In prior posts, I discussed how older ANE material from Canaanite and Sumerian/Akkadian tradition can survive quite late. In 1 Enoch, for example, we see how a famed Rephaim from Canaanite epic poetry, the wise judge Danel (cf. KTU 1.17-19), mentioned in Ezekiel 14:12-20, 28:1-3, was recast as a fallen angel in 1 Enoch 6:7, 69:2 (see [1] for discussion), and how the stories of Enoch's journey to the ends of the earth and into the underworld mimic that from the Epic of Gilgamesh (cf. 1 Enoch 17-19, 24-25, 33-35; Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablets 9-11; see [2] for discussion). The Enochian literature could be thought of as a rich resevoir of older traditions, reused and reformulated in a new synthesis. A number of different copies of 1 Enoch in the original Aramaic were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (most from the first century BC), but the Qumran material also contained Enochian works not otherwise included in 1, 2, 3 Enoch, Jubilees, or other previously-known texts. The most important of these is the Book of Giants, which retells the part of 1 Enoch and Genesis 6 that describes the rebellion of the angels and the origin of the Nephilim (~ the Rephaim), especially the two children of Semijaza, the leader of the wicked angels, named Ohya and Hahya.
The book exists only in fragments but it is possible to reconstruct the story. After the descent of the angels to intermarry with human women, "sin was great in the earth" and the angels "killed many" of the children of men (1Q 23 9/14/15:3-4). They begat giants who consumed "everything that the earth produced ... and all kinds of grain and all the trees" (4 Q531 3:12-15), a description reminiscent of the giants in 1 Enoch 7:3 which says they "consumed the produce of all the people until the people detested feeding them". This motif is reminiscent of the Bull of Heaven in the Epic of Gilgamesh, who "drank the water of the river in great slurps, with each slurp it used up one mile of the river... it devoured the pasture and stripped the land bare, it broke up the palm trees of Uruk, as it bent them to fit them into its mouth" (Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, Nippur MSS. Seg. A-D). But the motif is especially linked to the myth of the gracious gods of Shahar and Shalem in Canaanite myth (cf. KTU 1.23), the sons of El who were "both gluttonous from birth" and "there entered into their mouths the birds of the air and the fish from the sea, and wandering abroad, they put things from both their right and their left into their mouths, and were not satisfied" (KTU 1.23 v 60-64). Like the later Jewish legend of Lilith and possibly Behemoth, they were cast out from the divine presence and "roamed the edge of the desert" (65-70), and Psalm 82:1-7 and Isaiah 14:12-15 mentions the Shaharim and the "son of Shahar" who were cast from heaven to the earth/underworld. The Book of Giants goes on to describe the zoophilia between the giants and the beasts of the earth (1Q 23 1/6:1-5; cf. 1 Enoch 7:5-6), and the outcome of the demonic corruption was violence, perversion, and monstrous beings born from the unnatural acts between the giants and beasts (4Q 531 2:1-8; 4Q 532 1-6:2-8). But the giants began to have dreams and visions. Mahway, the Nephilim son of the angel Barak'el (cf. 1 Enoch 6:7), was the first the relate his troubling dreams to the other giants. He had a vision of the giants' future punishment, that "we shall die together and be made an end of" (4Q 530 7:4). Ohya and Hahya discuss the dream with Mahway, and one of the brothers says: "It is not for us but for Azazel ... we were not the ones cast down" (4 Q530 7:5-7).
