Enoch's Books, SkyWatchers in Cave 4 & Ethiopia ?!


~*~

'Before
these things ENOCH
was hidden,
and no human being knew
where he was hidden,
and where he abode,
and what had become
of him.
And his activities
had to do with the Watchers,
and his days were with the Holy Ones.
And I, Enoch, was blessing the Lord of Majesty
and the King of the Ages,
an lo, the Watchers called me ~ Enoch the Scribe ~ and said
to me:
"Enoch, you Scribe of Righteousness, GO,
declare to the Watchers of the Heaven who have left the High Heaven,
the Holy Eternal Place,
and have defiled themselves
with women ...
you shall have no peace nor
forgiveness
of sin ..."'
{1 ENOCH 12:1~6}

~@~

UNTIL
the discoveries
@ Qumran,
the book of Enoch {1 Enoch}
was known as a collection of apocalypses,
in Ethiopic, containing the divine wisdom Enoch
received from the angelic world
during his stay
with them.

=

Manuscripts
of five component parts
of 1 Enoch have now come to light
in their original Aramaic.
These parts are the Book of Watchers
{Ethiopic chs 1~36},
the Book of Astronomical Secrets
{chs 72~82},
the Dream Book
{chs 83~90},
and Enoch's Epistle
{chs 91~108}.
The Book of Astronomical Secrets
{represented by fragments of 4 manuscripts, 4QEnast a-d},
is also longer and more detailed
at Qumran.

-


Related to Enoch,
but apparently an independent work,
is the so~called Book of Giants, which the editor,
J.T. Milik, considered
an original part of an ancient Enochic Pentateuch,
later replaced by
the Parables.

=

IN GENESIS
Enoch lived to be 365 years old,
and "G*D" suddenly took him away.
Nowhere else in the hebrew Bible is he mentioned,
but hw was certainly known about.
Ben SIRA {44:16; 49:14} praises him,
and Jubilees claims he was the first mortal to learn writing.
That is, he was the progenitor
of literary culture.
Jude 14~15 quotes Enoch 1:19 concerning 'G*d's judgment
against sinners,
and Jude 6 is a transparent reference
to the punishment of the Watchers
in the Ne{an}ther{thal}world {Enoch10:4~6, 12~16; 12; cf. 2 Peter2:4~5}.
The Enochic tradition is now also recognized
as an important background
to many of the
Qumran
scrolls.

=

Cave 4
has preserved fragments,
but no extensive portions of the book of Enoch
or of any other of its parts.
Chapters 16~17, much of 24, 72~75, and 80~81 are missing,
and only extremely brief passages
from about 44 chapters survive
containing in many cases
not even one complete
sentence.

-

The 11 manuscripts
date from the early 2nd century BCE to the Herodian period,
and at least the Astronomical Book predates the book
of Daniel!

=

As contained
in the full Ethiopic form,
the Book of Watchers {which comes first}
tells of rebellious angels {"Watchers"} who descended to earth
and impregnated women,
who bore them gigantic children;
these Watchers taught the secrets of making weapons of war and ornaments, sorcery, spells, and the cutting
of medicinal
roots.

-

Violence
spread on the earth,
and the angels were sentenced to be bound for 70 generations
until the day of
judgment.

-

Enoch
is permitted to intercede,
but is ordered to reprimand them.
He is whisked away to heaven from where he can see the universe ~
mountains, trees, the centre of the earth, the paradise of the righteous
and even the tree of
knowledge.

=

The Book of Astronomical Secrets
describes the courses of the heavenly bodies throughout the year.
The Dream Book tells in symbolic form the history of Israel
from the fall of the angels to the Maccabean triumph
and the final divine
judgment.

-

The Epistle consists
of ethical admonitions to Enoch's children,
embedded in which is the "Apocalypse of Weeks",
measuring the history of the world,
like Jubilees,
in 50~{or 49}~year
epochs.

=

A central feature
of the Enochic corpus
is the belief that sin originated in the heavenly world
{no mention of Adam or Eve},
that the course of human history is pre~ordained,
and that the true calendar is determined by the sun,
NOT the moon.

-

ALL these tenets
are also prominent in the non-biblical scrolls from Qumran.
The Enoch traditions may well have been considered as authoritative
by the Qumran community
and other groups.

-

They directly influenced
the Book of Jubilees and, in turn,
the Damascus Document.

-

Whether a form of "Enochic Judaism"
can be separated from "Mosaic Judaism",
with which it merged but by which it was largely supplanted,
is an interesting and important question
currently under
discussion.

#
engel
14 feb 2005 - bewerkt op 20 feb 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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