Ronald Hendel (Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of California, Berkeley who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University) wrote a book chapter titled, “The Landscape of Memory: Giants and the Conquest of Canaan” within the book Collective Identity and Collective Memory: Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History in Their Context.
Hendel notes, “The Anglo-Saxon poem, ‘The Ruin,’ contemplates the stone ruins of England, including the Roman city of Bath and the megaliths of Stonehenge, and attributes them to the work of ancient giants.” This denotes the fallacy of concluding that large things must have been built for and by large people.
As he puts it, “Where ruined stone structures mark the landscape, local lore often attributes them to the work of ancient giants” to which I will add: ’cause, why not?
He notes, “Historians also recount giant lore” to which I will add that they also recount little people lore, and hybrid lore, and more lore characters of every shape, color, and size than we can shake a giant stick at.
Yet, with whatever level of emphasis and/or qualifying terms, Hendel wrote that, “the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus records the,” note this, “evidence of giants in his History of Denmark: ‘That the Danish area was once cultivated by a civilization of giants is testified by the immense stones planted upon ancestral barrows and caves.’”[1] This, again, denotes the fallacy of concluding that large things must have been built for and by large people and so can hardly be categorizable as evidence—it is just a huge jump to a gigantic conclusion.
Hendel Writes:
Saxo adds a comment that links Danish history with the Bible: “There is too little evidence to decide whether those who contrived these works were giants who lived after the irruption of the Flood.”
Saxo here refers to the antediluvian Nephilim in Gen 6:4, who were born to the sons of God and the daughters of humans, and who are translated in the Septuagint and Vulgate as γίγαντες/gigantes, “giants.”
The Nephilim “were on the earth in those days and also afterwards” (Gen 6:4), pointing forward to the Nephilim as giant inhabitants of Canaan in the era of Moses, on the verge of the conquest of Canaan (Num 13:33).
As Saxo observes, there is “little evidence” about these giants in postdiluvian time. Yet there is enough in texts from Numbers through Amos, particularly clustered in Deuteronomy and Joshua, to show their importance in biblical concepts of the conquest.
The aboriginal giants–who in the present age are no more – were an integral part of Israel’s identity and cultural memory.
Since we are tracking data vs. assertions vs. assertions about data, note that Hendel told us that Saxo, “records the evidence of giants” but Saxo himself, wrote, “There is too little evidence.” So, there is what is referred to as evidence yet, too little (as per some unelucidated standard or subjectivism).
Now, let us track the chronology: Saxo referred to “giants who lived after the irruption of the Flood…postdiluvian time” but Hendel takes us to “antediluvian” times instead—stand by.
Saxo was referring to subjectively unusual height so when Hendel appeals to Nephilim that brings this exploration to a full stop since we cannot claim that about them since we do not have a reliable physical description of them.
And appealing to “γίγαντες/gigantes, ‘giants’” is just committing the word-concept fallacy—much like the fallacy of large ruins ergo, giants.
We know all too well by now that merely quoting a fragment of a thought, 6:4a, and then making it mean whatever we want while actually believing an evil report. Thus, there is no indication whatsoever, and much against it, that 6:4 is pointing forward—it is actually pointing backward, back to 6:1.
We also know too well that there is no reliable indication whatsoever of, “Nephilim as giant inhabitants of Canaan in the era of Moses.”
As for, “enough in texts from Numbers through Amos…Deuteronomy and Joshua” well, we well know that they do not even hint at anything that can be viably referred to as, “show their importance in biblical concepts of the conquest” nor that they, “were an integral part of Israel’s identity and cultural memory.” The Rephaim, et al., were but not what Hendel means by giants.
Hendel then takes us to, “evidence of giants in the prehistory of Israel” since, “its environs was embedded in the landscape, in ruined walls and megaliths, which served as visible signs of the once formidable presence of the giants,” to which I will add: here we go again.
He is clearly pushing a narrative when he claims, “These stone ruins constitute a memoryscape, which inspired a cultural memory of ancient giants” yet, we have no indication that any landmark stood out for consideration in terms of having anything to do with giants. And yes, that is a fact even when it comes to what King James Version readers read as Valley of the Giants since, of course, that biblically means Valley of the Rephaim.
The narrative Hendel weaves is, as already seen but continuing, “According to our texts, the giants in the Promised Land met their end in the Israelite conquest, with a remnant surviving in Philistia until the era of David and with the Transjordanian giants destroyed by Israel’s eastern neighbors.”
According to our Hebrew texts, the Rephaim in the Promised Land met their end in the Israelite conquest, with a remnant surviving in Philistia until the era of David and with the Transjordanian Rephaim destroyed by Israel’s eastern neighbors.
Thus, any attempts at weaving a tall-tale fall apart.
Hendel quotes Brian Doak (see my book The Scholarly Academic Nephilim and Giants for a review of his views) since he, “observes, the biblical giants activate a conceptual boundary between chaos and order; the anomalous monster ‘represents a connection to primeval chaos, and stands as a barrier to creation and right rule.’”
Yet, Hendel’s point was:
In these memories, the giants frame a liminal era, beginning in an episode of chaotic sexuality before the Flood and ending in the violent origins of Israel and its neighboring territorial states…The giants inhabit and constitute the era of prehistory, with their roots in antediluvian chaos and their end in the decisive era of Israel’s ethno-political origins.
They are liminal creatures in a liminal time, whose demise marks the transition to present era, on this side of the deeds of fallen giants.
One problem is that, as it all too common—among pop-researchers and credentialed ones as well—he is using the word giants to imply three or four things without bothering to tell us, along the way, when, where, nor how he is changing his usage (he uses it to mean subjectively unusual height, and Nephilim, and Rephaim, and likely even Anakim).
