Book of Enoch | The Ethiopian Bible

so today though we're talking about theopic book of enoch and this is just sometimes called the book of enoch it's sometimes called the first book of enoch because there's actually bunches of books of enoch and we have to differentiate and so essentially this is the oldest and most important of the books of unique it's not that the books of enoch are all written by enoch necessarily and there's one you know first enix second third and fourth edict like we have and they're just all part of a set they're coming from very different authors but they're just numbered later chapter 1 the words of the blessing of enoch wherewith he blessed the elect and righteous who will be living in the day of tribulation when the wicked and godless are to be removed and he took up his parable and said enoch a righteous man whose eyes were opened by god saw the vision of the holy one in the heavens which the angels showed me and from them i heard everything and from them i understood as i saw but not for this generation but for a remote one which is for to come concerning the elect i said and took up my parable concerning them the holy great one will come forth from his dwelling and the eternal god will tread upon the earth even on mount sinai and appear from his camp and appear in the strength of his might from the heaven of heavens and all shall be smitten with fear and the watchers shall quake and great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth and the high mountains shall be shaken and the high hills shall be made low and shall melt like wax before the flame and the earth shall be holy rent in sunder and all that is upon the earth shall perish and there shall be judgment upon all men but with the righteous he will make peace and will protect the elect and mercy shall be upon them and they shall all belong to god and they shall all be prospered and they shall all be blessed and he will help them all and light shall appear unto them and he will make peace with them and behold he cometh with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all and to destroy all the ungodly and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him okay so we'll talk just to even talk about this particular book we want to have a little bit of background context about the bible and about uh the canon and so uh here we're going to be talking about we're talking about enoch we're talking about old testament or for what christians call the old testament also the hebrew bible for judaism although it's published you know kind of as a single book in fact the old testament is made up of multiple books that were not all written at the same time or place or anything like that they all kind of come together to be by edited anyway they're all put together and now published together but um you know in addition to those ones that made it in there are many many more texts that are sort of bible-like or also uh sound you know maybe sound like the bible and also are quite ancient and are written many cases in hebrew or aramaic or maybe in greek that are not included in the bible that didn't make it it so why did some make it into some not make it in so if we look at how the canon emerged in judaism and rabbinic judaism so after the destruction of the second temple uh as the rabbis are meeting together and deciding what the canon is going to be they come up with um three groupings of writings that get included and so there's an acronym that's tanakh here that's being made from torah nevi'im and ketuvim i don't speak hebrew so it's pronouncing this very badly but essentially law prophets and writings uh is how these go and that's also how they're organized so essentially the torah the most important in the in the christian christians that call this the pentateuch or the five books attributed to moses genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy uh then the the prophets are the essentially the from joshua well in this case they're grouped differently than how christians grouped them right so joshua judges samuel kings isaiah jeremiah ezekiel and then the 12 minor prophets that are all grouped together so everybody like jonah and everybody all in one book and then finally the writings which are things like psalms proverbs job song of solomon etc down to chronicles right okay so that's that and it's probably it's not clear when this canon is done there may well have been very early on some jews who kind of are keeping to this much more constrained canon uh and they are actually even maybe knocking some of these books out even so there might have even been more restrictions so a lot of them might have been there's arguments for example that song of solomon you know which is doesn't mention god and it is really an erotic love poem maybe this shouldn't make it in right you know and so and so that's even true among um the rabbis as they're still arguing that but it's maybe fixed um by the early 2nd century rabbinic councils meanwhile before that in the third century bc then so hundreds of years before that there had been this very important translation of all the texts occurring in the hellenistic kingdom of egypt in alexandria so the site of the the great library so this uh greek repository of all learning is the goal and so uh tal king ptolemy all the kings are called ptolemy you know according to the uh legendary account um you know agrees that the the bible of the the law of the uh of the jews is ancient enough and important enough that it also needs to be uh housed in the library of alexandria but of course it has to be translated into greek in order to make it be worth anything in there as far as and so they get together together um you know 70 actually probably 72 according to the tradition the magic number is probably 72 but anyway 70 scholars who are able to kind of according to the tradition anyway under inspiration uh translates the book you know kind of perfectly under divine guidance they're jewish scholars who are learned in the text there is a massive jewish community in egypt and there's been jews