The Strange Visions of Enoch

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Occupying a sometimes arcane world, the Pseudepigrapha are that collection of scripture-like books usually attributed to such ancients as Adam, Moses or the patriarchs, but actually composed, for the most part, between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. The accompanying article (“Don’t Let Pseudepigrapha Scare You”) provides general background about the Pseudepigrapha.

In this article, I would like to focus on a single book of the Pseudepigrapha, the Book of Enoch. Perhaps the best known work of the collection, Enoch is attributed—falsely, of course—to the sixth descendant of Adam (Genesis 5:1–24; 1 Chronicles 1:3).^a Enoch was the father of Methuselah, who, as everyone knows, lived 969 years. Enoch, however, lived only 365 years, the number of days in the solar year.

Of Enoch, we are twice told that he “walked with God” (Genesis 5:22, 24). Although Enoch did not live long by the standards of his time, he did not die; he was simply removed to heaven, spiritually relocated, or, to use a precise but today unusual meaning of the word, translated.^b Of each of the other descendants of Adam whose lineage described in Genesis 5, we are told that he “died”; of Enoch, however, we are told that he “was no more, for God took him,” or, in the New English Bible (NEB) translation: “Enoch was seen no more, because God had taken him away” (Genesis 5:24).

It is to this Enoch that the authorship of the Book of Enoch is attributed. From it we learn what Enoch saw when he was translated to heaven.

Actually, there are three different books of Enoch in the Pseudepigrapha, designated 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch. Enoch was obviously an inspiration for the kind of apocalyptic visions described in these books.

Second and Third Enoch are much later compositions, and we shall not be concerned with them here. When we speak of the Book of Enoch, we shall mean 1 Enoch.

The Book of Enoch holds a special fascination because its main themes—the Last Judgment and the Son of Man, the resurrection and the life to come—form a theological, as well as a literary and historical bridge between the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament.

First Enoch has survived, for the most part, only in Ge‘ez (the language of Ethiopia) or Ethiopic, as it is also called. For that reason, 1 Enoch is sometimes referred to as Ethiopic Enoch.^c In some copies of the Ethiopian Bible, the Book of Enoch is not only included in the canon, but is the first book of the Bible, preceding even Genesis. This is some indication of the esteem in which it was held by the Ethiopian Fathers.

But it was obviously highly regarded by some early Christians as well. An entire verse from Enoch is quoted in the New Testament letter of Jude (Jude 14–15) (See second sidebar to this article.). Moreover Jude himself, writing at a time when the canon of the New Testament had not closed (or been finally determined), regarded the Book of Enoch as inspired Scripture. For him, the Book of Enoch had the authority of Scripture. This suggests that it was once regarded as Scripture among those churches, perhaps in Asia Minor, to which the Epistle of Jude was originally addressed.

Many early Church fathers also were inspired by the Book of Enoch and regarded it highly. Beginning in the fourth century, the Book of Enoch seems to have fallen into disfavor, however. References to it and quotations from it in the writings of the Church fathers are no longer found 021after the fourth century. It apparently went out of general circulation, or, more probably, was suppressed as heretical. This is suggested by the fact that parts of it survived only among heretical Christian sects. For example, the sacred books of the Manichaeans^d include the Book of the Giants, which is taken from the Book of Enoch.

The entire Book of Enoch was not discovered until 1773, when it was brought from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to Europe by the Scottish traveler James Bruce.

We really can’t explain why this important work of ancient Judaism has survived as a whole only in the Ethiopic canon of the Bible. Nor are we sure by what strange accident of history the Book of Enoch was originally brought to Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Some have suggested that it was brought to Abyssinia by missionaries from Alexandria who are credited with converting the Ethiopian royal family to Christianity in 330 A.D. The Ethiopian monarchy, incidentally, traces its origins to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. I think it is more probable that it was brought to Abyssinia by Syrian Christian heretics, refugees from the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., who introduced the banned Book of Enoch into the Ethiopian Church.

