NP-7505Folder 04 — Ancient World Connections
Ugarit and the Rephaim Texts
Outside the Bible, Rephaim appear in Canaanite texts as royal ancestral dead as much as living giants.
ANCIENT TEXTARCHAEOLOGYDISPUTED
The material
Tablets excavated at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) refer to rpum — a term cognate with the Hebrew Rephaim — in contexts of feasting, royal ancestors and the honoured dead. The Hebrew Bible also uses Rephaim for the shades of the dead in passages such as Isaiah 14:9 and Proverbs 9:18.
Why it complicates the giant reading
If Rephaim carries a strong ancestral-dead meaning in the wider region, then the biblical Rephaim may be a people remembered through that lens rather than a straightforward description of stature.
Status
Genuinely disputed among specialists. Both the 'ethnic group' and the 'ancestral dead' senses appear in the sources; how they relate is unresolved.