The Book of Enoch Explained

This video is brought to you by Speakeasy. Access the vibrancy of a university campus wherever you happen to be. The Book of Enoch is the ultimate example of spinoff literature. It's over 100 chapters long, thousands and thousands of words, but it's based off of a fairly obscure biblical character, Enoch. The Hebrew Bible has very little to say about him. In the Book of Genesis, he appears briefly in the genealogy of Adam, after fathering Methuselah and a bunch of other kids. The text simply says, Enoch walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him. Wait, there's got to be more backstory here, right? What does because God took him even mean? Well, early Jews and Christians were rarely satisfied with such vague biblical passages, which leads us to its spinoff, the Book of Enoch. This text was so popular for early Christians that even the New Testament cites it. The Book of Jude, the second to last book in the New Testament, directly references Enoch, chapter 1, verse 9. But for a book that was so popular for ancient Jews and Christians, very few people today know about it. So what is the Book of Enoch, and what does it really say? First of all, there's not just one Book of Enoch. In fact, the Book of Enoch typically refers to First Enoch. However, there's also a Second Enoch, which probably dates back to the first century CE, but is preserved in later manuscripts written in the Church Slavonic language. And there's a Third Enoch. It survives in Hebrew and was preserved by Rabbinic Judaism. This video will be focusing on First Enoch. The next consideration, calling it the Book of Enoch, is kind of a misnomer. First Enoch is a compilation of several texts stitched together. There are obvious and abrupt seams between sections that are best explained by the theory that someone brought them all together into a compilation sometime in the past. First Enoch has five major sections and two appendices, which you can see on screen. The oldest sections of the text probably date back to the 4th or 3rd century BCE. However, the most complete manuscripts of the text date to the 15th or 16th centuries, written in the Ethiopic language. Ethiopic, also known as Ge'ez, is a Semitic language, a cousin of Hebrew, Arabic, and Amharic, one of the main spoken languages in Ethiopia today. Ethiopic is the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, kind of like how Latin was historically used in liturgies for Catholics or the Coptic language for Coptic Orthodox Christians. So you can see that the Book of Enoch had a long journey from when it was first composed to when our most complete manuscripts were created. Enoch was probably originally written in Aramaic before being translated into Greek and then finally into Ethiopic. Big chunks of the Aramaic version of Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at the site of Qumran. One Dead Sea Scroll fragment contains several sections of Enoch in one text, which shows that the different sections were already circulating as one compilation by the 1st century BCE. In all, 90 different manuscripts of First Enoch exist in some form or another. However, some of the manuscripts have big differences compared to earlier versions. This is why if you're going to read it for yourself, it's really important to find a scholarly translation that tries to account for all of the manuscript variations. I personally recommend the Hermeneia translation by George Nickelsburg and James Van Der Kam. It's published by Fortress Press. This is not an advertisement, it's literally just the best version I could find when I was researching this episode. Okay, that's a quick overview of the text itself. It's comprised of several texts stitched into one. It was originally written in Aramaic, but its most complete manuscripts are written in Ethiopic. Parts of it probably date to the 4th century BCE, but it also has sections that date to a few centuries later. But what about the content? What does First Enoch actually say? Like I said, the best way I can describe the Book of Enoch is that it is spin-off literature. It takes two tiny, tantalizing snippets from Genesis and expands them into a whole book of fantastic visions and stories. We already saw the first blurb, a few short sentences that says, God took Enoch. The second blurb, which inspires the entire opening section of First Enoch, is an odd story from Genesis 6, 1 through 4, about divine beings having sex with humans. Genesis says that before Noah's flood, divine beings called bene elohim, which literally translates to children of God, come down to earth to have sex with human women, who then give birth to beings called Nephilim. The text says these Nephilim were the mighty men of old, warriors of renown. That's it. Nothing else. No more mention of who these Nephilim were or their exploits. No backstory about these sons of God. And you know what that