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

26 The Book of Enoch.
170 B.C. and mainly from the prophetic standpoint of such
chs. as Is. lxv-lxvi. This is, undoubtedly, the oldest part of
the book, being anterior to lxxii-lxxxii; lxxxiii-xc; and xci-civ
(see Special Introductions). It is laid under contribution by
the authors of these sections. As lxxxiii-xc was written not
later than 161 B.C. i-xxxvi must be some years earlier, and
further, as there is not the faintest allusion to the persecutions
and massacres of Antiochus Epiphanes, we are probably safe
in fixing on 170 b. c. as the latest limit possible for its com-
position. This book i.e. i-xxxvi is noteworthy as being most
probably the first to mention the resurrection of the righteous
and the wicked : to describe Sheol according to the concep-
tion accepted later in the New Testament as opposed to that
of the Old Testament : and to represent Gehenna as a final
place of punishment. In other respects the writer of i-xxxvi
has not advanced much beyond the Old Testament prophetic
view of the Messianic kingdom. This kingdom, he holds, is
to be ushered in by the resurrection of the righteous and the
wicked (with the exception of one class of the latter) followed
immediately by the final judgment. The wicked angels,
demons, and men were to be punished according to their
deserts, and the righteous to become members of the eternal
Messianic kingdom. The scene of the kingdom was to be
the earth purged from all violence and sin. Peace, and hap-
piness, and prosperity were to prevail everywhere. Sin should
never again appear on the earth, and after a life crowned with
all good things, and blessed with patriarchal years and num-
berless offspring, the righteous were at length to die in peace,
as in Is. lxv-lxvi.
It is manifest here that the writer apprehended neither the
thought of the immortality of the soul, which was pressing
itself on the notice of Judaism from the side of the Greek,
nor the doctrine of the resurrection of the righteous to an
eternal blessedness which was seeking recognition from the
side of Zoroastrianism.
Part II, consisting of lxxxiii-xc, written between 166-16