GILGAL RAF'IM
STAR CALENDAR
IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS
Dee Finney's blog
start date July 20, 2011
today's date August 23, 2014
page 733
TOPIC: KING OG, GOLAN HEIGHTS - THE EASTERN
STAR CALENDAR
KING OG
KING OG BED
Og, ("gigantic"; Hebrew: עוֹגֿ, ʿog ˈʕoːɡ; Arabic: عوج, cogh [ʕoːɣ])
according to the Bible, was an Amorite king
of Bashan who,
along with his army, was slain by Moses and
his men at the battle of Edrei.
In Arabic literature he is referred to as ‘Uj
ibn Anaq (‘Ûj ibn ‘Anâq عوج
بن عنق).
Og is mentioned in
Jewish literature as being alive from the time of Noah up
until the time of his death in battle with the Israelites. It is also
written in the Midrash that
he had a special compartment in Noah's
Ark just for him. Aggadah suggests
an alternative to this; that he sat upon the top of the ark, riding out the
flood for the duration of the storm from this location.
Og is introduced in the Book
of Numbers. Like his neighbor Sihon of Heshbon,
whom Moses had previously conquered at the battle of Jahaz he
was an Amorite king,
the ruler of Bashan,
which contained sixty walled cities and many unwalled towns, with his
capital at Ashtaroth (probably modern Tell
Ashareh, where there still exists a 70-foot mound).
The Book
of Numbers, Chapter 21, and Deuteronomy,
Chapter 3, continues:
-
-
-
"Next we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, and Og
king of Bashan with his whole army marched out to meet us in
battle at Edrei." Moses speaks: "The LORD said to me, "Do not be
afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you with his whole
army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the
Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon ... So the LORD our God also
gave into our hands Og king of Bashan and all his army. We
struck them down, leaving no survivors." ... "At that time we
took all his cities, there was not one of the sixty cities that
we did not take from them—the whole region of Argob, Og's
kingdom in Bashan ... destroying every city, men, women and
children ... But all the livestock and the plunder from their
cities we carried off for ourselves."
Og's destruction is
told in Psalms 135:11 and 136:20 as one of many great victories for the
nation of Israel, and the book
of Amos 2:9 may refer to Og
as "the Amorite" whose height was like the height of the cedars and
whose strength was like the oaks.
King Og
WRITTEN BY: CK QUARTERMAN -
AUG• 15•11
Rephaim
King Og
of Bashan his
Genealogy
In the book
of Deuteronomy, the Rephaim are identified as exceedingly tall,
Giants.Deuteronomy
1.28 relates that
there were Giants who were resident in the area, calledAnakim,
who lived there before theIsraeliteconquest,
and who were discovered by the Israelite spies sent by Moses to
scout out the land.
Deuteronomy 2.11 considers
the Anakim to be Rephaim. In addition, Deuteronomy holds that Israel’s
neighbouring countries were also inhabited by races of Rephaim
before being settled by their human inhabitants. So, Deut.
2.11-12 and 20-21 describe
Giants living in Moab and Ammon –
called ”Emim”
and “Zamzummim”
(to buzz)– who also lived there before the Moabites and
Ammonites respectively, and who are also referred to as Rephaim. The
description of the Anakim in Deut.
1.28 seems to reflect
the parallel account in
Numbers 13.28b, 33.
Yet Num.
13.33 adds the
additional information that these Anakim were “from
the Nephilim”. Nephilim by the way is technically
(correctly) pronounced “nepheeleem.”
This description links to Genesis
6.1-4, the only other place in the Old
Testament where the
Nephilim are mentioned, and which describes the descent of these
mysterious Angelic creatures, Nephilim or “sons of god(s)”, to
earth, where they interbred with the “daughters of men”, producing
“mighty men” of ancient times.
Another possibility is that King
Og was considered the offspring not directly of Nephilim, but of
other Rephaim. Passages such as Num.
13.28 and Josh.
15.13-14 describe
lineages of Anakim (who Deuteronomy consider to be Rephaim), which
suggests that they were thought of as having families of their own
following the initial sexual intercourse between the “sons of god”
and human women. If this is the case, Deut.
3.11a might indicate
that King Og was the last of a genealogy of rulers which ultimately
claim an Angelic father who mated with a human mother: “only King Og
of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim”. Perhaps it merely
means that King Og was the last of his kind? Again, this is not
entirely clear.
Related articles
By (author): CK
Quarterman
One of the most fascinating and strategic topics in
ancient texts is the record of fallen angels, giants,
and UFO s. Fallen angels and giants are shrouded in
mystery and belong to the age of pyramids and other
great wonders of the world. It is an epoch that was
destroyed by God s judgment, a flood, which left the
world everlastingly changed, the evidence of which is
found in the tales, folklore, and traditions of many
cultures around the world. 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 ( Genesis
6:4). This vivid language defines the conspiracy of
evil which has beset our world. The ancient books, Enoch
and Jubilees, tell us of a race of nephilim, which are
hybrids, alive in history and today, fathered by fallen
angels. Strange as this may seem, the Lord declares that
this conspiracy of evil is to be repeated before His
return. Consequently, it is important from the
standpoint of both understanding history and
understanding the future that we understand these
events. The world is in a slumber, asleep with the dream
of a better tomorrow. While dark forces of fallen angels
are arrayed against us, many today write about the
approaching juggernaut of the apocalypse and well they
should! Few, however, know or understand that fallen
angels have brought us to this apocalypse, this apex of
human history. The end of the world as we know it is
about to take place. A storm is gathering, so terrible
as to cause men s hearts to fail them for fear; we must
not approach this coming apocalypse unaware and unarmed. |
Og and the Rephaim
Some see Rujm
el-Hiri, dating from the third Millennium BC in the Golan
Heights, as a source for legends about "a remnant of the
giants" for Og.
In
Deut. 3:11 and later in the book of Numbers and Joshua, Og is pronounced as
the last of the
Rephaim. Rephaim is a Hebrew word
for giants.
Deut. 3:11 declares that his "bedstead" (translated in some texts as
"sarcophagus") of iron is "nine cubits in
length and four cubits in width", which is 13.5 ft by 6 ft according to the
standard cubit of a man.
It
goes on to say that at the royal city of Rabbah of
the Ammonites,
his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty at the time the
narrative was written. If the giant king's bedstead was built in proportion
to his size as most beds are, he may have been between 9 to 13 feet in
height. However, later Rabbinic
tradition has it, that the
length of his bedstead was measured with the cubits of Og himself. The
Talmud further embellishes in
fantastic detail that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of the
Israelites by uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the
entire Israelite encampment. Moses, fulfilling the LORD's injunction not to
fear him, seized a spear of ten cubits length, and jumped a similar vertical
distance, succeeding in stabbing Og in the ankle.
The LORD then caused Og's teeth to lengthen until they grew into the
mountain he held aloft; millions of ants then swarmed into his mouth,
killing him. It is noteworthy that the
region north of the river
Jabbok, or Bashan,
"the land of Rephaim", contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen) dating
from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav
Dalman discovered in the
neighborhood of Amman Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah
of Ammon) a noteworthy dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of
Og's bed as described in the Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom
seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these
megaliths are to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron,
where the giant sons of Anak were
said to have lived (Numbers 13:33).
Og in
non-Biblical inscriptions
A reference to "Og" appears in a Phoenician
inscription from Byblos (Byblos 13) published in 1974 by Wolfgang Rölling in
"Eine neue phoenizische Inschrift aus Byblos," (Neue Ephemeris für
Semitische Epigraphik, vol 2, 1-15 and plate 1). It appears in a damaged
7-line funerary inscription that Rölling dates to around 500 BC, and appears
to say that if someone disturbs the bones of the occupant, "the mighty Og
will avenge me."
A possible connection
to Og and the Rephaim kings of Bashan can also be made with the much older
Canaanite Ugaritic text KTU 1.108 from the 13th century B.C., which uses the
term "king" in association with the root /rp/ or "Rapah" (the Rephaim of the
Bible) and geographic place names that probably correspond to the cities of
Ashtaroth and Edrei in the Bible, and with which king Og is expressly said
to have ruled from (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 9:10; 12:4; 13:12, 31). The clay
tablet from Ugarit KTU 1.108 reads in
whole, "May Rapiu, King of Eternity, drink [w]ine, yea, may he drink, the
powerful and noble [god], the god enthroned in Ashtarat, the god who rules
in Edrei, whom men hymn and honour with music on the lyre and the flute, on
drum and cymbals, with castanets of ivory, among the goodly companions of
Kothar. And may Anat the power<ful> drink, the mistress of kingship, the
mistress of dominion, the mistress of the high heavens, [the mistre]ss of
the earth."
"Ogias the Giant"
The 2nd century BC apocryphal book
"Ogias
the Giant" or "The Book
of Giants" depicts the adventures of a giant named Ogias who fought a
great dragon, and who was supposedly either identical with the Biblical Og
or was Og's father.
The book enjoyed
considerable currency for several centuries, especially due to having been
taken up by the Manichaeanreligion.
Hurtaly
In
"Pantagruel", Rabelais lists Hurtaly (a
version of Og) as one of Pantagruel's ancestors. He describes Hurtaly as
sitting astride the Ark, saving it from shipwreck by
guiding it with his feet as the grateful Noah and his family feed him
through the chimney.
Literature
- Kosman, Admiel:
"The Story of a Giant Story - The Winding Way of Og King of Bashan in
the Jewish Aggadic Tradition", in: HUCA 73, (2002) pp. 157–190.
See also
References
-
Jump up^ Talmud
Bavli Zabahim 113b; Pirkei D’Rebbi Eliezer (Heigar) “Chorev” Ch. 23 ד"ה
וזה אשר תעשה; Yalkut Shimoni, Torah, Parashas Noach, Remez 55 ד"ה זכר
ונקבה יהיו; Yalkut Shimoni, Torah, Parashas Noach, Remez 56 ד"ה ד"א ויהי
לשבעת; Yalkut Shimoni, Job, Remez 926 ד"ה +לט+ התקשר רים. These sources
were found using Bar Ilan CD.
-
Jump up^ From
Og's Circle to the Wise Observatory, Yuval
Ne'eman, Tel
Aviv University
-
Jump up^ Talmud
Bavli: Berachot 54b
-
Jump up^ Werner
Keller Bible As a History 1995,
Page 153 ISBN
1566198011, 9781566198011
-
Jump up^ Wyatt,
N. (2002). Religious
texts from Ugarit - 2nd Edition. Sheffield Academic Press.
pp. 395–396. ISBN 0-8264-6048-8.
The Gilgal is the Israeli Stonehenge. The structure is composed of over
40,000 stones that are arranged in 4 circles. It is quite big – the
diameter of the outer circle is about 150 meters/490 feet. The site is
estimated to be 5,000 years old.
Og, according to the Holy
Bible, was an Amorite king
of Bashanwho,
along with his army, was slain by Moses and
his men at the battle of Edrei.
Og is mentioned in Jewish folklore as being alive
from the time of Noah up until the time of his death in battle with the Israelites.
It is also written in the Midrash that
he had a special compartment in Noah’s Ark just for him.Aggadah suggests
an alternative to this; that he sat upon the top of the ark, riding out the
flood for the duration of the storm from this location.
I reject that Og survived the flood by any means
due to the following passage of Scripture:
-
Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your
household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this
generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and
his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his
mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female,
to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven
days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and
every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the
ground.”
(Genesis 7:1-4 ESV)
God clearly stated, “For in seven days I will
send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing
that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground” (Genesis 7:4).
When studying the Sons
of God and the Nephilim,
it is apparent that “Nephilim were on the earth before the flood, and
also afterward. (Genesis 6:4).
-
When man began to multiply on the face of the
land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the
daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they
chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever,
for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The
Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward,
when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore
children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of
renown.
(Genesis 6:1-4 ESV)
The Holy Bible is silent on how the Sons of God were established after the
flood. Many apocryphal books and commentaries deal with this question, I
will not however, as I do not believe speculation should be included in any
serious Bible study.
Og is introduced in the Book
of Numbers. Like his neighbor Sihon of Heshbon,
whom Moses had previously conquered at the battle of Jahaz he
was an Amorite king,
the ruler of Bashan,
which contained sixty walled cities and many unwalled towns, with his
capital at Ashtaroth where there still exists a 70-foot mound.
Th Book of Deuteronomy says, “Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan.
And Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to
battle at Edrei. But the LORD said to me, ‘Do not fear him, for I have given
him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you shall do to him
as you did to Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.’ So the
LORD our God gave into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his
people, and we struck him down until he had no survivor left. And we took
all his cities at that time–there was not a city that we did not take from
them–sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides
very many unwalled villages. And we devoted them to destruction, as we did
to Sihon the king of Heshbon, devoting to destruction every city, men,
women, and children. But all the livestock and the spoil of the cities we
took as our plunder” (Deuteronomy 3:1-7 ESV).
Og’s destruction is told in Psalms 135:8-12 and
136:2-22 as one of many great victories for the nation of Israel, and the Book
of Amos 2:9-10 may refer to Og as “the
Amorite” whose height was like the height of the cedars and
whose strength was like the oaks.
-
He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and of
beast; who in your midst, O Egypt, sent signs and wonders against
Pharaoh and all his servants; who struck down many nations and killed
mighty kings, Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and
all the kingdoms of Canaan, and gave their land as a heritage, a
heritage to his people Israel.
(Psalms 135:8-12 ESV)
-
Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures
forever; to him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love
endures forever; to him who by understanding made the heavens, for his
steadfast love endures forever; to him who spread out the earth above
the waters, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who made the
great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever; the sun to rule
over the day, for his steadfast love endures forever; the moon and stars
to rule over the night, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him
who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, for his steadfast love endures
forever; and brought Israel out from among them, for his steadfast love
endures forever; with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, for his
steadfast love endures forever; to him who divided the Red Sea in two,
for his steadfast love endures forever; and made Israel pass through the
midst of it, for his steadfast love endures forever; but overthrew
Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, for his steadfast love endures
forever; to him who led his people through the wilderness, for his
steadfast love endures forever; to him who struck down great kings, for
his steadfast love endures forever; and killed mighty kings, for his
steadfast love endures forever; Sihon, king of the Amorites, for his
steadfast love endures forever; and Og, king of Bashan, for his
steadfast love endures forever; and gave their land as a heritage, for
his steadfast love endures forever; a heritage to Israel his servant,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
(Psalms 136:2-22 ESV)
-
“Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was
like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I
destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. Also it was I who
brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the
wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.
(Amos 2:9-10 ESV)
In Deuteronomy 3:11 and later in the Book
of Numbers and Book
of Joshua, Og is pronounced as the last of
the Rephaim.
