Ep 62: The Book of Enoch

00:00If you feel inclined to start conspiracy theories based on this book, get on with your bad self.

00:07You're just giving Dan fodder for his TikToks.

00:11It's just job security at this point.

00:12That's right.

00:13That's right.

00:14You should be embracing this, Dan.

00:15I don't know why you're fighting it.

00:17I don't know what he did this to me.

00:21Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:26And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:28And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast where we increase public access to

00:32the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation

00:37about the same.

00:38Sure do.

00:39Sure do.

00:40Indeedly do.

00:42And how goes the thing?

00:44Stuff's good, man.

00:47I'm stoked.

00:49This week, you and I, Dan, are going to be talking about a thing that you have mentioned

00:55many times on the show, you even maybe explained to me what it is, and it's never really sunk

01:03in.

01:04I don't get it.

01:05I don't know why.

01:06Yeah.

01:07So I am very excited to have all of this cleared up.

01:10We're going to be talking about a book that has been shunted aside, that has been left

01:18out of the canon, and we're going to call this segment left behind.

01:24Not to be confused with the book series that has been probably, I think, like one of the

01:32most successful book series of the history of books.

01:37No, this is a series all about texts that were considered authoritative, historical,

01:45important at some time or another, but for whatever reason, we're left out of the canon.

01:51And today, it's a big one.

01:54It's first Enoch, the first book of Enoch, the book of Enoch, if you will.

01:59And something...

02:00Yeah, you do.

02:01It's funny that the first book of Enoch and Enoch can be used interchangeably because you

02:09would think that if there's multiple books of Enoch, you have to say the first thing,

02:15but you kind of don't, right?

02:18So it's not like first and second Corinthians or first and second Samuel where they're written

02:22by the same authors and they are consecutive, the one follows after the other.

02:27You do have a first, a second and a third Enoch, and then other pretenders, but they're written

02:34in vastly different time periods, and really when people are talking about the book of

02:38Enoch, they're talking about first Enoch.

02:41When somebody wants to refer to second Enoch or third Enoch, they're going to say second

02:45or third Enoch.

02:46If they know what they're talking about, but this is a phenomenally influential piece

02:50of pseudopigrophy, which means false writing, which means it's something that was attributed

02:56to some towering figure from Jewish or Christian history that was very clearly not written by

03:03that person.

03:04Which is funny because I think a lot of people might consider that reason enough to dismiss

03:09it from the canon of the Bible, but plenty of Bible books that are part of the canon

03:16and our pseudopigrophy as well.

03:19Exactly.

03:20And additionally, some of the texts that are in the Bible considered Enoch to be authoritative

03:27and historical, for instance, the epistle of Jude that we find in the New Testament directly

03:35quotes from first Enoch.

03:38And it says, Enoch, the seventh from Adam said, and then directly quotes a passage from first

03:45Enoch.

03:46It's the author of the epistle of Jude, considered it to be authoritative, considered it to be

03:52historical, but it fell out of favor a couple centuries after that.

03:58And we're going to talk about how that happened, I think toward the end of the show.

04:03But I wanted to start by talking about where this text comes from and then go through a

04:09brief outline of the text and then we'll talk about how we came about discovering it and

04:15all that kind of stuff.

04:16So by where it comes from, you mean it comes from the seventh descendant of Adam, right?

04:22Well, this was one of the concerns with some of the early Christians who were as a concern

04:28for what was canonical and what was not began to grow.

04:32This book purports to come from before the flood.

04:36And so actual manuscripts of this book would have to come have been preserved since before

04:43the flood.

04:45But Enoch is mentioned and I think we have, I think we have Enoch in both the genealogy

04:53in Genesis four and the genealogy in Genesis five because in Genesis four, the person Enoch,

04:59not the book.

05:00Correct.

05:01Correct.

05:02The person Enoch.

05:03Let's just lay the canonical foundation first.

05:05In Genesis four, we have in verse 15, the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest, oh, that's

05:13the KJV, I don't want to read that crap.

05:17You almost made a cardinal mistake, a cardinal sin.

05:20I'm being facetious, everybody.

05:23In Genesis four, 15, Adam and I put a mark on Cain so that no one who came upon him would

05:28kill him.

05:29Then Cain went away from the presence of Adonai and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

05:35And again, in in Genesis four, this narrative is not written from a perspective that understands

05:42Adam and Eve and their children to be the only people on earth.

05:46Genesis four is written from the perspective of the earth is already populated.

05:51And then in verse 17, Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch.

05:56And he built a city and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.

06:02No, I think I think Cain built a city and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.

06:10To Enoch was born Irad and Irad was the father of Mahuja El and Mahuja El, the father of

06:17Methuja El and Methuja El, the father of Lamek.

06:20And then Lamek, we get Ada and Zilla and blah, blah, blah, and we go on.

06:26And then in Genesis, and we talked a bit about these genealogies a long, long time ago.

06:31These are two different genealogies and we tend to try to conflate them.

06:36And so if we go to Genesis five, we get Adam, bore Seth, Seth bore Enoch, Enoch bore Keenan,

06:47Keenan bore Ivory Wayans and no, Keenan, where we go, bore Mahalal El, Mahalal, bore Jared,

06:57Jared bore Enoch.

07:00And that is a very different, well, it could just be a different Enoch.

07:08That's the rationalization, but this is the idea of the seventh from Adam, and it's not

07:13Cain's line, it's Seth's line, because this is the more righteous line.

07:18And then Enoch became the father of Methuselah.

07:23And so Methuselah was the longest living of the patriarchs according to the book of Genesis

07:30and then in Genesis 522, it says Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah, three

07:34hundred years and had other sons and daughters that saw the days of Enoch were 365 years.

07:40Enoch walked with God, then he was no more because God took him.

07:46And and the Hebrew is Lacach, which is the verbal root that means to take.

07:51Lacchilo Chachoto Alohim, because God took him.

08:02So Enoch is one of the patriarchs who doesn't die.