The discovery of Aramaic fragments of The Book of Enoch pushed back its antiquity to at least 200 B.C.

Of course, the Ethiopic manuscripts of Enoch are late, and scholars were initially quite understandably skeptical of the book’s genuine antiquity. Then in 1886, substantial fragments of Enoch in Greek were found near Gizeh in Egypt. The fragments were one part of three-section papyrus scroll found in a Christian grave. The other two sections contained parts of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter. All three sections of this composite papyrus have to do, in part at least, with the theme of life after death, a fact that perhaps accounts for their presence in a Christian burial.

In 1930, additional Greek fragments of Enoch were identified in papyrus collections now in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland.

The Greek fragments have been dated on paleographical grounds—that is, by the forms of the letters—to the fourth century A.D.¹

Then in 1952, it was discovered that fragments of Enoch in Aramaic, the vernacular in Judea at the time of Jesus, were among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Previously, scholars had demonstrated that the Greek texts of Enoch were translations; this was now corroborated by comparison with the overlapping Aramaic texts from the Dead Sea caves.

Comparison of the Ethiopic with the Greek and Aramaic shows equally clearly that the Ethiopic is a tertiary version: it goes back to the Greek, which in turn translated the Aramaic. This chain of tradition clearly demonstrates the antiquity of Enoch. Altogether, 11 identifiable fragments of Aramaic texts from the Dead Sea caves have been sorted out; each comes from a separate manuscript of an Aramaic Enoch. These fragments have been dated on paleographical evidence, as well as by orthography, that is, by a consideration of the spelling of words. The oldest fragments date to the third/second century B.C.; the latest, to the first century B.C. As already noted, comparison of the Greek with the overlapping Aramaic texts, by a detailed collation of the two demonstrates the dependence of the Greek on the Aramaic. Thus, we now know that the Ethiopic Enoch—which we must rely on for a relatively complete text—is a translation from the Greek, which is a 023translation from the Aramic

Does a Hebrew Enoch lie behind the Aramaic? Hebrew fragments related to or parallel to Enoch, or possibly of Enoch itself, have been found at Qumran (in Cave 1), so there may have been a Hebrew Enoch before or contemporaneous with the Aramaic book.² But the Hebrew fragments are too slight for any conclusions to be drawn on their relation to the Aramaic text, and everything else points to the Aramaic as the original Book of Enoch.

In any event, we have been able to trace at least sections of the Book of Enoch back to about 200 B.C. Since the work is composite, containing a number of sections, it is not possible to give a single date for the entire composition. Different parts come from different periods and from different authors. The final recension of the bulk of the book, with the exception of the parables (chapters 37–71), was probably completed in the second century B.C., but it incorporated much older material.

Jude and 2 Peter warn against sexual indulgence, but only Enoch spells out how the punishment fits the crime.

The accompanying article (“Don’t Let Pseudepigrapha Scare You”) describes how at one point the New Testament Epistle of Jude (14–15) actually quotes the Book of Enoch. But Enoch’s influence in Jude, as we shall see, is really far more pervasive and illustrates how the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament and the Pseudepigrapha are tied together textually, with the latter forming a kind of bridge between what Christians call the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The second epistle attributed to Peter (2 Peter) depends heavily on Jude. In this derivative way 2 Peter also depends on Enoch in the parallel passages of the letters of Jude and 2 Peter. The overriding concern voice in Jude and in 2 Peter is the danger to their churches of a perverted form of Christian belief, which claimed that all that was necessary was to have faith. This perverted belief held that whoever had faith was above all law. Called antinomianism, this position was in fact libertarianism, and took the form mainly of sensuality and sexual indulgence. Jude and 2 Peter admonish, even threaten, the “godless sinners” who have succumbed to this belief and its accompanying lusts, some of whom have even infiltrated (or, as the New English Bible translates, it in Jude 4, “wormed their way into”) the churches to whom the epistles of Jude and 2 Peter are addressed. As Jude describes it, “These godless sinners [have] turn[ed] the grace of God into licentiousness” (Jude 4). And 2 Peter tells us that “many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled” (2 Peter 2:2). The authors of Jude and 2 Peter describe at length the fate that is to befall these “godless sinners.” In short, their fate is to be like the angels, or Sons of God, who sinned by descending from heaven and having intercourse with the daughters of men. This is a reference to an episode described in Genesis 6:1–4, just before the story of Noah and the Flood (see “When the Sons of God Cavorted with the Daughters of Men”). This episode may have been the final straw that resolved God to bring the Flood upon mankind. According to Genesis, when men began to multiply on earth, the Sons of God saw how beautiful were the daughters of men and came down to sleep with them; the resulting children were giants, the mighty men of old. Genesis continues with God’s recognition of the wickedness of men and his decision to visit the Flood upon the earth.