there were jews in egypt very early on i mean obviously in according to the traditional story everybody came out of egypt right but they also went back at the time of the destruction of jerusalem we think of the babylonian captivity so when the exiles all go to babylon but an equal number of people also flee to egypt and they have a community there and so for example the prophet jeremiah who is a prophet that is existing before the destruction of jerusalem he also then goes into exile in egypt where he's among the the egyptian community uh they and even in the jewish egyptian community even at a certain point um builds its own temple there in egypt and which is not the understanding later that later jews have that you can have temples outside of jerusalem but it is what the egyptians are doing anyway and so when egypt becomes conquered by alexander the great it becomes a greek center uh the capital of this great city of alexandria name that alexander founds uh there ends up being a massive jewish community there and it may well be more than certainly more than maybe are living in jerusalem because jerusalem is a smaller city so the septuagint according to its own traditions or it's the traditions that are earlier surrounding it is also then inspired and so for greek speaking jews and also greek speaking christians um the text is itself uh often has the same kind of scriptural weight as the original would have been in hebrew you can see here that there is way fewer books in the in the hebrew bible than in the septuagint right and they're also grouped differently so um there's more books that are making it in so the law is the same so the torah is the same the pentateuch here is the same the five books of moses but then we have a different grouping here instead of uh the prophets at first here we have history grouping and so it's essentially the readers here of the septuagint are more or less saying that joshua is not speaking the same way as a prophet isaiah is speaking this is two and then these include a bunch of books that aren't in the jewish scripture so that's tobit judith uh maccabee you know four books of maccabees and then in the wisdom section so the wisdom section here is things like psalms and job and proverbs and song of solomon ecclesiastes but it also includes books like wisdom of solomon ecclesiasticus or sirach the psalm of solomon and then finally then the prophets people prophets like isaiah are grouped here at the end of that so i was suggesting that this canon so all out of these books these books are already written long before their where before the canon is finalized right so the last of the books to be written is like the book of daniel and so that's going to be i during the maccabee revolt and it makes it in because it pretends to be written much earlier than it is right and so because it's meant to be written at the time of the babylonian captivity and it's talking about that um and and the council kind of believed that uh it makes it in when much much earlier books didn't make it in but then the canon is maybe formulated in the second century a.d so when christianity then emerges in the first century a.d or the first century of the christian era christians are writing their own texts which ultimately become christian scripture are ultimately incorporated into the christian part of the bible the new testament when the christians are writing that text they that text we should point out is written in greek so that text even though the the first christians even though jesus uh is jewish and all of his disciples immediate disciples are all jewish and their native language would have been aramaic which is essentially an ancient syrian and so it's related very closely related to um hebrew but anyway hebrew would have been their liturgical language so they read scriptures in hebrew but the language that they would be speaking every day is arabic anyway so when the crit no we none of the early christians though none of those people jesus doesn't leave any writings at all so jesus never wrote a book and talked about this is my gospel this is my message or anything like that and none of the early disciples wrote their message in in aramaic instead when christians got to writing they were writing in greek and when they have for example there are many places in let's say the gospels where they have jesus quoting then from the hebrew bible they aren't having him the way he would have actually talked he would have spoken in aramaic and then he would have said something in hebrew and then you would imagine that the translator who is writing the gospel down who's writing it into greek would then both translate let's say both the aramaic and translate the the hebrew that jesus is saying instead the gospel writers are writing their own greek story and when they quote out of the hebrew bible they quote from the septuagint right so this is not a a new translation of the text they are using the septuagint as the um as the version of the bible so it's all very important then for the early christians so um the septuagint then is the basis uh for the christian old testament so when uh christians started uh christianity um some christians some early christians felt that the old testament was completely unnecessary and so in fact there's an early attempt the earliest attempt in christianity of making a cannon was a kind of a radical guy named marcion who in this early second century who made a list where he absolutely excluded almost all the books of the new testament that we think of as the christian bible and he also said that the old testament is absolutely worthless and so he had a very extreme position that pretty much everybody reacted against right in the early christianity so um anyway then though this because like i say this set of books in this order that is what the christians then the christians who were primarily spread through the greek speaking world of the roman empire greek is spoken as a as a second language even in the western part of the empire that becomes their scripture and so uh even when