the-book-of-enoch-r-h-charles - Fallen Angels

iniroaucuon xi
time, authorship, or teaching is to be looked for. Indeed, certain
considerable portions of the book belonged originally not to the
Enoch literature at all, but to an earlier work, i. e. the Book of
Noah, which probably exhibited in some degree the syncretism
of the work into which it was subsequently incorporated. This
Book of Noah clearly embraced chapters 6-11, 54''-552, 60,
65-6925^ 106-107.1
As regards the Enoch elements, the oldest portions of them are
likewise pre-Maceabean, i.e. 12-36, and probably 90^-^° 9P^-",
i. e. the Apocalypse of Weeks. The Dream Visions, i. e. 83-90,
were in all probability written when Judas the Maccabee was
still warring, 165-161 B.C., 72-82 before 110 B.C., the Parables,
37-71 and 91-104, 105-64 B.C.
The authors of all the sections belong to the Chasids or their
successors the Pharisees.
Conflicting views are advanced on the Messiah, the Messianic
kingdom, the origin of sin, Sheol, the final judgement, the
resurrection, and the nature of the future life. There is an
elaborate angelology and demonology, and much space is devoted
to the calendar and the heavenly bodies and their movements.
Babylonian influences are here manifest and in a slight degree
Greek.
The Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was written
originally partly in Aramaic and partly in Hebrew. From an
Aramaic original is derived 6-36, and possibly 83-90, while the
rest of the book comes from a Hebrew oris:inal. To determine
these questions categorically is a task of no little difficulty,
seeing that for foui'-fifths of the text we have only a translation
of a translation, and that such close affinities exist between
Hebrew and Aramaic. For the resemblances between the two
languages are so great that frequently retranslation from the
Ethiopic into either is sufficient to explain corruptions in the
former. There has accordingly been great divergence of opinion
on this question, but in the opinion of the present writer, who
1 Portions have been preserved in Jubilees 7^""" 10'"^^, but the date of this
Noachic literature is at latest pre-Macoabean.