“There We Saw the Giants”—Premodern Encounters with Giant Bones

Ma’aseh Tuvia (1708), a Hebrew reference book written by a Jewish doctor named Tobias Cohen (1652–1729),^[1] represented the best science of its moment, combining tradition and empiricism. There, Cohen describes a recent discovery of giant remains:

אחרי אשר כתבנו בשבח ובגנות ובטבעי האדם עלינו לחקור עוד במהות שני מיני האדם שמדתם משונה באריכות ובקצרות המין האחד הם הענקים מה שהפסוקים הזכירום במקומות נפרדים וגם כותבי חדושי העולם הפליגו לספר מהם הנמצאים בכמה נבולים באקלימים שונים ואני לאהבת הקצור לא אביאם אלא מה שראיתי בעיני ואכתו׳ לכם את הרשום בכתב אמת.

Now that we have written in praise and disparagement of the nature of man, we must now survey two types of humans of strange visage, both at length and in an abbreviated way. The first are the giants mentioned occasionally in [biblical] verses and also of whom authors writing about the wonders of the world wrote much. These are found in a number of places in varied climates, and I—loving brevity, will cite only those which I have seen with my own eyes. I will report to you honestly what I saw.^[2]

Cohen begins with a description of a large skeleton found near the Greek city of Thessaloniki:

כי בשנת התנ״ד חפרו וחתרו הפועלים בעומק הארץ בכפר אחד סמוך לעיר ואם בישראל סלוניקו...ומצאו בתוך ההר על שפת הנהר אשר שמו נעלם ממני ענק אחד שארכו ל׳׳ג אמות באמה שלנו שארכה ארבע מפחים.

In 1694/5 workers excavated and released from the depths of the earth close to the city of Thessaloniki, a major Jewish center…and they found within the mountain, on the bank of the river, the name of which I have forgotten, a giant thirty-three cubits long [50 ft]—according to [the length of] our arms—and four handbreadths [16 in] diameter.

Tobias associates this skeleton with the biblical Rephaim (Deut 2:10–11, 20, 3:11), the original inhabitants of the land of Canaan, remembered as giants:

והוא נשאר מיתר הרפאים מאז ומקדם והנה הוציאו ראשו משם ומלאוהו עצם הגלגולת עשרים שיניאקוס שעורים שכל שיניאק ליטרות היומיים.

He remains from the remnant of the ancient Rephaites. They took the skull from there and filled it with twenty dry measures of barley, where each dry measure is two Roman liters.

Cohen then describes personally seeing a bone and tooth from this giant:

אמנם לא ראיתי כי אם עצם גדול הניכר שהוא אהד משני העצמים שבזרוע הסמוכים לפרקי היד ושן אחד אשר משקלו ג׳ מאות וחמשים דרכמונים וזה תארו.

In truth, I saw only a large bone which is one of the two bones of the forearm and a tooth that weighs three hundred and fifty drachma [3 lbs]. This is its image:

ואלו לא היה נשבר שורש אחד משורשי השן בלי ספק שיהיה שוקל ד׳ ליטרין תמימות ועדיין כמוס הוא באוצרות האדון והשר היקר מונסיור פייר אנטונ״ו קסטוגניר די שסטאנוף והוא המשולח המהודר אשר למלך הישר והמוצלח שבארץ צרפת ירום הודו.

If one of the roots were not broken, it would easily weigh four hundred drachmas. It is still stored among the treasures of the master, the esteemed noble Monsieur Pierre-Antoine de Castagnère, marquis de Châteauneuf, honored ambassador [to the Ottoman Sultan] of the righteous and successful king of France, may his majesty be exalted.

Cohen goes on to describe a giant’s tooth owned by the Turkish Sultan, and concludes with discussion of a particularly tall woman of his own day, whom he conjectures might be a descendant of ancient giants. In fact, the molar that Tobias drew clearly belonged to a prehistoric elephant, and not to a giant.

