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Enoch
Calendar Testifies of Christ, Part I
by
John P. Pratt
Jesus
Christ quoted often from the Book of Enoch, indirectly testifying
of its authenticity. Now it has been discovered that Enoch returns
the favor because the key dates in the life of Christ are "holy
days" on the Enoch Calendar. Thus, Enoch, who prophesied of the
Elect One, indirectly witnessed that the Messiah would be none other
than Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
and his apostles quoted from the Book of Enoch (also called 1 Enoch)
as authentic scripture. It was once in the Bible and was accepted
as having been written by Enoch himself, the majestic antediluvian
prophet who was translated into heaven without tasting death (Heb.
11:5). During the Third and Fourth Centuries A.D. the book fell
into disfavor and was removed from sacred canon, destined to become
one of the "lost books" of the Bible. It was rediscovered in 1773
in Ethiopia and is now readily available in English, but is still
largely unappreciated. Before looking at the calendar it describes,
let us briefly review how it contains doctrines or phrases of the
Savior, which are apparently examples of the Savior quoting Enoch.
Christ Quotes
Enoch
The one direct
quote in the New Testament is by Jude, a brother of Jesus Christ:
"And
Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying,
Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
"To
execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly
among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed,
and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken
against him." (Jude 1:14-15, quoting Enoch 1:9 {2:1}
[1].)
While that is the
only referenced quotation in the Bible, there are many indirect references
which involve striking similarities. The scholar and translator R.H.
Charles declared, "The influence of 1 Enoch on the New Testament has
been greater than that of all the other apocryphal and pseudepigraphical
books taken together."[2] Another expert noted that
"Its influence is apparent in no less than 128 places in the New Testament."[3]
The following table compares a few from the introduction to Archbishop
Richard Laurence's original translation [4], in which
the Savior apparently alludes to the Book of Enoch.
| Jesus
Christ |
Enoch |
| Blessed
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Mat 5:5) |
The elect
shall possess light, joy and peace, and they shall inherit the
earth. (Enoch 5:7 {6:9}) |
| the Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the son
(John 5:22). |
the principal
part of the judgment was assigned to him, the Son of man. (Enoch
69:27 {68:39}) |
| shall inherit
everlasting life (Mat. 19:29) |
those who
will inherit eternal life (Enoch 40:9 {40:9}) |
| "Wo unto
you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. (Luke
6:24) |
Woe to
you who are rich, for in your riches have you trusted; but from
your riches you shall be removed. (Enoch 94:8 {93:7}). |
| Ye also
shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel. (Mat. 19:28) |
I will
place each of them on a throne of glory (Enoch 108:12 {105:26}) |
| Woe unto
that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been
good for that man if he had not been born. (Mat. 26:24) |
Where will
the habitation of sinners be . . . who have rejected the Lord
of spirits. It would have been better for them, had they never
been born. (Enoch 38:2 {38:2}) |
| between
us and you there is a great gulf fixed. (Luke 16:26) |
by a chasm
. . . [are] their souls are separated (Enoch 22: 9,11{22:10,12}) |
| In my Father's
house are many mansions (John 14:2) |
In that
day shall the Elect One sit upon a throne of glory, and shall
choose their conditions and countless habitations. (Enoch 45:3
{45:3}) |
| that ye
may be called the children of light (John 12:36) |
the good
from the generation of light (Enoch 108:11 {105:
25}) |
| the water
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing
up into everlasting life. (John 4:14) |
all the
thirsty drank, and were filled with wisdom, having their habitation
with the righteous, the elect, and the holy. (Enoch 48:1 {48:1}) |
History.
The Book of Enoch was dropped from the Jewish scriptures shortly
after Christ, most likely because it apparently referred to him
as the Messiah. It was quoted as scripture by the early Christian
Church fathers until the middle of the third century A.D., accepted
as a divine work having been written by Enoch himself.[5]
It then fell into disrepute and was banned from the canon of scripture
in the fourth century, partly because it didn't agree with how Christianity
came to be redefined after the death of the apostles.
The book also
doubtlessly raised questions with its unusual imagery, referring
to things such as "the stone which supports the corners of the earth"
and "the four winds, which bear up the earth" (Enoch 18:2 {18:2-3}).
That may have sounded primitive to the sophisticated science of
the fourth century, but that is the same imagery used by many great
prophets. For example, John the Revelator states, "I saw four angels
standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds
of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth" (Rev.
7:1; compare imagery of Isa. 11:12, Jer. 49:36, Ezek. 37:9, Dan.
7:2, Mat. 24:31). As is discussed later in this article, often what
appears to be primitive science in the scriptures turns out to be
the sophisticated concepts of God simplified for us. Note that the
prophets have 100% chance of success when predicting the weather,
so those angels may have more to do with the wind than we might
suppose.
Thus, for a
variety of reasons, the Book of Enoch was systematically purged
from the scriptures until it became a "lost book" of the Bible.
