preface this book contains the three schweich lectures for 1913, printed almost exactly as they were...

THE BRI TI SH ACADEMY

J ewi sh and Ch r is t ian

Apo c a lyps e s

By

Crawford Burkitt, M .A.,

Norrisian Professor of Divinity in theUniversity of Cam b ridge

Fellow of the British Academy

The Schweich Lectures

1913

London

Published for the British Academy

By Humphrey Milford, Oxford UniversityAmen Corner, E C.

19 1 4

TO THE MEMORY OF

SAMUEL ROLLES DR I VER

THE F I RST OF THE SCHWE I CH LECTURERS

ram newsm m : prawn5:

n-nz m rm: mwmwmen mm:

Aboth vi 1

PREFACE

TH I S book contains the three Schweich Lectures for 1913 , printedalmost exactly as they were delivered last November. The onlychange of importance is that I have divided the third Lecture into

its two constituent parts, so as to keep the specifically Christian

variety of Apocalypse in a class by itself.

In the Lectures I attempted to confine myself as m uch as possible

to what I believe to be the fundamental idea which underlies the

great series of Jewish Apocalypses, viz . the idea of the imminent

Judgement to Come,and further

,to exhibit thi s Idea in connexion

with what I believe to be both its true historical setting and the

ultimate cause of its mani festation . That which gives the Apocalypses vitality i s the great struggle between Religion and C iv iliz ation ,of which the Maccabean Martyrs are the symbol . I omit the adjec

tives. My readers themselves, according as they view the thing, can

say ‘between spiritual Religion and material Civi liz ation or ‘between

fanatical Religion and enlightened Civil i z ation,

’— and they will j udge

the Apocalypses accordingly. But it seemed to me worth while to

exhibit the Apocalypses as clearly as possible from this quite definite

and particular point of view, and therefore I found it inadvisable to

expand what I had said by introducing other points of V iew or more

details into the printed form of the Lectures .

What I have added will be found in the separate Appendices .

These will,I hope

,explain themselves to the speciali sts for whom

they were primarily written . They will at least serve to shew thatI have not ventured to make sweeping generalisations about this

department of ancient literature without making a somewhat minute

study of the principal documents.

The year 1913 saw a grand edition of all the Old Testament‘Apocrypha ’ and Pseudepigrapha ’ brought out under the able and

stimulating editorship of Dr, now Canon, R . H . Charles . Students of

who now has edited it three times in English and pnce in Ethiopic .I s i t not time that a l iteral English translation should be accessible

to all ? Poor students of theology can be expected to have read

Daniel, for it i s in the Bible ; they can be expected to have read Second

Esdras, for it i s at least in the Apocrypha But the cheapest wayOf getting at the plain text of Enoch is still to try and pick upa second—hand copy of one of the reprints of Laurence’s translation,

and this generally comes to about three - and - sixpence . This trans

lation was pioneer work . It was most creditable as a first attempt,

but like all such efforts,especially when made on a bad text, it is

generally inadequate, often obscure, and to young students often

positively misleading. On any theory of the Book of Enoch

either of Dr Charles’s translations is vastly superior . I am not

thinking of the needs of teachers and professors, but of young

students and ordinary clergymen . Is it impossible to hope that

Dr Charles and the Clarendon Press will prepare a plain translationfor us ? If not, I hope that some one else who knows Ethiopic willm ake one. If he does so, let me further beg him to make as few

emendations as possible, —he should follow Dr Charles’s MS g almostalways,— and when he feels bound to make an emendation let it bealways quite clear to the reader what the transmitted text is

.A text

so prepared would be useful to teachers and could be bought by

students, for I do not think it need cost m ore than a shilling.

F . C. BURKITT

Westroad Corner, Cam bridge

March, 1914

CONTENTS

I . THE APOCALYPTIC IDEA

II . THE BOOK OF ENOCH

III . THE MI NOR JEWISH APOCALYPSES

IV . EARLY CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC WRITING

APPENDIX I : ON THE GREEK TEXT OF ENOCH

1 . The Descent of the Angels

2 . The Prologue to Enoch

3 . Enoch and the Va lley s of the Dead

5 . On the Astronom ical teaching of Enoch

APPENDIX II : ON TH E MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH

APPENDIX III : ON SOME OTHER KINDS OF APOCALYPSES

INDEX

ILLUSTRATION

THE GI Z EH MS . OF ENOCH, p. 23 Tof ace p . 1

G I Z EH MS . O F ENOCH, p. 223 .

The Book of Enoch begins in the ”M ild/e of line 8 m arife/1 with a cross) .

Tof ace

JEWI SH AND CHRI STI AN APOCALYPSES.

I . THE APOCALYPTIC IDEA .

THE subject announced for the present series of Schweich Lecturesis Jewish and Chri stian Apocalypses It i s a subj ect upon whichmuch has been written Of late years, especially by specialists forspeciali sts . Besides this frankly specialist literature there has notbeen wanting a great measure Of recognition of the importa nce

,

in a general way,Of these Apocalypses and the state of mind which

they reflect, for the history of Early Christian ity. But the Apocalypses themselves are still unfamiliar to most people, and indeedthere are a good many reasons against their becoming popular in thepresent day . Both as wholes and in detai l they are strange and foreignto our ways Of think ing and writing they need, in fact, a great dealof what i s called Introduction to make them comprehensible at all .Before coming, therefore, to the Apocalypses or to the circumstancesthat called them forth, I wish to make a few remarks on certainideas and conceptions with which the Apocalypses are fundamentallyconcerned .

The S istine Chapel i s familiar to all in this travelled age . As youall know, i t is the private chapel of the Popes and i t was decorated bythe greatest artists of the time. The Popes for whom the work wasdone, and the artists who did it, were all profoundly influenced by theRenaissance, by the revival of the literature, the art, the ideas ofheathen Greece and Rome . Those who do not admire the SistineChapel as an example of Christian Art generally complain thatit seems to them pagan at least it i s free from the reproach of beingovermuch mediaeval . Let us consider for a moment what the schemeof decoration really is . We will not go into the Chapel as i f it werea mere picture - gal lery, walking about freely from point to point . Wewill take no look ing - glasses in our hands or l ie on our backs toexamine the ceiling. No doubt persons attending Mass have in allages turned their heads occasionally from side to side and looked up atthe roof. Those who do so at the Sistine Chapel see on their left scenesfrom the Old Testament and on their right the fulfilment in the

B

2 THE APOCALYBT I C IDEA

New. If they glance at the roof, they see the creation of the worldand the beginnings O f history as taught in Scripture and tradition .

The pious worshipper will perhaps not care thus to look abouthim . But there is one thing which he cannot well help seeing. Hecannot raise his eyes to adore the consecrated Host without beingconfronted with the Last Judgement . Behind the Priest, behind theAltar, behind the lighted candles, behind the sacred drama of worship,the Last Judgement is always there. The only thing that standsbetween the Christian worshipper and Hell i s the Priest and theAltar.The symbolism of the Last Judgem ent, as presented in ChristianChurches , i s not always exactly the same as in the Sistine Chapel .At Ulm , and formerly in many English Churches, it was representedon the Chancel Arch, SO that the Altar was exhibited as the one opendoor through which the worshipper might take refuge . But howeverit might he figured, it stood in the centre Of conviction , both inpopular belief and in the Official creed . The Pope’s Chapel, for allthe classical detai l in the paintings

,faithfully reflects the Christian

scheme Of things : behind everything the Last Judgement loomsin the background , universal, inev itable .

The guide - books tell us that M ichaelangelo’s great picture owesa great deal to Dante. I have no doubt that thi s i s true in the sensein which the statem ent i s made, i. e . in the arrangem ent Of details .Nevertheless there i s a sense in which Dante’s poem marks thetrium ph o f a quite different order of ideas, which robs the idea of theLast Judgem ent of mos t of its significance . Dante goes to the OtherWorld, he sees the ( lead in Paradise

,in Purgatory

,or in Hell . For

all intents and purposes the Last Judgement has no meaning forthem they are j udged already . After such and such a time or modeof probation one by one the souls in Purgatory will leave it to j ointhe souls in Paradise

,j ust as one by one they had arrived . The

Other World is a p lace, which individuals enter one by one when theydie ; the conception of the Las t Judgement, on the other hand, makesthe Other World a tim e, an era, which all indiv iduals experiences imultaneously. a “ Divine Event to which all Nature moves ”. Iti s this Div ine Event that i s set forth by the Apocalypses. Thedoctrine of the Apocalypses i s the doctrine of the Last Judgement .