For example, “In these memories, the Nephilim frame a liminal era, beginning in an episode of chaotic sexuality before the Flood and without relation to the violent origins of Israel and its neighboring territorial states since that was about Rephaim…The Nephilim inhabit and constitute the era of prehistory, with their roots in antediluvian chaos and their end in the flood, with the decisive era of Israel’s ethno-political origins pertaining to Rephaim.
Thus, when Hendel refers to, “They” he does not realize how accurate he is being, he is just speaking in the plural but actually, he is speaking about two wholly different and unrelated people groups.
He next appeals to, “some insights by Paul Karge and G. Ernest Wright. Karge proposed that ‘the representation of the aboriginal Rephaim as gigantic in popular belief arose by the interpretation of megalithic tombs, which were seen everywhere in the land as testimony to an ancient past’”—here we go again, again.
Also, what “representation of the aboriginal Rephaim as gigantic”? We would have to ask Hendel to what he is now referring by gigantic since a biblically accurate statement would refer to, “the representation of the aboriginal Rephaim as only subjectively unusually ‘tall’”—as if subjectively unusual height has anything to do with anything.
Hendel also notes, “Wright agreed, writing: ‘The Israelite tradition of giant Rephaim undoubtedly arose in part from the contemplation of megalithic structures especially in Transjordan”—again.
Now, when one is dealing with a group as ancient as “The Israelites” one cannot simply refer to their “tradition” since that begs the question: tradition from when—the Israelites of biblical days (and if so, which of those vast span of days?), the Second Temple Era Israelites, medieval, modern, etc.?[2]
Moreover, “He added that the stone ruins of Middle Bronze Age city walls were further stimulus to the belief in giants: ‘Hebrews viewing some of the cities of Canaan which we now know to have possessed walls as thick as eighteen feet, and often built of cyclopean masonry, might well have thought in terms of giants, just as did the Greeks.’”
Now, if—and that is a big IF—ancient Israelites took it upon themselves to believe in giants based on city walls, ruins, etc. it would just mean what it does in the case of Hendel, et al.: a case of the hop, skip, and a jump of large ergo, giants.
Did you catch the qualifying term? He wrote, “might well have.”
The narrative continues with, “parallels from European traditions…the testimony of Egyptian fellahin that the pyramids were the work of giants and the attribution of stone monuments to giants in Antioch, Syria.”
Interestingly, he notes, “Although there have been valuable recent studies of giants in the Bible and postbiblical literature, modern studies of the conquest tend to avoid the topic.” I know not but I would wonder if that is because it is largely a case of much ado about nothing, nothing to see here.
Yet, Hendel thinks, “This is presumably because giants are not historical, and most biblical scholars—following in the tracks of nineteenth century historicism—prefer things that are, or might be, historical. The giants are neglected in this area of scholarship.”
Again, “presumably because giants are not historical” can mean presumably because subjectively unusually tall people are not historical or presumably because Nephilim are not historical or presumably because Rephaim and/or Anakim are not historical.
As for historicity, Hendel notes, “We are concerned here not with history as such but with what Jan Assmann calls mnemohistory, an inquiry into the tracks of imagination, materiality, and events that transmute—by a kind of social alchemy—into authoritative representations of the remembered past.” Well, imagination and social alchemy is what we have been getting in Hendel’s paper.
He then goes back to the assertion that, “A variety of biblical texts describe the indigenous giants,” read as Rephaim, of course, “of Canaan and/or their demise in the conquest.”
Hendel next plays the patchwork-jigsaw puzzle academic’s game by appealing to the Documentary Hypothesis a.k.a. JEDP Theory which he uses (or, misuses) to put his narrative-tall-tale, “in roughly chronological order, beginning with Amos and J (or, if one prefers, a strand of non-P)…and then to P, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.”
Hendel writes, “I will emphasize the distinctive interpretations of the giants in each text; how they figure in the cultural imaginaire of these sources” and I, in turn, will emphasize the distinctive misinterpretations of the Nephilim, Rephaim, and subjectively unusually tall people in each text; how they figure in the scholarly imaginaire of the academic sources that publish such papers apparently, after literally being reviewed by peers: those who utterly agree and do so uncritically.
He tells us, “The most direct account of the conquest of aboriginal giants is Amos 2:9–10, where Yhwh recalls his destruction of the Amorites” to which he appeals because, as we well know by now, it refers to, “height is like the height of cedars” and Hendel, like them all, utterly ignores, “whose strength is like oaks.”
Of course, Hendel concludes that Amorites, “are presented as giants.” As I awaited to see how Hendel would correlate Amorites to Nephilim—assuming that perhaps more than one usage of giants was in play—I noted that he instantly took a step back from his narrative with, “the ethnonyms for the indigenous giants are somewhat varied among the texts; here ‘Amorite’ is the general designation.”
This makes it rather convenient for the tall-tale teller since they can simply water everything down and jump from one unrelated group to another by merely asserting they are correlatable because well, because it sure makes for some excitement.
For Hendel the equation is quite simple: begin with multi-usage uses of giant, for some unknown reason take Amorites being tall as cedars (ignore the oak bit), and reference their (supposed) “fearsome stature”—which he can at least recognize, “is expressed through metaphor, likening their height to cedars, the tallest known tree” and refers to it as a, “poetic text” and “prophetic poem.” But what, pray tell, does the metaphor tell us?
Hendel keeps laying it on thick with reference to, “the giant Amorites” and so this is about, “Yhwh’s destruction of the giants” perhaps as opposed to other since he asks, “were normal sized people conquered too…as in other accounts of the conquest?” which denotes the vague nature of our common parlance since what “normal sized” is, is subjective.
