The Apocryphal Book of Enoch

The Lost Text

 

 

 

 

  1. Composition 1 Enoch Apocryphal: "Of questionable authorship or authenticity" (American Heritage Dictionary). Apocryphal also refers to writings that are secret - from the Greek crypto "to hide". "The Hekhalot [visionary Temple] literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts [including the Book of Enoch] produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The documents have strong connections with earlier apocalyptic and gnostic literature and claim to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the ‘descenders to the chariot’ that permitted these men to view Ezekiel’s chariot vision (the Merkavah ) for themselves, as well as to gain control of angels and a perfect mastery of Torah through theurgy. This material is of particular interest for the study of divine mediation and mystical/revelatory experiences, because the Hekhalot documents claim to detail actual practices used to reach trance states, gain revelations, and interact with divine mediators." - James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism" "One of the most important apocryphic works of the Second Temple Period is Enoch." - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 "The Book of Enoch is a pseudoepigraphal work (a work that claims to be by a biblical character). The Book of Enoch was not included in either the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons, but could have been considered a sacred text by the sectarians. The original Aramaic version was lost until the Dead Sea fragments were discovered." "The original language of most of this work was, in all likelihood, Aramaic (an early Semitic language). Although the original version was lost in antiquity, portions of a Greek translation were discovered in Egypt and quotations were known from the Church Fathers. The discovery of the texts from Qumran Cave 4 has finally provided parts of the Aramaic original. ...Humankind is called on to observe how unchanging nature follows God’s will." - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 The Book of Enoch is "an ancient composition known from two sets of versions, an Ethiopic one that scholars identify as ‘1 Enoch’, and a Slavonic version that is identified as ‘2 Enoch’, and which is also known as The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Both versions, of which copied manuscripts have been found mostly in Greek and Latin translations, are based on early sources that enlarged on the short biblical mention that Enoch, the seventh Patriarch after Adam, did not die because, at age 365, ‘he walked with God’ - taken heavenward to join the deity." - Zecharia Sitchin , When Time Began "1 Enoch, preserved in a full, 108-chapter form in Ethiopic, consists of five parts and one appended chapter. It originated in Aramaic (perhaps Hebrew for chaps. 37-71), was translated into Greek, and from Greek into Ethiopic." - James C. Vanderkam (Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Notre Dame) "Chaps. 1-36 The Book of the Watchers may date from the third century BCE. Parts of its text have been identified on several copies from Qumran cave 4; the earliest fragmentary manuscript (4QEnocha) dates, according to the editor J.T. Milk, to between 200 and 150 BCE. All Qumran copies are in the Aramaic language." - James C. Vanderkam James Vanderkam divides the first part of 1 Enoch into five sections: 1-5 a theophany followed by an eschatological admonition 6-11 the angel story (stories) 12-16 Enoch and the failed petition of the angels who descended, 17-19 Enoch’s first journey, 20-36 Enoch’s second journey (chap. 20 is a list of angels who are connected with the journeys). " - Tom Simms (CrossTalk) "The Aramaic Book of Enoch...very considerably influenced the idiom of the New Testament and patristic literature, more so in fact than any other writing of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha." - Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 366 "Prior to the eighteenth century, scholars had believed the Book of Enoch to be irretrievably lost: composed long before the birth of Christ, and considered to be one of the most important pieces of Jewish mystical literature, it was only known from fragments and from references to it in other texts. James Bruce changed all this by procuring several copies of the missing work during his stay in Ethiopia. These were the first complete editions of the Book of Enoch ever to be seen in Europe." - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal "Chaps. 37-71 The Book of Parables (or the Similitudes of Enoch) may have been composed in the late first century BCE; a number of scholars prefer to place it in the first or even the second century CE. Milik assigns it to the late third century CE. No fragments of these chapters have been found at Qumran, and some think their original language was Hebrew, not Aramaic." - James C. Vanderkam As described in the Book of the Parables 37-71: "On the one side are God, the heavenly entourage, the agents of his judgment...and God’s people...On the other are the chief demon Azazel, his angels, and the kings and the mighty...[who] would have their counterparts among the Roman generals, governors, triumvirs, and monarchs whose activities in Judaea are well documented in the sources." - George Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah "Chaps. 72-82 The Astronomical Book, like the Book of Watchers, may date from the third century BCE; the oldest copy of it seems to have been made not long after 200 BCE. Sizable portions of the text are preserved on four copies, written in Aramaic, from Qumran cave 4. The Aramaic original appears to have been much different and much longer than the Ethiopic text, adding far more astronomical details." - James C. Vanderkam
