CHAPTER XIIITHE BOOK OF ENOCH
Enoch’s reputation as an astrologer in the middle ages—Date and influence of the literature ascribed to Enoch—Angels governing the universe; stars and angels—The fallen angels teach men magic and other arts—The stars as sinners—Effect of sin upon nature—Celestial phenomena—Mountains and metals—Strange animals.
Enoch’s reputation as an astrologer in the middle ages.
In collections of medieval manuscripts there often is found a treatise on fifteen stars, fifteen herbs, fifteen stones, and fifteen figures engraved upon them, which is attributed sometimes to Hermes, presumably Trismegistus, and sometimes to Enoch, the patriarch, who “walked with God and was not.”[1510]Indeed in the prologue to a Hermetic work on astrology in a medieval manuscript we are told that Enoch and the first of the three Hermeses or Mercuries are identical.[1511]Thistreatise probably has no direct relation to theBook of Enoch, which we shall discuss in this chapter and which was composed in the pre-Christian period. But it is interesting to observe that the same reputation for astrology, which led the middle ages sometimes to ascribe this treatise to Enoch, is likewise found in “the first notice of a book of Enoch,” which “appears to be due to a Jewish or Samaritan Hellenist,” which “has come down to us successively through Alexander Polyhistor and Eusebius,” and which states that Enoch was the founder of astrology.[1512]The statement in Genesis that Enoch lived three hundred and sixty-five years would also lead men to associate him with the solar year and stars.
Date and influence of the literature ascribed to Enoch.
TheBook of Enochis “the precipitate of a literature, once very active, which revolved ... round Enoch,” and in the form which has come down to us is a patchwork from “several originally independent books.”[1513]It is extant in the form of Greek fragments preserved in theChronographyof G. Syncellus,[1514]or but lately discovered in (Upper) Egypt, and in more complete but also more recent manuscripts giving an Ethiopic and a Slavonic version.[1515]These last two versions are quite different both in language and content, while some of the citations of Enoch in ancient writers apply to neither of these versions. While “Ethiopic did not exist as a literary language before 350 A. D.,”[1516]and noneof the extant manuscripts of the Ethiopic version is earlier than the fifteenth century,[1517]Charles believes that they are based upon a Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic original, and that even the interpolations in this were made by an editor living before the Christian era. He asserts that “nearly all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it,” and influenced by it,—in fact that its influence on the New Testament was greater than that of all the other apocrypha together, and that it “had all the weight of a canonical book” with the early church fathers.[1518]After 300 A. D., however, it became discredited, except as we have seen among Ethiopic and Slavonic Christians. Before 300 Origen in hisReply to Celsus[1519]accuses his opponent of quoting theBook of Enochas a Christian authority concerning the fallen angels. Origen objects that “the books which bear the name Enoch do not at all circulate in the Churches as divine.” Augustine, in theCity of God,[1520]written between 413 and 426, admits that Enoch “left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle.” But he doubts if any of the writings current in his own day are genuine and thinks that they have been wisely excluded from the course of Scripture. Lods writes that after the ninth century in the east and from a much earlier date in the west, theBook of Enochis not mentioned, “At the most some medieval rabbis seem still to know of it.”[1521]Yet Alexander Neckam, in the twelfth century, speaks as if Latin Christendom of that date had some acquaintance with the Enoch literature. We shall note some passages in Saint Hildegard which seem parallel to others in theBook of Enoch, while Vincent of Beauvais in hisSpeculum naturalein the thirteenth century, in justifying a certain discriminating use of the apocryphal books, points out that Jude quotes Enoch whose book is now called apocryphal.[1522]
Angels governing the universe: stars and angels.
The Enoch literature has much to say concerning angels, and implies their control of nature, man, and the future. We hear of Raphael, “who is set over all the diseases and wounds of the children of men”; Gabriel, “who is set over all the powers”; Phanuel, “who is set over the repentance and hope of those who inherit eternal life.”[1523]The revolution of the stars is described as “according to the number of the angels,” and in the Slavonic version the number of those angels is stated as two hundred.[1524]Indeed the stars themselves are often personified and we read “how they keep faith with each other” and even of “all the stars whose privy members are like those of horses.”[1525]The Ethiopic version also speaks of the angels or spirits of hoar-frost, dew, hail, snow and so forth.[1526]In the Slavonic version Enoch finds in the sixth heaven the angels who attend to the phases of the moon and the revolutions of stars and sun and who superintend the good or evil condition of the world. He finds angels set over the years and seasons, the rivers and sea, the fruits of the earth, and even an angel over every herb.[1527]
The fallen angels teach men magic and other arts.