In 1773 the famous explorer James Bruce discovered it in Ethiopia
(then called Abyssinia), and brought back three copies. Fortunately,
the Ethiopians had kept it in their Bible, where it was located
immediately after the Book of Job.[6]
One of the
three copies was presented to the Oxford library. The first English
translation was published in 1821 by Archbishop Richard Laurence,
who had been a Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. Later translations
included that of George Schodde in 1881, of R.H. Charles in 1913,
and by E. Isaac in 1983.[7] The first three translations
are now available on the internet. Quotations and links in this
article are to the original Laurence translation, because it still
appears to be the best overall translation.
Date of
Origin. Modern scholars, beginning with Laurence, all date the
origin of the book to the first or second century before Christ,
hence it is assigned to the "pseudepigrapha," meaning it is not
believed to have been written by the named author. It is dated using
standard "scholarly" methods. One rule of dating used by modern
scholars, is that if anything is prophesied which turns out to be
correct, it must have been written after the event, because otherwise
the author would really have to have been a prophet! This complete
rejection of the entire concept of revelation forced Laurence to
put the authorship of the Book of Enoch extremely late because he
saw that it prophesied not only the existence of Parthia (250 B.C.),
but even the reign of King Herod the Great, which began in 37 B.C.
On the other hand, it was quoted by the Savior and his apostles
so it must have been written before their time. Thus Laurence inferred
that the book had been written "before the rise of Christianity;
most probably at an early period of the reign of Herod."[8]
More modern scholarship has concluded that the book was probably
written by several authors over the period of about 180-64 B.C.[9]
This extremely recent authorship date of course raises the question
of how such a late forgery could have been so totally accepted as
genuine in just a few decades, which has never been adequately explained.
In this article,
let us consider the outrageous possibility that the work was actually
originally written by the prophet Enoch long before the Great Flood
and contains many genuine revelations.[10] It
probably also contains some interpolations of men, and has suffered
from mistakes introduced by the many hand-made transcriptions. But
for the purposes of this article, when it says that an angel revealed
to Enoch a divine calendar, those statements will be taken at face
value. One scientific way to test a hypothesis is to assume it is
true and examine the consequences. Let us now apply that method
to the astronomy contained in the Book of Enoch.
End
of Part 1: Tomorrow See Enoch's Astronomy.
1.
Quotations in this article from the Book
of Enoch are from the original translation of Richard Laurence,
The Book of Enoch the Prophet (reprinted by Wizards Bookshelf,
Minneapolis, 1976) because he translates astronomical text the best.
Since his time many other manuscripts have been discovered and the
chapter/verse notation is now different. Laurence's notation is
included in braces { }, complete with internet links.
2.
Charles, R.H., The Book of Enoch (London: Oxford U. Press,
1913), p. xcv. His chapter and verse notation is the first one listed
in quotations in this article. The entire text is easily accessible
on the internet.
3.
Nibley, Hugh, "A Strange Thing in the Land: The Return of the Book
of Enoch," The Ensign (Oct. 1975), reprinted in Hugh Nibley,
Enoch the Prophet, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS),
1986, p. 95.
4.
Laurence, pp. xxv-xxxiii.
5.
The introduction to the Laurence translation summarizes: "Reverting
to the second century of Christianity, we find Irenaeus and Clement
of Alexandria citing the Book of Enoch without questioning its sacred
character. . . . Tertullian, who flourished at the close of the
first and at the beginning of the second century, . . . speaks of
the author as 'the most ancient prophet, Enoch' an of the book as
the divinely inspired autograph of that immortal patriarch, preserved
by Noah in the ark. . . . Tertullian adds [that it was] 'disavowed
by the Jews like all other scripture which speaks of Christ.' .
. . Origen (A.D. 254) assigns to the Book of Enoch the same authority
as to the Psalms [but] affirms that the work of the antediluvian
patriarch was not accepted in the Churches as Divine." (Laurence,
pp. iv-v). Thus, by the third century the work was beginning to
be questioned. R.H. Charles notes that "from the fourth century
of our era onward it fell into discredit; and under the ban of such
authorities as Hilary, Jerome and Augustine, it gradually passed
out of circulation, and became lost to the knowledge of Western
Christendom . . ." (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1913, vol. 2, p. 163.)
6.
Laurence, p. vii.
7.
Laurence and Charles are referenced in footnotes 1 and 2. The translation
by George H. Schodde, (Andover: Warren R. Draper, 1881) is also
on the internet. Isaac's
translation is in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James
H. Charlesworth, (New York, Doubleday, 1983), vol I, pp. 5-89.
8.
Laurence, p. x.
9.
Charlesworth, p. 7.
10.
Nibley also suggests this possibility: "Instead of ever seeking
for sources to Enoch, which never turn up, why not do the sensible
thing and accept Enoch himself as the source, as the writers of
Jubilees and the XII Patriarchs do?" (Nibley, p. 123)
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