But the Genesis story does not indicate that the angels, or Sons of God, who descended to sleep with the daughters of men were punished. Yet both Jude and 2 Peter tell us that their punishment was severe—and that this punishment would befall the licentious heretics (the “godless sinners”) who were infiltrating the Church.

Jude states:

“I desire to remind you … [that] … the angels who did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him [God] in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6);

these angels acted immorally and, as the New English Bible translates it,

“committed fornication and followed unnatural lusts; and they paid the penalty in eternal fire, an example for all to see” (Jude 7).

Similarly, 2 Peter:

“If God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment, … then the Lord knows how to … keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion” (2 Peter 2:4, 9–10).

Yet the Biblical account says nothing 038of the angels’ punishment. For this we must turn to the Book of Enoch. The account in Enoch is far more complete:

“And it came to pass, when the children of men had multiplied, in those days there were born to them beautiful and comely daughters. And watchers [Enoch’s technical name for these angels of God]^e, children of heaven, saw them and desired them, and lusted after them; and they said one to another: ‘Come, let us choose for ourselves wives from the daughters of earth, and let us beget us children’ ” (Enoch 6:1–2).

These (leaders)^f and all the rest (of the two hundred watchers) took for themselves wives from all whom they chose; and they began to cohabit with them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them sorcery and spells and showed them the cutting of roots and herbs. And they became pregnant by them and bore great giants of three thousand cubits; and there were [not] born upon earth off-spring [which grew to their strength]. These devoured the entire fruits of men’s labour, and men were unable to sustain them. Then the giants treated them violently and began to slay mankind” (Enoch 7:1–4).

“Then the Most High said and the great Holy One spoke up and sent Sariel to the Son of Lamech, saying: ‘Go to Noah and say to him in my Name: “Hide yourself,” and show him the End that is approaching; that the earth will be completely destroyed; and tell him that a Deluge is about to come on the whole earth, to destroy all things from the face of the earth’ ” (Enoch 10:1–2).

“And to Gabriel the lord said: ‘Go, Gabriel, to the giants, (their) bastard off-spring, the children of fornication, and destroy (those) sons of the watchers from among the sons of men. Muster them (for battle), and send them one against the other … ” (Enoch 19:9a).

“And the lord said to Michael: ‘Go, Michael, make it known to Semhazah and the others who, with him, were united with the daughters of man, to defile themselves with them in their uncleanness’ ” (Enoch 10:11).

“Bind them for seventy generations in valleys of the earth, until the great day of their judgment and the time of the end … then they shall be dragged off to the fiery abyss in torment. … And everyone who is consumed by lust … from now on will be bound together with them and at the (fixed) time [of the judgment] which I shall judge, they shall perish for all generations for ever” (Enoch 10:12b–14).

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“And I, Enoch, was standing blessing the Lord of majesty, and the King of the ages, and behold! watchers [the angels, or Sons of God, who were now fearful of punishment] of the great Holy One were calling me and saying to me: ‘Enoch, scribe of righteousness, go, declare to the watchers of heaven who have left the high heaven and the holy, eternal Sanctuary and have defiled themselves with women; and they themselves do as the children of earth do, and have taken to themselves wives [say]: “You have wrought great destruction on the earth; and you shall have no peace or forgiveness.” And inasmuch as they delight in their children, the slaughter of their beloved ones they shall see, and over the destruction of their children they shall lament and make supplication without end: but they shall have neither mercy nor peace’ ”(Enoch 12:3–6).

