This might not be quite as outlandish as it sounds, because we now have plenty of evidence that early humans were living alongside and interacting with other archaic homo species.
I have a pet (similarly highly speculative) theory that the Nephilim[1] of the Bible might be a earlier oral history of Neanderthals. But I'll just leave it at that, speculation.
The speech portions of the brain were smaller in Neanderthals, which would have made them appear dimwitted to humans, which is how trolls are often depicted in folklore.
They are known to have lived in smaller social groups than humans, and trolls are depicted as living in small groups as well.
Neanderthals were larger than humans, and trolls are similarly depicted as large.
You are just picking the characteristics which confirm your hypothesis.
Trolls in Scandinavian folklore can be very different depending on local traditions. They can be small people living underground, human size, or giants living in the the mountains. They can be solitary or living in human-like societies.
Literal quote from the Wikipedia article you link: "Trolls may be described as small, human-like beings or as tall as men depending on the region of origin of the story."
It was quite common to depict them as a) human like, b) dimwitted, c) living in caves, d) living in small social groups, e) larger and stronger than humans.
You're right that there were other characteristics that were associated with them in some folklore that was not consistent with the Neanderthal hypothesis.
So you just ignore the facts which contradict your hypothesis? This is how people come to believe in wacky conspiracy theories.
How about:
f) often depicted as smoking pipe, g) living in hills, h) or underneath the earth, i) being rich, j) asking trick questions, k) hating church bells, m) replacing human children with their own, n) wearing read hats, etc.
There are several peculiar characteristics that match that of Neanderthals. There is an appreciable probability that it is not a coincidence, when Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals did in fact interact in Europe for thousands of years.
Titans are similar to the Indo-European pantheon of gods which have been around for 5000 years. The Neanderthals haven’t been around for 45,000 years. I strongly doubt that’s the origin for the titans.
The replacement aspect of it most probably comes from the Yamnaya that killed almost ALL the men in northern and Central Europe and replaced them.
I believe there's also a theory that the neanderthals were smarter than our ancestors of the time. That would also fit the story. I can imagine the homo sapiens of the time interacting with the far stronger and smarter neanderthals and describing them as 'sons of god'. I wonder if that's also where the old Greek myths of Hercules (etc) came from.
“Sons of god” is a translation of the Hebrew by non-Jews and is just plain incorrect. It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God.
But If you ask Jews, who wrote that section of the Bible, benei elokim translates as something like “those who are free”:
“Who or what exactly are the benei elokim? Who are the nephilim? How are they related to each other? And what does it all mean?
One thing benei elokim does not mean is “sons of G‑d.” In fact, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would “curse” anyone who translated the term benei elokim as the “sons of G‑d.”1 The word elokim in Scripture, while generally referring to G‑d, is in essence merely an expression of authority.2 Similarly, the term benei does not necessarily mean “sons,” but is often just a title. Benei chorin, for example, means those who are free—not “sons of freedom.”
The Jews who wrote Genesis aren't the Jews who wrote the Midrash. The culture from which the myths concerning the Nephilim and Benei Elokim arose had no problems with God having sons, e.g. Mot, Yam. The Jews of Elephantine are documented as having a temple to Anat, daughter of El (God) by his wife Asherah, in the 5th century BCE.
The opposition to reading any of the Hebrew scriptures as referring to "Sons of god" likely arose as a reaction in Rabbinic Judaism to Christianity, both of which (along with Karaite Judaism) arose out of Second Temple Judaism.
That was an interesting read. Thanks. I'm not sure how the linked article expresses more than an alternate translation, though. It says that benei doesn't "necessarily" translate to sons, which doesn't rule out the translation but merely suggests an alternative. The word elokim also refers generally to God, as it says, but can be translated differently. It's an interesting alternative, but the claim that the translation "sons of god" is specifically wrong only seems to be based on the declaration of a single earlier source.
> It gets passed around as legit probably because it enforces the idea that Christ is a son of God.
I've never heard of that before. Not sure where you would have, or how it even does reenforce that idea.