The identification of bones of large prehistoric mammals with the remains of ancient giants has a very long history in western culture.^[4] The bones of rhinoceroses, giraffes, and especially prehistoric elephants (Proboscideans), discovered in jumbles across the Mediterranean world and beyond were imagined by ancient Greeks, Romans, Christians and Jews, to be two legged creatures, the remains of ancient giants.^[5]

Biblical Giants

Jews were well primed for thinking about giants by biblical tradition.^[6] Deuteronomy, for example, recounts the defeat of Og, king of Bashan, and his people (3:3), later noting that Og was one of the Rephaim:

^{דברים ג:יא} כִּי רַק עוֹג מֶלֶךְ הַבָּשָׁן נִשְׁאַר מִיֶּתֶר הָרְפָאִים הִנֵּה עַרְשׂוֹ עֶרֶשׂ בַּרְזֶל הֲלֹה הִוא בְּרַבַּת בְּנֵי עַמּוֹן תֵּשַׁע אַמּוֹת אָרְכָּהּ וְאַרְבַּע אַמּוֹת רָחְבָּהּ בְּאַמַּת אִישׁ.

^{Deut 3:11} Now only Og, king of Bashan, was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed was an iron bed and can still be seen in the Ammonite city of Rabbah. By the common cubit, it was nine cubits long and four cubits wide [more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide].^[7]

In addition, when the Israelites first approach the land of Canaan, they find in the region of Hebron the יְלִידֵי הָעֲנָק, “descendants of the ʿAnaq” (Num 13:22).^[8] The spies that Moses sends to scout the land fearfully describe the great size of these people compared to the Israelites:

^{במדבר יג:לג} וְשָׁם רָאִינוּ אֶת הַנְּפִילִים בְּנֵי עֲנָק מִן הַנְּפִלִים וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם.

^{Num 13:33} And there we saw the Nephilim—the sons of ʿAnaq, who come from the Nephilim—and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

In the book of Joshua, the Israelites destroy the ʿanaqim, “giants,” in the Judean hill country; the only survivors are those residing in the Philistine cities:

‏^{יהושׁע יא:כא} וַיָּבֹא יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בָּעֵת הַהִיא וַיַּכְרֵת אֶת הָעֲנָקִים מִן הָהָר מִן חֶבְרוֹן מִן דְּבִר מִן עֲנָב וּמִכֹּל הַר יְהוּדָה וּמִכֹּל הַר יִשְׂרָאֵל עִם עָרֵיהֶם הֶחֱרִימָם יְהוֹשֻׁעַ. ^יא:כב לֹא נוֹתַר עֲנָקִים בְּאֶרֶץ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל רַק בְּעַזָּה בְּגַת וּבְאַשְׁדּוֹד נִשְׁאָרוּ.

^{Josh 11:21} And Joshua came at that time, and wiped out the ʿanaqim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel; Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. ^11:22 There was none of the ʿanaqim left in the land of the people of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, did some remain.

Giants in Josephus

Giants were a subject of fascination to Jewish authors of the Greco-Roman period. The Dead Sea Scrolls include a “book of Giants,” an antediluvian narrative about the Nephilim (Gen 6:1–4).^[9] This phenomenon is attested in Flavius Josephus’ account of the conquest of the land. He expands on Joshua with a vivid description of the ʿanaqim and a note that bones from these giants have been found at Hebron:

^{Antiquities 5.125} So they moved their camp to Hebron, took capture of that town and massacred all therein. There remained still a race of giants, who, by reason of their huge frames and figures in no way like the rest of mankind, were an amazing spectacle and a tale of terror to the ear. Their bones are shown to this day, bearing no resemblance to any that have come within men’s ken.

Josephus is quite sure that he has seen the bones of giants, even though his description of them indicates that these humans somehow did not look like other people.^[10] This statement shows just how powerful the identification of the bones as giants was, that it remained secure even in the face of visual evidence to the contrary.

