Giants of Old, Giants of Today: A contextual and Decolonial reading of the book of Giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls in Dialogue with African Realities of Oppression and Resistance

The Book of Giants, a fragmentary Enochic work from the Dead Sea Scrolls, narrates the violent reign of the Watchers' giant offspring, their terrifying dreams, and Enoch's pronouncement of divine judgment. This paper offers a contextual and decolonial re-reading from the perspective of the Ujamaa Centre's praxis of socially engaged biblical scholarship. Drawing on African hermeneutics and liberation theology, the giants are interpreted as symbols of imperial, colonial, and neo-colonial powers exploiting land, bodies, and communities. Through a Contextual Bible Study approach, the text is brought into dialogue with ecological justice, land dispossession, and gender-based violence in contemporary South Africa.