Eljo Kuiler 1968b
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Book of Enoch The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch; Hebrew language, Hebrew: סֵפֶר חֲנוֹךְ, ''Sēfer Ḥănōḵ''; , ) is an Second Temple Judaism, ancient Jewish Apocalyptic literature, apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to the Patriar ...
and
Book of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by members of Ethiopian Jewish ...
, copies of which were kept by groups including the religious community of
Qumran Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...
that produced the
Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
, the Elioud (also transliterated ''Eljo'') are the
antediluvian The antediluvian (alternatively pre-diluvian or pre-flood) period is the time period chronicled in the Bible between the fall of man and the Genesis flood narrative in biblical cosmology. The term was coined by Thomas Browne (1605–1682). The n ...
children of the
Nephilim The Nephilim (; ''Nəfīlīm'') are mysterious beings or humans in the Bible traditionally understood as being of great size and strength, or alternatively beings of great power and authority. The origins of the Nephilim are disputed. Some, ...
, and are considered a part-
angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...
hybrid race of their own. Like the Nephilim, the Elioud are exceptional in both ability and wickedness.


Canonicity

The texts that use the term "Elioud" are non-canonical in modern
Rabbinic Judaism Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabb ...
,
Western Christianity Western Christianity is one of two subdivisions of Christianity (Eastern Christianity being the other). Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Protestantism, Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the O ...
and
Eastern Orthodox Christianity Eastern Orthodoxy, otherwise known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Byzantine Christianity, is one of the three main Branches of Christianity, branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholic Church, Catholicism and Protestantism ...
, but are considered canonical by
Ethiopian Orthodox The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church () is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the few Christian churches in Africa originating before European colonization of the continent, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church dates bac ...
Christians and
Beta Israel Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, is a Jewish group originating from the territory of the Amhara Region, Amhara and Tigray Region, Tigray regions in northern Ethiopia, where they are spread out across more than 500 small villages over a wide ter ...
Jews (i.e. certain Ethiopian Jews). The canonical
Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek language, Greek ; ; ) is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its incipit, first word, (In the beginning (phrase), 'In the beginning'). Genesis purpor ...
mentions
Enoch Enoch ( ; ''Henṓkh'') is a biblical figure and Patriarchs (Bible), patriarch prior to Noah's flood, and the son of Jared (biblical figure), Jared and father of Methuselah. He was of the Antediluvian period in the Hebrew Bible. The text of t ...
, the putative source of this revelation about the Elioud only in passing (as a long-lived ancestor of
Noah Noah (; , also Noach) appears as the last of the Antediluvian Patriarchs (Bible), patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5–9), the Quran and Baháʼí literature, ...
), and while it notes that Nephilim had children, it does not assign a name to them. Another canonical Bible passage concerning a
giant In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''wiktionary:gigas, gigas'', cognate wiktionary:giga-, giga-) are beings of humanoid appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''gia ...
at Gath and his children, likely the
Anakim Anakim ( ''ʿĂnāqīm'') are mentioned in the Bible as descendants of Anak. According to the Old Testament, the Anakim lived in the southern part of the land of Canaan, near Hebron (Gen. 23:2; Josh. 15:13). states that they inhabited the regio ...
, is sometimes alleged to refer to the Elioud (who in that account have six fingers on each hand and each foot), although in context, these references to giants appear to refer instead to the
Philistines Philistines (; LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philistines origi ...
. Early fathers of the Christian church of the first and second centuries, as well as the bodies that formed the modern Rabbinical Jewish canon were aware of 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees in which these accounts were contained, and accepted the former as scripture, but by the 4th Century AD, due to a view of angels that held they could not engage in sexual intercourse, chose to omit these texts from the canon of Western Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism respectively.