The display of the bones of the ʿanaqim at Hebron is a Jewish variation on the Greco-Roman myth of long dead giants wiped out in a primordial war, what Greeks called a Gigantomachy.^[11]

Imagining Biblical Hebron

Josephus’s ʿanaq is part of the larger construction of Hebron as the national necropolis. In The Jewish War, he informs us that according to the statements of its inhabitants, Hebron is of greater antiquity than any other town in the country, and even older than Memphis in Egypt. He continues by highlighting the famous internees in the Herodian Tomb of Machpelah—which, according to biblical tradition (Gen 49:31, 50:13) was the burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah:^[12]

^{War 4.530–533} They also relate that it was there that Abraham, the progenitor of the Jews took up his abode after his migration from Mesopotamia, and from there that his posterity went into Egypt. Their tombs are shown in this little town to this day, of really fine marble^[13] and of exquisite workmanship.”

As Roman antiquity progressed, the list of biblical heroes buried in the family tomb increased to include Adam and Eve,^[14] Joseph,^[15] Esau,^[16] and Moses^[17] and Aaron,^[18] through a process that Isaak Heinemann called rikuz, the concentration of traditions.^[19] Multi-generational monumental Jewish tomb complexes were common in Roman Palaestina, providing a model for this midrashic leap.

Giants in the Greco-Roman World

Josephus’s interest in the bones of the Hebron giant would not have been unusual to his Roman readership. Roman period elites actively searched for giant fossil bones to display in temples, palaces and gardens, and descriptions of the discovery of battle sites and the bones of classical heroes and of foes, especially giants, are widespread in Greco-Roman historiography.

Pliny the Elder (d. 79 C.E.), a contemporary of Josephus, reports that a huge skeleton was discovered on Crete and identified with one of two mythological giants, either the huntsman Orion, or Otus, the son of the princess Iphimedia and the sea god Poseidon:

^{Natural History 7.73–75} When a mountain in Crete was cleft by an earthquake, a skeleton [or, “body”] 46 cubits [69 ft] long was found, which some thought to be that of [the giant hunter] Orion and others of [the young giant] Otus. The records attest that the skeleton of Orestes dug up at the command of an oracle measured 7 cubits [11 ft].^[20]

Pliny also reports on the discovery of the bones of a mythic monster:

The skeleton of the monster to which Andromeda in the story was exposed was brought by Marcus Scaurus [ca. 58 B.C.] from the town of Jaffa in Judaea and shown at Rome among the rest of the marvels of his aedileship. It was 40 feet long, the height of the ribs exceeding the elephants of India, and the spine a foot and a half thick.

Talmudic Giants

Rabbinic literature also describes the discovery of giant remains. The Babylonian Talmud describes an Arab guide who led one Rabba bar bar Hanna (3^rd c. Babylonian amora) across the desert, where he saw giant bones of the generation of Israelites who died in the wilderness:^[21]

^{בבלי בבא בתרא עג:} אָמַר לִי: תָּא אַחֲוֵי לָךְ מֵתֵי מִדְבָּר. אֲזַלִי, חֲזִיתִינְהוּ וְדָמוּ כְּמַאן דְּמִיבַּסְּמִי, ^עד. וְגָנוּ אַפַּרְקִיד. וַהֲוָה זְקִיפָא בִּרְכֵּיהּ דְּחַד מִינַּיְיהוּ, וְעָיֵל טַיָּיעָא תּוּתֵי בִּרְכֵּיהּ כִּי רְכִיב גַּמְלָא, וּזְקִיפָא רוּמְחֵיהּ וְלָא נָגַע בֵּיהּ.

^{b. Baba Batra 73b-74a} He [the Arab merchant] said unto me: “Come and I will show you the Dead of the Wilderness.” I went and saw them; and they looked as if in a state of exhilaration. They slept on their backs; and the knee of one of them was raised. The Arab merchant passed under the knee, riding on a camel with spear erect, and did not touch it.