For the study of Early Chri stian ity it i s most important to keep inmind the distinction between the doctrine of a Last Judgement andother forms of belief in retributive j ustice and in life beyond thegrave . This is particularly the case when it comes to a question

THE LAST JUDGEMENT 3

of origins . That the Powers above us are j ust and that evil will notgo in the end unpunished has been the conviction of many races Ofmankind : it is not necessary to look for a historical nexus every timethi s belief finds expression . The same may be said of bel ief inthe persistence of a man’s spirit or ghost . And it is an easy, thoughnot a logically necessary step, to comb ine the two beliefs and to holdthat the comparative happiness or misery of a man in his future l ifedepends on his past. Systems so different as Indian and EgyptianReligion agree in this . But the notion of a future general Assiz e

,at

which all wrong will be put right, not always with special reference toindividual cases, i s a peculiar conception . It is certainly not universal,or even widespread, and we may therefore suppose that it requireda very special train of circumstances to develop it .One thing appears to me to be quite certain . It seem s to me

certain that the doctrine of a future general Assiz e held no placein the Graeco -Roman world, apart from the beliefs of Jews andChristians . The period between the eras of Alexander the Great andthe Emperor Constantine, those six centuries during which Christianitygrew up, was an age of syncretism,

of the mingling of religions,

a period during which European civiliz ation was especially influencedby Oriental bel iefs . It was the age Of the Mystery- religions

,the

rel igions Of Isis, of Mithra, of Attis . The dominant philosophies, aswe are more and more com ing to see

,were the result of the blending

of Greek thought with Oriental bel iefs and teachings . OrientalAstrology was in itself a religious philos ophy it was an attempt toformulate the influences which to a certain degree moulded the l ives

of all the dwellers under the roof of heaven . One school of Philosophers, the Stoics, even taught the doctrine of a future g eneralconfiagration, but thi s i s quite a different thing from the Last Judgement . The Stoic confiagration merely started everything over again ,to retread the old circle . Gracco - Roman religion, speaking generally,did not see in History the working- out Of a Divine Purpose .I said j ust now that the doctrine of a Last Judgement requireda very special set of circumstances for its development. It will notbe a part Of my aim in these Lectures to trace the growth of thisdoctrine among the Jews from its origins . It i s commonly saidto have been taken over by the Jews from Zoroas trianism, and theremay be some truth in this view. But for us the more importantthing i s to notice that the Seed fell on congenial soil, from whereverit may have originally come . What I wish specially to emphasiz e i sthe difference between Judaism and the contemporary Hellenistic,Graeco- Roman , beliefs . Let us grant for the moment that the

B 2

44 THE APOCALYPTIC IDEA

Jewish hOpe was coloured by Zoroastriani sm Mithraism, in any cas e,was in great part ultimately derived from Persia . Why

,then

,was

a doctrine of Last Judgement so prominent in the one religion andnot in the other ?Here we come, in a very real sense, to the heart of our subj ect .I believe the main peculiarities, the main difierentia, of post-Al exandrian Judaism to arise directly from the actual hi story of theJews, in a word, to be the result of the great struggle betweenJuda i sm and Hellenism .

It is during the two centuries and a half that extend from theMaccabean Ris ing to the Destruction Of Jerusalem by Titus, from170 B. C . to 70 A . D . , that the world in general i s confronted with theJewi sh Nation . Before the Captivity its history had been simplythat of one among many petty nationalities of Palestine . The annalsof Sargon or of Sennacherib betray no consciousness that the subj ectsof the King O f Jerusalem were different in thought or custom s fromother people . After the Return the Jews had l ived unnoticed inquiet . After the Destruction of Jerusalem , again, the direct politicalpower o f Juda ism is gone ; the Jews become a Church, an international Society

,rather than a Nation in the ordinary sense of the

word . But in the interval Judaism had played a truly national partit becam e during those two - and - a - half centuries a kingdom of thisworld

,an alternative to Civ il i z ation as then understood, actually

before the eyes of men .

It is a curious fact that the parts of Israelite history with whichmost O f us are familiar are concerned with the preparation of theJews for their pecul iar rOle rather than with the part they actuallyplayed in general history . The kingdom over which the princes Ofthe House of Dav id ruled made very little mark on the ancientworld, and when the hill - fortress of Jerusalem stood in the way of

the great empire of Babylonia it fell, and the k ingdom of Judah fellwith it . The Jewish State collapsed, and there was nothing toindicate to an outsider that any part Of the social organisation wouldsurvive. AS a m atter of fact

,as we all know, the religion of the

Jews— or at least of a part Of them— had undergone a strange andunique development, the result of which was that i t did not die withi ts mother the old Jewish State. Two generations later, when therei s a change of Empires

,some of the heads of the Jewish communities

i n Babylon are still Jews,and they return to set the l ife in their Old

home going once more,and to worship the God of their fathers as

aforetime .The history of the age of E z ra i s full of unsolved historical

THE JEWISH NATION IN HISTORY 5

problems,but certain things are clear enough . It was no doubt

a day of small things . The returned exiles aspired to play no greatpolitical part their chief desire was to be left alone to practise theirreligion . But insignificant as they might be in numbers and immediate influence, they were now a peculiar people. They were quiteconscious of the fact themselves, and made their neighbours consciousof it . They were the People : the rest of the world were Gentiles .They now possessed the Law of God in black and white, a Law thathad been given to them to keep at all costs .From the days of Ez ra begins that most characteristic product of

Judaism— the Study O f the Law . The community existed for thesake of the Temple and its worship, for the sake of the ritual practisedat the Temple . To surround Jerusalem with a wall, and graduallyto raise up a fence for the Tora, as a later age phrased it— that wasa sufficient ambition . The Word of God had been already given tothem, and so the race of the Prophets came to an end and that ofthe Scribes took its place .The work of the Scribes was far more important than it was oncethought to have been . The wise men Of Israel who came after Ez rahad the Law already

,but it was they who brought the Prophets

into the form in which we read them , and the Psalms, whateverancient fragments they may possibly contain , were in the main theirwork . To the Prophets it had been given to make the ReligionOf Israel, but the Scribes made the Bible. It is difficult, when wethink of the immense effect that the Old Testament has had, to findwords high enough to describe the importance Of the work of theScribes for after generations . And yet it was secondary and derivative . The Scribes had not in themselves the direct and masterfulauthority that belonged to the Prophets who went before them .

They were not commissioned themselves to say ‘Thus saith theLORD And so when the cri sis came we find a new phenomenon .

The Jew who feels himself to have a new message for his brethrenshelters himself under a pseudonym . The original literature of thetwo centuries and a half that preceded the capture of Jerusalem iseither anonymous, or it professe s to be the work of some worthy ofOld time . It i s a remarkable fact, that during the period when theJewish Nation was actually playing a great part in the world’shistory, a part which was the direct outcome of the ideas whichan imated the people, there are hardly any avowed Jewish writers,till we come to the commentator Philo and to the Christians . Itwas a literary age, and in it a great quantity of Jewish literaturewas produced, some Of which had great influence . But almost all of


it was published in the name of some ancient hero, as a vis ion of thefuture which he had received .

It i s well, I think, to remind ourselves at the outset that theauthorship of the Book of Daniel i s no isolated problem . Baruch ,Ez ra, Solomon, Moses, the Twelve Patriarchs, Noah, Enoch, Adam ,

-all these had Apocalypses or Testaments fathered upon them . Iti s difficult to know in particular cases how far the pseudonymity wasan understood l iterary artifice and how far it was really deceptive .What, I think , i s clear is that both authors and readers believedthat if any Revelation from God was true, i t could not be new. Itm ust have been given to the great Saints of antiquity. The ChristianApocalypse of John, as we read it, may be a com pilation of differentdates

,or a reissue of an earl ier book, but in this respect the core of

it breathes a new spirit . “ I John, your brother and companion in

tribulation , I heard a voice which said, Write to Ephesus and

the rest of the Churches ” —this is new . It i s a new message, given

to the contem porary Seer, and it marks the end of the type of writingwhich we are to study.