Interestingly, via his theoretical means, Hendel speculates that, “The J (or non-P) portion of the narrative of the spies in Num 13 is arguably from around the same period as Amos. This narrative adds other resonances to Yhwh’s defeat of indigenous giants in the conquest. It is the culmination of the sequence of murmuring and backslidings in the Exodus-Wanderings, with the outcome that the Exodus generation, except for Caleb, will not enter the promised land. The people’s terror and fear of the giants is the focus of this account, motivating their resistance and Yhwh’s punishment.”
Do you discern how one single sentence in an evil report becomes a worldview hermeneutic whereby other—contextually utterly unrelated—texts are pulled into the black-hole which is the narrative?
Since, “The J (or non-P) portion of the narrative of the spies in Num 13 is arguably from around the same period as Amos” then Hendel uses the unreliable spies’ false assertions in order to then (mis)interpret and (mis)apply other texts, such as Amos’.
Now, what of, “the culmination…with the outcome” due to, “The people’s terror and fear of the giants”? Well, for one: “The people” saw nothing rather they, like Hendel, just took the ten spies’ word for it.
Note how Hendel relates the key text, the mother of all (of both) biblical Nephilim texts into which he actually delves in detail.
He notes, “Moses instructs the spies to reconnoiter the land…they came to Hebron, and there were Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmay, children of Anak…” so that Hendel has it that upon returning from their mission, “they brought them a report” and said, “the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very great, and also we saw there the children of Anak” along with that, “Amalek lives in the land of the Negev, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live by the sea and the Jordan.”
Then, “Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, ‘Let us immediately go up and possess it, for we are able to prevail over it.’”
Yet, “the people who went up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for it is stronger than us … And there we saw the Nephilim (the children of Anak are from the Nephilim) and we seemed in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we seemed in their eyes” (ellipses are Hendel’s).
Elsewhere in this book I have detailed how the key aspect of the Numbers 13 narrative is outlines and plays out.
Thus, here I will point out that via a footnote after, “the Nephilim),” Hendel noted, “This explicating plus (lacking in LXX)…” which is the point that I have variously made about those who for whatever reasons insist on believing the evil report cannot rely on the LXX.
Yet, it matters not to them just as it matters not to Hendel when it comes to weaving a tall-tale.
He goes as far as aggrandizing even the fruit of the land—a favorite sci-fi fallacy of the pop-researchers (to the point that I devoted a chapter in my Pop-Researchers’ book to it).
He asserts, “the scouts bring back a sample of the land’s fruit – which is gigantic” yet, there is no indication of that and he actually quoted that portion of the narrative and did so thusly, “they cut from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them, and also some pomegranates and figs. That place is called the Valley of Eshkol [‘cluster’], because of the cluster that the children of Israel cut from there … And they went … to Kadesh, and they brought them a report … and they showed them the fruit of the land” (ellipses and brackets are Hendel’s).
His comment was all-encompassing, “the land’s fruit,” in general that they brought back, “is gigantic.” Mention is made of grapes, pomegranates, and figs. No such thing is even hinted at regarding pomegranates and figs thus, so much for “the land’s fruit,” generically. What of grapes? Well, there is no indication that the individual grapes were “gigantic” but rather, than the cluster was plenteous and so, was heavy—after all, it was, as Hendel quoted it, a land, “flowing with milk and honey” (which the evil report contradicted).
This is another case of Gigorexia Nervosa—Grapeorexia Nervosa, in this case.
Now, another typical move is to lump all of the spies together. I grant that we do not know who actually spoke the recorded words of the original/as is report nor the evil one but only know what Caleb said in between them.
Yet, we know enough to recognize that when Hendel write thusly, he is not being specific enough, “they report about the state of the land (fruitful), the people (strong), and the cities (fortified). They supplement their report with some editorializing: ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for it is stronger than us,’ and add their visceral terror at the gigantic size of the inhabitants, ‘we seemed in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we seemed in their eyes.’”
The first “they” reported the original/as is report but the second, “They” contradict and embellish it, “supplement,” as Hendel quaintly has it.
It is not even the case that, “their visceral terror at the gigantic size of the inhabitants” caused them to say, “we seemed in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we seemed in their eyes.” Rather, their coming face-to-face with that they would have to confront six people groups who even they characterize as strong(er) (in agreement with the original/as is report) but not gigantic living in fortified cities, etc. that led them to invent a tall-tale—one that has been believed and repeated as fact by some for millennia.
Hendel has it that, “This metaphor of grasshoppers for humans transposes the actual relationship between humans and giants to a different scale – in the metaphor, people are like insects while giants are like people. In metaphor and reality, the giants have overwhelming mastery.” The key “different scale” between humans and giants, here Nephilim, is that at the time the humans were actually alive on the ground but Nephilim were not. The giants, the real situation which pertained to Rephaim, was that the Rephaim had mastery over the region—technically: the Anakim, Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites.
Hendel then makes an anachronistic statement in noting, “Caleb does not dispute the accuracy of the report but argues that ‘we are able to prevail’ due to Yhwh’s superior power. He is correct, but the fear of the crowd prevails.”
Why would he dispute the accuracy of the report since “the report” that came before his “we are able to prevail” statement came after the original/as is report. As to why he did not dispute the evil report after he heard it well, I already noted the issue of this not being a formal debate, that we surely do not have the entire discussion, etc.
And yet, if that is to be taken as an argument from silence then feel free to do away with it: we have way too many reasons to utterly reject the evil report as having been utterly false without what I just noted.
We are well past the point of Hendel no longer interacting with the text but rather, interacting with his fantasy version of it. For example (for another example), “Yhwh asks Moses in the following scene, ‘How long will this people reject me, and how long will they not trust me, despite all the signs that I made in their midst?’ (Num 14:11). The people’s fear of the indigenous giants triggers a decisive break between them and Yhwh.”