um when it's being translated to latin in the fourth century after it's become the state religion of the roman empire and so now they need to have a good good latin version uh from the for the westerners who don't speak greek the vulgate of saint jerome takes he uses the same books in the same order that the septuagint has even though he himself goes back to the hebrew in order to make some of his translation uh augustine this is one of the things with saint augustine who's another contemporary leader in the west uh doesn't think is necessary because he says we the septuagint is already perfectly translated because that was under inspiration so you can just take it from the greek and translate it directly into latin but jerome went back to the hebrew to do it but the organization and the number of books are taken from the situation so it is only if you can imagine in the fifth century then that the christian canon becomes fixed uh meanwhile that's at the simultaneously the rabbinic uh schools have started rejecting the septuagint so they don't um in part because of the christians have kind of run away with it and have made it their own and also because the rabbis have maybe decided that hellenism uh has all these bad connotations and leads you bad ways there's an emphasis on going back to the hebrew texts and so the subtitles are are discarded uh when creating the rabbinic canon and so when the reformation occurs 500 years ago in the christian west so when the protestants break away from rome they are also then going back to the originals and so they are also going back and translating and they also their jews around and so they're able to look at the jewish texts and they say wait we have all these books in our bible that you don't have in your bible and judaism is older than christianity so maybe these books shouldn't have been added in and so then the protestants take them all out all the ones that are in that the jews don't have right and so this is exactly uh what protestants call the apocrypha and so these books are talbot judith uh the book of esther that has extra bits on it uh wisdom of solomon the book of sirach the book of baruch which is is kind of like the add-ons to the book of jeremiah the extra bits of the book of daniel and so this is books like the the idol bell and the dragon and so if you've ever if you've ever know if you've read this and you've read the book of daniel and you have a story where um the king of babylon uh is having this idol and he um every day they they bring a feast to it and every night they close it up and uh and then they wake up in the morning and the whole feast and all the wine and everything's all gone and that's proving that the idol uh consuming this god is really god because he's consuming all of this feast and and the wine anyway and so then daniel is able to show the the king that all the priests of this particular pagan god are going in there and having a big feast every night and they're getting all this free food and everything and that uh and so then anyway once it once it becomes shown then then uh the king smashes old smashes the idol and kills all the priests and you know anyway so that's one of the fun stories that is in the apocrypha but not in the regular book of daniel right and then the books of maccabees so this is the kind of history in the inter-testament period so of when essentially the jewish revolt against the uh the greek syrian you know kings of syria okay and so then that leaves this kind of weird peculiar divide in the canons right so rabbinic judaism and protestant christianity have shared a bible text list where it doesn't include the apocrypha whereas the orthodox christians and catholics share a bible that does include the deuterocanonical texts which are both the same texts right however okay so even though today rabbinic judaism doesn't use these texts as part of scripture many in the first century many first century jews hellenistic jews especially so in other words greek speaking jews who were in the diaspora so there were jewish communities all throughout the roman empire especially in the greek speaking east many of them didn't know hebrew and for them the septuagint is their scripture and that included then these deuterocanonical books and however and i would also point out here that even in the aramaic speaking parts of the of judea some of these jews considered the texts to be canon obviously early christians who were jews thought of these texts as being part of the canon as did for example three of these that are have been found among the dead sea scrolls so the group of one of the jewish groups the essenes were ascetics who had a kind of a monastic community an apocalyptic community a priestly community where they were waiting kind of for the end times and they were it's on the shores or near the dead sea uh and they had all kinds of texts and at a certain point they buried all the texts and then they're they're sucked fortunately they buried everybody should be going in in antiquity if everybody would have just gone and buried all their texts in the desert it would be wonderful but anyway uh anyway fortunately they did and and so as a result of that we've recovered very very ancient manuscripts indeed of the bible but also extra biblical material including in this case bits of the books of tobits hirock and the epistle of jeremiah which is to say portions of then the apocrypha that are not in hebrew scripture today so if we take these books then of the septuagint and there's a bunch more of those obviously than what there were uh that made it into the protestant and jewish canons um there are still plenty more books that didn't make it into the catholic camp even though some of them were most all of them were scripture for somebody at some point uh whether or not it was ever very many people some people somebody thought it was scripture at least the original author and the immediate uh community that would have been around that author and then whoever wanted whoever bothered to copy it so if you can imagine the ones that we