Deuteronomy 3:11 declares that his “bedstead” (translated in some texts as
“sarcophagus”) of iron is “nine cubits in
length and four cubits in width” (13.5 ft x 6 ft) according to the standard
cubit of a man. It goes on to say that at the royal city of Rabbah of
the Ammonites,
his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty at the time the
narrative was written. If the giant king’s bedstead was built in proportion
to his size as most beds are, he may have been between 9 to 13 feet in
height. However, later Rabbinic
tradition has it, that the length of his
bedstead was measured with the cubits of Og himself. The
Talmud further embellishes in fantastic detail
that Og was so large that he sought the destruction of the Israelites by
uprooting a mountain so large, that it would have crushed the entire
Israelite encampment. Moses, fulfilling the LORD’s injunction not to fear
him, seized a spear of ten cubits length, and jumped a similar vertical
distance, succeeding in stabbing Og in the ankle.
The LORD then caused Og’s teeth to lengthen until they grew into the
mountain he held aloft; millions of ants then swarmed into his mouth,
killing him. It is noteworthy that the region north of the River
Jabbok, or Bashan,
“the land of Rephaim”, contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen) dating
from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav
Dalman discovered in the neighborhood of Amman
Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah of Ammon) a noteworthy
dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of Og’s bed as described in
the Holy Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan
river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths are to be found
in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron,
where the giant sons of Anak were
said to have lived (Numbers 13:33)
-
(For only Og the king of Bashan was left of
the remnant of the Rephaim.
Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of
the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth,
according to the common cubit.)
(Deuteronomy 3:11 ESV)
-
And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the
Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we
seemed to them.”
(Numbers 13:33 ESV)
-
Now these are the kings of the land whom the people of Israel defeated
and took possession of their land beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise,
from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon, with all the Arabah
eastward: Sihon king of the Amorites who lived at Heshbon and ruled from
Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and from the
middle of the valley as far as the river Jabbok, the boundary of the
Ammonites, that is, half of Gilead, and the Arabah to the Sea of
Chinneroth eastward, and in the direction of Beth-jeshimoth, to the Sea
of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, southward to the foot of the slopes of
Pisgah; and Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who
lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei and ruled over Mount Hermon and Salecah
and all Bashan to the boundary of the Geshurites and the Maacathites,
and over half of Gilead to the boundary of Sihon king of Heshbon.
(Joshua 12:1-5 ESV)
-
Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, “You
are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to
possess. This is the land that yet remains: all the regions of the
Philistines, and all those of the Geshurites (from the Shihor, which is
east of Egypt, northward to the boundary of Ekron, it is counted as
Canaanite; there are five rulers of the Philistines, those of Gaza,
Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron), and those of the Avvim, in the
south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that belongs to the
Sidonians, to Aphek, to the boundary of the Amorites, and the land of
the Gebalites, and all Lebanon, toward the sunrise, from Baal-gad below
Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath, all the inhabitants of the hill country
from Lebanon to Misrephoth-maim, even all the Sidonians. I myself will
drive them out from before the people of Israel. Only allot the land to
Israel for an inheritance, as I have commanded you. Now therefore divide
this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of
Manasseh.” With the other half of the tribe of Manasseh the Reubenites
and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses gave them,
beyond the Jordan eastward, as Moses the servant of the LORD gave them:
from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and the
city that is in the middle of the valley, and all the tableland of
Medeba as far as Dibon; and all the cities of Sihon king of the
Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, as far as the boundary of the
Ammonites; and Gilead, and the region of the Geshurites and Maacathites,
and all Mount Hermon, and all Bashan to Salecah; all the kingdom of Og
in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (he alone was left of
the remnant of the Rephaim); these Moses had struck and driven out.
(Joshua 13:1-12 ESV)
A reference to “Og” appears in a Phoenician
inscription from Byblos (Byblos
13) published in 1974 by Wolfgang Rölling in “Eine new phoenizische
Inschrift aus Byblos,” (Neue Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik, vol 2,
1-15 and plate 1). It appears in a damaged 7-line funerary inscription that
Rölling dates to around 500 BC, and appears to say that if someone disturbs
the bones of the occupant, “the mighty Og will avenge me.”
A possible connection can also be made with the
much older Ugaritic text
KTU 1.108, which uses the term “king” in association with the root /rp/ or
“Rapah” (the Rephaim of the Bible) and geographic place names that probably
correspond to the cities of Ashtaroth and Edrei in the Holy Bible, and with
which king Og is clearly associated (Deuteronomy 1:4; Joshua 9:10; 12:4;
13:12, 31).
-
In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses
spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the LORD had given
him in commandment to them, after he had defeated Sihon the king of the
Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in
Ashtaroth and in Edrei.
(Deuteronomy 1:3-4 ESV)
-
They said to Joshua, “We are your servants.” And Joshua said to them,
“Who are you? And where do you come from?” They said to him, “From a
very distant country your servants have come, because of the name of the
LORD your God. For we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in
Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were
beyond the Jordan, to Sihon the king of Heshbon, and to Og king of
Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth.
(Joshua 9:8-10 ESV)
-
Now these are the kings of the land whom the people of Israel defeated
and took possession of their land beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise,
from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon, with all the Arabah
eastward: Sihon king of the Amorites who lived at Heshbon and ruled from
Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and from the
middle of the valley as far as the river Jabbok, the boundary of the
Ammonites, that is, half of Gilead, and the Arabah to the Sea of
Chinneroth eastward, and in the direction of Beth-jeshimoth, to the Sea
of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, southward to the foot of the slopes of
Pisgah; and Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who
lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei and ruled over Mount Hermon and Salecah
and all Bashan to the boundary of the Geshurites and the Maacathites,
and over half of Gilead to the boundary of Sihon king of
Heshbon. (Joshua 12:1-5 ESV)
-
Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and
half the tribe of Manasseh.” With the other half of the tribe of
Manasseh the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance,
which Moses gave them, beyond the Jordan eastward, as Moses the servant
of the LORD gave them: from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of
the Arnon, and the city that is in the middle of the valley, and all the
tableland of Medeba as far as Dibon; and all the cities of Sihon king of
the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, as far as the boundary of the
Ammonites; and Gilead, and the region of the Geshurites and Maacathites,
and all Mount Hermon, and all Bashan to Salecah; all the kingdom of Og
in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (he alone was left of
the remnant of the Rephaim); these Moses had struck and driven out.
(Joshua 13:7-12 ESV)
-
Their region extended from Mahanaim, through all Bashan, the whole
kingdom of Og king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jair, which are in
Bashan, sixty cities, and half Gilead, and Ashtaroth, and Edrei, the
cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. These were allotted to the people
of Machir the son of Manasseh for the half of the people of Machir
according to their clans.
(Joshua 13:30-31 ESV)
The 2nd century BC apocryphal book
“Ogias
the Giant” or “The Book
of Giants” depicts the adventures of a giant
named Ogias who fought a great dragon, and who was supposedly either
identical with the Biblical Og or was Og’s father.
The book enjoyed considerable currency for several
centuries, especially due to having been taken up by the Manichaean religion.
KING OG
—Biblical Data:
Amorite king of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and was conquered by
Moses and Israel in the battle of Edrei (Num. xxi. 33), sixty fortified
cities, with high walls, gates, and bars, comprising the region of
Argob, being taken and given to the children of Machir, son of Manasseh
(Deut. iii. 13; Josh. xiii. 31). Og was one of the giants of the remnant
of the Rephaim. His iron bedstead in Rabbath, the capital of Ammon, is
described as having been nine cubits in length and four cubits in
breadth (Deut. iii. 11).
—In Rabbinical Literature:
Og was not destroyed at the time of the Flood
(Niddah 61a), for, according to one legend, the waters reached only to
his ankles (Midr. Peṭirat Mosheh, i. 128, in Jellinek, "B. H." ii.).
Another tradition states that he fled to Palestine, where there was no
flood (Rashi to Niddah, ad
loc.); while, according to a third legend, he sat on a rung of the
ladder outside the ark, and, after he had sworn to be a slave to Noah
and his children, received his food each day through a hole made in the
side of the ark (Pirḳe R. El. ch. xxiii.). Og was known also as
"Ha-Paliṭ" (see Gen. xiv. 13).
It was Og who brought
the news to Abraham of the captivity of Lot. This he did, however, with
an evil motive, for he thought that Abraham would seek to release Lot
and would be killed in battle with the great kings, and that he, Og,
would be able to marry the beautiful Sarah (Gen. R. xlii. 12). A long
lease of life was granted him as a reward for informing Abraham, but
because of his sinister motive he was destined to be killed by the
descendants of Abraham. Og was present at the banquet which Abraham gave
on the day Isaac was weaned (comp. Gen. xxi. 8). As Og had
always declared that Abraham would beget no children, the guests
teasingly asked him what he had to say now that Abraham had begotten
Isaac, whereupon Og answered that Isaac was no true descendant since he
could kill Isaac with one finger. It was in punishment for this remark,
one legend declares, that he was condemned to live to see a hundred
thousand descendants of Abraham and to be killed in battle against them.
(Gen. R. liii. 14). When Jacob went to Pharaoh and blessed him (Gen.
xlvii. 7), Og was present, and the king said to him: "The grandson of
Abraham, who, according to thy words, was to have no descendants, is now
here with seventy of them." As Og cast an evil eye upon the children of
Israel, God foretold that he would fall into their hands (Deut. R. i.
22).
Death of Og.During
the battle of Edrei (Num. xxi. 33) Og sat on the city wall, his legs,
which were eighteen ells long, reaching down to the ground; Moses did
not know what monster he had before him until God told him that it was
Og. Og hurled an entire mountain against the Israelites, but Moses
intercepted it (Deut. R. l.c.).
According to another legend, Og uprooted a mountain three miles long,
intending to destroy all Israel at once by hurling it upon their camp,
which was also three miles in length; but while he was carrying it upon
his head a swarm of locusts burrowed through it, so that it fell round
his neck. When he attempted to throw off this unwieldy necklace long
teeth grew from both sides of his mouth and kept the mountain in place.
Thereupon Moses, who was himself ten ells tall, took an ax of equal
length, jumped upward ten ells, so that he could reach Og's ankles, and
thus killed him (Ber. 54b).
Shabbat (151b) and
'Erubin (48a) also indicate that Og was regarded as an unusually large
giant. A legend says that a grave-digger pursued a stag three miles
inside of one of Og's bones without reaching the other end (Niddah 24b).
THE GIANT OF THE FLOOD
The Giant of the Flood
Just before the world was drowned all the animals gathered in front of the Ark
and Father Noah carefully inspected them.
"All ye that lie down shall enter and be saved from the deluge that is about to
destroy the world," he said. "Ye that stand cannot enter."
Then the various creatures began to march forward into the Ark. Father Noah
watched them closely. He seemed troubled.
"I wonder," he said to himself, "how I shall obtain a unicorn, and how I shall
get it into the Ark."
"I can bring thee a unicorn, Father Noah," he heard in a voice of thunder, and
turning round he saw the giant, Og. "But thou must agree to save me, too, from
the flood."
"Begone," cried Noah. "Thou art a demon, not a human being. I can have no
dealings with thee."
"Pity me," whined the giant. "See how my figure is shrinking. Once I was so tall
that I could drink water from the clouds and toast fish at the sun. I fear not
that I shall be drowned, but that all the food will be destroyed and that I
shall perish of hunger."
Noah, however, only smiled; but he grew serious again when Og brought a unicorn.
It was as big as a mountain, although the giant said it was the smallest he
could find. It lay down in front of the Ark and Noah saw by that action that he
must save it. For some time he was puzzled what to do, but at last a bright idea
struck him. He attached the huge beast to the Ark by a rope fastened to its horn
so that it could swim alongside and be fed.
Og seated himself on a mountain near at hand and watched the rain pouring down.
Faster and faster it fell in torrents until the rivers overflowed and the waters
began to rise rapidly on the land and sweep all things away. Father Noah stood
gloomily before the door of the Ark until the water reached his neck. Then it
swept him inside. The door closed with a bang, and the Ark rose gallantly on the
flood and began to move along. The unicorn swam alongside, and as it passed Og,
the giant jumped on to its back.
"See, Father Noah," he cried, with a huge chuckle, "you will have to save me
after all. I will snatch all the food you put through the window for the
unicorn."
Noah saw that it was useless to argue with Og, who might, indeed, sink the Ark
with his tremendous strength.
"I will make a bargain with thee," he shouted from a window. "I will feed thee,
but thou must promise to be a servant to my descendants."
Og was very hungry, so he accepted the conditions and devoured his first
breakfast.
The rain continued to fall in great big sheets that shut out the light of day.
Inside the Ark, however, all was bright and cheerful, for Noah had collected the
most precious of the stones of the earth and had used them for the windows.
Their radiance illumined the whole of the three stories in the Ark. Some of the
animals were troublesome and Noah got no sleep at all. The lion had a bad attack
of fever. In a corner a bird slept the whole of the time. This was the phoenix.
"Wake up," said Noah, one day. "It is feeding time."
"Thank you," returned the bird. "I saw thou wert busy, Father Noah, so I would
not trouble thee."
"Thou art a good bird," said Noah, much touched, "therefore thou shalt never
die."
One day the rain ceased, the clouds rolled away and the sun shone brilliantly
again. How strange the world looked! It was like a vast ocean. Nothing but water
could be seen anywhere, and only one or two of the highest mountain tops peeped
above the flood. All the world was drowned, and Noah gazed on the desolate scene
from one of the windows with tears in his eyes. Og, riding gaily on the unicorn
behind the Ark, was quite happy.
"Ha, ha!" he laughed gleefully. "I shall be able to eat and drink just as much
as I like now and shall never be troubled by those tiny little creatures, the
mortals."
"Be not so sure," said Noah. "Those tiny mortals shall be thy masters and shall
outlive thee and the whole race of giants and demons."
The giant did not relish this prospect. He knew that whatever Noah prophesied
would come true, and he was so sad that he ate no food for two days and began to
grow smaller and thinner. He became more and more unhappy as day by day the
water subsided and the mountains began to appear. At last the Ark rested on
Mount Ararat, and Og's long ride came to an end.
"I will soon leave thee, Father Noah," he said. "I shall wander round the world
to see what is left of it."
"Thou canst not go until I permit thee," said Noah. "Hast thou forgotten our
compact so soon? Thou must be my servant. I have work for thee."
Giants are not fond of work, and Og, who was the father of all the giants, was
particularly lazy. He cared only to eat and sleep, but he knew he was in Noah's
power, and he shed bitter tears when he saw the land appear again.
"Stop," commanded Noah. "Dost thou wish to drown the world once more with thy
big tears?"
So Og sat on a mountain and rocked from side to side, weeping silently to
himself. He watched the animals leave the Ark and had to do all the hard work
when Noah's children built houses. Daily he complained that he was shrinking to
the size of the mortals, for Noah said there was not too much food.