In a dream or vision Enoch is asked by the angels, or watchers, to write prayer for them and to intercede for them. He does so, but God rejects the prayer and the petition submitted by the angels.

“[B]ut in a vision it was revealed to me (that), forasmuch as your petition will not be granted to you all the days of eternity, sentence will be made final, by decree, upon you; that from now on you shall no longer ascend to heaven throughout all ages; and it has been ordered to bind you in bonds in the earth for all the days of eternity” (Enoch 14:4–5).

Thus, we cannot appreciate the reference—the threat to heretics—in Jude and 2 Peter without the account of Enoch.

Only in Enoch do we learn how the watchers (the angels, or Sons of God, who cavorted with the daughters of men) were punished.

But there is more than this. The relationship demonstrates how New Testament authors were influenced by books like Enoch. Indeed, here Jude and 2 Peter, as we have noted, clearly regard Enoch as authoritative, as sacred scripture.

Which came first—related passages in Genesis, Daniel or Enoch?

This episode from Enoch may also be significant for understanding the Old Testament, specifically the passage from Genesis 6. Until the discovery of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch, there was general agreement among scholars that Enoch expanded and was dependent upon the story in Genesis 6:1–4.³ Since the discovery of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch, however, indicating they date to about 200 B.C. and even earlier, the question has been reopened. Some scholars have suggested that Genesis 6:1–4 borrowed from and condensed the episode in 1 Enoch.⁴ This is of course a very controversial matter because Genesis 6 is usually assigned to the oldest Pentateuchal source, containing traditions from the nomadic period of Israel’s history and composed between 950 and 850, B.C. Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that some parts of Genesis were composed in the post-Exilic period (say 450–350 B.C.), and it may well be that Genesis 6:1–4 is such a passage, for which the author borrowed from a tradition preserved in 1 Enoch. Genesis 6:1–4 is clearly an isolated text and could have been inserted into Genesis at a relatively late date. It is also possible that both Genesis 6:1–4 and the expanded version in Enoch are traceable to a common Hebrew or Aramaic archetype, and that the Watcher myth in Enoch is actually as old as the Book of Genesis.

Another case of clear interdependence between Enoch and a book of the Old Testament involves the description of the heavenly throne of God in Daniel and in Enoch. In both Daniel 7:9–10 and in 1 Enoch 14:18–22, God’s throne is seen in a vision and is described as having wheels of blazing fire, or issuing forth blazing fire, with God sitting thereon in a robe whiter than snow.

The two descriptions are set forth in the sidebar to this article with the common material in italics:

As in the previous example (Genesis 6), until the discovery of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch,^g it was thought that Enoch was dependent on Daniel. But now the balance of probabilities is tipped the other way and favors the originality of the fuller, more detailed account in Enoch. If this is true, we 040have preserved in Enoch the original composition from which Daniel took his description. But, perhaps more important, we can better appreciate the extent to which books like Enoch influenced Jewish thinkers of this period.

Enoch’s visions include a tempestuos heaven, a vernal Paradise and a hell that incorporates Old Testament and Greek traditions.

One of the most fascinating sections of the Book of Enoch describes Enoch’s extraterrestrial journey beyond the ends of the earth to Paradise and to the Inferno (1 Enoch 17–36).

This section of the book contains a series of apocalyptic visions of the Beyond, of heaven above and the world to come. Angels lead Enoch to the summit of a mountain that reaches into heaven (Enoch 17:2). He sees the waters that lie beneath the earth and the fire that receives the setting sun (Enoch 17:4). He sees “wintry regions of storm-clouds, and the outpouring from the abyss of all the waters” (Enoch 17:7).