means. It's a story ready for a spin-off. Enoch vastly expands these few verses into the Book of the Watchers. The sons of God are no longer a vague category of heavenly beings, but a whole society of fallen angels called the Watchers, led by their chief, Shemihaza. Their children, the Nephilim, are giants that start to wreak havoc on earth. Enoch 7-3 says that the giants began to kill men and to devour them and then kill all the beasts and drank their blood. Sounds kind of like a horror film. This section also describes the Watchers as devious angels skilled in evil supernatural arts, which they then taught to humanity. Chapter 8 says that the Watcher Asael taught weapons of war to humanity. Shemihaza taught them sorcery. Others taught humans how to do astrology. As the Watchers and Nephilim continue to devastate the earth and pollute humans with evil knowledge, the story culminates in humanity crying out to God for help. In response, God dispatches his four archangels to set things right. He instructs one to warn Noah about the coming flood, another to imprison the fallen angel Asael and cast him into darkness. God orders Gabriel to destroy the Nephilim with a downright chilling passage, telling Gabriel to go to the bastards, to the half-breeds, to the sons of Yikes. And finally, God commissions Michael to imprison the king of the Watchers, Shemihaza. In this story, God sends Enoch as a prophet or emissary to the Watchers to warn them that they'll be destroyed. The remaining sections of Enoch contain mostly prophecy and visions. Rather than summarizing each and every section, I want to focus on the major themes running through these prophecies. The expectation of a messiah, final judgment, salvation, resurrection, and heavenly journeys. All of these are hallmarks of the cultural context and genre of First Enoch, Jewish apocalypticism. Apocalyptic literature is the name scholars call a bunch of texts that became super popular among Jews during the Second Temple period. These were texts that generally describe mystical visions of heaven where an angel would reveal to a prophet the end times or a judgment of the world. Enoch is one of the oldest Jewish apocalyptic texts, even older than another famous apocalyptic text, the Book of Daniel. That's to say, if we follow the scholarly consensus that Daniel was composed during the Hellenistic era of the second century BCE. Many of the terms commonly associated with Daniel, like the Son of Man and the Messiah, can be found first in the Book of Enoch. In one chapter, Enoch sees a vision in which the Son of Man is commissioned. He will be the staff for the righteous. He will be the light of the nations, and all who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him. For those of you familiar with the New Testament, this sort of language should sound familiar, as it's all applied to Jesus as well. But in this text, Enoch himself is named the Son of Man. Chapter 71-14 says, you are that Son of Man who was born for righteousness. We also find the idea of hell in Enoch, another theological concept seen later in Christianity. Remember from my History of Hell video that the concept of hell does not exist in the older texts of the Hebrew Bible. It is a later innovation that gained popularity during the Second Temple period, especially in apocalyptic literature. In chapter 21-7, Enoch beholds a narrow chasm extending to the abyss, where he saw a great fire burning and flaming. The text says, this place is a prison for the angels. Here they will be confined forever. Okay, so that's a summary of the content. Basically an entire text super concerned that the current world is evil and needs to be judged and renewed. A new age is at hand. God's final judgment is coming. But what about its later history? First Enoch was enormously influential for later Jews, Christians, and even Muslims. First, let's go through its history within Judaism. First Enoch influenced a bunch of non-canonical Jewish texts. In fact, Jubilees, another Second Temple Jewish text preserved in Ethiopic and found at Qumran in Hebrew, shares a lot of details with Enoch. However, although the Book of Enoch was a big deal for Second Temple Judaism, it plays almost no role in modern Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism rejected two major claims put forth by the Enoch spinoff literature. First, they rejected the notion that Enoch never died, and the idea that rebellious angels came to earth at the time of the flood. Because of this, Enoch doesn't formally appear in the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible, and only rarely in rabbinic literature. And even when it does appear, it appears in a negative light. One of the most important exceptions to the negative portrayal of Enoch in rabbinic literature is Third Enoch. This is a rabbinic Hebrew story of Enoch transforming into the angel Metatron. Metatron, the transfigured Enoch, is