Here are three versions of, “The people’s fear of the indigenous giants”:
Version 1: The people’s fear of the indigenous six people groups.
Version 2: The people’s fear of the indigenous subjectively unusually tall peoples who were just taller than 5.0-5.3 ft.
Version 3: The people’s fear of made up as a tall-tale and not really alive and on the ground indigenous fantasy giants.
Hendel tells us, “Moses convinces Yhwh not to destroy them, but they are punished with an unfulfilled journey” due to the additional four decades of wilderness wandering. Yet, “not to destroy them”: who is “them”? Speaking of, “Caleb does not dispute the accuracy of the report,” God reacted to it—with extreme prejudice (a technically contextually inaccurate term but well in keeping with military common parlance) since He most certainly did destroy the ten spies, “the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land—the men who brought up a bad report of the land—died by plague before the Lord” (Numbers 14:36-38).
Yet, while this was clearly about believing a falsehood premised upon not trusting God and the repercussions therefrom, Hendel misses the point entirely since to him, this is about that, “The giants are the occasion for the decisive act of backsliding and punishment.”
Hendel has so far removed himself from the text—ironically even whilst quoting it—that he even asserts, “The good scout, Caleb, is the only one who will enter the land. Yhwh states: ‘But my servant Caleb, because there is a different spirit in him, and he has fully followed me, I will bring him into the land that he entered there, and his seed will inherit it’ (Num 14:24)” yet, if he just kept reading he would have encountered that the text I just quoted actually goes on directly to state, “Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive.”
But, gain, for Hendel this is about weaving a narrative (using vague English) and so, “This…agrees with Amos that Yhwh will defeat the giants in the land, and the Israelites will inherit it.”
By the way, if, “The,” singular, “good scout” is Caleb (he’s forgetting about Joshua, again) then why, pray tell, use the assertions of the non-good scouts as the fundamental level premise for his entire theory?
He notes, “the P account of the spies in Num 13 plays down the theme of giants in the land” which he does not seem to realize is not because of a textual hypothesis but due to that there were no giants in the land—not in the way he is misreading, misunderstanding, misdefining, and misapplying giants.
He goes on to say, “The,” ten non-good, “spies state that the inhabitants are giants (ʾanšê middôt, lit. ‘men of stature,’ Num 13:32), but they do not identify them as Anakim or Nephilim.” This is because v. 32 of the evil report has it that, “all the people that we saw in it,” Anakim, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites, “are of great height.” They then went on to assert that—oh, by the way—they also saw Nephilim who were very, very, very tall.
Yet, that “all the people that we saw in it are of great height” is generic—subjectively of great height, just meaning taller than 5.0-5.3 ft.—and this is one of the five mere assertions of the non-good spies: we have no indication that those six people groups were “of great height” although some were and yet, what does it even matter—in reality?
Hendel notes of the Nephilim’s “supernatural quality” that “the J source traces back to the antediluvian coupling of the Sons of God and the daughters of humans (Gen 6:4).” Yet, the evil report’s Nephilim trace back to a fear-based tall-tale.
He focuses on that, “In P, the land is as threatening as its inhabitants: ‘The land that we crossed into to spy out, it eats its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it were giants’ (Num 13:32)” and, hallelujah, Hendel actually identifies a straight up contradiction, “Note the contrast – in P the land ‘eats its inhabitants,’ while in J the land is ‘flowing with milk and honey.’”
Yet, this is a missed opportunity since his takeaway is, “The P version of the spies’ report, it seems, is a minor revision of cultural memory,” rather than that the non-good spies are utterly unreliable.
He directs us to, “Moses’s retrospective in Deut 1:28, he recalls – and revises – the scouts’ report from Num 13:28 (with major modifications indicated by underline)…It is a people greater and taller than us, and great cities fortified up to heaven, and we also saw there the children of the Anakim.”
Technically, we do not know if this was exactly a revision since, again, we clearly do not have a point-by-point—word-by-word—narrative and yet, fine, let us go with it: Moses related part of their evil report, threw in a hyperbolic version of part of the as is report, and ended it—not this—by referring to the real-life problem on the ground, the Anakim, and utterly ignored any tall-tales about Nephilim. Moses was too practical, he had to deal with reality, not imaginary folklore.
Yet, note that this gives us a cultural and literary context-window as the cities were clearly not “up to heaven” (first, second, or third) much like Nephilim were not so very, very, very tall—especially when they no longer existed.
Another missed opportunity is that Hendel wrote, “Notice how Deuteronomy subtly intensifies the J wording. The adjective ʿaz (‘strong’) in Num 13:28 is expanded into a comparative, gādôl wārām mimmennû (‘greater and taller than us’), importing the comparative syntax from Num 13:31 (‘stronger than us’).” He missed pointing out that the as is report has the peoples being strong with the spies agreeing they are stronger but then embellishing that it was not just about strength but about size.
He also tells us that, “This intensified expression recurs in the description of other giant peoples – the Emim and the Zamzummim – in Deut 2:10, 21” but those supposed, plural, “peoples” are one since those are just a.k.a.s for Rephaim.
Incoherently, he adds, “Moses’s retrospective discourse replaces the giant grapes from the Valley of Eshkol with ordinary fruit: ‘And they came to the Valley of Eshkol, and they reconnoitered it, and they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and they brought it…’” but “replaces” from whereabouts? There is nowhere that “giant grapes” are referenced so this is not a case of replacing, it is just a case of narrating the events and doing so once.
In Deuteronomy 9:1–3, we read, “you are going to cross the Jordan today to go in and dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, with great cities fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the children of the Anakim” for which Hendel’s takeaway is, “Moses takes up this description of the indigenous giants again in his exhortation to Israel” but the only “description” was “tall.”