  2. 3 Enoch "3 Enoch 1-16 [is] a work that existed by the 9th century C.E., and that obviously contains earlier traditions." "Here are a few examples of parallels between the two works [1 Enoch and 3 Enoch]: There is a story or stories about precious metals and how they will not avail their users and those who make idols from them (1 Enoch 52; 65:6-8; 67:4-7 // 3 Enoch 5:7-14). One of the characters is a hostile angel named Azaz’el/Aza’el (1 Enoch 54:5; 55:4; 69:2 // 3 Enoch 4:6; 5:9); Enoch ascends to heaven in a storm chariot (1 Enoch 52:1; 70:1-3; // 3 Enoch 6:1; 7:1); Enoch is transformed into an angel (1 Enoch 71:11-17 // 3 Enoch 9:1-5; 15:1-2); Enoch as an exalted angel is enthroned in heaven (1 Enoch 55:4; 61:8; 62:1-5; 69:29 // 3 Enoch 10:1-3; 16:1); and he receives a revelation of cosmological secrets of creation (1 Enoch 69:16-26 // 3 Enoch 13:1-2)." - James Davila, " Enoch as a Divine Mediator "...The parallels between the Similitudes and 3 Enoch 3-15 are centred around eight elements in both pericopae: (1.) The heroes of the work (Rabbi Ishmael and Enoch: a biblical character and an extra-biblical character) (2.) Angelology (good and evil angels) (3.) Enoch / Metatron versus the ‘elect one’ ‘the son of man’ (4.) The throne and the Shekinah (5) Eschatology ( 6). The oath / power inherent in letters (7.) The heavenly ascent and (8.) Wisdom." - Bankole Davies-Browne, "~Abstract 3 - Enoch and the Similitudes of Enoch
  • (2) Authorship of 1 Enoch "The Judaic Law of the Pentateuch had come to be conceived as the final and supreme revelation of God ... there was now no room for independent representatives ... such as the post-Exilic prophets. As Zechariah made clear in his parable of the Foolish Shepherd, ‘a man could, or ought to be put to death for setting himself up as a prophet.’" - Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence, p. 62 "Thus the names of pseudonymous authors were used, of Isaiah or even ancient Enoch." - Chris King, "~The Apocalyptic Tradition

    1 Enoch is an unmistakable product of Hellenistic civilization. quot;A world view so encyclopaediac that it embraced the geography of heaven and earth, astronomy, meteorology, medicine was no part of Jewish tradition - but was familiar to educated Greeks, but attempting to emulate and surpass Greek wisdom, by having an integrating divine plan for destiny, elaborated through an angelic host with which Enoch is in communication through his mystical travels.quot; - Chris King, "~The Apocalyptic Tradition

    Although the Book of Enoch is considered as apocryphal, it was clearly known to early Christian writers as the following quote from 1 Enoch 1:9 indicates: "In the seventh (generation) from Adam Enoch also prophesied these things, saying: ‘Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners spoke against him’." - Jude 14-15

    (3) Hekhalot and Merkavah Visionary Experiences "And I went off and sat down at the waters of Dan, in the land of Dan, to the south of the west of Hermon: I read their petition till I fell asleep. And behold a dream came to me, and visions fell down upon me, and I saw visions of chastisement, and a voice came bidding (me) I to tell it to the sons of heaven, and reprimand them." - 1 Enoch 13:7b-8 "What one can say about Enoch in 1 Enoch 13 (and this applies to Daniel and Ezekiel also) is that the narrative has a seer or a prophet engage in the ritual for an incubation oracle by sleeping at a sacred spring, etc. So we have a pseudepigraphical character (at least for Enoch and Daniel) depicted as engaging in an actual ritual (for that matter, 4 Ezra has Ezra spend a week in the fields eating flowers). While all of this may represent a deliberate fiction, it does at least develop its fiction in terms of the ancient world’s fascination with the seeking of dreams and visions for oracular purposes. For that matter, the fascination with seeking dreams and visions includes the recording of those dreams, as the inscriptions from the temples of Asclepius show, so we have some kind of contact between dreaming (or visions) and written documents. The problem in knowning what to make of the apocalypses is that they are pseudepigraphical, but they are at least depicting their pseudepigraphical characters engaging in rituals that were thought by the ancients to stimulate oracular dreams. The issue for the historian is not epistemology but the conceptual world of the people writing the texts." - David W. Suter (Mediators) "The experiences described in the Hekhalot literature do not seem much like mysticism. There is no thought of mystical union. God is nearly as remote in the heavenly throne room as he is on earth. Nor is Hekhalot esotericism merely magic: it includes visionary experiences atypical of magic and often seems to be functioning in the context of a community. I propose therefore that the most illuminating framework for these experiences is ." "The clearest example of an initiatory disintegration and reintegration in the Hekhalot literature is found in one of its latest strata: the description of the transformation of the mortal Enoch into the angel Metatron in 3 Enoch 3-15 (paras. 