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The
Apocryphical Book of Enoch Editors
note: Begin... "One
of the most important apocryphic works of the Second Temple Period is
Enoch." The
Book of Enoch is "an ancient composition known from two sets of
versions, an Ethiopic one that scholars identify as '1 Enoch', and a
Slavonic version that is identified as '2 Enoch', and which is also
known as The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Both versions, of which copied
manuscripts have been found mostly in Greek and Latin translations,
are based on early sources that enlarged on the short biblical mention
that Enoch, the seventh Patriarch after Adam, did not die because, at
age 365, 'he walked with God' - taken heavenward to join the deity." "In
the Book of Enoch the arcane wisdom is said to have been betrayed to
mankind by fallen angels, but a Talmudic tradition claims that God whispered
it to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to this tradition its secrets
were then imparted to seventy elders who thereafter transmitted them
orally to their successors." "The
Book of Enoch is a pseudoepigraphal work (a work that claims to be by
a biblical character). The Book of Enoch was not included in either
the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons, but could have been considered
a sacred text by the sectarians. The original Aramaic version was lost
until the Dead Sea fragments were discovered." Although
the Book of Enoch is considered as apocryphal, it was clearly known
to early Christian writers as the following quote from 1 Enoch 1:9 indicates:
"Prior
to the eighteenth century, scholars had believed the Book of Enoch to
be irretrievably lost: composed long before the birth of Christ, and
considered to be one of the most important pieces of Jewish mystical
literature, it was only known from fragments and from references to
it in other texts. James Bruce changed all this by procuring several
copies of the missing work during his stay in Ethiopia. These were the
first complete editions of the Book of Enoch ever to be seen in Europe. The Patriarch Enoch "According
to the biblical narrative (Genesis 5:21-24), Enoch lived only 365 years
(far less than the other patriarchs in the period before the Flood).
Enoch 'walked with God; then he was no more for God took him'." "According
to Sumerian chronicles of the earlier times, it was at Eridu's temple
that Enki, as guardian of the secrets of all scientific knowledge, kept
the ME's - tabletlike objects on which the scientific data were inscribed.
One of the Sumerian texts details how the goddess Inanna (later known
as Ishtar), wishing to give status to her 'cult center' Uruk (the biblical
Erech), tricked Enki into giving her some of those divine formulas.
Adapa, we find, was also nicknamed NUN.ME, meaning "He who can
decipher the ME's'. Even unto millennia later, in Assyrian times, the
saying 'Wise as Adapa' meant that someone was exceedingly wise and knowledgeable....The
'wide knowledge' imparted by Enki to Adapa included writing, medicine,
and - according to the astronomical series of tablets UD.SAR.ANUM.ENLILLA
('The Great Days of Amu and Enlil') - knowledge of astronomy and astrology." "The
learned savant who guards the secrets of the gods will bind his favored
son with an oath before Shamash and Adad... and will instruct him in
the secrets of the gods." "Thus was the line of priests created,
those who are allowed to approach Shamash and Adad." "The
legend [of Enoch] begins...with the Sumerian King List. This is a list
of rulers before the Flood, and is preserved in several forms, including
Berossus. Here one of the kings, often given as the seventh (as Enoch
is in his list), is called Enmeduranki or Enmeduranna. He is generally
associated with the city of Sippar, which was the home of the cult of
the sun god Shamash. Moreover, in other texts this Enmeduranki was the
first to be shown, by Adad and Shamash, three techniques of divination:
pouring oil on water, inspecting a liver, and the use of a cedar (rod),
whose function is still unclear. These were to be transmitted from generation
to generation, and in fact became the property of the guild of baru,
the major group of diviners in Babylon. "One
cannot rule out the possibility that, as Enmduranki and Enoch, Adapa
too was the seventh in a line of sages, the Sages of Eridu, and thus
another version of the Sumerian memory echoed in the biblical Enoch
record. According to this tale, seven Wise Men were trained in Eridu,
Enki's city; their epithets and particular knowledge varied from version
to version. Rykle Borger, examining this tale in light of the Enoch
traditions ('Die Beschworungsserie Bit Meshri und die Himmelfahrt Henochs'
in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 33), was especially fascinated
by the inscription on the third tablet of the series of Assyrian Oath
Incantations. In it the name of each sage is given and his main call
on fame is explained; it says thus of the seventh: 'Uta-abzu, he who
to heaven ascended'. Citing a second such text, R. Borger concluded
that this seventh sage, whose name combined that of Utu/Shamash with
the Lower World (Abzu) domain of Enki, was the Assyrian 'Enoch'. "And