He goes on to write, “Moses’s original discourse in Deuteronomy does not address the giant Anakim outside of these two passages” but he does not even really address the “giant Anakim” at all, just the subjectively tall Anakim.
Note Hendel’s wording as he refers to, “information about the giants of Transjordan in Deut 2:10–11, 20–21, and 3:11, correlating their fate with the Anakim” and then quoting, “The Emim lived there previously, a people great and many, and tall like the Anakim. They were accounted as Rephaim, like the Anakim, but the Moabites called them Emim. (Deut 2:10–11).”
Well, of course they are correlated: they are, in essence, one in the same since Emim are Rephaim and Rephaim are Emim directly while Anakim are Rephaim in terms of a tribe’s clan.
Likewise with when he goes on to quote, “Rephaim lived there before them, but the Ammonites called them Zamzumim, a people great and many, and tall like the Anakim…(Deut 2:20–21).”
Well, of course they are correlated: they are, in essence, one in the same since Zamzumim are Rephaim and Rephaim are Zamzumim directly—etc.
Yet, Hendel goes on to write, of “the Emim and the Zamzummim” as if they are distinct peoples.
Hendel comes close to discerning this when he writes, “The ethnonyms of the giants of Transjordan are arranged according to place: Rephaim in Bashan, Zamzummim in Ammon, and Emim in Moab.”
Yet, it is a case of close but no cigar, as they used to say, since it is more of a case that the ethnonyms of the Rephaim of Transjordan are arranged according to place: Rephaim in Bashan, Zamzummim in Ammon, and Emim in Moab.
So as to example the ongoing problem with multiple usage of the term giants without informing the reader along the way, he then tells us, “Israel’s Transjordanian neighbors conquered their own giants” which giants? He continues that sentence directly with, “the only divine agent named is Yhwh (2:21), yielding a causality that conforms to Deuteronomy’s ‘Yhwh alone’ theology. There is no Milcom (the chief god of Ammon) in this representation of the conquest of the Zamzummim.”
But Milcom is a disembodied entity and thus, not a giant and, again the Zamsummim are the Repahim (Milcom is either a demon in, thin, disguise or just a made-up non-entity).
He then moves from that to that he considers, “The aside about King Og of Bashan…curious” and states outright, “There is no hint in Numbers that Og is a giant, nor in the Deuteronomic account of his defeat in 3:1–10.” Well, there is no hint anywhere that Og was subjectively unusually tall (yet, some assert that the hint is tucked in to his bed). The biblically accurate way to interpret giant here is that there is more than a hint, since we have an outright statement, that Og was a Repha.
Yet, Hendel is fixated on that, “Og’s bed, which is on display for actual viewing…appeals to empirical facts as evidence for the extraordinary size of this conquered giant.”
He even add the odd statement, “His iron bed is roughly 13.5 feet long and 6 feet wide – the size of a giant” but whence did he get such a notion of any normative “size of a giant” in the first place.
He seems to be engaged in circular reasoning: he comes to that conclusion based on merely assuming that the bed’s size is correlatable to Og’s size and then standardizing Og’s size to represent “the size of a giant.”
Hendel notes, “The Israelite conquest of the giants resumes when Joshua destroys the Anakim in the land of Israel in Josh 11” which states, “No Anakim remained in the land of the children of Israel.” So, we can read Hendel a, “conquest of the subjectively unusually “tall”—by unknown margins” or as, “conquest of the Anakim.”
Since he is not chasing down the Anakim, he refers to, “David and his men slaying four Philistine giants, including a certain Goliath” wherein, of course, “giants” are “Rephaim.”
Goliath was a Gathite, Philistine, Anakite, Rephite: Gathite as a resident of the city of Gath, Philistine due to living in the region of Philistia, Anakite due to his clan, and Rephite due to this tribe.
He notes, “The floating terms for the giants among these texts, from Amos to Joshua, seems to indicate differing ethnographies.” Yet, none of the term are floating as loftily and wildly high as giants, which is constantly being tossed to and fro by every wind of hot air tall-tale telling.
Since he has been formulating a narrative, and is then circuitously applying it to his narrative, he writes, “The common denominator is that the giants…were destroyed…the giants are dead. This seems to be a resonance of the terms nəpīlîm, Nephilim, lit. ‘fallen ones,’ and rəpāʾîm, Rephaim, elsewhere denoting the spirits of the dead, and probably also ʾēmîm (Emim, lit. ‘terrors’) and zamzummîm, Zamzummim, lit. ‘whisperers’). They once were giants, but now they sleep in the dust…The mighty giants are now only a memory.”
But by that (il)logic, absolutely any people group that “were destroyed…are dead…sleep in the dust…are now only a memory” can be correlated to Nephilim. And well, sure they can but only within the context that all are now “destroyed…dead…in the dust…memory” and nothing more.
Hendel then loops all the way back to, the beginning, “Is there a back-story for these giants? Genesis 6:1–4 offers one answer – they are descended from the sexual mingling of divine males and human females, who gave birth to the Nephilim, the ‘heroes of old,’ who then (somehow) survived the flood to become the indigenous giants of Canaan and Transjordan.”
This is well trodden ground, and we found no giant footprints impressed upon that ground—even if such tall-tales are impressive.
So, here we go again, “these giants” to which he has been referring were Rephaim, by any other name (sans the name Nephilim, of course) thus, there is no indication that “these giants” have anything at all to do with Genesis 6 and so not that they descended from such mingling—recall: not even if we actually accept the evil report in other than LXX form.
Also, Hendel has Nephilim (somehow) surviving the flood—meaning God failed—and then with a simple (unbiblical) switcheroo of names, were no longer called Nephilim, for another unknown reason, but were called various other terms. Well, there is literally no indication of any such a thing—nor, of course, that they did not survive but returned, in some unknown but sci-fi spiked exciting manner.
