ENOCH, BOOK OF. The Book of Enoch, or, as it is sometimes called, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, in contradistinction to the Slavonic Book of Enoch (see later), is perhaps the most important of all the apocryphal or pseudapocryphal Biblical writings for the history of religious thought. It is not the work of a single author, but rather a conglomerate of literary fragments which once circulated under the names of Enoch, Noah and possibly Methuselah. In the Book of the Secrets of Enoch we have additional portions of this literature. As the former work is derived from a variety of Pharisaic writers in Palestine, so the latter in its present form was written for the most part by Hellenistic Jews in Egypt.
The Book of Enoch was written in the second and first centuries B.C. It was well known to many of the writers of the New Testament, and in many instances influenced their thought and diction. Thus it is quoted by name as a genuine production of Enoch in the Epistle of Jude, 14 sq., and it lies at the base of Matt. xix. 28 and John v. 22, 27, and many other passages. It had also a vast indirect influence on the Palestinian literature of the 1st century of our era. Like the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Megilloth, the Pirke Aboth, this work was divided into five parts, with the critical discussion of which we shall deal below. With the earlier Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a canonical book, but towards the close of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century it began to be discredited, and finally fell under the ban of the Church. Almost the latest reference to it in the early church is made by George Syncellus in his Chronography about A.D. 800. The book was then lost sight of till 1773, when Bruce discovered the Ethiopic version in Abyssinia.
Original Language.—That the Book of Enoch was written in Semitic is now accepted on all hands, but scholars are divided as to whether the Semitic language in question was Hebrew or Aramaic. Only one valuable contribution on this question has been made, and that by Halévy in the Journal Asiatique, Avril-Mai 1867, pp. 352–395. This scholar is of opinion that the entire work was written in Hebrew. Since this publication, however, fresh evidence bearing on the question has been discovered in the Greek fragment (i.-xxxii.) found in Egypt. Since this fragment contains three Aramaic words transliterated in the Greek, some scholars, and among them Schürer, Lévi and N. Schmidt, have concluded that not only are chapters i.-xxxvi. derived from an Aramaic original, but also the remainder of the book. In support of the latter statement no evidence has yet been offered by these or any other scholars, nor yet has there been any attempt to meet the positive arguments of Halévy for a Hebrew original of xxxvii.-civ., whose Hebrew reconstructions of the text have been and must be adopted in many cases by every editor and translator of the book. A prolonged study of the text, which has brought to light a multitude of fresh passages the majority of which can be explained by retranslation into Hebrew, has convinced the present writer[1] that, whilst the evidence on the whole is in favour of an Aramaic original of vi.-xxxvi., it is just as conclusive on behalf of the Hebrew original of the greater part of the rest of the book.
Versions—Greek, Latin and Ethiopic.—The Semitic original was translated into Greek. It is not improbable that there were two distinct Greek versions. Of the one, several fragments have been preserved in Syncellus (A.D. 800), vi.-x. 14, viii. 4-ix. 4, xv. 8-xvi. 1; of the other, i.-xxxii. in the Giza Greek fragment discovered in Egypt and published by Bouriant (Fragments grecs du livre d’Enoch); in 1892, and subsequently by Lods, Dillmann, Charles (Book of Enoch, 318 sqq.), Swete, and finally by Radermacher and Charles (Ethiopic Text, 3-75). In addition to these fragments there is that of lxxxix. 42-49 (see Gildemeister in the ZDMG, 1855, pp. 621–624, and Charles, Ethiopic Text, pp. 175–177). Of the Latin version only i. 9 survives, being preserved in the Pseudo-Cyprian’s Ad Novatianum, and cvi. 1-18 discovered by James in an 8th-century MS. of the British Museum (see James, Apoc. anecdota, 146–150; Charles, op. cit. 219–222). This version is made from the Greek.
The Ethiopic version, which alone preserves the entire text, is a very faithful translation of the Greek. Twenty-eight MSS. of this version are in the different libraries of Europe, of which fifteen are to be found in England. This version was made from an ancestor of the Greek fragment discovered at Giza. Some of the utterly unintelligible passages in this fragment are literally reproduced in the Ethiopic. The same wrong order of the text in vii.-viii. is common to both. In order to recover the original text, it is from time to time necessary to retranslate the Ethiopic into Greek, and the latter in turn into Aramaic or Hebrew. By this means we are able to detect dittographies in the Greek and variants in the original Semitic. The original was written to a large extent in verse. The discovery of this fact is most helpful in the criticism of the text. This version was first edited by Laurence in 1838 from one MS., in 1851 by Dillmann from five, in 1902 by Flemming from fifteen MSS., and in 1906 by the present writer from twenty-three.