I saw there something horrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly
founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible. And there I saw seven
stars of the heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and burning
with fire. Then I said: 'For what sin are they bound, and on what account
have they been cast in hither?' Then said Uriel, one of the holy angels,
who was with me, and was chief over them, and said: 'Enoch, why dost
thou ask, and why art thou eager for the truth? These are of the number
of the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the commandment of the
Lord, and are bound here till ten thousand years, the time entailed
by their sins, are consummated.' And from thence I went to another place,
which was still more horrible than the former, and I saw a horrible
thing: a great fire there which burnt and blazed, and the place was
cleft as far as the abyss, being full of great descending columns of
fire: neither its extent or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture.
Then I said: 'How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!'
Then Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and
said unto me: 'Enoch, why hast thou such fear and affright?' And I answered:
'Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of the
pain.' And he said unto me: 'This place is the prison of the angels,
and here they will be imprisoned for ever.'" Enoch's description of the punishment prepared for the fallen angels has clear parallels with the chaotic void in the Necronomicon. "...The
Book of Enoch has always been of great significance to Freemasons, and...certain
rituals dating back to long before Bruce's time [1730-1794] identified
Enoch himself with Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom." "Enoch
was the first who invented books and different sorts of writing. The
ancient Greeks declare that Enoch is the same as Mercury Trismegistus
[Hermes], and that he taught the sons of men the art of building cities,
and enacted some admirable laws...He discovered the knowledge of the
Zodiac, and the course of the Planets; and he pointed out to the sons
of men, that they should worship God, that they should fast, that they
should pray, that they should give alms, votive offerings, and tenths.
He reprobated abominable foods and drunkenness, and appointed festivals
for sacrifices to the Sun, at each of the Zodiacal Signs." According
to Masonic lore, Enoch was the inventor of writing, "that he taught
men the art of building", and that, before the flood, he "feared
that the real secrets would be lost - to prevent which he concealed
the grand Secret, engraven on a white oriental porphyry stone, in the
bowels of the earth." "In
his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus writes that Adam had forewarned
his descendants that sinful humanity would be destroyed by a deluge.
In order to preserve their science and philosophy, the children of Seth
therefore raised two pillars, one of brick and the other of stone, on
which were inscribed the keys to their knowledge. The patriarch Enoch....also
constructed an underground temple [at Moriah] consisting of nine vaults,
one beneath the other, placing in the deepest vault a triangular tablet
of gold bearing upon it the absolute and ineffable name of Deity. According
to some accounts, Enoch made two golden deltas. The larger he placed
upon the white cubical altar in the lowest vault and the smaller he
gave into the keeping of his son, Methuselah, who did the actual construction
work of the brick chambers according to the pattern revealed to his
father by the Most High. In the form and arrangements of these vaults
Enoch epitomized the nine spheres of the ancient Mysteries and the nine
sacred strata of the earth through which the initiate must pass to reach
the flaming Spirit dwelling in its central core." Methuselah
" took the object back to Sippar. Enoch remained at Moriah, to
become the old man on the mountain. He lived 365 years, according to
Genesis, and then he died. Or did he vanish into thin air?" Enoch's
"name signified in the Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The legend
of the columns, of granite and brass or bronze, erected by him, is probably
symbolical. That of bronze, which survived the flood, is supposed to
symbolize the mysteries, of which Masonry is the legitimate successor
from the earliest times the custodian and depository of the great philosophical
and religious truths, unknown to the world at large, and handed down
from age to age by an unbroken current of tradition, embodied in symbols,
emblems, and allegories." There was a substantial Zoroastrian Influence on Judaism when Jewish exiles were exposed to the Persian religion during the Babylonian captivity. "Some
Jews adopted Enochian tradition in Babylon during the Exile and brought
it back to Canaan when Cyrus gave them leave to Return. The Enochian
Jews were detested by the priesthood in Jerusalem, and they were forced
to 'flee' into the desert before 300 BCE. Naturally, they supported
the Maccabees during the uprising of 165 BCE. The Enochians at Qumran
'updated' the text to include Judah the Hammer in the big story."
