Cultish: The Book of Enoch - Discerning Fact from Fiction

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01:18

Welcome back to cultish everybody, where we enter into the kingdom of the cults.

01:23

I hope you guys are all having a great day. I'm very excited for this episode that we have in store for you today.

01:30

It's a mysterious episode, a secret episode, an elusive episode. It's been hidden throughout the epochs and generations of time.

01:37

This is on the book of Enoch and I have with me today, Wes, how are you doing today,

01:43

Wes? Doing good. I'll load with an introduction like that. I feel like I need to change my background color to something more ominous, something like red or dark green.

01:51

Yeah, that's good. Maybe you should, man. I think you can't even see my background color. It turned off.

01:57

My light has been breaking. So I had a blue light on and it just, it just broke. So I'm just not going to keep changing the colors.

02:04

But also guys, you'll notice that Jeremiah Roberts is not here with me today, but that's okay.

02:11

He's getting ready for his wife who is giving birth to their first child. So there we go.

02:16

Wes has got his red light on praise God for that. And how have you been, man? I've been good.

02:22

It's been a very busy season. Kind of a crazy season, but you know, God is good despite it all.

02:28

Still have many, many blessings to be thankful for. We even had Canadian Thanksgiving up here in Canada.

02:35

So we had a whole day devoted to it. So we're funny like that. We don't do Thanksgiving when the rest of the world, or at least

02:43

America, that is the rest of the world, right? Does it? So, yeah, we, we had ours last month.

02:49

So that was, or this month is still October. I don't know. I don't know what month it is. But yeah, yeah.

02:54

Doing, doing well, despite a full schedule and, and many, many things to, to keep track of.

03:03

Wow. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us while you are very busy. I know this is going to be really edifying for the saints and for individuals in general who are just stumbling upon this podcast.

03:15

You can always go to the cult of show .com. Check out all of our other episodes and yeah, we're going to, we're going to get into it.

03:22

We're going to get into the book of Enoch. It's man. This is a topic that we've been wanting to discuss for the longest time, but we've waited until we've had the best person that can talk with us about it.

03:33

So the book of Enoch, we need to start off at a basic point for our listeners so we can build, uh, you know, the way we should look at this book, uh, when the book was written, things of that nature.

03:44

Let's, so let's start off with this book of Enoch. What type of literature is it?

03:49

Was, Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. The book of Enoch is apocalyptic literature.

03:56

So if you're thinking of the book of revelation, then the book of Enoch kind of fits into that genre.

04:03

It's got, you know, some crazy themes to it. And apocalyptic literature was, was not an unusual form of literature in sort of ancient

04:13

Judaism. The early Jews had a lot more of a framework than we do.

04:19

You know, we, we read the book of revelation and we see, you know, these motifs of a great battle and, you know, dragons and numerology and that kind of stuff, or at least with like numbers like six, six, six mark of the beast.

04:31

And, uh, we don't really have a frame of reference for it, but ancient Judaism did and the book of Enoch and a number of other key texts from the intertestamental period, that period that falls between the gap of the old

04:44

Testament and new Testament, the book of Enoch falls into that as well. So it's got some pretty epic themes to it, but that is kind of par for the course for the kind of writing that it is.

04:58

Yeah, absolutely. So let's get your pastoral hat on real quick. Uh, Wes, like what are, what are the rules for interpreting apocalyptic literature and what are the dangers, uh, when people are not following, uh, these, uh, the sets of a hermeneutic principles, uh, interpreting apocalyptic, apocalyptic literature.

05:17

Yeah, that's a, that's a good way of putting it. What's my like pastoral perspective on that?

05:23

I think I would say, you know, apocalyptic literature is full of symbolism. And one thing to remember about apocalyptic literature is that it's highly symbolic and the symbolic nature is not necessarily something we might be as familiar with as the ancient world was, like I said before, and part of the reason for that symbolism is to evoke emotion about the message.

05:48

And for something like the book of revelation, it's almost like a coded message because you're trying to communicate something to your audience that maybe you don't want a certain group of people, maybe the

05:59

Romans to know about. And so you're going to, you're going to phrase things or portray things in certain ways.

06:06

And so when you read a pocket apocalyptic literature, one of the ways that I think we need to, or the things we need to pay attention to is paying special attention to symbolism and emotion that it's intended to evoke.

06:20

You know, what is the, the kind of strong motifs of battle and war or bloodshed, or what is that trying to pull from the reader in that sense?

06:32

So I would say, pay attention to the symbolism. Also, don't forget that there was an original audience.

06:39

You are the secondary audience. You know, this might be useful for interpreting all scripture, right?

06:45

All scripture is written for you, but it's not written to you. And so that's important to keep in mind that you do have the reality that when

06:55

Jesus is talking to the Sadducees, he holds them to account as if when they read the scripture,

07:01

God is speaking to them directly, but at the same time, there is an original audience. And so understanding that original audience is only going to help you better understand what is really being said.

07:14

And so if the original audience, for example, would have had certain symbols and references stand out to them, then it's important to know, okay, what might that be?

07:28

So even like I mentioned before, something like the mark of the beast might be the most well -known symbol that's potentially even misunderstood today, right?

07:37

You know, there are all sorts of interpretations. Is it microchips? Is it this, is it that, you know, we're so far removed from some of these contexts, both in terms of time and in terms of culture, that a lot of symbolism is just simply lost on us.

07:52

And so we need to be careful not to just transplant apocalyptic literature into our own culture and historical setting.

07:59

But maybe even try to dig into, okay, what is the literature?

08:05

What, how would it have been understood? How would it have been portrayed? I think like we would for the gospels or the epistles as well, or even, you know, some of the old

08:14

Testament historical books, but there might be an added layer of that with apocalyptic literature as well, because there's, there's a lot going on with it.

