What Does the Talmud Really Say about Giants’ Teeth?

It says very little, and what it says is about the Avvim, not giants by name. In Chullin 60b, Rav Yosef states that each of the Avvim had sixteen rows of teeth. The tractate does not describe giants, and it does not mention double rows. The link between the Avvim and giants comes from later Jewish tradition and from a 1906 encyclopedia entry.

Where the claim comes from

The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 has an article on giants written by M. Seligsohn. It gathers rabbinic legends into one paragraph. Some giants had feet 18 ells long, a figure it sources to Deuteronomy Rabbah. The same length is given for the thigh-bone, sourced to Buber’s edition of the Tanhuma. They ate as many as a thousand oxen, horses and camels a day, sourced to Midrash Abkir. The article also says numerous rows of teeth are ascribed to them, and it cites Chullin for that line.

The citation in the encyclopedia is wrong by one page. It points to Chullin 60a. The passage is on 60b. Each detail in that paragraph comes from a different source, and only the teeth come from the Talmud.

What Chullin 60b actually says

The page is discussing Deuteronomy 2:23, which says the Caphtorim destroyed the Avvim and settled where they had lived. The Gemara links the Avvim to the Philistines. Rav disagrees and says they came from Teman. A baraita backs Rav and offers three reasons for the name Avvim. They ruined the place they came from. They longed for many gods. Or everyone who saw them was seized with trembling.

Right after that third explanation, Rav Yosef adds a line. In the Epstein translation it reads, “Every one of them had sixteen rows of teeth.” The next speaker, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, moves on to why a seemingly redundant verse like Deuteronomy 2:23 belongs in the Torah. It teaches how Israel could take Philistine land without breaking Abimelech’s oath to Abraham.

Rashi, the medieval commentator, glosses the Aramaic phrase simply as rows of teeth. The number itself is literal. The word for sixteen appears in the text.

Why anyone calls the Avvim giants

Jewish tradition holds that the earliest inhabitants of the land were the Anakim and the Rephaim, and it treats those peoples as giants. Later sources then tied other early peoples to them. Genesis Rabbah, a midrashic collection on Genesis, places the Avvim among the groups of mighty men of old in Genesis 6:4. That is where the giant label attaches to the Avvim. It is a rabbinic inference built on later tradition.

The Bible itself says nothing about their size. Deuteronomy 2:23 only says where they lived and who replaced them.

What the passage does not say

It does not say giants had double rows of teeth. It says sixteen, and it says it of the Avvim.

It does not appear in the Berakhot. Writer Harold T. Wilkins repeated the encyclopedia’s lines in a 1952 magazine article and a book that year. He placed the Chullin inside the Berakhot, attributed the 18 ells and the thousand oxen to it, and in the magazine version changed “numerous” rows into “double” rows. Many later writers copied that version. Researcher Jason Colavito traced this chain in a 2014 post, and I rely on his work for the Wilkins trail and for the encyclopedia’s citation error.

How much weight the passage carries

Rav Yosef was a Babylonian teacher, and the Talmud was compiled centuries after the Hebrew Bible. His statement is a rabbinic tradition about a people the Bible barely describes. Biblical scholar Michael Heiser made a similar point in a comment on Colavito’s post. Almost nothing is known about the Avvim from texts or archaeology, and the Gemara’s claim that they were Philistines has no independent support.

A claim of sixteen rows of teeth also fits no human skeleton. If you cite Chullin 60b, cite it for what it is: a rabbi’s teaching about the Avvim. It cannot be used to confirm a skull with two rows of teeth.

How to cite it correctly

Cite Chullin 60b, Rav Yosef on the Avvim. If you quote the Jewish Encyclopedia, quote it exactly and note that its reference to 60a should read 60b. Do not attribute the 18 ells or the daily appetite to the Talmud.

Sources

Colavito, “What Does the Talmud Really Say about Giants’ Teeth?” (2014)

Chullin 60b, Steinsaltz Center

Chullin 60b, Soncino text

Rashi on Genesis 6:4 (cites Genesis Rabbah)

Jewish Encyclopedia, Midrashim, Smaller (Midrash Abkir)

About the author: CK Quarterman is a USAF veteran, independent author and publisher at CKQbooks (ckqbooks.com). He develops the malaterrestrials concept in his nonfiction and writes fiction in the Watchers’ Universe and Sons of the Flood series. Truth · History · Scripture.