One day Noah said to him, "Come with me, Og. I am going around the world. I am
commanded to plant fruit and flowers to make the earth beautiful. I need thy
help."
For many days they wandered all over the earth, and Og was compelled to carry
the heavy bag of seeds. The last thing Noah planted was the grape vine.
"What is this--food, or drink?" asked Og.
"Both," replied Noah. "It can be eaten, or its juice made into wine," and as he
planted it, he blessed the grape. "Be thou," he said, "a plant pleasing to the
eye, bear fruit that will be food for the hungry and a health-giving drink to
the thirsty and sick."
Og grunted.
"I will offer up sacrifice to this wonderful fruit," he said. "May I not do so
now that our labors are over?"
Noah agreed, and the giant brought a sheep, a lion, a pig and a monkey. First,
he slaughtered the sheep, then the lion.
"When a man shall taste but a few drops of the wine," he said, "he shall be as
harmless as a sheep. When he takes a little more he shall be as strong as a
lion."
Then Og began to dance around the plant, and he killed the pig and the monkey.
Noah was very much surprised.
"I am giving thy descendants two extra blessings," said Og, chuckling.
He rolled over and over on the ground in great glee and then said:
"When a man shall drink too much of the juice of the wine, then shall he become
a beast like the pig, and if then he still continues to drink, he shall behave
foolishly like a monkey."
And that is why, unto this day, too much wine makes a man silly.
Og himself often drank too much, and many years afterward, when he was a servant
to the patriarch Abraham, the latter scolded him until he became so frightened
that he dropped a tooth. Abraham made an ivory chair for himself from this
tooth. Afterwards Og became King of Bashan, but he forgot his compact with Noah
and instead of helping the Israelites to obtain Canaan he opposed them.
"I will kill them all with one blow," he declared.
Exerting all his enormous strength he uprooted a mountain, and raising it high
above his head he prepared to drop it on the camp of the Israelites and crush
it.
But a wonderful thing happened. The mountain was full of grasshoppers and ants
who had bored millions of tiny holes in it. When King Og raised the great mass
it crumbled in his hands and fell over his head and round his neck like a
collar. He tried to pull it off, but his teeth became entangled in the mass. As
he danced about in rage and pain, Moses, the leader of the Israelites,
approached him.
Moses was a tiny man compared with Og. He was only ten ells high, and he carried
with him a sword of the same length. With a mighty effort he jumped ten ells
into the air, and raising the sword, he managed to strike the giant on the ankle
and wound him mortally.
Thus, after many years, did the terrible giant of the flood perish for breaking
his word to Father Noah.
NUMBERS 13
Exploring Canaan
1The Lord said
to Moses, 2“Send
some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.
From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”
3So at the Lord’s
command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders
of the Israelites. 4These
are their names:
from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zakkur;
5from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori;
6from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh;
7from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph;
8from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea son of Nun;
9from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu;
10from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi;
11from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi
son of Susi;
12from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli;
13from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael;
14from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi;
15from the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Maki.
16These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the
land. (Moses gave Hoshea son of Nun the name Joshua.)
17When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up
through the Negev and on into the hill country. 18See
what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak,
few or many. 19What
kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live
in? Are they unwalled or fortified? 20How
is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Do your best
to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (It was the season for the first
ripe grapes.)
21So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin
as far as Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath. 22They
went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai,
the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan
in Egypt.) 23When
they reached the Valley of Eshkol,a they
cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a
pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. 24That
place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes the
Israelites cut off there. 25At
the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.
Report on the Exploration
26They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite
community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to
the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. 27They
gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it
does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28But
the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very
large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29The
Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the
hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”
30Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We
should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
31But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack
those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32And
they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.
They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we
saw there are of great size. 33We
saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We
seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Footnotes:
a 23
NUMBERS 14
The People Rebel
1That night all the members of the community raised their
voices and wept aloud. 2All
the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to
them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! 3Why
is the Lord bringing
us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be
taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4And
they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
5Then Moses and Aaron fell facedown in front of the whole
Israelite assembly gathered there. 6Joshua
son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the
land, tore their clothes 7and
said to the entire Israelite assembly, “The land we passed through and explored
is exceedingly good. 8If
the Lord is
pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and
honey, and will give it to us. 9Only
do not rebel against the Lord.
And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them.
Their protection is gone, but the Lord is
with us. Do not be afraid of them.”
10But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the
glory of the Lordappeared
at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. 11The Lord said
to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they
refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? 12I
will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a
nation greater and stronger than they.”
13Moses said to the Lord,
“Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people
up from among them. 14And
they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard
that you, Lord,
are with these people and that you, Lord,
have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go
before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. 15If
you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have
heard this report about you will say, 16‘The Lordwas
not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath, so he
slaughtered them in the wilderness.’
17“Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have
declared: 18‘The Lord is
slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does
not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the
parents to the third and fourth generation.’ 19In
accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you
have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20The Lord replied,
“I have forgiven them, as you asked. 21Nevertheless,
as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills
the whole earth, 22not
one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the
wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— 23not
one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one
who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. 24But
because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I
will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. 25Since
the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow
and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea.a ”
26The Lord said
to Moses and Aaron: 27“How
long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the complaints
of these grumbling Israelites. 28So
tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord,
I will do to you the very thing I heard you say: 29In
this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more
who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. 30Not
one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home,
except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31As
for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in
to enjoy the land you have rejected. 32But
as for you, your bodies will fall in this wilderness. 33Your
children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your
unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the wilderness. 34For
forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will
suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’ 35I,
the Lord,
have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this whole wicked community,
which has banded together against me. They will meet their end in this
wilderness; here they will die.”
36So the men Moses had sent to explore the land, who returned
and made the whole community grumble against him by spreading a bad report about
it— 37these
men who were responsible for spreading the bad report about the land were struck
down and died of a plague before the Lord. 38Of
the men who went to explore the land, only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of
Jephunneh survived.
39When Moses reported this to all the Israelites, they mourned
bitterly. 40Early
the next morning they set out for the highest point in the hill country, saying,
“Now we are ready to go up to the land the Lord promised.
Surely we have sinned!”
41But Moses said, “Why are you disobeying the Lord’s
command? This will not succeed! 42Do
not go up, because the Lord is
not with you. You will be defeated by your enemies, 43for
the Amalekites and the Canaanites will face you there. Because you have turned
away from the Lord,
he will not be with you and you will fall by the sword.”
44Nevertheless, in their presumption they went up toward the
highest point in the hill country, though neither Moses nor the ark of the Lord’s
covenant moved from the camp.45Then
the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and
attacked them and beat them down all the way to Hormah.
Footnotes:
a 25
DEUTERONOMY 2
14Thirty-eight years passed from the time we left Kadesh
Barnea until we crossed the Zered Valley. By then, that entire generation of
fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had
sworn to them. 15The Lord’s
hand was against them until he had completely eliminated them from the camp.
16Now when the last of these fighting men among the people had
died, 17the Lord said
to me, 18“Today
you are to pass by the region of Moab at Ar. 19When
you come to the Ammonites, do not harass them or provoke them to war, for I will
not give you possession of any land belonging to the Ammonites. I have given it
as a possession to the descendants of Lot.”
20(That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used
to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. 21They
were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed
them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. 22The Lord had
done the same for the descendants of Esau, who lived in Seir, when he destroyed
the Horites from before them. They drove them out and have lived in their place
to this day. 23And
as for the Avvites who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorites coming
out from Caphtorb destroyed
them and settled in their place.)
Defeat of Sihon King of Heshbon
24“Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See, I have given
into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his country. Begin to
take possession of it and engage him in battle. 25This
very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under
heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because
of you.”
26From the Desert of Kedemoth I sent messengers to Sihon king
of Heshbon offering peace and saying, 27“Let
us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn
aside to the right or to the left. 28Sell
us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass
through on foot— 29as
the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir, and the Moabites, who live in Ar, did
for us—until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our
God is giving us.” 30But
Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For the Lord your
God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him
into your hands, as he has now done.
31The Lord said
to me, “See, I have begun to deliver Sihon and his country over to you. Now
begin to conquer and possess his land.”
32When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at
Jahaz, 33the Lord our
God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and
his whole army. 34At
that time we took all his towns and completely destroyedc them—men,
women and children. We left no survivors. 35But
the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for
ourselves. 36From
Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, and from the town in the gorge, even as far
as Gilead, not one town was too strong for us. The Lord our
God gave us all of them. 37But
in accordance with the command of the Lord our
God, you did not encroach on any of the land of the Ammonites, neither the land
along the course of the Jabbok nor that around the towns in the hills.
Footnotes:
a 1
b 23
c 34
DEUTERONOMY 3
Defeat of Og King of Bashan
1Next we turned and went up along the road toward Bashan, and
Og king of Bashan with his whole army marched out to meet us in battle at Edrei. 2The Lord said
to me, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have delivered him into your hands, along
with his whole army and his land. Do to him what you did to Sihon king of the
Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.”
3So the Lord our
God also gave into our hands Og king of Bashan and all his army. We struck them
down, leaving no survivors. 4At
that time we took all his cities. There was not one of the sixty cities that we
did not take from them—the whole region of Argob, Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 5All
these cities were fortified with high walls and with gates and bars, and there
were also a great many unwalled villages. 6We
completely destroyeda them,
as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroyingb every
city—men, women and children. 7But
all the livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried off for
ourselves.
8So at that time we took from these two kings of the Amorites
the territory east of the Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge as far as Mount Hermon. 9(Hermon
is called Sirion by the Sidonians; the Amorites call it Senir.) 10We
took all the towns on the plateau, and all Gilead, and all Bashan as far as
Salekah and Edrei, towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan.11(Og
king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron
and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide.c It
is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)
Division of the Land
12Of the land that we took over at that time, I gave the
Reubenites and the Gadites the territory north of Aroer by the Arnon Gorge,
including half the hill country of Gilead, together with its towns. 13The
rest of Gilead and also all of Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the
half-tribe of Manasseh. (The whole region of Argob in Bashan used to be known as
a land of the Rephaites. 14Jair,
a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole region of Argob as far as the border of
the Geshurites and the Maakathites; it was named after him, so that to this day
Bashan is called Havvoth Jair.d ) 15And
I gave Gilead to Makir. 16But
to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave the territory extending from Gilead
down to the Arnon Gorge (the middle of the gorge being the border) and out to
the Jabbok River, which is the border of the Ammonites. 17Its
western border was the Jordan in the Arabah, from Kinnereth to the Sea of the
Arabah (that is, the Dead Sea), below the slopes of Pisgah.
18I commanded you at that time: “The Lord your
God has given you this land to take possession of it. But all your able-bodied
men, armed for battle, must cross over ahead of the other Israelites. 19However,
your wives, your children and your livestock (I know you have much livestock)
may stay in the towns I have given you, 20until
the Lord gives
rest to your fellow Israelites as he has to you, and they too have taken over
the land that the Lordyour
God is giving them across the Jordan. After that, each of you may go back to the
possession I have given you.”
Moses Forbidden to Cross the Jordan
21At that time I commanded Joshua: “You have seen with your
own eyes all that theLord your
God has done to these two kings. The Lord will
do the same to all the kingdoms over there where you are going. 22Do
not be afraid of them; the Lord your
God himself will fight for you.”
23At that time I pleaded with the Lord: 24“Sovereign Lord,
you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For
what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works
you do? 25Let
me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan—that fine hill country and
Lebanon.”
26But because of you the Lord was
angry with me and would not listen to me. “That is enough,” the Lord said.
“Do not speak to me anymore about this matter. 27Go
up to the top of Pisgah and look west and north and south and east. Look at the
land with your own eyes, since you are not going to cross this Jordan. 28But
commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this
people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see.” 29So
we stayed in the valley near Beth Peor.
Footnotes:
a 6
b 6
c 11
d 14
BY DEANE | APRIL
13, 2011 · 1:50 PM
The Washington
Postyesterday (11 April 2011) reported the finding of a Giant the size
of King Og, in Belgium:
In 1643, workers unearthed some huge bones in a Belgian field. The
naturalists who studied them were convinced they had come
from a humanlike giant. Their length, after all, tallied with a
biblical reference to Og, a giant king supposedly slain by Moses.
- Henry Nicholls, “Frozen
remains help explain the life and eventual extinction of the woolly
mammoth”
Alas, centuries later the developing science of palaeontology discovered
that the purported Giant was an elephant. And later still, it turned out to
be an extinct mastodon. The Washington
Post story links to an
article by Taika Helola Dahlbom (“A Mammoth History: The
Extraordinary Journey of Two Thighbones”, Trends
in Cell Biology 31.3 (2007):
110-114):
In 1643, two respected gentlemen observed some workers unearth a
skeleton from a field outside Bruges in Flanders. One of the gentlement,
Dr. Sperling, the court physician to King Frederick III of Denmark,
recorded the length of the skeleton as nine Brabantian cubits (more than
4 m). With the bible as their point of reference as was common for
seventeenth-century naturalists, this confirmed to the men that the
skeleton had belonged to a giant…. [M]ore than 50 years later… the
King’s collection… contained three specimens believed to have come from
giants – two complete sets of teeth and another hip-bone. Whilst this
other hip-bone was, according to the 1737 catalogue, ‘more than three
feet long’ and ‘presumably of a large giant’, there was greater
certainty over the provenance of the more recent acquisition. ‘A still
larger hip-bone 3.5 feet long, weighing 25 lb, belonging to a large
Giant’. This confidence stemmed from the account of its excavation by
Dr. Sperling’s son, the reputable polymath Otto Sperling the younger
(1634-1715)…. Since the extraordinary length of the skeleton relayed by
Sperling the younger exactly matched the length of the giant King Og’s
coffin described in deuteronomy 3:11, there was little doubt that the
Bruges hip-bone had indeed belonged to a giant.
(p. 110)
GILGAL
GILGAL
Gilgal (Hebrew: גִּלְגָּל)
is a place name mentioned by theHebrew
Bible.
It is a matter of debate how many of the places named "Gilgal" are identical.
The Gilgal
associated with Joshua
The main mention of Gilgal is when the Book
of Joshuastates that the Israelites first
encamped there after having crossed the Jordan
River (Joshua 4:19 - 5:12).
In the narrative, after setting up camp, Joshua orders
the Israelites to take twelve stones from the river, one for each
tribe, and place them there in
memory. Some modern scholars have argued that this is anaetiological
myth created by the author of
Joshua to explain away what is in reality a neolithic stone
circle.
According to the
biblical narrative, Joshua then orders the Israelites who had been born
during the
Exodus to be circumcised.