Hendel then follows his loop back to that, as per William Robertson Smith, “The giant-legends no doubt arose in part from the contemplation of ancient ruins of great works and supposed gigantic tombs.”[3]
Hendel writes, “I would emphasize that such an act of collective “contemplation” takes us into the realm of mnemohistory, where imagination, physical realia, traditional lore, and social norms are linked in a creative dialectic.” And I, in turn, my dear readers, would emphasize that such an act of collective tall-taleing takes us into the realm of mnemo-neo-theo-sci-fi, where imagination, physical realia, traditional lore, and social norms are linked in a creative—yet, unbiblical (and un-historical and un-logical) dialectic.
The tale continues hereafter my a cacophonous concoction of all things mysterious, wild, and tall, “giants are creatures of otherness” and “awesome superhuman other,” whose vast size and strength instill fear and anxiety. Gods in the ancient Levant tend to be, in Mark Smith’s term, ‘supersized,’” because, after all, who want an unremarkable God who manifests, incarnates, in such a way that He exhibits, “no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2)?
Continuing, Hendel makes an interesting point, “Foreign peoples can also be giants, objectifying the otherness and angst that foreigners evoke.” Note that this denotes a case of xenophobically referring to foreigners as giants not due to identifying a particular characteristic of their physiques but in order to objectify their otherness. Thus, we have admission here that, as I have variously noted, arguing thusly, “The word giants is used ergo, they were subjectively unusually tall” is just a simple case of a word-concept fallacy.
Hendel also, refreshingly, refers to, “this usage” such as like I have variously emphasized the difference between meaning(s) or definition(s) vs. usage(s).
What he stated is, “In this usage, gigantic size can be a sign of the subhuman or uncultured other, peoples outside the norms of civilization.” Just to be extra-clear, I will re-write that thusly, “In this usage, that of supposed and/or metaphorical and/or caricatured gigantic size…”
Hendel appeals to “the ‘Satirical Letter’ from the Egyptian New Kingdom [1570-1544 BC], the fierce Shasu tribesmen of Palestine are larger than life: ‘The narrow path is infested by Shasu who hide in the scrub; some of them are four or five cubits tall from head to toe…”
He emphasizes Satirical due to his context of xenophobia making giants out of nothing to do with height. Thus, he refers to, “The giant foreigners – some up to 7.5 feet tall – are fierce, humorless, and barely civilized. They exemplify chaos…”
He then applies that thusly, “The giants in biblical memory are also foreigners…, with the qualification that they reside solely in the past,” according to his hypothesis regarding textual issues, “Since Israel was aware that it was a latecomer in the ancient Near East, the giants serve as a place-holder for this past era…the death of the giants is the narrative event that enables Israel’s inheritance of the land.”
This line of argumentation can only be applied to the evil report since it is only there were we see foreigners being described being of “great stature” and large enough to make the unreliable spies seem like grasshoppers.
Thus, this has been very much ado about not very much: a huge circumlocution to elucidate one single verse.
Hendel sets out on another circuitous rote by continuing with that, “The memory of the giants is often, as Robertson Smith observed, stimulated by great ruins in the land. As Simon Schama writes in Landscape and Memory, the landscape is always a work of interpretation, ‘built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.’”[4]
Hendel emphasizes that, “the rocks themselves are arguably…conjuring stories of ancient giants” but made-up stories or real stories? Well, he called it, “signifiers of memory” but actual memory or time plus tall-tale spiked memory such as that which evidencelessly turned Nephilim and Og into giants even in the face of no reliable physical description of either?
As he did before, he lists off such memory markers, “fields of dolmens and other megalithic structures in Transjordan…fortifications in Palestine” and adds the important qualifier, “the great Middle Bronze fortifications were built for defense and prestige.” So now, if fortifications were for prestige, then we cannot rightly take a measuring rod to them and assert that we can learn anything about the height of those who built them thereby.
Yet, he seems to want to set aside such considerations, even whilst stumbling into them in the manner of a moment of clarity, as he tells us, “The original function of these structures, however, does not concern us here; rather, we are concerned with their role in the mnemohistory of the giants.” Fair enough, I suppose, let us forgo mundane elucidations of a phenomena and chase after giants but then, why forgo mundane elucidations of a phenomena and chase after giants but for the sake of neo-theo-sci-fi-tall-tales and/or to elucidate how such ancient-theo-sci-fi-tall-tales originated?
Continuing along the long lines of such “massive architectural works,” he notes, “Hebron, where Moses sent the spies,” which featured, “cyclopean walls” (referring to walls “of the polygonal type known as cyclopean”). These consisted of boulders, “often six feet or more in length…walls constructed from them could be thirty or more feet in height.”
Hendel notes, “To the Israelites living here, the massive walls of Hebron must have seemed … cyclopean. Surely, they were built by giants – Anakim, Nephilim, or Amorites, in their shifting ethnonyms. The idea that giants built the walls of Hebron is indicated by the spies’ report. The city, the inhabitants, and even the fruit was gigantic. As Moses recounts their report: ‘It is a people greater and taller than us, and great cities fortified up to heaven’ (Deut 1:28)” (ellipses in original).
Now, I want to be chronologically careful about this: sure, they must have seemed cyclopean yet, (here is where the chronology come into play):
The Israelites living there had Caleb and Joshua who had known Egypt.
The Israelites living there had Moses’ records of Egypt.
The Israelites living there would have had plenty of cultural memories of Egypt as they were told and retold by the generation that did not make it into the land.
Thus, they must have seemed cyclopean yet, the logical reaction would (or should) have been, “Big deal! There was much, much, much bigger pyramids and such structures in Egypt but no one ever saw any giants around.”
