Mountains or giant Trees? The paradigm-changing historical and scientific evidence

The immediately preceding article (‘Mountains or Trees? The evidence that shatters mainstream thinking’) we asked whether gigantic features in our landscape could be the legacy of events explained to us by geologists or whether they could be the legacy of gigantic trees cut down in the distant past. This second explanation would shake the foundations of what we know about the earth, the people who dwelt there; the climate and terrain; whether we are living on a flat plain or a globe earth; and whether we live on a plain created by God.

With so much at stake, we must sift evidence with great care. We will begin by observing that most of the structures that we looked at appeared to show the same “period” of erosion/decay, indicating that if these were felled trees, they were all destroyed at about the same time and, very likely, for the same reason. Do we have any clues?

In fact, yes, the ancient Apocryphal book of Enoch as well as the book of Genesis provide valuable insights and so it is to these that we now turn. Following that, we will look at more contemporary sources.

The Book of Enoch (a) The wicked nephilim, how they corrupted earth and their height The Book of Enoch, was written during the second century B.C. and constitutes an important non-canonical apocryphal works. It presents the view that the earth suffering from the actions of the offspring of the Watchers, the sons of God (and fallen angels) and that God therefore ordered a flood to rid the earth of these. These offspring were said to be the result of mating between the watchers and the ‘daughters of men’, producing an evil group of giants known as the ‘Nephilim’,

Here is what is written about them in chapter 7:2 of Enoch: “And they [human women] became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells” (see p.35 of the 1917 translation by Canon Henry Charles) for which a link is supplied here). Now, this statement is nothing short of astonishing since the ancient ell was about 18 inches (ie 1.5 feet) which would mean that these giants would have risen to a height of roughly 4,500 feet, nearly a mile height (0.8 of a mile precisely)!

So, these evil nephilim were huge and a threat not only to life on earth but also ….to mainstream history. So, Henry Charles’ translation (that the nephilim were 3,000 3000 ells in height) comes under attack with the following somewhat convoluted argument (see p.3):

“It is a known fact that proper names (like “Elioud”) and numbers (for example 3,000 ells) suffer the most from scribal copying and translating over the millennia. Presumably, in ancient times a scribal copyist did not understand the proper name for Elioud, and assumed it was referring to the “ell” telling us how tall were the giants.

To be clear, “3,000 ells” in the Charles translation, is not an error of English translation. It began with an ancient copyist’s mistake which changed a verse about the “3” races of Watcher offspring, (one of those races was called “Elioud”), into a comment about the giant’s height. “Elioud” became “ells” and “3” became “3,000” in my understanding. George Nickelsburg and James Vanderkam (as do Daniel Olson, and John Baty) translate a Greek fragment (Synchellus) for the verse to restore a more original reading. The only mistake by translators was in not discerning the ancient scribal error and ferreting out the better reading. Perhaps the scribal /copyist error WAS a translation error if when the error was introduced the scribe was not able to translate the verse and erred in that way. But in the English translations they do not seem to be in error, just in poor selection of their underlying, eclectic text for use before translating to English.”

You can decide for yourself whether you think that a ‘scribal error’ has occurred or whether in fact Canon Henry Charles, educated at Queen’s College, Belfast and Trinity College, Dublin, subsquently archdeacon of Westminster, allowed himself to be duped by a scribal error. It must be said that this appears highly unlikely since if you look at his edition of the Book of Enoch, he is not afraid to express doubt concerning the likely origin of chapter vii may have come from Fragments of “The Book of Noah” that would be Pre-MaccabÊan at the latest (Introduction, p.9). Canon Charles offered these sources with caveats believing that the origin of chapter 7 in the Book of Noah is “approximately correct” (his edition of 197, p.9 refers). This shows that he is capable of evaluating material in a non-doctrinaire manner.

(b) The steps taken by God to rid the earth of the nephilim Chapter 66, v 2 of Enoch describes a vision in which trees were cut down by angels on the order of God in order to change the balance so that humans (especially the nephilim) no longer had access to heaven. Here are the words of this remarkable text:

2. ‘Now then shall the angels labour at the trees’; but when they proceed to do this, I will put my hand upon it, and preserve it. [does the ‘it’ refer to a particular tree?] 3. The seed of life shall arise from it, and a change shall take place and the dry land may not be left empty. I will establish thy seed before me for ever and ever, and the seed of those who dwell with thee on the surface of the earth. It shall be blessed and multiplied in the presence of the earth, in the name of the Lord.

