than their earthly mothers. The word xwr, however, is never clearly attested with this usage in the extant Aramaic Enoch texts (or the Book of Giants).94 That an early version of Watchers employed the term in this way is suggested by 4QSongs of the Sage, which consistently refers to “the spirits of the bastards” (twxwr ~yrzmm) to describe the spirits of the giants (e. g., 4Q510 1 5; 4Q511 35 7).95 90 91 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 267–68. Ibid., 272; Wright, The Origin of the Evil Spirits, 154; P. S. Alexander, “The Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (2 vols.; eds. P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2.331–53 (esp. 339). Consult also M. Hutter, “Demons and Benevolent Spirits in the Ancient Near East: A Phenomenological Overview,” in Angels: The Concept of Celestial Beings – Origins, Development and Reception (DCLY 2007; eds. F. V. Reiterer, T. Nicklas and K. Schöpflin; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 21–34; J. Z. Smith, “Towards Interpreting Demonic Powers in Hellenistic and Roman Antiquity,” ANRW 2.16.1 (1978): 425–39; Charles, The Ethiopic Version, 42. 1 En 10:15 (4QEnc 1 v 2–3) preserves a viewpoint regarding the spirits of the giants that is different from that of chapter 15. Whereas 1 Enoch 15 depicts the giants as continuing to live on the earth in spirit form, in 10:15 the archangel Michael is commissioned to “destroy all the spirits of the half-breeds and the sons of the Watchers.” Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 225, suggests that this verse is from an older stage of the text. 1 En 10:15 is also somewhat at odds with vv. 9–10, in which, as part of Gabriel’s commission, the giants (not the spirits of the giants) are to be destroyed and not receive eternal life. “Half-breed” is a pejorative term for the giants that reflects their mixed heavenly and worldly origins. The Greek in 10:15 for this term is κιβδήλων (cf. 9:9 [GSync]). Note also μαζηρέους in 10:9, which derives from !yrzmm, a word not in any extant text of the Aramaic Enoch manuscripts. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants, 159–60. xwr is reasonably reconstructed in reference to the giants in 4QEnc 1 v 2 (1 En 10:15) and 4QEnc 1 vii 28 (15:11; cf. 4QEne 1 xxii 3–4). G. Ibba, “The Evil Spirits in Jubilees and the Spirit of the Bastards in 4Q510 with Some Remarks on other Qumran Manuscripts,” Hen 31 (2009): 111–16. The word that denotes the spirits of the giants in both GPan and GSync is πνεύμα. This term commonly renders xwr (e. g., Gen 6:3). The only instance in ancient Jewish literature of Xpn being translated with πνεύμα of which I am aware is Sir 38:23. Xpn is usually translated in Greek with ψυχή, not unlike Xpn. It is a complicated subject, but the word ψυχή often signifies that part of a human be- 92 93 94 95 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 39 As Wright and others have stressed, Watchers presumes the existence of evil spirits who harm humankind and 1 Enoch 15 provides an etiology of their origins.96 The activities of the spirits of the giants resemble the evil deeds they committed in physical form. They, for example, commit iniquities (ἀδικοῦντα), destroy (ἀφανίζοντα), and wrestle (συνπαλαίοντα).97 There is, however, one key difference between their actions as spirits and the crimes they committed before their bodies were destroyed. They cannot eat: “They eat nothing but rather fast and are thirsty” (μηδὲν ἐσϑίοντα ἀλλ’ ἀσιτοῦντα καὶ διψῶντα) (15:11). The opinion that divine spirits cannot eat is attested in Early Judaism.98 This is evident from the Book of Tobit. The angel Raphael explains that when in the guise of a human being (Azariah), he appeared to be eating and drinking but actually did not.99 In a similar way, in the Testament of Abraham, God ing that denotes his vitality and animation, in a sense restricted to creaturely existence, whereas πνεύμα denotes affinity with the heavenly realm. I engage this topic further in “Genesis 1–3 and Conceptions of Humankind in 4QInstruction, Philo and Paul,” in Early Christian Literature and Intertextuality (eds. C. Evans and H. D. Zacharias; London: T &T Clark, 2009), 114–25. Also note that the Ethiopic uses the terms nafs and manfas, cognate with the Hebrew Xpn, to denote the “spirits” of the giants. The semantic range of this root in Ethiopic is very broad. The root can signify, for example, breath, soul, wind, the body as a whole or the penis. Use of this root does not necessarily mean that the nature of the “spirit” of the giants in the Ethiopic should be equated with Xpn. See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.101; Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge‘ez, 389. The emphasis of this text on explaining the existence of malevolent powers in this world indicates that the theme of evil in Watchers should not only be understood in terms of its origins in the primordial period. Alexander, “The Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 338, has argued that 1 En 15:11–16:1 “offers one of the most remarkable aetiologies of demons in the history of demonology.” He argues that the passage attests “a significant rationalization of the demonic world” by organizing different terminology for various demons (those who destroy, those who wrestle, etc.) into a single taxonomic category – they are all the spirits of the offspring of the Watchers (cf. T. Sol. 5:3). Consult