The great spiritual crisis that befel the Jews of the second centurybefore our era was not the result of any developmen t of Jewishthought . It was brought on from without . To the pious Jew wasoffered by Ant iochus Epiphanes the alternative of death or assimilation to the Heathen world around him , and he chose rather to die .And here

,as in so many other crises of history the saying was verified

that whoso hateth his present l ife shall keep it and Obtain l ife in

a greater and larger sense . I t was under Antiochus that Israel roseup once m ore to be a nation , bapti z ed to a new life in the blood ofthe Martyrs .

I am not going to attem pt to tell the story of the great strugglebetween Judai sm and Hellenism , or to appra ise the great debt thateven our modern world owes to the Jews for preserving elements o freligion that were absent from the rather vulgar Hellenic ideals ofthe Seleucid Em pire . The point I wish to make is this

,that during

the period we are considering Juda i sm came to play an imperial partin the history of civiliz ation , and that as a consequence Judaismlearned— the modern catchword i s convenient learned to thinkimperiallyWhat I mean may be illustrated by a com parison between theprophecies against the nations in E z ekiel and Jeremiah as contrastedwith those in the Book of Daniel . In Jeremiah and Ez ekiel we haveannouncements of Divine vengeance upon the enemies of Israel, but

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by the great struggle between Judaism and Hellenism , between theJewish and Gentile ideals . But this expectation was certainly stim u

lated and coloured by the struggle . While the struggle lasted Israelwas playing a great part on the world’s stage, great, that i s, from thepoint of view of the play of ideas and of their subsequent influence

,

and Israelite thought re- echoed the national activity . After a whilecame the reaction, or rather I should say, after a while there camea wholly new set of national conditions, and Jewish thought underwent a reconstruction to su it these altered conditions . In the year70 A . D., after the capture of Jerusalem , the Jewish State was destroyed .

Great departments Of the national l i fe ceased altogether to existm aterially ; i f they continued at all, they could only continue asideas

,in ( so to speak ) a spiritual form . The Jewish State, the

sacrificial worship, the Office of the priests, the Feasts, the pilgrimagesto the Feasts , all that in the New Testament is associated with theSadducees or the Herodians— all these disappeared . To quote thewords of the Apocalypse of Baruch , Zion hath been taken from us,and we have nothing now save the M ighty One and His Law ’

(lxxxvIt was a wonderful achievem ent for Jewish Religion to have ralliedat all after the sack O f Jerusalem in the year 70, and again afterBar Cochba’s rebellion two generations later in Hadrian’s t ime . Itis not surpris ing tha t such catastrophes should have modified JewishReligion : the wonder is that it should have survived at all, and thatit Should have surv ived in such a way as to reta in real continuitywith the past . When it is stated that Rabbinic Pharisaism after thedestruction o f the Temple differs largely from Pharisaism before thatdate we ought, I venture to think , he very careful that we expressthis Obv ious truth in such a way as to be j ust to JOhanan ben Zakkaiand the other founders of the Rabbinical Religion .

l Some of you

1 The nam e O i'

JOli anan b en Z akkai is hardly known am ong Christians , b ut tohim m ore than any m an is due the sum val of Judaism as an organized re ligioussystem after the Destruct ion O f Jerusalem in 70 and the cessation of the Sacrifices .

H e had been a pupil O f H i lle l , so that he was probably only a few years j unior toS . Paul . During the S iege , JOhanan b . Z akkai escaped out of Jerusa lem and

obtained perm ission from Titus to retire to the village of Jabne orJam nia, and teachthere openly. When the news of the fall of Jerusa lem cam e to Jam nia , Johanan

’

s

disciple Joshua b . H anam a cried out Woe to us , because the place is destroyedwhere they m ake propitiation for the s ins of Israel " But JOhanan answered Myson, let it not grieve thee we have yet one propitiation e q ua l to it , andwhat is thatb ut the bestowal of kindnesses P- even as it i s written “ I desired kindness and notsacrifice Com pare Matt x ii 7 and the saying of Sim on the Just in A both i 2.

A good account Of JOhanan is to b e found in Bacher’s Agada der Tarm a iten , ed . 9 ,

pp. 22- 49. I n N .T. style JOhanan’

s nam e would b e John the son of Z acchaeus.

JOHANAN BEN ZAKKAI 9

know,some of you perhaps know by heart, the first two chapters of

Aboth, where the chain of Teachers is set out from the men of theGreat Synagogue who learned from Ez ra, through Hillel andShammai

,to Johanan ben Zakkai . The succession is genuine . It

would ill become me as an Anglican Churchman , who values the ideaof apostolical succession and the organic continuity implied by it, toregard the Spiritual descent of Johanan from Ez ra otherwise thanwith respect and sympathy. The rel igion Of JOhanan ben Zakkai i sa legitimate child of the religion of Ez ra. I am only putting before

you the view that it i s not the only legitimate child ; and further,that in adapting itself to the altered conditions of existence after 70the Rabbin ical Religion was obliged to abandon part of the inheri

tance of former generations .One of the first problems before the newly - organiz ed Judaism was

to make a fence for the Law in a very direct sense, to fix in fact thel imits of the Canon of Scripture . By 70 A . D. , indeed, the main con

tents were beyond controversy, but the final delimitation had yet tobe made . Among the Jews, as among the Chri stians, the growth Of

the Canon of Scripture had been an almost imperceptible and naturalprocess, extending over a series of generations . No one can sayprecisely when the Books of Kings among the Jews, or the Acts ofthe Apostles among the Christians became Canonical Scripture . Thefinal stage we can j ust trace to some extent, because it i s m ore or lessa conscious process . The wall is already there, and the last comer ishelped over it, not without protests, j ust as the coping stone is puton. Every one has heard Of the saying of Rabbi Ak iba about theinclu sion of the Song of Songs all the Hagiographa are holy

,but

the Song of Songs i s Holy of Holies — but about the rej ection Of theWritings that in the end were rej ected we know very little . It isfor us says W ellhau sen,

“ hard to understand why Koheleth wasaccepted and Ben S ira not, why Baruch was excluded and Daniel not,why Esther was appreciated and l Maccabees not .” 1 A more or lesssatisfactory explanation can indeed be given in each case

,the result

being known , but one feels that almost equally sati sfactory explanations would have been forthcoming, had the result been different.However that may be, the Canon of Scripture was defined, with theinevitable result that the rej ected books gradually became forgottenand ceased to exercise any influence on Jewish thought . And indeed,whatever surprise we may feel about the disappearance of particularbooks

,it i s easy to see that most of the Apocalypses would have been

out of place in the reform ed Judaism of Jamnia and Tiberias . But1 Bleek

’

s Einleitung p . 5 5 92.

10 THE APOCALYPTI C IDEA

that is no reason for underestimating their part in the older religiouslife of Jerusalem and the dominions of Herod Antipas

,in the days

when the Temple was yet standing and the Jewish State was stilla reality . Above all, these documents are important to the Christianstudent, because he is less concerned with the reconstruction OfJudaism under JOhanan ben Zakkai and his successors, than with thegeneral conditions of Judaism before the Destruction of Jerusalem .

Most important Of all i s the case of the Book of Enoch . There isa curious passage about this famous work in Tertullian, who happensto quote the Book of Enoch for the sake O f the tradition that thefallen Angel Az ael taught women the u se of cosmet ics and j ewellery.

Tertu llian,having remarked that he knows the scripture of Enoch i s

not received by some on the ground that it i s not admitted into theJewish Collection

,goes on to say : since Enoch in the same Scripture

also predicted concerning the Lord,by u s Christians the view is not at

all to be rej ected that it does concern us, and we read that all scripturewhich i s suitable for edification i s divinely inspired (2 Tim ii iThat by the Jews it should seem to have been afterwards rejected,like most Of the other things that have a Chri stian ring, is not sovery wonderful

,i . e . if they have not received certain Scriptures about

Him whom they would not receive when He was speaking to them inperson .

’ 1 And Tertullian adds that the Book of Enoch has also inits favour the apostolic testimony of the Epistle Of Jude .The fierce and dogmatic Chri stian rhetorician

,himself more than

half a heretic,does not express himself in the language of modern

criticism,but I venture to think his words have a real m eaning for

the historian of ideas . What were the reasons that made Enoch ”

an honoured book to Tertullian and his Church, that caused it to bequoted in Jude and Barnabas

,and referred to besides in 1 Peter and

elsewhere in the New Testam ent, and (what is m ore im portant) madeit part of the background of the earliest Christian teaching, of theteaching of Jesus Himself ? What were the reasons that caused it tobe proscribed and forgotten by orthodox Judaism , so that hardlya memory of i t survives in Rabbinical l iterature PWe cannot answer these questions with the cheery assurance of the

apologists of a past generation,and say that Enoch was rej ected

because it was a forgery,while Canonical Scripture is genuine and

historical . we live in an age which has fully reali sed that neitherEsther nor Daniel is historical

,an age which does not take its beliefs

about the origin of man and the uni verse from Genesis any more thanit does from Enoch . We have rather to consider, as well as we can,

1 De Cu ltu F em . i 3 .

CHERISHED BY CHRISTIANS 11

what the Book Of Enoch must have meant to the Jew of the times OfAlexander Jannaeus and of Herod, to the Jew and the Christian ofthe time of the Destruction of Jerusalem , to the Christian of later

Modern scholars are pretty well agreed as to the Palestinian originof the Book of Enoch, and that it had attained its present formbefore the Christian Era. What is in dispute is the original form of

its constituent parts and the dates to which they should be assigned .

For our purpose j ust now this does not matter so much . It is notdisputed that the book quoted in the Epistle Of Jude is our Enoch ;it i s our Enoch, the work preserved in full in Ethiopic and for thefirst third in Greek

,that the early Christians read and the Rabbis

rejected. And the problem before us i s to discover why this Palestinian book attracted the one party and failed to attract the other .We must find a general reason

,for none of the Apocalyptic writ ings ,

with the exception Of Daniel, was received by the reformed Judaismof Jamnia and Tiberias . The only reason for the exception musthave been that the position of the Book of Daniel in the JewishCanon of Scripture was already assured before the Destruction of

Jerusalem . This v iew, it may be remarked in passing, is borne out

by the particular respect shewn to it by such widely separated repre

sentatives of l st century Jewish thought as the Synoptic Gospels andJosephus . But Daniel i s a solitary exception . Every one of theothers, the Apocalypses or Testaments of Adam ,

Enoch, Noah,Abraham

,the Twelve Patriarchs, the Book of Jub ilees, the Assum p

tion of Moses, the Apocalypses of Ez ra and of Baruch , were allexcluded . Indeed their claim s do not seem to have been seriouslyconsidered . Among the Christians, on the other hand, they werelong current, and Christian Apocalypses, such as the Ascension of

Isaiah, were composed in imitation of them ,not to speak Of more

original works,such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the canonical

Apocalypse of John . After a time the Apocalypses fell out of favourin the Christian Church also

,as the expectation O f the speedy end of

all things gradually faded away . But they had been rej ected fromthe first by the Jewish Schools that survived the Destruction of

Jerusalem .

Naturally the word rej ection ’ does not mean that Johanan benZakkai and his scholars tried the claims Of Enoch and, on consideration, came to a view unfavourable to its canonicity . Before a bookbecomes canonical, it must become at least interesting, and we haveto find out why the book that was so interesting to Jude and theChristians was not interesting to JOhanan and those who worked with


him . Official canonic ity i s only the final seal : the fate of a bookhas generally been determined long before the official decision i spronounced.

I have quoted to you a piece from Tertullian about Enoch,to

exhibit to you the motives that made it an honoured book in theChurch . What saying shall we take to sum up the reasons Why theApocalypses were not preserved by the Synagogue ? I will venture totake as my text the saying of JOhanan ben Zakkai, that God revealedto Abram this world, but the world to come He did not reveal tohim .

1 I believe that this saying really implies the renunciation of theApocalyptic idea, the notion that the Kingdom of God was anexternal state Of things which was j ust upon the point of being manifested, and (as a corollary) that the person Of insight could knowsomething about it beforehand . I t was this idea that inspires thewhole series o f Jewish Apocalypses, that was the central thought of

the earliest preaching of Christianity, that intoxicated the Jewishpeople in their wild struggle with Rome . Johanan ben Zakkai, as

you all know, had no false hopes about that struggle . He kepta sober mind

,li ke Jeremiah before him . He saw the i nev itable

destruction of Jerusalem and so,when the crash cam e , and the sacri

fices cam e to an end,he was prepared to guide Jewish thought and

religion into new channels,not less profound , i f necessarily more

narrow, than those along which they ran of old . He was content tolet the future age wa i t for God

’s good time , when it should pleaseH im to revcal it

,and perhaps it was as well that he could not foresee

the future, or he might not have had the courage to begin his epochmaking work in the V ineyard at Jam nia .

W e read in the Gospel that Wisdom is j ustified of her children .

Like certa in o f the sayings in F irke Aboth the exact meaning of thispronouncement in its original context is somewhat obscure, and thewise have held differing opinions about it . But if we may for oncetake it in the sense that the wisdom of a course of action is to beinferred from its results, then we m ay recognise the wisdom both of

the early Christians and of those Jews who rallied round JOhanan benZakka i . The work of these two companies was very different, their

aims,their ideals were different

,and it is therefore not surprising that

they travelled along different roads . The Kingdom of God at hand—that was the Chri stian watchword . A New World, a wholly new

1 Ber . Tab. 44 (on Gen xv 15 nB: NS sari uSwn 53 s °

15 nSJ ma nSwn.

R . Akiba , on the contrary , said that God revealed to Abram both this world andthat which is to com e—b ut Ak iba , unlike Johanan b en Z akkai, be lieved that theK ingdom of God was at hand , and lost his life as an adherent of Bar Gochha.

REJECTED BY THE RABBIS 13

state of things i s on the point of arriv ing : watch and be ready, andabove all do not cumber yourselves with your old pos sess ions, yourold traditions

,your old affections . I am not ask ing you to forget the

personal influence of Jesus upon those who accepted Him as theirMaster

,for indeed without it you lose the cord that both binds the

Christians together and supplies the current of their enthusiasm .

But that enthusiasm Of the early Christians was directed to the GoodTime Coming. And the historian of rel igion can now see quite clearlywhat advantages this detachment gave to the Christians . From ourvantage - ground we can see very well that the Jewish State had becomeimpossible, that it was only a question of time, before the Roman

Empire would come and crush it out Of existence . According to alla p riori probability the Religion Of the Jews would disappear withtheir national existence

,— and

,as a matter of fact, many of the most

characteristic features of Jewish rel igious l ife did disappear at theDestruction O f Jerusalem and have never been renewed to this day .

The Jewish State perished,but it left two daughters, Chri stianity and

the Rabbinical Religion,which succeeded each in its own way in

adapting its l i fe to the new conditions .I believe further that the faith O f each of these descendants of

ancient Judaism was j ustified by the result,diff erent as the course

o f events turned out to be from what had been expected . TheChristians expected the visible return Of their Lord to j udge thenations : they received instead the Roman Empire itself. They werej ustified in their expectation of a wholly new state of things, in theirbelief that the Old state of things was worn out and ready to vanishaway, and that in them alone were the seeds Of life that were destinedin due time to replen ish the thought of the Western World . But forthe venture of faith made by the early Christians

,but for their belief

in the New Age,the religion Of Amos and Jeremiah would never

have permeated the civiliz ation Of Europe . And those who believein Religion bel ieve that the faith of religious men in the Obligationsof right and wrong

,and in the Power that makes for righteousness, is

what keeps civiliz ation al ive,that makes it possible.

With this belief in the New Age the Christian s naturally valuedthe books that told them Of it . Their hope was in the future, thefuture j ust before them

,in the Day of Judgement when the Son of

Man would come and inaugurate the reign Of the Saints . It wasonly when the vision faded away that these books fell out of favour .But by that time the Christian Church had struck root in new soil, inthe Gracco -Roman civili z ation . It was living in the new world already ,breathing the new air of Christian fellowship .


Let us turn now to the other side of the scene . The Christianmovement did not attract the maj ority of the Jewish nation . Likeother nations, l ike the English, the maj ority were disinclined tosac rifice everything for an ideal ; there were doubtless many like theRich Young Man in the Gospel, who was not will ing to leave hi s

great possessions and follow Jesus, - great possessions that he or hisheir probably lost when the nation dri fted into the disastrous warwith Rome . Yet nothing would be more unjust than to regard thewhole body of the Jews who did not become Christians as worldly

or indiflerent . There were others, and among them were some of themost deeply religions of the Jewish people, to whom the Christiansseemed to be men who in ignorance were gi v ing up the substance forthe shadow . Israel was what it was by reason of God’s Law, a Law

sacred and div ine in itself, the true interpretation of which had beenhanded down from generat ion to generation

,an interpretation open

to all who take the pain s to learn it from those who had given theirlives to its study . The Law of the Lord was a perfect Law , and ithad been gi ven to Israel to keep . It was a treasure - house Of all

wisdom : if any one be curious about the world to come, that whichi s fit for him to know about it m ay perhaps be found hidden in God

’

Law if not, then it is probably an unsearchable secret. In any ca se,the first duty of an Israelite is to study the Law O f his God

,not to

search in books o f doubtful authenticity for the signs O f the end of

the world .

The triv ial round, the common task ,Will furnish all we ought to ask ,Room to deny ourselves,

”

(this las t is a Christian phrase, i s it not ? Let us emend it for our

present purposes into Room to walk straighter y et) ,

a road,

“ To bring u s daily nearer God .

”

I have ventured to u se the language of the well - known Chri stianHymn , in order that we m ay not forget that the frame of mind I amdescribing is eminently religious . It was an ideal of pious learning.

I am not conv inced that it was the dominant or the most popularidea l of religion in Israel during the first three - quarters of the first

Christian century, during the period depicted in the Gospels . Ishould not be surpri sed

,if during that exciting period the lea rned

cas uist may have Often appeared dull and pedantic to the eagerApocalyptists, the half- heathen politicians, the fierce and uncom

promising Zealots . The learned casuist could wait : his time was


with the belief in the New Age . And those who believe that inChristianity a new Era really did dawn for us ought

,I think

,to have

that sympathy.

What has happened to the Apocalypses is, after all, very muchwhat has happened to the most striking external product of theirage

,I mean to the Maccabean Princes and the Martyrs through

whose courage they rose to power. The Maccabeans proved in theend to be only worldly tyrants, and no one would gather fromTalmudic sources how great a part they played in preserving Israelfrom a fatal penetration by Hellenic ideas . It is through the bookcalled I Maccabees, preserved in Greek by the Christians, that weknow of their heroic efforts . And the Martyrs, whose readiness todie for the fa ith was the bulwark o f Israel’s resistance, both passiveand active, their fate is even harder. Their sim ple courage is enshrined in a wordy and rhetorical Greek tale

,full of errors of fact

and of taste . Yet in a very true sense it is on them that the foundat ion stone of the Christian movement was laid . They first set the

example of Martyrdom ,of passive resistance to what they could not

actively prevent,for the sake of loyalty to an ideal . The Oldest tale

of these Martyrs i s the story o f Eleaz ar the aged priest and of theWoman with her seven sons, told in 2 Mace vi and v i i . As I havejust said

,the tale as told there i s wordy and rhetorical

,and full of

errors . Yet the historical investigator, who knows how heroic am ovement is there represented and how far - reaching were its ultimateresults, must regard the story with sympathy and some measure of

respect . SO also with the Apocalypses . They also are wordy, theycontain errors of fact and of taste, and the New Age which theyannounce proved, when it came , to be different from what the Apocalyptists had anticipated . But we read them with sympathy whenwe think not only of the great movement which they heralded, butalso of the unconquerable hope in the future to which they testify .

We study the Apocalypses to learn how our spiritual ancestors hopedagainst hope that God would make all right in the end, and that wetheir children are here to - day studying them i s an indication thattheir hope was not wholly unfounded .

I I . THE BOOK OF ENOCH .

THE Book of Enoch is Often referred to, but it i s hardly so wellknown in fact as it ought to be

,except to quite a small class of

students . And indeed it is an Odd and in some ways a not veryattractive conglomeration . It is best therefore to begin at once withthe prime reason that gives the book interest to us, and thi s is, itsinfluence on the Chri stian Movement . ‘Wandering Stars ’, we readin the Canon ical Epistle of Jude, ‘ to these Enoch also, the seventhfrom Adam

,prophesied, saying “ Behold

,the Lord came with ten

thousands of His Holy ones to execute j udgement upon all, and toconvict al l the ungodly of all their work s of ungodliness which theyhave ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly

sinners have spoken against Him 1 This i s a definite quotationwhich cannot be gainsaid . As a matter of fact, the words quotedare the last sentence of the Opening paragraph of the Book of Enoch.

2

It is no mere illustration , no coincidence of ideas . Enoch ’ i s quotedby name as inspired prophecy . This famous passage i s very far frombeing the only trace of the influence Of Enoch upon the NewTestament, but it is the clearest and the best known . It i s the beststarting - point for our discussion of the book .

One thing may be noted at the outset . S . Jerome, in hi s accountof Jude in De Viris I llustribus , says that inasmuch as in the Epistlea testimony is quoted from Enoch an apocryphal Book , it i s rej ectedby most. This unfavourable verdict has curiously persisted almostto our days in a different form . In the nineteenth century not somuch stress was laid on canonicity as on date and autho rship . Partof the reason that led some distinguished scholars to put the Epistleof Jude in the 2nd century A . D. ,

and to question the right of

its author to call himself the brother of James,was derived from the

approval with which it seemed to stamp an ‘apocryphal ’ writing.

There was a widely- spread feeling that pure original Christianity musthave been self- contained and rational

,and in no sense based on

unfamiliar and unhistorical Jewish legends. In a S imilar spirit thecalmness ’ and sobriety of the canonical Bible stories

,both of the

1 Jude 13- 15 .

2 Enoch i 9 according to the m odern chapters and verses .

C

18 THE BOOKoOF ENOCH

Old and New Testaments, were very Often contrasted with theextravagance ’ Of uncanonical fables ’.I well know that I am now touching upon a large and very thorny

subj ect, into which it i s not the province of these Lectures to go .

My chief Obj ect in mentioning it here is to remark that this view doesnot carry us very far when we are tracing back popular bel iefs andpopular enthusiasms to their earliest forms . The one thing quitecertain about the early Christians i s that they were enthusiasts ; thosewho j oined them j oined because they were enthusiasts

,and the first

expression Of their hopes and fears were unrestrained and sometimescrude . The early Christians were full of new wine ’. We are morelikely to find bad literary and historical criticism in an early Christian document than a ‘ late one moderation ’ i s l ikely to bethe mark of the second generation rather than the first, and certainlythe respect paid in the Epistle of Jude to the Book of Enochis no reason for putting that Epistle late . In the next Lecturewe shall see that something similar m ay be said about the date of theChristian Apocalypse called the Ascension Of Isaiah .

To return to Enoch it m ust be frankly confessed that the modeof quotation in Jude does imply that the writer Of the Epistle believedthat the Book Of Enoch was the work of the Patriarch . It would bea very interesting subj ect to investigate to what extent the reputedauthorship o f pseudonymous books actually secured or influenced theirreception in ancient times . What is certain is that when they wererejected it was on grounds of doctrine rather than of historical scepti

cism , although we m ay gather from Tertullian that some people didwonder how the Book Of Enoch escaped the Flood .

1 But therei s another aspect O f pseudonymous authorship to which I ventureto think suffic ient attention has not been given . It is this, that thenames were not chosen out of mere caprice ; they indicated toa certa in extent what subj ects would be treated and the point Of view

of the writer .For example, there is the Apocalypse of Baruch . The historicalBaruch lived in the days of Nebuchadnez z ar. Consequently inhis Apocaly pse he is supposed to be acquainted with the names of thepersonages who figure in the pre - exilic history of Israel . But though

1 My friend Mr G . R . S . Mead has rem inded m e that this q uestion was a lso con

s idered by those who received other ‘writings ’

of Enoch , as appears from the

Gnostic work P istic Sophia 3 5 4, according to which the “ Books of I eu” were

deposited by Enoch in the rock of Ararat and m iraculous ly preserved there fromthe F lood by a Ru ler superior to Fate . I n the Book of Enoch itse lf Enoch giveshis teaching q u ite Openly to Methuselah , e . g. lxxxiii 1 , lxxxv 2.

JEWISH PSEUDONYM ITY 19

the real interest Of the author is in the fate of t he Jews after theDestruction of Jerusalem by Titus, Baruch ’ mentions no oneby name later than the day Of the historical Baruch . In theAssumption of Moses, given out as the last dying- speech of Moses toJoshua but really dating from about 9 A . D the history of Israel i ssketched in figurative though quite comprehensible terms . But noname is mentioned . As I once wrote elsewhere,l the Seers of Old aresupposed to foretell events and to understand doctrines, but they mustbe silent about nam es . Daniel m ay predict the wars of the successorso fAlexander, and in chap . xi we can even follow the details of their cam

paigns, but he must not mention the names OfAntiochus and Ptolemy,of Antioch and Alexandria. If he needs to announce the coming ofthe great over - sea Power from the West, he must not mentionthe Romans, for the name was unknown in the days of Belshaz z ar ;he must speak of the ships of Chittim .

2

But further, the choice of a name shews more or less what problemsoccupy the writer’s mind . Baruch and E z ra were Jews in the strictsense of the word

,members of the organi z ed historical Jewish Church

Nation , men to whom no sacrifice was valid outside Jerusalem . Theiroutlook is the strictly Jewish outlook , God is to them above allthings the God of the Chosen People, the problems dealt with areconcerned with the fortunes Of the Chosen People . And so in thebooks which bear their names the consummation Of all things i sfound in the Messianic Kingdom . The outlook is national . Howdifferent from this is the Book of Job " Here the scene is laid inpatriarchal times and the place is somewhere far away in the East .Why ? Because the writer, who I do not doubt was also a strictJew, wished to speak about some of the problems Of human lifeapart from the individualities of Jewish customs

,divinely enj oined

though they might be .So it i s with the Book of Enoch . Enoch was the great - great - grandfather of Shem, but he was the great - great -grandfather of Ham andJaphet too . What was Enoch ’s national ity He might appropriatelyreply H om o sum , and accordingly no spot on the wide earth is al ienfrom him, though its centre is still Jerusalem . In the course of hi slong book there occurs a V i sion of the history of mank ind

,in which

the centre of interest is,of course, the fortunes of the Chosen People,

but elsewhere the outlook is to a certain extent cosmopolitan . TheSun and the Moon and the Stars , about which Enoch has so much totell us, shine equally on Jew and Gentile . And the theme of the firstpart of the work , the Origin of Evil, has (alas ") equal interest for all

1 Journ. of Theol. Studies xiii 374. See Dan xi 30 .

c 92

Q0 THE BOOK OF ENOCH

races. The writer was surely an orthodox Jew and his book was writtenfor his countrymen to read, but like the Book of Job it i s concernedwith mankind and the world inhabited by mankind as a whole ; i tattempts to “ j ustify the ways of God to men ”

,and not only H is

dealings with the custodians Of His Revelation in Judaca.

The contents of the Book of Enoch are, very roughly, as followsAfter a short Prelude , which strikes the dominant note of thewhole l iterature with its announcement of impending Judgement

( i—v ), we are told the story of how the ‘Watchers ’, i . e . the Angels,sons of God

,came down to earth and married the daughters of Men,

thereby bringing all sorts of evil on mank ind, first, because their off

spring were Giants who devoured men and crops, and secondly,because the Arts and the Sciences were taught by the Watchers totheir wives and to the other human beings with whom they came incontact (vi—vii i) . The leaders of the Watchers were named Sem iaz aand A z ael (or Az az el) . Moved by the cry of m en suffering under thehorrors of Civili z at ion , the Most High interferes. A z ael and hiscompanions are to be punished and the earth is to be cleansed by theFlood, and only the son Of Lamech, i . e . Noah, i s to escape, so thatm ank ind m ay be started afresh from his descendants ( ix—xi).Before all thi s had happened Enoch had been taken to live a kind

of life between earth and heaven . It was he who had been deputedto announce the Div ine Sentence against Az ael. Az ael appeals form ercy, and Enoch prepares and presents A z ael

’

s petition before theMost High, but it fails A z ael is reduced to impotence for ever andhis m onstrous offspring become the demons in the air all round us

(xi i—xvi) .Enoch i s then taken by holy Angels to view the world from the

West to the East (xv i i - xxxv i) . He sees everything, even to Chaosand beyond Earth and Heaven . He sees also the deep Valleys wherethe spirits Of the dead will be kept till the Day of Judgement (xxii) .

l

Here ends the First Book . The Second, called the Parables or

S im ilitudes of Enoch,contains Enoch’s visions of the pre - existent

Elect Mess iah,often called in thi s section the Son o f Man who at

1 The description is som ewhat difficu lt to follow in parts , because the transm ittedtext is ful l of sm all errors . But it appears that of the four V alleys one will b e suf

ficient to conta in the spirits Of the righteous this V a lley is bright and there is afounta in of water in it (xxii One of the four V alleys is apparently reserved forthose who are neither righteou s nor definitely wicked , l ike K ipling’s Tom linson, and

like Tom linson they fail to atta in e ither to H eaven or to H el l (xxii For the

text, see Appendix I .

ITS CONTENTS AND ITS INTEREST 2 1

the appointed time will j udge the Kings and the mighty rulers of theearth and vindicate the oppressed righteous . In this section God is

generally called the Lord of Spirits (xxxvn- lxxi) .The Third Book i s astronomical

,and teaches that the year has , or

should have, 3645 days (lxxi i - lxxxii) .The Fourth Book contains Enoch’s Vision of Israelite history,which ends some time during the Maccabean period (lxxxii i—xci) .This i s followed by admonitions and somewhat vague prophecies of

the future (xcii - cv) . At the end comes an Appendix about the birthof Noah

,only loosely connected with what goes before (cvi—cvii i).

Such are the contents of the Book , or rather the Books, of Enoch .

There is reported in the Talmud a saying of Rabbi Akiba, to theeffect that he who reads outside

,i. e . non - canonical, books is like a man

reading a letter that has no sense . I think that those O f you whohave tried to read ‘Enoch ’ will agree that the first impression itleaves i s that of words with very l ittle sense . The Greeks called theu niverse the Cosm os, meaning thereby an ordered whole Enoch is

the most unhellenic of writings, and seems to be dominated by thevery Spirit of Chaos, if there be such a thing.

Nevertheless it i s an attempt to see the world steadily and to seeit whole, to unify the physical world, the moral world, and thepolitical world, the world, that i s, of the national destiny of God’schosen People . It contains a serious attempt to account for thepresence of Evil in human history, and this attempt claims our attention , becau se it i s in essentials the v iew presupposed in the Gospels,especially the Synoptic Gospels . It i s when you study Matthew ,

Mark and Luke against the background Of the Book s O f Enoch thatyou see them in their true perspe ctive .In saying this I have no intention of detracting from the impor

tance of what the Gospels report to us . On the contrary,i t puts

fam il iar words into their proper setting. Indeed it seems to me thatsome of the best - known Sayings of Jesus only appear in their truelight if regarded as IMidrash upon words and concepts taken fromEnoch, words and concepts that were familiar to those who heard theProphet of Galilee, though now they have been forgotten by Jewand Chri stian ali ke .An instance of what I mean is to be found in the Say ing about theUnclean Spirit reported in Matt xi i 43—45

, Lk xi 24- 26.

