The book of Enoch : translated from Professor Dillmann's Ethiopic ...

SECTION III.
(chapters LXXII—LXXXII.)
THE BOOK OF CELESTIAL PHYSICS. INTRODUCTION.
A. Its Critical Structure and Object. B. Its Independence of
i-xxxvi. C. Its Calendar and the knowledge therein implied.
A. Critical Structure and Object. Chapter lxxii intro-
duces us to a scientific treatise. In this treatise the writer
attempts to bring the many utterances 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 lxxii. i, is
to give the laws of the heavenly bodies, and this object it pursues
undeviatingly from its beginning to lxxix. i, 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. As a Jew he
upholds the accuracy of the moon as a divider of time, lxxiv. 1 2 :
1 The moon brings in all the years exactly, so that their position
is not prematurely advanced or delayed by a single day unto
eternity.' And this order is inflexible : there will be no change
in it till the new creation, lxxii. 1. 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 lxxix, we pass into a new atmosphere.
The whole 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,
lxxx. 2-8, and even that infallible luminary the moon (lxxiv. 1 2)
becomes a false guide and misleader of men, lxxx. 4.