08:02So that wording is unusual.

08:04That wording is not used for people that like, you know, when we say God took grandma, we

08:12mean that she just died.

08:15Right.

08:16Here it is.

08:17Yeah, it doesn't seem to indicate that.

08:19And the tradition is that this is someone who was snatched up in some way.

08:25And it doesn't say, it doesn't say this about anybody else.

08:28Okay.

08:29So we're dealing with somebody who's supposed to come from very early in the primeval history.

08:36And he lived fewer than 400 years, which for that time among these patriarchs, that's

08:42that's actually paltry.

08:44He must have gotten in a car accident or something.

08:46Something like that.

08:47Then lived 960 some odd years, so.

08:51And it says 365 years, which would be a year of years.

08:56Yeah.

08:57Oh, yeah.

08:58Sure.

08:59And we talked about the significance of some of these numbers in that in that episode,

09:03which was, oh gosh, I forget the name of the episode.

09:06But if anybody wants to go check it out, it was, oh, I knew a man who was so old.

09:11Yeah, something like that.

09:12That the name of the episode.

09:13Anyway, the book of Enoch is purporting to tell a story from the perspective of Enoch.

09:20And scholars agree that the earliest layer of it, it came together over a long period

09:25of time, the earliest portions of it probably date to around 300 BCE.

09:30And probably originally written in Aramaic, and then later translated into Greek.

09:37But the earliest portions are coming from the beginning of the Hellenistic period.

09:42So Alexander the Great has already conquered everything and then drank himself to death.

09:47And so now we have the Diatahi, the wars of succession afterwards, and Greek is becoming

09:53the lingua franca.

09:55And we're also starting to see the influence of Greek literature, Greek myth and Greek philosophy

10:01on things.

10:02But we take up, we lay our scene around 300 BCE and the latest part of the book of Enoch,

10:09the very last chapter, which is called the final book of Enoch, chapter 108, was probably

10:15written around the time of some of the New Testament toward the end of the first century

10:20CE.

10:21Oh, wow.

10:22And so it's coming together over the course of several centuries.

10:26But in pretty large chunks, although portions of it scholars think have been edited and

10:31redacted as it's coming together.

10:34I would hope so.

10:35If you've got 300 years, you better get some edits done.

10:38Yeah.

10:39So we've got seven different scholars generally divided into five to seven different segments.

10:47And the first segment is known as the book of watchers.

10:50And this is a reference to the angels who descended from heaven as the watchers.

10:56And one thing I should probably make clear that I should have made clear earlier, this

11:00is basically taking the story from Genesis 6 regarding the banalohim, the children of

11:07God who come down and they have children with human women.

11:11And those children are, you know, the, what does it say, the warrior, the mighty men of

11:17old and there were Nephilim in the earth in those days and afterwards as well.

11:22So we got that story and Enoch is basically taking that and then just blowing it up into

11:27108 chapters where we're talking about what happened, why it happened, what was the outcome.

11:33And it's basically trying to account.

11:35This is fan fiction is what we're talking about.

11:36It's fanfic.

11:37Yeah.

11:38And with, with just as much sex and the, but it's, it's looking down on it, not, not

11:48as in from above, but as in it is, it condense approving of it, yes.

11:57And so this isn't 50 shades of Enoch.

12:00No, no, there's no Mr. Gray.

12:04And, but what happens is it is using this as a lens for contemplating the problem of evil.

12:13Where does evil come from?

12:14Uh, well, it comes from these angels who make this decision.

12:17In fact, they make a pact, a covenant to go descend to earth and they end up coming down

12:23hundreds of them on, uh, Mount Hermon, uh, and then everything goes from there.

12:30And, and that story is told a couple of times over, uh, and then it explains that these

12:36angels, they taught, uh, humanity about weapons of war.

12:41In fact, um, go in a little bit into the book of watchers.

12:44The first few chapters are an intro and then chapter six through 11, retail, uh, Genesis

12:50six through nine.

12:51So starting with these, uh, these angels and in Genesis six, they're banalohim.

12:55They're gods, children of gods.

12:57They're gods.

12:58Uh, they get renegotiated.

13:00The pantheon gets reduced, gets renegotiated and they become angels.

13:05And in, um, chapter six through 11, Asael is the head malevolent angel.

13:11Now, this head malevolent angel is going to later turn into what the New Testament knows

13:18as Satan.

13:19So, uh, but in the book of Enoch, uh, they go by different names and at least at the,

13:26at the beginning, it's Asael is the head angel.

13:29And then chapters 12 through 16, uh, reinterpret chapter six through 11.

13:36So basically we tell the story in six through 11, 12 through 16, we're like, hang on, I'm

13:40going to tell that again.

13:42And, um, tell it all over again, which never happens in old texts and ancient texts.

13:48And so now we have evil spirits, uh, in the Greco-Roman world.

13:53And so the watchers, when they die, their spirits leave their corpses and become the

14:00evil spirits that possess people that, uh, compel people to do bad things.

14:06Oh, now in chapters 17 through 32, we get a bit of a, uh, a travel log.

14:12Here's where Enoch is being taken on this tour of this eschatological tour where an

14:17angel is, is, uh, acting as Enoch's psychopath, we've used that word before on the show.

14:23Um, and, but, but define it again.

14:27Don't define it.

14:28I go, you'll kill me if I say that, but what, what are we talking, what's a psychopath

14:32again?

14:33Uh, psychopath is like the angelic or divine guide that explains what the eschatological

14:38visions mean and represented, all that kind of stuff.

14:40It's, it's the, uh, the dragon in Mulan, something, something like that.

14:46Um, and, uh, Oh, now I'm Jiminy cricket could be represented that way.

14:54Uh, there are some, yeah, there are other examples, but anyway, every Disney movies

14:59got a psychopath, but Enoch has shown a bunch of weird places and he's, um, and kind of

15:06like spirit.

15:08What does this mean?

