Table of Contents
Our Commentary, you decide
What is the appeal of that curious collection of tales known as the Book of Enoch? It is (and was) that it provides a glimpse into the beyond. As George Nickelsburg suggests in his new commentary, Enoch reassures the faithful that there was and will be another reality far better than their present painful circumstances. Writes Nickelsburg: “[The books of Enoch] guarantee future salvation on the basis of a present reality … Deliverance will take place soon.”
1. The publication of the first volume
The publication of the first volume of Nickelsburg’s commentary on 1 Enoch is a major event in the study not only of this strange and mysterious text but also of early Judaism and early Christianity. Nickelsburg, now retired from teaching at the University of Iowa, is widely recognized as a world authority on the literature of early Judaism. His commentary, which will eventually consist of two volumes,1 is one of the very few full-scale commentaries ever published on a pseudepigraphic work—that is, an extrabiblical work falsely attributed to a biblical character, in this case Enoch. Modern scholars who study the periods of early Judaism and Christianity have found it helpful to use the pseudepigrapha to set scriptural writings into the wider framework of Jewish and Christian thought in which they belong. They exemplify developments in many areas, such as beliefs about the end, that are important to know in studying the Bible.
This pseudepigraphic book is attributed to Enoch, but it is actually the work of several different writers. There are five major sections, each dated to a different time period, plus a concluding chapter. They include:
2. The Book of the Watchers
The Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), which includes Enoch’s vision of heaven and an account of the fall of the angels (called the Watchers) based on Genesis 6:1–4, in which the “sons of God” have intercourse with the beautiful women of earth and give birth to the Nephilim. Enoch attempts to intercede with God on behalf of the fallen angels. He is then given two tours of the universe by the angels.
The text may date as early as the third century B.C.E. Several Aramaic copies of parts of the Book of the Watchers have been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 4; the earliest fragmentary manuscript (4Q201, 4QEnocha) dates, according to the editor Jozef T. Milik, to between 200 and 150 B.C.E.
3. The Book of Parables
2. The Book of Parables (or The Similitudes of Enoch) (chapters 37–71). This book includes frequent references to a person who is called “the righteous one,” “the chosen one,” “the Messiah” (=“the Anointed One”), and “the son of man,” an end-time judge, who reverses the fortunes of the oppressed and condemns their oppressors. In the very last chapter Enoch is told that he is that son of man. As Birger Pearson notes in the previous article in this issue, comparisons have been made between this son of man and Jesus’ portrayal of himself as “Son of Man” in the Gospels.
The Book of Parables may have been composed in the late first century B.C.E., although a number of scholars prefer to place it in the first or even the second century C.E.
4. The Astronomical Book
3. The Astronomical Book (chapters 72–82), which contains a revelation to Enoch from his heavenly guide, the angel Uriel. Uriel explains the structure of the universe by describing the course of the sun in a 364-day year and of the moon in a 354-day year. (The same two solar and lunar years, with the same numbers of days, are combined and correlated in several of the calendrical documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.) According to the Astronomical Book, the sun and moon pass through gates at the eastern and western sides of the heavens. The book also discusses the movement of the stars and winds and other elements of the created order, all of which is ultimately under divine control.
The Astronomical Book, like the Book of the Watchers, may date from the third century B.C.E.; the oldest extant copy seems to have been made not long after 200 B.C.E. Sizable portions of the text are preserved on four copies, written in Aramaic, from Qumran Cave 4.
5. The Book of Dreams
4. The Book of Dreams (chapters 83–90) consists of two dream visions given to Enoch. The first tells of the coming Flood; the second, known as the Animal Apocalypse, presents biblical history from Adam and Eve to Maccabean times—with animals in place of the biblical characters! Israel is a flock of sheep, and God is the Lord of the sheep. Historical allusions at the end of the apocalypse to Judah Maccabee and his times suggest that it was written in the late 160s B.C.E.
The Book of Dreams is also represented on Aramaic copies from Qumran Cave 4.
6. The Epistle of Enoch
5. The Epistle of Enoch (chapters 91–107) offers ethical instructions for the righteous and the wicked. It also includes a story about the birth of the extraordinarily precocious Noah and an apocalypse, called the Apocalypse of Weeks, that divides all of biblical history and beyond into uneven units of time called weeks (the author lives in the seventh week; the final judgment will begin in the eighth). The Epistle of Enoch may date as early as 170 B.C.E., though it is usually dated later in the same century.
Plus, The Conclusion (chapter 108). This single chapter does not appear in any of the early copies of 1 Enoch; it was probably added later to wrap up the collection.
