Fascinating pre-New Testament writings...
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This has been gathering dust on my shelf for a few years now, and I've only just got round to reading it. The five books of 1st Enoch range from the utterly fascinating to sure-fire cures for insomnia.
Written between the old and new testaments, it gives a fascinating insight into what some Jewish groups believed at that time (for example, several editions of Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.)
Anyone with an interest in the New Testament could learn a lot by reading Enoch. Attitudes of people in the gospels have clearly been coloured by the content and even vocabulary of Enoch. And, of course, it's even quoted in Jude and 2 Peter. Parts of it are so startlingly similar to the book of Revelation that it must surely have provided a visual vocabulary for the writer of that book.
For the background and relevance of Enoch, I *highly* recommend "Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period" by Larry R Helyer. It provides a great survey of a wide range of this and other books, from the 'Testament of Moses' to Josephus, and from the Dead Sea scrolls to Philo - and much more!
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History of the angels
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A good formerly heretical work, that details the SECOND FALL of the angels, and early human pre-history from a biblical perspective. the work at points includes parralels where differences have arrisen between two available translations.
The book has the journey of enoch through the heavens a truely epic view of heaven not often found in scripture, and also details the workings of cosmology to primitive humans. The main attraction for me was the details of the angelic nature and society something only breifly delt with at best if at all. The only other strong direct references would be in Ezekiel, Daniel and Isaiah. Good for an theologian or personw ishing to expand there spiritual understanding.
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A much neglected key to a better understanding.
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This impressive translation is a true masterpieceand worthy of the uttermost attention. Any book that had the Church "Fathers" as spooked as this one did demands to be read. Unlike the mostly ridiculous Gnosic gospels also excluded from the Bible, this ancient Jewish text carries a divine authority that demands it be taken seriously. The very fact that the prophecies of Enoch were fulfilled to the letter in the timeframes suggested, should be reason enough for Christans to want to study it. The prophecy concerning the judgement of a wicked generation, seventy generations from Enoch (Christ's contemporary generation according to the gospel of Luke) found a devastating fulfillment in the fiery destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, exactly as Christ predicted would befall his own generation!The majority of Christians may not accept Enoch as scripture but clearly Christ and his disciples did and I'm sure that Christ would agree that the majority are rarely, if ever right. Why not read these texts for yourself and make up your own mind what you believe? Maybe, as more and more Christians explore the Jewish roots of their faith, true Christianity will be restored and the foundations of "Churchianity" will be trampled into the dust where they belong! A truly compelling read and I very much urge you to try it.
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Standard edition of Enoch
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For those that are not familiar with Book of Enoch, in brief, it is a 3rd-2nd Century BC Jewish text based on an imaginative expansion of Genesis 6:2 (the sons of God and the daughters of men), which tells the story of 200 angels intermarrying with human women prior to the flood, and was something of a bestseller in the days of Jesus and the apostles. It was kept firmly out of the New Testament canon but survived in Egypt and Ethiopia, to be rediscovered by western scholars in the Victorian era. In 1948 fragments of up to 7 copies were found in Qumran, where they had been buried since AD69. Since the work was first made available to the general public (notably in this edition reprinted here) it has attracted a growing following among those who find the Bible lacking in the angels-and-sex department. I should make clear that the 3 stars given here are for the work of R.H. Charles, a very serious and respectable scholar in his day, and not for the content of the Book of Enoch itself. Although this work is now out of copyright the advantage of buying a reprint by the original publishers in 1910, SPCK, is that you get Charles' necessary introduction. There is a more modern translation in Charlesworth's two-volume edition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Doubleday), however the fragments of Enoch found in the Dead Sea Scrolls have not made as much of an impact on Book of Enoch as one might imagine - the primary source text being Coptic. If I was asked to rate the book itself I would give it the minimum 1 star as given by the apostle Peter's review of the Book of Enoch in 2Peter 2:16 "cleverly devised tales" and 2:3 "false words". It is true that Jude quotes from the Book of Enoch, but the bit he quotes happens to be the only part directly drawn from the Old Testament(Jude 14 = 1 Enoch 1:9 = Deuteronomy 33:2). Jude's comment that Michael would not accuse fallen angels is also related to Book of Enoch, because in Enoch he does exactly what Jude says never happened.
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And fascinating reading for anyone else...
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I would simply like to endorse everything written by the previous reviewer. I came across this text by accident while gathering research for a project which at first bore very little connection with its themes. It took hold of my imagination, and soon became pivotal. And there it sits, quietly overlooked, burning ferociously. A dramatic eye-opener.
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