15:08Um, he's shown all these smooth places, three smooth places.

15:15And one of them is the place where the, these are the souls of the, of the righteous and

15:20they're, they're waiting upon judgment and these are the souls of the sinners who did

15:25not, uh, receive judgment during their life and they're going to go on to another place.

15:32And then there's another smooth place where these are the, the souls of, uh, the sinners

15:37who did not, or who did receive judgment in life.

15:39So they're, he's basically seeing the post mortem divine punishment and reward that is

15:46going to be set up for people as well as what smooth mean in this case, it just says smooth

15:54more.

15:55Yeah.

15:56Okay.

15:57It's just like, it's not a rocky, um, terrain is just like a big bowl.

16:00And everybody's just hanging out in the bowl, um, people in their, in their smooth place,

16:06waiting to go to hell or whatever, and, uh, but the, the angels, the, the wicked angels

16:12are also to be punished and Enoch witnesses, uh, like, uh, Osil being commanded, or not

16:19Osil, but, uh, Raphael being commanded to, um, go bind the four head angels, uh, and throw

16:27them into darkness and put them in, you know, put jagged rocks underneath them and throw

16:32them into this cursed valley, valley and all this kind of stuff.

16:35And a lot of this imagery, whether it's they're going to be in a fiery place or they're going

16:40to be in a smooth place or they're going to be in a dark place or they're going to be

16:44covered in jagged rocks.

16:45Like this imagery gets picked up in imagery about hell as these concepts further develop.

16:50So Enoch is where we get a lot of the imagery that gets picked up in the New Testament related

16:55to hell.

16:57And then, um, books 33 through 36 summarize parts of the book of luminaries.

17:04And we're going to talk a little bit about those a little later on.

17:07Uh, the next book, though, is the book of parables.

17:09Uh, I guess I should just list all the books in the, in the seven.

17:13Um, so, uh, George Nicklesburg and James van der Cam are scholars who wrote the two volumes

17:18of the hermenea commentary on the book of Enoch.

17:20And if you want a very detailed, very technical discussion, I would highly recommend that,

17:25but they divided into the book of watchers, the book of parables, the book of luminaries,

17:30the dream visions, the epistle of Enoch, the birth of Noah and then the final book of Enoch.

17:37So we talked a little bit about the watchers, uh, in the book of parables, uh, we've got

17:42a series of journeys again, uh, we have similar structure to the book of watchers where we

17:49have all these, uh, wicked angels who have covenant to come down and they're going to

17:53teach, uh, evil things to humanity.

17:56And by the way, one of the evil things that the angels teach to humanity is eyeshadow.

18:01Oh, really?

18:02Yes.

18:03So when you go into, um, chapter, I believe it's chapter eight.

18:09Yeah.

18:10Chapter eight, Asael taught men to make swords, swords, swords of iron and weapons and shields

18:16and breastplates in every instrument of war.

18:19He showed them metals of the earth and how they should work gold to fashion it suitably

18:23and concerning silver to fashion it for bracelets and ornaments for women.

18:28Satan created jewelry, um, and he showed them concerning antimony and eye paint and all manner

18:36of precious stones and dies, scum, and the sons of men made them for themselves and for

18:42their daughters and they transgressed and led the holy ones astray.

18:48That's just so weird.

18:49Why, why do you people have against looking pretty?

18:53I like a bit of good fashion.

18:56I'm, I, I enjoy a bit of, uh, you know, a nice, a nice shirt every now and then a nice

19:01piece of jewelry.

19:02Who knows?

19:03I just think, uh, that's a very funny thing, but apparently it's from those evil scamps.

19:09Yeah.

19:10The, uh, the angels.

19:11Yeah.

19:12And, and so in, in one of the first parables, I think they're two main, uh, main parables,

19:17but, um, the unrighteousness that was let loose on the world by, uh, by the watchers

19:23drove wisdom back to heaven.

19:26So wisdom is personified as, as one of the works of God and, um, wisdom is like, this

19:33party's dead.

19:34I'm out and goes back to heaven, um, and then they're all wearing eye paint.

19:39I'm out of here.

19:46We also have visions, uh, related to Daniel, we talk about the son of man.

19:50We talk about, uh, wisdom.

19:52There are, uh, we're pulling from the book of Isaiah, some of the, um, some of the frameworks.

19:57We see a great judgment.

19:59The flood is kind of the outcome of the great judgment.

20:02So the, the deluge Noah's flood is interpreted as God's judgment on the angels, uh, and humanity,

20:11which, you know, decided they were just going to get fully out of pocket and where I shadow.

20:18Um, and then Enoch is taken from the earth.

20:22Uh, Enoch summarizes his ascent to heaven and presentation as the son of man.

20:28Now we, we've talked about this son of man title before, because Jesus picks up the son

20:33of man title and then you test him in and this is in Daniel, uh, the apocalyptic parts

20:40of Daniel where Daniel sees the son of man coming to the ancient of days.

20:44And this is kind of this mediator figure of some kind who, uh, in at least the one trend,

20:51one version in the old Greek, the, uh, it says the son of man came to the ancient of

20:56days.

20:57Well, that's preposition is altered by one letter so that it says in one version of the

21:03old Greek, the son of man came as the ancient of days and suddenly it's like, Oh, the son

21:08of man is the ancient of days.

21:10What's going on here?

21:11So we have this mediator figure who, uh, their identities kind of blurred with the identity

21:16of God, but Enoch is, um, identified with this character, at least in this part of, of,

21:22uh, book of parables and then we get the book of luminaries, which has to do, this is basically

21:28about the calendar and about celestial bodies.

21:33So we talked previously when we were talking about the flat earth.

21:35I mentioned that in Enoch, you got this part where he's like, so like in the firmament

21:41on the, on the east, there are three holes and the sun comes out of the hole and follows

21:46the track and then goes in the west, it leaves the firmament through another hole and, um,

21:52this was the cuckoo clock part of the, uh, right of the, yeah, firmament theology.