This story actually survived independently in later rabbinical and Islamic legend, which help to shed light on the fragmentary text. In the cycle of legends on the fallen angels (Yalkut Genesis 44, Abkir Midrash), there survived a curious story about the first children born from the alliance with the daughters of men, two brothers named Heyya and Aheyya. These names are obviously the same as Hahya and Ohya from the far older Book of Giants. These lusty giants consumed daily a thousand camels, a thousand horses, and a thousand steers. With his sons having such a stake in the livestock of the world, the angelic father of the lads was disturbed that God had resolved to destroy all flesh. If a flood is to come upon the earth, where will the two brothers find they daily meat? Then the two lads begin to have frightening dreams. One saw lines upon lines of writing obliterated, until but four letters were left intact. The other dreamed of an orchard in which all the trees were cut down, and only a single tree survived with three of its branches. This last dream is related in fragmentary form in the Book of Giants. Ohya's dream vision is of a tree that is uprooted except for three of its roots (6Q 8 2:1-3). From their father the two brothers learned the meaning of their dreams:
"He told them, 'God is about to bring a flood upon the earth, to destroy it, so that there will remain one man and his three sons'. The brothers thereupon cried in anguish, and wept, saying, 'What shall become of us, and how shall our names be perpetuated?' 'Do not trouble yourselves about your names. Heyya and Aheyya will never cease from the mouths of creatures, because every time that men raise heavy stones, or ships, or any heavy load or burden, they will sigh and call your names'. With this his sons were satisfied" (Yalkut Genesis 44).
The concern for their names recalls how the Nephilim were "the heroes of old, men of renown" (Genesis 6:4), with shem "name" being the Hebrew word for "renown". Obviously the story is meaningful only if mariners and masons could be heard swearing and cheering each other by something that sounded like Heyya and Aheyya. That this was actually the case with seamen, we learn from Pesahim 112b which says: 'The sailor's cry is 'heyya! heyya!' ". Perhaps grunts from the lifting of stones and the labor of masons was also connected with the names. But name Heyya or Hahya is also a probable survival of Canaanite mythology. We learn in 1 Enoch 7:1-2 and 8:1-4 that the fallen angels were the ones who taught civlization to humanity, or at least matters such as medicine, botany, metallurgy, the making of ornaments, astrology, etc. The primeval history of Philo of Byblos presents a similar story, designating the gods as the discoverers of the necessities of life. Philo calls the first intelligent beings Zophesemin or "Seers of Heaven," which directly recalls the name "Watchers" given to the angels in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Daniel (4:13, 17, 23). Among these benefactors of humanity are Agreus and Halieus, the inventors of hunting and fishing, and then the story of their children is told:
"From them were born two brothers, discoverers of iron and the mode of working it. One of them, Khousor, was skilled in words, incantations, and divinations. It is he who was Hephaestus, and invented the hook and bait, and line, and raft, and was the first of all men to navigate, thus he was worshipped as a god after his death, and was also called Zeus Meilichios. And some say that his brother devised the way of making walls from stone blocks" (Philo of Byblos, Phoenician History, Ev. Praep. I 10.35).
Here we have two brothers just like Heyya and Aheyya, connected with sailing and masonry, just like the two Nephilim from Jewish legend. The reference to Khousor being a "discoverer or iron and the mode of working it" and being "skilled in words, incantations, and divinations" recalls exactly the Enochian legend of the fallen angels: "And they taught them magical medicine, incantations.... Azazel taught the people the art of making swords and knives... Amasras taught incantation and the cutting of roots, and Armaros the resolving of incantations" (1 Enoch 7:1, 8:1, 3). As inventors of iron tools, the two brothers made stonecutting and shipbuilding possible. Now the name Zeus Meilichios derives from Aramaic mallachim "sailors" and likely Khousor was venerated by sailors as the "Zeus of the sailors", being the first to travel by water. As for the name Khousor, this is universally regarded as a Hellenistic version of Canaanite Kothar (pronounced "Koshar" in later Semitic, cf. Athtart < Astarte, Athirat < Asherah, etc.), who was the craftsman-god who like Hephaestus crafted weapons for Baal, Anat, Aqhat, and others. Kothar's occupation closely recalls that of Azazel in 1 Enoch. Now in the Ugaritic texts, Kothar is also called Hayin (cf. KTU 1.3 vi 20; KTU 1.17 v 19, 33-34), an epithet meaning "deft, skilled" (cf. Arabic hayyin "easy") which like his other epithet Hasis reflects one of his professional qualities. In fact, in the Targum to Proverbs 28:16, Aramaic hawna' "ability, strength" translates tebuna "understanding," one of the qualities of the human craftsman Bezalel in Exodus 30:3, who made the furnishings for the tabernacle. In the Baal Epic, Kothar builds the divine abode for Baal, a duty paralleled by Bezalel. In short, we see that Hayin is one of the names of the craftsman god that lay behind the legend reported by Philo of Byblos, a legend that also resembles that of Heyya in the Book of Giants and in later Jewish midrash. But who was Khousor's brother in the Ugaritic version? Possibly "Hasis", usually hyphenated with Kothar as Kothar-and-Hasis in the Ugaritic texts, was the basis by which popular fancy later made into the eponymous hero of masons (via a hypostasis of Kothar), a task again recalled by Kothar's role in building Baal's palace. The name Aheyya in the midrash and the Book of Giants would have then been freely invented by the rabbis from Heyya, as a pair of pendent names like Eldad and Modad, Hillek and Billek, and so forth, Orioch and Marioch from 2 Enoch, and continued in Islamic tradition with names like Harun and Karun for Aaron and Korah, Habil and Qabil for Abel and Kain, and so forth.
