The First Christians / pt. 7
The Parables of Enoch (chapters 37–71 of 1 Enoch) is a unique composition dating to the last decades of the first century BCE. It has been preserved as part of the First Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), but scholars have noted that it does not fit its context, neither as to theology nor vocabulary. Its dating is also different: the remaining parts of 1 Enoch have been dated to late II BCE, while the Parables of Enoch are dated a century later (more on dating below). One writer has opined: “I think we should not even rule out the possibility that the authors of the Parables might have been Jewish Christians.” The theology of the Parables—in which the Son of Man becomes divine—is, in fact, unprecedented in intertestamental literature. Even the terminology of the Parables is different—God is called “the Lord of Spirits,” an epithet that occurs nowhere else, while the antediluvian patriarch Enoch is termed “the Son of Man.” One specialist has written:
The evidence available today gives us reason to believe that the Parables of Enoch had a different origin and early transmission history than the other four works in 1 Enoch. In all likelihood the booklet was not copied together with other Enochic texts at Qumran, where no fragment of the Parables has been identified. Long before discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Parables was thought to have a different origin than the other parts of 1 Enoch…
The various differences that set the Parables off from the other booklets have led to the conclusion that the Book of Parables stems from another kind of Jewish group.
At the conclusion of the preceding post I suggested that the Parables was authored by a Naṣarene follower of Yeshu haNotsri and that its astonishing theology of Enoch becoming divine rested upon a redefinition of divinity, in which the material creation becomes of no account and God emerges as the “Lord of Spirits.”
In the Parables, Enoch takes a journey from ignorance (materiality) to gnosis (spirituality). He is at first the naive questioner (Parable 1). The Son of Man is then introduced to him (Parable 2). And finally Enoch himself becomes the Son of Man (1 En 71:14)—he sits upon the divine throne dispensing eschatological judgment (45:3; 49:4; 51:2-3). Enoch essentially replaces Yahweh and assumes roles that no human being can assume in Judaism. In sum, the Parables of Enoch are not “Jewish” in any normative sense, though the text uses the language of Judaism. This work represents something quite new.
The unusual theology of the Parables also contributed to its unpopularity with the later Church. In far too restrained language, J. Charlesworth basically writes that the Church ‘did not like it’:
Perhaps the early scholars of the church [i.e. the Church Fathers] considered the document polemical. For them the Book of Parables was most likely not a source for explaining the origins of the Christian affirmation that ancient prophecy proved the divinity and messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth. These scholars may have reasoned that if Enoch is the Son of Man and identified as the Messiah, then it should not be translated from Aramaic to Greek or explored and mined for Christian kerygma and didache [“proclamation and teaching”].
In Hebrew ben adam (bar enosh in Aramaic) literally means “Son of Man,” but it is also the routine locution for “man, human being.” Thus, “Son of Man” in the Parables of Enoch has a double meaning: (1) it narrowly refers to Enoch as the archetypal Son of Man; and (2) it refers more generally to Enoch as a human being, as one of us. In portraying the journey of the Son of Man to divinity, the author of the Parables is portraying a transformation that is potentially within the reach of us all. The Enochian odyssey from ignorance to gnosis/divinity is, by implication, the journey that all humans must take. This is the deeper message of the Parables.
Parallels between Enoch and Jesus of Nazareth in the gospels are many and close. The Parables are intensely ebionite (praising the poor and condemning the rich), a theme that continues in the gospels (Lk 6:20–26; GTh 54, 68, 69). Both Enoch and Jesus of Nazareth are the Son of Man, the eschatological judge, and the bearers of higher wisdom. Such obvious parallels merit the sounding of bells and whistles when the name “Enoch” is mentioned in early Christian studies. But scholars are not interested, for such parallels diminish the uniqueness of Jesus. For example, instead of presenting the equivalent of a neon sign pointing from “Enoch” to “Jesus,” the scholar above, J. Charlesworth—arguably the doyen of the field for the past generation—timidly notes (and in passing) a distant connection between Enoch and Jesus:
In the Parables of Enoch the Son of Man is a celestial judge. It is significant that in the words attributed to Jesus, the Son of Man is assumed to be the judge at the end of times (cf. Mark 8:38; 13:24–27; esp. John 5:27).
Charlesworth’s argument is not that both Enoch and Jesus were denominated the “Son of Man” (which is the elephant in the room) but that words are “attributed” to Jesus, and that the Son of Man “is assumed to be” judge (all very tentative language), which just might indicate some resemblance in both cases…
It is past time that scholars lost their timidity and went down this path connecting Enoch and Jesus. For readers of this blog, of course, the connection is no longer between Enoch and “Jesus,” but between Enoch and Yeshu haNotsri, a connection that we now consider.
Yeshu and Enoch
The allegations raised against Yeshu haNotsri during his trial ca. 65 BCE—allegations that led to his stoning and “hanging upon a tree”—included the following charges: (1) he made himself into God; (2) he called himself (or was called) the “Son of Man”; and (3) he claimed to ascend to heaven:
R. Abahu said: If a man says to you ‘I am God,’ he is a liar; if [he says, ‘I am] the Son of Man,’ in the end people will laugh at him; if [he says] ‘I will go up to heaven,’ he says but will not perform it. (Pal. Talmud, Taanith 65b. Cf. NazarethGate 422.)