The Bible refers to the location this occurred as Gibeath
Haaraloth; some English
translations of the Bible identify
"Gibeath Haaraloth" as the name of the place. However, since the place is
elsewhere identified as still being Gilgal, and since "Gibeath Haaraloth"
means "hill of foreskins", some scholars[citation
needed] think
this is simply a description, and some translations provide a translation
rather than a transliteration of it as a proper name.
The narrative continues
by stating that the place was named Gilgal in memory of the reproach of
Egypt being removed by this act of mass circumcision. Although "Gilgal" is
phonetically similar to "gallothi", meaning "I have removed" in Hebrew, some
believe that it is more likely that "Gilgal" means "circle of standing
stones", and refers to the stone circle that was there.
Some textual scholars see
the circumcision explanation, and the twelve stones explanation, as having
come from different source texts; the circumcision explanation being a way
to explain how the location was regarded as religiously important in local
culture, without mentioning the presence of a religious monument (the stone
circle) whose existence might have offended the author's religious
sensibilities. It is considered by some that this stone circle was the
(unnamed) religious sanctuary that was severely condemned by the Book
of Amos (Amos 4:4, 5:5) and Book
of Hosea (Hosea 4:15).
This Gilgal is said to
have been "on the eastern border of Jericho"
(Joshua 4:19). It has been identified with Khirbet
en-Nitleh, but today scholars regard Khirbet
El Mafjir as the more
probable identification. Khirbet El Mafjir is located 2 km northeast of
ancient Jericho.
A "Gilgal" is also
mentioned in a list of places to divide the land under the leadership of
Joshua (Joshua 15:7). There are scholars who
believe that this is not the same location as the one where the Israelites
had encamped. Some scholars believe that this may be the result of a scribal
error, and instead should really refer to Galilee.
It may also have been the place marked by the modern village Jiljulieh,
southwest of Antipatris,
and northeast of Joppa.
But another Gilgal, under the slightly different form of Kilkilieh, lies
about two miles east of Antipatris.
The
Gilgal mentioned by Deuteronomy
It
may have been the
Gilgal of Elijah and Elisha, or yet another Gilgal, that is mentioned in Deuteronomy 11:29-30
as having
Mount Gerizim and Mount
Ebal in front of it. Its
location is significant since it helps fix the position of these religiously
significant hills.
The Gilgal
associated with Samuel
A place named Gilgal is mentioned by the Books
of Samuel as having been
included in Samuel's
annual circuit, and as the location where he offered sacrifices after Saul was
anointed as king, and where he renewed Saul's kingship together with the
people (1 Samuel chapters 7 and 11). Again it is possible for this to simply
be yet another "circle of standing stones" (or the same one as mentioned in
relation to Elijah and Elisha, as Bethel is
on the circuit with Gilgal, and other assumed locations show Gilgal to be
far further away than the other two locations), and significant that it is
treated as a holy place by the biblical text, rather than as a heathen one.
It is also the place
where Samuel hewed King
Agag in pieces as Saul
refused to obey the Word of the Lord and utterly destroy the Amalekites (1
Samuel 15: 32, 33).
The Gilgal associated with Elijah and Elisha
In the Books
of Kings, a "Gilgal" is mentioned that was said to have been home to a
group of prophets.
The text states thatElijah and Elisha came
from here when they went down to Bethel from Gilgal (2 Kings 2:1-2);
suggesting that the place was in the vicinity of Bethel, and hence in a
mountainous region, which is somewhat different from the place associated
with Joshua. Since "Gilgal" literally means "circle of standing stones", it
is quite plausible for there to have been more than one place named Gilgal,
and although there are dissenting opinions, it is commonly held to be a
different place to the one involved with Joshua; it has been identified with
the village Jiljilia,
about 11 km north of Bethel. It is significant that the Books of Kings treat
it as a place of holiness, suggesting that stone circles still had a
positive religious value at the time the source text of the passages in
question was written, rather than having been condemned as heathen by
religious reforms.
Another opinion is that
it is not different from the Book of Joshua, as it locates it near Bethel as
does the Books
of Chronicles.
References
External links
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What is the Meaning and Significance of Gilgal in the Bible?
Here is a spiritual
conundrum posed by a reader named
victor:
What is the significance of gilgadh mentioned in 2king 2:1 – why the
journey starts from gilgadh?
Gilgal Refaim, or Rujm el-Hiri
Thanks for the question, victor! I assume you mean Gilgal, which is
mentioned in 39 verses in the Bible. One of those verses is 2
Kings 2:1—the start of a story about the prophet Elijah being taken
up to heaven in a whirlwind while the prophet Elisha, his apprentice, looks
on (2
Kings 2).
The name Gilgal has been associated by Bible scholars with at least five
different possible locations in and around the Holy Land, none of them
certain. But as we will see, it seems likely that “Gilgal” is not a town
name at all. Instead, it is likely a word for a particular type of
human-made site. In recent decades archeologists have made some exciting new
discoveries of ancient “Gilgal” sites!
Though Gilgal is first mentioned in Deuteronomy
11:30, it gains its primary meaning and significance in the book of
Joshua. The first camp of the Israelites after they crossed the Jordan into
the Holy Land was at a place called Gilgal. This camp served as their base
of operations during the initial conquest of the Holy Land under Joshua.
Several other important events in the Bible take place either at this Gilgal
or at a different one. Eventually, though, Gilgal became corrupt, and two of
the prophets railed against it later in Israel’s history.
In some ways Gilgal has a story similar to that of Bethel, which is covered
in an earlier article: “What
is the History and Importance of Bethel in the Bible?” However, as we
will see in Part 2 of this article, “the gilgal” (as it should really be
translated) has its own particular meaning in the Bible story, and its own
special significance for our spiritual life.
Okay, okay! I’ll spill the beans just a little . . .
As the Israelites’ point of entry into the Holy Land and their base of
operations for the initial conquest of the land, the site called “Gilgal”
signifies the simple, basic religious beliefs and teachings that first
introduce us to a spiritual life, and that we return to again and again as
we fight our early battles to reform ourselves and get our life into order.
It’s all about stones and circles.
Part 1: The Biblical and archeological background of Gilgal
Where is Gilgal?
Do you like to see where places are on the map? I do!
Thing is . . . we don’t really know where Gilgal was. As I mentioned
earlier, scholars have suggested at least five different locations for the
various mentions of “Gilgal”
in the Bible. Most of them are on the east side of Palestine, toward the
Jordan. One is located on the western, Mediterranean side.
The traditional location of Gilgal is just east of Jericho, based on Joshua
4:19. Here is a map showing this location. See the question mark?
That’s because no location has been definitely identified as that of Gilgal.
This is just the best guess of various Bible scholars.
Bethel in relation to Jericho and Jerusalem
(Map courtesy of http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/)
Though it doesn’t seem to agree with the location given in the book of
Joshua, some scholars think Gilgal might be farther north—near the town
labeled “Adam” on this map. That’s because back in the 1980s archeologists
discovered a fascinating site there, which may have been connected to the
ancient Israelites about the time of their conquest of the Holy Land. We’ll
get to that in a minute.
What’s a “gilgal”?
Why has it been so hard to locate Gilgal in the Bible? It may be that
scholars and archeologists had been looking for the wrong thing.
It was long assumed that Gilgal was the name of a town, like other towns
mentioned in the Bible. But it’s possible, even likely, that
Gilgal is not a town at all.
One subtle hint of this is that almost everywhere “Gilgal” appears in the
original Hebrew, it is preceded by a definite article—Hebrew’s equivalent of
our word “the.”
The one exception is Joshua 5:9, which reads: “The Lord said to Joshua,
‘Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.’ And so that place
is called Gilgal to this day.” That might be why we previously thought it
was the name of a town.
Everywhere else, it should really be “the gilgal.” This suggests that
“Gilgal” is not the name of the town, but rather a type of
place.
Consider these examples in English:
-
People often refer to the nearest major city as simply, “the city,”
rather than saying its name.
-
People who live in suburban areas go to “the mall” to do much of their
shopping. They may not even know the
official name of their nearest shopping mall.
-
People who live near a large natural waterway commonly refer to it as
“the river,” even though they usually do know
its name.
Of course, there are many different cities, malls, and rivers. Each has a
specific name. But as a type of place, we refer to them as “the city,” “the
mall,” and “the river.”
In the Bible, the same is probably true of “the gilgal,” as it is almost
always written in the original Hebrew. In other words, what is usually
translated “Gilgal” is probably a type of
place. And there might very well be several different Gilgals, as many Bible
scholars have suggested.
The meaning of “gilgal”
So what type of place is a “gilgal”?
Like other words assumed to be place names, “Gilgal” isn’t a translation.
It’s atransliteration into
English of the letters in the original Hebrew word. It doesn’t give us the meaning of
the Hebrew; it simply represents the sound of the original Hebrew word in
Roman letters.
However, the word gilgal does
have a meaning in Hebrew.
As suggested in the original Hebrew of Joshua 5:9 (quoted above), the word gilgal in
Hebrew is related to the word galal, which
means “to roll.” Galal is
often used to refer to rolling heavy objects such as stones. So in Hebrew
the related word gilgalmeans
a wheel or circle, or something that rolls. In particular, it seems to refer
to a circle of stones, or to a circular altar.
A remarkable example of a “gilgal” is the place known as “Gilgal Refaim” in
Hebrew, or “Rujm
el-Hiri” in Arabic. It is pictured at the beginning of this article.
This ancient monument is sometimes called “the Stonehenge of the Levant,” or
“Israel’s Stonehenge.”
“Gilgal Refaim” is massive arrangement of four concentric stone circles,
with a fifteen-foot-high circular stone mound in the center. It is estimated
to contain over 42,000 large basalt stones. The largest circle is about 170
yards in diameter, and eight feet high. Archeologists believe it was built
around 3,000 BC. This would mean that it was already over 1,500 years old
when Joshua and the Israelites began their conquest of the Holy Land. This
ancient “gilgal,” or stone circle, is located in the present day Golan
Heights region, east of the Sea of
Galilee.
It is unlikely that Gilgal Refaim corresponds to any of the Gilgals
mentioned in the Bible.
However, a more recent discovery may very well be associated with the
Biblical Gilgals.
The foot-shaped gilgals
A foot-shaped “Gilgal” near the Jordan River
Starting in the 1980s, and continuing right up into the 2000s, archeologists
have discovered and done initial studies of five human-built foot- or
sandal-shaped constructions that have been dated to the same general time
period as the Israelites’ conquest of the Holy Land. Pictured here is the
best-known one, named in modern times “Bedhat esh-Sha’ab.” It is located
just southwest of the Argaman settlement in the Jordan River valley, about
two-fifths of the way from the Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee.
To put this in Bible terms, Bedhat esh-Sha’ab a little northwest of the town
of Adam on the map above.
Why is this significant? Because when Joshua and the children of Israel
crossed the miraculously dried-up Jordan river to enter the Holy Land, Adam
and its neighboring city of Zarethan to its north are named as the location
where the Jordan River’s “waters flowing from above stood still, rising up
in a single heap” (Joshua
3:15–16).
Because of this association, some scholars think that Bedhat esh-Sha’ab may
actually be the Gilgal mentioned in Joshua—though this does not square with
its description in Joshua 4:19 as being “on the east border of Jericho.”
Why were these “gilgals” in the shape of feet, or sandals? And what does
this shape have to do with the Bible story?
First, it should be said that the Bible does not make any specific mention
of foot-shaped sites. However, Israeli scholars Adam
Zertal and Dror Ben-Yosef, of theUniversity
of Haifa, who have studied five foot-shaped sites discovered in the
Holy Land, make the case that the foot shape does have Biblical overtones.
See the recent article, “Footprints
of Ancient Israel: Unusual stone circles may mark biblical ‘Gilgal’”
Here’s the short version:
In ancient times, setting one’s foot on the land and walking around the
borders of a particular area of land were ways of asserting ownership or
control of that land. The feet were also symbols of the defeat of enemies.
Here are just a few Biblical examples:
-
In Deuteronomy
11:22–32, God promises the Israelites that if they obey his
commandments, “Every place on which you set foot shall be yours.”
Tantalizingly for our theme, these verses also contain the very first
brief mention of a “Gilgal” in the Bible.
-
In Joshua
6, all the Israelite warriors are commanded to “march around the
city seven times,” once each day for seven days, led by the priests
carrying the ark of the covenant. This was an unmistakable signal to the
inhabitants of Jericho that the Israelites were laying claim to their
city. After the seventh day of marching around the city, the Israelites
invaded and captured the city.
-
In Joshua
10:16–27, Joshua ordered the commanders of the army to put their
feet on the necks of five defeated king as a sign of victory over them.
The kings were then executed, and the Israelites took control of their
territories.
The foot-shaped stone sites, perhaps built by the Israelites during this
time period, may have been symbols of their declaration of ownership and
control of the land, and their defeat of its previous inhabitants. It is
likely that these foot-shaped “gilgals” were used for sacred observances and
rituals. One of those rituals, scholars think, may have involved a
ceremonial walking around the borders of the site, reflecting the practice
of walking around a parcel of land to claim ownership of it.
There are many other Biblical tie-ins with these foot- or sandal-shaped
gilgals. But these are enough for now. It should also be mentioned that
these foot-shaped gilgals commonly had smaller circular arrangements of
stone within them that were probably used for sacrifices and other
ceremonial purposes.
In short, even though these sites are not technically circular, they invoke
the circles represented by the Hebrew word gilgal in
a number of ways, including being stone enclosures, the ritual of walking
around their borders, and the circular stone objects commonly placed within
them.
These recent discoveries throw a whole new light on what the Bible means by
“Gilgal”!
What happened at the gilgals?
We don’t know how many gilgals there were in the Bible, or exactly where
any of them were. However, we don’t need to know all of the historical and
archeological details in order to understand the cultural and spiritual
significance of the gilgals, or stone circles, in the Bible. We only need to
read the stories of what took place at these important sites.
Though the gilgals certainly have a strong ritual significance in the Bible,
they have an equally strong association with military conquest, and with new
beginnings.
We don’t have time or space to cover all of the events described in the
Bible as taking place at Gilgal. When we look at the significance of Gilgal
in the Bible, we’ll focus on the initial story of the Gilgal mentioned in
Joshua.