actually have that survive it's because it was important enough that somebody actually bothered to do something very expensive of hand copying a thing by hand and it actually has been copied enough times that it's come down to us uh there's plenty more of these that are lost than whatever we have that are that are written and saved anyway so these are two volumes of old testament pseudepigrapha of which i have one of these here so there's the canon then there's the deuterocannon or apocrypha and finally pseudepigrapha the word pseudopigrapha means falsely attributed because in general the books are written by people who clearly didn't write them or they're attributed to people who was not who were not the authors right chapter 4 and again observe ye the days of summer how the sun is above the earth over against it and you seek shade and shelter by reason of the heat of the sun and the earth also burns with growing heat and so you cannot tread on the earth or on a rock by reason of its heat chapter five observing how the trees cover themselves with green leaves and bear fruit wherefore give ye heed and know with regard to all his works and recognize how he that liveth forever hath made them so and all his works go on thus from year to year forever and all the tasks which they accomplish for him and their tasks change not but according as god hath ordained so is it done and behold how the sea and the rivers in like manner accomplish and change not their tasks from his commandments but ye ye have not been steadfast nor done the commandments of the lord but he have turned away and spoken proud and hard words with your impure mouths against his greatness oh ye hard-hearted you shall find no peace therefore shall he execrate your days and the years of your life shall perish and the years of your destruction shall be multiplied in eternal execration and ye shall find no mercy that same term though then pseudopographic um actually applies to lots and lots of books that actually made it in the canon much less the apocrypha as well right so for example the book of daniel daniel which we mentioned is the last of the books in the hebrew bible to have been written and it's even written partially in aramaic made it into the canon even though it's technically pseudipographical so in other words it's not written by daniel so among the pseudepigrapha see the bigrapha um there's a whole bunch of them these are ones that are just in my my couple volumes here right but there's a bunch more even in the volume so they're things like the apocalypse of abraham the apocalypse of adam the testament of adam the life of adam and eve the book of jubilees the testament of the 12 patriarchs the testament of the three patriarchs the testament of job the book of enoch which we're going to be talking about and then the second third and fourth books of enoch so additional books of enoch that people have written so you can kind of see here a trend there's a lot of apocalypse and so one of the things that's one of the things that's going to come through so all of these books are coming from that later time period when daniel is composed the book of daniel and the book of daniel is one of the few apocalyptic books uh in the hebrew bible and so this is a period when second of second temple judaism when apocalyptic thinking has really come to the front and there are lots and lots of these books that have been made and so the fact that um that these let's say have been in the christian canon has met and have been rejected then late from the later rabbinic canon has meant that apocalypticism has stayed more with christianity than with judaism which largely moved on right okay so this is also at the dead sea scroll location so at qumran this place where the dead sea scrolls were found the essene um complex uh among those were also fragments of the book of jubilees and the book of enoch so even though again this isn't making this isn't part of the septuagint and it's not part of the canons of uh the catholics or the orthodox they were part of the scripture used by the essenes in the dead sea scroll community uh also very widely the book of enoch was very widely used by early christians so for example the new testament author of the book of jude the epistle of jude quotes from the book of enoch even though it's not in the old testament as far as the christians are concerned so here's the quote in jude see the lord is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him and so that quotation then is the letter epistle of jude chapter one you know it's only one chapter long anyway verses 14 and 15 uh quoting first enoch or the book of enoch here uh chapter 1 verse 9. and you can kind of see again apocalypticism right so end times um however uh by the time we get to the fourth century by the time uh christianity becomes the state religion of the roman empire when uh they're getting down to business and formulating everything making creeds and also deciding on the cannon uh that's the time period when it started to be fall out of favor and so specifically both augustine and jerome who tended to not agree on many many things at all both agreed that enoch didn't didn't make their grade so the part of the problem here is is that the book contin contains stuff that uh mark it out to be written you know much much later than the then when enoch would have been alive so enoch uh as a person who is living the seventh generation from from adam uh this would essentially be the oldest by far and away the oldest book in the bible if it did make it into the bible because uh the rest of the the bible as it's now understood as far as augustine and jerome were concerned moses was the author of the of the pentateuch that's that also proves not to be the case now in other words those texts actually are written many many you know generations after when moses would have lived but enoch is so much further back that this book would have been you know incredibly agent and so they don't find that credible so they just don't think it was written by enoch so they don't they question it