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Book of Enoch


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8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but I suppose the next question is:  Did you?  And what were your impressions of it?  I assume we are talking about the LDS Book of Enoch.  There are several other books of Enoch.

 

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but I suppose the next question is:  Did you?  And what were your impressions of it?  I assume we are talking about the LDS Book of Enoch.  There are several other books of Enoch.

Uh, there's an LDS one?  Did not know that.

38 minutes ago, Metis_LDS said:

Looking at that now...

 

Fyi, the book of enoch was and still is in eastern hands, the Ethiopian orthodox have always had it in tbeir holy texts unabridged, as far as i know.  It was just lost to the European western world.  Think what i always liked about it, man wasn't on top of the pile, something most entitled people out here can't stand the idea of.

Edited by poptart
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1 Enoch has been very important in Margaret Barker's work.

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Publications/LostProphet.htm

Also, in a more technical manner in The Older Testament.  She succinctly describes 1 Enoch as a repository of temple traditions, pointing back to the 1 Temple High Priests, and important to the beginnings of Christianity. 

And there are some interesting resonances with LDS scripture.  Nibley (A Strange Thing in the Land) and Welch (a review of a recent Enoch translation that points out how many angel names correspond to happenings in 3 Nephi) have pointed out several.  There used to be an interesting web essay with many more comparisons to the Book of Mormon, but the link I had doesn't work anymore.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

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4 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

1 Enoch has been very important in Margaret Barker's work.

http://www.margaretbarker.com/Publications/LostProphet.htm

Also, in a more technical manner in The Older Testament.  She succinctly describes 1 Enoch as a repository of temple traditions, pointing back to the 1 Temple High Priests, and important to the beginnings of Christianity. 

And there are some interesting resonances with LDS scripture.  Nibley (A Strange Thing in the Land) and Welch (a review of a recent Enoch translation that points out how many angel names correspond to happenings in 3 Nephi) have pointed out several.  There used to be an interesting web essay with many more comparisons to the Book of Mormon, but the link I had doesn't work anymore.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Thoughts on the Angels teaching men how to make war, magic and what not?  The race of giants they spawned and how one of em flew though the cosmos to ask Enoch to intercede on their behalf?  That and the answer God returned?  The whole thing read like a sci-fi novel, no offense intended. 

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5 hours ago, poptart said:

Thoughts on the Angels teaching men how to make war, magic and what not?  The race of giants they spawned and how one of em flew though the cosmos to ask Enoch to intercede on their behalf?  That and the answer God returned?  The whole thing read like a sci-fi novel, no offense intended. 

The year after I got back from my mission (Sept 1975), I read around 300 SF novels, and I later (around 1980) sold a novella and short story, twice each, within two weeks. 

I have read a lot of SF.  1 Enoch has some strange things in different sections, but it does not read like a novel.  It has five very different sections, including the accounts of the fallen angels, the parables, the apocalypse, the calendrical chapter (Luminaries), and collections of woes.  I have never read a better succinct description than "a repository of priestly traditions."  It's eclectic, a collection, not a continuous account with a consistent narrative or single story.  The oldest copies come from Qumran, where there were at least 20 copies, compared to 21 of Isaiah.  If you read Nibley's essay on The Enoch Figure in "Enoch the Prophet" of the Collected Works, he notes the antiquity and range of the themes that appear in the fallen angel stories, as he compares them with a range of myths, including Greek. 

Elsewhere, he observes that Samuel in the Book of Mormon appears to quote 1 Enoch in saying "woe unto the rich".    That is interesting, but not overwhelming by itself.  However, it's interesting to compare the various "woe" pronouncements in 1 Enoch with Jacob's list of woes.  The technique is similar.  And I argued in one of by Barker essays that the way that the book of Mosiah describes Amulon's wicked priests makes allusive comparisons with the Fallen Angel stories.  That is, they are a corrupt priesthood, they steal wives they should not have, they teach the enemies of the Nephites various skills that turn out to threaten the Nephites, trading their Temple knowledge for earthly power, and, they come to a bad end, hunted down and destroyed.