As the reader of the work soon recognizes, one important theme of the First Book of Enoch is the origins of massive amounts of evil in this world. The Book of the Watchers serves to explain how the world became so evil that God sent the Flood. This was an important question to biblical expositors in ancient times, who questioned whether God’s dramatic action, as recorded in Genesis, was justified.
In Genesis 6, God tells Noah: “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness” (Genesis 6:12). “The earth,” according to the biblical narrator, “was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth” (Genesis 6:11). And “every inclination of the thoughts of [humankind’s] hearts was nothing but evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).
God’s harsh assessment of humankind posed a problem for ancient interpreters, who scoured the earlier chapters of Genesis looking for references to mankind’s evil. They knew that Adam and Eve had sinned by eating forbidden fruit, that Cain had killed Abel and that Noah’s father Lamech had killed someone (he confesses to it in Genesis 4:23). But was this enough to justify the Flood that eliminated every person and animal except those on the ark? And how had evil grown so rapidly and monstrously since the days of Adam that God could regret ever having made humankind?
7. Seeking to answer these questions
Seeking to answer these questions, the authors of Enoch and other ancient expositors turned to the cryptic passage that immediately precedes the Flood account:
When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them. The Lord said, ‘My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years.’ It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth—when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
(Genesis 6:1–4)
8. The Book of the Watchers
The Book of the Watchers elaborates greatly on this passage. Here, as in other ancient texts, the “sons of God” are understood to be angels; the Nephilim are identified as giants (Nephilim is translated “giants” in the Septuagint as well [see Numbers 13:33]). Although the Bible tells us very little about the Nephilim, in extrabiblical literature, these giant warriors wreak havoc. In the Book of the Watchers, they devour all the food on earth and terrify the population:
These devoured all the toil of men, until men were unable to sustain them. And the giants turned against them in order to devour men. And they began to sin against birds, and against animals, and against reptiles and against fish, and they devoured one another’s flesh and drank the blood from it. Then the earth complained about the lawless ones.4
(1 Enoch 7:3–6)
9. They bring such evil to earth
They bring such evil to earth that God has no choice but to send the Flood. It is a bizarre story, but in one form or another it is widely attested in Jewish sources (it is mentioned, for example, in the pseudepigraphic Book of Jubilees,b several of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of the first-century C.E. historian Josephus and 2 Enoch) and Christian texts (such as 2 Peter, Jude and the writings of several second- to third-century C.E. Christians, such as Tertullian). The Book of the Watchers provided powerful sermonic material—a memorable example of evil and divine punishment. The prudent should beware.
Another remarkable feature of 1 Enoch is that the law revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai plays almost no part in it. This is surprising when one considers how important judgment is in 1 Enoch and how often the writers speak of being righteous and doing what is upright. But instead of citing Mosaic law, the Book of Enoch presents an alternative revelation.
Of course, Enoch lived before the Flood and therefore long before the law was revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai. But this does not explain the absence of references to Mosaic law. Remember, 1 Enoch includes two apocalypses (the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse) that recount the entire history of Israel, beginning with the Creation. Both apocalypses cover the wilderness period in which Moses should receive the Law—but they gloss over the event.
The Apocalypse of Weeks reaches the moment when the law should be given in its fourth week: “And after this in the fourth week, at its end, visions of the holy and righteous will be seen, and a law for all generations and an enclosure will be made for them” (1 Enoch 93:6). Indeed, the law is mentioned here—but it’s not given to Moses. He’s not even mentioned here. Further, nothing is added to suggest the law’s importance, character or contents. It is in no way distinguished from references to other laws mentioned in 1 Enoch, such as the Noachic laws (for example, banning murder), which all nations were expected to obey.
10. The law of Moses recedes
The law of Moses recedes even further in the Animal Apocalypse. This historical survey reaches the end of the Egyptian sojourn in 1 Enoch 89:27, with the drowning of the Egyptians (pictured as wolves) in the sea. The Sinai experience follows: “And that sheep [Moses] went up to the summit of a high rock, and the Lord of the sheep [God] sent it to them. And after this I saw the Lord of the sheep standing before them, and his appearance (was) terrible and majestic, and all those sheep saw him and were afraid of him. And all of them were afraid and trembled before him; and they cried out after that sheep with them which was in their midst: ‘We cannot stand before our Lord, nor look at him.’ And that sheep which led them again went up to the summit of that rock; and the sheep began to be blinded and to go astray from the path which it had shown to them, but that sheep did not know” (1 Enoch 89:29–32).