21:59Yeah.

22:00Um, so just like, uh, in the, uh, ride pirates of the Caribbean where you see the people who

22:05were on a track.

22:06Okay.

22:07Come out.

22:08Uh, I think it's a woman with like a, a rolling pin chasing one of the pirates or something

22:11like that.

22:12Or the block on spiel.

22:13If you want to get, if, if you want to get, uh, sure.

22:17Fun.

22:18If you want to get too tonic, uh, about things, um, but Enoch is with, uh, another angel,

22:26angel Uriel, uh, who reveals details of the calendar and the four ruling luminaries.

22:32So we got a 364 day year that is laid out here.

22:36That's the solar year or 364 day solar year.

22:40And then we also have a 354 day lunar year.

22:43Oh, so we've got two different years.

22:46Yeah.

22:47Um, and it's divided up into 12 months of exactly 30 days for each month.

22:52And then we have extra days in the third sixth, ninth and 12th month adding up to 364 days

23:01in the year.

23:03And then the 354 day lunar year that divides into 12, um, sun moves through six gates

23:09in the east starts in the east settles in the west, um, not to, to intentionally quote

23:17the great poet, uh, that is the red hot chili peppers, but, um, and then there's a part about

23:23the, the luminaries kind of breaking down.

23:26Uh, I've been on the pirates of the Caribbean when it has broken down and we have all been

23:31on the pirates of the Caribbean, if you've been on the pirates of the Caribbean, but did

23:36they walk you outside to the back lot where you had to walk around?

23:40Oh, yeah.

23:41I just have to sit and wait for 45 minutes and then, and then finally go again.

23:46They turned all the lights on and they're like, everybody up.

23:48And we had to go like across a catwalk above the thing and then out to some back lot.

23:53And it was like a bunch of the boats were like turned over and just sitting in his back.

23:57How dare they?

23:58They've broken the magic.

23:59Yeah.

24:00It's broken.

24:01I was like, I can't deal with this anymore.

24:03I need a churro.

24:04Um, but there's a, there's a part where, uh, things, uh, seem to malfunction and this is

24:11in, uh, chapter 80 and some scholars think this is like a later interpolation because

24:17the whole point of this book is everything works perfectly.

24:20Nothing breaks down.

24:21Um, but that, and that's also the only eschatological part of that book.

24:25So the point is, oh, things are breaking down.

24:27It's all coming to an end.

24:29Um, luckily that's not what happened when we, uh, had to leave the Pirates of the Caribbean

24:33ride.

24:34But that wasn't particularly eschatological.

24:36No, no, I mean, seeing coming outside, uh, to the, you know, the bright sunshine of,

24:42uh, it does, it can feel like a Orange County, California.

24:46Yeah.

24:47Yeah.

24:48It was a little, um, uh, a little jarring.

24:51Okay.

24:52Uh, and then we move on to the dream visions, which are chapters 83, uh, through 90.

24:59And we have two main floods or two main floods, two main visions here.

25:02One has to do with the flood.

25:03The other has to do with what's called the animal apocalypse.

25:07And that's the cool one.

25:08Cause that's basically retelling the same story all over again about the angels and everything.

25:13Only now everybody's animals.

25:16Mm.

25:17So yeah, um, and this starts in, um, the, the one part that I think is cool is, uh, not

25:26the one part, but the main part that I think is cool.

25:29The chapter 86.

25:30Oh, and by the way, if you want a good translation, you can find all kinds of cheap translations

25:34of First Enoch.

25:35Most of them are from the 19th century or our garbage, um, but, uh, I mentioned Nicklesburg

25:41and Vandercam, they, uh, part of their commentary was a translation.

25:45And so they took the translation and just published it separately.

25:48This is like 14 bucks.

25:50Okay.

25:51Um, so, uh, First Enoch, the hermenea translation, uh, good deal.

25:55And that's the most academic translation that's available today because this isn't going

25:58to be found in like, if you buy a copy of the NRSV or whatever, you know, this is not

26:06a part of the apocrypha, uh, but we'll get to the, the whole canon issue, um, in a bit.

26:12Okay.

26:13So, uh, first enoch 86 one.

26:17This is Enoch talking.

26:18And again, I saw with my eyes as I was sleeping, I saw the heaven above and look, a star fell

26:22from heaven and it arose and was eating and pasturing among the cattle.

26:27That's wow.

26:29I did not see that coming for a fallen star.

26:32Then I saw those large and black cattle and look, all of them exchanged their pens and

26:36their pastures and their calves and they began to moan one after the other.

26:41And again, I saw in the vision and I looked to heaven and look, I saw many stars descend

26:45and cast themselves down from heaven to that first star.

26:50And in the midst of those calves, they became bulls and they were pasturing with them in

26:56their midst.

26:57And so we've got, we've got calves and we've got bulls starting off and I am so confused

27:04about what you just read like, so this is the head angel.

27:07So as I L in first enoch six, uh, elsewhere they're referred to as Shemi Hazah.

27:13Um, if you, if you've seen Darren Aronofsky's Noah, I just, uh, appeared on a podcast called

27:19Escape Hatch where we talked all about this and they are actually basing a lot of that

27:23on, uh, first enoch and the story of the watchers.

27:26Um, so Sam Yaza is, is the name there, uh, their Azazelle is another name for the head

27:33angel.

27:34So they got a few different names, but that head angel is a falling star.

27:38And then, um, if you go look in the book of Revelation, it says, I saw the great dragon

27:42fall from heaven, uh, like a star and then with their tail, they swept with them a third

27:49of the stars of heaven, which also fell to earth with them.

27:53So book of Revelation is drawing directly from what we're seeing in, uh, the book of

27:58Enoch where the head, malevolent angel falls and then all the other angels go tagging along

28:03after.

28:04Do they also become cows in, uh, in Revelation?

28:08So Adam through Noah are all represented as bulls in the animal apocalypse.

