Canonbury Masonic Research Centre
Lecture texts
Presented at CMRC by Professor Emeritus Philip Davies on 21 Feb 2008
As most of you will know, the figure of Enoch has several books credited to him. What is usually meant by ‘the book of Enoch’ is more precisely 1 Enoch. It is also called ‘Ethiopic Enoch’ because the only complete text we have is in an Ethiopic translation. The book is, indeed, part of the Ethiopic church’s canon. This Ethiopic text had been translated from a Greek text and the Greek text in turn from either Hebrew or Aramaic and it was first published in the West in 1821. We now know the original language was Aramaic, because fragments of 11 manuscripts were found at Qumran. There were also a few Greek fragments of one part of this collection (the Epistle).
1 Enoch is really a collection of writings, apparently five distinct but related compositions. They are The Book of the Watchers, 1–36; the Parables (or Similitudes) of Enoch, 27–71; the Astronomical Book (72–82); the Dream Visions (83–90); the Epistle of Enoch (91-108). The Ethiopic version is a bit messy, but these are the broad outlines. So we can be sure there was original a group of Enoch writings before they were assembled into a book. However, they are interrelated and we are justified in talking about an Enoch tradition in early Judaism, rather like the Moses or David or Solomon traditions.
The Aramaic version, the earliest we have, does not have the Parables. There is still a dispute about whether these are a purely Jewish or a Jewish-Christian composition. The work is obviously derived from other Enoch writings but I am going to ignore it this evening because it seems to represent a later development. The Astronomical Book is also not written on any of the manuscripts that have the others. Its Qumran form is entitled ‘Book of the Heavenly Luminaries’. One of the four manuscripts goes back well into the third century BC.
The main elements of these traditions comprise three themes:
Enoch is a figure who moves between heaven and earth, travelling in both directions. Having begun as a human he ends as a divine judge, an angelic figure. He also tells his followers what will occur on earth in the future and the end of history. There is nothing about Moses, his law or the covenant at Sinai, and because of its many differences from the ideas found in most of the Old Testament, recent discussion has begun to speak of an ‘Enochic Judaism’. Where do these ideas come from? The standard view is that they are late and emanate from Jewish sectarian groups, some of whose descendants lived at Qumran. I am going to suggest something different: that much of the Enoch tradition is older than parts of the Old Testament, and that not only can we see it reflected in parts of Genesis but we can also see in Genesis some reaction against it.
But let me first say a little more about the contents of four of these Enochic books, relating them to the themes on the screen. The Astronomical Book, which may be the earliest, has Enoch guided through heaven by the archangel Uriel, seeing the various lights and the gates through which they pass, the winds, and four corners of the earth. The 12 gates for the sun correspond, of course, to the zodiac signs. Everything is orderly and the movements are controlled by angels. No Newton here! But we find a mixture of very accurate observation with some idealization. A crucial element in this scheme is a year of 354 days, 12 months of 30 days plus four quarter days. It’s a scheme, of course, that we also find in some other early Jewish writings and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As we’ll see presently, it also crops up in the book of Genesis.
The Book of the Watchers is as early, or almost as early. Here we find the myth of the origin of evil, in several slightly different variations combined in a single text. But essentially it is the same story. The core of this story is the descent of a number of divine beings (called ‘Watchers’) to earth, led by an angel with various names, one of which is Azazel. They brings various kinds of knowledge to earth, but impregnate the women and beget a race of vicious giants who devour the vegetation, the animals, then humans and finally turn on each other. The divine remedy is first to create a flood that will kill the giants and cleanse the earth. The ringleader is buried under a rock in the desert, together with his accomplices, awaiting their punishment at the end of time. But the spirits of the dead giants live on in this world and become the evil demons that continue to plague humanity. We are also told of another heavenly tour by Enoch, but this time he sees the place where the dead go, and the various rewards that according to their virtues and vices they are to expect. So if the Astronomical book is metaphysical, the Book of the Watchers deals with ethical matters.
Finally, the third theme, the future and the end of history, are found in the Book of Dreams and the Epistle. There are two ‘Dream Visions’. In the first Enoch foresees the Flood; in the second, the whole history of the world afterwards. Here the human actors take the form of animals, the wicked angels are fallen stars and the archangels have the form of humans. So the Watchers fall like stars, become bulls, mate with heifers and produce camels, elephants and donkeys (the giants). After the flood and Noah’s death, the descendants of Ham and Japheth, who are red and black bulls respectively, diversify into all kinds of animals. Shem and his descendants are white bulls. But after the beginning of the nation of Israel, cattle disappear. Esau is a black boar and Jacob a white sheep. These sheep have seventy angelic shepherds, some good but some bad. The story then focuses closely on events of the second century BC and the revolt of the Maccabees, which obviously belong to the time of the author. Finally divine judgment is brought on the fallen angels, the bad angelic shepherds and all wicked Jews. The Gentiles come into the Jewish fold and there is universal peace.
