Enoch Calendar Testifies of Christ, Part I
by John P. Pratt
Jesus Christ quoted often from the Book of Enoch, indirectly testifying of its authenticity. Now it has been discovered that Enoch returns the favor because the key dates in the life of Christ are “holy days” on the Enoch Calendar. Thus, Enoch, who prophesied of the Elect One, indirectly witnessed that the Messiah would be none other than Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ and his apostles quoted from the Book of Enoch (also called 1 Enoch) as authentic scripture. It was once in the Bible and was accepted as having been written by Enoch himself, the majestic antediluvian prophet who was translated into heaven without tasting death (Heb. 11:5). During the Third and Fourth Centuries A.D. the book fell into disfavor and was removed from sacred canon, destined to become one of the “lost books” of the Bible. It was rediscovered in 1773 in Ethiopia and is now readily available in English, but is still largely unappreciated. Before looking at the calendar it describes, let us briefly review how it contains doctrines or phrases of the Savior, which are apparently examples of the Savior quoting Enoch.
Christ Quotes Enoch
The one direct quote in the New Testament is by Jude, a brother of Jesus Christ:
“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
“To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1:14-15, quoting Enoch 1:9 {2:1} [1].)While that is the only referenced quotation in the Bible, there are many indirect references which involve striking similarities. The scholar and translator R.H. Charles declared, “The influence of 1 Enoch on the New Testament has been greater than that of all the other apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books taken together.”[2] Another expert noted that “Its influence is apparent in no less than 128 places in the New Testament.”[3] The following table compares a few from the introduction to Archbishop Richard Laurence’s original translation [4], in which the Savior apparently alludes to the Book of Enoch.
History. The Book of Enoch was dropped from the Jewish scriptures shortly after Christ, most likely because it apparently referred to him as the Messiah. It was quoted as scripture by the early Christian Church fathers until the middle of the third century A.D., accepted as a divine work having been written by Enoch himself.[5] It then fell into disrepute and was banned from the canon of scripture in the fourth century, partly because it didn’t agree with how Christianity came to be redefined after the death of the apostles.
The book also doubtlessly raised questions with its unusual imagery, referring to things such as “the stone which supports the corners of the earth” and “the four winds, which bear up the earth” (Enoch 18:2 {18:2-3}). That may have sounded primitive to the sophisticated science of the fourth century, but that is the same imagery used by many great prophets. For example, John the Revelator states, “I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth” (Rev. 7:1; compare imagery of Isa. 11:12, Jer. 49:36, Ezek. 37:9, Dan. 7:2, Mat. 24:31). As is discussed later in this article, often what appears to be primitive science in the scriptures turns out to be the sophisticated concepts of God simplified for us. Note that the prophets have 100% chance of success when predicting the weather, so those angels may have more to do with the wind than we might suppose.
Thus, for a variety of reasons, the Book of Enoch was systematically purged from the scriptures until it became a “lost book” of the Bible. In 1773 the famous explorer James Bruce discovered it in Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia), and brought back three copies. Fortunately, the Ethiopians had kept it in their Bible, where it was located immediately after the Book of Job.[6]
One of the three copies was presented to the Oxford library. The first English translation was published in 1821 by Archbishop Richard Laurence, who had been a Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. Later translations included that of George Schodde in 1881, of R.H. Charles in 1913, and by E. Isaac in 1983.[7] The first three translations are now available on the internet. Quotations and links in this article are to the original Laurence translation, because it still appears to be the best overall translation.
Date of Origin. Modern scholars, beginning with Laurence, all date the origin of the book to the first or second century before Christ, hence it is assigned to the “pseudepigrapha,” meaning it is not believed to have been written by the named author. It is dated using standard “scholarly” methods. One rule of dating used by modern scholars, is that if anything is prophesied which turns out to be correct, it must have been written after the event, because otherwise the author would really have to have been a prophet! This complete rejection of the entire concept of revelation forced Laurence to put the authorship of the Book of Enoch extremely late because he saw that it prophesied not only the existence of Parthia (250 B.C.), but even the reign of King Herod the Great, which began in 37 B.C. On the other hand, it was quoted by the Savior and his apostles so it must have been written before their time. Thus Laurence inferred that the book had been written “before the rise of Christianity; most probably at an early period of the reign of Herod.”[8] More modern scholarship has concluded that the book was probably written by several authors over the period of about 180-64 B.C.[9] This extremely recent authorship date of course raises the question of how such a late forgery could have been so totally accepted as genuine in just a few decades, which has never been adequately explained.
In this article, let us consider the outrageous possibility that the work was actually originally written by the prophet Enoch long before the Great Flood and contains many genuine revelations.[10] It probably also contains some interpolations of men, and has suffered from mistakes introduced by the many hand-made transcriptions. But for the purposes of this article, when it says that an angel revealed to Enoch a divine calendar, those statements will be taken at face value. One scientific way to test a hypothesis is to assume it is true and examine the consequences. Let us now apply that method to the astronomy contained in the Book of Enoch.
End of Part 1: Tomorrow See Enoch’s Astronomy.
1. Quotations in this article from the Book of Enoch are from the original translation of Richard Laurence, The Book of Enoch the Prophet (reprinted by Wizards Bookshelf, Minneapolis, 1976) because he translates astronomical text the best. Since his time many other manuscripts have been discovered and the chapter/verse notation is now different. Laurence’s notation is included in braces { }, complete with internet links.
2. Charles, R.H., The Book of Enoch (London: Oxford U. Press, 1913), p. xcv. His chapter and verse notation is the first one listed in quotations in this article. The entire text is easily accessible on the internet.
3. Nibley, Hugh, “A Strange Thing in the Land: The Return of the Book of Enoch,” The Ensign (Oct. 1975), reprinted in Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS), 1986, p. 95.
5. The introduction to the Laurence translation summarizes: “Reverting to the second century of Christianity, we find Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria citing the Book of Enoch without questioning its sacred character. . . . Tertullian, who flourished at the close of the first and at the beginning of the second century, . . . speaks of the author as ‘the most ancient prophet, Enoch’ an of the book as the divinely inspired autograph of that immortal patriarch, preserved by Noah in the ark. . . . Tertullian adds [that it was] ‘disavowed by the Jews like all other scripture which speaks of Christ.’ . . . Origen (A.D. 254) assigns to the Book of Enoch the same authority as to the Psalms [but] affirms that the work of the antediluvian patriarch was not accepted in the Churches as Divine.” (Laurence, pp. iv-v). Thus, by the third century the work was beginning to be questioned. R.H. Charles notes that “from the fourth century of our era onward it fell into discredit; and under the ban of such authorities as Hilary, Jerome and Augustine, it gradually passed out of circulation, and became lost to the knowledge of Western Christendom . . .” (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1913, vol. 2, p. 163.)
7. Laurence and Charles are referenced in footnotes 1 and 2. The translation by George H. Schodde, (Andover: Warren R. Draper, 1881) is also on the internet. Isaac’s translation is in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, (New York, Doubleday, 1983), vol I, pp. 5-89.
10. Nibley also suggests this possibility: “Instead of ever seeking for sources to Enoch, which never turn up, why not do the sensible thing and accept Enoch himself as the source, as the writers of Jubilees and the XII Patriarchs do?” (Nibley, p. 123)
2001 Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
EmetMarch 15, 2017
Thought it might be the perfect day to post this on the eve of March 16th. Loved your article! :) https://enochcalendars.webs.com/apps/calendar/