He sees “the storehouses of all the winds” (Enoch 18:1). He sees “the cornerstone of the earth” (Enoch 18:2). He sees “the four winds that support the earth and the firmament of heaven” (Enoch 18:2). He sees “the winds that turn the heaven and cause the stars to set” (Enoch 18:4).

He also sees the prison-house of the stars—located at the end of heaven and earth (Enoch 18:14)—where the stars are punished for not rising punctually (Enoch 18:15).

Two different paradise traditions are preserved in Enoch. Both are denominated (in Aramaic) pardes qushta, “Paradise of Righteousness.” One, like Eden, is in the east (Enoch 32:2–3; cf. Genesis 2:8), “beyond the great Darkness” (Enoch 32:2). In this new Eden, Enoch sees the “Tree of Knowledge,” of which Adam had partaken.

The second “Paradise of Righteousness” is in the northwest, (Enoch 77:3), and on the slopes of a mountain that is like the throne of God (Enoch 24:3; 25:4–5). Here Enoch sees the Tree of Life (cf. Genesis 3:22). It had “a fragrance that I have never at any time smelt, and no tree … [flourishes like it]; it had a fragrance sweeter than all spices, and its leaves and flowers and wood never wither” (Enoch 24:4).

The fruit of the Tree of Life is described as “beautiful,” and it is given to the “elect” for food (Enoch 24:5, 25:5). Here is unquestionably the basis of the statement in Revelation 2:7 that “To him who is victorious I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that stands in the Garden (Greek paradeisos) of God.”

The nether regions are described by Enoch far more extensively than Paradise.

Enoch sees the “accursed valley” (Enoch 27:1), “for those accursed forever” (Enoch 27:2). Enoch’s vision incorporates the Old Testament Sheol, Greek Hades, and, in addition, the apocalyptic vision of the “fiery abyss” of Gehenna. But as a result of the rise of a belief in resurrection (a distinctively Hebrew idea), Enoch’s vision is wedded to the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. From this emerges the belief in an “intermediate state,” prior to the coming of the Last Judgment (and its sequel, eternal life or Abaddon). After its existence in this “intermediate state,” the soul may suffer total destruction forever in Gehenna. Enoch is the forerunner of Dante and his hell in Commedia and of Michelangelo and his famous mural of hell in the Sistine Chapel. And who knows how much of Enoch’s imagery filtered down through heretical channels to provide the medieval church with its pictures of heaven and hell.

As Enoch describes it, the “nether regions” consist of four Sheol-like caverns where the spirits of the dead await the Last Judgment (Enoch 22). The first “cavern” is for the “righteous”; it is “bright, with a spring of pellucid water,” recalling the “spring of forgetfulness” and the “spring of memory” in Hades in Greek mythology (and is clearly modeled on them). The second cavern is for “sinners,” who did not receive their just deserts in this life; the third is for those who had died a violent and unjust death, but whose cases will be heard at the Last Judgment; the fourth is for a class of “sinner,” not wholly reprobate, but who collaborated with the “sinners” during their lives.

Enoch’s distinctive ideas concerning the punishment of this fourth group reflect a concept that links the Old Testament belief in Sheol with the Jewish intertestamental and New Testament idea of resurrection. The lesser punishment of this fourth group is not, like all the others, to be returned to life at the time of the Last Judgment; instead, they are to be left forever in the dark cavern of Sheol. In this way, these stricken souls escape the possibility of a worse fate, along with the “sinners” in the “fiery abyss”; but, at the same time, they miss forever the chance at the Last Judgment of “awakening,” like all the righteous and acquitted souls, to “everlasting life”: “Their spirits will not be punished on the day of the righteous judgment, but neither will they be awakened from here (Sheol)” (Enoch 22:13). Everlasting darkness in Sheol is to be their punishment.

The word used with respect to this fourth class of spirits is that they will not be “awakened.” In this word we have the distinctive Old Testament term for being “roused” from the sleep of death. This idea is, for the most part, alien to the Hebrew Bible (it is roundly denied at Job 14:12); it is nevertheless adumbrated at Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2. Here is the passage from Isaiah: “Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!”

