Cultish: The Book of Enoch - Discerning Fact from Fiction

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good maybe you should man I think uh you can't even see my background color it turned off my light has been breaking so I had a blue light on and and it just it just broke so I'm just not going to keep changing the colors but also guys you'll notice that Jeremiah Roberts uh is not here with me today but that's okay he's getting ready for his wife who is giving birth to their first child so there we go Wes has got his red light on praise God for that and how have you been man I've been good it's been a very busy season uh kind of a crazy season but you know God is good despite it all still have many many blessings to uh be thankful for um we even had Canadian Thanksgiving up here in Canada so we had a whole day devoted to it so we're funny like that we don't do Thanksgiving when um the rest of the world or at least America that is the rest of the world right does it so um yeah we we had ours uh last month so that was or this month it's still October I don't know I don't know what month it is but yeah yeah doing doing well despite a full schedule and and many uh many things to to keep track of wow well thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us while you are very busy I know this is going to be really edifying uh for the Saints and for individuals in uh General who are just stumbling upon this podcast you can always go to the cultis show.com check out all of our other episodes and yeah we're we're going to get into it we're going to get into the Book of Enoch it's man this is a topic that we've been wanting to discuss for the longest time but we've waited until we've had the best person that can talk with us about it so the Book of Enoch we need to start off at a basic point for our listeners so we can build uh you know the way we should look at this book uh when the book was written things of that nature let's so let's start off with this is Book of Enoch what type of literature is it Wes oh that's a good question yeah the Book of Enoch is apocalyptic literature so if you're thinking of the Book of Revelation then the Book of Enoch kind of fits into that genre it's got you know some crazy themes to it and apocalyptic literature was was not an unusual form of literature in sort of ancient Judaism the the early Jews had a lot more of a framework than we do you know we read the book of Revelation and we see you know these motifs of a great battle and you know dragons and and numerology and and that kind of stuff or at least with like numbers like 66 mark of the beast and uh we don't really have a frame of reference for it but ancient Judaism did and the Book of Enoch and a number of other key texts from the intertestamental period that period that falls between the gap of the Old Testament and New Testament it The Book of Enoch falls into that as well so it's h got some pretty epic themes to it but that is kind of part for the course for the kind of writing that it is yeah absolutely let's get your uh P pastoral hat on real quick uh Wes like what are what are the rules for interpreting apocalyptic literature and what are the dangers uh when people are not following uh these C uh the sets of hermeneutic principles uh interpreting apocal apocalyptic literature yeah that's a that's a good way of putting it what's my like pastoral perspective on that I think I would say you know apocalyptic literature is full of symbolism and one thing to remember about apocalyptic literature is that it's highly symbolic and the symbolic nature is not necessarily something we might be as familiar with as the ancient world was like I said before and part of the reason for that symbolism is to evoke emotion about the message and for something like the Book of Revelation it's almost like a coded message because you're trying to communicate something to your audience that maybe you don't want a certain group of people maybe the Romans to know about and so you're going to you're going to phrase things or portray things in certain ways and so when you read apocal apocalyptic literature one of the ways that I think we need to or the things we need to pay attention to is paying special attention to symbolism and emotion that it's intended to evoke you know what is the the kind of strong motifs of battle and war or um Bloodshed or what is that trying to pull from from um the reader in that sense so I would say pay attention to the symbolism also don't forget that there was an original audience you are the secondary audience you know this might be useful for interpreting all scripture right all scripture is written for you but it's not written to you and so that's important to keep in mind that you you do have the reality that when Jesus is talking to the Sadducees he holds them account to account as if when they read the scripture God is speaking to them directly but at the same time there is an original audience and so understanding that original audience is only going to help you better understand what is really being said and so if the original audience for example um would have had certain symbols and references stand out to them then it's important to know okay what might that be so even like I mentioned before something like the mark of the beast might be the well most well-known symbol that's potentially even misunderstood today right you know they're all sorts of interpretations is it microchips is it this is it that you know we're so far removed from some of these contexts both in terms of time and in terms of culture that a lot of symbolism is just simply lost on us and so we need to be careful not to just transplant apocal apocalyptic literature into our own culture and historical setting but maybe even try to dig into okay what is the literature what how would it have been understood how would it have been portrayed I think like we would for the gospels or the Epistles as well or even you know some of the Old Testament historical books but there might be an added layer of that with apocalyptic literature as well because there's there's a lot going on with it um the other thing I'd say is don't overanalyze the symbols so in a ilar way since we know that these writings aspects of it maybe not all of it but aspects of it are very symbolic it's easy to get lost in the details and try to figure out exactly what everything is you know okay what did what is this creature what does it portray what what's the hidden meaning well I think uh we can ask those questions but which parts might have been identified or you know interpret the the clear or the the confusing by the clear because many of the details they certainly do have meaning some of