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

General Introduction. 29
true,, who are living on the advent of the Messianic kingdom
will indeed be recompensed with all good things, but the
departed righteous will not rise thereto, but will find their
reward in the everlasting spiritual bliss that is the inheritance
of all the faithful after the final judgment. In the meantime
they are at rest, guarded as the apple of an eye by the angels
of God, and will in due time, on the close of the Messianic
kingdom, attain to the resurrection. This resurrection of the
righteous appears not to be of the body but of the soul only,
as we find in a later book, the Psalms of Solomon, or in the
still later Book of Jubilees. As for the wicked they will
descend into the pain of Sheol and abide there everlastingly.
Here Sheol appears as Hell for possibly the first time.
The writer of this section lived towards the close of the
second century b. c. He was a Pharisee strongly opposed
to all hellenizing tendencies, but apparently influenced by
kindred Zoroastrian ideas. His chief denunciations are
directed against the Sadducees. These oppress the righteous,
and the rulers who are in league with them connive at their
oppression. The persecution which the righteous undergo is
severe, but far removed from the murderous oppression of
which they were the victims from 95 b. c. onwards. We
may therefore regard this book as written before that date,
and after the breach between J. Hyrcanus and the Pharisees,
i. e. between 134 and 95 b. c. ; or if we may take c. 2 to be
an allusion to Aristobulus' murder of his brother, between
104-95 b. c.
Part IV.—The Similitudes, consisting of xxxvii-lxx and
written between 94-79 B. c. or 70-64 b. c. For full account
see pp. 306-109.
The Similitudes introduce us to the events and aspirations
of a time not far removed in years from the period we have
just been considering but very remote in character. The
sufferings of the righteous mourned over in xci-civ are of
slight consequence compared with their afflictions of this
later date. Their plaint is no longer now of the greed and