Relevance to Christian theology

Less literal readings of Genesis 6:4 see the reference in that passage to the intermarriage of "sons of God", meaning the godly descendants of
Seth Seth, in the Abrahamic religions, was the third son of Adam and Eve. The Hebrew Bible names two of his siblings (although it also states that he had others): his brothers Cain and Abel. According to , Seth was born after Abel's murder by Cain, ...
or to people faithful to God generally, with "daughters of men", meaning the godless descendants of Cain, or to people who are not faithful to God generally. This less literal reading is the one adopted, in contrast to 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, by the
pseudepigraphic A pseudepigraph (also :wikt:anglicized, anglicized as "pseudepigraphon") is a false attribution, falsely attributed work, a text whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Th ...
second part of the
Book of Adam and Eve The ''Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan'' (also known as ''The Book of Adam and Eve'') is a 6th-century Christianity, Christian Biblical canon, extracanonical work found in Ge'ez language, Ge'ez, translated from an Old Arabic original which is ...
. The language of 1 Enoch that references the race of Elioud precludes less literal readings of the term "sons of God", for example, by enumerating the names of particular angels who choose to have children with human women.


Discrepancies in the tradition

In some readings of the non-canonical texts, the Nephilim are children whose father is an angel and whose mother is a human and they are the "giants" (also known as Gibborim) referred to in the canonical
Book of Numbers The Book of Numbers (from Biblical Greek, Greek Ἀριθμοί, ''Arithmoi'', , ''Bəmīḏbar'', ; ) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final f ...
. In others, angels and human women produce children who are Gibborim, and the Nephilim have fathers who are Gibborim and human mothers. This ambiguity is also found in the non-canonical Book of Giants, fragments of which were found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...
. For example, according to one account, there is a discrepancy between
Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
, Ge'ez (i.e. Ethiopian) and
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
translations of 1 Enoch 7:2 and 7:10–11. :2 And when the angels,* the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children. :* An Aramaic text reads " Watchers" here (J.T. Milik, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 xford: Clarendon Press, 1976 p. 167). . . . :10 Then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees. :11 And the women conceiving brought forth giants, :* The Greek texts vary considerably from the Ethiopic text here. One Greek manuscript adds to this section, "And they
he women He or HE may refer to: Language * He (letter), the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads * He (pronoun), a pronoun in Modern English * He (kana), one of the Japanese kana (へ in hiragana and ヘ in katakana) * Ge (Cyrillic), a Cyrillic letter cal ...
bore to them he Watchersthree races–first, the great giants. The giants brought forth ome say "slew"the Naphelim, and the Naphelim brought forth r "slew"the Elioud. And they existed, increasing in power according to their greatness." The 1913 translation of R.H. Charles of the Book of Jubilees 7:21–25 reads as follows (note that "Naphil" is an alternative transliteration form of "Nephilim"): :21 For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth, namely, owing to the fornication wherein the Watchers against the law of their ordinances went a whoring after the daughters of men, and took themselves wives of all which they chose: and they made the beginning of uncleanness. :22 And they begat sons the Naphidim, and they were all unlike, and they devoured one another: and the Giants slew the Naphil, and the Naphil slew the Eljo, and the Eljo mankind, and one man another. :23 And every one sold himself to work iniquity and to shed much blood, and the earth was filled with iniquity. :24 And after this they sinned against the beasts and birds, and all that moves and walks on the earth: and much blood was shed on the earth, and every imagination and desire of men imagined vanity and evil continually. :25 And the Lord destroyed everything from off the face of the earth; because of the wickedness of their deeds, and because of the blood which they had shed in the midst of the earth He destroyed everything. There are possible references to the Elioud in the non-canonical Book of Giants, fragments of which were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but a definitive reading is difficult because no complete version of this text is available to modern researchers and the available fragments are in six different archaic languages.W. B. Henning, "The Book of Giants", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. XI, Part 1, 1943, pp. 52–74 at page 69, note 5 http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/giants/giants.htm#page_69_fr_5


See also

*
List of angels in theology This is a list of angels in religion, theology, astrology and magic, including both specific angels (e.g., Gabriel) and types of angels (e.g., seraphim A seraph ( ; pl.: ) is a Angelic being, celestial or heavenly being originating in Anci ...


References

{{Authority control Angels in Judaism Classes of angels Fallen angels Giants in the Hebrew Bible Jewish legendary creatures Jewish mysticism Book of Jubilees Book of Enoch Nephilim