08:24

The other thing I'd say is don't overanalyze the symbols. So in a similar way, since we know that these writings, aspects of it, maybe not all of it, but aspects of it are very symbolic, it's easy to get lost in the details and try to figure out exactly what everything is, you know, okay.

08:44

What did, what is this creature? What does it portray? What, what's the hidden meaning? Well, I think, uh, we can ask those questions, but which parts might have been identified or, you know, interpret that the clear or the confusing by the clear, because many of the details, they certainly do have meaning.

09:06

Some of which we can still make reasonable inferences about, but others require a little bit more, you know, stepping back and going, okay, there's something here that I, as a 21st century reader might not be getting at.

09:22

So, uh, those are simple things that I would say, I would also say, you know, there are men and women, godly men and women throughout the last two millennia who have really devoted their lives to interpreting scripture.

09:34

And so we have the benefit of the internet, of Bible software, of commentaries being published for a relatively reasonable prices.

09:44

Um, and so there's a lot of great commentaries on, you know, apocalyptic literature, uh, the book of revelation or just the genre in general.

09:55

And, and we can, we, we have the benefit. I think the reformers would have been, you know, their minds would have been blown at the amount of access to information that we have in your pockets.

10:09

My, my iPhone has more accessible information than someone like John Calvin did in the entire libraries that he would have studied in.

10:20

And so, um, we need to make sure that we're also relying on, or at least, you know, critically evaluating scholarship that has devoted themselves to reading the languages, understanding the context.

10:34

We don't have to agree with everything that's said, but using that as a resource that is accessible to us and that can genuinely help us understand what's going on.

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11:07

Talk to you later, guys. That's good, man. When I think of original audience and I'm trying to think in the context of the book of Enoch, I find it interesting that we'll probably get into it later.

11:16

And of course, I'm going to ask you on a dating of the book of Enoch, but from what I've looked up, uh, it's around the third century

11:23

BC, uh, well, Enoch was to have lived thousands of years before that. And if it was to the audience in which

11:30

Enoch was speaking to, that means when it was written, uh, we already have a, I don't even know how many years gap between what the original audience would have been.

11:38

It sounds like they would have been actually the secondary audience at that time, uh, for the book of Enoch, if it were to come from, uh,

11:45

Enoch and with apocalyptic literature, especially like the book of revelation, when we're talking about the mark of the beast, like you said, it's good to look, interpret to the unclear passages with the clear and use total script

11:56

Torah as a frame, like looking at all of scripture. When I see phrases about, uh, the market, the beast on your hand and on your forehead,

12:02

I think back to, uh, Deuteronomy when it's talking about how we're supposed to love the Lord that all our heart, uh, soul and strength, right.

12:10

And that we would bind the words of God essentially on our hands and on our foreheads talking about devotion to God, or this mark of the beast would be full devotion, uh, in a sense, uh, in terms of like, uh, rules for interpreting apocalyptic literature.

12:24

I know that there's people who hold different, different, uh, interpretations of the book of revelation than I would. But what do you think about that in terms of the book of Enoch and the original audience, who is that supposed to be?

12:38

Yeah, that's, that's a really great way of putting it in, especially framing it in the context of, you know, what, what else can scripture tell us about the particular things that we're seeing within other books of scripture?

12:48

Now, obviously Enoch, um, we wouldn't consider scripture, but, but looking at similar literature that would have been kind of in the, the same sphere of reference, um, when we're talking about Enoch, I would agree with you.

13:03

I think we're not talking about the, the timeframe of the Enoch that's mentioned in Genesis, you know, Enoch, uh, was mentioned in Genesis.

13:10

He's the grandfather of Noah. Now, nothing we have in terms of the literary evidence puts what we would call

13:20

Enoch or particularly, uh, within scholarship. The first Enoch is the, is the applicable one.

13:25

There are actually three, but, uh, it doesn't go back that far. And it's not necessarily attributed, uh, to Enoch being the author, but it is a book about Enoch.

13:37

So think of the book of Joshua in the Bible, the book of Joshua isn't claimed to be written by Joshua, but it's about Joshua and sort of his exploits.

13:44

That's, that's kind of what we're seeing when we, we talk about, um, Enoch. The, and I would agree with you.

13:51

I think the writing itself doesn't really go older than about the four hundreds BC, and even that we're kind of pushing it to its utter, like it's, it's farthest back level.

14:00

Some sections of it that, that exists today were actually written after the time of Jesus. And so the, the thing with Enoch is that it's a smorgasbord.

14:09

It's kind of a collection of a number of different sources that all we believe are the same writing.

14:16

And so we publish it. It's published. If you, if you buy, you know, you can buy a copy of the book of Enoch.

14:22

I have a couple of different translations. If you buy one, it's going to be at least the more modern versions are going to be kind of a, an amalgamation of those.

14:32

Now, what, what I think we can say is that Enoch was written during the

14:39

Hellenistic period of Judaism. That's starting at about 200 years before Jesus and many ancient biblical characters become the subject of extra biblical, apocryphal, easy for me to say literature in, in this time.

14:54

And that's what we call the pseudopigraphy. So pseudo in Greek means false and graphic means writing.

15:01

So it's like, think of a pseudonym, right? It's a, it's a name. That's not your own name.

15:07

It's a name that you're using. It's a false name. A pseudepigraphical literature is kind of the same thing.

15:12

It's literature that's described to certain people, but it's unclear as to whether the, the ancient

15:19

Jews believed wholeheartedly that this literature actually was coming from that individual.

15:28

We have some that go even back as far as talking about Adam within the pseudo, did the kind of intertestamental apocryphal literature, the pseudepigraphical literature.

15:38

And so it's not that it's not that all of these writings were wholeheartedly believed to have been written by these individuals, but they, they do fall into this collection of early

15:48

Jewish literature that often has been attributed to authors that at least today we know we're not the original authors.

