Ancient Texts
Hebrew Bible: Ancient texts
Ancient Texts pages that draw on Hebrew Bible, each with the sources shown. Start with Anakim, Cherubim, Enoch, Helel ben Shahar (Lucifer).
Beings · Hebrew BibleAnakimAncient spies came back from Canaan saying they felt like grasshoppers next to the sons of Anak. The Bible traces a line from these giants of Hebron to the Philistine city of Gath, home of Goliath. The spies' report is framed as a faithless exaggeration, though. Were the Anakim a real people, or a legend enlarged by fear?Beings · Hebrew BibleCherubimForget the chubby babies. The first angelic beings in the Bible are armed security, posted at the gate of Eden with a flaming sword that turned every way, to guard the road to the tree of life. Later, God is said to ride one. What were the cherubim really supposed to be?People · Hebrew Bible; Enoch literatureEnochGenesis spends only a few lines on Enoch, and then breaks its own pattern. Everyone else in his family line dies, but of him it says only that God took him. He lived 365 years, the same number as days in a solar year. That odd ending sparked a whole library of visions, still being read today.Beings · Hebrew Bible; Canaanite mythHelel ben Shahar (Lucifer)The name Lucifer comes from a Latin word for the planet Venus as the morning star, which rises bright and vanishes in the sun's glare. In Isaiah 14 a shining one tries to lift his throne above the stars and is thrown down. In context it mocks a king of Babylon. So how did it become a story about Satan?People · Hebrew Bible; Enoch literatureMethuselahIf you add up the ages in the standard Hebrew text, the oldest man in the Bible dies in the very year of the Flood. Methuselah lived 969 years. In the Enoch books he does something odder: he travels to "the ends of the earth" to ask his vanished father about a glowing baby. What did Enoch tell him?Places · Hebrew Bible; Enoch literatureMount HermonThe story says two hundred angels landed on this mountain and swore an oath, and that the peak got its name from that very oath. In Hebrew, Hermon sounds like a word for a ban or curse. It is a real snowy summit that feeds the Jordan River. Did the legend explain the name, or the name the legend?Beings · Hebrew BibleNephilimGenesis says giants walked the earth "also after that," meaning after the Flood that was meant to wipe everything out. The Nephilim get just two verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, and neither explains them. Who were they, and how did they outlast the Flood? Scholars and the text itself disagree.People · Hebrew Bible; Jewish and Islamic legendNimrodGenesis uses the same word for Nimrod, "mighty one," that it uses for the offspring of the sons of God, and the Greek Bible calls him a giant. He is the Bible's first empire-builder, and legend made him the force behind the Tower of Babel. Most scholars see a memory of Mesopotamian kings. Who was he really?People · Hebrew Bible; rabbinic legendOg of BashanDeuteronomy gives a giant king a bed of iron, nine cubits long, and then points readers to where it sits in Rabbah, almost like a museum label. Og was said to be the last of his kind. Some scholars think the bed was really a basalt tomb. Was Og a giant, or a monument that grew a legend?Beings · Hebrew Bible; Jewish mysticismOphanim (the wheels)Ezekiel describes a wheel in the middle of a wheel, with rims so high they were dreadful and full of eyes. There are no gears or engines. The text says the wheels move because the spirit of the living creature was in them. Later readers decided the wheels were alive, and made them a class of angels.Beings · Hebrew Bible; UgaritRephaim, Emim and ZamzummimIn Hebrew, one word names both a tribe of giants and the ghosts of the dead. Deuteronomy pauses its travel story to list the tall peoples who once lived east of the Jordan, and other ancient texts use the same name for departed spirits. Which meaning came first, and how did giants and ghosts end up sharing a name?Beings · Hebrew BibleSeraphimA prophet sees six-winged beings above God's throne, and one flies to him with a live coal held in tongs. It presses the coal to his lips. The Hebrew name means "burning ones," and the same word also names the venomous fiery serpents that attacked Israel in the desert. Angels, or something more serpent-like?Beings · Hebrew Bible; Canaanite religionThe divine council (sons of God)In Psalm 82, God stands in a heavenly assembly and sentences its members: "ye shall die like men." In Job, the sons of God come to present themselves, and an accuser walks in among them. The Hebrew Bible keeps glimpsing a divine court. Is it poetry about angels, or something older and stranger?Beings · Hebrew Bible (Daniel)The Prince of PersiaAn angel tells the prophet Daniel that his answer was three weeks late. A rival being, the prince of Persia, physically held him up for twenty-one days until Michael came to help. In Daniel's picture, each nation has a heavenly ruler, and their battles mirror the wars of empires. Who are these hidden princes?People · Hebrew BibleUzzahThe Ark of the Covenant was rolling to Jerusalem when the oxen stumbled and Uzzah reached out to steady it. The text says he died on the spot. King David was so shaken he refused to take the Ark home and left it with a stranger for three months, just to see what would happen to him. Why?
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