This essay is the work of “Leolaia”
Taken from:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/
As many of you know, the lore about the Rephaim constitutes one of
my biggest current interests in the OT. The Rephaim (also known as or
affiliated with the Nephilim, the Anakim, the Zamzumim, etc.) were believed by
the Israelites, the Canaanites, and the Phoenicians to be the aboriginal
inhabitants of Canaan, the great and mighty kings of old, and who currently
reside as ghosts in Sheol (cf. Genesis 14:5; Deuteronomy 2:10-11,
3:11-13; Proverbs 9:18; Isaiah 14:4-11; 26:14). The Nephilim were
explicitly described as of divine descent in Genesis 6:1-4, and
both the Nephilim and the Rephaim were described as giants in Numbers
13:33; Deuteronomy 2:10-11, 3:11-13; 2 Samuel 21:15-21 (cf. also 1
Samuel 17:4-5). The Rephaim mattered in Canaanite and Israelite
society because they were the heroes of legend and song and through ancestor
worship were believed to bless and "heal" (Hebrew rp'ym
literally means "healers") through their semi-divine powers.
According to the Phoenician legends of Philo of Byblos and
their Sumerian/Akkadian counterparts, the first race of kings and city-builders
were giants, primordial gods, and deified kings; the city of Sidon was thus
built by son of Pontus (=Yamm) the sea god. A Ugaritic liturgical text summoning
the Rephaim in fact names "Sidanu" as one of the Rephaim residing in
the underworld. In later Jewish myth (cf. 1 Enoch, Jubilees,
the Qumran Book of Giants), these divine bestowers of
civilization were recast as fallen angels who taught man all the evil aspects
of civilization. Thus in Ezekiel, the ancient hero Danel was revered as a
wise and righteous man of old (mentioned in the same breath as Noah), whereas
in 1 Enoch he appears as one of the wicked angels, and in Jubilees
he is the father-in-law of the antediluvian hero Enoch (Ezekiel
14:12-20, 28:1-3; 1 Enoch 6:7, 69:2; Jubilees 4:20). The ancient hero Gilgamesh, king of Uruk and
subject of the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, is also recast
as fallen angel in the Book of Giants (cf. my post on the
subject). The ancestor cult that revered these heroes of old centered on their
chthonic king (mlk) named Malik or, as pronounced in Judean Hebrew,
Molech. The third millenium BC tablets of Ebla mention the god Malik who is
equated with Nergal in Akkadian texts, he appears in Ugaritic texts as well as
the title of the god Rapha/Rapiu (the "king of eternity" in the
underworld), the LXX version of Amos 5:26 (cf. Acts 7:43)
equates Molech with the god Raphan, and even the Quran, sura
43:77 mentions Malik as an angel of hell. The cult site of Molech
in Judah, namely the Hinnom Valley, later became associated with the
underworld and hell (e.g. Gehenna) in rabbinical Jewish and Christian
tradition. The cult site of Rapha/Rapiu in northern Israel was located in the
Bashan region, specifically the cities of Edrei and Athtarat (biblical
Ashtaroth). The Ugaritic text KTU 1.108 indicates that he was
"enthroned" in both cities:
"May Rapiu, king of eternity, drink wine, yes,
may he drink, the powerful and noble god, the god enthroned in
Athtarat, the god who rules in Edrei, whom men hymn and honor with music,
on the lyre and the flute, on drum and cymbals.... May the god drink, the god who subdued the
calf of El, [the beast of] the god Shad, may the king of eternity
hunt... [May all be blessed] with the strength of Rapiu, king of
eternity, with his help, with his power, by his rule, by his splendor, among the Rephaim of the
netherworld . May your strength, your help, your power, your rule, your
splendor be in the midst of Ugarit, throughout the days and months, and the
gracious years of El" (KTU 1.108 R 1-3, 11-13, V 22-29).
