Giants in the Earth
I was asked to expound on this mysterious scripture:
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Gen 6:4
P. Blavatsky said this: “The giants of Genesis are the historical Atlanteans of Lanka, ( an island-continent now sunken except its northern headland, which is Ceylon) and the Greek Titans.”
Legend has it that the Sons of God were fallen Angels, but it is more likely that they were advanced entities who were the first of a new race who thwarted evolution by taking wives from the Atlanteans which diffused the seed race that was developing.
I’ll relate to you some of the legends which usually have seeds of truth in them, but must be sorted out through the soul as there is much distortion in ancient stories mixed with elements of truth.
First here is the story of the Titans:
“Hesiod’s mythology revels in monsters and blood, and is not averse to theological pornography. Out of the mating of Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Ge or Gaea) came a race of Titans, some with fifty heads and a hundred hands. Uranus liked them not, and condemned them to gloomy Tartarus. But Earth resenting this, proposed to them that they should kill their father. One of the Titans, Cronus, undertook the task. Then “huge Ge rejoiced, and hid him in ambush; in his hand she placed a sickle with jagged teeth, and suggested to him all the stratagem. Then came vast Heaven, bringing Night [Erebus] with him, and, eager for love, brooded around Earth, and lay stretched on all sides.” Thereupon Cronus mutilated his father, and threw the flesh into the sea. From the drops of blood that fell upon the earth came the Furies; from the foam that formed around the flesh as it floated on the waters rose Aphrodite.
“The Titans captured Olympus, deposed Heaven-Uranus, and raised Cronus to the throne. Cronus married his sister Phea, but Earth and Heaven, his parents, having predicted that he would be deposed by one of his sons, Cronus swallowed them all except Zeus, whom Rhea bore secretly in Crete. When Zeus grew up he deposed Cronus in turn, forced him to disgorge his children, and plunged the Titans back into the bowels of the earth.” From Story of Civilization by Will Durant
Next here are some stories from ancient texts that did not make it into the Bible.
The Qumran scrolls fortunately unmuddy the waters for us considerably. A fuller account of Gen. 6:1-4 can be found in 4QEnochb and 1QGenesis Apocryphon (Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated [Leiden, New York, Koln: Billl, 1994] pp. 230-31, 248-50). Let us turn to these now. First, the Book of Enoch. (For ease of reading, all the diacritical marks that indicate text restorations are dispensed with.)
It happened that when in those days the sons of men increased, pretty and attractive daughters were born to them. The Watchers, sons of the sky, saw them and lusted for them and said to each other: Let’s go and pick out women from among the daughters of men and sire for ourselves sons. However, Shemihazah, who was their chief, said to them: I am afraid you do not want to carry out this deed and I alone will be guilty of great sin. They replied and all said to him: We all take an oath and all swear under oath to each other not to go back on this venture until we have performed this deed. . .
The text then groups the twelve other angels by name.
They and their chiefs all took for themselves women, choosing from among all, and they began to penetrate them and be defiled by them and teach them sorcery, incantations, and the cutting of roots and to explain herbs. They became pregnant by them and gave birth to giants, some three thousand cubits tall [a cubit is about 11⁄2 feet], who were born upon the earth in keeping with their infancy and grew at a rate of their growth and consumed the work of all the sons of men, without the men being able to supply them.
People became increasingly depraved through the black arts taught them. Raphael, Michael, Sariel, and Gabriel see this and report to God.
And to Gabriel the Lord said: Go to the bastards and the sons of whoring and exterminate the sons of the Watchers from among the sons of men; involving them in a war of attrition for there will not be long days for them. Absolutely no request in their favor will be granted to their fathers; for they hope to live an everlasting life or that each one of them will live five hundred years. And to Michael the Lord said: Go, Michael, and tell Shemihazah and all his friends who coupled with women to be defiled by them in their uncleanness that their sons will expire and they will see the extermination of their loved one; chain them up for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth until the great day of their judgment. . .
Meanwhile, in the Genesis Apocryphon, Lamech becomes suspicious of his wife, for reasons now lost, that his own son Noah is the product of such a supernatural union:
Then I, Lamech, was frightened and turned to Bitenosh, my wife, and said: . . . Swear to me by the Most High, by the Great Lord, by the King of the Universe, . . . the sons of heaven, that you will in truth let me know everything, if . . . you will in truth and without lies let me know whether this . . . Swear to me by the King of all the Universe that you are speaking to me frankly and without lies. . . Then Bitenosh, my bride, spoke to me very harshly. She wept . . . and said: Oh my brother and lord! Remember my pleasure . . . the time of love, the gasping of my breath in my breast. I shall tell you everything accurately. . . I swear to you by the Great Holy One, by the King of the heavens . . . that this seed comes from you, that this pregnancy comes from you, that the planting of this fruit comes from you, and not from any foreigner or watcher or son of heaven. . . Then I, Lamech, ran to my father, Methuselah, and told him everything, so that he would go and ask Enoch, his father, and would know everything for certain from him, since he (Enoch) is liked and well liked. . .” (This having been done, Enoch responds:) “Go tell Lamech, your son. . .”
At this point the extant text of the Genesis Apocryphon breaks off, but we can assume that Lamech was reassured his son Noah was legitimate.
