Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism,
andInsatiable Eating in Enochic Literature
Matthew
Goff
In different ways 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 ffects 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… twin themes of appetite and consumption are important in
otherEnochic texts that reformulate the Watchers story, including Jubilees, the
Bookof 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
In the Syncellus text the giants are divided into “three kinds”(γένα τρία; :) and are given a lead role in the
introduction of illicit revelation
to the world 21
--the giants’ appetite is the key factor motivat-ing their
destructive activities. ey begin by eating the toil of the humans.12 When
this is insucient, they eat the humans themselves.
--the extraordinary amount of food anddrink consumed by the
Canaanite king Og, who is regarded as a giant (Deut :), is de-scribed in the
late rabbinic work
Tractate Sopherim(b; Soncino edition) 26
--In a Freudian twist on the consumption trope, the text envisions
a violent scene in which the giants ght with and eventually eat theirfathers
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 ter-ried 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 thesons of the earth
began to tremble and quake before them, and to flee” ( En 86:5–6). 28
-
Tiller, A Commentary on the Animal Apocalypse ,
The
Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline ...
By James A. Waddell
what degree the stylizing of apkallu are symbolic or literal
needs to be addressed. Mesquakie
narratives
Secrecy
and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel. Alan Lenzi. review
-there was a political organization that
formed the secret council for the Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The
evidence for these councils is found in the vision of the mythological divine
assembly, for which the work of E. T. Mullen and the American School of Old
Testament studies is foundational. That no evidence for such councils has yet
appeared in the mundane tablets does not stop scholars from positing their
existence (which is fair enough since they are supposed to be a secret after
all), but then to found theories of lineages of secret traditions and
complimentary secret councils which can be posited for “Israel”
(Lenzi
almost without exception uses “Israel” to refer to the political situation in
Jerusalem) stretches the data beyond certainty. To his credit, Lenzi constantly
reminds the reader that his reconstruction is hypothetical… Mesopotamian
scribal self-understanding: they understood themselves to be the bearers of
secret knowledge from the antediluvian deities. Accepting that the writing of
cuneiform Akkadian was simplified through these 2000 years and that therefore
the capacity for literacy expanded, the professional scribes contrived various
means by which to keep texts they wished to maintain within their circles away
from the barely literate. Using Sumerian served these purposes, as was using
ancient forms of cuneiform signs…
The official ideology appears to be that the information of
the practitioners of various forms of divination, exorcism, medicine, and other
specialized arts came from a group of seven sages (apkallu) who, in
turn got their information directly from the deities, especially the god of
wisdom, Ea. Well documented is that the origin of practical wisdom derives from
ancient times through the passing on of written texts intended to be kept
secret… there is the positing of a secret council for the Jerusalem kings (or
at least the Samarian kings), evidence for which is extremely slim… Unlike
Mesopotamia, however, Israel sought to make secret knowledge known. Prophets
did not seek to keep other people from knowing what the divine council
proclaimed, but set out to inform publically and orally as many people as
possible…
volume ends with a select series of passages being
considered in light of the material presented in the book: Daniel as a court
scholar with secret knowledge not available to other court functionaries (the
cluster of court positions are seen to have Mesopotamian literary roots); Deut
28:69–30:20 as a description of Moses as the paradigmatic prophet (with 29:28
as an interpolation devised to prevent apocalyptic or exilic restoration
speculation); Prov 8:22–31 as the foundational tale of Wisdom as God's creation
before creation (presented as, if not based on, at least familiar with, the Enuma
Elish—though the question of why would the term אָמוֹן in Prov 8:30
remind readers of Marduk rather than, say, Amon raises questions about the
matter; see pp. 354-57); and Deut 34:10–12 wherein Moses is shown to be the apkallu
for the Israelites. Lenzi is fully aware that these interpretations are
selected from numerous alternatives which contemporary biblical commentators
have posited, but they do seem appropriate given his thesis. [much of this
sounds swallowed hook, line and sinker by heiser]
--on Secrecy and the
Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel at
Samizdat
“The motif of the divine origin of civilization is common in the ancient Near East,
[ie the apkallu Nephilim] especially in Mesopotamia, and it stands in stark
contrast to the portrayal of the rise of civilization in Genesis 1– 11.