But let’s get the big picture first. Here is a list of the events that took
place at one or another of the Gilgals:
-
Gilgal was the first place Joshua and the children of Israel camped
after their miraculous crossing of the Jordan river. (Joshua
4:19)
-
Joshua commanded one hand-picked leader from each of the twelve tribes
of Israel to set up at Gilgal twelve large stones, taken from the middle
of the river, as a sign and remembrance of that miraculous crossing. (Joshua
4:1–9, 20–24)
-
At Gilgal, all of the Israelite men who had grown up during the forty
years of wandering in the desert were circumcised, thus renewing the
Israelites’ earlier covenant of circumcision with God. (Joshua
5:2–9)
-
At Gilgal, the Israelites also celebrated the Passover for the first
time in the Holy Land. The very next day, the manna that
had been the Israelites’ staple food during their forty years of
wandering in the desert ceased, and they began to eat the produce of the
land instead. (Joshua
5:10–12)
-
At Gilgal, the Gibeonites, who were inhabitants of the land, deceived
Joshua into making a treaty with them in order to save themselves from
being slaughtered by the Israelites. (Joshua
9)
-
Gilgal was Joshua’s base of operations for the Israelites’ initial
conquest of the Holy Land, including his honoring of his treaty with the
Gibeonites by defending them from the attacks of Amorites—another nation
inhabiting the land. (Joshua
10:6–15, 40–43)
-
An angel of the Lord went from Gilgal to a place called Bokim to
chastise the Israelites for breaking their covenant with God. (Judges
2:1–5)
-
Ehud, one of the “judges,” or regional leaders, of Israel (and a famous
lefty of the Bible), turned back from Gilgal to assassinate Eglon, king
of Moab, who had attacked Israel and imposed a tribute on them for eight
years. (Judges
3:12–30)
-
Gilgal was one of the places on the circuit that Samuel, the first
leader since Joshua to be recognized throughout Israel, traveled to
provide judgments for Israel. (1
Samuel 7:15–17)
-
The kingship of Saul, the first king of Israel, was reaffirmed at Gilgal
after Saul led a victorious campaign against the Ammonites. (1
Samuel 11:14–15; see also 1
Samuel 10:1, 8)
-
However, Gilgal was also where Saul twice ignored God’s commands, and
there Samuel informed him that the Lord had rejected him as king, and
that his dynasty would not continue. (1
Samuel 13:1–15; 1 Samuel 15)
-
After King David’s son Absalom mounted an unsuccessful revolt against
him, David was greeted by the people and reaffirmed as the king of
Israel in Gilgal. (2
Samuel 19:9–15, 40)
-
Many years later, Gilgal was the starting point of a pilgrimage that
ended in the great prophet Elijah being carried up to heaven in a
whirlwind while his apprentice, Elisha, looked on. Gilgal was also one
of several places where Elisha began to establish himself as a great
prophet in his own right. (2
Kings 2:1–14; 4:38–41)
-
Late in Israel’s history, the prophets Hosea and Amos condemned the
Israelites for wickedness and corrupt worship in Gilgal. Amos associates
Gilgal with Bethel in its ruin and disgrace. (Hosea
9:15–17, 12:11–14; Amos 4:4–6, 5:1–6)
-
Finally, in the course of calling the people of Israel to account for
their abandonment of the Lord, the prophet Micah reminded them of God’s
care for them in their early days in Gilgal and elsewhere—thus bringing
the story of Gigal full circle. (Micah
6:1–5)
Whew! That’s quite a list! And it paints a picture of Gilgal as:
-
A place of new beginnings.
-
A base camp for many battles of the Israelites against their enemies.
-
A sacred site that eventually became corrupted, but was still important
in Israel’s history.
Like Bethel,
by the time of Jesus, Gilgal had faded into insignificance. It is not
mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. And like Bethel, Gilgal relates to
new beginnings in our spiritual life.
However, Gilgal has its own spiritual significance, distinct from that of
Bethel.
The journey starts at Gilgal not just because that happened to be where the
Israelites first landed in the Holy Land, but because of the symbolism of
Gilgal as pictured in the Bible.
The creation of Joshua’s Gilgal
Like our first impressions of someone that we’re meeting for the first
time, the first occurrence of any person, place, or thing in the Bible tends
to put its stamp on its meaning. In the Bible, Gilgal is stamped with the
meaning it took on in the first major stories about it. Those stories are
about its role as the first place that the Israelites camped in the Holy
Land after crossing the Jordan River on dry land.
The whole story is too long to repeat here. You can read it in Joshua
chapters 4 and 5. Here is the key narrative of what might have been
the creation of
that Gilgal:
Joshua crossing the Jordan
When the entire nation had finished crossing over the Jordan, the Lord
said to Joshua: “Select twelve men from the people, one from each tribe,
and command them, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the middle of the
Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet stood, carry them over
with you, and lay them down in the place where you camp tonight.’”
Then Joshua summoned the twelve men from the Israelites, whom he had
appointed, one from each tribe. Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the
ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you
take up a stone on his shoulder, one for each of the tribes of the
Israelites, so that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask
in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell
them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of
the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of
the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a
memorial forever.”
The Israelites did as Joshua commanded. They took up twelve stones out
of the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of
the Israelites, as the Lord told Joshua, carried them over with them to
the place where they camped, and laid them down there. (Joshua set up
twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet
of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are
there to this day.)
. . .
The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first
month, and they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. Those
twelve stones, which they had taken out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in
Gilgal, saying to the Israelites, “When your children ask their parents
in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your
children know, ‘Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.’ For
the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you
crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up
for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may
know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and so that you may fear the
Lord your God forever.” (Joshua 4:1–9, 19–24)
What did Joshua’s Gilgal look like?
The Bible doesn’t say exactly how the twelve stones were arranged when
they were set up. However:
-
Joshua 5:9 says, “Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away
the reproach of Egypt from you.’ So the place has been called Gilgal to
this day’” (emphasis added).
-
The Hebrew word gilgal means
a wheel or circle, or something that rolls.
-
The name “Gilgal” has traditionally been associated with stone circles
and sacred enclosures that exist in and around the Holy Land.
-
Recent archeological discoveries have turned up a number of large stone
enclosures that seem to have had sacred uses. Though the enclosure is
often foot-shaped, there are also smaller stone circles or circular
mounds within them that served as altars or perhaps as tombs.
All of this points to the likelihood that Joshua had his men set up those
twelve stones in a circle.
Perhaps it was Joshua’s army that built the various foot-shaped stone
enclosures that have been discovered in Palestine. These “gilgals” be the
strongest archeological evidence to date that something like the conquest of
the Holy Land by the Israelites—which many secular scholars have considered
a cultural myth—may have actually taken place historically.
Part 2: The spiritual significance of Gilgal
As fascinating is it is to speculate on these ancient circular and
foot-shaped gilgals in the Holy Land, the Bible itself provides all we need
to know to understand thespiritual significance
of Gilgal for our own life journey. It also provides what we need to know in
order to understand why the journey starts from Gilgal both inJoshua
4–5 and in 2
Kings 2. Remember, like the parables of Jesus, the
entire Bible speaks to us through the use of “correspondences,” or
physical imagery that speaks of deeper spiritual realities.
Here are some of the key facts from the Bible story about the Gilgal
mentioned in Joshua:
-
It was marked by twelve stones.
-
Its twelve stones are associated with the twelve tribes of Israel.
-
They came from the middle of the Jordan River.
-
They came from the place in the river where the priests carrying the ark
of the covenant were standing.
-
They were set up at the first place where the Israelites camped
overnight in the Holy Land.
-
The twelve stones were placed there as a lasting memorial of the power
of their God, who dried up the Jordan River so that the Israelites could
cross over on dry ground.
-
The encampment at Gilgal became the Israelites’ base of operations for
their initial conquest of the Holy Land.
We can’t cover all of these facts in detail. In fact, if we were to try to
fully understand all the depths of meaning in even a single verse of the
Bible, we would never reach the end of it. However, if we sketch out the
significance of the stones, the Jordan River as an entryway into the Holy
Land, and the conquest of the Holy Land, we can create a vivid snapshot of
the meaning of Gilgal in our own spiritual journeys today.
The stones of Gilgal
Stones appear prominently throughout the Bible—and they embody a deeper
spiritual meaning. Wherever they appear with a positive connotation, we can
think of them as representing bedrock
truths on which we can
safely found our beliefs and our life.
In the Old Testament, one the most vivid examples of this correspondential
meaning of stones is the fact that the Ten Commandments were written by the
finger of God on two stone tablets.
The Ten Commandments are the most central and sacred laws given in the Old
Testament. So much so that they were placed in the ark of the covenant,
which occupied the most holy place in the ancient Jewish Tabernacle, and
later in the Temple. They were written in stone to signify that these
commandments embody basic, everlasting laws of divine truth for us to live
by.
In the New Testament, when the apostle Peter said of Jesus, “You are the
Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Jesus said of Peter’s
statement, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it.” (He also made a play on words with the name
“Peter,” which means “rock” in Greek.) For Christians, the belief that Jesus
is the Messiah (Hebrew for “anointed one”) or Christ (Greek for “anointed
one”) and the Son of God, is the bedrock
truth of the entire Christian faith.
From these and many other examples of stones in the Bible, we can understand
that the stones of
Gilgal represent the simple, basic beliefs, or truths, that form the
foundation of our spiritual faith and life.
The River Jordan
However, these were not just any old stones. These stones came from the
middle of the Jordan River, from the very spot where the priests were
standing with the ark of the covenant.
What does the Jordan River mean spiritually?
For the ancient Israelites, the Jordan was their introduction into the Holy
Land. To get into their Promised Land on the route that they were traveling,
they had to cross the Jordan.
For Christians, the Jordan represents introduction into the Christian
Church.
Why?
Because that’s where the first Christians became Christians
through baptism: “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the
whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to
him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins”
(Mark 1:4–5). Jesus himself was also baptized by John at the beginning of
his ministry, as an example for all to follow (Matthew
3:13–17).
Water in general represents God’s living truth flowing in our lives. Here is
how this is expressed in the poetic words of Deuteronomy 32:1–2:
Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;
let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
May my teaching drop like the rain,
my speech condense like the dew;
like gentle rain on grass,
like showers on new growth.
When the rain of God’s teaching gathers together, it becomes rivers of
truth. And the Jordan River, because of its special significance in the
spiritual life of both Jews and Christians, represents the truth that
introduces us into “the heavenly Canaan,” which for Jews is the Holy Land,
and for Christians is the Christian Church . . . and for all good people in
due course, the angelic community of heaven.
Stones from the Jordan
If you are a person of faith, or are following a spiritual path, what
were the basic beliefs that introduced you into the spiritual life—or into
the church, if you are a churchgoer?
-
Was it the laws of the Ten Commandments as a guide for honorable life?
-
Was it the realization that you must repent and reform your life or die?
-
Was it the conviction that you must love your neighbor as yourself?
-
Was it a belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
These and many other basic, fundamental religious and spiritual beliefs have
the power to introduce us into a spiritual or religious life from our former
worldly and secular life.
For each one of us, the stones of Gilgal, taken from the River Jordan where
the feet of the priests had stood, represent the “sacred circle” of basic
beliefs, or teachings of truth, that provided the miraculous passage through
our own spiritual Jordan from our former ways of spiritual enslavement and
death to our new ways of spiritual life.
The conquest of our Holy Land
Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan
If you have made that symbolic passage over Jordan into your own spiritual
Holy Land, you probably discovered fairly quickly that there was great
resistance to your new life. It is likely that:
-
Your family and friends didn’t recognize you anymore, and didn’t respect
the new you.
-
Your old habits and addictions came roaring back, leaving you
disoriented and disheartened.
-
You discovered that you are not as good and nice a person as you thought
you were.
-
You realized that this new, spiritual life requires some major internal
battles against the old you.
When we cross the Jordan into a new, more spiritual life, that is only the beginning.Before
we can actually occupy the
“promised land” of spiritual life and joy, we must battle our old self into
submission. That “old self” is represented by all the pagan nations that
occupied the Holy Land when the Israelites first crossed the Jordan. (No,
this doesn’t necessarily mean those historical nations actually were evil or
deserved to be slaughtered. That’s only what those nations represented to
the ancient Jews. So they came to represent the same thing in the Bible,
which was written through the ancient Jewish culture.)
What do those battles have to do with Gilgal?
Gilgal, as we have already seen, was the base camp from which Joshua and his
army conducted their initial conquest of the Holy Land. And Gilgal
represents the basic religious truths that introduce us to the spiritual
life, or to the church.
What’s the message here?
If we are to be victorious in our early battles to set aside our old
selfish, materialistic self, which was enslaved to various worldly desires
and pleasures, we must continually return to those basic beliefs and
teachings that got us going on a spiritual life in the first place.
-
If we are tempted to go back to our old cheating, dishonest life, we
must return again and again to the commandments that say, “You shall not
murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall
not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:13–16).
-
If we slide back into our old addictive ways, we must once again heed
the Bible’s call to repent (Mark
1:4), and to choose life over death (Deuteronomy
30:19–20).
-
If we find ourselves once again thinking of ourselves first, and
everyone else second, we must remind ourselves that the second Great
Commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus
19:18; Matthew 22:39).
-
If, as Christians, our faith begins to wane, and, like the apostle
Thomas, we begin to doubt, we must reaffirm our faith in Jesus Christ as
“my Lord and my God” (John
20:28)
What basic beliefs drew you into
a new, spiritual or religious life? These are your “stones of Gilgal,” to
which you can return again and again to steel yourself for the battles of
life that you must fight both within your own mind and heart and in your
relationships with your fellow human beings.
There may come a time when, as Jesus says, “our yoke will be easy and our
burden light” (see Matthew
11:29–30) in living a spiritual life. But especially in the early
days, it is a battle. And
we fight that battle using those simple, basic true beliefs that first
introduced us to a spiritual life. They represent our Gilgal.
Why does the journey start from Gilgal?
Gilgal was the Israelites’ first foothold in the Holy Land, and their
base of operations for the initial conquest. Later, the center of their
culture shifted to farther inland. From the low ground in the Jordan river
valley where Gilgal was located, it moved eventually to the heights of the
mountain on which Jerusalem and the Temple were built.
In the very same way, later on in our own spiritual journey we must move on
to a higher, more complex and nuanced understanding of the Bible, of Jesus
Christ, and of the meaning of a spiritual life. We must move from the Gilgal
of a basic understanding of spiritual life to a more developed and complex
Jerusalem of mature spiritual life.
When we do reach that stage of our journey, those simple, basic truths will
no longer be enough for us. If we are unwilling to journey higher in our
spiritual life, but remain stuck in those old, simple, black-and-white laws,
our “Gilgal” can become a place of corrupt idol worship, as it had become
when the prophets Hosea and Amos railed against it (Hosea
9:15–17, 12:11–14; Amos 4:4–6, 5:1–6).
Even so, it all starts in Gilgal. It all starts out with those first,
fundamental true teachings that introduced us into the spiritual life. And
the final mention of Gilgal in the Bible is a poignant reminder by the
prophet Micah of the simplicity and faith of our early beginnings with God (Micah
6:1–5).