15:56

So what we do have, we can trace to the earliest portions that we call

16:02

First Enoch that, that exists in Aramaic, both in language and in the style are represented representative of the community of those who are coming back from Israel immediately after the

16:17

Babylonian exile. So the Babylonian exile takes place between 597 and 538

16:23

AD or sorry, BC rather. Right. And so that's what you get. You get that story. We get that in some of the prophets in the, in the

16:30

Bible with, you know, Jeremiah and they're coming back and they're rebuilding the temple. And then there's this period where, you know, after Malachi scripture stops, but then the

16:40

Jews are still writing things. And that's where you, we get some of these other writings that are written in some are in Aramaic.

16:47

A lot of them are in Greek. And that has to do with, you know, just kind of what was happening in that period.

16:56

Bring us, bring us back to the diaspora, right? Like the separation, the spreading out of the

17:02

Jews in that period what was going on within Judaism in general?

17:08

I know you talked about a little bit, but go, go into like a little bit more in -depth study on the diaspora real quick.

17:16

Hmm. Yeah. So Israel, they, they at least those who were sent to Babylon, they're able to come back to Jerusalem.

17:28

You know, they rebuild Israel at least to a certain degree. Israel is still a Northern and Southern empire.

17:35

So they're split and you have Judah, and then you have kind of the other areas of Israel, but Israel was actually under the control of the

17:44

Persian empire not long after that. So about between the five thirties to the three thirties

17:51

BC and the Persians allowed the Jews to practice their religion with little interference.

17:58

They, they were pretty good in terms of, you know, they were technically ruling over Israel at that time, but they were allowed to rebuild a temple and worship in the temple, right?

18:09

We get that mentioned in second Chronicles 36 and Ezra and then this span of time includes the hundred years of the old

18:18

Testament period and about the first hundred years of the intertestamental period. So this time is relatively peaceful.

18:27

There's, there's not that much going on, but prior to the intertestamental period,

18:32

Alexander, the great defeats Darius of Persia and Hellenized as the world in, in, in that everything becomes basically

18:41

Greek. Um, and Alexander was a student of Aristotle and was pretty well educated in Greek philosophy and politics, but he was also kind of multicultural in the sense that he, he allowed what was going on in a lot of the

18:59

States to happen. Um, for example, when I was in Egypt back in July, uh, when

19:06

I was in Luxor and I was at one of the temple, well, the main temple in Luxor, there is actually a shrine to Alexander the great that he built in there, in the temple of Ra, um, where he depicts himself as an

19:20

Egyptian Pharaoh being blessed by the Egyptian gods. And, and it's very much like there's some

19:25

Greek iconography, but if you didn't know, you would have just thought because of the hieroglyphics and everything else that, you know, this is ancient

19:32

Egyptian, but he really takes on these roles as he's ruling over, but he's also, he's not eradicating the culture.

19:40

He's, he's allowing certain things to just take place. And, and within that, the

19:48

Hebrew old Testament, you know, as people who were Jews, especially as they were spread out throughout the ancient world, because there was a big population of Jews in places like Egypt.

19:59

I mean, that's why Jesus and his family, when they're, you know, in the, in the, the Christmas story, they flee to Egypt is because there was a pretty good population of Jews in places like Alexandria and Elephantine.

20:14

And, and so they were eventually, you know, over the decades as the

20:21

Greek empire took over the ancient world, as Alexander, the great power kind of spread, they started to speak

20:27

Greek. And so the old Testament was translated into Greek, and this is what we call the

20:35

Septuagint. And this is what a good portion of the new Testament authors are quoting. Not all the time, but I would say most of the time they're quoting a body of literature that are, is one stream.

20:48

There are actually multiple streams, but is one mainstream of the Greek translation of the old Testament. And so that's a big thing that happens.

20:56

Alexander, the great allowed for religious freedom for the Jews, but he strongly promoted

21:02

Greek lifestyles. And this is why you get the development that we see in the new Testament of when we start to get, see the sex of Judaism of Pharisees and Sadducees and new

21:14

Testament doesn't talk about Essenes, but they're another one or even the zealots. Like these are all reactions towards the first Hellenization and the, the, the

21:24

Greekification of the Jewish culture and kind of reactions towards and against.

21:31

There's, there's this, this influx of Hellenization and that really influences what the

21:39

Jews think about how they should worship. Now, after Alexander died,

21:44

Judea where Judea was ruled by a number of successors, and that was kind of, it came to its head with the

21:52

Seleucid empire of Antiochus Epiphanes, because Antiochus was not like kind of the previous

22:00

Persians and Greeks, Greeks, at least under Alexander, the great, and he was not about religious freedom.

22:07

And so around 167 BC, he overthrows the right line of the priesthood of the

22:13

Jews. He slaughters them and he desecrates the temple. And he actually, what he does is he, he sacrifices a pig to Zeus on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem and totally desecrates that, you know, any talk about a, um, about a, uh, uh, what's the term in, in Mark, um, 3, 14, when it talks about the, uh, um, let me see the, uh, the abomination of desolation.

22:51

Yeah. So, so that when, when that term is used, what would have been in the mind of the, the

23:00

Jew in that day would have been that, you know, what, what's worse than a pagan

23:06

King stomping into not just the court of the Gentiles, but right into the, the place before the

23:15

Holy of Holies and sacrificing a pig and unclean animal on the altar of Yahweh to Zeus.

23:21

Well, that's, you know, that, that takes the cake. And so that really sets the stage of, uh, a lot of resistance in, um, for the

23:35

Jews. There's some pretty brutal descriptions of people being, um, killed, uh, during that time.

23:43

And this is where you get the, if you've heard of the, the intertestamental

23:48

Deuterocanonical books of the Maccabees, first and second Maccabees, this is what that's describing. Yeah. Judas Maccabeus and Hasmoneans, they revolt, they go in and they restore the temple.

24:01

And that's the story of Hanukkah or the feast of dedication. You know, Jesus goes to Jerusalem and he celebrates the feast of dedication, uh, dedication of the temple, rededication of the temple.

