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An Ancient Text and Its Significance.

Introduction to the Book of Enoch for beginners!

The book known as Enoch was not included in the collection of writings that came to comprise the Hebrew Bible. Some two centuries before the birth of Christ, the Jewish ruling council at Jamnia officially ruled against the inclusion of the book of Enoch in the Jewish canon and also excluded twelve other books that had evidently enjoyed a status among the Jews of their time similar to the one that had been enjoyed by the book of Enoch.

We know from several ancient sources that the early Christian church continued to hold the book of Enoch in high repute. It enjoyed a status only slightly less than those of the other writings of the Old Testament and was used quite regularly in liturgical settings, as well as for other ritual purposes.

The Ethiopians have preserved the entire book intact in a separate section in their great version of the Bible, which also contains the distinctive Old Testament of the Ethiopic church. Fragments of the book had also been preserved in various other ancient languages before the Ethiopic version came to light.

These were pieced together to form a composite text in various publications and were consulted intensively by scholars attempting to reconstruct the contents of what was apparently one of the most important texts of antiquity. The work comprises five distinct divisions, while the second subdivisions of the first division should be considered on their own. These subdivisions are generally referred to as “books,” though the relationships between the books are not entirely clear, and the division into five books is somewhat arbitrary. The several parts are available in the English translation that is utilized in this study. They are presented in the following order: Enoch 6-16, 37-71, and 91-108.

Historical Background and Discovery

Much scholarly debate has taken place and continues on questions of date, provenance of the Greek text, and the present state of the text. We will present an English translation of the Book of the Words of Enoch, also known as 1 Enoch or The Ethiopic Enoch.

We know that the Book of Enoch, like Ezra, was well known and revered by the Jews. The very contents of the book suggest that it was produced in Palestine, since events and topography from Palestine are prominent in Book I. The New Testament attests to the respect that Enoch and the Book of Enoch had; the Book is cited as Scripture by various early Christian writings.

The Book of Enoch began to be forgotten probably in the time of Athanasius or before and was known almost exclusively in the East by the time of Bede, who claimed that acceptance of it in the East outweighed rejection of it in the West.

According to the discovery and research by an early scholar, who claimed to have found a translation of our Greek text in 1910, and since no one else other than he has seen it, his discovery and the location have not been confirmed.

Our Greek text of the Book of Enoch would have come from there. The period in which the Book of Enoch fell into complete obscurity was curiously that of the prosperity of the Ethiopian Church, to which the Book of Enoch was preserved. There, the use of the Book among the faithful did not falter. The Book of Enoch is catalogued among the four primary canonical apocalypses called by the Ethiopian Church, Henoch. Two remarkable discoveries in a cave near the Dead Sea are that of the only known scroll of the Song of Miriam and Deuteronomy; perhaps also more important is pseudepigraphic material, including two works and a fragment of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch found in the cave. These two fragments are a part of the portion now missing in our Greek text.

Structure and Content

The Book of Enoch is made up of several different texts that made their first appearance in Aramaic, probably at different times and places over a long period. The original text of each unit is, in a number of places, corrupt and brief, and has not been preserved in its original form.

The compilation and transmission of these texts have complicated the linguistic problem. The beginning and ending of each of the five units in the Book, which were evidently surrounded by narrative, are preserved. Inside each unit, only scattered fragments remain. Only one of the units contains a substantially complete sequence in a few copies. Even these complete copies differ definitively among themselves as to content, style, and length.

Three versions of the Book of Enoch are extant today: one in Aramaic, one in Old Slavonic, and one in Greek. The available manuscripts containing all these versions were collected. The edition of the Aramaic text is therefore made up of many fragments and pieces of fragments. The translation was guided by readings found among the fragments.

The Slavonic was not available when the Aramaic was edited. The Greek was, however. The greater part of the Greek translation is found in a copy of the Hebrew translation of the Greek; in those rare cases when the translator and adapter of the Greek can be identified with certainty, we recognize that the official translation was followed. The Greek seems to have been translated from the Aramaic, but for certain mechanically repeated sections of the work, it used a copy of the Slavonic.

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