Rediscovering Enoch The Antediluvian Past From The Fifteenth To Nineteenth Centuries

As the first volume to focus on texts and traditions about Enoch between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, this book brings specialists in antiquity into conversation with specialists in early modernity, exploring the reimagination of the antediluvian past.

This book includes 1 Enoch: The Ethiopic Book of Enoch; 2 Enoch: The Slavonic Book of the Secrets of Enoch; 3 Enoch: The Hebrew Book of Enoch; and versions of the Book of Giants. The 1st Book of Enoch, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, or 1 Enoch is more known as simply the Book of Enoch. Although this book is considered apocryphal for the Western canon, it is contained in the Ethiopic Bible. It was considered sacred by some important first followers of Christ but it was left out of the Bible and disappeared for centuries until it was rediscovered in 1773 in Ethiopic. This manuscript was first translated into English in the 1820s and into German in the 1830s. According to most scholars, part of it was written in third century BCE and part of it in the first century CE (the part related to the Son of Man). Although the oldest complete copies of 1 Enoch are K-9 or Kebran 9, dated late fourteenth early fifteenth century and Ethiopian Monastic Microfilm Library (EMML 2080) of the fifteenth or fourteenth century, fragments found in Qumram in the 1950s are more than 2000 years old. Other old important manuscripts are Abbadianus 55 (possibly fifteenth century) and British Museum Orient 485 (first half of the sixteenth century). The 2nd Book of Enoch, the Slavonic Enoch, or 2 Enoch, is another apocryphal book, found complete only in Old Slavonic manuscripts, and it was once present in the Old Slavonic Bible. It's usually dated to the first century CE although Matthew Black in The Oxford Guide to People & Places of the Bible state that there is no manuscript "earlier than the fourteenth century BE." The 3rd Book of Enoch, the Hebrew Enoch, or 3 Enoch, is a Rabbinic text originally written in Hebrew usually dated to the fifth century CE. Some experts believe it was written by Rabbi Ishmael (second century CE), familiar with both 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch. The Book of Giants contains a narrative that involves the antediluvian giant offspring originally known from both the Genesis and the Book of Enoch. The Book of Giants resembles particularly 1 Enoch: The First Book of Enoch.

This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references to '1 Enoch'. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions.

The rediscovery of Enochic Judaism as an ancient movement of dissent within Second Temple Judaism, a movement centered on neither temple nor torah, is a major achievement of contemporary research. After being marginalized, ancient Enoch texts have reemerged as a significant component of the Dead Sea Scrolls library unearthed at Qumran. Enoch and Qumran Origins is the first comprehensive treatment of the complex and forgotten relations between the Qumran community and the Jewish group behind the pseudepigraphal literature of Enoch. The contributors demonstrate that the roots of the Qumran community are to be found in the tradition of the Enoch group rather than that of the Jerusalem priesthood. Framed by Gabriele Boccaccini's introduction and James Charlesworth's conclusion, this book examines the hypotheses of five particularly eminent scholars, resulting in an engaging and substantive discussion among forty-seven specialists from nine countries. The exceptional array of essays from leading international scholars in Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins makes Enoch and Qumran Origins a sine qua non for serious students of this period. Contributors: William Adler Matthias Albani Jeff S. Anderson Albert I. Baumgarten Andreas Bedenbender Stefan Beyerle Gabriele Boccaccini James H. Charlesworth John J. Collins Michael A. Daise James R. Davila Torleif Elgvin Mark A. Elliott Hanan Eshel Peter W. Flint Ida Fröhlich Florentino Garca Martnez Claudio Gianotto Lester L. Grabbe Ithamar Gruenwald Charlotte Hempel Matthias Henze Martha Himmelfarb Michael A. Knibb Klaus Koch Helge S. Kvanvig Armin Lange Erik W. Larson Timothy H. Lim Corrado Martone George W. E. Nickelsburg Pierluigi Piovanelli Émile Puech Annette Yoshiko Reed John C. Reeves Henry W. Morisada Rietz Paolo Sacchi Lawrence H. Schiffman Loren T. Stuckenbruck David W. Suter Shemaryahu Talmon Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar Patrick Tiller Liliana Rosso Ubigli James C. VanderKam Jacques van Ruiten Benjamin G. Wright III

Explores the unified science-religion of early humanity and the impact of Hermetic philosophy on religion and spirituality • Investigates the Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe • Reveals how this original knowledge has influenced civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge • Examines how “Enoch’s Pillars” relate to the origins of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Newtonian science, William Blake, and Theosophy Esoteric tradition has long maintained that at the dawn of human civilization there existed a unified science-religion, a spiritual grasp of the universe and our place in it. The biblical Enoch--also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Thoth, or Idris--was seen as the guardian of this sacred knowledge, which was inscribed on pillars known as Enoch’s or Seth’s pillars. Examining the idea of the lost pillars of pure knowledge, the sacred science behind Hermetic philosophy, Tobias Churton investigates the controversial Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe. He traces the fragments of this sacred knowledge as it descended through the ages into initiated circles, influencing civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge. He follows the path of the pillars’ fragments through Egyptian alchemy and the Gnostic Sethites, the Kabbalah, and medieval mystic Ramon Llull. He explores the arrival of the Hermetic manuscripts in Renaissance Florence, the philosophy of Copernicus, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, and the origins of Freemasonry, including the “revival” of Enoch in Masonry’s Scottish Rite. He reveals the centrality of primal knowledge to Isaac Newton, William Stukeley, John Dee, and William Blake, resurfacing as the tradition of Martinism, Theosophy, and Thelema. Churton also unravels what Josephus meant when he asserted one Sethite pillar still stood in the “Seiriadic” land: land of Sirius worshippers. Showing how the lost pillars stand as a twenty-first century symbol for reattaining our heritage, Churton ultimately reveals how the esoteric strands of all religions unite in a gnosis that could offer a basis for reuniting religion and science.

This is a study of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic of all seventeenth-century figures: Thomas Totney (1608-1659), a London puritan, goldsmith and veteran of the Civil War. In November 1649, after fourteen weeks of self-abasement, fasting and prayer, Totney experienced a profound spiritual transformation and declared himself TheaurauJohn Tany, 'a Jew of the Tribe of Reuben' descended from Aaron the High Priest. During his prophetic phase Tany enacted a millenarian mission to restore the Jews to their own land and wrote a number of remarkable but elusive works. By contextualizing and then unraveling the mind of this exceptional person, this book provides a clearer view of what it was like living in the wake of the English Revolution, when freed men and women spoke their minds and challenged the times.

This book presents a collection of papers from the fifth conference of the Enoch Seminar. The conference re-examined 2 Enoch, an early Jewish apocalyptic text previously known to scholars only in its Slavonic translation, in light of recently identified Coptic fragments.

Andrei A. Orlov examines the tradition about the seventh antediluvian patriarch Enoch, tracing its development from its roots in the Mesopotamian lore to the Second Temple apocalyptic texts and later rabbinic and Hekhalot materials where Enoch is often identified as the supreme angel Metatron. The first part of the book explores the imagery of the celestial roles and titles of the seventh antediluvian hero in Mesopotamian, Enochic and Hekhalot materials. The analysis of the celestial roles and titles shows that the transition from the figure of patriarch Enoch to the figure of angel Metatron occurred already in the Second Temple Enochic materials, namely, in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch, a Jewish work, traditionally dated to the first century CE. The second part of the book demonstrates that mediatorial polemics with the traditions of the exalted patriarchs and prophets played an important role in facilitating the transition from Enoch to Metatron in the Second Temple period.