24:12

And that's, that's Hanukkah. That's the period of the Maccabean revolt. Um, but that, that was a pretty bloody time.

24:21

Uh, but once that's reestablished, you know, you have kind of a reestablishment of the

24:26

Jewish system of, uh, worship and, um, the priestly order.

24:33

And that starts to come back into practice. And then not long before Jesus, around 63

24:40

BC, Pompeii of Rome conquers Israel and puts Judea under control of the

24:46

Caesars. And this eventually led to Herod being made the king of Judah by the

24:51

Roman emperor empire and the Senate. And this is the timeframe leading up to Jesus, where you have, you know, the politics of taxation and you have this kind of mixing of, of, um, the complication even more so from the

25:08

Hellenization of Judaism into like the Romanization of Judaism. And that leads right up to the time when

25:14

Jesus comes on the scene and you got the new Testament, but you have this succession of, you know, the

25:20

Persians, the Greeks, the, um, the Seleucids and, uh, eventually the

25:27

Romans. Man. So, so thinking about, uh, the book of Enoch in the intertestamental period, because I know where, uh, it's like a 483 year gap where the

25:37

Bible is silent on history. And I think it's extremely important for us to understand what was going on during that timeframe, especially when that's when the book of Enoch came to be, right?

25:45

Uh, apocalyptic literature. Listen to what was going on within Judaism at that time, getting conquered by these people conquered by those people.

25:52

Uh, that's a big deal. A quick question for you. I'm just thinking off the top of my head was the book of Enoch, like the only apocalyptic literature at that time, or were

26:01

Jews, uh, viewing Daniel as apocalyptic literature at this time as well? Oh yeah, definitely.

26:07

Daniel would, would certainly have been considered apocalyptic literature. And there are other, um, groups of sort of a sectarian apocalyptic literature.

26:16

So there, the, the group that was in Qumran where we get the Dead Sea Scrolls from, um,

26:23

I mean, we, we assume a lot of those are from the group called the Essene's we don't know a hundred percent, but it's a pretty good guess because they were, uh, separatists and they, they went out in the desert and, and did their thing there.

26:36

And that's where we find a lot of the documents, but they had a document called the war scroll, which was also very, very apocalyptic, um, full of a lot of motifs that you both see in the book of Enoch and in Daniel and in Revelation, um, great battles, uh, the battle of the children of light versus the battle of the children of darkness.

26:56

Um, you know, you have these motifs and so apocalyptic literature.

27:01

And in that sense, a lot of what's going on there with those groups is that this is a description and, and even like an end times apocalyptic description, but.

27:12

What it is is it's, it's a lot of the themes of apocalyptic literature is simply

27:18

God wins, you know, there's going to be a great battle and it's going to be between evil and good and guess what?

27:24

God wins. And we see that in revelation as well. Right. Um, and, and that, that was kind of, it was this hope giving picture of, you know, sometimes it takes great pain and suffering to get to great triumph, but in the end, despite the pain and the suffering and the turmoil,

27:45

God is still in God's armies are going to win and God's people are going to be vindicated. What's up everybody.

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28:38

And that's good stuff. I mean, if I were someone who was living, uh, within the intertestamental period, and I was familiar with Daniel by God's grace, if I was,

28:47

I would be expecting something to be happening soon. You know, uh, especially since we're, we would be living in that time of silence.

28:55

That's a reference in Malachi four, five through six. When I, when I think about the book of Enoch, one thing that makes my ears get like tickled a little bit is understanding that God said he wasn't going to speak.

29:06

At that time until, uh, that one prophet would come to make straight the way of the

29:11

Lord in the path of the wilderness. Right. John the Baptist. So I would be thinking personally that I couldn't have scripture come about during that time.

29:22

Right. So when I'm thinking about the book of Enoch, uh, I wouldn't want to consider it scripture, especially if it's written during the time of the intertestament intertestamental period.

29:31

Is that, does that logically flow? Are there issues with that? Yeah, I would agree. I would say that it's sometimes called the 400 years of silence.

29:41

It wasn't silent in the sense that there was a lot going on and there was actually a lot being written by the

29:46

Jews, but the silence is that nobody is speaking where they thus say at the Lord's statement. And in that sense, the, the, the nature of scripture, although clearly from the expectation that you see in the new

29:59

Testament, um, because they're expecting something to happen exactly like you said, they're expecting

30:05

God to break into history and to do something. And so in that sense, I think they're expecting also scripture to be written because the

30:13

X, the understanding of scripture in the Jewish mindset was that, you know, the promises and the covenant of God are immediately followed up by writings.

30:20

And so in that sense, I think, you know, the new Testament authors very well have might, might've thought they were writing scripture because they have the new covenant, the new, the new

30:28

Testament. And so where are the writings? And so I think in that sense, it would have been very organic for them to write.

30:35

But, but I think, I think what you said is exactly right. There was this period of time where they were waiting and there were things being written, but the

30:45

Jewish people never considered them scripture. So even though there was more of a sense of an open Canon, you know, we have a closed

30:51

Canon of scripture today. They had a sense of an open Canon, their Canon, actually,

30:57

I don't know if you, you know, the center, but, uh, the Jewish Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im and the

31:02

Old Testament ends with a different book than ours. Ours ends with Malachi. The, the, if you get a

31:09

Jewish publication of the scriptures, um, whether in Hebrew or in English, it's going to end with Chronicles.

31:15

Now we, we divide it up into first and second Chronicles, but they divided up and they end with Chronicles for the very reason that they're waiting for the son of David to come.

31:24

So it ends with the expectation that we're waiting for the King. We're waiting for Moshiach, we're waiting for the

31:31

Messiah. And so, um, in that sense, there was this very palpable expectation.

31:39

And even though you did have, you know, even apocalyptic literature being written, uh, when we get to the first century and we get individuals like Josephus and Philo, and they're talking about what books are scripture, they're not including the other ones.