28:13And then ham and it feels like the, there's going to be another section that's going to

28:18be the veggie tails, but okay, we're not.

28:22So now every now all of the, uh, the patriarchs are, are, are cattle.

28:27Well up through Noah, because Noah is, uh, Noah survives the flood, but Noah had three

28:32sons according to the, the tradition, Ham, Jay, fifth, and Shem, Ham and Jay, fifth,

28:40their offspring are all kinds of different animals and birds.

28:43Oh, wow.

28:45Shem is the only one who's offspring are all bulls.

28:48So now we start to notice a theme, the semites, the fathers of, of, uh, the people of Israel

28:55are staying in that lane of bulls, but Ham and Jay, fifth, because they deviated, they're

29:01all different kinds of animals.

29:04And then we go all the way down to Isaac and then Isaac produces a wild boar.

29:09Okay.

29:10And this is Esau and then Isaac produces sheep or A sheep.

29:15And this is Jacob and then Jacob has, all of Jacob's 12 offspring are all sheep.

29:22And so this is the 12 tribes of Israel.

29:24And so they're sheep and, um, sometimes they go astray.

29:28Sometimes they're blinded, sometimes they're killed by wild beasts.

29:32And so the wild beasts are obviously all of the offspring of the children of Ham and

29:37Jay, fifth.

29:38In other words, these are the Gentiles, so the Gentiles are causing problems.

29:43And this is, this is kind of political commentary because they're in a period after Alexander

29:47the greatest died.

29:48You got the saluted empire.

29:49You got the Ptolemies.

29:50They're fighting over this land and the Judeans are stuck in the middle of it and they're getting

29:55the short end of the stick and they're being oppressed heavily.

29:59And this is probably, this vision is probably written during the Maccabean period when Antiochus,

30:04the fourth epiphanies was pushing hard on the Judeans, trying to stamp out Judean traditions.

30:12Um, you know, things like circumcision, things like, uh, whatever they were using to, to try

30:17to, as, as identity markers, he's trying to stamp them out.

30:22Right.

30:23The, the animal apocalypse is all about this.

30:26And then it's all going to come to a head right around the same time that Antiochus,

30:31the fourth epiphanies is hopefully going to be defeated.

30:34So it's very similar to the book of Daniel in that regard.

30:37Um, unfortunately, things don't work out that well, other than like it's, it's the same

30:43as Daniel other than the fact that everyone in Daniel stays people.

30:48Yeah.

30:49Yeah.

30:50It's, it's got to have a hook, somehow it's got to have a hook, some, you can, you can

30:55imagine these people sitting around a table.

30:56What if it was Daniel, but animals, but, but critters, I, somebody called Julie Tamor,

31:04or whoever did the Lion King musical, I mean, we need to, we need to do a version of this.

31:10And then the next book is the epistle of Enoch from, uh, chapters 91 to 105.

31:15And this is Enoch warning his sons, writing these, these epistles as, you know, the epistle

31:20Larry warning to your offspring as, uh, you know, that old cannered.

31:25Um, if you haven't written an epistle to your offspring yet, uh, warning them of whatever.

31:31Get on that.

31:33And it's primarily being written to Methuselah.

31:36And here we have another apocalyptic text only.

31:39This is called the apocalypse of weeks.

31:42And this is where we have 10 periods, like the whole existence is divided into 10 periods

31:47of weeks.

31:48So this is sounding kind of like Daniel, and also sounding kind of like, uh, different

31:53kinds of apocalyptic imaginings that, you know, there are 6,000 years and so there are six

31:58dispensations and all that kind of stuff.

32:00Only here the weeks are not all of the same length of time.

32:05So we can, it's there's a bit of an accordion thing going on.

32:08Those are less useful weeks when you don't know exactly, when you don't know how long

32:12a week's going to end up being, it's, it's hard to, to rely on that.

32:16I'll see you in a week doesn't necessarily, I mean, I have friends for whom I'll see you

32:20in a week and a week can mean anything from tomorrow to, you know, six months from now.

32:26So I guess it makes sense.

32:28I mean, put it in the dictionary because that's, uh, you know, a couple of days used to mean

32:34two days.

32:35Now it's like a week or two, um, yeah, at least from an academic point of view, that's, that's

32:40how we communicate.

32:42And then in the epistle, we have two sets of woes.

32:46One of them is, is woeing or lamenting idolatry, consuming blood, blasphemy, cursing, perverting

32:55or disregarding the divine law.

32:58Whoa.

32:59Whoa.

33:00Indeed.

33:01The second whoa is woeing rich and powerful, abusing the righteous, um, big houses, banqueting

33:09in luxury, hoarding food and wealth and wearing expensing of clothing and jewelry and also

33:16lying.

33:17That this is why Bezos and, uh, and his ilk have really got like tried to get Enoch out

33:24of everything.

33:25Yeah.

33:26So, but this is interesting because, uh, dividing it into two is kind of similar to

33:31later ideas that we see about the two great commandments love God and love your neighbor.

33:35And these two woes happen to do with ways that you sin against God and then ways again,

33:41that you sin against your neighbor, um, and you know, there's a real kind of social justice

33:47vibe, uh, to the second whoa that is probably being pulled from Isaiah, but also is a reflection

33:54of their, their perspective under the boot of, uh, the, um, the Greek, well, not even Greek,

34:02the Hellenistic empires that are, uh, that are oppressing them.

34:06And then, um, it ends with a warning and then an instruction to pass these things on, uh,

34:13so later generations have it.

34:15And then we have this awesome story.

34:16Uh, the next book is the birth of Noah, which is, um, just chapters 106 and 107.

34:24And basically Noah was Methuselah's son, right?

34:27Uh, Lamek or the mech. So there's somebody between them. Yes.

34:32So Methuselah is Noah's grandfather, right?

34:35And that's relevant here.

34:36So when Noah's born, he's born with white, his body is all white and red.

34:41Oh, okay.

34:42He's got white, he's a care decane.