In Enoch, the Greek word used for “awakening” is metegerthosin. Meta implies a fundamental transposition or change. In the original Aramaic, the word used was almost certainly the verb ‘ur, “awakening” from sleep. Here we have concrete philological evidence for an explicit Jewish belief in resurrection as early as the second century B.C.

By rare good fortune, the original Aramaic of Enoch’s description of the nether world has been here 041substantially preserved in recently published fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we can be confident that it was part of the original composition and that it dates to the second century B.C. Moreover, as I noted earlier, a historical allusion may confirm the second century B.C. date. One scholar has suggested that the “righteous” are “members of the Jewish middle classes” of about the first half of the second century B.C., and the “sinners” the godless Hellenizers.⁵ One can perhaps be more precise: The “righteous” could well be a grouping such as the Maccabean hasidim, and the “sinners” their Syrian oppressors together with the godless Hellenizers; and the lesser sinners of the fourth class seem unmistakably to be the Jewish collaborators with the Syrians.

Enoch’s “Last Judgement,” with its “new heaven” anticipates the New Testament’s “world to come.”

In any event, here we see a Jewish belief in resurrection as early as the second century B.C., at the same time this belief is reflected in the Last Judgment described in the Book of Daniel dated to about 167 B.C.:

“… [M]any of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will wake, some to everlasting life and some to the reproach of eternal abhorrence” (Daniel 12:2).

The New Testament draws the entire vocabulary of its basic belief in “resurrection” from the Jewish belief in resurrection as adumbrated in Isaiah (which the New Testament authors knew in Greek), from Daniel and from pseudepigraphical works like Enoch.

Also found in Enoch is the classic pre-Christian, Jewish account of the Last Judgment. It is contained in a section known as the Apocalypse of Weeks (Enoch 91:11–17, 93:3–10). The Apocalypse of Weeks consists of a sequence of ten “weeks,” each of which, in turn, consists of 49 years. Into this sequence of “weeks,” the author compresses the history of the world from the Creation to the Last Judgment (the sequence in Michelangelo’s murals).

The last two weeks—the ninth and the tenth—describe the Last Judgment of all mankind:

[In] the Ninth Week … a righteous judgment will be revealed for all the children of the whole earth;

And all workers of iniquity shall vanish from

all of the whole earth,

And they will be cast into the eternal pit,

And all men shall look to the true, eternal path.

[In] the Tenth Week … an everlasting

judgment …

Will be exacted.…

The first heaven shall pass away,

And a new heaven shall appear …

And the righteous shall awake from their sleep,

And they shall arise and walk in the paths of

righteousness;

And unrighteousness shall altogether cease,

And the earth will be at rest from oppression,

for all generations forever.⁶

Enoch 91:14–17.

This apocalyptic poem with its vision of a universal judgment at the end of time and of a new heaven and a new earth is the classic documentary foundation in pre-Christian Judaism for the New Testament doctrine of the “world to come.” This ancient Aramaic text of the second century B.C. preserves and anticipates even the phraseology of Revelation 21:1:

“Then I saw a new heaven

and a new earth; for the

first heaven and the first

earth had passed away”

(Revelation 21:1)

“And in it the first heaven

shall pass away

And a new heaven shall appear

(1 Enoch 91:16)

Controversial passages in Enoch may presage descriptions of the Christian Messiah.

I have saved for last the most controversial part of 1 Enoch, that part of the book that presages something very close to the Christian Messiah.

The relevant passages are found in that part of Enoch known as the Parables or Similitudes of Enoch (Enoch 37–71). We find here references not only to the Elect One, but also to the Son of Man:

“ … [M]y Elect One shall sit on the throne of glory …” (1 Enoch 45:3). “I will cause my Elect One to dwell among them, And I will transform the earth and make it a blessing” (Enoch 45:4–5).

Later we read of the Son of Man:

“The Son of Man: … shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay themselves and not fall, And he shall be a light to the Gentiles, And the hope of those who are troubled in their hearts.