31:53

They're, they're not including the books that, um, were written in this time.

32:00

That, you know, we can call the, uh, sometimes it's called the Apocrypha formal or the Deuterocanonical books.

32:06

Um, but they have, they, they list them differently because the Jewish canon groups them differently.

32:12

They group the prophets together and we split them up and things like that. Uh, but essentially the

32:19

Hebrew old Testament canon is exactly what we see in the Protestant old Testament canon. And it didn't include

32:25

Enoch, even though Enoch was and could have very well been a very influential and a very well -known writing in the inter -testamental period, even leading up into the time of Jesus.

32:37

I mean, it, it, it makes sense. I, if I were alive back then, I probably would have been reading it, uh, myself.

32:42

I mean, grabbing things from Genesis six or in Daniel talking about the watchers, really elusive concepts.

32:48

And then like hearing a big elaboration on them would be really gripping. Right. And then, uh, also using like an apocalyptic narrative with that.

32:57

I mean, of course, uh, people are going to, uh, like that. So you said, you said earlier that it's was hundreds of years of being formed with the book of Enoch.

33:05

So who wrote it, right. And how did these people get, how did it get compiled together? Yeah. I don't know if I have a concrete answer necessarily for that.

33:13

Um, in terms of who wrote it, I mean, we have some copies. It, the problem with it is that, um, we have copies in a number of different languages, uh, cause some of it is in Aramaic.

33:26

Uh, some of it is in Coptic, which is the language of the ancient Egyptians. Some of it's in Greek and some of it's in Latin now, depending on, on when we're finding, uh, the manuscripts.

33:36

In fact, the only full copy of first Enoch that we have in our possession is the 15th century manuscript that's written in Ethiopic and that's very, very late, right?

33:46

The 15th century. I mean, that's, you know, reformation period. So that's, that's not very early, but what we've done.

33:55

If you get, say a critical copy of, I have mine actually just here, right here, the first Enoch, um, it's the translation and, and it's, it, it's an attempt as some of the newer ones do to take all of those kind of fragmentary copies, uh, particularly the, uh,

34:18

Dead Sea Scroll Aramaic fragments and put them together in a critical edition.

34:23

Like we would with the new Testament with all the different manuscripts that we have in the new Testament and come up with a text that's readable.

34:30

And then comparing that to the full text we have later and seeing, you know, uh, what, what, what's a clear development within the text over time, because that happens, that happens with all texts.

34:42

It happened with the new Testament as well. Later manuscripts get bigger because people start, instead of just writing

34:49

Jesus, they start writing our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the things like that, where the text expands, right? So that, that happened with the book of Enoch as well.

34:57

And so what we have now in modern critical editions is we have an attempt to trace the original text back, but it really is a little bit trickier because we're dealing with an amalgam of different languages and portions from different time periods.

35:11

And so we can estimate what the earliest periods are. But like I said before, um, some of those come from even around the time, if not after Jesus.

35:19

Right. And so, um, there it's kind of like a smorgasbord, like I said previously.

35:26

Right, right. So what were the texts from, uh, the book of Enoch that were found in Qumran and what else also was found in Qumran?

35:34

Cause a lot of people will use arguments when thinking about the book of Enoch and they're like, well, maybe it was inspired because it was actually found within, uh, the

35:42

Dead Sea Scrolls, but there's a lot of different texts that were found within the Dead Sea Scrolls that we don't consider, uh, scripture.

35:48

Can you, can you go into that a little bit? Yeah, I, uh, I'll be a little bit self -serving and I'll say, uh,

35:54

I'll mention that I, I actually have an infographic on my website, um, at wesleyhoff .com, uh, that, that goes through the

36:00

Dead Sea Scrolls themselves because the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's kind of an umbrella term. It's kind of like, although not a hundred percent analogous,

36:08

I mentioned the Septuagint before that's also an umbrella term, uh, of, you know, a number of different just translation literature of, of Greek stuff.

36:18

So it's kind of hard to say, you know, well, the, the Septuagint says this, the Septuagint says that, well, okay, but we're thinking of it as a single bound volume and that's not how it would have been understood in the ancient world.

36:30

But, um, the, the Dead Sea Scrolls or the, the Qumran, um, community, uh, is, is it's a group of about 970 scrolls that's assembled from more than 10 ,000 fragments that were found in and around the

36:50

Dead Sea. So there are, I think seven different sites, um, one at Jericho and then, uh, there's caves one through 11, which are on the

37:02

North end of the Dead Sea. And then there's Marabat and Gedi, Narhal Hever and Masada.

37:09

Um, I think that adds up to seven, maybe, maybe I, I need to, I mean, I've lots of degrees, none of them are in math.

37:15

Um, and so, uh, what we have with those is kind of an umbrella group of literature.

37:23

We're not entirely sure who wrote or copied or even stored what we call the

37:28

Dead Sea Scrolls. A bunch of it could have just been, you know, uh,

37:33

Jewish sectarian groups. The biggest one, as I mentioned before, would have been the Essenes, uh, but along with every book of the old

37:43

Testament, except for Esther, um, you have the book of Enoch, you have the book of Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach.

37:50

Then you have the one I mentioned before the war scroll, and then you have a blessing scroll and a community scroll, and you even have a treasure map.

37:58

There's a really interesting copy of, um, all of them are either parchment or papyrus, except for one that's referred to as the copper scroll, which is a really,

38:11

I can't, I can't go let that get over a treasure map. Has anyone ever discovered anything from this treasure map?

38:18

And why did, why have I never heard of this treasure map before? I'm so sorry, but I need to hear about it a little bit more. Yeah.

38:24

So the copper scroll, uh, lists, I believe it's 64 or 63 locations that are said to have caches of silver and gold in them.

38:34

And it's on, it's written on a very thin piece of copper, um, that's kind of been rolled up and there have been attempts to, to try to decipher it and find these caches.