The OT also links these very same cities
with the Rephaim. In Genesis 14:5, the Rephaim were located in
"Ashtaroth-Karnaim" (Ashtaroth of the horns), whereas in Deuteronomy
1:4, 3:10 and Joshua 9:10, 12:4, 13:12, 31 the
Rephaim king Og was said to rule from the cities of Ashtaroth and Edrei. Even
as late as 1 Maccabees 5:37 do we read of a town called
Raphon in the Bashan area, and the name survives in the modern er-Rafeh
(located 8 km. from ancient Athtarat). For more information, please see my detailed post on the
subject.
For
the Canaanites and the later Israelites and Jews, the concept of the Rephaim
constitued a means of constructing a "mythic past" in the fullest
sense of the term. We today tend to think of the Canaanites and Israelites as
very ancient peoples; 1200 BC, the time when the last of the Ugaritic texts
were written, was about 3,200 years ago. To us, that's ancient. But Jericho,
one of the oldest cities in the world, goes at least as far back as 7000 BC. So
5,800 years separates the Neolithic town from 1200 BC -- a much longer time
depth! The ancient Israelites and Canaanites were living in a world already
ancient, filled with ruins and objects that have no relation to the peoples
currently living in the lands, but must have belonged to unknown mysterious
peoples who came before them. It should thus not surprise us that stories about
the Rephaim reference actual ruins and objects that date back to Neolithic
times. I will give two examples.
THE MEGALITHIC DOLMENS AND RING STRUCTURES OF BASHAN
I
believe the Bashan area became a cultic site for ancestor worship because of
the high number of Early Bronze megalithic structures in the area. About 8,500
dolmens (table-like tomb structures composed of two standing stones spaced
apart and covered with a flat horizontal stone) have been identified in the
Golan Heights area and in the vicinity of Galilee, of varying styles and sizes.
The 
largest dolmens
contain stones weighing 50 tons and stand 7 meters (22 feet) in height. It is
thus hardly a surprise that giants were believed by the Canaanites and
Israelites to have built these massive structures. Some structures date as
early as 3000 BC but most date to Early Bronze III (2400-2200 BC) and Middle
Bronze I (c. 2200 BC). Especially noteworthy are the archeological finds in
some of the Golan Dolmens, which include javelins of a type found at Ugarit
dating back to 2400 BC, and especially common among the Ugaritic "necklace
wearers" several centuries later. The cultural connection thus suggests
that the Ugaritic culture was linked to the more ancient culture that produced
the dolmen structures.
In
the OT, standing stones were attributed to the patriarchs and Joshua (cf. Genesis
28:18-19, 31:44-47, 35:14; Joshua 4:3, 7:25-26, 8:29), but there is
then the bed of the Rephaim king Og which, though described as made of
iron, is described as 13 feet in length and still standing in Rabbah --
a description that suits very well the dolmen structures of the area (Deuteronomy
3:11). The term 'rs commonly translated "bed,
couch" (cf. NIV, RS) is likely a basalt tomb or sarcophagus of suitable
size to contain the remains of a giant Rephaim king, and bzl
"iron" is thought by Alan Millard (cf. Biblical Archaeology
Review 6:16-41, 44 [1990]) to derive from the iron-like color and texture
of the basalt. The use of words for "bed, couch" ('rs, mtth)
for tombs are attested both in the OT (cf. Genesis 47:30-31)
and in the Phoenician funerary inscription of Eshmunazor, which interestingly
also mentions the Rephaim in connection with his funerary
"bed" or "couch" (translated by McCarter as "resting
place"):
"May no royal race and no man open my funeral couch, and may they not
seek after treasures, for no one has hidden treasures here, nor move the coffin out of my
funeral couch, nor molest me in this funeral bed, by putting another tomb
over it....For the punishment of the violators shall be: Every royal
race and every man, who shall open the covering or this couch, or who shall carry
away the coffin where I repose, or who shall molest me in this couch, they
shall have no funeral couch with the Rephaim" (Sarcophagus
Inscription of Eshmunazor, King of Sidon, COS 2.57)
So the story in Deuteronomy
apparently alludes to the Early Bronze structures in the Bashan area as
material evidence of the extinct Rephaim. There are similar mentions of dolmens
in the Canaanite legend of Aqhat which tells the story of the "Rapha
man" Danel, which is possibly also set in the Bashan area. In the
beginning of the story, Danel complains to El that he has no son, and thus has
no one "to set up the tomb (skn) for his father's ghost ('lb), in
the sacred precinct the monument (ztr) of his clan, to 
draw out his father's
smoke from the ground, the guardian of his place from the underworld" (KTU
1.17 i 25-28). The term translated "tomb" literally means
"storage place" (cf. 'ry-msknwt "store-cities" in Exodus
1:11) but also is related to the word for "stela" (thus
translated as such by Wyatt), and the paralleled term ztr also means
"monument". The term 'lb refers to chthonic deities,
possibly related to the biblical Rephaim in Sheol and the 'b
"ghosts" of the OT. It is thus appropriate for the "Rapha
man" to be considered with the building of his own "storage
place" monument.
