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

SECTION III
(CHAPTEllS LXXtl LXXXIl)
THE BOOK OF THE COURSES OF THE HEAVENLY
LUMINARIES. INTRODUCTION
A. Its Critical Structure and Object. B. Its Independence of 1-36.
C. Its Calendar and the Knowledge therein implied.
A. Critical Structure and Object. Chapter 72 introduces us to
a scientific treatise. In this treatise the writer attempts to bring the
many utterances in the O.T. regarding physical phenomena into one
system, and puts this forward as the genuine and biblical one as
opposed to all other systems. The paramount and, indeed, the only
aim of this book, according to 72^, is to give the laws of the heavenly
bodies, and this object it pursues undeviatingly from its beginning
to 79', where it is said that the treatise is finished and all the laws
of the heavenly bodies set forth. Through all these chapters there
is not a single ethical reference. The author has no other interest
save a scientific one coloured by Jewish conceptions and beliefs.
Our author, like the author of Jubilees, upholds the accuracy of the
sun and stars as dividers of time, 74^2 :
' The sun and stars bring
in all the years exactly, so that they do not advance or delay their
position by a single day unto eternity '. And this order is inflexible:
there will be no change in it till the new creation, 72^. So far,
then, we have to deal with a complete and purely scientific treatise,
in which there is no breach of uniformity till the new creation.
But the moment we have done with 79, we pass into a new atmo-
sjjhere in 80^"^. The Avhole interest is ethical and nothing else
there is, indeed, such a thing as an order of nature, but, owing to
the sin of men, this order is more conspicuous in its breach than in
its observance, 80^"^, and the moon becomes a false guide and
misleader of men, 80* ; and even the sun (80^ see note) shines in
the furthest west at nightfall, but 80'* may be interpolated,
Chapter 80^~*, therefore, is manifestly an addition, made to give
an ethical turn to a purely scientific treatise, and so furnish it witli
some fitness for its present collocation.
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