as being authoritative it's not as much i don't think it's as much the content that there were that they're as worried about um the content is in fact one of the things that the real christians really liked about it and so they and so anyway so since they both didn't um think that enoch should be considered part of the canon and jerome was the person that was preparing the great latin translation of the text it ultimately did not and augustine was preparing the canon list it ultimately didn't make it into the canon meanwhile what ends up happening is there's places outside of the roman empire so the roman empire uh this is in the african part of the roman empire so there's egypt right and jerusalem the arabian peninsula the red sea the romans have trade with india and that trade is coming down from through egypt and uh also through petrol which is what wonderful place in jordan with all the rock palaces and everything so the um uh on the trade routes there is this kingdom called axum and so that's along the route right and so uh in the ethiopian kingdom of aksum so this is where ethiopia is now and it's also a precursor of ethiopia it grew kind of from in this first 10 centuries of the christian era originally the people there are like everybody else are pagans polytheists but the kingdom apparently there's indications was heavily influenced by judaism so there has been jewish spread ever since um at first exile in egypt and so that has come down to that and at some point anyway then anyway one of the kings in the fourth century at the same time as constantine the emperor constantine converted and became and started the process of christianizing the roman empire uh king izana the second converted to christianity in aksum it made the state religion so here so king izana here um his he has a tudor named fermentius that guy is from syria he's a phoenician or a serial phoenician and he uh later then becomes when he converts the king he becomes the first bishop of aksum so they start setting up a christian church there centered around a bishop uh the kingdom adopts christianity's estate religion in 328 oxim then is the very first state to use the symbol of the cross on its coinage so already in the 4th century there's a coin with the cross and so if we kind of have this early this is an early this is kind of a early bit accelerating to the modern divisions of christianity so anyway this is kind of europe africa asia and so we have the the split that we're pretty aware of between the latin west so the catholic west and the orthodox greek orthodox east that extends up into russia so russia's part of the greek orthodox tradition and then north south division here between the protestants and catholics but are all part of kind of the latin west then further east so beyond what's now turkey in syria in iraq and then beyond the persian empire into india and then down here in egypt and down into ethiopia there's the churches of the um the oriental orthodox churches and the churches of the east which even though it sounds a lot like eastern orthodox is not eastern orthodox it's more eastern so beyond the eastern orthodox you know when you start saying that the west is here then there's actually a lot of east you know the orient is very there's more and more orient right you just have to keep saying east east okay so of these divisions then protestant catholic eastern orthodox we're talking about then oriental orthodoxy and the churches of the east they're already divided uh from the churches of the west including the eastern orthodox of the greek orthodox churches over christology in the first couple centuries of these lost christianities people have very different answers to the question we're monotheists so we think jesus is god but we're only there's only one god and jesus is praying to god so how does this kind of how does this all work right and so the ultimate formula that comes in the council of nicaea that constantine calls in the roman empire is you know that the father or creator is god that christ is god that this holy spirit is god but the father is not the holy spirit the holy spirit is not christ christ is not the father right so essentially the idea is one god but three persons and it's very very complicated and pretty much very few christians get it okay but let's say so that for the philosophy philosophically minded which uh ancient greeks were then there's a next question okay yeah now we have this idea that jesus is god but he was also a human so how what does that mean then does he have a nature where uh his real nature is that he's divine and that was always his nature even though he's in human uh form during his earthly ministry and that's what the churches of the east and historians say he's nature is that he's god but he looked like a human and acted like a human when he's when he's in that or does he have two equally balanced natures so is he both have a divine nature a fully divine nature and a fully human nature so that's difficult or does he have one nature only this christ nature which is both human and divine and so what's the answer for all protestants catholics in eastern orthodox it's the middle one but essentially especially nobody in the west ever got it so the special quality of the of jesus's that he's begotten the special quality of the spirit is that he proceeds and the special quality of the father is the creator right so in the gospel of john the formula works like this in the beginning was the logos in the beginning was the you know which is sometimes translated as the word and the word was with god and the word was god and what it's saying is that when it's with god it's with the creator so in other words his word was with the father the creator uh but the word also is god in the same way that the creator is god so the idea of it here then is that protestants catholics and the eastern orthodox agree in that the way where this thing works is diophasitism which is to say jesus is fully human fully divine possessing divine nature and human nature in harmony so that's how they work it out not