The Epistle of Enoch, a letter ascribed to Enoch, includes an apocalypse in which the history of the chosen people is set out within ten schematized periods or ‘weeks’. In the last week a chosen group emerges who will execute judgment on their enemies before God judges the whole world. The letter thus encourages the faithful to remain steadfast in times of persecution; we are probably dealing with a text from the second century again.
There is no doubt that much of 1 Enoch comes from the second century, the same time as the book of Daniel, and that it represents a set of ideas that supported the nationalist Maccabean revolt but later produced one or more Jewish sects. Indeed, the Enoch tradition continued into the Jewish mystical tradition and remained influential within Christianity, where the wicked archangel, known also as Lucifer, the falling star, and the final divine judgment persisted. Enoch is, of course, mentioned in the New Testament.
But more interesting is the question of the origin of all this. As I have said, the common view is that the Enoch tradition begins quite late in some kind of alternative movement that builds on hints in the Old Testament. This I am now going to challenge. In the first place, Enoch himself, and the story of a descent of angelic beings, are in the Old Testament. But did they originate there? This seems unlikely. I think rather than the writers of the antediluvian stories in Genesis 1–11 and the writers of 1 Enoch were drawing on something older than both of them. We don’t know how old the figure of Enoch himself is, but he is clearly modelled on a figure in the Sumerian king list, one of the most ancient writings known. These are the kings who reigned before the Flood and the seventh one is called Enmeduranki. Enoch, too, is seventh in the biblical list. He is associated with the city of Sippar, the home of the cult of the sun god Shamash. Enmeduranki, we learn from other ancient Sumerian texts, 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 (not sure what for). These skills were to be transmitted from generation to generation, and they became the property of the guild of baru, the major group of diviners in Babylon. The biblical figure of 365, the years of Enoch’s life, preserve an affinity to the sun, rather than the sun god.
Another connection with Enmeduranki comes via a third character. Each of the Sumerian kings before the Flood had a fish-man (apkallu), from whom they learnt all kinds of knowledge. Enmeduranki’s apkallu was called Utu’abzu, and in another cuneiform text he is said to have ascended to heaven.
This last link is perhaps a little less direct, but we should conclude that the writer of Genesis 5 appears to either have known or understood Enoch as a counterpart of Enmeduranki. Did he know more than he is letting on? The wording of Genesis 5:24 is quite enigmatic: ‘Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and was not, because God took him’ (Gen 5:24). It’s a fairly astounding statement and we must be wondering what lies behind it. It’s hardly just something that the writer made up. But now I have to introduce a complication. There are two writers in the first part of the Genesis. One of them is known as the ‘Priestly’ writer or ‘P’ and the other has the letter ‘J’ which stands for Jehovah, the name of the Jewish god, because while P always refers to god as elohim, J uses the divine name itself. This is why we have two stories of creation, two sets of genealogies, two stories of the spread of nation and, in the Flood story, two narrative strands woven together. Indeed, we can almost reconstruct two separate narratives of creation, human descent, origin of sin, flood and spread of humans.
Now let’s look at Enoch according to the other writer, J: “Cain knew his wife; and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son. To Enoch was born Irad …” (Gen 4:17-18). This statement does not suggest anything remarkable about Enoch at all. Yet although the name Enoch is never again mentioned, another part of the J story in the early chapters of Genesis does have an important connection with the contents of 1 Enoch. In Genesis 6:1-4 is an account of a descent of heavenly beings. In the Enoch version, these angels descended to earth to marry the women; brought and taught celestial secrets, including forms of divination; and begot children who were giants and turned to eating people and animals, spilling blood on the earth, so that the earth cried out. The chief angels in heaven then observed and reported to Elyon, who decreed the flood as punishment, but first ordered the leader to be bound and cast into a hole in the desert, to await the day of judgment; to him, by whom the earth was corrupted, all subsequent human sin is ascribed. The remaining angels will see their offspring to kill each other, and then suffer the same fate as their leader, and at their destruction after 70 generations the earth will be restored. Later, we are told that evil spirits emanate from the bodies of the giants and maintain evil on the earth.
The common view is that this Enoch story is a midrash, an elaboration, of the shorter Genesis 6:1-4 story. But in his publication of the Aramaic Enoch fragments from Qumran, Jozef Milik argued that the relationship was the other way round: the Enoch story of the descent of divinities is older than the Genesis account. I agree with this view, and will now explain why I think it must be correct. But I’ll begin with the Priestly story, and the problem of why, according to him, the Flood was necessary. His creation story is found in Gen 1, and here creation is perfect: repeatedly, “God saw that it was good”. But P’s story continues mainly with genealogies, until we reach Noah, and then, in Genesis 6:11, we are suddenly told that “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight”. How, according to our priestly writer, did things go wrong in between? We can infer the missing event from clues in the sequel. Here are the elements in Enoch’s story and corresponding elements in the Priestly writer’s story in Genesis.