No matter how fancy and developed our spiritual beliefs and practices may
become, those basic beliefs that were the starting point of our spiritual
journey are never out of date. Even if we no longer spend our days in them,
they still form the foundation of our spiritual life. The journey starts
with the stones of Gilgal because we need a lasting foundation of basic
principles of truth on which to build the superstructure of a mature,
well-developed spiritual life.
What does Gilgal mean for you? What are the basic stones of truth that form
the sacred circle from which your spiritual
journey started?
In addition to being a response to a spiritual
conundrum submitted
by a reader, this is one in a series of articles on the theme “The Bible
Re-Viewed.” Each article takes a new look at a particular selection or story
in the Bible, and explores how it relates to our lives today. For more on
this spiritual way of interpreting the Bible, see “Can
We Really Believe the Bible? Some Thoughts for Those who Wish they Could.”
GIANTS OF THE BIBLE
compiled by Dee Finney
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GIANTS
ji'-ants The word appears in the King James Version as the
translation of the Hebrew words nephilim ( Gen
6:4; Num 13:33 );
repha'im ( Deut
2:11,20; 3:11,13; Jos 12:4 ,
etc.); rapha' ( 1Chron
20:4,6,8 ),
or raphah ( 2Sam
21:16, 18, 20, 22); in one instance of gibbor,
literally, "mighty one" ( Job
16:14 ).
In the first two cases the Revised Version (British and
American) changes "giants" into the Hebrew words "Nephilim,"
nephilim, and "Rephaim," repha'im, respectively. The "Nephilim
of Gen 6:4 are
not to be confounded with the "mighty men" subsequently
described as the offspring of the unlawful marriages, of "the
sons of God" and "the daughters of men." It is told that they
overspread the earth prior to these unhallowed unions. That the
word, whatever its etymology, bears the sense of men of immense
stature is evident from the later passages; Num
13:33 .
The same is true of the "Rephaim," as shown by the instance of
Og ( Deut
3:11; Jos 12:4 ).
There is no doubt about the meaning of the word in the ease of
the giants mentioned in 2Sam
21 and 1Chron
20 .
When did Giants live?
Anthropologists have found evidence of humanoid giants existing
into the far distant past, over 1 million years ago (see
Gigantopithecus). Since then it is possible that numerous
civilizations, troupes and tribes of human and human-like giants
lived and perished across planet earth.
Those mentioned in the Bible, Nephilim, Emim and Anakim, may
have been a tiny element of a once expansive human giant
civilization, especially before the Great Flood of the Bible,
and other sources.
Giants (1.)
Heb. nephilim , meaning "violent" or "causing to fall" (Gen
6:4). These were the violent tyrants of those days, those
who fell upon others. The word may also be derived from a root
signifying "wonder," and hence "monsters" or "prodigies." In Num
13:33 this name
is given to a Canaanitish tribe, a race of large stature, "the
sons of Anak." The Revised Version, in these passages, simply
transliterates the original, and reads "Nephilim." (2.) Heb.
rephaim , a race of giants (Deu
3:11) who lived on the east of Jordan, from whom was
descended. They were probably the original inhabitants of the
land before the immigration of the Canaanites. They were
conquered by Chedorlaomer (Gen
14:5), and their territories were promised as a possession
to Abraham (Gen
15:20). The Anakim, Zuzim, and Emim were branches of this
stock. In Job
26:5 (R.V., "they
that are deceased;" marg., "the shades," the "Rephaim") and Isa
14:9 this Hebrew
word is rendered (A.V.) "dead." It means here "the shades," the
departed spirits in Sheol. In Sam2
21:16, Sam2
21:18, Sam2
21:20, 33, "the giant" is (A.V.) the rendering of the
singular form ha raphah, which may possibly be the name of the
father of the four giants referred to here, or of the founder of
the Rephaim. The Vulgate here reads "Arapha," whence Milton (in
Samson Agonistes) has borrowed the name "Harapha." (See also Ch1
20:5, Ch1
20:6, Ch1
20:8; Deu
2:11, Deu
2:20; Deu
3:13; Jos
15:8, etc., where the word is similarly rendered "giant.")
It is rendered "dead" in (A.V.) Psa
88:10; Pro
2:18; Pro
9:18; Pro
21:16 : in all
these places the Revised Version marg. has "the shades." (See
also Isa
26:14.) (3.) Heb. 'Anakim (Deu
2:10, Deu
2:11, Deu
2:21; Jos
11:21, Jos
11:22; Jos
14:12, Jos
14:15; called "sons of Anak," Num
13:33; "children of Anak," Num
13:22; Jos
15:14), a nomad race of giants descended from Arba (Jos
14:15), the father of Anak, that dwelt in the south of
Palestine near Hebron (Gen
23:2; Jos
15:13). They were a Cushite tribe of the same race as the
Philistines and the Egyptian shepherd kings. David on several
occasions encountered them (Sam2
21:15). From this race sprung Goliath (Sa1
17:4). (4.) Heb. 'emin , a warlike tribe of the ancient
Canaanites. They were "great, and many, and tall, as the
Anakims" (Gen
14:5; Deu
2:10, Deu
2:11). (5.) Heb. Zamzummim (q.v.), Deu
2:20 so called by
the Amorites. (6.) Heb. gibbor (Job
16:14), a mighty one, i.e., a champion or hero. In its
plural form (gibborim) it is rendered "mighty men" (2 Sam.
23:8-39; Kg1
1:8; 1 Chr. 11:9-47; Ch1
29:24.) The band of six hundred whom David gathered around
him when he was a fugitive were so designated. They were divided
into three divisions of two hundred each, and thirty divisions
of twenty each. The captains of the thirty divisions were called
"the thirty," the captains of the two hundred "the three," and
the captain over the whole was called "chief among the captains"
(Sam2
23:8). The sons born of the marriages mentioned in Gen
6:4 are also
called by this Hebrew name.
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Rephaim, or Giants:
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(r f ´ m) (KEY) ,
in the Bible. 1 Pre-Israelite race of giants. They were
also referred to simply as “giants.”Rephaim -
from the root rapha = spirits, shades Gen. 14:5
Anakim - race of giants Num. 13:33 descendents of
Nephilim Emim - the proud deserters, terrors, race of
giants Gen. 14:5
Zuzim- the evil ones, roaming things Gen. 14:5
Zamzummims - the evil plotters, Deut. 2:20 Zophim -
watchers, angels who descended Num. 23
Sepherim - the many.
Nephilim - According to Micah
3, God used the Nephilim Giants to punish Israel.
They are hidden but will soon return during the
"Tribulation" to lead the nations against Israel. This
will be the taller ones.
The "Gold Museum" of Peru has displays of Giant
skulls and mummies who were evidently Royalty, according
to the clothing and artifacts they had with them.
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Glenn Kimball reports:
GLENN’S EXPERIENCE WITH THE GIANTS
Glenn photographed the mummies of two
of these giant men in Lima Peru in 1969. These giants are still
in the gold museum in Lima Peru today and can be seen by anyone
who visits. They were mummified because their golden robes are
prominently on display. Their crowns could fit around Glenn’s
waist. Their golden gloves have fingers ten inches long. Their
mummies can be measured with a tape and they were both around
nine and a half feet tall. There were other personal items fit
for a giant king, that wouldn’t have been useful to a man of
normal size. The actual bodies are there incased in glass for
all to see. The news media has never photographed anyone nine
and a half feet tall.
These were not mutations. A mutation is something that happens
once in a “blue moon”. There were two giants in Peru side by
side from successive generations. What makes the story even
stranger is that the average height of the Peruvians, both now
and historically, is well under six feet high.
This isn’t the only time Giants were mentioned by prominent
people who visited South America. Don Cieza de Leon and Agustin
de Zarate published texts on South American Giants in 1553 AD
and 1555 respectively. These books came just after the arrival
of the conquistadores and were published within twenty years of
Pizarro. They said that the native traditions told the incoming
Spanish that the giants came to the Americas on raft-like boats.
Some of these men were so tall that from the knee down they were
as big as a man. Their eyes were the size of plates. Some were
clad in skins and others were mostly naked. They said that there
were no women on these boats, which was strange indeed. These
giants dug deep wells for water that still exist today through
solid rock. Cieza de Leon said that when Don Antonio de Mendoza
went to Cuzco Peru in 1560 that he found tombs with extremely
large bones, similar to the ones that were already found in
Mexico City at the time of Montezuma. Padre Acosta found similar
large bones in 1560 in Manta Peru where they later found similar
bones in 1928 when constructing the railroad to Ecuador. They
were hidden behind stalagmites in caves.
When Diego de Ordaz climbed to the high volcano of Popocatepetl,
near Mexico City, according to Las Casas, he found a giant thigh
bone that he sent to the Vatican. When Cortez invaded Mexico his
men found living giants in this region and reported them. In
their written testimonies they tore a few ribs from the dead
bodies of these giants and brought them back to Spain with them.
In the summer of 1931 Monsignor F. Lunadi organized an
expedition into the jungles of San Agustin. He found traces of a
very ancient South American empire known to the old British
buccaneers of the seventeenth century. These men were giants who
had knowledge of electricity which they used in various forms.
This race of ancient white giant men with beards was called the
Viracochas. Pedro Cieza de Leon said that they came long before
the Incas began to reign. The Indians also called these white
men Titicaca, like Lake Titicaca today located high in the
mountains between Bolivia and Peru. Glenn Lived in Juliaca Peru
on the sores of Lake Titicaca, very close to the ancient city of
Tiauanacu where there are huge statues to the giants with six
fingers and toes to this day. On the door to the sun, the main
entrance to their temple, is carved the image of Viracoca, the
creator of not only their civilization, but the white bearded
God who created the whole world. This temple has many
similarities to the Masonic temples of our day.
At the ruins of Pachacamac where US and British archeologists
and the Carnegie Institution are working today, the giants are
mentioned. It is said that they built large beautiful temples
with iron tools around 500 BC. The tradition has it that these
giant men had no women in their group and were later consumed in
fire from heaven. It is interesting that the stories of these
giants quasi-parallels the story of the Watchers married the
Daughters of Eve. The daughters of Eve bore the watchers giant
children, but nothing is mentioned that these giants themselves
had children. The stories of the Giants often ends in a single
generation, though the Giants lived a very long time.
These giants were granted a state of quasi-unprotected
immortality by deity. They could be killed, but did live long
periods of time if they weren’t deliberately killed and for the
most part couldn’t bare children. According to Hesiod these
“Watchers”, one of the parents of the giants, were men from the
four former epochs of human existence prior to the coming of
Adam and Eve. Adam wasn’t the first man on the earth. He was the
patriarch of the final epoch of time. How else could their have
already been men of old and men of renown when Adam and Eve had
their first children? That is exactly what it says in Genesis
chapter six. The four previous epochs of time rose in culture
and science, but were exterminated because they violated the
laws of the earth and deity. We are headed for a similar
cataclysm in our day because of our rejection of deity. A human
remnant of the four epochs survived because of their valiant
nature and those people, numbering in the thousands, were called
the “Watchers”. Hesiod suggests that this remnant numbered in
the thousands.
These immortals who survived the cataclysms of the four previous
epochs of time were also called angels because they were allowed
to pass from the realm of Deity to mortality seamlessly. They
were allowed to pass between the heavens and the earth because
they were given the assignment by deity to watch over mortals.
This is another reason they lived so long and paradoxically the
reason they were commanded not to have children. Their job
wasn’t to interfere with men unless directly commanded. These
Watchers weren’t classic disembodied spirits, as is the case
with classic angels. Most of the evidence and history of the
Watchers is included in the audio class “Daniel and the
Watchers”. In essence the Watchers were noble-immortal men who
have yet to die; a status granted them by deity because of their
righteousness.
Two hundred some odd of these watchers, because they were still
in the flesh, found the daughters of Eve attractive and violated
their agreements with deity not to intervene in the lives of
men. That is why they are often called “Fallen Angels”. They
bore children to mortal women which was against their agreement
with God. They were angels because of the status deity gave them
and fallen because they violated the agreement. However, not all
the watchers violated the agreement with deity and remain men of
old and men of renown who come and go at the behest of deity.
These are the ones who still appear today during a moment in
crisis, effect rescues and give important messages and then are
gone. Most of us have either had a first hand encounter with one
of them at a moment in crisis, or have heard of the stories from
our friends.
Daniel met some of them. Moses is said to have translated the
book of Jubilees as dictated by one of them. Even Mohammed is
said to have been dictated the Quran by one of them. Millions of
people have reported a stranger appearing at the moment of
crisis and then vanishing without a trace. Others have reported
these Watchers coming to them during moments of crisis and
giving them critical pieces of advice about subjects they could
not have otherwise known. After they left their message they
were nowhere to be found. Truly these beings watch over the
affairs of men and perform rescues of many kinds, as if they
were sent from deity.
The important thing about the giants is that they are children
of a small segment of the Watchers and the daughters of Eve.
Since one of the parents of the Giants was immortal, these
giants often lived a very long time.
The North American Indians believed that the first race of human
beings were giants. In the autobiography of William "Buffalo
Bill" Cody, Cody writes that while camping on the South Platte,
a Pawnee Indian came into the camp with what the army surgeon
pronounced to be a giant thigh bone of a human being. When Cody
asked about where such a bone might have come from, the Indian
replied that long ago a race of giants had lived in the area.
This race of men had been three times larger than normal men and
able to out-run a buffalo and even carry it in one hand. Cody
wrote:
“These giants denied the existence of a Great Spirit, so he
caused a great rain storm to come, and the water kept rising
higher and higher so that it drove these proud, and conceited
giants from the low ground to the hills, and thence to the
mountains, but at last even the mountain tops were submerged and
then those mammoth men were all drowned. After the flood had
subsided, the Great Spirit came to the conclusion that he had
made man too large and powerful, and that he would therefore,
correct the mistake by creating a race of men of smaller size
and less strength. This is the reason, say the Indians, that
modern men are small and not like the giants of old, and they
claim that this story is a matter of Indian history, which has
been handed down among them from time immemorial.”
The bones that were in the possession of Buffalo Bill were given
to the museum, that promptly hid them. They continue to be lost
to us today, though many saw them at the time.
Brazilian Giants
William Turner, the naturalist and dean of Wells (d. 1568),
mentions that on the coast of Brazil, near the river Polata, he
saw a tribe of very gigantic naked savages, one of whom he
estimated to be twelve feet tall.
While in Brazil, Knyvet several times saw an Indian who, though
still a youth, towered to a height of thirteen spans. Since
thirteen spans equals nine feet, nine inches, this would have
made the giant about the same size as Goliath.
Chile's Giants
Reaveneau de Lussan reported contact with natives of Chile that
were of enormous bulk and stature. Frezier also relates that
natives of the coast of Chile told him that some of the Indians
living inland stood nine feet high.
Captain George Shelvock, on his voyage in 1719 to the Island of
Chiloe off the coast of Chile, saw Indians which stood nine to
ten feet high.