so according to the oriental orthodox and the churches of the east so the oriental orthodox are jesus has one nature that is human and divine it's not seem like that's too much different but it's enough for them to split apart and same thing the divine nature overwhelms the human nature so that's nestorianism so that's this kind of syrian and uh chaldean churches the churches that go off into india and and the mongol empire and this is the churches in egypt and then down into ethiopia what ends up happening then is uh in the 7th and 8th centuries islam emerges out of the arabian peninsula and conquers the whole persian empire and then also the portions of the east roman empire that are not in union with constantinople so these guys in fact are being persecuted like crazy by the uh by their roman or byzantine leaders uh for their kind of harris their views of christianity are seemed deemed as heretical the muslims are very happy they're like we don't care what you what's the difference between what you're saying you know you're all not believing the correct way anyway because there's only one god there's not three gods so anyway what ends up happening then is there's this latin west and the greek east and they're quite cut off then right from this christian ethiopian kingdom so uh the oriental orthodox churches so this is essentially ethiopian church the eritrean church and then the coptic church which exists under egyptian rule so maybe 10 of the egyptian population now has continued to be christian uh to this day i mean so the ethiopian orthodox church develops on its own traditions and these are some pretty cool traditions for example they have these uh there's maybe 100 different this is one of the nicest ones but anyway 100 different monolithic churches which are carved out of like one rock so you can kind of see the rock all around here that's been carved away this is not like built out of rocks this is just one rock so from the 13th century so from the middle ages onward the king of the ethiopia claimed dissent from a guy a traditional guy or a legendary figure called menelek the first who is said to have been then the son of king solomon and the queen of sheba and so the queen of sheba is her in turn a legendary character in the from the book of kings in the old testament so the idea is according to the ethiopian tradition is is that they had a tryst as solomon was want to do especially towards the end when he had 100 pagan wives and all this kind of thing and so then the queen of sheba went back to sheba which is across the red sea from aksum and essentially uh you know which is to say yemen and the axonite kingdom included yemen at a certain point and so they actually you know included both sides of the red sea and they they more or less say queen of sheba comes back and her child is the the ultimate legendary heir or founder or whatever of the dynasty that becomes the ethiopian royal dynasty okay another thing they got so this is oxen the city of oxen in ethiopia this is a part of the the central church the cathedral of our lady mary of zion then there's a little chapel here that's the chapel of the tablet that's the table nobody's allowed to go to into except for the top ethiopian clergy because inside there is kept according to the ethiopian church the ark of the covenant okay and then of course they have their own bible so they're cut off they're not part of these debates that are happening in the latin west with augustine and jerome about what should be in the bible and what shouldn't and so they have the same bible all the books that were in the septuagint so another is the same as the greek orthodox and also the catholics but they also then have five additional books the book of enoch the book of jubilees and three ethiopian books of maccabees which are different from the ethio the other books of maccabees that exist in the apocrypha okay so to actually get to the topic of enoch who was enoch um uh enoch is one of the legendary figures from that what i call the baguettes section of genesis so if so-and-so begets so-and-so we get so-and-so and so he's included in the lineage from adam to noah which is to say after the canaan able story and before the flood story and so he's listed as the seventh from adam and is the great grandfather of noah so if we're going to do a one of the genealogy chart used you know from those begets adam and eve seth enosh keenan mahalia jared uh enoch is right here methuselah lamech noah and then noah's three sons hem sham and japa so i'll just read this is what the begets sound like so this is genesis 5 18 and 20. when jared had lived 162 years he became the father of enoch jared lived after the birth of enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters thus all the days of jared were 962 years and he died and so almost all of the baguettes go like that so the formula for every one of these guys we don't know anything more about them almost than that and we'll have a formula the number of years is different for each one of them but more or less that's how they all go except for this one when enoch had lived 65 years he became the father of methuselah enoch walked with god after the birth of methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters thus all the days of enoch were 365 years so much less enoch walked with god then he was no more because god took him that's all we got but that all by itself you can imagine in a whole list of begets where everybody's living all these thousand years long and yet we don't have any details of their lives at all until suddenly boom you know here we have uh he guy who lives only a much shorter time he walks with god and then he's no more because god took him so that has inspired a lot of let's say speculation and ultimately fan fiction so the book of enoch as we have it as divided into five sections or books and these probably are originally different texts so probably what's happened is that there's an editor who has put together a bunch of unique material uh and in some cases maybe we're putting some of the unique