6/19/18 The
Nephilim and apkallu identity in Anne Kilmer, the
Mesopotanian counterparts of the Biblical Nepilim
apkallu – advisors to kings. fish-men,
mixed species, the nēpīlîm passage in Genesis 6 occurs
together with the theme of increased population growth on which Genesis
6 opens. The apkallu are semi-divine beings depicted as mixed
beings, priests wearing fish hoods,
humans and apkallu could presumably mate since we have the description
of the four post-flood apkallu as “of human descent,” the fourth being
only “two-thirds apkallu” as opposed to pre-flood pure apkallu
and subsequent human sages (ummiānu)--- nēpīlîm
appeared on the earth after divine beings (sons of elohim) had mated
with the daughters of men. look to the Mesopotamian sage traditions for the
mythological background of Genesis
6:1-4. While the ties between the apkallu
and the nēpīlîm are hardly ties that bind, there are enough points of comparison—superhuman / semi-divine beings, acts of daring /
hubris, acts that anger divinity, association with wickedness in men, their
predominantly pre-flood existence.
--the bird-faced
winged genies of Assyrian Palace art may be identified as apkallu -----(see Anthony Green, “Neo-Assyrian Apotropaic Figures,” Iraq
45 (1983),
--typhon
looks like
-- the
uruk list of kings Uruk List of Kings and Sages is best known for its
genealogy connecting Mesopotamian scholars (ummânù) traced
their professional ances-try explicitly back to the mythological sages
(apkall ù ) of antedilu-vian fame
--human scholars
to antediluvian sages
anne kilmer, apkallu. samizdat
Fallen
Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity : The Reception of Enochic
Literature by Annette Yoshiko Reed
subdocuments and manuscripts of1enochBW
Book ofthe Watchers(1En1
36).Sim Similitudes of Enoch
(1En37-71
AB Astronomical Book 1En71–82
BD Book of Dreams 1En83–90
E Epistle of Enoch 1En.91–105-6
“AW”“ A p o c alypse of Weeks” (1En93:1–10;91:11–17
AA”“ A n imal
Apocalypse” (1En85–90
all
the refernces to the book of enoch
And in the church
fathers
--NT parallels: head covering of angels because of angels, 4
women in Jesus genealogy,----Use in NT: King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Rev
not in OT, Enoch 2:1-2 and
Jude 1:14-15, comes with ten thousands of his saints, the souls of the dead cry out in Enoch
9:9-12 and Revelation
6:9-10; we shall judge angels with Enoch 14:2 the power of reproving the Watchers, the offspring of heaven;
"those who once were good angels," but are now fallen spirits. It was so understood by
Tertullian, Chrysostom, etc, Heb 2.5 “it is not angels who will control the
future world” Gal 1.8 “even if an angel from heaven,” Jn 12.31 “now will the
ruler of this world be cast out.” Enoch
19 :6-7 with angels not to marry Matthew 22:29-30; 2 Peter 2:
bring not railing accusation against them
before the Lord with Enoch 40:3;
6/19/18 --Liu Dan (sunflower) does not tend towards a single
subject matter, he is known to paint what he calls “uncertain” subjects, since
he believes that “the clearer the
feeling, the blurrier the image.” His best known works depict landscapes,
flowers, and what is known as Guai Shi (odd stones) in traditional
Chinese art and literati culture. From this, Liu has developed a theory of
landscape painting he calls a “micro exploration through macro understanding.”
--two images: at a tennis match from the chair a projector casting
an image of the crescent moon into the sky so large it filled the whole view, a
crescent man in moon figure, as if the moon were a projection!
And on court 2. Mike
adams at doubles against conrad ramos on the star court.
Up the Beanstalk suggests the giants are buffoons, part of
the control for they are more the board
of directors
We can document thse techniqus being applied at the personal
and the societal level, therefore might speculate beyong that that there are a
kind of though blinders at the global,
whicdh sounds like Icke and the moon,
but that could only be documented as a
metaphor of Dante, say.