John C. Reeves

A work entitled the "Book of Giants" figures in every list of the Manichaean "canon" preserved from antiquity. Both the nature of this work and the intellectual baggage of the third-century Persian prophet to whom it is ascribed remained unknown to scholars until 1943, when fragments of several Middle Iranian versions of the Book of Giants were published by W. B. Henning. Twenty-eight years later, at Qumran, J. T. Milik discovered several copies of a fragmentary Aramaic work which is unquestionably the precursor of the later Manichaean recension. One other important work, Mani's "autobiography," the so-called Cologne Mani Codex, was brought to scholarly attention in 1970 with evidence that Mani spent his youth among the Elchasaites, a Judeo-Christian sect that observed the Sabbath, strict dietary laws, and rigorous purification practices. Although leading Orientalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have consistently stressed the Iranian component in Mani's thought, Reeves argues, in the light of evidence drawn from the above-mentioned discoveries and from a rich panorama of other textual sources, that the fundamental structure of Manichaean cosmogony is ultimately indebted to Jewish exegetical expansions of Genesis 6:1-4. Reeves begins with an examination of the ancient testimonies about the contents of Mani's Book of Giants. Then, using documents from Second Temple Judaism, classical Gnostic literature, Christian and Muslim heresiological reports, Syriac texts, and Manichaean writings, he provides a detailed analysis of both the Qumran and Manichaean rescensions of the work, demonstrating additional interdependencies and suggesting new narrative arrangements. He addresses a series of quotations from an unnamed Manichaean source found in a paschal homily of the sixth-century Monophysite patriarch Severus of Antioch and a narrative from Thoeodore bar Konai. In sum, Reeves demonstrates that the motifs of Jewish Enochic literature, in particular those of the story of the Watchers and Giants, form the skeletal structure of Mani's cosmological teachings, and that Chapters 1 to 11 of Genesis fertilized Near Eastern thought, even to the borders of India and China.

Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions

Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony

Annette Yoshiko Reed

This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references to '1 Enoch'. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions.

Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Volume I

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

John Kampen

The themes of this volume encompass the lifelong interests of one of the most eminent and learned Jewish scholars of our time: Qumran, Hellenism, Rabbinics and chronography. The contributors, leading scholars in these fields, have produced what is a benchmark of modern scholarship of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period.

Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday

Pursuing the Text

Ben Zion Wacholder

Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday

A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader

Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic

A work entitled the "Book of Giants" figures in every list of the the Manichaean "canon" preserved from antiquity. Although leading Orientalists of the 19th and 20th centuries have consistently stressed the Iranian component in Mani's thought, Reeves argues, in the light of evidence drawn from a number of recent manuscript discoveries and from a rich panorama of other textual sources, that the fundamental structure of Manichaean cosmogony is ultimately indebted to Jewish exegetical expansions of Genesis 6:1-4. In sum, Reeves demonstrates that the motifs of Jewish Enochic literature, and in particular those of the story of the Watchers and Giants, form the skeletal structure of Mani's cosmological teachings — and that Chapters 1 to 11 of Genesis fertilized Near Eastern thought, even to the borders of India and China.

John C. Reeves

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