Elsewhere, the Talmud reports that while hunting a gazelle, Abba Shaul (2^nd century) discovered the thigh bone of the giant Og:

^{בבלי נדה כד:} תניא: אבא שאול אומר ואיתימא רבי יוחנן: קובר מתים הייתי פעם אחת רצתי אחר צבי ונכנסתי בקולית של מת ורצתי אחריו שלש פרסאות וצבי לא הגעתי וקולית לא כלתה כשחזרתי לאחורי אמרו לי של עוג מלך הבשן היתה.

^{b. Niddah 24b} A Tannaitic tradition: Abba Shaul says, and some say it was Rabbi Yoḥanan: I was burying the dead. Once I ran after a gazelle and I entered into the thigh bone of a dead person. I ran after it three parsangs [approximately 11 miles]. I did not reach the gazelle, and the thigh bone did not end. When I returned they said to me: “That was the thigh bone of Og the king of Bashan.”

In a second tradition, he finds the bones of Absalom—King David’s son, who attempted to usurp the throne (2 Sam 15)—when Abba Shaul falls into a hole:

^{בבלי נדה כד:} תניא אבא שאול אומר: קובר מתים הייתי פעם אחת נפתחה מערה תחתי ועמדתי בגלגל עינו של מת עד חוטמי כשחזרתי לאחורי אמרו עין של אבשלום היתה.

^{b. Niddah 24b} A [Tannaitic] tradition: Abba Shaul says: Once I was burying the dead. A cave opened under me, and I stood in the eye socket of a corpse up to my nose. When I returned they said: “It was the eye of Absalom.”

Long cave systems are a common geological feature of Israel, and chasing or following a gazelle into one was clearly part of the life experience of locals.^[22] The Hariton Cave, in Upper Naḥal Teqoa is 3,450 m. long.^[23] The Malcham cave system in Mt. Sodom is the longest salt cave system in the world at more than ten kilometers.^[24] Bones of dead and fossilized creatures are occasionally discovered in Judean caves. As fantastic as the tales of Rabba bar bar Hanna and Abba Shaul are, they reflect geological realities known to the Sages, and their attempt to interpret those realities.^[25]

The Bavli quickly dismisses the possibility that Abba Shaul was small, which would somewhat diminish the size of the skeletal remains that he had discovered. Instead it declares that Abba Shaul himself was a giant:

^{בבלי נדה כד:} ושמא תאמר אבא שאול ננס הוה. אבא שאול ארוך בדורותיו ורבי טרפון מגיע לכתפו.

^{b. Niddah 24b} Lest you say that Abba Shaul was a dwarf, Abba Shaul was giant in his generation, and Rabbi Tarfon reached the height of his shoulder.

The Talmud then runs through the generations of Rabbis, each of which was a physical and spiritual “giant in their generations,” though smaller than the generation before:

^{בבלי נדה כד:} ור׳ טרפון ארוך בדורו [ור׳ עקיבא היה מגיע לכתיפו ור׳ עקיב׳ גדול בדורו היה ור[בי] מ[איר] מגיע לכתפו רבי מאיר ארוך בדורו היה ורבי מגיע לכתפו רבי ארוך בדורו היה ורבי חייא מגיע לכתפו ורבי חייא ארוך בדורו היה ורב מגיע לכתפו רב ארוך בדורו היה ורב יהודה מגיע לכתפו ורב יהודה ארוך בדורו היה ואדא דיילא מגיע לכתפו.