They also would have known about the evil report and the utterly unreliable nature of the evil reporters who promulgated a tall-tale.
They would have also been aware of common parlance such as Moses’, “great cities fortified up to heaven” line (whether it was his own hyperbolic accent to the tale of a previously unrecorded portion of the as is or evil reports).
Oddly, Hendel notes, “This ancient concept is still reflected in the archaeological terminology that describes these structures as cyclopean” which may be fair enough but, then again, we might as well assert that such structures have something to do with having one single eye. In short, what Western academics decided to term such structures based on their knowledge of Greek mythology only tell us what Western academics decided to term such structures based on their knowledge of Greek mythology.
More specifically, “This term stems from ancient Greek memories…According to Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.16.5 (trans. Jones): ‘the city wall [of Mycenae], including the gate…are said to be the work of the Cyclopes, who made for Proetus the wall at Tiryns.’ The Cyclopes who built these walls were giants, offspring of Gaia and Ouranos, who had enormous strength but a single eye. They are giant Others, superhuman in strength.’”
Interestingly, as noted elsewhere in this book, the LXX has Nephilim as gigantes which means earth-born as in born of Gaia and Ouranos. Speaking of cultural memories, it is interesting that the Genesis 6 affair was between sons of God (fallen) from heaven and women of Earth. Greek mythology puts this as Ouranos mating with Gaia: Ouranos, representing the sky, mating with Gaia, representing the Earth.
Yet, before jumping much too excitedly from Nephilim were called gigantes ergo, they were GIANT TITANS!!! Let us break this down a few different ways:
There was not just one generation of the mating of Ouranos and Gaia and the generations varied quite a bit.
There is no reason to think that just because anonymous translators and renderers of the Hebrew into Greek had any sort of special insight—much less that they were attempting to impart such an insight via the rendering of one word.
Also, recall that, for some unknown yet flummoxing reason(s), the LXX renderers (and rendering is what they were doing in this case, most certainly something nowhere even close to translating) had Nephilim as gigantes but also Rephaim as gigantes.
But, just when some are ready to declare Rephaim were called gigantes ergo, they were GIANT TITANS!!!
They also rendered gibborim as gigantes but just when some are ready to yell gibborim were called gigantes ergo, they were GIANT TITANS!!! We must note that gibborim, in and of itself, cannot (certainly not necessarily) refer to height of any sort since it is just a descriptive term referring to might/mighty.
Pop-researchers do tend to speak of the Gibborim as if it refers to a people group but such is simply not the case—not a people group. Certainly, many people groups can be described as being gibborim/mighty but that tells us about a characteristic that has nothing to do with height.
In fact, those who insist on insisting that gibborim were called gigantes ergo, they were GIANT TITANS!!! Will have to, by their own (il)logic, have to conclude that Angels are giants, Nimrod was a giant, some of David’s soldiers were giants, Boaz was a giant, etc., oh, and God is a giant since they, et al., are all referred to as gibbor/im (Genesis 10:8; Psalm 103:20; Ruth 2:1; 1 Chronicles 11:11; and Isaiah 9:6).
To Hendel, this is about that, “our terminology retains the ancient memory that these massive stone walls were built by giants…the Israelites would have readily assented. The connection between the cyclopean walls of Hebron and the biblical representation of Hebron as a city of giants seems self-evident.
The built landscape of Hebron is the imagined backdrop of the spies’ report, and the cyclopean walls are visual testimony to the ancient giants in the land.”
Yet, if “the Israelites would have readily assented,” even in the face of the knowledge of the evil report and its repercussions, and, “a city of giants” having been, “self-evident” of, “giants in the land” they did not, actually, view nor term Hebron a city of giants, that is just Hendel’s eisegetically inserting his narrative and (mis)speaking for them. It was a city of Rephaim or Anakim or various other terms, none of which even imply anything about height whatsoever.
Hendel writes of, “the Rephaim, whom the Ammonites call Zamzummim and the Moabites call Emim” in relation to, “stone structures: dolmens, standing stones (maṣṣēbôt), stone circles, and stone alignments…megalithic landscapes…ceremonial landscape…stone structures” and a particular dolmen that features, “a capstone nine feet long and eight feet wide” along with that, “Their capstones range in size from roughly three to eleven feet in length and two to ten feet in width, with most in the middle range (ca. six feet by three feet) and some larger outliers.”
That was meant to, for some reason, reiterate (again and again) that, “the megaliths of Transjordan were viewed by Iron Age peoples as the work of the giant Rephaim”—Rephaim Rephaim—“in European folklore in what we may call an ethnographic parallel, dolmens are widely attributed to giants” (both as per Paul Karge).[5]
Interestingly, he now tells us, “These dolmens are often identified as giants’ beds, tables, or tombs…In Sardinia, similar megalithic structures are called the Tombe dei Giganti.” Thus, there is no reason to think that they were giants’ beds, tables, or tombs but were misinterpreted or folklorized as giants’ beds, tables, or tombs.
He provides us with this example (“Dolmen west of Heshbon (PEF-P-4080, photo by Alfred M. Mantell, courtesy of the
Palestine Exploration Fund)”), “with a six-foot tall ʾAdwān sheikh alongside for perspective”:
Where is the pillow?
One need not appeal to cultural memories but simply to how many times one can say, “Look, it’s a pile of rocks” that marks thus and such, until one begins to say, “A giant is buried beneath it!!!!” (that adds a layer of mystique, does it not?) or “A giant sleeps on it!!! (so, kids, don’t go out there at night), etc. This may come as a shock but before television and the interweb machines, people actually talked and told and retold and re-retold tales—accreting as they went.
