(c) Images Courtesy of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. Photo, Shai Halevi. www.deadseascrolls.org.il

The Book of Giants belongs to a literary tradition surrounding the biblical figure Enoch, who appears briefly in Genesis 5:21–24. Rather than recording his death, Genesis simply states “he was no more because God took him”—a mysterious disappearance that sparked extensive storytelling during the Second Temple period.

The seven fragmentary scrolls of Giants discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized scholarly understanding. Previously known only through third-century CE Manichaean sources, these scrolls prove the book is at least 500 years older than scholars believed.

The text takes Genesis 6:1–4 as its starting point: the tale of fallen angels who married human women and fathered giants reaching 450 feet in height. These wicked angels and their giant offspring oppressed humanity and taught people evil.

The Book of Giants expands this narrative, focusing on the exploits of two giant brothers, Ohya and Hahya, sons of the fallen angel Shemihaza. Intriguingly, the scroll mentions Gilgamesh—hero of the ancient Babylonian epic—as one of these giants. Because no complete manuscript survives, the book’s full contents and exact narrative sequence remain unknown.

Detail Translation

1 Concerning the death of our souls. [Then en]tered all his comrades [and Oh]ya made known to them all that which had said to him

2 Gilgamesh. And […] I will fear, and a sentence against his life will be spoken. And the great one has cursed the princes.

3 And they rejoiced upon him […] the friends. And he returned and went to […] upon him. Then two of them dreamed dreams,

4 and the sleep of their eyes fled from them and they ar[ose…] from them and they arose […] their eyes

5 and came to […] their dreams. And he s[ai]d in the assembly of [his] fri[ends]

6 the Nephilim […in] my dream I have seen in the night […]

7 […ga]rdeners and they were watering

8 […] numerous [roo]ts issued from their trunk wheat in time and my wine [in its season,]

9 […] I watched until tongues of fire from

10 […] all the water and the fire burned in all

[xxx] = restoration of missing text based on other versions of the same text or scholarly research

LORD = the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Bible