34:44He's got white curly care, exact curly hair, exactly pepperminty flavor.

34:48Um, but when he opens his eyes, his eyes shown like the sun and then immediately after being

34:55born, he stood up and praised the Lord.

34:58Wow.

34:59That's a precocious kid.

35:01Yes. At which point, Lamek or Lamek freaks out and says, you might, uh, in that.

35:08And amazingly says, this ain't my son.

35:13This looks like one of the sons of angels.

35:16He's afraid that his wife has been knocked up by one of his wife and he's like, uh, yeah.

35:22How angelic does the milkman look because, uh, I don't look like this.

35:29So he goes to Methuselah and is like, dad, um, I don't know what's going on here.

35:35And Methuselah goes to Enoch and Enoch says, no, no, it's your son.

35:41It's cool.

35:42You can see it in the eyes, um, and Enoch tells him that he's going to survive the flood,

35:47but that great evil will return to the earth afterwards.

35:51So it, I like, I liked that A, they know that the flood is coming because it doesn't seem

35:57like that was common.

35:58And the other thing, it doesn't seem like that was common knowledge.

36:01Well, no, God announces it to Noah like shortly beforehand.

36:05Right.

36:06So A, they know that the flood is coming and B, they know, oh, it doesn't work.

36:10Yeah.

36:11It's not like it works.

36:12Don't worry.

36:13Yeah.

36:14And then the, the final book of Enoch, which again was probably written around the same

36:19time as the New Testament.

36:20So the, the, so these, this text is kind of coming together cumulatively.

36:25It's accreting more and more chapters, but it's still in circulation as it's accreting

36:31these chapters.

36:32The final book is a summary, uh, an interpretive conclusion of the whole book.

36:36And then it promises this escaton, the end times the believers will be delivered.

36:42Uh, the sinners will be eradicated.

36:45And you have a, you have a few different perspectives on postmortem divine punishment.

36:49There's some like, Oh, they're going to be destroyed as if they never existed.

36:54And then you've got, they're going to be punished and then they're either going to be destroyed

36:57or they're going to achieve some kind of salvation or you've got the idea of eternal conscious

37:02torment.

37:03So you, because there are many different people contributing to the book, you've got

37:07many different perspectives on postmortem divine reward and punishment, which then get

37:13taken up in the New Testament and they don't really get systematized until afterwards.

37:19Sorry, one of the things that I'm picking up on here and you can correct me if I'm wrong,

37:25but I've been doing the show for over a year now and I have learned a couple things, not

37:30a lot, but I've learned a couple of things.

37:32And one of the things that I'm picking up on is though this book purports to have been

37:38written from before the flood, it's got a lot of ideas that weren't that were very

37:46late ideas, like, like all of this eschatol, eschaton stuff, all of the, like, I remember

37:54you talking about those, those are late BCE, like ideas.

38:00Correct?

38:01Yeah.

38:02Yeah.

38:03Yeah.

38:04Yeah.

38:05These are, these are conceptual packages that get put together comparatively late.

38:07So they're coming Persian period, perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism, certainly the

38:12afterlife concepts are being influenced by, by Greek and Roman mythology in the Greco-Roman

38:18period.

38:19So this is all pretty late stuff.

38:20And as you pointed out, if you've got Enoch saying, hey, remember the flood thing that's

38:26going to come up?

38:27Right.

38:28Like that's very clearly someone writing from the perspective of well after all of that.

38:34It's basically assuming the knowledge of someone who is coming after almost the entire Hebrew

38:41Bible has already been, been composed.

38:43And so yeah, it has a bunch of giveaways that it is quite late.

38:47And this is what worried some of the early Christians.

38:49So again, Jude quotes from, from first Enoch, we have 11 different manuscripts, fragmentary

38:59manuscripts, just, just shards and fragments, but different manuscripts that were found

39:05that Qumran, meaning of all the books of the Bible, the only books that were better represented

39:11than the book of Enoch, first Enoch, by the way, would be like Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah

39:17and Psalms.

39:18Oh, wow.

39:19So Isaiah, or first Enoch is big time at Qumran.

39:25It's big time for the early Christians.

39:27And I'm just going to remind people that when we say at Qumran, we're talking Dead Sea Scrolls

39:31here.

39:32Dead Sea Scrolls, right?

39:33A little outpost, Northwest shores of the Dead Sea, where they, where they hid the Dead

39:42Sea Scrolls.

39:44And so within early Christianity, there's very influential text, but I think that one

39:50of the most pivotal things that happened within early Christianity, as it relates to

39:53the biblical text, is in the second century, you had people who were either raised Christian

40:02or converse to Christianity, who were embedded in the Greco-Roman intelligentsia.

40:07They were part of the elite.

40:08They were educated.

40:09They were literate.

40:10They were familiar with philosophy.

40:11They were familiar with philosophy.

40:13And we generally refer to these folks as the apologists, because their main, their main

40:18project was basically to convince the Greco-Roman intelligentsia that the Christian gospel

40:25merited their consideration, merited taking seriously.

40:28So they're basically trying to intellectualize, philosophize, systematize the gospel and the

40:35scriptures.

40:36And they're largely responsible for kind of figuring out where things are going to go

40:43with, which texts.

40:45And probably between the third and the fourth century, you get the, well, it probably starts

40:50in the second century, but in the third and the fourth century, you get these concerns

40:54for, hey, this book has a lot of internal contradictions.

40:58Like, you know, it, it tells the same story a bunch of different ways.

41:02And they're also concerned for the fact that this book would have had to have survived

41:06from before the flood.

41:08And that just doesn't pass muster for a lot of them.

41:11And so sometimes...

41:12I mean, it could have been on the boat.

41:14Why not?

41:15Yeah.

41:16It, as long as we're just ginning up scenarios that are not in evidence.

41:20Yeah, it could have been.

41:21But that...

41:22I mean, you know, Noah would want to keep his great grandpa's writings.