“ Theunclean sp irit said Jesus once, “ when it is gone out of the manpasses through waterless places, seek ing rest and finding none ; theni t says To my house I wi ll return from whence I came forth

,

’ and on

22 THE BOOK OF ENOCH

coming finds it swept and garnished.

'

Then it goes and takes with itseven others worse than itself and they enter and dwell there— andthe last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” Matt xi i44 adds that it was empty as well as swept and garni shed, and whenthe Saying is used in the pulpit most of the weight is usually made tofall on this addition, though I doubt whether it be more than a glossadded by the Evangelist to bring out the assumed sense . In anycase the passage is treated as a sort of revelation about what may becalled the Natural History of demons and demoniacs, as so muchinformation given . That I am sure is wrong ; the Saying does notgive information at all . It simply assumes the then popular bel iefabout demoniacs and the cause of their affl iction, a belief which is setforth at length in Enoch

,chapter xv . There we read that the

demons are the progeny of the heavenly Sons of God and theDaughters of men . They are ‘ spirit ’ l ike their fathers, but theycannot rise far from the surface of the earth, the home of theirmothers, and they are evil, oppressive, destroying, attacking,wrestling, casting men upon the ground,

1 making them run mad,spirits that can eat nothing but fast all the time and thirst and dashthemselves about . And these attack the sons Of men and women ,because they have come forth from them .

”I t i s the same doctrine

as is presupposed in the Gospel ; the unclean demons are about inthe air, seeking rest and finding none except in a human body . Butif you look at the context in the Gospel

,you will find that the point

of the Saying of Jesus i s not to give information about the demons,

but to draw a comparison between what was commonly bel ievedabout the recurring at tacks suffered by a dem oniac and the state ofmind O f the Jewish people . SO will it be also to thi s evil generation sa id Jesus according to Matthew, and whether this part of theSaying be authentic reminiscence or an interpretation of what hasgone before

,it certainly hits the general meaning. It is by no pact

with the powers of evil says Jesus in effect, that I exorci se uncleanspirits from those you bring to me I am neither setting forth a newdoctrine nor practis ing new and unlawful methods . If I can do goodto men because the spirit that i s with me is the spirit of God

,i t

shews you the Kingdom of God at your doors before you were awareof it (e

’

qieao eu 84? was ) . The power of God is with me,stronger

than the powers Of evi l (Matt xi i 26—29, Lk xi 18 Which sidewill you take ? (Matt x i i 30, Lk xi Blessed are they that hearthe word of God and also keep it : you hear the word now take carethat presently you do not lose it again, like a man who has been set

1 Com pare the description of the dem oniac in Mk ix 20.


his glory,

and all the elect will stand before him on that day .

And all the kings and the mighty will supplicate for mercy at hishand . Nevertheless the angels of punishment will take them incharge to execute vengeance upon them, because they have oppressedhis children and his elect . And they will be a spectacle for therighteous and for his elect, and the righteous and elect will besaved on that day and the Lord of Spirits will abide over themand with that Son of Man wi ll they eat and lie down and rise up forever and ever. The kings and the mighty pray for a respite butcannot Obtain it, and they say Our souls are filled with them ammon of unrighteousness, but thi s does not prevent us fromdescending into the flame of the pain of Sheol (lxi iiLet me remind you of the words of the parallel passage in Matt xxvWhen the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the angelswith him

,then shall he Sit on the throne of his glory, and before him

shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them as theshepherd separateth the sheep from the goats

,and he shall set the

sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left . Then shall theKing say unto them on his right hand, ‘ Come ye blessed Of myFather

,inherit the k ingdom prepared for you from the foundation of

the world, for I was hungry and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty andye gave me drink

,I was a stranger and ye took me in, naked and ye

clothed me , sick and ye visited me, in prison and ye came unto meYou know how it goes on : how the righteous ’ declare that they donot know when they had had the opportunity of succouring the Lordof the Day of Judgem ent, and they are told that what they had doneto one of the lea st of His brethren they had done unto Him ; and thenhow those on the left are sent away into the fire prepared for thedev il and his angels, because inasmuch as they had not done it untothe least of the King’s brethren they had not done i t unto Him .

I t i s surely impossible not to recognise a rea l l iterary connexionbetween these pictures of the Judgement . In both we read of theSon of Man

’ who ‘ s its on the throne o f his glory ’

,in both the

righteous get their v indication and reward, while the adversaries totheir surprise are banished to flame and torment . The one picture isevidently an adaptation of the other

,and the question arises which is

the pattern and which the copy . It is not a question of the comparative merits of the two pieces. The passage in the Gospel of Matthewis magnificent as l iterature . The picture i s sketched in very fewstrokes, yet every one of them tells, the four - fold enumeration of theworks Of mercy ( shortened at each repetition) giving a k ind of

rhythmical swing to the narration , that lifts it a t once out of

ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GOSPEL 25

the sphere of material description into that of epic poetry . Thescene in Enoch

, on the other hand, i s confused and laboured, and it i s

not enl ivened by grace either of style or thought . It deals with the

m ost awful events that the human mind can contemplate in the spirit

of plain prose .But when we pass from considerations of value to considerations ofpriority there can be little doubt that Enoch is the original . Itis j ust one of those cases where S . Paul’s canon applies : “ howbeitthat is not first which i s spiritual, but that which is natural , and afterward that which is spiritual.” The description of the Judgementin Enoch is complete in itself ; it i s the imagined end of the kingdomsof the world, whose rulers are j udged for their failure to discover andpay homage to the True God (lxi i i 4 , 7 In a word, they are condem ned for being Gentiles . This is a natural view for a Jewish Seerto take at a time when his people are still palpitating with the lifeand death struggle against the powers of Hellenism . There is indeedevidence that so summary an Assi z e was felt in some quartersto be unjust, and in the Apocalypse of Baruch it is only those whohave ruled over Israel

, or have had dealings with them , that are givenup to the sword ; the nations which knew not Israel and havenot trodden down the seed of Jacob will be spared— they are needed ,because some out of every nation will be subj ected to the Israeli tes

(Apoc. Bar. lxxi i 4In the Gospel the Gentiles are judged by the kindness they have

shewn to the persecuted brethren of the Son of Man . Obviously thi si s a very imperfect test

,inasmuch as the greater part of the Gentiles

would have had no dealings with them at all . It seems to me therefore that we are really in the presence of a sort OfM idrash, by whichI mean an application of the Judgem ent - scene in Enoch to enforcea particular moral . We do Matt xxv 31 ff. an inj ustice i f we treatit as a description of the Day of Judgement given to an audiencewho did not know beforehand what would happen there on thecontrary, it assumes that the scene Of Judgement as given in Enochis already familiar, and then goes on to tell the wellknown taleagain— with a difference .In any case I must regard the S imil itudes of Enoch as having

consciously supplied the framework for the scene in Matthew. It isbecause the Book Of Enoch does thus stand behind the Gospels thatit is of such importance to the Christian student .

I must now say a few words about the transmission of the Book ofEnoch and even touch upon certain details of the text

,because


what I have in mind is concerned with the important question Ofthe nationality of the writer. Apart from a few quotations our knowledge O f the text of Enoch comes from four sources .1 . The whole work i s preserved in Ethiopic, forming an integralpart of the Old Testament as received by the Abyssinian Church .

This Ethiopic text is a fairly l iteral translation from the Greek,

made apparently in the 4th century, i n the early days of EthiopicChristianity . There are many MSS of it extant

,but they all

go back to the same translation , so that the value of the Ethiopictext, where we can retranslate it with certainty back into Greek,i s that of a single ancient Greek M S .

1

2 . A vellum MS now at the Cairo Museum (formerly at Giz eh),discovered in 1886 and probably of the 6th century

,contains Enoch i

I —xxxi i 6, i . e . about the first third of the whole .3 . A miscellaneous MS in the Vatican ( Va t. Gr. 1809) contains

Enoch lxxxix 42—49 i n Greek shorthand . This small fragment wasthus preserved as a reading exercise ; its importance consists inthe fact that such an excerpt must have been taken originally froma continuous text

,and lessens the probabil ity that the Ca iro text only

contained the First Part,without the Similitudes .