Quote

Barker remarks, “It has been suggested that the fallen angel themes of 1 Enoch were in fact an attack upon the corrupt priesthood of the second temple period.”53 Similarly, the account of Amulon’s wicked priests shows the use of allusions to the fallen angel myth to interpret that story.54 The arch sin of the fallen angels in the Enoch accounts was pride, and in consequence of their fall, they spread a corrupt form of wisdom. In the Enoch accounts, the fallen angels intermarried with human women, and their offspring were destroyed in the time of Noah.55 In the Book of Mormon, Amulon’s priests are described from the beginning as proud (Mosiah 11:5–13); they also pervert sacred knowledge for gain (Mosiah 11:5–6; 12:28–29) and take wives they should not have (Mosiah 20:1–5). Amulon’s priests teach the Lamanites to be cunning and wise “as to the wisdom of the world” (Mosiah 24:7; see 23:31–35; 24:1–7). Finally, their descendants from the union with the stolen wives become “hardened” and meet with destruction (Alma 25:4, 7–9).

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=15

And,  if you read Jack Welch's review of Nickelsburg's then-new translation, you'll see this:

Quote

Nickelsburg carefully explains the meanings of the names of the twenty evil watchers who rebel against God (pp. 179-81). These names appear to have the following literal meanings:

  1. “My name has seen,” i.e., God has seen the wicked
  2. “Earth is power”
  3. “Evening of God” or “burning ashes of God,” referring to “volcanic activities”
  4. “Star of God”
  5. “God is their light ” or “God is prudence “
  6. “Thunder of God”
  7. “God is my judge”
  8. “Shooting star of God”
  9. “Lightning of God”
  10. “God has made,” i.e., God’s creative activities
  11. “The one of [Mount] Hermon”
  12. “Rain of God”
  13. “Cloud of God”
  14. “Winter of God”
  15. “Sun of God”
  16. “Moon of God”
  17. “Perfection of God”
  18. “Mountain of God”
  19. “Sea of God” or “Day of God”
  20. “God will guide”

I found it interesting that this list names the leaders of the rebellious forces that all banded together and “swore together and bound one another with a curse” (1 Enoch 6:5) to shake God’s creation according to their own will. These key figures are main powers in the Enochic heavenly panoply. Thus, it seems significant that when “the prophet” (Zenos) spoke of the Lord God visiting the house of Israel in the day of destruction that would accompany the cataclysmic death of the Son of God, the Book of Mormon text in 1 Nephi 19 includes most of these heavenly elements as the instruments that will implement the visitation of the Lord. In other words, the Book of Mormon text assumes that these rebellious forces are again (or perhaps were actually always) in line under the dominion of the Lord God of Israel. The Enochic elements directly or arguably present in this prophecy include:

1. “God surely shall visit” (1 Nephi 19:11) 2. “opening of the earth,” “power” (1 Nephi 19:11) 3. “vapor,” understandable as volcanic clouds (1 Nephi 19:11; compare 3 Nephi 8:20) 5. “righteousness” (1 Nephi 19:11) 6. “thunderings” (1 Nephi 19:11) 7. “they shall be scourged” (1 Nephi 19:13) 8. “fire” (1 Nephi 19:11) 9. “lightnings” (1 Nephi 19:11) 10. “God of nature” (1 Nephi 19:12) 12. “tempest” (1 Nephi 19:11) 13. “smoke” (1 Nephi 19:11) 14. “darkness” (1 Nephi 19:11) 17. “salvation of the Lord” (1 Nephi 19:17) 18. “mountains” (1 Nephi 19:11) 19. “isles of the sea” (1 Nephi 19:12, 16) or “at that day” (1 Nephi 19:11) 20. “I [will] gather in” (1 Nephi 19:16)

Absent here, for some reason, are references to the potentates related to the sun (#15), moon (#16), stars (#4), and Hermon (#11); but more than three-quarters of the twenty heavenly chiefs named in 1 Enoch 6:7 seem to stand in the background of the ancient Israelite prophecies used by Nephi in 1 Nephi 19. This would indeed suggest some significant linkage between Nephi’s explanation of the “sign” that should be given “unto those who should inhabit the isles of the sea” (1 Nephi 19:10) and these beings in the Enochic heavenly host, whose main activity, as is clear from 1 Enoch 8:3, also involved the dispensing of “signs.” Although in 1 Enoch these rebellious watchers acted in defiance of the plan of God and outside the scope of their authority, both the cosmic view of 1 Enoch and the worldview of Zenos and the prophets cited by Nephi would seem to see these principalities operating in or around the assembly of God with power to communicate signs from the heavenly sphere to mortals abroad on the earth.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1458&index=18

And as I said, an LDS student named Daniel Gibbon used to have a web page with a great many comparisons to other Book of Mormon passages.  And the Bible has around 128 allusions to 1 Enoch including a quotation in Jude, a person who was in Jesus's family. 