which we can still make reasonable inferences about but others require a little bit more you know stepping back and going okay there's something here that I as a 21st century reader might not be getting at so uh those are simple things that I would say I would also say you know there are men and women Godly men and women throughout the last two Millennia who have really devoted their lives to interpreting scripture and so we have the benefit of the internet of Bible Software of commentaries being published for uh relatively reasonable prices um and so there's a lot of great commentaries on you know apocalyptic literature uh The Book of Revelation or just the genre in general and and we can we we have the benefit I think the re forers would have been you know their minds would have been blown at the amount of access to information that we have in your pockets my my iPhone has more accessible information than someone like John Calvin did in the entire libraries that he would have studied in and so um we need to make sure that we're also relying on or at least you know critically evaluating scholarship that has devoted themselves to reading the languages understanding the context we don't have to agree with everything that's said but using that as a resource that is accessible to us and that can genuinely help us understand what's going on what's up everybody it's the super sluth here letting you know that you can go to shop csh.bz and we're just like whoa you're wearing the shirt I'm wearing the shirt you could wear the shirt too go to shops.com today and get your exclusive coltish merch talk to you later guys that's good man when I think of original audience and I'm trying to think in the context of the Book of Enoch I find it interesting that uh we'll probably get into it later I'm of course going to ask you on uh dating of the Book of Enoch but from what I've looked up uh it's around the 3rd Century BC uh well Enoch was to have lived thousands of years before that and if it was to audience Enoch was speaking to that means when it was written uh we already have a I don't even know how many years gap between what the original audience would have been it sounds like they would have been actually the secondary audience at that time uh for the Book of Enoch if it were to come from uh Enoch and with apocalyptic literature especially like the Book of Revelation when we're talking about the mark of the beast like you said it's good to look interpret to the unclear passages with the clear and use Toto script Torah as a frame like looking at all of scripture when I see phrases about uh the mark of the beast on your hand and on your forehead I think back to uh Deuteronomy when it's talking about how we're supposed to love the Lord through all our heart uh soul and strength right and that we would bind the words of God essentially on our hands and on our foreheads talking about a Devotion to God or this Mark of the Beast would be full devotion uh in a sense uh in terms of like uh rules for interpreting apoc apocalyptic literature I know that there's people who hold different different uh interpretations of the Book of Revelation than I would but what do you think about that in terms of the Book of Enoch and the original audience who was that supposed to be yeah that's that's a really great way of putting it and especially framing it in the context of you know what what else can scripture tell us about the particular things that we're seeing within other books of scripture now obviously Enoch um we wouldn't consider scripture but but looking at similar literature that would have been kind of in the the same sphere reference um when we're talking about Enoch I I would agree with you I think we're not talking about the the time frame of the Enoch that's mentioned in Genesis you know Enoch uh was mentioned in Genesis he's the grandfather of Noah now nothing we have in terms of the literary evidence puts what we would call Enoch or particularly within scholarship the first Enoch is the is the the applicable one there are actually three but uh it doesn't go back that far and it's not necessarily attributed to Enoch being the author but it is a book about Enoch so think of the Book of Joshua in the Bible the Book of Joshua isn't claimed to be written by Joshua but it's about Joshua and sort of his exploits that's that's kind of what we're seeing when we we talk about um Enoch the and I would agree with you I think the writing itself doesn't really go older than about the 400s BC and even that we're kind of pushing it to its utter like it's it's far this back level some sections of it that that exist today were actually written after the time of Jesus and so the the thing with Enoch is that it's a shmorgishborg it's kind of a collection of a number of different sources that all we believe are the same writing and so we publish it it's published if you if you buy you know you can buy a copy of the Book of Enoch I I have a couple different translations um if you buy one it's going to be at least the the more modern versions going to be kind of a an amalgamation of those now what what I think we can say is that Enoch was written during the helenistic period of Judaism that's starting at about 200 years before Jesus and many ancient Biblical characters become the subject of extra biblical apocryph APO apocryphal easy for me to say literature in in this time and that's what we call the pseudepigrapha so pseudo in Greek means false and graphic means writing so it's like think of a pseudonym right it's a it's a name that's not your own name it's a name that you're using it's a false name um pseudograph literature is kind of the same thing it's literature that's ascribed to certain people but it's unclear as to whether the the ancient Jews believed wholeheartedly that this literature actually was coming from that individual um we have some that go even back as far as talking about Adam um within the pseud the uh kind of intertestamental uh apocryphal literature the pseud graphical literature and so it's not that it's not that all of these writings were wholeheartedly believed to have been written by these individuals but they they do fall into this collection of early Jewish literature that often has been attributed to authors that at least today we know we're not the original authors so what we do have can trace to the earliest portions um that we call First Enoch uh that that exist in Aramaic um both in language and in the style are represented representative of the community of those who are coming back from Israel immediately after the Babylonian exile so the Babylonian exile takes place between 597 and 538 ad or sorry BC rather right and so that's what you get