Another
important structure in the area (16 miles east of the Sea of Galilee) is the
Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ringed structure called Gilgal Rephaim or Rujm el-Hiri, built by an early
population that antedated the Canaanites, which contains about 37,000 tons of
basalt stones and was presumably used for astral observations:
It
is noteworthy that this massive structure was located 10 miles from ancient
Athtarat (biblical Ashtaroth) and the reference to the Rephaim in Genesis
14:5 locates them in Ashtaroth-Karnaim.
NEOLITHIC PLASTERED SKULLS
Later
in the Aqhat legend, the war goddess Anat offers Aqhat immortality in exchange
of his composite bow. She declares him a gzr "hero" and
promises that he would be "celebrated in poem and chant, beautiful songs
will be sung about him, this kind of life I will give Hero Aqhat" (KTU
1.17 vi 31-34). But Aqhat replies:
"Do not deceive me, O Virgin, for to a
hero your deceit is rubbish! At his end, what will a man receive? What will he
receive as his destiny? A coating will cover my head, lime-plaster will deck the top
of my skull. For I shall die as all men die, indeed I shall die like all
mortals" (KTU 1.17 vi 34-39).
The context is
obviously funerary and Aqhat is indicating that his skull would be coated (spsg)
with lime (chrs), and this is exactly what Anat does after he is
killed by her henchmen: "She incised the gums of his mouth, she grasped his teeth
and extracted them, she plastered his crown with lime, in accordance to
with the wish of the chthonics, and the instruction of the Nethergods" (KTU
1.19 i 7-12).
This
was not a practice followed by the Ugaritic population (it was, in fact,
discontinued by 5500 BC), but it was typical of the Neolithic (c. 7000-6000 BC)
plastered skulls discovered at Jericho and in various sites throughout the
Golan Heights (especially in the Chuleh Valley adjacent to the Sea of Galilee).
Not only is the skull plastered in the Canaanite story but the teeth extracted
as well. Forensic study of the Neolithic skulls has found that the teeth from
the lower mandible were extracted prior to the plastering -- exactly the
situation described in the Aqhat myth. So how was such an ancient practice
described accurately thousands of years later?
Margalit
(p. 309) suggests that such skulls were also discovered back in the Middle Bronze
and Late Bronze Age, and were objects of curiosity in their day. Some of the
skulls found recently in the ancient Bashan area were recovered fairly close to
the surface. Such strange relics were correctly regarded by the ancients as of
great antiquity, belonging to even earlier inhabitants of the land, and thus
stimulating the imagination of others. In a story about one of the Rephaim
(Danel) that was set in the Jordan Valley near Bashan, that referred to
pre-monarchial social organization (i.e. Danel, like Job, was a
"judge" who administered justice in the city gateway), and described
a 'pre-historic' world with regular contacts between gods and men, the author
of Aqhat quite understandably alludes to "relics" of
a bygone world, just as Deuteronomy mentions the massive
resting-places of the dead Rephaim.