When I was a kid, I heard rumors of weird books that were on the edge of the Canon, and the one that intrigued me the most was the book of Enoch, since it actually gets quoted in Jude’s epistle.
But as I grew up I found that several of the apocryphal books were fairly boring and actually include a lot of moralizing.
However, I am keeping my eye on Trinitarian developments in studies of Second Temple Judaism, and I decided I needed to go back to the sources. After all, I found that reading the Dead Sea Scrolls was quite illuminating and John M.G. Barclay convinced me that even the Apocrypha could contain gems that might aid biblical interpretation.
Also, I often find that when I go to the primary sources the modern scholars are either wrong or at least ther is a large enough possibility of multiple interpretation that I can get a better handle on the actual state of modern scholarly debates.
1 Enoch
1 Enoch is indeed Apocalyptic. Although it has some really boring bits about astronomy and ends with some boring exhortations about the fate of the wicked and the righteous, in between there are some fun visions.
The most interesting vision is strikingly similar to the Book of Revelation. Judgment takes place before a heavenly throne, the prayers of the saints ascend to heaven, and a figure called the Son of Man pours out vengeance on the world. The parallels are so striking that I can’t help thinking that either Enoch read Revelation or John read Enoch.
Another interesting, but I think artistically unsuccessful vision, involves an allegory in which the people of Israel and their heroes are symbolized by sheep. This is not as fun as it sounds. The allegory is tediou and does not have any fresh insights into the biblical narrative.
The most interesting thing, however, is that Moses is described as being transformed from a sheep into a man—which to me sounds like evidence of him becoming an angel. Noah’s birth at the end of the book also makes him sound like an angel. I will have more to say on that at the end of this essay.
The book ends with warnings to the rich which sounded strikingly like the book of James. The author observes that we think that God does not see our sins, but when we see a storm at sea we fear it, even though God is greater than the sea. Those sections are edifying, if a bit long.
And yes, this book does assert that angels came down and impregnated women, creating the Nephilim. I agree. Genesis 6 pretty much teaches it.
2 Enoch
I found 2 Enoch much more fun than 1 Enoch.
It reminds me more than anything of Dante. Enoch is brought by the Spirit into Heaven where he sees the entry-places of the stars and angels in various levels of Heaven. When he reaches Heaven he is clothed like a High Priest and becomes an angel. Again, more on that in a second.
The most striking thing about this book is how fixated it is on the motion of the sun, moon, and stars. Since all three books of Enoch and portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls pay special attention to the courses of the stars, I had to stop and think about how these passages fit in with the rest of the book.
Imagine my excitement to find an actual comment in the text about this:
And the Lord set everything forth for the sake of man, and he created the whole creation for his week. And he divided it into times: And from time he established years; and from the years he settled months; and from the months he settled days; and from the days he settled 7; and in those he settled the hours; and the hours he measured exactly, so that a person might think about time, and so that he might count the years and months and the days and the hours and the perturbations and beginnings and the endings, and that he might keep count of his own life from the beginning unto death, and think of his sins, and so that he might write his own achievement, both evil and good. (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, pp. 64-65)
So, the significance of the stars is that they mark time and thus should make men consider their life, their deeds, and their sins.
Probably the most interesting about the rest of the book of 2 Enoch is the theme of priesthood.
After Enoch is translated into heaven, Methuselah becomes the priest through a divine miracle, with the sacfificial knife flying into his hand like a lightsaber into the hand of a Jedi.
Then—and this part is for real folks—Methuselah commissions Nir, Noah’s brother to be high priest. Nir’s wife miraculously conceives a child in her old age. Nir gets mad and suspects her infidelity, and she dies at his rebuke. But they bury her and discover a fully grown child, Melchizedek. No, not that Melchizedek. That’s going to be a few centuries later. Anyway, this Melchizedek is the new high priest and Michael is sent to carry him to Eden with Adam. Nir dies of a broken heart.
Fun stuff.
Anyway, I have a theory, and I am not sure if it’s true, but I’ll put it out there for fun. If time is what determines days and years, and days and years are what determine sacfifices, then the purpose of time is to create the sacrificial system. And the sacrificial system and priesthood are what keeps the world going round.
Like I said, just a theory.
3 Enoch and Metatron
The final book of Enoch seemed more than anything like Kabbalah. Here we have an emphasis on the transforming presence of the Shekinah and on the letters of the Torah as a semi-magical incantation.
In this book, a Levite, Rabbi Ishmael, is taken up to heaven. There he meets an exalted angel Metatron, who is—surprise!—the angelic Enoch.
The next few chapters are about how Enoch arrived in Heaven and became “divinized” into a man-angel. The remainder of the book is about the secrets of the stars that Enoch learned, the future divine judgment, and the intercession for the post-Temple Jewish nation.
This is the third time we have seen a man “divinized.” We saw it in the way baby Noah and Moses are described in 1 Enoch. We saw it in Enoch and Melchizedek in 2 Enoch. Men become angels, and in becoming angels they become godlike.
Now, of course, they do not become God. In fact, 3 Enoch 16 has a voice from heaven complain that there are “two powers in heaven,” and then knock Metatron down, protecting God’s glory from usurpation. (Some scholars think this is a later edition, and I understand why they think so.)
What we do see, clearly, in this text is that the theme of being joined to the divine nature was still very present in Judaism, perhaps even a long time after the New Testament.
Dante was certainly not treading unwalked paths.