38:46

But as far as I'm aware, nobody has actually found them, but it is part of this group that we call the

38:55

Dead Sea Scrolls. Um, cause it was found in and around the caves of the Dead Sea, um, area.

39:03

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Was like Solomon's gold or something like that? Yeah, maybe. I mean,

39:08

I, I don't know exactly. Um, I'm, I'm not attempting to decipher it and go out into the desert to find anything.

39:15

You need to, but that's awesome. Yeah. Maybe, maybe I'll put my, uh, put my Stetson back on and get a, get a plane to the

39:23

Middle East. I hear it's a peaceful place right now, so it should be good. Let's wait a little bit before you go out and Indian Jones, that copper scroll.

39:30

Okay. Getting back into what you were saying. I apologize. No, that's okay. I was just going to say the vast majority are in Hebrew, about 75 % of the

39:37

Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, but a bunch of them are in Aramaic and a bunch of them are in Greek. So they span, um, a time that is approximately the third century to the first century as well.

39:46

There are some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are, uh, are contemporary with, with Jesus and, and most of them were found in the 1950s.

39:55

Um, but the, even as recently as 2021, uh, there have been some in, uh, and Nahal Hever in the

40:06

Bar Kokhba caves that they discovered what really were pieces of scrolls that we had before, but they were just fragments that we, we didn't have up until this point, but that's where the oldest fragments of what we're talking about today of, you know, come from.

40:26

They come from this group that was probably used and the Essenes are, if it is the

40:31

Essenes that were using them do in fact seem to hold them in pretty high regard in terms of the book of Enoch.

40:39

Um, now they, I don't think we should read too much into that, that they kind of treat them in more of a scriptural perspective than we would.

40:48

And the reason I say that is because the Essenes were kind of an unusual group anyways. They were an ascetic sectarian group who had basically concluded that the temple in Jerusalem and every

41:01

Jew that was in Jerusalem, uh, was corrupted and was impure. And so they went out into the desert, they created their own temple and did their own, you know, ritual sacrifices and stuff out there.

41:12

So they were kind of an odd ball group anyways. So they're interesting. They give us a perspective on what

41:19

Judaism in late antiquity looked like, but at the exact same time, we can't read too much into the

41:26

Essenes as standard practice because they weren't, they, they were kind of off on their own doing their own thing.

41:35

They had very, very strict dietary restrictions, way more than even just what was prescribed in the

41:41

Torah. And, um, they were celibate and they had all sorts of things going on. So sometimes

41:47

I've read even recently people accusing Jesus of being a closet Essene.

41:52

I mean, Jesus, he would have failed every standard of the Essenes, um, by talking to women and by talking to, you know, being around, um, being around lepers and eating what he eats and that kind of thing.

42:07

So, so just because the Essenes may or may not have held Enoch in a higher regard than other

42:15

Jews, I don't think we, we should necessarily read too much into that. Aaron Right. What, what parts of the, what were the fragments of book of Enoch found within the

42:24

Qumran, uh, caves? Was it all of it or just certain sections? No, it was, it was just certain sections.

42:31

I believe the oldest section, um, was the Enoch's vision and the book of the watchers.

42:41

Uh, I know that, uh, there's a whole section, uh, that is very much later.

42:54

Um, but the, the book of the watchers is, is pretty old and the book of parables, but those, those ones were, were very fragmentary.

43:04

And so it's really piecing together the copies that we have and comparing and contrasting and filling in the spaces with the

43:15

Greek copies, the Coptic copies, the land copies and the later Ethiopic copy that really gets us to what we would call first Enoch.

43:22

But, but some sections are genuinely old. Some, like I said before, um, some people would push them as back as, as 400

43:28

BC. Um, that might be a little bit too old, but they're, they're definitely in and around the time of about two, 300 years before Christ.

43:36

Aaron Yeah. So I saw you hold up, uh, the, that edition that you have, that's the, was that the hermeneate, uh, translation?

43:43

How do you pronounce that? Aaron Hermenea. Yeah. Hermenea is just a, uh, it's a, a commentary publication.

43:50

So, I mean, I have other Hermenea commentaries. Um, of biblical books, but it's, it's one of the more scholarly or like, uh, academic ones in the secular world of new

44:03

Testament, ancient Christianity, ancient Judaism scholarship. And so this one, uh, yeah, the

44:09

Hermenea, uh, uh, first Enoch was done by, uh, George Nickelsburg and James Vanderkam prominent old

44:17

Testament and, uh, scholars of Judaism. So it's, it's really the main one because it takes into consideration all of the literature and provides what's called a textual apparatus.

44:32

So, uh, for the new Testament, uh, modern translation of the new

44:37

Testament is translated from what's called a critical edition of the Greek new Testament. And the critical edition takes into consideration, you know, the span of the new

44:46

Testament manuscript tradition, along with quotations from the early church. And based on that, you, you get a text and you get a critical apparatus at the bottom and the critical apparatus highlights important textual variants or things of note.

44:59

And the Hermenea commentary, um, in terms of its, uh, translation of first Enoch is really the first one to take into consideration the, the bulk of the data and provide textual notes at the bottom.

45:15

If you buy older ones, they're almost, they're almost guaranteed to be a translation of the

45:22

Ethiopic. And like I said, that's from the 15th century. So in terms of analyzing the data of what, okay, well, this is missing from, you know, the

45:31

Aramaic or this is appears to have been added in the Latin, that those kinds of things, you're going to get that from the

45:37

Hermenea translation, whereas you may not get it from other translations of Enoch.

45:42

Yeah, that makes sense. And we're going to get into this, into the second episode. Uh, so definitely recommend this second episode that's coming up as well for everyone who's listening.

45:50

Cause we're going to go into a biblical quotations, quote unquote, from the book of Enoch, uh, did

45:55

Jesus quote from the book of Enoch and also a section of Enoch, uh, first Enoch 71, 13 through 14.

