Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions

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.