you get that story we get that in some of the prophets in in the Bible um with you know Jeremiah and they're coming back and they're rebuilding the temple and then there's this period where you know after Malachi scripture stops but then you the Jews are still writing things and that's where you get some of these other writings that are written in some are in Aramaic a lot of them are in Greek um and uh that has to do with you know just kind of what was happening in that period yeah bring us bring us back to uh the diaspora right like the the separation the spreading out of uh the Jews in that period uh what was going on within Judaism uh in general I know you talked about it a little bit but uh go go into like a little bit more indepth uh study on the diaspora real quick yeah so Israel they they uh at least those who were uh sent to Babylon they are able to come back to Jerusalem you know they rebuild Israel this to a certain degree Israel is still a northern and southern Empire um so they're split uh and you have Judah and then you have kind of the other areas of Israel but Israel was actually under the control of the Persian Empire uh not long after that so about between you know the 530s to the 330s BC and the Persians allowed the Jews to practice their religion with little interference they they were pretty good um in terms of you know they were technically ruling over Israel at that time but they were allowed to rebuild the Temple and worship in the temple right we get that mentioned in 2 Chronicles 36 and Ezra um and then this span of time includes the 100 Years of the Old Testament period and about the first hundred years of the inter testamental period so this time is relatively peaceful there's there's not that much going on but prior to the intertestamental period Alexander the Great defeats Darius of Persia and heniz the world in in in that everything becomes basically Greek um and Alexander was a student of Aristotle and was pretty well educated in Greek philosophy and politics but he was also kind of Multicultural in the sense that he he allowed what was going on in a lot of the states to happen um for example when uh I was in Egypt back in July uh when I was in Luxor and I was in the one of the temple well the main temple in Luxor there is actually a shrine to Alexander the Great that he built in there in the the Temple of raw um where he depicts himself as an Egyptian pharaoh being blessed by the Egyptian gods and and it's very much like there's some Greek iconography but if you didn't know you would have just thought because of the hieroglyphics and everything else that you know this is ancient Egyptian but he really takes on these rules as he's ruling over but he's also he's not eradicating the culture he's he's allowing certain things to just take place and and within that the Hebrew Old Testament you know as people who were Jews especially as they were spread out throughout the ancient world because there was a a big population of Jews in places is like Egypt I mean that's why Jesus and his family when they're you know in the in the the Christmas story they flee Egypt it's because there was a a pretty good population of Jews in places like Alexandria and elephantine and and so they were eventually you know over the decades as um the Greek Empire took over the ancient world as Alexander the Great's power kind of spread they started to speak Greek and so the Old Testament was translated into Greek and this is what we call the Septuagint and this is what a good portion of the New Testament authors are quoting not all the time but I would say most of the time they're quoting a body of literature that are is one stream there are actually multiple streams but is one mainstream of the Greek translation of the Old Testament and so that's a big thing that happens um Alexander the Great allowed for for Religious Freedom for the Jews but he strongly promoted Greek Lifestyles and this is why you get the development that we see in the New Testament of uh when we start to get see the sects of Judaism of Pharisees and Sadducees and um New Testament doesn't talk about essin but they're another one uh or even the zealots like these are all reactions towards the first heniz and the the the Greek ification of the uh Jewish culture and kind of reactions towards and against there's there's this this influx of heniz and and that really influences um what the Jews think about how they should worship now after Alexander died Judea were Judea was ruled by a number of successors and that was kind of it came to its head with the sald Empire of Antiochus epiphanies because Antiochus was was not like kind of the previous Persians and Greeks uh Greeks at least under Alexander the Great and he was not about religious freedom and so around 167 BC he overthrows the right line of the priesthood of the Jews he Slaughters them and he desecrates the temple and he actually what he does is he he sacrifices a pig to Zeus on the altar in the the temple in Jerusalem and totally desecrates that you know any talk about a um about a uh uh what's the term in in Mark um 3:14 when it it talks about the uh um let me see the the abomination of desolation yeah so so that when when that term is used what would have been in the mind of of the the Jew in that day would have been that you know what what's worse than a pagan King stomping into not just the the court of the Gentiles but right into the the place before the holy of holies and sacrificing a pig an unclean animal on the altar of Yahweh to Zeus well that's you know that that takes the cake and so that really sets the stage of uh a lot of resistance in um for the Jews there's some pretty brutal descriptions of people being um killed uh during that time and this is where you get the if if you've heard of the the intertestamental dudo canonical books of the mccabes first and second mccabes this is what that's describing yeah Judas macabus and the has manans they Revolt they go and they restore the temple and that's the story of Hanukkah or the Feast of dedication you know Jesus goes to Jerusalem and he celebrates the Feast of dedication uh dedication of the temple rededication of the temple and that's that's Hanukkah that's the period of the mban Revolt um but that it was a pretty bloody time uh but once that's reestablished you know you have kind of a reestablishment of the Jewish system of uh worship and um the Priestly order and that starts to come back into practice and then not long before Jesus around 63 BC Pompei of Rome conquers Israel and puts Judea under control of the Caesars and this eventually led to Herod being made the king of Judah by the Roman emperor empire and the Senate and this is the time frame