THE BOOKS OF ENOCH AND NOAH

"And I, Enoch, alone saw the vision, the ends of all things: and no man shall see as I have seen.”

THE BOOK OF ENOCH.

"Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling-place."

THE BOOKS OF ENOCH AND NOAH

THE

(INTRODUCTION)

HE Book of Enoch is the most renowned, the longest, and certainly in some parts the most poetically elevated, of the Old Testament apocrypha. It exists for us to-day only in an Ethiopian version. But this is quite obviously translated from a Jewish work which must have been composed about a century before the Christian erá. This Jewish work, moreover, was obviously compiled from still earlier books. In places these are joined so carelessly that they do not fit together at all, and it is thus easy to pick out sections which belong to at least two of the preceding books. These were a book of the Parables of Enoch, and a remarkable and ancient Book of Noah.

Enoch was the first of the great Genesis figures to follow Adam. He was the "friend of God," the man raised to immortality without going through the gates of death. Hence he was naturally selected by later ages as the authority to see visions and to make prophecies. There is another apocryphal book, called the "Secrets of Enoch," which touched upon the medieval "Kabbalah" and magic. Our present book also implies repeatedly that Enoch had a knowledge of many mighty secrets, of powers too dangerous to be revealed. Hence this book is an example of the apocrypha in that earliest Hebraic sense, where the word meant teaching not to be entrusted to the general world.

Dr. Charles, our chief recent authority upon this book, says in referring to it: "It is seldom that authors attain to the immortality which they hope for, and it is still more seldom that anonymous authors achieve to this distinction. And yet it is just such a distinction that the authors of the Book of Enoch have achieved. That such should be ultimately his lot was the deep-rooted conviction of one of this

literary circle. He looked forward (chapter civ) to the time when his writings would be translated into various languages, and would become to the righteous a cause of joy and uprightness and much wisdom.' This hope was to a large degree realized in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, when the currency of these apocryphal writings was very wide-spread, because they almost alone represented the advance of the higher theology in Judaism, which culminated in Christianity. Some of its authors and there were many — be longed to the true succession of the prophets, and it was simply owing to the evil character of the period in which their lot was cast, that these enthusiasts and mystics, exhibiting on occasions the inspiration of the Old Testament prophets, were obliged to issue their works under the ægis of some ancient name. The Law, which claimed to be the highest and final message from God, could tolerate no fresh message from God, and so, when men were moved by the spirit of God to make known their visions relating to the past, the present, and the future, and to proclaim the higher ethical truths they had won, they could not do so openly, but were forced to resort to pseudonymous publication."

The Book of Enoch has indeed had a remarkable history. While it was never admitted to the Jewish canon, it was well known to the Jews of Jesus' time. One of the Epistles of the New Testament refers to it as an authoritative work; and its phrasing is sometimes echoed in the other books of the New Testament. Later Christian writers referred to it frequently and with reverence. It was, however, condemned by the great Christian Fathers of the fourth century, and thus fell into disuse. Finally all Jewish and European copies of it disappeared, and through all the Middle Ages it was a lost book, known only by the references to it in the Scriptures and the early Fathers.

A century ago it was rediscovered in Africa by an English traveler in Abyssinia. Indeed so popular had it been in that country that nearly thirty MSS. of it have since been found there. They present what is probably a badly bat