material together and maybe expanded it to make another portion of the book so what we have are called the book of watchers the book of similitudes or parables the book of astronomical writings the book of dream vision and the book of the epistle of enoch and these are different you know kind of in order the different chapters and the oldest parts here may be written as early as the fourth or third century bc and so that's like the book of washers and this book of astronomical writings and then the more recent stuff then uh would have been right in the first century let's say or in the mat in the later maccabean period and so again there are prophecies about the maccabean revolt that are very very specific just like happens in daniel and that's why we can date daniel so cl so clearly because it it tracks the book of daniel tracks everything that happens exactly in the maccabean history all the way up until one a particular moment and then it goes wildly wrong so it gets the next part completely wrong it makes very specific errors very immediately after and so we can date daniel very clearly to when it was written right right up to here after that it was written and then it was wrong you know so essentially that's how we date daniel likewise here we can do that with enoch which is written parts of it anyway this book of the dream vision is predict making similar kinds of apocalyptic traditions i'm sorry apocalyptic predictions just like are in the book of daniel okay so we want to look at a couple little portions of the text and so one of the things that i first was always drawn to there's an expansion of this flood story so one of the few stories that exists in genesis about the time period before noah and so there is an explanation in genesis it's kind of brief and again we don't really understand what it's about um and that kind of begs for an expansion there's a vast expansion of that in the book of enoch that explains what's going on chapter six and it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters and the angels the children of the heaven saw and lusted after them and said to one another come let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children and sem jazza who was their leader said unto them i fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed and i alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin and they all answered him and said let us all swear and oath and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing then swear they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it and there were in all 200 who descended in the days of jared on the summit of mount hermon and they called it mount hermon because they'd sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it and these are the names of their leaders simayas batterell ananelle zacchael samso pl saturelle tyrell john gile sariel these are their chiefs of tens chapter seven and all the others together with them took unto themselves wives each chose for himself one and they began to go in unto them and defile themselves with them and they taught them charms and enchantments in the cutting of roots and made them acquainted with plants and they became pregnant and they bear great giants whose height was three thousand els who consumed the acquisitions of men and when men could no longer sustain them the giants turned against them and devoured mankind and they began to sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish and to devour one another's flesh and drink the blood then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones chapter eight and azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them and bracelets and ornaments and the use of antimony and the beautifying of the eyelids and all kinds of costly stones and all coloring tinctures and there arose much godlessness and they committed fornication and they were led astray and became corrupt in all their ways sem jazza taught enchantments and root cuttings amaros the resolving of enchantments iraqi jail taught astrology kokobel the constellations ezekiel the knowledge of the clouds arachiel the signs of the earth shamsiel the signs of the sun and sariel the course of the moon and as men perished they cried and their cry went up to heaven chapter nine and then michael uriel raphael and gabriel looked down from heaven and saw much blood being shed upon the earth and all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth and they said one to another the earth made without inhabitant cries the voice of their crying up to the gates of heaven and now to you the holy ones of heaven the souls of men make their suit saying bring our cause before the most high and they said to the lord of the ages lord of lords god of gods king of kings and god of the ages the throne of thy glory standeth unto all the generations of the ages and thy name holy and glorious and blessed unto all ages thou has made all things and power over all things hast thou and all things are naked and open in thy sight and thou seest all things and nothing can hide itself from thee thou seest what as they have done who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were preserved in heaven which men were striving to learn and sem jazza to whom thou has given authority to bear rule over his associates and they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth and have slept with the women and have defiled themselves and revealed to them all kinds of sins and the women have borne giants and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousness and so this is the origin for example in the in the genesis story of you know the like people like goliath right so giants in the earth so god sends then um the archangel uriel to warn noah and his family of the coming flood and he sends michael and the other archangels to go after these fallen angels to bind them right and cast them into the pit and so anyway so this is a big expansion of a couple verses in genesis so one of the things that this gives us though you know is this angelology and actually these names of the four