Giants at Jericho?

An interesting hypothesis put forward by Ronald S. Hendel at the Biblical Archaeology website: BAR 35:02, Mar/Apr 2009 Biblical Views: Giants at Jericho By Ronald S. Hendel It's interesting that the Hebrews were still talking about "giants" - evidently attributable to the descendants of Nephilim - thousands of years after the Great Flood that was supposed to have wiped out every living thing except those that survived on Noah's Ark. Can't have it both ways, folks! If there were still descendants of Nephilim a few thousand years after the flood, that means your accounts of universal destruction are wrong (or God lied to Moses when He was dictating the first five books of the Bible). Or that means that Noah's family weren't as pure as driven snow - because everyone AFTER the Great Flood was supposedly descended from those four men and four women who walked off the Ark somewhere in the region of Mount Ararat. Well, that's another subject! I highly recommend reading the comments in the "Talk Back" section after reading the article. I'm not a biblical scholar, nor an archaeologist, just an avid reader, so this is just my personal opinion. Assuming that an exodus occurred (to my knowledge, there is no consensus on this), I'm of the opinion that it occurred sometime during the troubles with the Hyksos (c. 1650-1550 BCE), possibly in conjunction with the aftermath of the eruption of Thera (I do not think a definitive date has been established - there is a wide range of opinion with dates ranging anywhere from 1645 BC to 1500 BC). Those were chaotic times; it's not amazing to me that no definitive records of a mass migration of Hebrews out of the Delta area have been discovered. One of the comments to Hendel's article also suggest TWO exoduses - an intriguing proposition! Here's an interesting article on the destructive power of the eruption of Thera from Live Science. I recently watched a NOVA special on the eruption of Krakatoa in the 1880's, and that was absolutely terrifying. To think that Thera's eruption was four times more powerful than Krakatoa beggars the imagination - I just cannot conceive of it. It's aftermath must have been felt around the entire globe for years - perhaps a decade. Wow!

There Be Giants...

Giants. Did they exist? Who the heck knows? Giants are mentioned in the early part of the Old Testament of the Bible as the "Nephilim" - fellers of men. Those "Nephilim" were specifically described as half-breeds created by the mating of "male" angels from Heaven and the female "daughters of the earth." They are, I believe, the equivalent of the demigods often written of by the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians and - much later - the ancient Greeks: big, strong, powerful, certainly super-human in strength, intelligence and ability, but not immortal. There are countless blogs (and before blogs, message board entries) about these giants, and countless theories about their origins. From my early internet days, the mesage boards entries I remember the best have to do with alien origins from outer space. Ahem. Now, The National Geographic has weighed in, presenting a couple of enhanced and doctored-up photographs that had been presented on the internet as evidence of these giants. Because of the legitimacy that The National Geographic Society enjoys in the eyes of the public, such an article is tantamount to telling the general public that giants are phoney and never existed and do not exist, end of story. Period. Take a look at the photos presented in the article. It is obvious to me that these images of "giant" burials are phoney. For one thing, the scale of these "giants" in relation to the average human is so out of whack in relation to the little bit of information we have about them, that they cannot be taken as real. Those photos most remind me of the "Amazing Amazon Woman" from a 1950's "B" movie. For another thing, the condition of the "bones" is utterly amazing, just based on the little bit I know about how water and soil conditions can degrade the human body, including its bones. And so, common sense to the rescue! I don't recall reading any description of any giant as big as those presented in these "photographs" except, perhaps, the giant from the fairy-tale "Jack and the Beanstalk." I freely admit, this may reflect my utter lack of discretion in choosing reading material, darlings :) But, since The National Geographic has said - without saying - that ALL accounts of giants are to be dismissed as frauds and fakes, those voices out there who say otherwise, legitimate or not, will now have a harder row to hoe. I don't care for this type of archaeology by innuendo - on the part of the fraudsters, or on the part of The National Geographic Society.