even described as a second or lesser Yahweh. While Enoch is mentioned in Third Enoch and some other mystical rabbinic texts, rabbinic Judaism doesn't consider them standard. For example, the Babylonian Talmud, second only to the Hebrew Bible in importance for traditional rabbinic Judaism, says that a famous rabbi became a heretic when he saw Metatron sitting in the presence of God and claimed that there are two powers in heaven. In the Talmud, Metatron and the rabbi are both punished. But this story reflects the Talmud's discomfort with the whole idea of Enoch becoming a divine being. Curiously, this is not the case in Kabbalah, medieval Jewish mysticism. Kabbalistic texts such as the Zohar not only view Enoch positively, but also compares him to Adam and refers to the The scholar of Late Antique Judaism and Christianity, Annette Reed, suggests that this is a result of continuing cross-cultural Jewish and Christian dialogue throughout Late Antiquity. Because apparently, Christians really liked this text, at least at first. Like I said, the Book of Jude in the New Testament directly references First Enoch, and Enoch likely influenced the theology of the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. The idea of the Son of Man, for example, which appears in the Gospel of Mark, shares theological similarities with First Enoch. The last book of the New Testament, Revelation, closely resembles the apocalypse of the Book of the Parables, since both describe a throne room apocalypse partnered with a final judgment both in the heavens and on earth. Initially, First Enoch was a big deal for Christians. Church fathers such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus use and reference First Enoch. Tertullian even defends the book's authority, and the non-canonical Epistle of Barnabas refers to First Enoch as scripture. However, by the 4th century, Enoch apparently fell out of favor. It's around this time that big-name church fathers like Augustine and Jerome rejected it. By the 7th and 8th centuries, First Enoch only remained popular in Ethiopia, which still remains true to this day, as part of the biblical canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. With over 81 books, the biblical canon is much wider in Ethiopian Christianity compared to other branches of Christianity, and by including Enoch, the book has left a lasting legacy on Ethiopian Christians. But Enoch was not only a big deal in Judaism and Christianity, he also appears in early Islamic traditions. The prophet Idris is mentioned twice in the Quran. The Quran commands its audience and remember Idris in the book, verily he was truthful and a prophet. We raised him to a Idris is typically associated with Enoch, although some also associate him with Elijah, and like what we see in the book of Genesis, his little blurb here is ambiguous. Many Muslim commentators debate what is meant by raised to a sublime station. In one hadith, one of the reported sayings, actions, and approval of the prophet, the prophet reports that he met Idris in the fourth heaven during his miraculous ascension through the seven heavens, typically rendered as the night journey in the west. Other commentators suggest that sublime station means that Idris was directly taken alive by God, which parallels the plain text of Genesis 5.24. So even though Enoch only earned a brief mention in his source text, Genesis, that one tiny blurb inspired an entire book that continued to influence religious traditions for centuries to come. The Qumran community, early Christians, early Muslims, Jewish Kabbalists, and Ethiopian Christians today. And even though very few people today have read this book, the apocalyptic ideas introduced in Enoch, hell, salvation, the son of man, the coming of the messiah, these ideas lay the groundwork for the central themes of Christian theology. Not bad for a work of spin-off literature. And just like how the Watchers taught magic to humanity, I'll be teaching a two-week seminar, Magic in the Ancient World, on Speakeasy. It will be on Saturday, September 5th and September 12th at three o'clock p.m. We'll discuss magical rituals that the ancient Romans practiced, like cursed tablets and healing spells. We'll talk about Roman laws enacted against magic and explore what this archaeological evidence reveals about the religious lives of people living in the late Roman Empire. Now, we're limiting the number of participants to just 12 people so that everyone who attends can really engage in the material and get their questions answered. I'd love to see you there. If you'd like to attend, a link to the seminar is here on screen and in the video description below. Remember, there are only 12 spots, so I hope to see you there. When you're looking at a pre-industrial society, a society before medicine, before the scientific method, what did it mean to practice magic? What did it mean to practice religion?