The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

392 QUMRAN AND THE DATINGOFTHEPARABLES OF ENOCH
have the sense it had in Zadokitism. This is not much. Even when it tells
of the fall of angels, the author makes no reference at all to the contamination
of human nature. In 84:4 he writes: “The angels of your heavens
sin and your wrath shall fall on the flesh of men until the great day of
Judgment.” There is no intermediate term between the sin of the angels
and the ruin of humankind: the author has left out the impurity provoked
by the angels’ sin.
In the oldest part of the Epistle of Enoch (later than the Book of Dream
Visions, but still in the second century B.C.E.), impurity is mentioned only
in 1 En. 91:7. Its roots lie in human behavior, because there are no angels
who sin. The author says: “If rebellion, sin and impurity grow (obviously
among men and due to their guilt) there shall be great punishment.”
Impurity is placed in the third position as a final consequence of rebellion,
which elicits sin, which in turn elicits impurity. It is therefore the
opposite of the conception present in the Book of Watchers where impurity
was caused by the angelic sin, the principal cause of sin among the
humans. However, the prophetic theme of the discourse on the ten historical
eons can justify the author’s lack of interest in this specific theme.
If, however, we move to the part added in the first century B.C.E.,
omission of the “impure” cannot be accidental, given the parenetic nature
of the discourse. Suspicion that at least in the most recent part of the
Epistle of Enoch impurity is not important, not only exists, but is very
strong. Evil coincides with violence and oppression of the weak (see 1 En.
96:4, 5, 7; 97:8; 98:11, 12; 99:11–13), which was to become a central
motif in BP. In its first-century B.C.E. reelaboration, the Epistle of Enoch
becomes strongly anti-Qumranic inasmuch as it defends the idea of human
responsibility in sin (1 En. 98:4). 46 If we bear in mind that impurity coincided
with sin for the Qumranites, and for this reason existed before the individual,
the Epistle of Enoch’s lack of interest in impurity can easily be
understood in terms of an intention to polemicize with those Enochians
who were withdrawing from the world, the ones we have referred to as
Qumranites. In rejecting the idea that impurity/sin exists before the individual,
the author found himself rejecting the existence of impurity or, at
least, its value.
At this point the problem of the relationship between Enochism and
Mosaic Law, a theme I addressed at the Congress of the “Associazione
46. “I have sworn unto you, sinners: In the same manner that a mountain has never
turned into a servant, nor shall a hill ever become a maidservant of a woman; likewise,
neither has sin been exported into the world. It is the people who have themselves
invented it. And they who commit it shall come under a great curse” (trans. E.
Isaac, OTP 1:78).