46:01

And the reason why I was asking about the translation is because there's a difference in translation. I believe there's a different translation from 1912 that interprets first Enoch 71, 13 through 14 differently, which is extremely, uh, important, uh, to know the reason why you're talking about the scholarly, uh, translation that you hold there, why it may differ from the other, the other one.

46:23

I don't want to get into that yet, but we will. Uh, but before we're, we're done with the end of the, this episode, there's a couple more questions.

46:29

Uh, what, what is the, uh, how has the book of Enoch broken up? Like what are the sections and what is the general outline of each section?

46:38

Yeah. So the book of Enoch is broken up into a number of books, the book of the watchers, the book of the parables, the book of the luminaries,

46:48

Enoch's dream vision, the narrative bridge, the epistle of Enoch, the birth of Noah, and the final book of Enoch.

46:55

And it's really charting the, the things or the events leading up to the flood and then a few things afterwards.

47:06

And where the book of Enoch, I think is actually very valuable and interesting in terms of its content is that it gives us this picture of angel and demonology leading up to the new

47:18

Testament. You kind of, if you read the old Testament and then you just jump into the new Testament, you realize that there is far more of a fleshed out understanding of the fact that there are demons around.

47:34

And that, I mean, you certainly have the principalities and dominions, and you certainly have angels, seraphim and cherubim in the old

47:45

Testament. And the devil is a character, you know, pops up in places like Job where he's a main character.

47:53

And so it's not like they're non -existent, but there seems to be some switch that goes on within the intertestamental period.

48:00

And the book of Enoch is, is part of that. The book of Enoch is part of the discussion as to, okay, what are these things?

48:08

Where do they come from? How, how do we think about them? Even how do we think of ideas like the

48:13

Messiah? How do we understand God's presence and divinity and that that influenced really what would later develop into the mystic

48:26

Judaism in the Kabbalah of the middle ages. And then even some ideas of, of Judaism within modern rabbinical

48:36

Judaism, where you have ideas of God's presence going out, the Shavuot and the

48:41

Shekinah of God's presence. How does that, how do we understand that within the fact that God rules and reigns in heaven, but is present here on earth somehow.

48:49

And so there are all these pieces of literature that flesh these things out. And the book of Enoch is part of that.

48:56

It's part of that ongoing discussion. Although it's framed in the way of talking about, you know,

49:02

Enoch and the events leading up to the flood and some of these creatures, the watchers and the

49:11

Nephilim and those sorts of things that are mentioned in the old Testament, but never really defined or understood.

49:19

I think what we can say about the content, about the different aspects of the breakdown of the book of Enoch is that this is a period of Judaism where Jews are kind of there.

49:32

They're coming up with descriptions and they're thinking more concretely about how, how do we understand the supernatural realm and how does the supernatural realm operate in the world?

49:45

And so some of those discussions, I think, you know, we can take with a grain of salt. Others, Jesus at least seems to give credence to when he talks about, say in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, and the idea of Hades being, you know, you have

50:03

Abraham's bosom and you have this place of pain and suffering. That's the part of this discussion as well.

50:08

The afterlife, Sheol, the grave, what is that? What is this? What are the, how do we understand these things?

50:15

And so Enoch fits into this slot of intertestamental literature.

50:20

That's not historical like first and second Maccabees, which is describing things that are happening, but is more conceptual, more theological and saying, okay, even though we're going to frame this in somewhat of a narrative and, and have an apocalyptic aspect to it, it's, it's a discussion and a fleshing out of these ideas.

50:41

And I think that can be helpful, especially when we get to Jesus. I mean, this might be putting the cart before the horse, but a lot of the things that Christianity is accused of, of thinking of a divine

50:56

Messiah, we get snippets of in Enoch and Enoch and a few other pieces of intertestamental literature, give lip service to the fact that the idea of the

51:12

Messiah who is to come being, or at least having divine qualities is not foreign.

51:20

It's not unusual. It's not something that was invented at the Council of Nicaea or imposed on Jesus.

51:27

There would have at least been a frame of reference to say, okay, well, this is not, it's not complete quackery in the first century

51:34

Jewish mindset, because there are groups that are discussing those sorts of things that the

51:39

Messiah could very well be more than a man and have a, have at least the prerogatives of more than a man drawing on Daniel chapter seven.

51:50

And I think which, which Jesus very strongly alludes to when he's, he's being interrogated in, in the gospel of Mark.

51:59

Yeah, man, that is, that is good stuff. It's very interesting stuff that I have trying to been at the best of my ability to research lately in terms of thinking about how to understand the book of Enoch.

52:13

I think it gives a great insight into the history of the world of the gospels at that time.

52:19

And I remember in our earlier conversations, when we talked about historical context of the gospels and how we can date them and know that they're early, part of it is because you just stated parts of the book of Enoch are very early within the intertestamental period and the

52:35

New Testament in some ways can capture some of the spirit of that age from even writings like the book of Enoch.

52:41

That would be one way to have earlier datings of the gospels, right? Yeah, yeah,

52:48

I think so. Man, that's good stuff. So in terms of why the book of Enoch is not considered canon, can you give us a brief historical overview?

52:58

Were there ever debates about it? Were there ever councils held about the book of Enoch or anything like that? I mean, in terms of the

53:06

Jewish conversation, the answer is no. The Jews never considered it scripture. I think we can see, and we'll talk about this later from its allusions and quotations within the

53:17

New Testament, that it was a very important piece of literature, but it's not until you get to the early church period when they're having discussions as to what is and isn't canon that Enoch kind of comes into the frame.

53:36

And part of the reason for that is because the Jews had one of the criteria, if you want to put it that way, for what was and what wasn't scripture is that it had to have a

53:46

Hebrew origination, and Enoch did not have a Hebrew origination. It wasn't that old.