"The last of the Essene stragglers buried it [the secret book]
in Cave IV at Qumran c.70 CE. The urban Christians and Jews of the Near
East rejected it. The authors of the Apocalypse rewrote and retitled
it, but they didn't understand the heptadic structure of the original
lines, the arrangement of sevens. (The Revelation of St John is pure
gibberish, a sloppy rehash of Babylonian myths and legends.) Only the
students of the Merkabah (in Babylonia) possessed the key to the Enochian
mystery." The Secrets "At
that hour, that Son of Man was given a name, in the presence of the
Lord of the Spirits, the Before-Time, even before the creation of the
sun and the moon, before the creation of the stars, he was given a name
in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits." The
Messiah "first appears as preexistent in the apocryphal First Book
of Enoch, which was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic about 150
BC. From that period on, the concept of the Messiah who was created
in the six days of Creation, or even prior to them or who was born at
variously stated subsequent dates and was then hidden to await his time,
became a standard feature of Jewish Messianic eschatology. "From
the beginning the Son of Man was hidden, And the Most High has preserved
him In the presence of His might, And revealed him to the elect." "Written
both as a personal testament and as a historic review, the Ethiopic
Book of Enoch, whose earliest title was probably The Words of Enoch,
describes his journey to Heaven as well as to the four corners of Earth." "In
the Book of Enoch it was the archangel Uriel ('God is my light') who
showed Enoch the secrets of the Sun (solstices and equinoxes, 'six portals'
in all) and the 'laws of the Moon' (including intercalation), and the
twelve constellations of the stars, 'all the workings of heaven'. And
in the end of the schooling, Uriel gave Enoch - as Shamash and Adad
had given Enmeduranki - 'heavenly tablets', instructing him to study
them carefully and note 'every individual fact' therein. Returning to
Earth, Enoch passed this knowledge to his old son, Methuselah." The knowledge granted Enoch included: "All
the workings of heaven, earth and the seas, and all the elements, their
passages and goings and the thunderings of the thunder, and of the Sun
and the Moon; the goings and changings of the stars; the seasons, years,
days, and hours." According
to the The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, "it seems that when the
prophet Enoch was 'taken up', he saw the air and then the ether. Then
he reached the first heaven, where 'two hundred angels rule the stars'
and where he saw a sea 'greater than the earthly sea'. "I
know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third
heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know
- God knows. And I know that this man - whether in the body or apart
from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to Paradise.
He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." "Enoch's
third heaven...seems very similar to the region known as Ilavrta-varsa,
which is described in the Fifth Canto of the Bhagavata Purana. Thus,
in Ilavrta-varsa there are four gigantic trees, and four rivers flow
from their roots, including a river of honey. There is also a city called
Brahmapuri, which is visited by Lord Brahma and which may correspond
to the 'place on which God rests when he comes into Paradise'."
The Venerable Bede, an eighth-century English theologian and historian,
wrote that "the seven heavens are (1) the Air, (2) the Ether, (3)
Olympus, (4) the Element of Fire, (5) the Firmament, (6) the Angelical
Region, and (7) the Realm of the Trinity."
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