Elsewhere, the text refers to the fact that “lofty trees were gliding off from their trunk and were in the act of being projected and sinking into the abyss’” So, when the angels were labouring at the trees, were they cutting them down so that the trees could not afford a means of escape for the giant nephilim after the flood was launched? And could the abyss being referred to be the ocean?

God’s intention vis-s-vis the giants is clear from the words in chapter 16, v 1 whch refers to the death of the giants. As it states: “Let their flesh be without judgement and thus shall they perish’. Or ‘Their flesh will be destroyed before the judgement” (alternative translation).

How credible is it that the nephilim giants were around a mile in height? To modern ears, beings whose height exceeded 880 times that of a tall, modern human (of 6 foot) is perhaps not only unimaginable but the stuff of fancy. However, corroboration comes from two sources: (a) the Old Testament and (b) the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Old Testament and Epic of Gilgamesh As many reading this article will know, Genesis 6:4 states that “ In those days, there were giants” Then, Numbers 13:33 states that the Nephilim made the Israelite spies look like grasshoppers in comparison while Amos 2:9 describes ths descendants of Anakim giants as “strong and tall like cedars”.

The analogy between giants and the height of cedars is interesting since in the Epic of Gilgamesh we hear Enkidu, wartime comrade and friend of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, addressing Gilgamesh and saying (in Tablet 5): “My friend, we have cut down the towering Cedar whose top scrapes the sky.’

This is an extraordinary reference since it refers to a cedar tree that ‘scrapes the sky’, providing support for the view that trees could grow to immense heights. In order to discover just how high this could be, let us explore the notion of the firmament.

The firmament in the Bible In Genesis 1:6-8 we can read: God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.’ Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

In terms of the word used for ‘firmament’, we can read how the term “firmament” comes from the Latin word “firmamentum,” which means “support” or “strength.” This Latin term itself is derived from the Greek word “stereōma” (στερέωμα), meaning something solid or established. However, the word originally appears in the Hebrew Bible as “raqia” (רָקִיעַ), which is derived from the root “raqa” (רָקַע), meaning “to spread out” or “to beat out” like metal.

So the Biblical reference to firmament appears to be something solid, thereby making sense of Gilgamesh’s reference to the towering Cedar having ‘scraped the sky’. Is there any science to support the view that the firmament is something physical? If so, are there any estimates as to its height? Ultimately, this question will have a bearing on how tall ancient trees may have been and whether the structures that we looked at in the last article could have been giant trees, soaring into the upper atmosphere. If they were, then the Book of Enoch’s account of God ‘labouring at the trees’, possibly to strike them down with a view to stopping giant nephilim from scaling them and escaping the flood, has a degree of plausibility.

The firmament Do we have any scientific evidence that the firmament exists as a physical barrier? Well, it appears that we may do.

In 1962, there was operation fishbowl project Dominic, translated to mean ‘fishbowl of the Lord’. During this operation, both the United States and the Soviet Union launched 31 missiles straight up into the sky, possibly to test the boundaries of the firmament. Here’s a quote from Dr. John Mack, Department of Defence during operation fishbowl, “Nothing has or ever will penetrate the glass dome” The research concluded that the firmament begins at 78 miles altitude from earth and you can read more about this here and here. From the first of these two links, you can read how the outer boundary of the firmament is at 12,450 miles.

Climate One might ask how it could be that trees could extend miles into the sky. There is a view that the most critical contributions of trees to our planet is their role in the oxygen revolution. Through photosynthesis, trees have significantly increased atmospheric oxygen levels, creating a more hospitable environment for diverse life forms, including humans. The more trees or bigger trees the more oxygen the more oxygen in earth’s atmosphere, the larger things would grow. Post flood, the oxygen levels were lower by virtue of the trees having been cut down. And humans would reduce in size in a lower oxygenated environment, hence our relatively midget size today compared with giants of the past.

Legend Everything was gigantic and the trees went into another realm and connected downwards too into a realm below. Some of this has seeped into legend with the story of Jack who ends up in the land of the Titans.

Conclusion The vast diameters of the structures that we observed in the last article - up to 12 miles in extent in the case of the ‘Island in the Sky’ in Utah - could lead one to infer a height ratio from 1:2 - 1:9. A height ratio of 1:6 would produce a tree extending to a height of 72 miles, a distance that could be accommodated within the limits of a firmament that begins 78 miles above this earthly realm.