4-19) . Enoch’s experience is much like that of the shamans:" - James R. Davila, "~Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism " "Metatron is a Hebrew corruption of either the Greek ‘metadromos,’ ‘he who pursues with a vengeance,’ or of ‘meta ton thronon’, ‘nearest to the Divine Throne.’" - Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis Sanhedrin 38b refers to Metatron "which his name is like the name of his Lord". "The only sustained effort to locate the community behind the Hekhalot literature has been made by David Halperin [Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision, 1988]. He argues, on the basis of a passage found in some manuscripts of the Sar Torah text (paras. 304-305), that the ‘people of the land,’ the uneducated people who were held in contempt by the rabbis, made theurgic use of the myth of the ascent of Moses to seize the Torah from heaven, and that the result was the Hekhalot literature." "I propose then, that the composers of the Hekhalot literature were a group of professional scribes who lacked formal rabbinic training and whose socio-economic position probably suffered as a result. They envied the superior station of the rabbis and defied them with another skill common in their own profession—magic. The ‘descenders to the chariot’ (the only self-designation they have given us) were familiar with and no doubt transmitted, augmented, and used the Jewish magical literature. But they also developed a strain of magical praxis that from an anthropological perspective is closer to shamanism than anything else. They were, to paraphrase Hultkrantz [’A Definition of Shamanism’, Temenos 9 (1973) 25-37], social functionaries who, with the help of guardian spirits, attained ecstasy in order to create a rapport with the supernatural world on behalf of the members of their group. According to their beliefs they used theurgy to compel angels to take them to the otherworld and to give them an infallible knowlege of Torah. They in turn passed on the power from their experiences to their community (which on various levels seems to have been as narrow as a circle of adepts and as broad as the human race)." - James R. Davila, "~

    The Patriarch Enoch "According to the biblical narrative (Genesis 5:21-24), Enoch lived only 365 years (far less than the other patriarchs in the period before the Flood ). Enoch ‘walked with God; then he was no more for God took him’." - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 "The Enoch literature seems to offer an alternative to the form of Judaism that centers upon the Mosaic covenantal law. It appeals to a myth of great evil and punishment in ancient times and calls on people to be righteous because another judgment is coming. That righteousness is apparently defined in Enoch’s writings, not in the Mosaic law. In other words, the appeal here is to a much earlier time in history, before the division of nations. Was Enoch chosen to make a wider appeal than Moses who lived after the nation of Israel had begun? There is ample reason for believing that the biblical and pseudepigraphic Enoch is a reflection of Mesopotamian traditions about the seventh antediluvian king Enmeduranki of Sippar, a king who was associated with the sun god and with divination. Enoch, the seventh pre-flood patriarch in the Bible, taught a solar calendar and received revelations about the future through mantic means such as symbolic dreams." - James C. Vanderkam "According to Sumerian chronicles of the earlier times, it was at Eridu’s temple that Enki , as guardian of the secrets of all scientific knowledge, kept the ME’s - tabletlike objects on which the scientific data were inscribed. One of the Sumerian texts details how the goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar), wishing to give status to her ‘cult center’ Uruk (the biblical Erech), tricked Enki into giving her some of those divine formulas. Adapa, we find, was also nicknamed NUN.ME, meaning "He who can decipher the ME’s’. Even unto millennia later, in Assyrian times, the saying ‘Wise as Adapa’ meant that someone was exceedingly wise and knowledgeable....The ‘wide knowledge’ imparted by Enki to Adapa included writing, medicine, and - according to the astronomical series of tablets UD.SAR.ANUM.ENLILLA (‘The Great Days of Amu and Enlil’) - knowledge of astronomy and astrology." "...It is almost certain that the biblical ‘Enoch’ was the equivalent of the Sumerian first priest, EN.ME.DUR.AN.KI (‘High Priest of the ME’s of the Bond Heaven-Earth’), the man from the city Sippar taken heavenward to be taught the secrets of Heaven and Earth, of divination, and of the calendar. It was with him that the generations of astronomer-priests, of Keepers of the Secrets, began." - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began "The learned savant who guards the secrets of the gods will bind his favored son with an oath before Shamash and Adad... and will instruct him in the secrets of the gods." "Thus was the line of priests created, those who are allowed to approach Shamash and Adad." - Sumerian tablet (W. G. Lambert, Enmeduranki and Related Material) "The legend [of Enoch] begins...with the Sumerian King List. This is a list of rulers before the Flood, and is preserved in several forms, including Berossus. Here one of the kings, often given as