Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism, andInsatiable Eating in Enochic Literature
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
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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
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.
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