Though the above passage does not mention Yeshu, “That it refers to Jesus there can be no possibility of doubt”—Herford. We note that all three of the above allegations against Jesus/Yeshu perfectly fit the late I BCE theology of the Parables of Enoch, in which Enoch (1) becomes God, (2) becomes the “Son of Man,” and (3) ascends to heaven. This constitutes strong evidence that the Parables stem from circles influenced by Yeshu haNotsri.
It appears, then, that the author of the Parables, a I BCE follower of Yeshu haNotsri, used the already-existing Enochian literature (the Book of Watchers, Dream Visions, Astronomical Book, Epistle of Enoch) and attempted to fuse the theology of Yeshu onto the figure of Enoch, the patriarch whom “God took” (Gen 5:21–24). His fusion produced the Parables of Enoch, a provocative mixture of Naṣarene theology and Enochian lore: God morphs into the “Lord of Spirits”; Enoch becomes the archetype for Everyman and Everywoman; and life becomes a journey from ignorance to the realization that we are all the “Son of Man,” lords and masters of our own universe through free will and knowledge of the “divine secrets” ( = gnosis, Heb. netsuroth).
Along his existential journey, Enoch changes. This renders the Parables a literary tour de force. Depending on where the reader is in the text, he sees a different Enoch. Furthermore, Enoch himself in the story has an evolving self-conception. Perhaps James Joyce would have been equal to such literary challenges! In any case, the Naṣarene author doesn’t fare too badly. He makes clear (or attempts to make clear) that who Enoch is depends upon Enoch’s own state of understanding: “You, son of man, according to the degree to which it will be permitted, you will know the hidden things” (60:10, Isaac translation and emphasis added).
A closer look at dating and composition
The Parables of Enoch (1 En 37–71) is not a unitary composition. It betrays different stages and even incompatible theologies. In the first place, we have seen that the Naṣarene author was not interested in the material realm. For him, God is the “Lord of Spirits”—a name that occurs in no other document. And yet, the Parables contain three extended passages dealing with the material realm, that is, detailing cosmic events in nature (Chps. 41/43; 52; 59–60)—one passage in each of the three parables. These passages are similar in tone and content to those found in earlier Enochic literature of the late second century BCE. Thus, I would suggest that these “cosmic” passages belong to an earlier stratum of the Parables of Enoch.
In the second place, the Naṣarene author upheld the doctrine of free will. For him, good and evil come from the choices one makes. This view puts him at odds with earlier Enochian literature, in which evil has been irrevocably introduced into the world by an exterior source, namely, the “Fallen Watchers/Angels” (1 En 6–14; Jubilees 5, etc). Therefore, the passages that speak of Fallen Angels in the Parables (1 En 54:5–6; 55:3 ff; 56) must also be credited to an earlier pre-Naṣarene stratum. Apparently, the Naṣarene author adapted a pre-existing composition and “modified” it to conform to his radically spiritualized theology.
The Naṣarene belief in free will also opposed any notion of determinism or predestination as, for example, practiced at Qumran, where the sectarians “believed that God determined all, and thus theirs is a metaphysics of fatalism” (Stauber). The Naṣarene position is confirmed by Epiphanius, who in his section on the Nasarenes writes that they “did not introduce fate or astrology” (Pan 18.1.2). These are precisely the two points I have signaled above: by rejecting “fate” (determinism) the Naṣarenes maintained human agency and free will; and by rejecting “astrology” they rejected preoccupations with the heavens, the cosmos, and materiality.
Thus the Parables of Enoch is a composition with at least two stages. The Naṣarene author supplemented an already existing composition that conformed to the earlier deterministic Enochic point of view as evidenced in the Book of Watchers, the Astronomical Book, Jubilees, and so on.
Scholarship has settled upon the date “late I BCE” for the Parables of Enoch. However, the two-stage nature of the work requires a more nuanced dating: the first stage was as early as ca. 125 BCE, contemporaneous with other early Enochic literature, while the second stage, the “Naṣarene” stage, dates to late I BCE.
In conclusion, we note that other hands also seem to have “interpolated” the book. Chapters 64–69:26 (with “Noachic” fragments) are clearly intrusive. They include a hostile anti-gnostic diatribe (Chp. 65:10–12) in which we read that only the condemned learn “things which are secret” and that the “pure and kindhearted” actually detest secret things. This, however, is the polar opposite of the Naṣarene view. Thus, the text as it stands betrays opposing theologies. It witnesses to intense theological battles that raged on the ground long ago.
For the Naṣarene author, however, the essential is that Enoch the “Son of Man” transforms into the divine eschatological judge (chps. 70–71). At that point, which is the climax of the book, all humanity comes into judgment. Enoch executes that judgment from an intensely “ebionite” point of view—for each one of us, everything depends upon how one has treated one’s neighbor:
Blessed is the man who dies righteous and upright,
against whom no record of oppression has been written,
and who received no judgment on that day. (1 En 81:4)