also L. T. Stuckenbruck, “Giant Mythology and Demonology: From the Ancient Near East to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Die Dämonen – Demons: Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt – The Demonology of Israelite-Jewish and Early Christian Literature in Context of their Environment (eds. A. Lange et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 313–38; and in the same volume, J. C. VanderKam, “The Demons in the Book of Jubilees,” 339–64; J. van Ruiten, “Angels and Demons in the Book of Jubilees,” in Angels, 585–609. These terms are in both GPan and GSync. The image of the spirits “wrestling” with humankind has been understood as a reference to illness, in particular seizures (cf. Jub 10:12–13). The reference in 1 En 15:12 to the spirits rising up against women “for they have come forth from them” can be understood as a demonological explanation of problems during childbirth. See also Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 268. Note this intriguing passage from the medieval Book of Asaph the Physician, which, Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 171, argues is reliant on Jubilees 10: “In those days [after the flood] the spirits of the bastards began to attack Noah’s children, to lead them astray and to cause them to err, to injure them and to strike them with illness and pains and with all kinds of diseases that kill and destroy human beings” (as cited from Segal, ibid., 171). K. P. Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels: A Study of the Relationship between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament (AGJU 55; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 179–95; D. Goodman, “Do Angels Eat?” JJS 37 (1986): 160–75. “Although you were watching me, I really did not eat or drink anything – but what you saw was a vision” (12:19; cf. 6:6). The version of this verse in the Vulgate states that Raphael ate 96 97 98 99 40 Matthew Goff makes it seem as if the archangel Michael eats human food when in fact he does not.100 A similar viewpoint pervades the Gospel of Luke. In the appearance story that concludes this gospel, the disciples think they see a πνεύμα (NRSV: “ghost”). To prove to them that he is not, the resurrected Jesus eats fish in front of them (24:36–43). The Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 15 takes the idea that spiritual beings do not eat physical food and turns it, fittingly, into part of the punishment allocated to the giants, whose insatiable appetites are a key factor in their crimes. The text never states that their appetite for human flesh has been removed. The spirits of the giants should be understood as hungry, although this is not stated directly in 1 En 15:11.101 The fact that they are thirsty implies that they have a desire to drink that is not being satisfied.102 This suggests not that the spirits of the giants willfully abstain from food but rather that they have an urge to eat that they cannot appease.103 Given their crimes on earth, this is an appropriate punishment. The giants’ lack of contentment as spirits is conveyed elsewhere in 1 En 15:11, I suggest, although the text is not fully clear on this point. Just before it states that they do not eat, the Greek has an enigmatic phrase – “they make races” (δρόμους ποιοῦντα). Nickelsburg does not find a clear sense in this passage, suggesting that it translates hcwrm which can mean “running” but also “oppression.”104 He speculates further that the word hcwrm of the Vorlage was itself a corruption of h[wrm (“illness”), which he then cautiously uses in his translation of 15:11. The Ethiopic does not seem to translate directly either GPan or GSync – rather it has the verb hazana, “to sadden.” Knibb thus translates  “cause sorrow,” adding that the references to running in the Greek “make no some sort of heavenly food as opposed to the kind that humans eat. Compare JosAs 16:15, in which an angel eats a honeycomb that he created himself. See C. A. Moore, Tobit (AB 40A; New York: Doubleday, 1996), 272–73; Sullivan, Wrestling With Angels, 186–87; B. Ego, “The Figure of the Angel Raphael According to his Farewell Address in Tob 12:6–20,” in Angels, 239–53 (esp. 249). Michael says: “Lord, all the heavenly spirits are incorporeal, and they neither eat nor drink. Now [Abraham] has set before me a table with abundance of all the good things that are earthly and perishable. And now, Lord what shall I do? How shall I escape his notice while I am sitting at one table with him? The Lord said ‘Go down to him, and do not be concerned about this. For when you are seated with him I shall send up on you an all-devouring spirit, and, from your hands and through your mouth, it will consume everything which is on the table” (4:9–10). See further Goodman, “Do Angels Eat?” 168–72. Since the Book of Giants states that the giants will exist as spirits, it stands to reason that in spirit form they do not eat. But this is not explicit in any extant portion of the composition. The Ethiopic states that the spirits do not thirst, whereas neither GPan nor GSync include a negation. It seems that the negation is an addition that developed in the Ethiopic textual tradition, perhaps to convey the idea that the spirits do not need to drink. See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 1.61, 2.102; Charles, The Book of Enoch, 84–85. Charles, The Ethiopic Version, 45, offers a similar understanding of 1 En 15:11, arguing that the verse is similar to an Arabic tradition that the Jinns endure intense hunger but cannot eat. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 268. 100 101 102 103 104 Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature 41 sense.”105 I tentatively suggest that δρόμους ποιοῦντα is an authentic text and should be understood as a lectio difficilior which was not reproduced in the Ethiopic because its sense was not understood. The word δρόμος does not exclusively signify athletic contests but can signify running or swift movement in general (e. g. Hdt 3:77; 9:59). Wright asserts but does not examine the opinion that 1 En 15:11 depicts the spirits of the giants as roaming and wandering.106 I agree and think that this imagery is conveyed by the phrase δρόμους ποιοῦντα.107 The expression signifies the constant movement of the spirits of the giants. Unlike the Watchers, who are bound and imprisoned in the “valleys of the earth” to await judgment (10:12), there is no suggestion in 1 Enoch 15 that the spirits of the giants are fixed to a single location. The activities they are to conduct as spirits indicate that their movement is not restricted. The idea that they roam the earth accords well with the view that they are hungry.108 They are restless spirits. Their retribution for eating humans and other creatures of the earth, it seems, is that they must remain eternally hungry. This lack of contentment helps explain their wandering and their disagreeable state, producing a willingness to disturb the affairs of humankind. In spirit form the giants can no longer consume blood. It is not emphasized in the text, but this is an important consequence of this punishment. The recompense addresses the complaint of the victims, whose blood cried out from the ground. The spirits of the giants can still trouble humankind, but they cannot spill or defile the Xpn in the blood. Above I argued that the crime of drinking blood should be understood not only as a heinous act but also a direct flouting of God’s authority, since the blood is the seat of the Xpn. The spirits of the giants are rooted in the human realm, the earth. There is no sense that they can ascend to heaven or have the ability to challenge God’s dominion. The goal of the text is not only to explain the continuing presence of malevolent divine forces in operation on the world. It is also to indicate that they no longer pose a threat to God. That the giants, in spirit 105 106 107 Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, 2.102. Charles, The Book of Enoch, 84, translates the phrase “[they] work affliction.” See also idem, The Ethiopic Version, 44; J. Barr, “AramaicGreek Notes on the Book of Enoch (II),” JJS 24 (1979): 179–92 (esp. 185–86). Wright, The Origins of Evil Spirits, 154. See also Alexander, “Demonology,” 339. Luke 11:24 attests the idea that when wicked spirits are not inhabiting a body they wander the earth restlessly: “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’” Watchers depicts the angels as moving around a great deal but in the heavenly world, whereas the spirits of the giants walk the earth. This motion of the angels is evident in the tours of the cosmos they give Enoch and perhaps based exegetically on the Hithpael of the verb in Gen 5:24, a central text for Watchers: ~yhlah ta $wnx $lhtyw (“Enoch walked to and fro with the angels”; cf. Ezek 1:13–14; Job 1:6–7). They are divine beings who are not housed in temples that have sacrificial cults. The sacrifices offered at temples were often understood in the ancient world as a form of sustenance which the gods needed. This is classically expressed in the Atrahasis epic, when after the flood the hungry deities swarm upon the sacrifice like flies. By comparison, the spirits of the giants are ‘homeless’ divine beings without a regular source of food. 108 42 Matthew Goff form, can no longer consume blood is an important way that the text conveys this point. Conclusion The spread of evil on the earth in the primordial age has been a focal point in scholarship on the Book of Watchers. In this article I have attempted to explore how ancient Enochic texts recount the crimes of the offspring of the Watchers on earth and their recompense. The evil that increases on the earth takes the form of the giants murdering and consuming creatures of the earth. Not unlike their angelic fathers, who cannot restrain their sexual desire for the women of earth, the giants cannot control their appetites for the food of the earth. Their insatiability drives their actions and has disastrous consequences for the earth and themselves. The role of their appetite in their crimes is reflected in the form of the punishment they receive. They are forced to remain on earth as spirits that cannot eat. This should be interpreted, I have suggested, as meaning that they are punished by being hungry and yet be unable to sate that hunger. The themes of consumption, as well as murder, anthropophagy and the drinking of blood, are prominent in the Book of Watchers and in other Enochic texts such as Jubilees, the Animal Apocalypse and the Book of Giants. All of these texts reformulate the Watchers myth. Despite their differences, they all prominently appropriate the themes of appetite and consumption. The monstrous appetites of the giants are critical for understanding the consequences of the Watchers’ descent and sexual activities on earth.