leading up to Jesus where you have have you know the politics of Taxation and you have this kind of mixing of of um the complication even more so from the hellenization of Judaism into like the romanization of Judaism and that leads right up to the time when Jesus comes on the scene and you got the New Testament but you have this succession of you know the Persians the Greeks the um the solids and uh eventually the Romans man so so thinking about uh The Book of Enoch in the intertestamental period because I know we're uh it's like a 480 threeyear Gap where the Bible is silent on history and I think it's extremely important for us to understand what was going on during that time frame especially when that's when The Book of Enoch came to be right apocalyptic literature listen to what was going on within Judaism at that time getting conquered by these people conquered by those people uh that's a big deal uh qu quick question for you I'm just thinking off the top of my head was The Book of Enoch like the only apocalyptic literature at that time or were Jews uh viewing Daniel as apocalyptic literature at this time as well oh yeah definitely Daniel would would certainly have been considered apocalyptic literature and there are other um groups of sort of sectarian apocalyptic literature so the the the group that was in kumran where we get the Dead Sea srels from um I mean we we assume a lot of those are from the group called The Essen we don't know 100% but it's a pretty good guess because they were uh separatists and they they went out in the desert and and did their thing there and and that's where we find a lot of the documents but they had a document called the war scroll which was also very very apocalyptic um full of a lot of motifs that you both see in the Book of Enoch and in Daniel and in Revelation um great battles uh the battle of the children of light versus the b battle of the children of Darkness um you know he had these motif thiefs and so apocalyptic literature and in that sense a lot of what's going on there with those groups is that this is a description and and even like an end times apocalyptic description but what it is is it's it's a lot of the themes of apocalyptic literature is simply God wins you know there's going to be a great battle and it's going to be between evil and good and guess what God wins and we see that in Revelation as well right um and and that that was kind of it was this hopeg giving picture of you know sometimes it takes great pain and suffering to get to Great Triumph but in the end despite the pain and the suffering and the the turmoil God is still in control God's armies are going to win and God's people are going to be Vindicated what's up everybody if you are blessed by this content and you want to support the gospel's proclamation to the Cults while equipping the church to Combat Deception then come join us and become a coltish all access member you will get an adree experience and exclusive content like coltish the water cooler where you hang out with Jeremiah and myself as we go live and interact with all of our members you'll also get early release of episodes 1 to two weeks early on top of all of that there's also cultish the aftermath it's an after show commentary where we get to say all the things that they won't let us on top of that you get all of the other training on apologia studios.com come be one of us head over to to the cultist show.com or follow the link in the show notes and click the join button directly support the work of this ministry as the mission is completely funded by you our listener and that's good stuff I mean if I were someone who was living uh within the intertestamental period And I was familiar with Daniel by God's grace if I was I would be expecting something to be happening soon you know uh especially since we would be living in that time of Silence that's uh referenced in Malachi 453 6 when I when I think about the Book of Enoch one thing that makes my ears get like tickled a little bit is understanding that God said he wasn't going to speak at that time until uh that one Prophet would come to make straight the way of the Lord in the path of the Wilderness right John the Baptist so I I would be thinking personally that I couldn't have scripture come about during that time right so when I'm thinking about the Book of Enoch uh I I wouldn't want to consider it scripture especially it's written during the time of the inter Testament intertestamental period is that does that logically flow or are there issues with that yeah I would agree I would say it's sometimes called the 400 years of Silence it wasn't silent in the sense that there was a lot going on and there was actually a lot being written by the Jews but the silence is that nobody is speaking with a thus sayith the Lord's statement and in that sense the the the nature of scripture although clearly from the expect that you see in the New Testament um because they're expecting something to happen exactly like you said they're expecting God to break into history and to do something and so in that sense I think they're expecting also scripture to be written because the ex the understanding of scripture in the Jewish mindset was that you know the promises and the Covenant of God are immediately followed up by writings and so in that sense I think you know the New Testament authors very well have might might have thought they were writing scripture because they have the new the new the New Testament amen and so where are the writings and so I think in that sense it would have been very organic for them to write but but I think I think what you said is exactly right there was this period of time where they were waiting and there were things being written but the Jewish people never considered them scripture so even though there was more of a sense of an open Cannon you know we have a closed Cannon of scripture today they had a sense of an open Cannon their Cannon actually I don't know if you you know the center but uh the Jewish tanak the Torah the Nim and the Kim what we call the Old Testament ends with a different book than ours ours ends with Malachi the the if you get a Jewish publication of the scriptures um whether in Hebrew or in English it's going to end with Chronicles now we we divide it up into first and second chronicles but they divide it up and they end with Chronicles for the very reason that they're waiting for the son of David to come so it ends with the expectation that we're waiting for the king we're waiting for mssiah we're waiting for the Messiah and so um in that sense there was this very palpable expectation and even though you did have you know even apocalyptic literature being written uh