HistoricalChristian.Faith

The Rephaim as the spirits of dead kings (the Ugaritic funerary text KTU 1.161)

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: sound — the core identification (the Ugaritic rpum / biblical Rephaim are the deified spirits of dead kings) is well-grounded, near-consensus scholarship that genuinely illuminates Isaiah 14 and Psalm 88; but De Young's framing of the rite as "ritual magic to ward off the Rephaim" so the dead king could "pass by them safely" inverts what the text does — it invokes and welcomes the royal dead and seeks their blessing — and the bridge from these underworld shades to the giant Rephaim/Nephilim is a further, separable step · advanced by Fr. Stephen De Young

Related arguments: the Rephaim — see also Og's cities and the Rapiu (KTU 1.108)

This one tests the strand De Young draws from the mid-20th-century discovery of Ugarit (Ras Shamra): a royal funerary liturgy that, he says, shows the Rephaim were "the spirits of these dead ancient kings." The research confirms the identification is mainstream and the biblical payoff (Isa 14, Ps 88) is real — but the cuneiform liturgy summons the dead kings to a banquet and asks their blessing on the living dynasty; it does not "ward them off," and the dead king is welcomed into their company rather than slipping past them.

The claim

In the 2026 interview De Young grounds the biblical Rephaim — and Og of Bashan, "the last of the Rephaim" — in a Ugaritic ritual text uncovered at Ras Shamra:

one of the texts there is a ritual text for when the king died … they did this funerary ritual where they … did … ritual magic to try to ward off the Rephaim — who were the spirits of these dead ancient kings — so that the king who had just died could pass by them safely to get into the underworld.

— Tucker Carlson Show, "Young giants" (2026), YouTube. He adds: "this is what Isaiah 14 and Psalm 88 mean by the Rephaim." Two assertions are bundled here: (a) the Rephaim are the spirits of dead ancient kings, attested in a Ugaritic royal funerary rite; and (b) that rite is apotropaic "ritual magic to ward off the Rephaim" so the newly dead king can "pass by them safely" into the underworld.

Who advances it

De Young is downstream of mainstream Ugaritology, not floating an apologetic novelty. The text he means is KTU 1.161 (= RS 34.126), a royal funerary liturgy recovered at Ras Shamra and dated to the reign of Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, just before the city's destruction in the Bronze Age collapse (late 13th / early 12th c. BC).¹ The identification of its rpum ("Rapiuma") with the deified royal dead is the explicit thesis of the standard study — Baruch Levine & Jean-Michel de Tarragon, "Dead Kings and Rephaim: The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty" (1984) — and is carried by Theodore J. Lewis, Dennis Pardee, Wayne Pitard, John Healey, and Klaas Spronk.² The connection of these Ugaritic rpum to the biblical Rephaim is likewise a scholarly commonplace. So the lineage is Ugaritic epigraphy / cult-of-the-dead studies → De Young; he is popularizing a real consensus.

The evidence for

The core identification is solid and multiply attested:

• The text names the dead kings as the Rapiuma's company. KTU 1.161's incipit is spr dbḥ ẓlm, "document of the sacrifice of the shades." It opens by summoning "the Rapiuma of the underworld" (rpi arṣ) in parallel with "the assembly of Didanu" (qbṣ ddn) — the eponymous dynastic ancestor — and then summons named recently dead kings: "King Ammishtamru … King Niqmaddu."³ The long dead (rpum) and the recently dead kings (mlkm) are addressed together as the patrons of the reigning house — exactly "the spirits of these dead ancient kings."
• The biblical Rephaim as the shades of the dead. In Hebrew the Rephaim are, in one of their two senses, the ghostly inhabitants of Sheol: "the Rephaim tremble" (Job 26:5); "Do the Rephaim rise up to praise you?" (Ps 88:10); they "do not rise" (Isa 26:14). De Young's two proof-texts fit. Isaiah 14 is the closest analogue of all: Sheol "rouses the Rephaim to greet" the descending king of Babylon — "all who were kings of the nations" rising from their thrones — which is the Ugaritic tableau of dead kings receiving a new arrival, transposed into Hebrew prophecy.⁴
• Royal, dynastic, semi-divine. At Ugarit the rpum are noble dead — once human kings — who protect the living dynasty; KTU 1.161 presents them, with Didanu, as "the patrons of the Ugaritic dynasty." This matches the biblical use of Rephaim for ancient royal/heroic figures and gives real ANE depth to "the spirits of dead ancient kings."²

On the central point — that "Rephaim" can denote the deified spirits of dead kings, and that a Ugaritic royal funerary liturgy attests it — De Young is squarely with the scholarship.