the seventh (as Enoch is in his list), is called Enmeduranki or Enmeduranna. He is generally associated with the city of Sippar, which was the home of the cult of the sun god Shamash. Moreover, in other texts this Enmeduranki was the first to be shown, by Adad and Shamash, three techniques of divination: pouring oil on water, inspecting a liver, and the use of a cedar (rod), whose function is still unclear. These were to be transmitted from generation to generation, and in fact became the property of the guild of baru, the major group of diviners in Babylon. "These details show how the biblical portrait of Enoch may have been compiled from Enmeduranki: each is seventh in the antediluvian list; the biblical 365 preserves the affinity to the sun, rather than the sun god; walking with God (or perhaps, ‘angels’?) suggests the intimacy between god(s) and man. The final connection links not with Enmeduranki, but with a fish-man (apkallu), with which each of the first seven kings associated and from whom they learnt all kinds of knowledge. Enmeduranki’s apkallu, called Utu’abzu, is mentioned in another cuneiform text, where he is said to have ascended to heaven. This last link remains provisional, but at all events, the writer of Genesis 5:21-24 appears to either have created Enoch as a counterpart of Enmeduranki or, equally probably, to have alluded to an already existing Jewish tradition about Enoch, already modeled on the earlier figure." - John Rogerson and Philip Davies, The Old Testament World "One cannot rule out the possibility that, as Enmduranki and Enoch, Adapa too was the seventh in a line of sages, the Sages of Eridu, and thus another version of the Sumerian memory echoed in the biblical Enoch record. According to this tale, seven Wise Men were trained in Eridu, Enki’s city; their epithets and particular knowledge varied from version to version. Rykle Borger, examining this tale in light of the Enoch traditions (‘Die Beschworungsserie Bit Meshri und die Himmelfahrt Henochs’ in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 33), was especially fascinated by the inscription on the third tablet of the series of Assyrian Oath Incantations. In it the name of each sage is given and his main call on fame is explained; it says thus of the seventh: ‘Uta-abzu, he who to heaven ascended’. Citing a second such text, R. Borger concluded that this seventh sage, whose name combined that of Utu/Shamash with the Lower World (Abzu) domain of Enki, was the Assyrian ‘Enoch’. "According to the Assyrian references to the wisdom of Adapa, he composed a book of sciences titled U.SAR d ANUM d ENLILA - ‘Writings regarding Time; from divine Anu and divine Enlil’. Adapa, thus, is credited with writing Mankind’s first book of astronomy and the calendar." - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began "Henceforth, the seventh king shall be known by his Semitic name. ‘Enoch’ (meaning ‘initiated’ or ‘dedicated’) may have abdicated his throne. He took his son (the biblical Methuselah) on a journey to the west. They settled at Moriah, where Enoch built an underground temple, having been inspired in a dream. Then he engraved cuneiform characters on two triangles made of solid gold. The first delta was concealed at Moriah. Methuselah was entrusted with the second. He took the object back to Sippar. Enoch remained at Moriah, to become the old man on the mountain. He lived 365 years, according to Genesis, and then he died. Or did he vanish into thin air?", "Enoch" "Enoch was the first who invented books and different sorts of writing. The ancient Greeks declare that Enoch is the same as Mercury Trismegistus [Hermes], and that he taught the sons of men the art of building cities, and enacted some admirable laws...He discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac, and the course of the Planets; and he pointed out to the sons of men, that they should worship God, that they should fast, that they should pray, that they should give alms, votive offerings, and tenths. He reprobated abominable foods and drunkenness, and appointed festivals for sacrifices to the Sun, at each of the Zodiacal Signs." - Hebraeus According to Masonic lore, Enoch was the inventor of writing, "that he taught men the art of building", and that, before the flood, he "feared that the real secrets would be lost - to prevent which he concealed the grand Secret, engraven on a white oriental porphyry stone, in the bowels of the earth." - Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia "In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus writes that Adam had forewarned his descendants that sinful humanity would be destroyed by a deluge. In order to preserve their science and philosophy, the children of Seth therefore raised two pillars, one of brick and the other of stone, on which were inscribed the keys to their knowledge. - Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy The chilren of Seth "also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day." - Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Bk I, Ch II, Sn 3 "The patriarch Enoch....also constructed an underground temple [at Moriah] consisting of nine vaults, one beneath the other, placing in the deepest vault a triangular tablet of gold bearing upon it the absolute and ineffable name of Deity. According to some accounts, Enoch made two golden deltas. The larger he placed upon the white cubical altar in the lowest vault