Moses the sheep goes up the mountain, but he doesn’t receive any law. There is only a hint of Moses’ law in the description of the straying sheep: They departed from the path Moses had shown them, which suggests that Israel had departed from some kind of rules or regulations for them.
Even later, when Israel worships the golden calf and sins in the land, this is not seen as a violation of the covenantal law, as it is in the Bible. Also, when Jerusalem and the Temple are destroyed and the people exiled, the law is never mentioned. In the Bible, the prophets regularly relate exile to violations of the covenantal laws.
11. The Book of Enoch offers
The Book of Enoch offers an alternative to the forms of Judaism that center upon the covenantal law God gave to Moses.5 Enoch appeals to a myth of great evil and punishment in ancient times and calls on people to be righteous now because another judgment is coming. That righteousness is defined by Enoch’s writings, not the Mosaic law. Perhaps Enoch, who lived before the nations were formed, was chosen as the pseudepigraphic hero to make a wider appeal than Moses, who lived after the separation into nations and after Israel charted its separate course.
These are just a couple of the themes that are discussed in detail in Nickelsburg’s commentary. They shed light on the multifaceted nature of Judaism in this period—which we miss by reading just the Bible—and remind us why this fresh translation and commentary are so important.
The present volume offers the student of early Enoch literature a complete collection and analysis of the varied textual material, all carefully scrutinized, a rich exegetical treatment of the reconstructed text, and a critical interaction with a wide range of scholarly literature about Enoch and 1 Enoch. Until now Matthew Black’s 1985 translation and commentary was the fullest study of 1 Enoch.7 Nickelsburg’s edition benefits greatly from the recent publication of many Enoch manuscripts from Qumran and from the growing secondary literature on the book.
As is the custom in the Hermeneia commentary series, of which it is a part, Nickelsburg’s volume contains a lengthy (125-page), well-footnoted introduction covering the manuscripts that attest to different versions of 1 Enoch, the literary history of the work, the major themes in it, the influences of Enoch on later literature (Jewish and Christian), and trends in modern scholarship. Each section of 1 Enoch has its own introduction (discussing literary form, audience, setting and function) followed by Nickelsburg’s translation, copiously annotated with references to variant readings and explanations of numerous textual problems. Next comes a detailed, verse-by-verse commentary. There is also a bibliography, an index of references to ancient texts and a list of names of modern scholars to whose works he refers.
12. The subtitle for Nickelsburg’s
The subtitle for Nickelsburg’s first volume—A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108—seems innocent enough, but the observant reader will notice that Nickelsburg has not divided the book based on the standard order (or even the standard division—the Astronomical Book clearly ends with chapter 82) of the various sections listed above. This arrangement of the books reflects Nickelsburg’s own theory about how the Book of Enoch developed as a collection. This volume includes those books that Nickelsburg believes were grouped together as a collection of Enoch booklets as early as the first century B.C.E. According to Nickelsburg, this collection took the form of a testament—Enoch’s final message to his descendants. It began with stories about Enoch’s remarkable experiences in association with the heavenly angels, which established him as an unrivaled authority, an intimate of the angels, one to whom the reader should listen. His teachings, based on so much experience and revelation, were then presented in the remaining parts of the collection. Only later were the Astronomical Book (except for its ending) and the Book of Parables—the subjects of the forthcoming second volume—incorporated into this collection.
Nickelsburg’s theory on how the book took shape is based on the manuscript evidence from Qumran, where at least some of these books were gathered together in single manuscripts.
The problem with this theory, however, is that Nickelsburg’s hypothesized collection does not look very much like other ancient testaments. Not only is it longer than the others (for example, the individual works in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs), it doesn’t read like a testament. Of all the texts gathered together by Nickelsburg in this volume, only the Epistle of Enoch, in which Enoch gathers his children and exhorts them before he is removed from them, has the trappings of a testament.
13. The problem with this theory
Of course, when one writes so large a book on a complicated text about which scholars have expressed varied opinions, there are bound to be areas of disagreement. I consider such points regarding this volume to be relatively minor. The major statement to be made here is that Nickelsburg has produced an essential reference work, one that will be the standard for some time to come.
Nickelsburg could hardly have known when he began studying Enoch as a graduate student at Harvard in the 1960s that the literature on 1 Enoch would mushroom to such an extent in light of the Qumran manuscripts and of the renewed scholarly interest in the period of early Judaism. But he has persisted, and we are the beneficiaries. We look forward to the appearance of the second volume, which will complete the coverage of this long and intriguing text.
By James C. VanderKam