The fallen angels in particular are mentioned in theBook of Enoch. Two hundred angels lusted after the comely daughters of men and bound themselves by oaths to marry them.[1528]After having thus taken unto themselves wives, they instructed the human race in the art of magic and the science of botany—or to be more exact, “charms and enchantments” and “the cutting of roots and of woods.” In another chapter various individual angels are named who taught respectively the enchanters and botanists, the breaking of charms, astrology, and various branches thereof.[1529]In the Greek fragment preserved by Syncellus there are further mentioned pharmacy, and what probably denote geomancy (“sign ofthe earth”) and aeromancy (aeroskopia). Through this revelation of mysteries which should have been kept hid we are told that men “know all the secrets of the angels, and all the violence of the Satans, and all their occult power, and all the power of those who practice sorcery, and the power of witchcraft, and the power of those who make molten images for the whole earth.”[1530]The revelation included, moreover, not only magic arts, witchcraft, divination, and astrology, but also natural sciences, such as botany and pharmacy—which, however, are apparently regarded as closely akin to magic—and useful arts such as mining metals, manufacturing armor and weapons, and “writing with ink and paper”—“and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day.”[1531]As the preceding remark indicates, the author is decidedly of the opinion that men were not created to the end that they should write with pen and ink. “For man was created exactly like the angels to the intent that he should continue righteous and pure, ... but through this their knowledge men are perishing.”[1532]Perhaps the writer means to censure writing as magical and thinks of it only as mystic signs and characters. Magic is always regarded as evil in the Enoch literature, and witchcraft, enchantments, and “devilish magic” are given a prominent place in a list in the Slavonic version[1533]of evil deeds done upon earth.
The stars as sinners.
In connection with the fallen angels we find the stars regarded as capable of sin as well as personified. In the Ethiopic version there is more than one mention of seven stars that transgressed the command of God and are bound against the day of judgment or for the space of ten thousand years.[1534]One passage tells how “judgment was held first over the stars, and they were judged and found guilty, and went to the place of condemnation, and they were cast into an abyss.”[1535]A similar identification of the stars with the fallen angels is found in one of the visions of SaintHildegard in the twelfth century. She writes, “I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding multitude of falling sparks which with the star followed southward. And they examined Him upon His throne almost as something hostile, and turning from Him, they sought rather the north. And suddenly they were all annihilated, being turned into black coals ... and cast into the abyss that I could see them no more.”[1536]She then interprets the vision as signifying the fall of the angels.
Effect of sin upon nature.
An idea which we shall find a number of times in other ancient and medieval writers appears also in theBook of Enoch. It is that human sin upsets the world of nature, and in this particular case, even the period of the moon and the orbits of the stars.[1537]Hildegard again roughly parallels the Enoch literature by holding that the original harmony of the four elements upon this earth was changed into a confused and disorderly mixture after the fall of man.[1538]
Celestial phenomena
The natural world, although intimately associated with the spiritual world and hardly distinguished from it in the Enoch literature, receives considerable attention, and much of the discussion in both the Ethiopic and Slavonic versions is of a scientific rather than ethical or apocalyptic character. One section of the Ethiopic version is described by Charles[1539]as theBook of Celestial Physicsand upholds a calendar based upon the lunar year. The Slavonic version, on the other hand, while mentioning the lunar year of 354 days and the solar year of 365 and ¼ days, seems to prefer the latter, since the years of Enoch’s life are given as 365, and he writes 366 books concerning what he has seen in his visions and voyages.[1540]TheBook of Enochsupposes a plurality of heavens.[1541]In the Slavonic version Enoch istaken through the seven heavens, or ten heavens in one manuscript, with the signs of the zodiac in the eighth and ninth. An account is also given of the creation, and the waters above the firmament, which were to give the early Christian apologists and medieval clerical scientists so much difficulty, are described as follows: “And thus I made firm the waters, that is, the depths, and I surrounded the waters with light, and I created seven circles, and I fashioned them like crystal, moist and dry, that is to say, like glass and ice, and as for the waters and also the other elements I showed each of them their paths, (viz.) to the seven stars, each of them in their heaven, how they should go.”[1542]The order of the seven planets in their circles is given as follows: in the first and highest circle the star Kruno, then Aphrodite or Venus, Ares (Mars), the sun, Zeus (Jupiter), Hermes (Mercury), and the moon.[1543]God also tells Enoch that the duration of the world will be for a week of years, that is, seven thousand, after which “let there be at the beginning of the eighth thousand a time when there is no computation and no end; neither years nor months nor weeks nor days nor hours.”[1544]
Mountains and metals.
Turning from celestial physics to terrestrial phenomena, we may note a few allusions to minerals, vegetation, and animals. “Seven mountains of magnificent stones” are more than once mentioned in the Ethiopic version and are described as each different from the other.[1545]Another passage speaks of “seven mountains full of choice nard and aromatic trees and cinnamon and pepper.”[1546]But whetherthese groups of seven mountains are to be astrologically related to the seven planets is not definitely stated. We are also left in doubt whether the following passage may have some astrological or even alchemical significance, or whether it is merely a figurative prophecy like that in the Book of Daniel concerning the image seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his dream. “There mine eyes saw all the hidden things of heaven that shall be, an iron mountain, and one of copper, and one of silver, and one of gold, and one of soft metal, and one of lead.”[1547]At any rate Enoch has come very near to listing the seven metals usually associated with the seven planets. In another passage we are informed that while silver and “soft metal” come from the earth, lead and tin are produced by a fountain in which an eminent angel stands.[1548]
Strange animals.
As for animals we are informed that Behemoth is male and Leviathan female.[1549]When Enoch went to the ends of the earth he saw there great beasts and birds who differed in appearance, beauty, and voice.[1550]In the Slavonic version we hear a good deal of phoenixes andchalkydri, who seem to be flying dragons. These creatures are described as “strange in appearance with the feet and tails of lions and the heads of crocodiles. Their appearance was of a purple color like the rainbow; their size, nine hundred measures. Their wings were like those of angels, each with twelve, and they attend the chariot of the sun, and go with him, bringing heat and dew as they are ordered by God.”[1551]