and the smaller he gave into the keeping of his son, Methuselah, who did the actual construction work of the brick chambers according to the pattern revealed to his father by the Most High. In the form and arrangements of these vaults Enoch epitomized the nine spheres of the ancient Mysteries and the nine sacred strata of the earth through which the initiate must pass to reach the flaming Spirit dwelling in its central core." - Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy Methuselah "took the object back to Sippar. Enoch remained at Moriah, to become the old man on the mountain. He lived 365 years, according to Genesis, and then he died. Or did he vanish into thin air?" - Brian , "~ENOCH The Greatest Story Never Told " Enoch’s "name signified in the Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The legend of the columns, of granite and brass or bronze, erected by him, is probably symbolical. That of bronze, which survived the flood, is supposed to symbolize the mysteries, of which Masonry is the legitimate successor from the earliest times the custodian and depository of the great philosophical and religious truths, unknown to the world at large, and handed down from age to age by an unbroken current of tradition, embodied in symbols, emblems, and allegories." - General Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma There was a substantial Zoroastrian Influence on Judaism when Jewish exiles were exposed to the Persian religion during the Babylonian captivity. "Some Jews adopted Enochian tradition in Babylon during the Exile and brought it back to Canaan when Cyrus gave them leave to Return. The Enochian Jews were detested by the priesthood in Jerusalem, and they were forced to ‘flee’ into the desert before 300 BCE. Naturally, they supported the Maccabees during the uprising of 165 BCE. The Enochians at Qumran ‘updated’ the text to include Judah the Hammer in the big story." "The last of the Essene stragglers buried it [the secret book] in Cave IV at Qumran c.70 CE. The urban Christians and Jews of the Near East rejected it. The authors of the Apocalypse rewrote and retitled it, but they didn’t understand the heptadic structure of the original lines, the arrangement of sevens. (The Revelation of St John is pure gibberish, a sloppy rehash of Babylonian myths and legends.) Only the students of the Merkabah (in Babylonia) possessed the key to the Enochian mystery." - Brian , "ENOCH The Greatest Story Never Told"

    The Secrets (1) A Separate Tradition "...The ONLY...geographical landmarks in ‘Original Enoch’ refer to Galilee! In I En.6, the ‘angels, the children of heaven...descended into Ardos, which is the summit of Hermon.’ "In 13.7, Enoch has been sent to deliver imprecations against the fallen angels and offer their prayers for forgiveness. ‘And I went and sat down upon the waters of Dan - in Dan which is on the southwest of Hermon - and I read their memorial prayers until I fell asleep.’ (Peter’s Confession in Mk.8.27-30 is delivered in the environs of Caesarea Philippi, on the southwest approach to Hermon.) "In 13.8-9 Enoch’s story continues, ‘I came unto them while they were conferring together in Leya’el, which is between Lebanon and Sanzer...’ Though ‘Sanzer’ is uncertain, apparently ‘Leya’el’ represented the Valley of Jezreel in Galilee." - Philip B. Lewis (CrossTalk) The similitudes of Enoch do not contain geographical markers and "could have been added to I Enoch virtually anywhere except Qumran (where they are absent)." - Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk) "In the Book of Enoch the arcane wisdom is said to have been betrayed to mankind by fallen angels, but a Talmudic tradition claims that God whispered it to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to this tradition its secrets were then imparted to seventy elders who thereafter transmitted them orally to their successors." - David Conway, Ritual Magic "One of the most remarkable features of 1 Enoch is that the law revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai plays almost no part in it at all. It could be objected that it would be more surprising if it did have a role, since 1 Enoch is, of course, about Enoch who lived before the flood (see Gen 5:21-24) and thus long before the law was revealed. The argument would be that the authors of 1 Enoch were consistent about their pseudepigraphic attribution of the material to Enoch and therefore did not commit the anachronism of having him teach and obey the law of Moses. "But there is a flaw in that argument because at least two places in the book should mention the law revealed on Mt. Sinai. The two places are in the two principal apocalypses, the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse. Both of these revelations cover the period when Israel was in the wilderness and, according to the pentateuch, received the covenantal law." - James C. Vanderkam While the Apocalypse of Weeks mentions the law of Moses, There is "nothing added to suggest its importance or character.". In the Animal Apocalypse the law of Moses is even less evident: "And that sheep (= Moses) went up to the summit of a high rock, and the Lord of the sheep sent it to them. And after this I saw the Lord of the sheep standing before them, and his appearance (was) terrible and majectic, and all those sheep saw him and were afraid of him. And all of them were afraid and trembled before him; and they cried out after that sheep with them which was in their midst: ‘We cannot stand before our Lord, nor look at him.’ And that sheep which led them again went up to the summit of that rock; and the sheep began to be blinded and to go astray from the path which it had shown to them, but that sheep did not know." - 1 Enoch 89:29-32 "Nothing is said here about God’s giving the law to Moses; the only hint of it comes as the writer describes the straying of the sheep: they departed from the path Moses had shown them (see also v. 33). The aspects of the Sinai event that were more interesting than the law itself were the frightening appearance of the Lord and the fact that the people, right at that spot, made and worshiped the golden calf." "The law is mentioned elsewhere in 1 Enoch (e.g., 5:4; 63:12 seems to be referring to a different law; law is used several times for the course of luminaries in chaps. 72-82 [e.g. 79:1-2]; 99:2 speaks of sinners who ‘distort the eternal law’ but it is not clear what this law is [cf. 104:10]; 108:1 mentions those who ‘keep the law in the last days’). But the law is never identified as the law of Moses (or something of the sort); a more common usage of the term is for the laws of nature. This is astounding when one considers how important the judgment is in 1 Enoch and how often the writers speak of righteous, doing what is upright, etc. The Torah is also never mentioned in 2 Enoch." - James C. Vanderkam "And I saw there something horrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible. And there I saw seven stars of the heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and burning with fire. Then I said: ‘For what sin are they bound, and on what account have they been cast in hither?’ Then said Uriel, one of the holy angels, who was with me, and was chief over them, and said: ‘Enoch, why dost thou ask, and why art thou eager for the truth? These are of the number of the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and are bound here till ten thousand years, the time entailed by their sins, are consummated.’ And from thence I went to another place, which was still more horrible than the former, and I saw a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss, being full of great descending columns of fire: neither its extent or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture. Then I said: ‘How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!’ Then Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and said unto me: ‘Enoch, why hast thou such fear and affright?’ And I answered: ‘Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of the pain.’ And he said unto me: ‘This place is the prison of the angels, and here they will be imprisoned for ever.’" - 1 Enoch 21:1-10 Enoch’s description of the punishment prepared for the fallen angels has clear parallels with the chaotic void in the Necronomicon . "...The Book of Enoch has always been of great significance to Freemasons , and...certain rituals dating back to long before Bruce’s time [1730-1794] identified Enoch himself with Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom." - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

    (2) Enoch’s Journey to Heaven "Written both as a personal testament and as a historic review, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, whose earliest title was probably The Words of Enoch, describes his journey to Heaven as well as to the four corners of Earth." - Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven According to the The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, "it seems that when the prophet Enoch was ‘taken up’, he saw the air and then the ether. Then he reached the first heaven, where ‘two hundred angels rule the stars’ and where he saw a sea ‘greater than the earthly sea’. "The second heaven was gloomy. In the third heaven, he saw the Tree of Life , with four streams, of honey, milk, oil, and wine, flowing from its roots. The Place of the Righteous is in this heaven and the Terrible Place where the wicked are tortured. There was also the ‘place on which God rests when he comes into Paradise ’. "Enoch’s third heaven...seems very similar to the region known as Ilavrta-varsa, which is described in the Fifth Canto of the Bhagavata Purana. Thus, in Ilavrta-varsa there are four gigantic trees, and four rivers flow from their roots, including a river of honey. There is also a city called Brahmapuri, which is visited by Lord Brahma and which may correspond to the ‘place on which God rests when he comes into Paradise’." The Venerable Bede, an eighth-century English theologian and historian, wrote that "the seven heavens are (1) the Air, (2) the Ether, (3) Olympus, (4) the Element of Fire, (5) the Firmament, (6) the Angelical Region, and (7) the Realm of the Trinity." "According to the Fifth Canto of the Bhagavata Purana, Brahmapuri and the residences of eight prominent Devas [administrators of the Universe] are situated on the top of a mountain in Ilavrta-varsa called Meru , and therefore Mount Meru corresponds to the Greek Olympus. Thus, if Ilavrta-varsa corresponds to Enoch’s third heaven, then it is also reasonable to say that this third heaven corresponds to the Greek Olympus." - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this man - whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to Paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." - 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 (the apostle Paul describing his own experience) 2 Cor 12:1ff "while it does seem to point to a heavenly ascent tradition, its connection is only very superficial as it contains no angel guide, no divine throne, no revelation unless one counts v9), no vision of God, etc." - Paula Gooder (Mediators) "In the fourth heaven, he saw luminaries, wondrous creatures, and the Host of the Lord. There were many ‘hosts’ in the fifth, and in the sixth he saw ‘bands of angels who study the revolutions of the stars’. Finally, in the seventh heaven he saw great angels and he got a distant glimpse of the Lord on His Throne." - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities "And after that I saw all the secrets of the heavens, and how the kingdom is divided, and how the actions of men are weighed in the balance. And there I saw the mansions of the elect and the mansions of the holy, and mine eyes saw there all the sinners being driven from thence which deny the name of the Lord of Spirits, and being dragged off: and they could not abide because of the punishment which proceeds from the Lord of Spirits. And I saw the chambers of the sun and moon, whence they proceed and whither they come again, and their glorious return, and how one is superior to the other, and their stately orbit, and how they do not leave their orbit, and they add nothing to their orbit and they take nothing from it, and they keep faith with each other, in accordance with the oath by which they are bound together." - 1 Enoch 41:1-2, 5b -6a "In the Book of Enoch it was the archangel Uriel (‘God is my light’) who showed Enoch the secrets of the Sun (solstices and equinoxes, ‘six portals’ in all) and the ‘laws of the Moon’ (including intercalation), and the twelve constellations of the stars, ‘all the workings of heaven’. And in the end of the schooling, Uriel gave Enoch - as Shamash and Adad had given Enmeduranki - ‘heavenly tablets’, instructing him to study them carefully and note ‘every individual fact’ therein. Returning to Earth, Enoch passed this knowledge to his old son, Methuselah." - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began The knowledge granted Enoch included: "All the workings of heaven, earth and the seas, and all the elements, their passages and goings and the thunderings of the thunder, and of the Sun and the Moon; the goings and changings of the stars; the seasons, years, days, and hours." - The Book of the Secrets of Enoch "The visions obtained by the heaven journey etc. have in their contents the structure of heavens (or the throne/abode of God etc.) -- almost necessarily. But the same structure is underlying many cultic practices, first of all, the temple (tabernacle) structures and calendar (for the calendar is always based on the presupposed structure of the Universe). So, there is a basic unity between all the three—visions’ content, temple structure, and calendar. They are always parts of the same tradition, that is, the reality they are referring to is always intermediated by this tradition." - Basil Lourie (CrossTalk) "The Book of Enoch, like so many canonical books of Christians and Jews, is an allegorical and metaphorical document about the calendrical battles fought for so many years between those who insisted that holy days be calculated according to the ancient astronomy and those who insisted that holy days be calculated according to the improved mathematical understandings of solar-lunar-astral periodicities. The ‘Watchers,’ ‘Archers,’ or ‘Tetramorphs,’ whom Ezekiel and the early Christian astronomers expressed as Lion, Ox, Man, and Eagle, are the four ‘Guardian Stars’ (Regulus, Aldebaran, Fomalhaut, and Antares) which fixed the two solstices and the two equinoxes to the wheel of time, the Zodiac or Ecliptic, back when archaic astronomy first was learning (the hard way) about precession of the equinoxes." - Lee Perry, Jesus Silenced (private correspondence) The Astronomical Book in 1 Enoch "explains the structure of the universe by describing the course of the sun in a 364-day year and of the moon in a 354-day year. The same two years (solar and lunar) with the same numbers of days are combined and correlated in a number of the calendrical documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The sun and moon pass through gates at the eastern and western sides of the heavens. Other sections of the booklet speak about the stars and winds and other related topics. All of the created order is under angelic and ulitimately under divine control.". - James C. Vanderkam "...When the righteous dead are mentioned in 1 Enoch or Jubilees, they seem to be destined for a blissful existence as disembodied souls, a notion so un-Jewish that it is presumed to be a Greek idea. No particular sect is identified in these works although they were used extensively at Qumran ." - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition

    (3) The Preexisent Messiah "A feature of chaps. 37-71 [the Similitudes of 1 Enoch] is the frequent reference to a person who is called ‘the righteous one’, ‘the chosen one’, ‘the messiah’, and ‘the son of man’ (for this last title three different formulations are used); at the end of the section (chap. 71) Enoch is identified as that son of man who functions as the eschatological judge, a judge who reverses the fortunes of his oppressed people and of their oppressors who are termed ‘the kings and the mighty’". - James C. Vanderkam The Similitudes fall into four parts: "’a’ speaks of ‘the Elect One’ who is seen by Enoch (39.6), blessed by Raphael (40.5), who sits on the seat of glory, judging (45.3) and who dwells among the righteous in a transformed earth (45.4-5. ‘b’ describes a Son of man to whom righteousness belongs, who will open hidden store-rooms being destined to be victorious (46.3) and who removes kings and mighty ones (46.4). He is given a name by the Lord of the Spirits - ‘staff for the righteous,’light of the gentiles,’ and ‘hope of the heartsick’ (48.2-10) he ‘became the Chosen One’ (5), ‘revealed wisdom to the righteous’ (7) and appears to be the equivalent of the Messiah. ‘c’ describes The Elect One (again) who sits on the throne of the Lord of the Spirits (51.3) he is a risen one (5). Mountains melt before him and peace reigns when he appears (52.6,9) and judges Azaz’el (55.4). [56.5 refers to Parthians and Medes, apparantly referring to the invasions of 115-117 C.E.] In 61.5 the Elect One is ‘the First Word’ who has been set on the throne of judgment by the Lord of the Spirits. He is blessed by the vigilant ones (i.e. the Watchers), the holy ones in heaven, and ‘all the elect ones who dwell in the garden of life’ (a return to Eden?) ‘d’ in 62.6ff the Son of man who was concealed from the beginning sits on a throne, is the object of pleas for mercy. The righteous and elect ones shall ‘eat and rest and rise with that Son of man for ever and ever.’ Sinners are shamed before him (63.11). In 69.27-29 he has been revealed to the righteous, has seated himself on his throne of glory and confessions are heard by him. In 70.1 Enoch is translated before the Son of man and Lord of the Spirits, and in 71.17 the Similitudes end with ‘there shall be length of days with that Son of Man and and peace to the righteous ones.’" "IMO the distinctions between a-c and b-d are clear. They indicate two stages of interpolation, b-d with its Son of Man imagery being inserted in an a-c complex which had already been developed around the figure of The Elect One. The Son of Man (b-d) passages reflect Christian development, while both echo imagery from enthronement rites associated with the Feast of Booths in Judaism." - Philip B. Lewis (CrossTalk) When promoted to the status of Son of Man, Enoch embodies three Future Ideal Figure figures: (1) "The one like a son of man in Daniel 7:13-14 . He is called Son of Man, or that Son of Man (three different Ethiopic phrases are involved). A nice example is in 1 Enoch 46:1-3, where the echoes of the heavenly scene in Daniel are clear. Whatever we make of the original meaning of Daniel 7, that Son of Man in the Similitudes is clearly an eschatological redeemer. (Other references to the Son of Man in the Similitudes are: 48:2; 62:5, 7, 9, 14; 63:11; 69:26, 27, 29; 70:1; 71:14, 17). - James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator" "...4Q491 frag. 11...shows that the Qumran community entertained the idea of the enthronement, exaltation, and even divinization of a human being. Likewise, the enthroned Son of Man in the Similitudes of Enoch ‘participates in God’s unique sovereignty’ rather than sharing in God’s ‘identity.’ He, like Jesus, is worshiped as God’s agent, not God per se.". - Adela Yarbro Collins (2) "The (Davidic) Messiah. The title Messiah (i.e., Anointed One) is applied to the eschatological redeemer twice in the Similitudes (48:10 and 52:4). The language of the first passage echoes Psalm 2:2 and thus evokes the messianic traditions drawn in the Second Temple period out of the royal psalms. (3) "The Servant of God in Deutero-Isaiah. This mysterious figure appears in the four servant songs in Isaiah 40-55 (roughly, Isa 42:1-7; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12) and two titles of the echatological redeemer in the Similitudes allude to him: the Righteous One (1 Enoch 38:2?; 47:1, 4; 53:6), and the Elect/Chosen One (39:6; 40:5; 45:3, 4; 48:6; 49:2, 4; 51:3, 5; 52:6, 9; 53:6; 55:4; 61:5, 8, 10; 62:1). The Servant is called the Righteous One in Isa 53:11 and is called chosen in Isa 42:1. He is also a light to the nations in Isa 42:6 and 49:6 (cf. 1 Enoch 48:4) and the shame of the kings of the world before the Servant (Isa 52:15) is echoed in 1 Enoch 62:9-10. It’s interesting to note that, although the grievous suffering of the Servant is central to the figure in Isaiah, these sufferings are ignored in the Similitudes." - James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator" "At that hour, that Son of Man was given a name, in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits, the Before-Time, even before the creation of the sun and the moon, before the creation of the stars, he was given a name in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits." - 1 Enoch 48:4 The Messiah/Son of Man "first appears as preexistent in the apocryphal First Book of Enoch, which was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic about 150 BC. From that period on, the concept of the Messiah who was created in the six days of Creation, or even prior to them or who was born at variously stated subsequent dates and was then hidden to await his time, became a standard feature of Jewish Messianic eschatology." - Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts "From the beginning the Son of Man was hidden, And the Most High has preserved him In the presence of His might, And revealed him to the elect." - 1 Enoch 62:7