Cocopa Giants
Soon after Maldonado discovered the Seri giants, Captain
Melchior Diaz came across another tribe of huge Indians while
searching farther up the coast for the ships carrying supplies
for Coronado's 1540 expedition. Pedro de Castaneda reported
that, “After going about 150 leagues, they came to a province of
exceedingly tall and strong men-like giants.” Evidently, these
were the Cocopa, a Yuman tribe who also inhabited the lower Rio
Colorado, which the Indians called Rio del Tison.
MAGELLAN
Antonio Francesco Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's
circumnavigation of the world: “We
had been two whole months in this harbor without sighting anyone
when one day (quite without warning) we saw on the shore a huge
giant, who was naked, and who danced, leaped and sang, all the
while throwing sand and dust on his head. Our Captain ordered
one of the crew to walk towards him, telling this man also to
dance, leap and sing as a sign of friendship. This he did, and
led the giant to a place by the shore where the Captain was
waiting. And when the giant saw us, he marveled and was afraid,
and pointed to the sky, believing we came from heaven. He was so
tall that even the largest of us came only to midway between his
waist and his shoulder; 621 yet with all he was well
proportioned. He had a large face, painted round with red; his
eyes were ringed with yellow and in the middle of his cheeks
were painted two hearts. He had hardly any hair on his head,
what little he had being painted white....”
Rupert Gould said in his book Enigmas in
1945, included another quote about Magellan’s voyage and added, This
man was so tall that our heads scarcely came up to his waist,
and his voice was like that of a bull.
Many of the other natives in this region were also very tall;
this would lead to the naming of those in the region the
"Patagonian Giants", Patagonian meaning "people of the long
feet."
P. Joseph Tarrubia wrote in his Gianthologia, published in
Madrid in 1761, that some utensils found in South America were
of such enormous size that they could only have been used by
giants. He also noted that several Spanish settlers told of
having seen monstrous men, ranging from nine to ten feet in
height, when they sometimes strayed from their wild retreats
verging toward the Straits of Magellan. Tarrubia further related
that: “…the South Americans had a body of soldiers, consisting
of about four hundred men, the shortest of whom was not shorter
than nine feet and the tallest about eleven feet.”
Twenty years before Magellan came, Amerigo Vespucci and some
fellow sailors sighted several giants off the coast of
Venezuela. Amerigo, for whom approximately one-third of the
world was later named, recounted this experience: “Thus sailing
along, we came upon an island [Curasao] which was situated
fifteen leagues from the mainland. At our arrival, since we saw
no people and the island looked favorable to us, we decided to
explore it, and eleven of us landed. We discovered a trail and
set ourselves to walk on it two leagues and a half inland; we
met with a village of twelve houses in which we did not find
anyone except seven women. They were of such great stature that
there was not one of them who was not taller than every one of
us by a span and a half [about 19 inches]. When they saw us they
were very much afraid of us. The chief one of them, who was
certainly a discreet woman, by signs hauled us up to a house and
made them give us refreshments. When we saw such noble women, we
determined to carry off two of them, who were young women
fifteen years of age, and make a present of them to the king.
They were creatures whose stature was certainly above that of
average men. While we were thus plotting, thirty-six men
arrived, who entered the house where we were drinking, and they
were of such lofty stature that each of them was taller when
upon his knees than I was when standing erect. They were of the
stature of giants in their great size and in the proportion of
their bodies, which corresponded with their height.
When the men entered, some of our fellows were so frightened
that at the moment they thought they were done for. The warriors
had bows and arrows and tremendous oar blades, finished off like
swords. When they saw our small stature, they began to converse
with us to learn who we were and whence we came. We gave them
soft words for the sake of amity and replied to them in sign
language that we were men of peace and that we were out to see
the world. In fact, we judged it wise to part from them without
controversy, and so we went by the same trail by which we had
come. They stuck with us all the way to the sea and until we
embarked.
GIANTS ALL OVER THE PLACE AND RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSE
Critics have long suggested that the stories from South America
are just too incredible to be true. They have openly asked why
there aren’t stories of giants in the North America. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Again we are people who run
from subjects that don’t neatly conform to what we believe.
The stories of the giants are located in every state in the
union and are beyond the scope of a single class. However, to
illustrate this point we choose Ohio.
The History of Marion County, Ohio (1883)
A picture of a skull from 1996, taken by J.C. Chatters of
Kennewick Man, Washington State is that of a giant. Giants were
also found when removing the gravel bluffs for the construction
and repairs of roads.
The History of Brown County, Ohio (1883)
Mastodonic remains are occasionally unearthed and from time to
time; discoveries of the remains of Indian settlements. Among
the ruins are gigantic skeletons with high cheek bones, powerful
jaws and massive frames peculiar to the Red man.
Now and Long Ago: A History of the Marion County Ohio Area
Satterfield, a justice of the peace, said that three giant
skeletons were found at the mouth of the Paw Paw Creek. Jim Dean
and others found the bones while digging a bridge foundation.
She said it was Dr. Kidwell, of Fairmont, who examined them and
said they were very old, perhaps thousands of years old. She
said that when the skeletons were exposed to the weather for a
few days, their bones turned black and began to crumble. All
these skeletons, she said, were measured and found to be about
eight feet long.
MORE HISTORICAL INFORMATION AT:
http://www.stevequayle.com/Giants/articles/giants.Kimball.html
There Were
Giants in the Earth in Those Days
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the
face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That
the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were
fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And
the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man,
for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred
and twenty years.
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.
-- Genesis 6: 1-4 (KJV)The phrase 'and also
afterwards' is a later addition in an attempt to harmonize
the Genesis account with the book of Numbers and Samuel, for
reasons which will become obvious. These giants appear to be
an ancient Hebrew equivalent to the Greek myth of Hercules
or Cyclops. Shortly thereafter everyone on earth, including
all the giants, called Nephilim, perish in the flood, with
the exception of Noah and his family.
"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds,
cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the
earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose
nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every
living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and
animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were
blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those
that were with him in the ark." (Genesis
Chapter 7 verse 21)
Since Noah was of a stock of smaller people, most of
his descendants were of his stature. However, some of the
genes to produce giants survived through the wife of Ham,
one of Noah's sons. Therefore, a number of the sons of
Canaan (one of Ham's sons) were giants (Numbers
13:1-2, 32-33). InDeuteronomy
2:19-21, Moses records that God destroyed the giants who
dwelt in Ammon so that the children of Lot could possess the
land. Those giants—who apparently descended from Canaan
through a man named Anak—eventually became extinct. King Og
of Bashan was the last of them to inhabit Palestine east of
Jordan (Deuteronomy
3:11).
- Subdued by Chedorlaomer
(Genesis
14:5)Genesis 14
5 In
the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with
him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth
Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim 6 and
the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran
near the desert. 7 Then
they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh),
and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as
well as the Amorites who were living in Hazazon Tamar. The
War of Sodom and Gomorrah
"In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who
were with him came and subdued the Rephaim" (Genesis 14:5
RSV)
Emim
The Emim were a warrior tribe of giants who were
defeated by Chedorlaomer and his allies. Around the time of
Abraham,
they lived east of the Jordan.
"In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who
were with him came and subdued the Rephaim in
Ashterothkarnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in
Shavehkiriathaim" (Genesis 14:5 RSV)
-
Anakim
The Anakim lived in the south, near Hebron. They were
defeated by the Israelites under Joshua.
Joshua 11
6 The LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them,
because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over
to Israel, slain. You are to hamstring their horses and burn
their chariots."
7 So
Joshua and his whole army came against them suddenly at the
Waters of Merom and attacked them, 8 and
the LORD gave them into the hand of Israel. They defeated
them and pursued them all the way to Greater Sidon, to
Misrephoth Maim, and to the Valley of Mizpah on the east,
until no survivors were left. 9 Joshua
did to them as the LORD had directed: He hamstrung their
horses and burned their chariots.
10 At
that time Joshua turned back and captured Hazor and put its
king to the sword. (Hazor had been the head of all these
kingdoms.) 11 Everyone
in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed [2] them,
not sparing anything that breathed, and he burned up Hazor
itself.
"And Joshua came at that time, and wiped out the
Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir,
from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and
from all the hill country of Israel; Joshua utterly
destroyed them with their cities." (Joshua 11:21 RSV)
21 At
that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from
the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all
the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country
of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their
towns.
The Lord tells Joshua to Kill the Enemy
Joshua.12:4 "And
the coast of Og king of Bashan, which was of the remnant
of the giants."1 These
are the kings of the land whom the Israelites had
defeated and whose territory they took over east of the
Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge to Mount Hermon, including
all the eastern side of the Arabah:
2 Sihon
king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon. He ruled
from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge-from the middle
of the gorge-to the Jabbok River, which is the border of
the Ammonites. This included half of Gilead. 3 He
also ruled over the eastern Arabah from the Sea of
Kinnereth [1] to
the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea [2] ),
to Beth Jeshimoth, and then southward below the slopes
of Pisgah.
4 And
the territory of Og king of Bashan, one of the last of
the Rephaites, who reigned in Ashtaroth and Edrei. 5 He
ruled over Mount Hermon, Salecah, all of Bashan to the
border of the people of Geshur and Maacah, and half of
Gilead to the border of Sihon king of Heshbon.
6 Moses,
the servant of the LORD , and the Israelites conquered
them. And Moses the servant of the LORD gave their land
to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of
Manasseh to be their possession.
7 These
are the kings of the land that Joshua and the Israelites
conquered on the west side of the Jordan, from Baal Gad
in the Valley of Lebanon to Mount Halak, which rises
toward Seir (their lands Joshua gave as an inheritance
to the tribes of Israel according to their tribal
divisions- 8 the
hill country, the western foothills, the Arabah, the
mountain slopes, the desert and the Negev-the lands of
the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites
and Jebusites):
The Battles of Moses and Joshua
Og the king of Bashan had reigned in Ashtaroth and
Edrei and had survived as one of the last of the Rephaites.
Moses had defeated them and taken over their land. 13 But
the Israelites did not drive out the people of Geshur and
Maacah, so they continue to live among the Israelites to
this day.
(Joshua
13:12)
The Land that was given by the Lord to the Israelites
- THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS - Joshuah's
allotment
- A border of Judah
(Joshua
15:8)
- Then it ran up the Valley of Ben Hinnom along the
southern slope of the Jebusite city (that is,
Jerusalem). From there it climbed to the top of the hill
west of the Hinnom Valley at the northern end of the
Valley of Rephaim. 9 From
the hilltop the boundary headed toward the spring of the
waters of Nephtoah, came out at the towns of Mount
Ephron and went down toward Baalah (that is, Kiriath
Jearim).
Dwelt in Canaan - Manneseh's
Allotment
(Joshua
17:15)(Said to Joseph) 15 "If
you are so numerous," Joshua answered, "and if the hill
country of Ephraim is too small for you, go up into the
forest and clear land for yourselves there in the land of
the Perizzites and Rephaites."
-
Jos.18:16 "The
valley of the son of Hinnom, and which is in the valley of
the giants."
16 The
boundary went down to the foot of the hill facing the Valley
of Ben Hinnom, north of the Valley of Rephaim. It continued
down the Hinnom Valley along the southern slope of the
Jebusite city and so to En Rogel.
(Isaiah
17:5)
It will be as when a reaper gathers the standing grain and
harvests the grain with his arm-
as when a man gleans heads of grain in the Valley of
Rephaim.
David & Goliath: 1
Sam.17:4 "Goliath,
of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span....."
4 A
champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the
Philistine camp. He was over nine feet [1] tall. 5 He
had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor
of bronze weighing five thousand shekels [2] ; 6 on
his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung
on his back. 7 His
spear shaft was like a weaver's rod, and its iron point weighed
six hundred shekels. [3] His
shield bearer went ahead of him.
- The last of, destroyed by David and his warriors
(1
Samuel 17:4,49,50; 2 Samuel 21:15-22)
- 48 As
the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly
toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching
into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck
the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his
forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.
50 So
David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a
stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the
Philistine and killed him.
"And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a
champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and
a span [i.e. about 9 feet / 3 meters]. He had a helmet of bronze
on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the
weight of the coat was five thousand shekels [i.e. about 125
pounds / 57 kilograms] of bronze. And he had greaves of bronze
upon his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his
shoulders. And the shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam,
and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels [i.e. about 15
pounds / 7 kilograms] of iron; and his shield-bearer went before
him." (1 Samuel 17:4-7 RSV) (see David
And Goliath)
The biblical giant Goliath of Gath (or "the Gittite"), whom the
teenage David killed with a sling stone (I Samuel 17). Goliath's
brother and sons were also men of great stature, and the Bible
explicitly mentions that David and his men killed them all (II
Samuel 21:15-22; I
Chronicles 20:4-8).
Both before and after the Flood, God was directly involved
in the destruction of those giant men. The reason for their
destruction is not stated directly, but like Goliath, those men
seemed always to be in opposition to God and to His people
Israel.
- David obtained victories over the Philistines in
(2
Samuel 5:18,25)
18 Now
the Philistines had come and spread out in the Valley of
Rephaim; 19 so
David inquired of the LORD , "Shall I go and attack the
Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?"
The LORD answered him, "Go, for I will surely hand the
Philistines over to you."
20 So
David went to Baal Perazim, and there he defeated them. He
said, "As waters break out, the LORD has broken out against
my enemies before me." So that place was called Baal
Perazim. [4] 21 The
Philistines abandoned their idols there, and David and his
men carried them off.
22 Once
more the Philistines came up and spread out in the Valley of
Rephaim; 23 so
David inquired of the LORD , and he answered, "Do not go
straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them
in front of the balsam trees. 24 As
soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the
balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the LORD
has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army." 25 So
David did as the LORD commanded him, and he struck down the
Philistines all the way from Gibeon [5] to
Gezer.
Nephilim
Although their origin has been interpreted various ways,
the Nephilim existed very early in human history. Independent
Egyptian records of about 2000 BC also record their existence.
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also
afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of
men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty
men that were of old, the men of renown." (Genesis 6:4 RSV)
"‘And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who
come from the Nephilim); and we seemed to ourselves like
grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.' Then all the
congregation raised a loud cry; and the people wept that
night." (Numbers
Chapter 13 verse 33)
SEE: NEPHILIM
Rephaim
The Rephaim occupied the land prior to the Canaanites, but
were eventually defeated. The Anakim, Zuzim, and Emim people
were related.
"The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many,
and tall as the Anakim." (Deuteronomy 2:10 RSV)
Dt.2:10-11 "The
Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and
tall, as the Anakims; Which also were accounted giants."
Dt.2:20-21 "That
also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old
time.... A people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but
the LORD destroyed them."