Barker's The Older Testament explores ties between Isaiah and 1 Enoch. 

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Edited by Kevin Christensen
Typo
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15 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

The year after I got back from my mission (Sept 1975), I read around 300 SF novels..

Surely you mean years and not "year"...right?

That would be like finishing a novel every 1.2 days for an entire year!  I haven't read that many books in my entire life!  I am amazed. 

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42 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

The year after I got back from my mission (Sept 1975), I read around 300 SF novels, and I later (around 1980) sold a novella and short story, twice each, within two weeks. 

I have read a lot of SF.  1 Enoch has some strange things in different sections, but it does not read like a novel.  It has five very different sections, including the accounts of the fallen angels, the parables, the apocalypse, the calendrical chapter (Luminaries), and collections of woes.  I have never read a better succinct description than "a repository of priestly traditions."  It's eclectic, a collection, not a continuous account with a consistent narrative or single story.  The oldest copies come from Qumran, where there were at least 20 copies, compared to 21 of Isaiah.  If you read Nibley's essay on The Enoch Figure in "Enoch the Prophet" of the Collected Works, he notes the antiquity and range of the themes that appear in the fallen angel stories, as he compares them with a range of myths, including Greek. 

Elsewhere, he observes that Samuel in the Book of Mormon appears to quote 1 Enoch in saying "woe unto the rich".    That is interesting, but not overwhelming by itself.  However, it's interesting to compare the various "woe" pronouncements in 1 Enoch with Jacob's list of woes.  The technique is similar.  And I argued in on of by Barker essays that the way that the book of Mosiah describes Amulon's wicked priests makes allusive comparisons with the Fallen Angel stories.  That is, they are a corrupt priesthood, they steal wives they should not have, they teach the enemies of the Nephites various skills that turn out to threaten the Nephites, trading their Temple knowledge for earthly power, and, they come to a bad end, hunted down and destroyed.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1081&index=15

And,  if you read Jack Welch's review of Nickelsburg's then-new translation, you'll see this:

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1458&index=18

And as I said, an LDS student named Daniel Gibbon used to have a web page with a great many comparisons to other Book of Mormon passages.  And the Bible has around 128 allusions to 1 Enoch including a quotation in Jude, a person who was in Jesus's family. 

Barker's The Older Testament explores ties between Isaiah and 1 Enoch. 

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Think because i'm a cultural Christian at best this stuff reads to me a lot differently than it would to most of you folks, I read giants, watchers and some really far out yet cool stuff like I've read in Ezekiel.  Dude seriously, i'd emphasize the cool parts like giants and all the mayhem they caused, would get more people to read the bible. 

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22 minutes ago, pogi said:

Surely you mean years and not "year"...right?

That would be like finishing a novel every 1.2 days for an entire year!  I haven't read that many books in my entire life!  I am amazed. 

That year, yep.  No TV, and a tendency to finish at a single sitting.  And much of it would be Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack Vance, Fred Saberhagen, Ursula LeGuinn, Roger Zelazny.  Not Tolstoy.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

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8 hours ago, poptart said:

.........................

Fyi, the book of enoch was and still is in eastern hands, the Ethiopian orthodox have always had it in tbeir holy texts unabridged, as far as i know.  It was just lost to the European western world.  Think what i always liked about it, man wasn't on top of the pile, something most entitled people out here can't stand the idea of.

Yes, there are some scholarly translations of it out there, and the NT quotes it as Scripture.

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1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

That year, yep.  No TV, and a tendency to finish at a single sitting.  And much of it would be Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack Vance, Fred Saberhagen, Ursula LeGuinn, Roger Zelazny.  Not Tolstoy.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

I'm getting that way, i almost never watch tv, i have a PlayStation i hardly touch.  Think i watch mostly anime and European movies with knight's, vikings and what not.  The modern western world doesn't interest me, it's like a visual sewer to me.

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