Jewish · Greek · c. 93 CE
Antiquities of the Jews
Flavius Josephus; trans. William Whiston, 1737
A Jewish history written for a Roman readership, and the place where several figures acquire the biographies most people think are biblical. Nimrod is the clearest case: Genesis gives him six verses and no crime, and the tyrant who builds the tower in defiance of God is here.
Read Antiquities of the Jews in full at the linked edition →What this text attests · 3
| Name here | Rank given | # | Powers described |
|---|---|---|---|
| Of the race of the giants | — | Josephus retells the duel and gives the height as four cubits and a span, agreeing with the Greek and the scroll against the Masoretic text — which is why the shorter reading is not a modern proposal but the older majority one. | |
| — | — | Where the tyrant comes from. Josephus makes him the man who turned the people from God to a contempt of him, built the tower so that a second flood could not reach them, and ruled by force — none of which is in Genesis, and all of which is now what the name means. | |
Og = Og of Bashan | King of the Amorites | — | Josephus retells the campaign east of the Jordan and dwells on Og's size and strength, which is the point at which a biblical epithet starts becoming a legend with details of its own. |