when we get to the first century and we get individuals like Josephus and Pho and they're talking about what books are scripture they're not including the other ones they're they're not including the books that um were written in this time that you know we can call the uh sometimes it's called the Apocrypha formal or the dud canonical books um but they have they they list them differently because the the Jewish Canon groups them differently they group the prophets together and we split them up and things like that uh but essentially the Hebrew Old Testament Canon is exactly what we see in the Protestant Old Testament Cannon and it didn't include Enoch even though Enoch was and could have very well been a very influential and a very well-known writing in the intertestamental period even leading up into the time of Jesus yeah I mean it it makes sense I if I were alive back then I probably would have been reading it uh myself I mean grabbing things from Genesis 6 or in Daniel talking about the Watchers really elusive Concepts and then like hearing a big elaboration on them would be really gripping right and then uh also using like an apocalyptic narrative with that I mean of course uh people are going to uh like that so you said you said earlier that it's was hundreds of years of being formed with the Book of Enoch so who wrote it right and how did these people get how did it get compiled together yeah I don't know if I have a concrete answer necessarily for that um in terms of who wrote it we have some copies it the problem with it is that um we have copies in a number of different languages uh because some of it is in Aramaic uh some of it is in Copic which is the language of the ancient Egyptians some of it's in Greek and some of it's in Latin now depending on on when we're finding uh the manuscripts in fact the only full copy of first Enoch that we have in our possession is the 15th century manuscript that's written in ethiopic and that's very very late right the 15th century I mean that's you know Reformation period so that's that's not very early but what we've done if you get say a critical copy of I have mine actually just here right here the first Enoch um it's the translation and and it's it it's an attempt as some of the newer ones do to take all of those kind of fragmentary copies particularly the uh dead SE scroll Aramaic fragments and put them together in a critical addition like we would with the New Testament with all the different manuscripts that we have in the New Testament and come up with a text that's readable and then comparing that to the full text we have later and seeing you know uh what What's a clear development within the text over time because that happens that happens with all texts it happened with the New Testament as well later manuscripts get bigger because know people start instead of just writing Jesus they start writing our Lord Jesus Christ and so the things like that where the text expands right so that that happened with the The Book of Enoch as well and so what we have now in modern critical editions is we have an attempt to trace the original text back but it really is a little bit trickier because we're dealing with an amalgam of different languages and portions from different time periods and so we can estimate what the earliest periods are but like I said before um some of those come from even around the time if not after Jesus right and so um they're it's kind of like a morish sporg like I I said previously right right so what the texts from uh The Book of Enoch that were found in kumran and what else also was found in kumran because a lot of people will use uh arguments when thinking about the Book of Enoch and they're like well maybe it was inspired because it was actually found within uh the Dead Sea Scrolls but there's a lot of different texts that were found within the Dead Sea Scrolls that we don't consider uh scripture can you can you go into that a little bit Yeah I uh I'll be a little bit self- serving and I'll say uh I'll mention that I I actually have an infographic on my website um at wesle half.com that that goes through the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves because the Dead Sea Scrolls it's kind of an umbrella term it's kind of like although not 100% analogous I mentioned the septan before that's also an umbrella term uh of you know a number of different just translation literature of of Greek stuff so it's kind of hard to say you know well the the Sean says this sepian says that well okay but we're thinking it of it as a a single bound volume and that's not how would have been understood in the ancient world but um the the deadsy Scrolls or the the kumran um Community uh is is it's a group of about 970 Scrolls that's assembled from more than 10,000 fragments that were found in and around the dead Seas so there are I think seven different sites um one at Jericho and then then uh there's caves 1 through 11 which are on the North End of the Dead Sea and then there's marbat and GTI naral he and Masada um I think that adds up to seven may maybe I I need to I mean i' lots of degrees none of them are in math so forgive me um and so what we have with those is kind of an umbrella group of literature we're not entirely sure who wrote or copied or even sto sted what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls a bunch of it could have just been you know a Jewish sectarian groups the biggest one as I mentioned before would have been the essin uh but along with every book of the Old Testament except for Esther um you have the Book of Enoch you have the book of jubilees Tobit sirak then you have the one I mentioned before the war scroll and then you have a blessing scroll and a community scroll and you even a treasure map there's a a really interesting copy of um all of them are either parchment or Papyrus except for one that's referred to as the Copper Scroll hold on I I can't I can't go let that get over a treasure map has anyone ever discovered anything from this treasure map and why did why have I never heard of this treasure map before I'm so sorry but I need to hear about it a little bit more yeah so the Copper Scroll uh lists I believe it's 64 or 63 locations that are said to have caches of silver and gold in them and it's on it's written on a very thin piece of copper um that's kind of been ruled up and there have been attempts to to try to decipher it and and find these caches but as far as I'm aware nobody has actually found them but it is part of this group that we call the Dead Sea Scrolls um cuz it was is found in and around the the caves of the dead dead sea um area yeah yeah wow was like Solomon's gold or something like that yeah maybe I mean I I don't know exactly um I'm I'm not attempting to decipher it and and go out into the desert to find anything you need to but that's awesome yeah maybe maybe I'll put my uh put my STS in back on and get a get a plane to the Middle East I hear it's a peaceful place right now so should be good let's wait a little bit before go out and Indian Jones that Copper Scroll okay getting back into what you were saying I apologize no that's okay I was just going to say the vast majority are in Hebrew about 75% of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew but a bunch of them are in Aramaic and a bunch of them are in Greek so they spend um a time that is approximately the the third Century to the first century as well there are some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are uh are contemporary with with Jesus and and most of them were found in the 1950s um but the even as recently as 2021 there have been some in in uh Nal he in the bar ccka caves that they discovered what really were pieces of Scrolls that we had before but they were just fragments that we we didn't have up until this point but that's where the oldest fragments of what we're talking about today of Enoch come from they come from this group that was probably used and the essenes are if it is the essenes that we using them do in fact seem to hold them in pretty high regard in terms of the Book of Enoch um now they I don't think we should read too much into that that they kind of treat them in more of a scriptural perspective than we would and the reason I say that is because the essens were kind of an unusual group anyways they were an atic sectarian group who had basically concluded that the temple in Jerusalem and every Jew that was in Jerusalem uh was corrupted and was impure and so they went out into the desert they created their own Temple and did their own you know ritual sacrifices and stuff out there so they were kind of an oddball group anyways so they're interesting they give us a perspective on what Judaism in late Antiquity looked like but at the exact same time we can't read too much into the essenes as standard practice because they weren't they they were kind of off on their own doing their own thing they had very very strict dietary restrictions way more than even just what was prescribed in the Torah and um they were celibate and they had all sorts of things going on so sometimes you I I've read even recently people accusing Jesus of being a closet essene I mean Jesus he he would have failed every standard of the scenes um by talking to women and by talking to you know being around um being around lepers and eating what he eats and that kind of thing so so just because the essenes may or may not have held Enoch in a higher regard than other Jews I don't think we we should necessarily read too much into that right what what for parts of the what were the fragments of Book of Enoch found within the kumran uh caves was it all of it or just certain sections no it was it was just certain sections I believe the oldest section um was the Enoch's vision and the Book of the Watchers uh I know that uh there is a whole section uh that is very much later um but the the book of the Watchers is is pretty old and the Book of Parables but those those ones were were very fragmentary and so it's really piecing together the the copies that we have and comparing and contrasting and filling the spaces with the Greek copies the Coptic copies the Latin copies and the later ethiopic copy that really gets us to what we would call First Enoch but but some sections are genuinely old some like I said before um some people would push them as back as as 400 BC um that might be a little bit too old but they're they're definitely in and around the time of about 2 300 years before Christ yeah so I saw you hold up uh the that addition that you have that's the was that the hermania uh translation how do you pronounce that hermania yeah hermania is just a uh it's a a commentary publication so I mean I have other hermania commentaries um of of biblical books but it it's it's one of the more scholar or or like academic ones in ter in the secular world of New Testament ancient Christianity ancient Judaism scholarship and so this one yeah the hermania uh first Enoch was done by George melburg and James vandercam prominent Old Testament and Scholars of Judaism so it's it's really the main one because it takes into consideration all of the literature and provides what's called a textual apparatus so uh for the New Testament a modern translation of the New Testament is translated from what's called a critical edition of the Greek New Testament and the critical Edition takes into consideration you know the span of the New Testament manuscript tradition along with quotations from the early church and based on that you you get a text and you get a critical apparatus at the bottom and the critical apparatus highlights important textual variance or things of note and the hermenia commentary um in terms of its uh translation of first Enoch is really the first one to take into consideration the the bulk of the data and provide textual notes at the bottom yeah if you buy older ones they're almost they're almost guaranteed to be a translation of the ethiopic and like I said that's from the 15th century so in terms of analyzing the data of what okay well this is missing from you know the airic or this is appears to have been added in the L that those kind of things you're going to get that from the hermenia translation whereas you may not get it from other translations of Enoch yeah that makes sense and we're going to get into this into the second episode uh so definitely recommend this second episode that's coming up as well for everyone who's listening because we're going to go into uh biblical quotations quote unquote from uh The Book of Enoch uh did Jesus quote from the Book of Enoch and also a section of Enoch first Enoch 711 13-14 and the reason why I was asking about the translation is because there's a difference uh in Translation I believe there's a different translation from 1912 that interprets first Enoch 7113 through 14 differently which is extremely uh important uh to know the reason why you're talking about the scholarly uh translation that you hold there why it may differ from the other the other one I don't want to get into that yet but we will uh but before we're we're done with the end of the this episode there's a couple more questions uh what what is the uh how is the Book of Enoch broken up like what are the sections and what is the general outline of each section yeah so the The Book of Enoch is broken up into a number of books the book of the Watchers the book of The Parables the book of The Luminaries Enoch's dream Vision The Narrative Bridge the Epistle of Enoch the birth of Noah and the final Book of Enoch and it's really charting the the things or the events leading up to the flood and then a few things afterwards and where the Book of Enoch I think is actually very valuable and interesting in terms of its content is that it gives us this picture of Angel and demonology leading up to the New Testament you kind of if you read the Old Testament and then you just jump into the New Testament you realize that there's far more of a fleshed out understanding of the fact that there are demons around and that um I mean you certainly have uh the principalities and dominions and um you certainly have Angels seraphim and uh cherubim in the Old Testament and the devil uh is is a character you know pops up in places like job where he's a main character and so it's not like they're non-existent but there seems to be some switch that goes on within the intertestamental period And The Book of Enoch is is part of that the Book of Enoch is part of the discussion as to okay what are these things uh where do they come from how how do we think about them even how do we think of ideas like the Messiah how do we understand um God's presence and and Divinity and that that influenced really what would later develop into the Judaism in the cabala of the Middle Ages and then even some ideas of of uh Judaism within modern ritical Judaism where you have ideas of God's presence going out the chevro and the shikina of God's presence how does that how do we understand that within the fact that God rules and Reigns in heaven but is present here on Earth somehow and so there are all these pieces of literature that flesh these things out and the Book of Enoch is part of that it's part of that ongoing discussion although it's framed in the way of talking about you know Enoch and the the events leading up to the the flood and and some of these um creatures the Watchers and uh the Nephilim and those sorts of things that are mentioned in the Old Testament but but never really defined or understood uh I think what we can say about the content about the the different aspects of the breakdown of the Book of Enoch is that this is a period of Judaism where Jews are kind of they're they're coming up with descriptions and they're thinking more concretely about how how do we understand the supernatural realm and how does the supernatural realm operate in the world and so some of those discussions I I think um you know we can take with a grain of salt others Jesus at least seems to give Credence to when he talks about say in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in the idea of Hades um being you know you have Abraham's bosom and you have this place of pain and suffering that's part of this discussion as well the afterlife shaol the grave what what is that what is this what do the how do we understand these things and so Enoch fits into this slot of intertestamental literature that's not historical like first and second macbes which is describing things that are happening but is more con ceptual more theological and saying okay even though we're going to frame this in somewhat of a narrative and and have an apocalyptic aspect to it it's it's a discussion and a fleshing out of these ideas and I think that can be helpful especially when we get to Jesus I mean this might be putting the the cart before the horse but a lot of the things that Christianity is accused of of thinking of a Divine Messiah mesiah um we get Snippets of in Enoch and Enoch and a few other pieces of intertestamental L literature give lip service to the fact that the idea of the Messiah who is to come being or at least having Divine qualities is not foreign It's Not Unusual it's not something that was invented at the Council of NAA or imposed on Jesus there would have at least been a frame of reference to say okay well this is not it's not complete quackery in the first century Jewish mindset because there are groups that are discussing those sorts of things that the Messiah could very well be more than a man and have a have at least the prerogatives of more than a man drawing on Daniel chapter 7 and um I think which which Jesus very strongly alludes to when he's he's being interrogated uh in in the gospel of Mark yeah man that is that is good stuff it's it's very interesting uh stuff that I have trying to been at at the best of my ability to research uh lately in terms of thinking about how to uh understand the Book of Enoch I think it gives a great uh insight into the history of the world of the gospels at that time and I remember in our earlier conversations when we talked about historical context of the gospels and how we can date them and know that they're early uh part of it is because like you just stated like parts of the Book of Enoch are very early within the intertestamental period and the New Testament in some in some ways can capture some of the spirit of that age from uh even writings like The Book of Enoch that would be one way to have a earlier datings of the gospels right yeah yeah I think so man that's good stuff so uh in terms of why the Book of Enoch is not considered uh Canon can you give us like a brief historical uh overview were there ever debates about it were there ever councils held about the Book of Enoch or anything like that um I mean in terms of the the Jewish conversation the answer is no the Jews never considered it scripture uh I think we can see and we'll talk about this later from its Illusions and quotations within the New Testament that it was a very important piece of literature it but it's not until you get to the the early church period when they're having discussions as to what is and isn't Canon that uh the Enoch kind of comes into the the frame and part of the reason for that is because the Jews had one of the kind of criteria if you want to put it that way for what was and what was in scripture is that it had to have a Hebrew origination and Enoch did not have a Hebrew origination it wasn't that old and so uh they never they never included in the can and we never have apart from I mentioned those references um from The Kuman group that could allude to it being considered scriptural uh the mainstream Jews the Jews that were living in Jerusalem the at least the Jews that were writing in terms of the groups like uh the ones I mentioned before Josephus Pho when they talk about scripture they they specifically leave it out and I think that's intentional but the amount of early church fathers who new Hebrew could probably be counted on one hand and that's a big blind spot for the early church fathers a lot of them knew Greek um I mean there's a whole subsection that were Greek uh but the Latin speaking fathers not all of them knew Greek and very very few of them new Hebrew and so that that does cause some issues especially when they're talking about the inclusion of um this book so the Epistle of Barnabas in chapter 4:3 alludes to it talks about Enoch and then quotes Enoch as scripture um Clement of Alexandria irus and tralian all at least entertain the idea of it being scripture however when the dust starts to settle on the cannon everyone who thinks it could be scripture eventually says you know well the the church has the authority to recognize that which is given by God and we lose you know we we thought this might have been included and it's clearly not know we can we can see that now so it's not like there was an there was a overly strong battle nobody was contending to their death that Enoch should be included there were some people who thought that you know this might have some some level of credibility to it but at the end of the day it they concede when everything is put on the table and um the dust starts to settle especially with the Old Testament there really was very little if if any argument about what the Old Testament scripture was in terms of what the Jews considered scripture I mean even when Jerome is translating what what eventually becomes the Latin Vulgate Jerome is one of the early church fathers who happens to know Hebrew and he goes back to Israel and he consults with the Jews and just flat out ask them you know what do you consider scripture and they're they're not confused about what they considered scripture and so he goes back and he actually very vly argues against including any of the other dud canonical apocal books um on that basis and he eventually loses the argument and is pre I think peer pressured by individuals like Augustine remember these the early church fathers were not uh infallible and so he includes them eventually in the land Vulgate um but uh in terms of the canonical discussion for the Jews it was never considered it was never considered scriptural and for the Christ for the early church CH it was in it was in contest but the discussion was never that strong of one compared to say the arguments that were made for macabe or Tobit or Judith the there were individuals who had a lot stronger opinions on the other ones but Enoch was not necessarily in that list gotcha so when did when did that happen for the the ethiopic uh Orthodox Church with their canonization and was their canonization is it is it the same essentially as how we would view uh the Bible or is it more liberal in the sense that it may be something they think can be good to learn from as an apocryphal or not apocryphal but a pseud pseudepigraphal literature uh how does that work within within their Church you know yeah this is admittedly something I have to kind of lay my cards on the table and say I'm not entirely sure I'm not entirely sure why or when the e opic Cannon included um Enoch it is clear that copies of Enoch in um gz and in ethiopic get down to Ethiopia very early on but why they considered it scriptural and why they start to include it in their Canon is not entirely clear to me but there's a lot less of uh what we would consider like an an academic chain of custody for some of these other cannons whether it's the ethiopic or the an oriental Orthodox or um because it just sort of ends up and that's that whereas for the the Greek speaking church for the especially for the Latin speaking Church there's a lot of Academia going on or at least what we would consider Academia and so we have a lot more literature to go on so that could just be a blind spot for me admittedly um I'm I'm not entirely sure what's going on there it did end up in the ethiopic cannon but uh it it's kind of an well it's not kind of it is an outlier it's an outlier in terms of the rest of the universal church in in the early church period and that's why we only have one full copy of it in ethiopic um is because they were really the ones that preserved it up until that point uh but other than it having um early attestation very uh within you know a few centuries of the early church period uh down in Ethiopia I'm not exactly sure why it it Rose to such prominence Ely yeah no that that's that's good man it's good to be uh honest and transparent about those things I don't I don't really know myself but uh I'm thankful for you uh Wes you've helped clear things even up for me during this discussion so praise God for that uh don't don't leave now though guys uh we I want to leave you with a few things we're going to have a second episode on The Book of Enoch we're going to get into Jude uh does Jesus quote from The Book of Enoch we'll get even into Peter uh with the Book of Enoch there's all kinds of awesome things that we're going to talk about even Nephilim the Watchers but that's in the next episode but before we go uh Wes where can people find you yeah so if people want to find me they can go to either Wesley huff.com or apologetics canada.com so uh Wesley hof.com would be my website and then I work for I'm a regional director for apologetics Canada so any of the events that I'm doing or that we're doing as an organization uh will be listed there perfect yeah we'll have all of those links in our show notes so you can find Wes and if you want to support uh his ministry go go ahead and uh go there and also if you want to support Colt you can go to the coltish all access button that we have in our show notes or the links in the descriptions on our YouTube channel and that's how you can support us because this ministry cannot continue without your support so we are thankful for all of your partnering with us to make this possible but you can also go to shop ces.com we have a lot of uh merch there even some new bad theology hurts people designs and more are coming but uh thank you guys all for tuning in with us and we'll catch you next time as we enter into the kingdom of the Colts talk to you later can't wait to get the next episode in the series then join the cultish All Access get early release of these series to quench those binging desires along with a host of amazing perks head over to the cultist show.com or follow the link in the description and start listening to the full series while supporting this mission

Channel: Apologia Studios

Views: 16,019

Keywords: Jeff Durbin, Apologia Studios, Apologia Church, Book of Enoch, bible giants, lost books of the bible, nephilim, nephilim genesis 6, who are the nephilim, aliens bible, aliens book of enoch, what is the book of enoch, Cultish

Id: y7xgmzGuvfE

Length: 61min 43sec (3703 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024