Mahway, Ohyah and Hahyah: The Giants Who Dreamed of Doom
Named giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls who dream of doom, argue, and send one of their own flying to Enoch for answers.
The Book of Giants, known from Qumran fragments and later Manichaean versions, names the giants Genesis leaves anonymous: Ohyah and Hahyah, sons of Shemihazah, and Mahway, son of the Watcher Baraqel.
Genesis never names a single Nephilim. The Book of Giants, known from Aramaic fragments found at Qumran and later Manichaean versions from Central Asia, does. Its main characters are Ohyah and Hahyah, sons of the Watcher leader Shemihazah, and Mahway, son of the Watcher Baraqel. They talk, quarrel and fear what is coming.
The plot survives in pieces. The giants have disturbing dreams. In one, a tablet is submerged in water and the names on it are erased except for a few. In another, gardeners water a garden until a flood destroys it. The giants cannot interpret the dreams, so they send Mahway to Enoch, the scribe who can travel between worlds. One fragment describes him rising into the air like a whirlwind and flying over the desert to reach Enoch.
Enoch sends back a tablet with a judgment: the giants' deeds are known, and destruction is coming. The fragments also name two more giants who seem to come straight from Mesopotamia: Gilgamesh, the hero of the famous epic, and Hobabish, likely Humbaba, the forest monster Gilgamesh killed. These giants are not faceless monsters. They argue about whether the dreams mean anything, boast about their strength, and worry about their fate, which makes this one of the most human portraits of the Nephilim in ancient literature.
Two of the giants in a Dead Sea Scroll are named Gilgamesh and Hobabish, apparently borrowed from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Book of Giants is extremely fragmentary, so any reconstruction of its story, including the order of the dreams and Mahway's flight, involves educated guesswork by editors.