It reinforces “Christ as the son of God” because, if the phrase is translated as “sons of God”, that sets a precedent in the Old Testament that God has sons. The Jews do not believe God has sons. Christians do. So it is in the best interest of Christian translators to translate that phrase as “sons of God”.
> but the claim that the translation "sons of god" is specifically wrong only seems to be based on the declaration of a single earlier source.
No, I only provided one source (Chabad), but there are many others, including all Jewish translations of the Old Testament (Torah) from the original Hebrew to English. You’ll never see it translated as “sons of God” in a book translated by Jews.
> You’ll never see it translated as “sons of God” in a book translated by Jews.
Do the 70 Jewish authors of the Septuagint not count? In the LXX, it clearly reads "οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ Θεοῦ", "the sons of God". The LXX precedes Christianity by quite some time.
Well, actually it is a bit more complicated than just God having a (or more than one) son:
„The Christian doctrine of the Trinity […] holds that God is one God, but three coeternal and consubstantial persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct, yet are one ‚substance, essence or nature‘. In this context, a ‚nature‘ is what one is, whereas a ‚person‘ is who one is“, from [0] where you can also read a lot more about it.
That's completely missing the point of Christianity: Christ does not require a precedent; he's considered God's "only begotten son", which sounds like an explicit denial that there has been a precedent like him. Considering some mysterious people mentioned in a single line in Genesis as being of similar stature as Christ also goes against the idea of Christ as part of the Trinity.
Also, Christianity considers all people to be children of God (though apparently not "begotten"). On top of that, almost every Christian interpretation of the Bible seems to skip over that mention of the nephilim like it's not there. There's far more reason for Christianity to argue against translating this as "sons of God" than for it.
AFAICT, the Greek pantheon (Hercules etc) is commonly assumed to belong to a religious belief system that in large part aligns with the spread of the Indo-European language, probably (maybe) originating with the Yamnaya culture on the Pontic steppe north of the Black sea according to what is called the Kurgan hypothesis [0][1].
The culture and language seems to have spread across large parts of the Indo-European landmass starting maybe 6000 years ago, eventually displacing many older European and Indian cultures respectively among others. It is assumed to be the reason that such disparate pantheons as the Roman, Greek, Norse and Hindu have many common characteristics. One reason for the relative swift and wide spread of the culture is currently speculated to be that the Yamnaya were the first to domesticate the horse and use them to pull wagons (chariots).[2]
While it could be possible that the original pantheon referred to Neanderthals a more rational interpretation seems to me to be that the pantheon is a deified memory of some prominent people in a small group that roamed the plains of present Ukraine many thousands of years ago, a group that came to conquer other groups because of their advanced horsemanship, establishing traditions that in turn achieved a life of their own as traditions and beliefs commonly do. But hey, it is little more than speculation at this point.
Only a quite small number of the Greek pantheon have Indo-European forebears and were brought to Greece with the expansion of the Indo-European languages from the Pontic Steppes. Most of the Greek deities derive from the non-Indo-European autochthonous culture of Greece, or from interaction with the Greeks’ neighbors in Anatolian. Your own linked article emphasizes this:
"Despite the popularity of Greek mythology in western culture, Greek mythology is generally seen as having little importance in comparative mythology due to the heavy influence of Pre-Greek and Near Eastern cultures, which overwhelms what little Indo-European material can be extracted from it."
Well, 'similar' and 'dissimilar' are elastic concepts, and as the pantheons mentioned are certainly not 'the same' there is much room for interpretation, where different schools tend to stress the difference more than the similarity or vice versa. But there are sufficient common characteristics to trace a lineage in all of them, albeit certainly intermixed with other influences.
In the specific case of the Greek mythology, these deities have distinct Indo-European parallels: Zeus (Dyēus, Sky Father), Eos (H₂éusōs, Dawn goddess), Helios (Seh₂ul, Sun god), Castor and Pollux ( Divine Horse Twins), and more, enough to at least put central tenets of Greek pantheon largely within the realm of the Indo-European tradition.
The cited quote in isolation gives an incorrect impression in this context.
I have a pet (similarly highly speculative) theory that the Nephilim[1] of the Bible might be a earlier oral history of Neanderthals. But I'll just leave it at that, speculation.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim