Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 Composition "1 Enoch, preserved in a full, chapter form in Ethiopic, consists of five parts and one appended chapter. It originated in Aramaic perhaps Hebrew for chaps. Parts of its text have been identified on several copies from Qumran cave 4; the earliest fragmentary manuscript 4QEnocha dates, according to the editor J. Milk, to between and BCE. All Qumran copies are in the Aramaic language. Vanderkam "James Vanderkam divides the first part of 1 Enoch into five sections: Milik assigns it to the late third century CE.
No fragments of these chapters have been found at Qumran, and some think their original language was Hebrew, not Aramaic. Sizable portions of the text are preserved on four copies, written in Aramaic, from Qumran cave 4. The Aramaic original appears to have been much different and much longer than the Ethiopic text, adding far more astronomical details.
Vanderkam Authorship "A world view so encyclopaediac that it embraced the geography of heaven and earth, astronomy, meteorology, medicine was no part of Jewish tradition - but was familiar to educated Greeks, but attempting to emulate and surpass Greek wisdom, by having an integrating divine plan for destiny, elaborated through an angelic host with which Enoch is in communication through his mystical travels. It survives only in late Old Slavonic manuscripts. It may have been composed originally in Aramaic or Hebrew, later being translated into Greek, and later still being translated into Old Slavonic.
It is an amplification of Gen 5: Major theological themes include: The Enochian writings, in addition to many other writings that were excluded or lost from the Bible i. The term "apocrypha" is derived from the Greek word meaning "hidden" or "secret". Originally, the import of the term may have been complimentary in that the term was applied to sacred books whose contents were too exalted to be made available to the general public. In addition, 4 Ezra Gradually, the term "apocrypha" took on a pejorative connotation, for the orthodoxy of these hidden books was often questionable.
Because these secret books were often preserved for use within the esoteric circles of the divinely - knit believers, many of the critically - spirited or "unenlightened" Church Fathers found themselves outside the realm of understanding, and therefore came to apply the term "apocryphal" to, what they claimed to be, heretical works which were forbidden to be read.
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch
In Protestant parlance, "the Apocrypha" designate 15 works, all but one of which are Jewish in origin and found in the Septuagint parts of 2 Esdras are Christian and Latin in origin. Although some of them were composed in Palestine in Aramaic or Hebrew, they were not accepted into the Jewish canon formed late in the 2nd cent. The Reformers, influenced by the Jewish canon of the OT, did not consider these books on a par with the rest of the Scriptures; thus the custom arose of making the Apocrypha a separate section in the Protestant Bible, or sometimes even of omitting them entirely Canonicity, The Catholic view, expressed as a doctrine of faith at the Council of Trent, is that 12 of these 15 works in a different enumeration, however are canonical Scripture; they are called the Deuterocanonical Books Canonicity, The three books of the Protestant Apocrypha that are not accepted by Catholics are Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.
The theme of the Book of Enoch dealing with the nature and deeds of the fallen angels so infuriated the later Church fathers that one, Filastrius, actually condemned it openly as heresy Filastrius, Liber de Haeresibus, no. Nor did the rabbis deign to give credence to the book's teaching about angels. Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai in the second century A.
So the book was denounced, banned, cursed, no doubt burned and shredded - and last but not least, lost and conveniently forgotten for a thousand years.
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But with an uncanny persistence, the Book of Enoch found its way back into circulation two centuries ago. In , rumors of a surviving copy of the book drew Scottish explorer James Bruce to distant Ethiopia. True to hearsay, the Book of Enoch had been preserved by the Ethiopic church, which put it right alongside the other books of the Bible.
Second Book of Enoch
Bruce secured not one, but three Ethiopic copies of the book and brought them back to Europe and Britain. When in Dr. Richard Laurence, a Hebrew professor at Oxford, produced the first English translation of the work, the modern world gained its first glimpse of the forbidden mysteries of Enoch. Most scholars say that the present form of the story in the Book of Enoch was penned sometime during the second century B.
The earliest Ethiopic text was apparently made from a Greek manuscript of the Book of Enoch, which itself was a copy of an earlier text. The original was apparently written in Semitic language, now thought to be Aramaic. Though it was once believed to be post-Christian the similarities to Christian terminology and teaching are striking , recent discoveries of copies of the book among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran prove that the book was in existence before the time of Jesus Christ.
But the date of the original writing upon which the second century B. Qumran copies were based is shrouded in obscurity. It is, in a word, old. It has been largely the opinion of historians that the book does not really contain the authentic words of the ancient biblical patriarch Enoch, since he would have lived based on the chronologies in the Book of Genesis several thousand years earlier than the first known appearance of the book attributed to him.
Despite its unknown origins, Christians once accepted the words of this Book of Enoch as authentic scripture, especially the part about the fallen angels and their prophesied judgment.
The Book of Enoch Including the Book of the Secrets of Enoch by Enoch
In fact, many of the key concepts used by Jesus Christ himself seem directly connected to terms and ideas in the Book of Enoch. There is abundant proof that Christ approved of the Book of Enoch. Over a hundred phrases in the New Testament find precedents in the Book of Enoch. Another remarkable bit of evidence for the early Christians' acceptance of the Book of Enoch was for many years buried under the King James Bible's mistranslation of Luke 9: But Luke's verse in the original Greek reads: If the book was indeed known to the apostles of Christ, with its abundant descriptions of the Elect One who should "sit upon the throne of glory" and the Elect One who should "dwell in the midst of them," then the great scriptural authenticity is accorded to the Book of Enoch when the "voice out of the cloud" tells the apostles, "This is my Son, the Elect One" - the one promised in the Book of Enoch.
The Book of Jude tells us in vs. Therefore, Jude's reference to the Enochian prophesies strongly leans toward the conclusion that these written prophesies were available to him at that time. Fragments of ten Enoch manuscripts were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The famous scrolls actually comprise only one part of the total findings at Qumran.
Much of the rest was Enochian literature, copies of the Book of Enoch, and other apocryphal works in the Enochian tradition, like the Book of Jubilees. With so many copies around, the Essenes could well have used the Enochian writings as a community prayer book or teacher's manual and study text.
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The Book of Enoch was also used by writers of the noncanonical i. The author of the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas quotes the Book of Enoch three times, twice calling it "the Scripture," a term specifically denoting the inspired Word of God Epis. Vaillant [9] showed in that the additional parts found only in the longer version use more recent terms. Other scholars [10] suggest that both of them preserve original material, and posit the existence of three or even four recensions.
Two different ways of numbering verses and chapters are used for 2 Enoch: The best family of manuscripts [11] are copies of the compilation of rearranged materials from Chapters 40—65 found in a 14th-century judicial codex titled The Just Balance Merilo Pravednoe. The main manuscripts of the longer version are designated R, J, and P. The Semitisms, such as the words Ophanim , Raqia Arabot , and others, found in various parts of the text, point to the possibility of a Semitic original behind the Greek version.
In , four fragments in Coptic from Chapters 36—42 were identified.
- Genoveva, Op. 81, Act 1, No. 1: Erhebet Herz (Vocal Score).
- The Book of Enoch Including the Book of the Secrets of Enoch.
- Full text of "The book of the secrets of Enoch;";
They follow the short recension and are related to Manuscript U. The date of the text can be deduced solely on the basis of the internal evidence, since the book has survived only in the medieval manuscripts even if a reference to 2 Enoch could be found in Origen 's De Principis i, 3: The crucial arguments for the early dating of the text have very largely been linked to the themes of the Temple in Jerusalem and its ongoing practices and customs.
Scholarly efforts have been, in this respect, mostly directed toward finding hints that the Sanctuary was still standing when the original text was composed. Scholars note that the text gives no indication that the destruction of the Temple had already occurred at the time of the book's composition. Critical readers of the pseudepigraphic would have difficulty finding any explicit expression of feelings of sadness or mourning about the loss of the sanctuary. Affirmations of the value of animal sacrifice and Enoch's halakhic instructions, found in 2 Enoch 59, also appear to be fashioned not in the "preservationist", mishnaic -like style, but rather as if they reflected sacrificial practices that still existed when the author was writing his book.
The author tries to legitimize the central place of worship, through reference to the place Ahuzan , which is a cryptic name for a Jewish temple. Scholars have also previously noted in the text some indications of the ongoing practice of pilgrimage to the central place of worship. These indications could be expected in a text written in the Alexandrian Diaspora.
In his instructions to the children, Enoch repeatedly encourages them to bring the gifts before the face of God for the remission of sins, a practice which appears to recall well-known sacrificial customs widespread in the Second Temple period.
Further, the Old Bulgarian apocalypse also contains a direct command to visit the Temple three times a day, an inconsistency if the sanctuary had been already destroyed. The Second Book of Enoch, also known as The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, is most noted for its description of multiple heavens and accounts of battles between angels and devils. This account is thought to have been known by and to have influenced the apostle Paul who described his experience of being taken up to the third heaven 2 Corinthians Enoch describes the ten heavens this way: The first heaven is just above the firmament Genesis 1: In the second heaven, Enoch finds darkness: In the third heaven, he sees both paradise represented as the garden of eden also guarded by angels as in 2 Corinthians The fourth heaven is the place of the movements of the Sun and of the Moon, which are described in detail.
There is also on this level a heavenly choir comprising soldier angels whose singing is wonderful and marvelous. In the fifth heaven, Enoch finds some Grigori: They were in a state of limbo, having not yet been condemned, and Enoch convinced them to repent. In the sixth heaven, he sees the angels in charge of governing the cosmos and people. In the seventh heaven, Enoch, now guided by Gabriel, is allowed to enter and sees the Lord on his throne face to face but only from a distance.
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The Eighth heaven is just below the upper firmament in which are stuck the constellations; here lives Muzaloth, changer of the seasons and mover of the constellations. The ninth heaven is the upper firmament in which are fixed the constellations and the changer of the seasons. Here he holds court. Chapters of 2 Enoch sometimes referred as the Exaltation of Melchizedek or 2EM outline the priestly succession of Enoch.
There is not unanimous consensus whether this section belongs to the main body of the text or it is an early addition. Considering the not-fragmentary main manuscripts, 2EM is not included in P V N, it is included partially in J, while it is fully included in R U B, which anyway represent the best traditions of all versions. So we have both shorter and a longer versions of 2EM.
Some early authors, as Charles, [7] have not included this section mainly because they based their edition on manuscripts P and N.