^{b. Niddah 24b} Rabbi Tarfon was giant in his generation. [Rabbi Aqiva reached his shoulder. Rabbi Aqiva was giant in his generation.] Rabbi Meir reached his shoulder. And Rabbi Meir was giant in his generation. And Rabbi [Judah the Prince] reached his shoulder. And Rabbi was giant in his generation. And Rabbi Hiyya reached his shoulder. And Rabbi Hiyya was giant in his generation. And Rav reached his shoulder. Rav was giant in his generation. And Rav Yehudah reached his shoulder. And Rav Yehudah was giant in his generation. And Ada the attendant also reached up to his shoulder.

Thus the tale of unearthing the giant bones of biblical villains is used as a jumping off point to express notions of generational decline in physical stature that represent diminishing social and spiritual stature. An Aramaic addendum compares the height of Ada the attendant to the most important Persian official in the area, the nicely rhyming לפרשתבינא דפומבדיתא, “the parshtavina of Pumbedita.”

^{בבלי נדה כה.} פרשתבינא דפומבדיתא קאי ליה לאדא דיילא עד פלגיה וכולי עלמא קאי לפרשתבינא דפומבדיתא עד חרציה.

^{b. Niddah 25a} And when the official of Pumbedita would stand next to Ada the attendant, he would reach half of his height. When all the world stands next to the ruler of Pumbedita, they would reach his loins.

The intention here is unclear, though it seems that it was meant to elicit a chuckle, the least important Jew of the rabbinic circle towering over the most important official of the local Persian administration. Still, the status of the rabbis is clear—even a servant of the rabbis towers over this representative of the Sasanian rulers, who reaches only as high as his private parts!

Giants in Augustine’s City of God

Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 C.E.), a contemporary of the rabbis, reflects a similar anthropology of shrinking humanity. Like Tobias Cohen a millennium later, he “saw” a very large molar:

^{City of God 15:9} I myself, along with some others, saw on the shore at Utica [in Tunisia] a man’s molar tooth of such a size, that if it were cut down into teeth such as we have, a hundred, I fancy, could have been made out of it. But that, I believe, belonged to some giant. For though the bodies of ordinary men were then larger than ours, the giants surpassed all in stature. And neither in our own age nor any other have there been altogether wanting instances of gigantic stature, though they may be few.

The younger Pliny, a most learned man, maintains that the older the world becomes, the smaller will be the bodies of men. And he mentions that Homer in his poems often lamented the same decline; and this he does not laugh at as a poetical figment, but in his character of a recorder of natural wonders accepts it as historically true. But, as I said, the bones which are from time to time discovered prove the size of the bodies of the ancients, and will do so to future ages, for they are slow to decay.^[26]

Augustine goes on to connect his discovery to men “before the world-renowned deluge,” the ʿanaqim of Scripture.

Augustine’s testimony was so significant in later periods that the rationalist Jewish scholar, Azariah de Rossi (northern Italy, ca. 1511–1578) references it in the course of a critical essay on rabbinic exaggeration in aggadic texts. Azariah cites Augustine, whom he calls “the head of the Christian sages”—to give some credence to a Zohar tradition (1, 62a) about the discovery of a bone from the flood generation:

גם אצל חכמי האמת איתא בזוהר בראשית על פסוק כי לימים עוד ר׳ חייא ור׳ יהודה פסעו תלת מאה פסיען בחד גרמא דרבני טופנא / אישר כעין זה בלי גוזמא כתב ראש חכמי הנוצרים בספרו ט״ו פ״ט לענין גודל גוף הענקים שהוא ראה שן בן אדם אשר אילו נחתך לערך שנינו היה מתחלק למאה שן.

Also among the sages of truth it is found in the Zohar on Genesis regarding the verse “For in seven days” (7:4)—Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Judah walked three hundred paces on the bone of one of those who died in the flood. Similarly, without exaggeration, the head of the Christian sages wrote in his book (book 15, ch. 9) concerning the size of the giants’ bodies, that he saw a human tooth which, if it were cut proportionally to our [normal human teeth], would be divided into a hundred teeth.^[27]

The Jewish stage was thus set for Tobias Cohen more than a century later when he came upon the tooth of a giant.