Titans

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Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible [1]

TITANS . In Greek mythology the Titans were divine or semi-divine beings who, endowed with supernatural powers, were overcome only with the greatest difficulty. In later times they were identified with primitive giants.

In the LXX [Note: Septuagint.] version of Samuel the ‘ Vale of Rephaim ’ (  2 Samuel 5:16;   2 Samuel 5:22 ) is called the ‘Vale of the Titans.’ Here it is used in the sense of ‘giants,’ for the same version of Chronicles translates this name in   1 Chronicles 11:15;   1 Chronicles 14:9 ‘Vale of the Giants.’ Thus, in interpreting early Hebrew thought for Greek readers, the old shadowy Rephaim were identified with Titans and giants.

Similarly in the song of victory in Jdt 16:7 we read:

‘For the mighty one did not fall by the young men,

Neither did the sons of Titans smite him,

Nor did tall giants set upon him,

But Judith, the daughter of Merari …’

In this late work Greek mythology has been absorbed by Jewish thought.

George A. Barton.

The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]

In the Greek mythology sons of Uranos and Gaia, beings of gigantic strength, and of the dynasty prior to that of Zeus, who made war on Zeus, and hoped to scale heaven by piling mountain on mountain, but were overpowered by the thunderbolts of Zeus, and consigned to a limbo below the lowest depths of Tartarus; they represent the primitive powers of nature, as with seeming reluctance submissive to the world-order established by Zeus, and symbolise the vain efforts of mere strength to subvert the ordinance of heaven; they are not to be confounded with the Giants, nor with their offspring, who had learned wisdom from the failure of their fathers, and who, Prometheus one of them, represented the idea that the world was made for man and not man for the world, and that all the powers of it, from highest to lowest, were there for his behoof.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia [3]

tı̄´tanz  : In   Judith 16:7 , "Neither did the sons of the Titans ( υἱοὶ Τιτάνων , huioı́ Titánōn ) smite him." The name of an aboriginal Canaanitish race of reputed giants who inhabited Palestine before the Hebrews, and so used in the sense of "giants" in general. See Rephaim . In  2 Samuel 5:18 ,  2 Samuel 5:22 , the "valley of Rephaim" is translated by the Septuagint as "the valley of the Titans."

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