| 1 Enoch | P |
|---|---|
| earth corrupt | Human way corrupt on the earth (Gen 6) |
| eating animals | eating animals (Gen 9) |
| bloodshed | bloodshed (Gen 9) |
| 364-day year (12 months x 30 + 4) | 30-day months (Gen 7) 365-day year (Gen 5) |
| Enoch goes to heaven | Enoch goes to heaven (Gen 5) |
In the right hand column, the first element shows that the earth itself is implicated in the human corruption, and the stress on the eating and shedding of blood in the divine covenant with Noah suggests that bloodshed has become an issue. This points to the defiling of the earth with blood, and even suggests that the Flood itself was seen in part as a cleansing of the earth from this defilement. The last two items on the list have already been mentioned. There is one final, but dramatic connection, however: the name Azazel recurs in another part of P’s composition, in Leviticus, where the scapegoat is sent into the wilderness “to Azazel” (or “for Azazel”), bearing the sins of the people. This reference, which amazingly still puzzles some scholars, makes complete sense if the writer, like 1 Enoch, believed that Azazel was responsible for all human sins and would ultimately bear the punishment for it.
Thus, it looks as if the Priestly author and the Enoch story are basically in agreement over the origin of evil and of human sin on the earth, as well as the notion that divine punishment would ultimately resolve the problem.
The story of an angelic fall does occur, however, in Gen 6:1-4:
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of god saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then Yahweh said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterwards – when the sons of god went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes (gibborim) that were of old, people of renown (’anshey shem).
But here we face a problem, since the story bears the characteristics of the J, not the P writer. This makes sense, however, when we look at it closely, because despite the apparent similarity, there are important differences – contradictions, even – compared with Enoch’s version. There is no mention of sin or of the flood as punishment; the giants are not said unambiguously to be the offspring of the interbreeding, but just to be around at the time this happened – and afterwards. And anyway, they are ‘heroes’, not monsters. They do not kill or shed blood, and they are also very explicitly said to be mortal and not divine or semi-divine. Specifically they do not have a divine spirit and so cannot be the source of evil spirits. The story seems designed not to relate an angelic source of sin but to contradict the notion. The result is that this episode seems is unnecessary, inconsequential and meaningless. It does not explain sin, or the Flood. Its purpose is to mask or twist the existing story.
In the context of J’s own story about the origins of sin, it is clear that he has no place for such an explanation, anyway, since he has provided it earlier. Compare the following elements:
| 1 Enoch | J |
|---|---|
| Bloodshed on earth: the earth cries out | Abel is killed by Cain and his blood cries out |
| The angels bring secrets of art and technology | Cain’s descendants discover arts and technologies |
| Azazel carries a burden of sin in the wilderness, but is not killed | Cain carries a burden of sin in the wilderness, but is not killed |
The similarities are striking. Cain has replaced the wicked angel Azazel. This author has an alternative view of the origins of sin. His Garden of Eden story tells not of an Adam made in the image of God but one made out of mud. There is no supernatural demon in the guise of a serpent but a snake, a creature made by God. Evil is first of all human disobedience to the divine law, and then this leads to violence as Cain kills Abel. From this come all the woes of humanity; in this story, Cain’s line of descent leads to us: when the two stories were put together, it had to peter out because we couldn’t really have two Noahs.
So while one of the narratives of Genesis seems to agree with the story according to Enoch, the other is radically different: Enoch himself, and the story of the angelic descent that is at the heart of the Enoch tradition, were both rewritten. There are traces of a serious theological dispute going on here. But what became of this dispute? There may have been immediate historical consequences in the expulsion of those who adhered to the Enochic worldview, including its solar calendar, from their place at the centre of Judean life. Part of this view was, of course, the apocalyptic expectation of the coming end of history and of divine judgment. That expulsion might be suggested, at any rate, by the hints of sectarian attitudes in parts of 1 Enoch and by the Enochic orientation of so many of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These disputes seem to have been brewing before they erupted in the second century BC, and it was probably in the period of national independence that the power struggle reached its climax.
But the dispute has had a curious afterlife. We know that in the later history of Judaism and Christianity the two competing stories were combined: the orthodox tradition still has a Satan, Lucifer, and sin is still provoked by supernatural temptation, while the story of the Garden of Eden is, at least in Christian tradition, also the origin of sin, where Lucifer has been reintroduced not as a humble snake but a demonic serpent. We have in effect combined two quite contradictory accounts. I doubt whether either of our biblical authors would have been happy with this compromise, which is, in modern jargon, a fudge. The philosopher, for whom there were no divine beings except one, from whom no evil could have come, tried hard to eliminate any kind of Satan figure or a world of evil spirits, leaving us all responsible for our own fate and to live with the consequences. The other, and I think older view, regards humans as victims of a world put into disorder by supernatural forces and ultimately to be rescued only by God himself at the end of history. Here is the choice. It has very modern relevance, too: which of the alternatives, I wonder, offers the better cure for global warming?
Copyright © 2008 Philip Davies
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