But there is another name in the Book of Noah that derives from ancient ANE tradition. After Ohya, Hahya, and Mahway discuss each other's dreams, another giant speaks up: Gilgamesh. He begins his speech:
"[I am] a giant, and by the mighty strength of my arm and my own great strength [I can vanquish] anyone mortal, and I have made war against them; but I am not [...] able to stand against them, for my opponents reside in Heaven, and they dwell in holy places. And not [... they] are stronger than I. [...] of the wild beast has come, and the wild man they call me." (4Q 531 1:3-8)
Those familiar with the second-millenium BC Epic of Gilgamesh can note a few close similarities here. The king Gilgamesh was a demi-god like the giants, endowed with mighty strength and virtue: "Two-thirds of him is god, one-third of him is human.... Like a wild bull he makes himself mighty, head raised (over others). There is no rival who can raise his weapon against him. ... You have indeed brought into being a mighty wild bull, head raised! There is no rival who can raise a weapon against him" (Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 1). However, Gilgamesh's enemies are those in heaven, the gods, who beseech Aruru to create a human enemy for Gilgamesh, intended to be superior in power, so the gods may have peace. Enkidu is created specifically as a "wild man", living with the beasts of the field, but he is civilized by his harlot lover, and he tells her, "I am the mighty one! Lead me in and I will change the order of things!" Then, like the giants that Gilgamesh converses with in the Book of Giants, Gilgamesh receives symbolic dream-visions of what was to come. He dreams of a giant meteorite that falls from heaven and everyone in Uruk kissing it. His mother tells him: "There will come to you a mighty man, a comrade who saves his friend -- he is the mightiest in the land, he is strongest, his strength is mighty as the meteorite of Anu!" (ibid.).
Back to the Book of Giants story, Ohya goes back to the other giants and "told them what Gilgamesh said to him", but stuck to his belief that the judgment only relates to the demon Azazel and perhaps the other fallen angels...thus "the giants were glad at his words. Then he turned and left" (4 Q530 2:1-3). But more dreams began to afflict the giants, and the visions terrified them: "Thereupon two of them had dreams and the sleep of their eyes fled from them, and they arose and came to [...] and told their dreams," and described "monsters", gardeners watering "two hundred trees", large shoots coming out from the water, and a fire burning up the entire garden (4 Q530 2:3-10). Ohya had another dream about "the Ruler of Heaven coming down to earth" (2:13). The giants were unable to interpret the dreams themselves, and so they called on Enoch, "the noted scribe", to interpret the dream for them. Here Enoch figures in the story just like Daniel or Joseph in their respective stories. Then Mahway flew to Enoch as on the "wings of an eagle" (cf. like the Sumerian myth of Etana?), past the "great desert" and "Desolation", and "Enoch saw him and hailed him," and Mahway proceeded to tell him the visions (3:2-11). Enoch sends back a tablet "in his very handwriting" with a grim message of judgment to "Semijaza and all his companions", condemning them, their wives, their sons, and the wives of their sons, for "all the things you have done ... by your licentiousness on the earth", and announcing the coming of Raphael who will bring "destruction" to all living things, "and whatever is in the deserts and the seas" (4Q 530 f2:1-15). And that is where the text pretty much leaves off.
But as these many examples suggest, Akkadian and Canaanite legends persisted for some time in Judea under a new guise, altered but still recognizable in some form.