School of Suspicion

Tag: Giants

Giants, Titans and the Nephilim, and the suspicion that a monster’s size can be a way of describing a people someone wanted gone.

  • Noah — Prophet and Builder

    Noah — Prophet and Builder

    Lamech named his son for rest. Noah built a chest sealed with the letters of atonement, fed every creature in it for a year, sent out the dove, and woke from his wine to curse a grandson. Read beside the giants of 1 Enoch, the birds of Gilgamesh, Peter’s eight souls, the dove at the…

  • The Serpent Slayers

    The Serpent Slayers

    Genesis 3:15 is usually called the first messianic prophecy, and the reading is old and serious. God turns to the serpent, promises lasting hostility between its offspring and the woman’s, and says that one will be struck on the head and the other on the heel. Christian tradition has read that as the announcement of…

  • Sons of God, Daughters of Men, and Nephilim – The beginning of Ancient religions

    Genesis 6:4 ends with a phrase that belongs to Homer more than to Moses. The children born to the sons of God by the daughters of men, it says, became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. That is heroic vocabulary. It is the language a poet uses of Achilles or of Gilgamesh,…