53:52

And so they never included it in the canon. We never have, apart from,

53:58

I mentioned those references from the Qumran group that could allude to it being considered scriptural.

54:06

The mainstream Jews, the Jews that were living in Jerusalem, at least the Jews that were writing in terms of the groups like the ones

54:14

I mentioned before, Josephus, Philo, when they talk about scripture, they specifically leave it out.

54:20

And I think that's intentional. But the amount of early church fathers who knew

54:26

Hebrew could probably be counted on one hand. And that's a big blind spot for the early church fathers.

54:33

A lot of them knew Greek. I mean, there's a whole subsection that were Greek, but the

54:38

Latin speaking fathers, not all of them knew Greek and very, very few of them knew Hebrew. And so that does cause some issues, especially when they're talking about the inclusion of this book.

54:51

So the epistle of Barnabas in chapter four, verse three alludes to, it talks about Enoch and then quotes

54:59

Enoch as scripture. Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Tertullian all at least entertain the idea of it being scripture.

55:09

However, when the dust starts to settle on the canon, everyone who thinks it could be scripture eventually says, you know, well, the church has the authority to recognize that which is given by God and we lose, you know, we, we thought this might've been included and it's clearly not, you know, we can, we can see that now.

55:29

So it's not like there was an, there was an overly strong battle. Nobody was contending to their death that Enoch should be included.

55:37

There were some people who thought that, you know, this might have some, some level of credibility to it.

55:42

But at the end of the day, they concede when everything's put on the table and the dust starts to settle, especially with the old

55:51

Testament. There really was very little, if any argument about what the old Testament scripture was in terms of what the

55:58

Jews considered scripture. I mean, even when Jerome is translating what would eventually becomes Latin Vulgate, Jerome is one of the early church fathers who happens to know

56:07

Hebrew and he goes back to Israel and he consults with the

56:12

Jews and just flat out ask them, you know, what do you consider scripture? And they're, they're not confused about what they consider scripture.

56:20

And so he goes back and he actually very vehemently argues against including any of the other

56:27

Deuterocanonical apocryphal books on that basis. And he eventually loses the argument and is,

56:33

I think, peer pressured by individuals like Augustine. Remember these, the early church fathers were not infallible.

56:40

And so he includes them eventually in the Latin Vulgate. But in terms of the canonical discussion for the

56:49

Jews, it was never considered. It was never considered scriptural. And for the early church, it was in contest, but the discussion was never that strong of one compared to say the arguments that were made for Maccabees or Tobit or Judith.

57:13

There were individuals who had a lot stronger opinions on the other ones, but Enoch was not necessarily in that list.

57:21

So when did, when did that happen for the Ethiopic Orthodox church with their canonization and was there canonization?

57:28

Is it, is it the same essentially as how we would view the Bible or is it more liberal in the sense that it may be something they think can be good to learn from as an apocryphal or not apocryphal, but a pseudepigraph, pseudepigraphal literature?

57:41

How does that work within, within their church? Do you know? Yeah, this is admittedly something

57:47

I have to kind of lay my cards on the table and say, I'm not entirely sure. I'm not entirely sure why or when the

57:55

Ethiopic canon included Enoch. It is clear that copies of Enoch in Ge 'ez and in Ethiopic get down to Ethiopia very early on, but why they considered it scriptural and why they start to include in their canon is not entirely clear to me, but there's a lot less of what we would consider like an academic chain of custody for some of these other canons, whether it's the

58:33

Ethiopic or the Oriental Orthodox or, because it just sort of ends up and that's that.

58:40

Whereas for the, the Greek speaking church for the, especially for the

58:46

Latin speaking church, there's a lot of academia going on, or at least what we'd consider academia.

58:53

And so we have a lot more literature to go on. So that could just be a blind spot for me.

58:59

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. It did end up in the Ethiopic canon, but it, it's kind of an, well, it's not kind of, it is an outlier.

59:10

It's an outlier in terms of the rest of the universal church in the early church period.

59:16

And that's why we only have one full copy of it in Ethiopic is because they were really the ones that preserved it up until that point.

59:28

But other than it having early attestation, very within a few centuries of the early church period down in Ethiopia, I'm not exactly sure why it rose to such prominence, admittedly.

59:48

Yeah, no, that's good, man. It's good to be honest and transparent about those things. I don't, I don't really know myself, but I'm thankful for you,

59:57

Wes, you've helped clear things even up for me during this discussion. So praise God for that. Don't, don't leave now though, guys, we,

01:00:06

I'm going to leave you with a few things. We're going to have a second episode on the book of Enoch. We're going to get into Jude.

01:00:11

Does Jesus quote from the book of Enoch? We'll get even into Peter with the book of Enoch.

01:00:18

There's all kinds of awesome things that we're going to talk about, even Nephilim, the watchers, but that's in the next episode.

01:00:23

But before we go, Wes, where can people find you? Yeah, so if people want to find me, they can go to either wesleyhuff .com

01:00:31

or apologeticscanada .com. So wesleyhuff .com would be my website.

01:00:36

And then I work for, I'm a regional director for Apologetics Canada. So any of the events that I'm doing or that we're doing as an organization will be listed there.

01:00:45

Perfect. Yeah, we'll have all of those links in our show notes so you can find Wes. And if you want to support his ministry, go ahead and go there.

01:00:53

And also, if you want to support Coltish, you can go to the Coltish all access button that we have in our show notes or the links in the descriptions on our

01:01:02

YouTube channel. And that's how you can support us because this ministry cannot continue without your support.

01:01:07

So we are thankful for all of your partnering with us to make this possible. But you can also go to shopcoltish .com.

01:01:13

We have a lot of merch there, even some new Bad Theology Hurts People designs and more are coming.

01:01:20

But thank you guys all for tuning in with us and we'll catch you next time as we enter into the kingdom of the Colts. Talk to you later.

01:01:26

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01:01:36

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