Here is one of the strangest and most wonderful facts in the whole study of the lost books. In a text recovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there appears a name no one expected to find in a Jewish religious writing: Gilgamesh — the hero of the great Babylonian epic, written down more than four thousand years ago. And he is not there as a foreign king. He is listed as one of the giants.
The book is called the Book of Giants. It was not in the Bible most of us read, but it was treasured by the community at Qumran, who kept multiple copies in Aramaic across several caves. It belongs to the same family as the Book of Enoch — the story of the Watchers, the angels who came down to Mount Hermon, and the monstrous children they fathered.
Where Enoch tells the story from heaven's side, the Book of Giants tells it from the giants' own point of view. We meet Ohya and Hahya, the sons of the fallen leader Shemihaza, and Mahway, the son of the Watcher Barakel. And we find them afraid. They are haunted by dreams — a stone tablet plunged into water until every name but three is washed away; a great tree uprooted except for three of its roots. The giants cannot read these dreams, but the dread in them is plain: a flood is coming, and almost nothing will survive.
"I am a giant, and by the mighty strength of my arm… I have made war against them; but I am not able to stand against them, for my opponents reside in Heaven." — the Book of Giants, 4Q531 (the speaker may be Gilgamesh)
So they do the only thing they can think of: they send Mahway flying across "the great desert" to find Enoch, the one human who can interpret the dreams and plead for them before God. Enoch's answer comes back written in his own hand — the flood is coming, the archangel Raphael will bring the destruction, and the only hope left is to "loosen the bonds binding you to evil… and pray." It is a haunting, almost tender moment: even the giants are offered a chance to repent.
The ancient authors were weaving the legends of their whole world into one sacred history. Gilgamesh was the most famous "mighty man" the ancient Near East knew — so into the story of the mighty men before the flood he went. It is a breathtaking glimpse of how connected these old traditions really were, and how one buried jar at Qumran can link the Bible to Babylon.
Gilgamesh in a Banned Book — read aloud
The full voiced Broadcast follows the giants through their dreams and their doomed flight to Enoch — the whole story the Dead Sea Scrolls gave back. In a real voice.
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