"For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of
the Rephaim; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it
not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits [i.e. about 13 feet
/ 4 meters] was its length, and four cubits its breadth,
according to the common cubit." (Deuteronomy 3:11 RSV)
|
|
1 Chr.11:23 "And
he slew an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits high."
Chronicles 11
22 Benaiah
son of Jehoiada was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who
performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab's best men.
He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. 23 And
he struck down an Egyptian who was seven and a half feet [1] tall.
Although the Egyptian had a spear like a weaver's rod in his
hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the
spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own
spear.
MATTHEW HENRY - CHRONICLES XX
4 And it came to pass after this, that there
arose war at Gezer with the Philistines; at which time Sibbechai
the Hushathite slew Sippai, that
was of the
children of the giant: and they were subdued. 5 And
there was war again with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of
Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear
staff was like
a weaver's beam. 6 And yet again there was war at
Gath, where was a man of greatstature,
whose fingers and toes were four
and twenty, six on
each hand, and
six on each foot: and
he also was the son of the giant. 7 But when he
defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea David's brother slew
him. 8 These were born unto the giant in Gath; and
they fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.
|
Giant (mythology)
Giants are
humanoid creatures of prodigious size and strength, a type
of legendary monster that
appear in the tales of many different races and cultures.
They are often stupid or violent and are frequently said to
eat humans, especially children; others, however, like Oscar
Wilde's giants, are intelligent and friendly.
The Cyclopes of Homer's Odyssey were
giants, as was Goliath who
strove with King David in
the Bible.
The Bible also records a race of giants called "Nephilim". Genesis states
that "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 bore children to them, the same became
mighty men who were of old, men of renown." (Gen. 6:4 KJV);
here "giants" is a translation of the Hebrew "Nephilim".
Post-biblical tradition holds that Nimrod was
a member of this race.
In Germanic mythologies
(see Norse
mythology), giants (Jotuns)
are often opposed to the gods. In particular, the Wodin/Odin-derived
mythologies of Northern Europe feature frost
giants, who
are eternally opposed to the Aesir.
The Aesir themselves emerged from the race of giants, and in
the eventual, apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok the
frost giants will storm Asgard,
home of the gods, and defeat the gods in war, bringing about
the end of the world. In the mature form of this mythology
recorded in the Edda poetry
and prose, giants inter-marry with the gods and are the
origin of most of the monsters in Nordic mythology (e.g.,
the Fenris Wolf),
so relations between the Aesir and the giants are sometimes
cordial and sometimes adversarial.
Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in
the folklore of Wales and Ireland.
From here, giants got intoBreton and Arthurian romances,
and from this source they spread into the heroic tales of Torquato
Tasso, Ludovico
Ariosto, and their follower Edmund
Spenser. The giant Despair appears in John
Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. Norse andAnglo-Saxon
mythology are
also rich in tales of giants, which seem there to be a
separate race akin to the gods,
and strove often with Thor. Ogres and trolls are
giant-like humanoid creatures that occur in various sorts of Europeanfolklore.
In Basque
mythology, giants appear as jentilak (Gentiles)
and mairuak (Moors).
They are who made dolmens andmenhirs.
After Christianization,
the giants were driven away. The only remaining one is Olentzero,
a coalmaker that
brings gifts on Christmas
Eve.
Giants figure in a great many fairy tales and folklore
stories, such as Jack
and the Beanstalk and Paul
Bunyan.
[
Examples of giants
Origin of the belief in giants
It is possible that tales of giants derive from the
remains of previous civilizations. Saxo
Grammaticus, for example, argues that giants had to
exist, because nothing else would explain the large walls,
stone monuments, and statues that we know were the remains
of Roman construction.
Similarly, the Anglo-Saxon "Seafarer"
speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants.
Giants provided the least complicated explanation for such
artifacts. Cyclopes may be originated in antique
elephant skulls
found in Sicily.
If one does not know what an elephant looks like, the place
where the trunk is placed on the skull can be mistaken for a
giant eyesocket.
"Giant" is also colloquially used for a human who is
unusually tall, or afflicted with one of the several forms
of gigantism.
Gigantes y cabezudos ("Giants
and big-heads") are figures from street processions at
Spanish fiestas.
See also
|
| Gigantopithecus and Meganthropus are names
given to giant hominids found by paleontologists, but since they
don't fit too well in the imaginary evolutionary chain, they
don't get much attention. Meganthropus is the giant Java man who
inhabited Southeast Asia over a million years ago. He stood12
feet tall and weighed several hundred pounds. Java man was found
with stone implements consisting of hand axes, clubs, pounders,
adzes, knives, and other tools often ranging in weight from 8 to
36 lbs or more. Artifacts, identical to those used by
Meganthropus, have been found in Australia. Gigantopithecus is
often suspected of being the elusive Bigfoot or Yeti.
There are a number of skeletons, skulls, and footprints of
giants as tall as 30 feet. They appear in almost every culture's
folklore and legend, most of them the "big bully" variety, and a
hero dispatches almost all. Theories about the builders of
pyramids, stone circles, and other monolithic examples of
ancient construction find giants as a possible answer. Big
blocks mean big builders.
Icon of St. Chistopher (249-251).
Church of St. George Cegelkoy. Tradition relates that the
saint came from a country of cannibals and that his face was
disfigured. When he became a Christian, he was martyred
for his faith. Jacques de Voragine, in The Golden Legend, wrote
of St. Christopher: "He was of gigantic stature, had a
terrifying mien, was twelve coudees tall.” A coudee is equal to
or larger than the English foot. According to this ancient
account, St. Christopher stood from 12 to 18 feet tall, a fact
that was erased from church history.
St. Christopher was a member of the north African tribe of
the Marmaritae. He was captured by Roman forces during the
emperor Diocletian's campaign against the Marmaritae in late
301/early 302 and was transported for service in a Roman
garrison in or near Antioch in Syria. He was baptised by the
refugee bishop Peter of Alexandria and was martyred on 9 July
308. Bishop Peter arranged for the transport of his remains back
to Marmarica in 311. He is really identifiable with the Egyptian
martyr known as St. Menas. In so far as the author of the lost,
original acts of St. Christopher seems both to have been based
at Antioch and to have wanted to encourage missionary activity,
he is probably identifiable if not as bishop Theophilus the
Indian himself, present at Antioch c.351-54, then as one of his
circle.
The Greek tradition came to interpret this passage
absolutely literally, and this is why Byzantine icons often
depicted St. Christopher with a dog's head. In time, of course,
this led to a reaction against St. Christopher. The Latin
tradition developed along different lines, however, since early
Latin translations did not always render a literal translation
of the original Greek term "dog-headed" (kunokephalos),
and some seem to have translated it as "dog-like" (canineus).
This was amended to read "Canaanite" (Cananeus) as time
progressed since it was obvious that he could not really have
been "dog-like".7 It
is important at this point to emphasize that the description of
Christopher as from the land of the dog-headed has absolutely
nothing to do with the Egyptian cult of the jackal-headed god
Anubis.8 The
real explanation is rather more prosaic. In brief, the civilised
inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world had long been accustomed to
describe those who lived on the edge of their world and beyond
as the strange inhabitants of stranger lands, cannibals,
dog-headed peoples and worse.9 So
when the author of the original account of the martyrdom of St.
Christopher described his origin from the land of cannibals and
dog-headed peoples he was merely signifying that he came from
the edge of the civilised world as the inhabitants of the Roman
empire saw it, and the Marmaritae did indeed inhabit such a
peripheral region.10He
was not to realize that later generations would misinterpret
this common cultural metaphor in an entirely literal fashion.
FROM: http://www.ucc.ie/milmart/chrsorig.html
|
| GIANTS IN RELIGION: Evidence for human
giants in the Bible and other holy writ.
Giants'
Skeletons
THE HOLLOW EARTH - DREAMS AND VISIONS
... The Giants are also Norse Gods .
Frost giants all descended from Ymir, the frost
giant(who Odin slewed. ... The giants will fight them at
Ragnorak. ...
www.greatdreams.com/holwdrms.htm
UFO'S AND EXTRATERRESTRIALS
... 6-15-03 - THE RETURN OF THE
GIANTS. 6 ... ROCKERFELLER.!!!! 5-11-00 - BARRY CHAMISH
TELLS THE WORLD THE GIANTS HAVE RETURNED SIGHTINGS.COM
INTERVIEW. ...
www.greatdreams.com/ufos.htm -
BLUE BEAR
... In those days there was a race of
giant bears just as there was a race
of human Giants. ... One Bear Spirit married into the
Giants. ...
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/blue-bear.htm
Easter Island - The Connection to Extraterrestrials
... They are among the few moai
that face the sea. These seven stone giants may well
symbolize those seven explorers, but no one knows for
sure. ...
www.greatdreams.com/ufos/long-ears.htm -
AFRICAN LUCY
... His teacher explained that
the word meant "giants" when describing the "sons of
the deities" who married the daughters of Man, although
the literal Hebrew ...
www.greatdreams.com/african-lucy.htm -
The Mandelbrot Set Crop Circle Formation
... The myth belongs in the same
tradition of battles between gods and giants,
or between the powers of light and the demons of
darkness. ...
www.greatdreams.com/crop/mndlbrt/mandlbrt.htm -
REVELATION OF THE TRUE SATAN
... EXCERPTS FROM JIM A.
CORNWELL'S SCHOLARSHIP. " Biblical Information of Giants
(8,850
BC to 1,300 BC) ". ... Noah and the Giants (Anakim or
Annunaki) after the Flood. ...
www.greatdreams.com/revblack.htm
11:11 - POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?
... I went back to the building
to look for the rods and hatchet again, and when I went
to the laundry rooms along the 'Way' I was now in the
land of the giants. ...
www.greatdreams.com/11-11-positive-negative.htm -
KNITTING A STORY - THE NUMBER 26 - THE MAYAN CONNECTION
... Above, in Asgard, the gods
would march to meet the frost giants, and the awful
children
of Loki, Jormungand the world serpent, and Fenrir the
wolf, as well as ...
www.greatdreams.com/26.htm
MAYAN PROPHECY
... Bacabs. In Mayan mythology, a
group of four protective deities, the sons of Itzamna
and Ixchel. They are giants who uphold the sky at its
cardinal points. ...
www.greatdreams.com/mynproph.htm -
BARRY CHAMISH - UFO WAVE IN ISRAEL
... After reading these cases
previously sited, I will be first in line. RETURN OF THE
GIANTS. by Barry Chamish. ... End of Chapter Five.
CHAPTER NINE - THE GIANTS RETURN ...
www.greatdreams.com/chamish.htm
THE END OF THE WORLD
... stone in South America. He
also met long-eared giants on the craft, and
found their statues in South America. He even was shown
...
www.greatdreams.com/end-world.htm
DEES DREAMS AND VISIONS - JANUARY , 2001
... AV - Anakims 9; 9. Anakims =
"long-necked". 1) a tribe of giants, descendants of
Anak, which dwelled in southern Canaan. 6063 `Aner
{aw-nare'}. AV - Aner 3; 3. ...
www.greatdreams.com/jan2001.htm
THE SYMBOLISM AND SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUMBER
FIVE
... age, the "age of joy," or
spiritual innocence of man; Treta-yug, the age of
silver,
or that of fire -- the period of supremacy of man and of
giants and of the ...
www.greatdreams.com/five/five.htm
- 86k - Cached - Similar pages
GREATDREAMS - EARTHQUAKE NEWS
... Greek mythology says he was
the leader of the Giants, the sons of heaven and earth
who fought a battle with the Olympian gods for control
of the universe. ...
www.greatdreams.com/gdquakes.htm
THE PILLAR OF KING ARTHUR
... Some traditions have him as
brother of Ambrosius and High King of Britain for a
time. Geoffrey of Monmouth says he is buried at the
Giants' Dance. MORE. ...
www.greatdreams.com/arthur-pillar.htm
THE SYMBOLISM AND SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NUMBER
NINE
... and nobleman(jarl). Jotunheim
- (Norse) The abode of the giants. It is
on the edge of the ocean, far to the northeast. It is
one ...
www.greatdreams.com/nine/nine.htm
The 4th World - and the 5th World of the Aztecs
... According to the native
traditions of the Caroline Islands, Papua New Guinea,
and
Malaysia, a subterranean race of giants went underground
in ancient times. ...
www.greatdreams.com/4th-world.htm
THE MYSTERY AND CONTROVERSY OF THE STORY OF MOSES -
AKHENATEN
... The Tradition promises a
"bow" set in "the clouds" to those persons who have
maintained
its chain. " Biblical Information of Giants (8,850 BC to
1,300 BC). ...
www.greatdreams.com/moses.htm
THE NUMBERS OF GOD
... 1728 + 48 = 1776. The Book of
Genesis tells us that fallen Angels descended to
earth and had offspring with woman. These were called
Giants. ...
www.greatdreams.com/nmbrsgod.htm
|
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www.greatdreams.com/ark2.htm - Similarto
IS THE ARK OF THE COVENANT IN ETHIOPIA?
Jun 6, 2000 ... Jones
believes that since Israel had its first beginnings and subsequent
renewals , not in Jerusalem, but at Gilgal that
the kingdom will once ...
-
www.greatdreams.com/cut_and_banded_tree.htm - Similarto
THE CUT AND BANDED TREE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
So the place has been called Gilgal to
this day. On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, while
camped at Gilgal on
the plains of Jericho, the Israelites ...
-
www.greatdreams.com/delphi_oracle.htm - Similarto
THE DELPHI ORACLE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
4 For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye
shall live: 5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal,
and pass not to Beersheba: for ...
-
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/bread_bible.htm - Similarto
BREAD FROM THE BIBLE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
15 All their wickedness [is] in Gilgal:
for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive
them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their ...
-
www.greatdreams.com/israel_database.htm - Similarto
ISRAEL DATABASE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
4 For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye
shall live: 5 But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal,
and pass not to Beersheba: .
-
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/red-heifer.htm - Similarto
THE RED HEIFER - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Feb 14, 2004 ... ...
work in two videos, Digging Up the Future and Return to Gilgal.
He has written several articles for the RESEARCHER. (See The Skies
Speak).
-
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog152.html
Feb 29, 2012 ... For
example, it was reinstated by Joshua at Gilgal,
by Josiah, by Hezekiah and, after the return from the captivity, by
Ezra. By the time of the ...
-
www.greatdreams.com/economy/banksters-u-s.htm - Similarto
THE BANKSTERS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Nov 12, 2008 ... A
statue interpretation of the dream at Gilgal Sculpture
Garden, Salt Lake City, Utah. Nebuchadnezzar's statue vision is a story
from chapter 2 of ...
THIS IS WHERE I POST WHAT I'M DOING AND THINKING
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