101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

128 101 Myths of the Bible
whom they “smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham,
and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim” (Gen. 14:5).
Rephaim, Zuzim, and Emims are names for groups of giants. While they are usually
thought of as different groups, they are sometimes considered one and the same.
For example, in Deuteronomy 2:11, the Emim and Rephaim are equated and the text
places them in Moab. (The English translation says “giants” for “Rephaim.”) And
Deuteronomy 2:20 says that the Ammonites called the Zamzummim (a variation of
Zuzim)“Rephaim.”
“Rephaim” has a second meaning: in addition to“giants,” it also means“shades of the
dead.” Since the territories associated with Lot, Moab, and Ammon, were inhabited by
a variety of Rephaim, the inhabitants were either mythological giants or “shades of
the dead.”
The Bible, therefore, describes this wicked city as being in a land inhabited by
many varieties of Rephaim because Sodom originally signified the underworld, which
was inhabited by the“shades of the dead.”
In later times, when biblical editors compiled the stories about Lot, they had forgotten
that Sodom represented the underworld and they confused the Rephaim
meaning of “shades of the dead” with the Rephaim meaning of “giants.”
In the incomplete story that we have, the escape of Lot and his family from Sodom
described an attempt by Lot to bring his wife back from the dead. As in the story of
Orpheus, the arrangement included a proscription against looking back at the underworld,
and when his wife violated the terms of the bargain she could not come out
with her husband.