archangels so this is a christian church that has michael gabriel i'm sorry michael it's in the order here uriel michael gabriel and raphael right and so there there they are in in the in the stained glass and so this is becomes a very important source for angelology the book of enoch so for these archangels michael gabriel raphael and uriel they're only make they only make it into the um hebrew bible michael gabriel and raphael in the book of daniel here and then raphael is in the book of tobit which is actually one of the neutral canonical books of the apocrypha so it isn't actually in the tenoch right and so daniel again you can see this is again this one of this this late book uh the related book a book where they have these kind of apocryphal uh or rather apocalyptic concerns this is also uh really on the minds of the christians and so uh michael and gabriel have pretty important roles in in the christian new testament so this also then becomes as people kind of created this kind of uh angels of the four corners of the earth uh the of the four elements earth fire and water of the cardinal directions of time and everything like that then they associate um you know again the angels with those different points in various kinds of mysticism and also magic practices and other things like that it's also then a source of this demonology right so we have all these names of demons so behold the names of those fallen angels and these are the names the first of them is sam jazza the second is articuefa the third is our men the fourth is kookabell you know and so on and so forth so we have lots and lots of names of devils that also then get mined for um black magic right and sorcery and things like that and part of the ideas of even the later mythologies of of and elaborations of the stories of hell and things chapter 69 and the third was named gadrial he it is who showed the children of men all the blows of death and he led astray eve and showed the weapons of death to the sons of men the shield and the coat of male and the sword for battle and all the weapons of death to the children of men and from his hand they have proceeded against those who dwell on the earth from that day and forevermore and the fourth was named penemue he taught the children of men the bitter and the sweet and he taught them all the secrets of their wisdom and he instructed mankind in writing with ink and paper and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day for men were not created for such a purpose to give confirmation to their good faith with pen and ink it's also and one of the reasons why it was so important to early christians it's also a big source of messianicism and this was also why they elected qumran so the dead sea scrolls people are very much people on the outs with the uh contemporary authorities in jerusalem they've been kicked out of being able to be the priests in jerusalem and they looking forward to a day when they and their interpretation and their calendar and every other one of these kind of ideas about purity uh when a a massive apocalyptic event will occur and they will be the righteous ones that are going to be restored in a new jerusalem and a new temple messianic figures that are coming with that chapter 46 and there i saw one who had a head of gaze and his head was white like wool and with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man and his face was full of graciousness like one of the holy angels i asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things concerning that son of man who he was and whence he was and why he went with the head of days and he answered and said unto me this is the son of man who hath righteousness with whom dwelleth righteousness and who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden because the lord of spirits hath chosen him and whose lot hath the preeminence before the lord of spirits in uprightness forever chapter 51 and in those days shall the earth also give back that which has been entrusted to it and sheol also shall give back that which it has received and hell shall give back that which it owes for in those days the elect one shall arise and he shall choose the righteous and holy from among them for the day has drawn nigh that they should be saved and the elect one shall in those days sit on my throne and his mouth shall pour forth all the secrets of wisdom and counsel for the lord of spirits hath given them to him and hath glorified him you know uh why this you know was something that early christians kind of read and looked forward to and they saw in terms of their understanding of of of jesus as as the messiah or as the greek version for that is christ um why they're kind of then seeing you know in the the title um in the gospels jesus frequently uses then is uh calls himself by the title son of man right the son of man it says this from that um anyway this idea of again an apocalyptic future uh and it's about the salvation and the where the righteous are vindicated there's actually an amazing amount to this book it's a very um substantial it's a long book and it's had a very long reach so it has affected even though it didn't make it into the canon in the christian west it actually has um uh ended up um influencing our ideas about angels and demons and it also influenced uh it was also very characteristic of second temple jewish thought at least among the apocalyptic groups out of which christianity emerged and so when we go back and we look at these things we can kind of see christianity wasn't such a bizarre thing how did this thing come out of the root it's actually there is this stream that exists um obviously the rabbinic proto-rabbinic part is also there too and there's already this division that happens between the two religions even before uh even before the candidates are formed [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Space AI

Views: 90,383

Keywords: Enoch, apocalypse, Ethiopia, Enoc, canon, scripture, bible

Id: RmgjmyuyNhE

Length: 54min 50sec (3290 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 16 2021