Hendel tells us, “In the Bible, dolmens are not mentioned” but perhaps that is precisely what it is doing with regards to Og’s bed—employed ritualistically or merely decoratively. In fact, he notes, that Karge, “proposed that the famous bed of Og of Bashan, the last of the Rephaim, was probably a dolmen in Rabbat-Ammon.”
Looping around to subjects again (and again) as he does, Hendel writes, “I think that this background for Og’s bed is attractive, the adjective ‘iron’ (barzel) for a dolmen is a problem – one would expect ‘stone’ (ʾeben) or ‘flint’ (ṣōr)” yet, of course, we have already covered this ground—we get it, the bed was ironic.
He then gets around to that, “Hübner and Lindquist argue that Og’s bed is modeled after Marduk’s large bed, which was encrusted with gold and jewels and located in the holy chamber of Etemenanki, the ziggurat of Babylon.”[6]
We are then taken back to, “large dolmens…in the imagined landscape of ancient giants…legendary topography…Megalaiths…cyclopean…to premodern eyes, signified the past existence of giants – Anakim, Nephilim, Rephaim, and others.”
I will re-reiterate, “the past existence of giants”: Anakim who were subjectively “tall,” Nephilim for whom we have no reliable physical description, Rephaim who were subjectively “tall” (and well, whoever the others were) so, what happened to, “the past existence of giants”?
Hendel continues arguing, “The giants were no longer seen, since they were long dead, but the ruins of their mighty works were striking features of the landscape” which he writes as if after seeing the size of King Solomon’s Temple, a generation after it was built Israelites would have assumed that it was built by giants.
He even insists, “These memory-stones point to mighty figures and forces of the past that shaped the worldview of ancient Israel” but then why, pray tell, is there hardly a single word in the whole Bible about any such giants—even if we stretch them as we might in order to get them to be or seem gigantic?
If I had to argue his point, I would do so thusly (but would have to admit that admit that I was basing this upon one single verse about one single instance): witnessing that, “the cities are fortified and very large” resulted in the identification of the city builders and dwellers as, “Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
Yet, this would not only myopic but a watered-down statement that leaves out key features of the narrative—the stuff of which neo-theo-sci-fi-tall-tales are made: ignore key features, emphasize juicy aspects, and throw in vague and undefined terms such as giants.
As Hendel puts it, “Compared to them, and to their cyclopean monuments, the Iron Age inhabitants must have seemed in their own eyes like grasshoppers.”
Hendel’s conclusion focuses on how he, “focused on the biblical representations of giants,” even while we still await even one single actual reference to any such personage.
And he makes my ongoing point for me, again, by following that statement with, “The idea that ancient giants inhabited Canaan and Transjordan was inferable from the cyclopean walls of Hebron and other sites, including Gath, home of the last giants” even when that is to be, biblically, read as, “ancient Rephaim inhabited Canaan and Transjordan…Gath, home of the last Rephaim” with the only indication of anything to do with height being, “tall” compared to 5.0-5.3 ft. Yet, Hendel re-re-reiterates, “the giants – Anakim, Nephilim, Rephaim, etc.”
He notes, “Josephus mentions huge bones on display in Hebron as further testimony to the local giants.” Yet, there is no indication he saw any such bones, he only notes that they are on display. And even if he saw them, he was not an anatomist so would not know if he was looking at the huge (another vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage, and undefined term) bones of whales, dinosaurs, pachyderm, etc. (see one of the appendices of my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology).
Speaking of huge, he tells us that, “the indigenous Canaanites were…huge” yet, “compared to the Israelites” bingo!
He adds, “monstrous barbarism…the giants are foreign and primordial ‘others’…frightening creatures” and that, “In historical terms, these claims are mostly fictive” and yet, that which is mostly fictive, by orders of magnitude, is his (mis)handling of this entire topic.
He goes on to references, “the role of the giants in the conquest and in the formation of Israel’s collective identity” but then why, pray tell, in all of the biblical records of battles and even hand-to-hand combat do we only get a mere two specified heights: just shy of 7 ft. and 7.5 ft.?
Sadly, as he nears the end of his paper he merely emphasizes his generic and aggrandized misunderstandings of this topic with phrases that are all-encompassing as, “the very nature of the giants…they are fallen ones, spirits of the dead, whispering and terrible….dead spirits.”
Thus, overall, as noted, this has been an example of how poor Nephilology from academe is what trickles down to pop-research who glean from it and then make it even worse by peppering it with neo-theo-sci-fi atop ancient-the-sci-fi.
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This review was of Ronald Hendel, “The Landscape of Memory: Giants and the Conquest of Canaan” in, Collective Identity and Collective Memory: Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History in Their Context (eds., Johannes U. Ro and Diana Edelman, BZAW 534 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 263-88).
You can find my various Nephilology and giantology books here.
Hendel’s notes:
[1] “Saxo Grammaticus. 2015. Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Edited by Karsten Friis-Jenson. Translated by Peter Fisher. Oxford: Clarendon, p. 19”
[2] “Wright, G. Ernest. 1938. “Troglodytes and Giants in Palestine.” JBL 57:305–9”
[3] “…from an unpublished letter written by William Roberston-Smith to Samuel R. Driver and cited in Dozeman, Thomas B. 2015. Joshua 1–12. AB 6B. New Haven: Yale University Press. Driver, Samuel R. 1895. Deuteronomy. ICC. Edinburgh: Clark, p. 40.”
[4] “Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and Memory. New York: Random House.”
[5] “Karge, Paul. 1917. Rephaim: Die vorgeschichtliche Kultur Palästinas und Phöniziens. Archäologische und religionsgeschichtliche Studien. Paderborn: Schöningh.”
[6] “Hübner, Ulrich. 1993. “Og von Baschan und sein Bett in Rabbat Ammon (Deuteronomium 3,11).” ZAW 105:86–92.”