GFROERER, gfrol'rer, AUGUST FRIEDRICH: German historian; b. at Calm (20 m. w.s.w. of Stuttgart) Mar. 5, 1803; d. at Carlsbad July 6, 1861. He studied theology at Tübingen, where he became repetent in 1828, after he had spent three years in Switzerland and Italy. In 1829 he became Stadtvicar at Stuttgart, and in 1830 librarian at the royal library there. He then definitely aban doned the ministry and devoted himself to his torical studies. In 1846 he was appointed pro fessor of history at Freiburg, and in 1848 was elected to the German parliament, in which he dis tinguished himself as an adherent of the "Gross deutsche" party and an opponent of Prussia. After failing in an attempt at Frankfort to unite Protestants and Catholics he joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1853. He had already been long recognized as one of the leaders of the Ultramontane party in Germany. His principal works are, Philo und die judisch-Alezandrinische Theosophie (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1831); Gustav Adolf und seine Zeit (2 vols:, 1835--37); Geschichte des Urchristentums (3 vols.,1838); Allgemeine Kirchengeschichte (4 vols., 1841-46); Geschichte der ost- and westfrdnkischen Karolinger (2 vols., Freiburg, 1848); Urgeschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts (2 vols., Schaffhausen, 1855); and Papst Gregorius VII. und sein Zeitalter (7 vols., Schaffhausen, 1859-61; index vol., 1864).
Bibliography: P. Alberdingk Thijm, A. F. Gfrvrer en zifne werken, Haarlem, 1870; KL, v. 579-580.
GIANTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT: The
passages in the Old Testament where the word giant
or its equivalents occur may be differentiated into
two classes: (1) those which adduce sporadic cases
of
exceptional stature or strength, against which
no a priori historical objection can lie (such as
I Sam. xvii.); (2) those in which a mythological or
early legendary character is clearly in evidence.
The first class requires no discussion here. In con
sidering the second class preliminary notes of
im portance are (1) that in the canonical writings
there are but fugitive references to what was
probably a much larger body of current folk-lore,
which entered literature extensively only in the
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (H. Gunkel,
Gene sis, Göttingen, 1901, p. 52); and (2) that illumina
tion is received from comparison with like myths of
other peoples. In the Old Testament two words convey the idea
of giants Nephilim
(
In ethnic myths the earlier inhabitants of earth
are pictured as of more than human stature and
strength, and often as living beyond the usual span
of human life. Thus in India the first Jina is said
to have been 3,000 feet in height and to have lived
eight millions of years. Another characteristic of
these myths is that the giants come into conflict
with the gods and are destroyed. Examples of
this are the Marduk-Tiamat myth of Babylonia and
the Gigantomachia and Titanomachia of Greece.
In Hebrew legend these characteristics are separated; the lengthened span of life is assigned to
antediluvians in general, abnormal stature is attributed to the prehistoric race in canonical literature, the contest of the giants with God appears
first in the Apocrypha (Ecclus, xvi. 7) and develops
enormously in the Pseudepigrapha. Wisd. of Sol.
xiv. 6 has a curious explanation of the survival of
the flood by the giants, and rabbinic literature explains in equally grotesque fashion the survival
of Og. In such passages as Baruch iii. 26-28,
Bibliography:
J. L. Porter, Giant Cities of Bashan, New
York, 1871; F. Lenormant, Les Origines de 1'histoire, 2
vols., Paris, 1880-84,
Eng.
transl. of vol. i., London, 1883;
E. Meyer, in ZATW
i
(1881),
139, and Schwally in the same, xviii (1898), 127 sqq.; K. Budde, Die biblische
Urgeschichte, pp. 30 sqq., Giessen, 1883; H. E. Ryle, Early
Narratives of
Genesis, London, 1892; S. R. Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, on
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