Goff, "Ben Sira and the Giants"

RECENTLY UPLOADED TO ACADEMIA.EDU: "Ben Sira and the Giants of the Land: A Note on Ben Sira 16:7" (Matthew Goff, JBL 129, no. 4 (2010): 645–655).

In this short note I address the common claim that Sir 16:7 alludes to Gen6:1–4. I argue that understanding the verse in this way is not unreasonable but thatthis position needs to be qualified. The primary reference of the line is not the floodstory but archaic peoples of the land. Genesis 6 and early Jewish traditions that per-tain to this chapter influence Ben Sira’s description of archaic Canaanite rulers.