The Holy Fathers Speak
St. Clement was a Roman who characterized himself as a “lover of chastity from his earliest youth.” He struggled for years with the dread of oblivion after death. In his quest for truth, he studied with the philosophers, who only argued unceasingly and left him in still greater spiritual turmoil and despair. Then he hears of our Savior’s preaching to the Jews, and of His miracles, and attempts to go to Judæa. On the way he meets St. Barnabas who has come to preach in Alexandria, but the sophisticated Greeks deride the simple discourse of Barnabas, and Clement takes Barnabas to his lodgings to protect him from the crowd. Then Barnabas leaves for Judæa, and shortly thereafter Clement does, as well. When he arrives in Cæsarea he again comes upon Barnabas, who introduces him to St. Peter. Commending him for rescuing Barnabas from the unruly crowd in Alexandria, Peter invites him to join his party as it makes its way to Rome with the message of Truth, and to become his attendant. In the course of St. Peter’s discourse on our Savior’s teachings, he gives an account of creation of the world and of man. This is St. Clement’s account of what St. Peter said next.
All things being completed which are in heaven, and in earth, and in the waters, and the human race also having multiplied, in the eighth generation, righteous men, who had lived the life of angels, being allured by the beauty of women, fell into promiscuous and illicit connections with these; and thenceforth acting in all things without discretion, and disorderly, they changed the state of human affairs and the divinely prescribed order of life, so that either by persuasion or force they compelled all men to sin against God their Creator. In the ninth generation are born the giants, so called from of old, not dragon footed, as the fables of the Greeks relate, but men of immense bodies, whose bones, of enormous size, are still shown in some places for confirmation. But against these the righteous providence of God brought a flood upon the world, that the earth might be purified from their pollution, and every place might be turned into a sea by the destruction of the wicked. Yet there was then found one righteous man, by the name of Noah, who, being delivered in an ark with his three sons and their wives, became the colonizer of the world after the subsiding of the waters, with those animals and seeds which he had shut up with him.
In the twelfth generation, when God had blessed men, and they had begun to multiply, they received a commandment that they should not taste blood, for on account of this also the deluge had been sent. In the thirteenth generation, when the second of Noah’s three sons had done an injury to his father, and had been cursed by him, he brought the condition of slavery upon his posterity. . . In the fourteenth generation one of the cursed progeny first erected an altar to demons, for the purpose of magical arts, and offered there bloody sacrifices. In the fifteenth generation, for the first time, men set up an idol and worshiped it. . . .
The following, from “The Clementine Homilies,” is an elaboration on the subject of creation quoted above from the “Recognitions of Clement.” (The translator calls it “a more developed speculation.”)
For of the spirits who inhabit the heaven, the angels who dwell in the lowest region, being grieved at the ingratitude of men to God, asked that they might come into the life of men, that, really becoming men, by more of an exchange of ideas they might convict those who had acted ungratefully towards God, and might subject every one to adequate punishment. When, therefore, their petition was granted, they metamorphosed themselves into every nature; for, being of a more godlike substance, they are able easily to assume any form. So they became precious stones, and [metals]. . . They also changed themselves into beasts and reptiles, and fishes and birds, and into whatsoever they pleased. . .
But when, having assumed these forms, they . . .changed themselves into the nature of men, in order that, living holily, they might subject the ungrateful to punishment, yet having become in all respects men, they also partook of human lust, and being brought under its subjection they fell into cohabitation with women; and being involved with them, and sunk in defilement and altogether emptied of their first power, were unable to turn back to the first purity of their proper nature, . . .they trode the impious path downward. For they themselves, being fettered with the bonds of flesh, were constrained and strongly bound; wherefore they have no more been able to ascend into the heavens.
But from their unhallowed intercourse spurious men sprang, much greater in stature than ordinary men, whom they afterwards called giants; not those dragon footed giants who waged war against God . . . but wild in manners, and greater than men in size, inasmuch as they were sprung of angels; yet less than angels, as they were born of women. Therefore God, knowing that they were barbarized to brutality, and that the world was not sufficient to satisfy them (for it was created according to the proportion of men and human use), that they might not through want of food turn, contrary to nature, to the eating of animals, and yet seem to be blameless, as having ventured upon this through necessity, the Almighty God rained manna upon them, suited to their various tastes; and they enjoyed all that they would. But they, on account of their bastard nature, not being pleased with purity of food, longed only after the taste of blood. Wherefore they first tasted flesh.
And the men who were with them there for the first time were eager to do the like. Thus, although we are born neither good nor bad, we become one of the other; and having formed habits, we are with difficulty drawn from them. But when irrational animals fell short, these bastard men tasted also human flesh. For it was not a long step to the consumption of flesh like their own, having first tasted it in other forms.
. . . All things, therefore, going from bad to worse, on account of these brutal demons, God wished to cast them away like an evil leaven, lest each generation from a wicked seed, being like to that before it, and equally impious, should empty the world to come of saved men. And for this purpose, having warned a certain righteous man, with his children, to save themselves in an ark, He sent a deluge of water, that all being destroyed, the purified world might be handed over to him who was saved in the ark, in order [that there might be] a second beginning of life. And thus it came to pass.
“Recognitions of Clement,” Book 1, Ch. xxix-xxx, and “The Clementine Homilies,” Homily 8, Ch. xii-xvii, Ante Nicene Fathers.
May 25, 2001
Copyright by J J Dewey
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