41:27It feels...

41:28That makes sense to me, but you know...

41:29His baby pictures are in there where he's all white and red and looks like a candy cane.

41:34It's got that, that lock of bright white hair or whatever.

41:39But they get suspicious about this.

41:41And so by the fourth century, most everybody is like, yeah, we probably don't need to keep

41:47doing this.

41:48We can get it.

41:50However, when some Syrian missionaries took the Septuagint, so the Septuagint is the

41:57Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures.

42:00And at the time, it wasn't just one volume, it was a bunch of different scrolls.

42:04And First Enoch had been translated into Greek, so it was a part of this collection.

42:10Probably beginning to the middle of the fourth century CE, some Syrian missionaries take Septuagint

42:16manuscripts and they go down to what was then known as the Kingdom of Axum, now Ethiopia.

42:22And they bring the Book of Enoch, and the Book of Jubilees, a similar production from

42:28mainly the middle of the second century BCE that's riffing on, it's fan fiction of both

42:33Genesis and Exodus.

42:35But they take those books down there and Christianity takes root in what we now know as Ethiopia.

42:41And so all of the canon debates that are going on up north, in northern Africa, in Syria,

42:48in Rome, and everywhere in between, they're having these canon debates, and the Kingdom

42:55of Axum is just happy to keep on doing their thing and be left alone.

43:02And so the Ethiopian...

43:04So they're not sending delegates to the various things?

43:09Yeah, like they're not at Nicaea and stuff like that.

43:13In fact, Nicaea probably happened right around the time those missionaries are first getting

43:17down there.

43:18But yeah, there's contact back and forth, but for the most part, they're like,

43:23we're doing fine all by ourselves.

43:26And so the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawakodo Church has the most expansive canon within Christendom,

43:33and it includes the Book of Enoch.

43:36In fact, our earliest copies of the entire Book of Enoch are all in a language that we

43:43refer to as Ethiopia, or that we refer to as Ges, which is, they're both references

43:50to different periods of the same language.

43:53But these medieval copies of Enoch are our oldest versions of this, and tell, except

43:59for a handful of old Greek manuscripts, that some of the Patristic authors seem to have

44:04been aware of, and some Aramaic copies, those that we found at Qumran.

44:10Now the stuff we found at Qumran makes up 1% of, if that, of the entire all 108 chapters

44:19of the Book of Enoch.

44:20And just in case you're wondering, it's roughly the same size of the Book of Isaiah.

44:25So the chapters are a lot shorter.

44:27I think they're chapters with like six verses in the Book of Enoch.

44:31But it was largely unknown to the world until 17th, 18th century, we start to have these

44:39references bubble to the surface.

44:41So Sir Walter Raleigh, you remember that guy.

44:46Yeah.

44:47So brave explorers/pirate or whatever he was.

44:50Yeah.

44:51So in 1616, he wrote a history of the world while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London

44:55as one does.

44:56Yeah.

44:57Sure.

44:58And you got time.

44:59And he told about how Origen and Tartullian, two very influential early Christian authors,

45:06wrote about the Book of Enoch which contained the course of the stars, their names and motions.

45:13So that's that Book of Luminaries.

45:15So he seems to have some knowledge of this, but we don't have anything by Origen that

45:19mentions any such thing at all.

45:22And then in the 17th century, we have some explorers who come back from Ethiopia saying,

45:30"Hey, I saw this weird manuscript down there where they got some stuff that sounds like

45:35it might be what Jude was quoting from," or something like that.

45:41And then there's a Scottish traveler named James Bruce came back to Europe in 1773 and

45:49had three copies of a Gaz or Ethiopian version of the Book of Enoch with him.

45:55And these three copies disagreed quite a bit with each other.

45:58So they're pretty late manuscripts.

45:59They're not very trustworthy manuscripts.

46:03But people start making translations from these.

46:06We get a German translation in 1801.

46:10And then the first English translation comes out in 1821.

46:14And then we get revisions in later years.

46:17And then 1838 was when we have the first Ethiopia text of First Enoch that is published in Europe.

46:27And it's divided into 105 chapters, and then later on it gets redivided into 108.

46:33And then the first critical edition comes out in 1851.

46:36So critical edition would be like an academic edition.

46:39We're trying to reproduce as accurate as we can what the manuscript says.

46:45And then there was a German translation that was released in 1853.

46:49And then most people today who go to a bookstore or go online to try and find a version of

46:56the Book of Enoch are going to find R.H. Charles' translation, which was originally published

47:01in 1906.

47:04And then in the early '50s, we have the first Aramaic fragments that were discovered among

47:10the Dead Sea Scrolls that were published.

47:12And then you can actually see all of those fragments.

47:15If you go pick up a copy of the-- there's a multi-series set called Discoveries in the

47:21Judean Desert, which is the critical editions of all the Dead Sea Scrolls.

47:25And a 1976 volume edited by Joseph Millik is the one that contains all of the Enoch fragments.

47:33And yeah, and then we've had a number of other translations have appeared.

47:38Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, French, and other languages.

47:41And then the 2001 Nickelsberg and Vandercam Hermaneic commentary I think is the most up-to-date.

47:47But scholars are still trying to pick apart the significance of all of this.

47:52But yeah, this was originally written in Aramaic, then translated into Greek, then translated

47:58into Ethiopia.

48:00And so our best witnesses are in Ethiopia.

48:03But we can go back to some Greek fragments that we've got scattered around as well as

48:08these Aramaic fragments to compare what we have.

48:12And I think it's just one of the most fascinating kind of mysteries, puzzles, that is still being

48:17put together by scholars today.

48:21And it's one of the most interesting things, is it is so significant to the discussion

48:25of early Christology because of the Son of Man character.

48:32But to really dig deep into it, you have to learn as you have to learn.

48:39It's a Semitic language.

48:42It's more closely related to Hebrew and Arabic than it is to Egyptian.

48:47Interesting.

48:48But the script is entirely different.

48:50It is a different language.

48:52But scholars are trying to learn as Ethiopia so that they can delve a little deeper.

49:00Now also, there's also Slavonic versions of this text that are another language, another

49:09tradition that scholars are also looking at.

49:13What Slavonic?

49:14Where is that?

49:15So it is a Slavic language.

49:18Okay.

49:19So the church Slavonic is saying- I was going to guess that but I didn't know, okay, Slavonic.

49:26And so it's this interesting little kind of outlier.

49:30It was considered authoritative for a long time among early Jewish folks as well as early

49:34Christian folks.

49:35It was phenomenally influential.

49:37Our concept of Satan, our concept of hell, our concepts of angels, our concepts of so

49:44many different things that we find in the New Testament.

49:47Our concepts of bulls, cows- Yes, smoothies.

49:51It's all deriving in some way or another from this anarchic tradition.

49:56It's at least playing a role in how these things are developing.

50:00And it was totally unknown to the vast majority of Christendom for, you know, 1700 years.

50:08And we're just now getting back to the point where we're taking it seriously and where scholars

50:14are digging into it to see what it can tell us about early Judaism as well as early Christianity.

50:19Yeah.

50:21But a caveat, it's not historical.

50:24Right.

50:25One of the things I deal with every day on social media are videos from people who are

50:30like, "They've been hiding the book of Enoch for us and now we have all the answers."

50:35And it's like aliens visited Earth and turned people into cows.

50:41And they had spaceships and they had this and that and the other.

50:44And first, you can't prove that they're wrong.

50:50So now we're back to Russell's teapot.

50:51Why do I always find myself at Russell's teapot?

50:56It's a useful metaphor.

50:58Yeah, it is.

51:01And so it is a fascinating text.

51:04It is a weird text.

51:06Yeah.

51:07It is a phenomenally influential text.

51:09But it is not a historical text.

51:12So for folks who want to go into Enoch, you're going to find a lot of stuff that inspired

51:18what was going, the discussions that were going on related to eschatology related to

51:23early Christology related to salvation and damnation and Satan and all these things.

51:30It's not about aliens.

51:31It's not about spaceships.

51:32I mean, it might be about those things.

51:36It's just that they never happened.

51:38I mean, oh, and the giants as well.

51:40Yeah.

51:41The Kandahar giant is not real.

51:44Oh, how dare you, sir?

51:45How dare you?

51:47So that what about Andre the giant?

51:50He was real.

51:51That is a myth, no such person.

51:59Carrie Elway's was performing against a green screen.

52:02That's right.

52:03That's right.

52:04It was a blue screen back then.

52:06They hadn't discovered the color green yet.

52:08They hadn't figured out green yet, but if you want a wonderful translation, I highly recommend

52:12the herma Nia translation by Nichols Berg and van der Cam.

52:16If you want to, if you just want to get elbow deep in the scholarship, go get the two volumes

52:22of the herma Nia commentary and, and yeah, be a maze friends and confound enemies at

52:29your party by, by now, you can also confound your friends and amaze your enemies.

52:35You can do anything you want.

52:36Yeah.

52:37Yeah.

52:38And there's a lot of semantic overlap between the concept of amazement and confounding.

52:41Yes, indeed.

52:42Yeah.

52:43We're not, we're not here to tell you how to amaze.

52:46We're just here to give you the tools and the resources so that you can amaze and confound

52:52all at the same time.

52:54So that's, that's first Enoch.

52:56I think it's so fascinating.

52:58I think it's really cool.

52:59I think that it's, you know, it's so, because we've had, like you have referenced it other

53:05like guests have referenced it as though, and I've been confused because those references

53:11have been as though it were almost treating it as though it's just a book of the Bible.

53:17Yeah.

53:18Because, uh, influential, it kind of is like it's, it's, it's source material for a lot

53:26of ideas for a lot of, uh, and, and, and, and as you say, like in Jude, apparently it's

53:33treated as, uh, as scriptural.

53:36It, they, you know, the, the author of Jude counts it as, uh, as, as part of the canon as

53:43part of the scripture.

53:44So, yeah.

53:45Fascinating.

53:46Yeah.

53:47It's, it's a fascinating text, um, but please stop pretending it's historical.

53:53I, I mean, but you could say that about a lot of the canonical books.

53:59Yeah. No, I'm, I'm just uniquely frustrated at how much misinformation I have to respond

54:05to that is related to the notion that the book of Enoch is like the secret story that

54:11they've, everybody's been hiding from us and that you suddenly can unlock all the keys

54:15to the universe because you have the book.

54:17Well, I mean, I, yeah, I, I can see where you could come at that though.

54:21If, if you are to say, you know, that all of the Bible is to be taken literally, if you're

54:27a Bible literalist and this book was that influential within, you know, that framework

54:35and was touted as actual scripture by the authors of scripture, yeah, I can see, I can

54:44see the argument.

54:45It's obviously silly, um, but I can see it.

54:50I can see why they do it.

54:51I, I say, if you, if you feel inclined to start, uh, conspiracy theories based on this

54:57book, get on with your bad self.

54:59You're just giving Dan, uh, ammunition for fodder for his, it's just job security at

55:06this.

55:07That's right.

55:08That's right.

55:09You should, you should be embracing this, Dan.

55:10I don't know why you're fighting it.

55:12I don't know.

55:13Oh, right.

55:14Well, I, I, that is fascinating.

55:18I really, uh, I've, I've enjoyed that, uh, and you and I are going to talk about it a

55:24little bit more and we're going to answer some patrons questions in our Patreon bonus

55:29episode, the after party that we do every week.

55:33Uh, if you friends at home would like to become a part of that or just help to make

55:38the show go or get access to an early and ad free version of every show, you can go

55:44to patreon.com/dataoverdogma, uh, and then sign up.

55:50And if you would like to reach us, uh, contact at dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that.

55:58And other than that, hey, have a great week.

56:01Bye everybody.

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