Translations and Commentaries.—Laurence, The Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1821); Dillmann, Das Buch Henoch (1853); Schodde, The Book of Enoch (1882); Charles, The Book of Enoch (1893); Beer, “Das Buch Henoch,” in Kautzsch’s Apok. u. Pseud. des A.T. (1900), ii. 217–310; Flemming and Radermacher, Das Buch Henoch (1901); Martin, Le Livre d’Henoch (1906). Critical Inquiries.—The bibliography will be found in Schürer, Gesch. d. jüdischen Volkes3, iii. 207–209, and a short critical account of the most important of these in Charles, op. cit. pp. 9-21.
The different Elements in the Book, with their respective Characteristics and Dates.—We have remarked above that the Book of Enoch is divided into five parts—i.-xxxvi., xxxvii.-lxxi., lxxii.-lxxxii., lxxxiii.-xc., xci-cviii. Some of these parts constituted originally separate treatises. In the course of their reduction and incorporation into a single work they suffered much mutilation and loss. From an early date the compositeness of this work was recognized. Scholars have varied greatly in their critical analyses of the work (see Charles, op. cit. 6-21, 309–311). The analysis which gained most acceptation was that of Dillmann (Herzog’s Realencyk.2 xii. 350–352), according to whom the present books consist of—(1) the groundwork, i.e. i.-xxxvi., lxxii.-cv., written in the time of John Hyrcanus; (2) xxxvii.-lxxi., xvii.-xix., before 64 B.C.; (3) the Noachic fragments, vi. 3-8, viii. 1-3, ix. 7, x. 1, 11, xx., xxxix. 1, 2a, liv. 7-lv. 2, lx., lxv.-lxix. 25, cvi.-cvii.; and (4) cviii., from a later hand. With much of this analysis there is no reason to disagree. The similitudes are undoubtedly of different authorship from the rest of the book, and certain portions of the book are derived from the Book of Noah. On the other hand, the so-called groundwork has no existence unless in the minds of earlier critics and some of their belated followers in the present. It springs from at least four hands, and may be roughly divided into four parts, corresponding to the present actual divisions of the book.
A new critical analysis of the book based on this view was given by Charles (op. cit. pp. 24-33), and further developed by Clemen and Beer. The analysis of the latter (see Herzog, Realencyk.3 xiv. 240) is very complex. The book, according to this scholar, is composed of the following separate elements from the Enoch tradition:—(1) Ch. i.-v.; (2) xii-xvi.; (3) xvii.-xix.; (4) xx.-xxxvi.; (5) xxxvii.-lxix. (from diverse sources); (6) lxx.-lxxi.; (7) lxxii.-lxxxii.; (8) lxxxiii.-lxxxiv.; (9) lxxxv.-xc.; (10) xciii., cxi. 12-17; (11) xci. 1-11, 18, 19, xcii., xciv.-cv.; (12) cviii., and from the Noah tradition; (13) vi.-xi.; (14) xxxix. 1-2a, liv. 7-lv. 2, lx., lxv.-lxix. 25; (15) cvi.-cvii. Thus while Clemen finds eleven separate sources, Beer finds fifteen. A fresh study from the hand of Appel (Die Composition des äthiopischen Henochbuchs, 1906) seeks to reach a final analysis of our book. But though it evinces considerable insight, it cannot escape the charge of extravagance. The original book or ground-work of Enoch consisted of i.-xvi., xx.-xxxvi. This work called forth a host of imitators, and a number of their writings, together with the groundwork, were edited as a Book of Methuselah, i.e. lxxii.-cv. Then came the final redactor, who interpolated the groundwork and the Methuselah sections, adding two others from his own pen. The Similitudes he worked up from a series of later sources, and gave them the second place
- ↑ The evidence is given at length in R. H. Charles’ Ethiopic Text of Enoch, pp. xxvii-xxxiii.