All who dwell on earth shall fall down and worship before him …

“And will glorify and bless and celebrate with song the Name of the Lord of spirits …” (Enoch 48:4–5).

“For in his (God’s) Name they will be saved and he will become the avenger of their lives” (Enoch 48:7b).

This section of the book known as the Parables of Enoch has survived only in the Ethiopic text. Not even fragments have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. On this basis at least one scholar argues that the parables of Enoch are a late, post-Christian work, inspired by the Gospels themselves.⁷ This, however, is a distinctively minority view. The absence of any part of the parables at Qumran becomes less impressive when we realize that, at the most generous estimate, not more that 25–30 percent of the whole Book of Enoch has survived in Aramaic. The actual figure is nearer five percent if the statistics are based on a strict word 042count, because many words are missing even in passages preserved in the Aramaic fragments.

Another factor militates against the parables being a Christian work: the total absence of any reference to Jesus of Nazareth—a case of Hamlet without the prince. This counterargument from silence tells in favor of the Jewish origin and inspiration of the Parables of Enoch. Moreover, there are historical allusions that point to a pre-Christian date for at least some of the apocalyptic visions in the parables.⁸

The high likelihood is that the parables, like the rest of the Book of Enoch, was an original Jewish work, composed in Hebrew or Aramaic before being translated into Greek.

Enoch comes from the same milieu and the same time period as Daniel 7:13–14, which proclaims:

“I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion

and glory and kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting

dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed.”

The expression “one like a son man” inspired the title “Son of Man” for the Messiah in Enoch and the Gospels, as the King James Version recognized by capitalizing (improperly) “Son of Man” in Daniel 7:13.

Enoch also draws on Isaiah for his titles for the Messiah:

“The Elect One” (passim in Enoch), “the Righteous One” (Enoch 38:2, 3), “the Righteous and Elect One” (Enoch 53:6) have been taken from Isaiah 42:1 (“my servant … mine elect”), and Isaiah 53:11 (“my righteous servant”). The role of the Isaianic servant of the Servant Songs is to be the Suffering Servant of the Lord as set forth in the classic language in Isaiah 53. For Christians, this is one of the key passages in the Hebrew Bible concerning the Messiah. Enoch does not refer directly, in so many words, to this famous chapter, but it may well have been in his mind, when he speaks of the angels giving thanks in heaven for “the blood of the Righteous One” (Enoch 47:1–2).

In the Hebrew Bible all these terms, “one who is like a son of man,” “mine elect,” “my righteous servant,” are ciphers, or code words, for Israel. In Enoch they have become titles, applied in Enoch’s vision to the heavenly Son of Man Messiah, which, for Enoch no less than for Isaiah, is also a cipher, but for a regenesis of a new Israel, the redeemed sons of men.

In the New Testament, all of these terms or titles—Son of Man, Elect One, Righteous One—are applied to Jesus.⁹

In this way Enoch weds the coming Son of Man as Judge of all mankind with the lowly figure of the Suffering Servant of the Lord. Clearly, if this part of the Book of Enoch contains purely Jewish and pre-Christian ideas, it is of immense importance in prefiguring the Gospel Son of Man, by the coalescence of these two prophecies about One who was both the Servant of all, yet Lord of all mankind.

Here is a Jewish work that prefigures and shares Christianity’s most cherished beliefs and dearest hopes.

Occupying a sometimes arcane world, the Pseudepigrapha are that collection of scripture-like books usually attributed to such ancients as Adam, Moses or the patriarchs, but actually composed, for the most part, between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. The accompanying article (“Don’t Let Pseudepigrapha Scare You”) provides general background about the Pseudepigrapha. In this article, I would like to focus on a single book of the Pseudepigrapha, the Book of Enoch. Perhaps the best known work of the collection, Enoch is attributed—falsely, of course—to the sixth descendant of Adam (Genesis 5:1–24; 1 Chronicles 1:3).a Enoch was the father of Methuselah, […]