Adversarial assessment

What holds. The equation Rephaim = deified royal dead is mainstream (Levine–de Tarragon, Lewis, Pardee, Spronk), the text he points to is real and aptly chosen (KTU 1.161), and the biblical payoff is genuine: Isaiah 14 and Psalm 88 do use Rephaim for the shades in Sheol, and Isaiah 14's dead kings greeting a new arrival is a near-perfect literary cousin of the Ugaritic rite. This is one of De Young's better-grounded ANE parallels.

Where the framing inverts or outruns the evidence:

1. "Ritual magic to ward off the Rephaim … so the king could pass by them safely." This is the load-bearing overstatement, and it reverses the rite's valence. KTU 1.161 does not repel the Rapiuma; it summons and welcomes them. The verbs are invitation — "we have called unto you, O Rapiuma of the underworld; we have invoked you, O assembly of Didanu" — followed by food and drink offerings and a sevenfold sacrifice, and closing in blessing: "peace (šlm) to Ammurapi and to his house; peace to Ṯarriyelli (the queen mother) and to her house; peace to Ugarit and to her gates."³ The dead king is not slipping past hostile Rephaim; he is received into their company — "greeted by the noble Rephaim in the underworld," the same picture as Isaiah 14.⁴ The rite's purpose is to seat the new royal dead among the ancestral patrons and so secure their blessing on the living successor — an invocation of benevolent dynastic guardians, not apotropaic magic against dangerous ones.

2. "Pass by them … to get into the underworld" as the rite's goal. The liturgy's beneficiary is not really the dead king's safe passage but the living king and realm: its operative payload is the šlm ("peace / well-being") pronounced over Ammurapi, the queen mother, and the city. De Young's retelling makes the dead king the anxious traveler and the Rephaim the threat; the text makes the dead king the newest patron and the Rephaim the benefactors whose goodwill is being enlisted for the succession.³

3. From shades to giants — a separable step. "Rephaim" in the Hebrew Bible carries two senses: the shades of the dead (Isa 14; 26; Ps 88; Job 26; Prov 2, 9, 21) and a pre-Israelite race of giants (Gen 14:5; Deut 2:11, 20; 3:11, 13; Josh 12:4) — Og of Bashan being "the last of the Rephaim." KTU 1.161 supports the first sense directly. Whether the two are one concept or homonyms, and how the underworld shades relate to the giant clans of the conquest, is a genuinely debated question; the funerary text alone does not bridge it.⁵ De Young's larger system links shade-Rephaim, giant-Rephaim, and the dead Nephilim into one demonological chain; that synthesis may be defensible, but it is not read off KTU 1.161, which speaks only of deified dead kings. The bridge is not left wholly to his system, however: a separate Ugaritic text — the Rapiu liturgy KTU 1.108 (RS 24.252) — names the god Rapiu ("King of Eternity," mlk ʿlm), eponym of the rpum, as enthroned in Ashtaroth and Edrei, which Deut 1:4 gives as Og's own royal seat; Maria Lindquist and Mark S. Smith adduce this as evidence of "divine affiliations for King Og, the last of the Rephaim," tying the giant-Rephaim to the divine/shade Rephaim through Og's own territory. It is a further text, not KTU 1.161, and the shade↔giant identity remains debated — but the link has textual purchase beyond De Young's synthesis.⁵

4. "Cult of the dead" is itself contested. A minority of scholars (notably Brian Schmidt) read KTU 1.161 as a one-time funerary/accession ceremony rather than evidence of an ongoing necromantic cult of the dead. This does not touch the rpum = dead kings identification De Young relies on, but it is worth noting that the broader "they practiced ritual magic with the dead" register is not uniformly granted.⁵

Assessment

Sound. Trust the core: that "Rephaim" can mean the deified spirits of dead kings, attested in a real Ugaritic royal funerary liturgy (KTU 1.161) and illuminating Isaiah 14 and Psalm 88, is near-consensus scholarship resting on Levine–de Tarragon, Lewis, and Pardee — one of De Young's stronger ANE parallels. What should be flagged on De Young's page is the direction of the rite: KTU 1.161 invokes and welcomes the royal dead and seeks their blessing on the living dynasty (peace to Ammurapi, the queen mother, and Ugarit), so "ritual magic to ward off the Rephaim … so the king could pass by them safely" inverts a liturgy of solidarity into one of aversion — the dead king is received into the company of the Rephaim, not steered past it. And the move from these underworld shades to the giant Rephaim (Og) and the dead Nephilim is a further, separable step the funerary text does not itself carry. Stated carefully — Rephaim = the honored royal dead, summoned to bless the dynasty — the parallel is sound; the single misframing is the apotropaic, "ward-off" valence, not a factual error about what the Rephaim are.

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