The present article proposes that Enoch’s status in Watchers and Parables is virtually angelic. It then goes on to compare the knowledge revealed to angelified Enoch with the teachings of the fallen angels in those two Enochic booklets. It becomes clear that the subjects taught by the Watchers are negative aspects of subjects apprehended by Enoch is his angelified state. Thus the status of the revealer determines what can be revealed.
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See idem, “Lists of Revealed Things in the Apocalyptic Literature,” in Magnalia Dei, the Mighty Acts of God: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Memory of G. Ernest Wright (ed. G. Ernest Wright et al.; New York, n.y.: Doubleday, 1976), 444 and idem, “Enoch’s Revelations?” in Proceedings of the Conference on the Enochic Chronotope, Berlin, December 2013 (ed. Florentina Badalanova Geller, forthcoming).
Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 176; Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels, 2005.
Apparently in Gen 6:4, cf. Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels, 197–200; Hendel, “Of Demigods and the Deluge,” 13–26. See explicitly in 1 En. 15:8–9: compare Annus, On the Origin of the Watchers, 311–12 and also his remarks there on the punishment of the Watchers.
See Michael A. Knibb, “Enoch and Wisdom: Reflections on the Character of the Book of Parables,” in Congress Volume Helsinki 2010 (ed. Martti Nissinen; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 255–76, and the contrast of the Watchers’ knowledge and Enoch’s on pp. 266–67. Knibb, however, does not speak of the different valuation of shared subjects.
In Michael E. Stone, Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011), 31–57 assesses the Adamic and Enochic explanations of evil. To that analysis I would add that, despite their radical differences, these two axes share some common features. First, both describe a descent from an angelic or virtually angelic state to the earthly. Second, Adam’s fall was caused by disobedience, which was caused by the power of vision, with the serpent-Satan fanning physical desire for the fruit. It also implies a desire to become like God, explicit in Gen 3:22. The angels’ fall is caused by vision leading to physical desire and lust for human women in the Genesis 6-derived story, but also by rebellion and desire to replace God. In both narratives, knowledge is ambiguous and serves in both as a cause of evil. On the Enochic axis, it makes further evildoing possible. In the Enochic text, good knowledge is to be aspired to at the end. Ben-Dov and Sanders remark appropriately on the migration of the Watchers’ teaching to Enoch in Jubilees: Ben-Dov and Sanders, Ancient Jewish Sciences, 16.
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The present article proposes that Enoch’s status in Watchers and Parables is virtually angelic. It then goes on to compare the knowledge revealed to angelified Enoch with the teachings of the fallen angels in those two Enochic booklets. It becomes clear that the subjects taught by the Watchers are negative aspects of subjects apprehended by Enoch is his angelified state. Thus the status of the revealer determines what can be revealed.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 6066 | 152 | 8 |
Full Text Views | 278 | 16 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 190 | 22 | 0 |