4 . Georgius the Syncellus,a chronographical writer Of the 8th

century, quotes Enoch v i I —ix 4 ,vi i i 4—x I 4

,xv 8—xvi I .

These last, the extracts from the Syncellus, were for a long time theonly port ions Of the Book Of Enoch known . It was natural thereforethat editors of the Ethiopic translation should have regarded thepassages where the Ethiopic differs from the Syncellus as due to thenature of a translation or to the clumsiness Of the translator. Andwhen the Cairo Greek MS turned up and was found in many placesto agree with the Ethiopic

,Dr . Charles still holds to the general

superiority Of the Syncellus extracts and has maintained that theEthiopic and the Cairo MS belong to a special recension or type oftext which is, according to him, often inferior to the extracts . I feelbound therefore to give some reasons for regarding the Cairo MS asbetter

,and for treating the extracts given by the Syncellus as to

a certain degree sophisticated .

In the first place thi s i s only what we might expect . The CairoMS was written by unintelligent mechanical scribes, men who m ay

leave out l ines and make mistakes, but who do not seem to have madeintentional alterations . The chronographer, on the other hand, onlybrings in hi s extracts to illustrate his work : he regards Enoch

1 The Ethiopic text has been adm irably edited by R . H . Charles (Oxford ,who gives also the Greek Fragm ents in fu ll .

TEXT AND TRANSMISSION 27

as Apocrypha not as sacred,and was under no Obligation to refrain

from casual emendations . It is therefore not surpris ing to find thatin quoting Enoch vi i 1 the Syncellus has interpolated his own chronology into the text and in xvi I he has brought in a gloss about

the Nephilim ;1 while in vii i 4, where the true text has simply so the

cry Of perishing mankind came up to heaven the Syncellus gives us

in two places two different versions of the cry .

2

The Cairo MS is certainly not written with much intelligence .The first scribe began in the middle of Enoch

,at xix 3, in the middle

Of a sentence . He went on then to xxi 9, where he breaks off

and begins at i 1,in the middle Of a line, without any indication that

the text is disturbed. No doubt his exemplar had a leaf loose whichhad been placed in front of the text, but it i s Odd to find the intelli

gence of the scribe so small as not to know where the book hei s Copying begins . As we might expect after this, his standardof accuracy is low ; he leaves out sentences here and there, Oftenmaking havoc of the sense . But at least he makes no intentionalchanges, and where his text makes any sense at all it seem s to me that

we do safest to follow it.3

After all,the Greek i s itself a translation, not an original . This i s

maintained by almost all those who have worked at Enoch, thoughfurther proofs of acquaintance with Palestine are sometimes asked forby Jewish scholars . What is chiefly in dispute is whether the workwas originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic . It might be thoughtthat such a question could be definitely settled at once, but unfortunately this is not the case, and most of the most convincing proofsthat the Greek text Of Enoch is a translation from a Semitic languagefit equally well with a Hebrew or an Aramaic original . Thus inEnoch x 17 the Greek has Ta c dfiBa

-ra aim-

(Bu, where the contextshews that the original had ‘ their Old age ’. Assuming that this

original was in Aramaic,this implies that the translator had jlflfllW

before him, but that he read it shabbatth6n (117111329) i nstead ofsébu tt n (llnnJW). But the letters of the corresponding Hebrew

word Dh j wcould equally well be read either way.

My own Opinion is that the original language Of Enoch wasAramaic, but that a few passages do seem to suggest a Hebrew origin ,yet not decis ively . Certainly the question will never be settled byarguments based on ingenious j ingles or paronom asias in conj ecturally

1 See the Notes to Charles ’s edition, who recognises these additions as editoria lglosses by Synce llu s.

2 H ere Charles m ost incom prehensibly m aintains that the Syncellus text isoriginal . But which text 3 See further, Appendix I .


restored Semitic originals . We must be sure that the j ingle wasin the original at all, before we can draw any safe arguments from it .The nationality of the author of Enoch has to be inferred fromthe knowledge of geography and topography which he displays .What makes inference difficult i s that he writes in the personof a Patriarch who lived before the Deluge and the Tower Of Babel

,so

that he is debarred from using any names of cities or towns. In hisaerial j ourneys he visits the site of Jerusalem (xxvi f.) and looks downinto the Valley Of Jehoshaphat, where the Judgement will take place,but no name is mentioned, only that it i s the centre of the earth .

That, however, was a belief which might have been held by aJew wherever he lived . The topography Of the stream of Siloam andthe Mount of Olives is correct, but here again it might be said thatthe author knew Jerusalem because he had attended the Feasts .More striking is the fact that in Enoch x 4 f. the decree goes forththat A z ael (or A z az el— both forms occur) is to be cast

“ into thedesert which is in Dudael (or Daduel) , and to have rough andj agged rocks placed upon him . This seems to indicate a knowledgethat the scape -goat ‘ for A z az el ’ i n Lev xvi 10 was sent to die ina hard and rough place called Beth H adudo, i . e . it shews someacquaintance with ritual as actually practised in the Holy Land .

But the place where the author of Enoch seems most at home isthe head - waters O f the Jordan . Here, and here only, he breaks hi srule of naming no names . When the fallen Sons O f God entrust Enochwith their petition he goes O ff and sits down at the Waters of Dan inthe land of Dan (xi ii This i s a perfectly definite place, the mostnortherly town in Israel

,fam iliar to us in the phrase ‘ from Dan to

Beersheba Whether we identify it with the modern Banias or themodern Tell - el-Kadi, it i s equally a main source o f the Jordan . Theauthor of Enoch

,as you see, knows that there are waters ’ there,

and he adds,quite correctly

,that it i s southw est of Mount Hermon ,

the hill upon which the Watchers descended when they came to earth .

But this is not all . The Watchers seem to have haunted this regionas long as they could

, for when Enoch awakes from his Visions andgoes to find them

,they are sitting gathered together weeping in

Ab elsiael,l which i s between Lebanon and Seniser.

2 The last word i sevidently a scribe’s corruption for Senir, the o ther name for Hermon

(Deut i i i or for a part of it (Cant iv 8) the place was thereforein the valley between the two great ranges Of mountains . And here,

1 So the Ethiopic. The Ca iro MS has ceNGBGACATa. which I suppose is m iswrittenfor €N aBeA

2 Enoch xiii 9 the Cairo MS has cem caA.


as a matter O f fact , quite close to the Waters O f Dan, we find thetown Abel, called also Abel of Beth -Ma‘acha to di stinguish it fromother towns of the same name . The name really means meadow ’ or‘ lea ’, but it happens to be very much like a Hebrew and Aramaicword which means mourning or

‘weeping and so it seemed to bean appropriate spot for the weeping Sons of God . In Old times, aswe know, they were wont to ask in Abel

’

(2 Sam xx this seemsto refer to some ancient legend, and it is j ust possible that an earlyform of the Enoch - Saga may have belonged to that region . In anycase it is the country round the sources of the Jordan that seems tobe most familiar to the author of our Book of Enoch .

1

I have dwelt thus at length upon the personality of the author OfEnoch because of the importance of any evidence which tends to shew

that it i s really a Palestinian book , one therefore which circulatedamong Jews in Palestine . If m oreover the author came from thenorth, that helps to explain the influence the book had upon theReligion that was cradled in Gal ilee . It i s now time to considersomething Of the general message O f Enoch .

In the last Lecture I tried to make the Apocalyptic Hope clearerby contrasting with it the religious ideal of the Rabbis by whom itwas rej ected . As a contrast to Enoch if I may use this name forthe author or authors of the Book O f Enoch, let me invite you toglance at the imposing figure Of the eclectic philosopher Posidonius.In many ways there is a strik ing likeness between the two . To beginwith, they are almost contemporary and almost fellow- countrymen .

In the year 13 5 B. C . , the year in which John Hyrcanu s began his longand prosperous reign

,Posidonius was born at Apamea

,a Syrian city

about a hundred miles north of the sources O f the Jordan . He diedin 5 1 B. C . at the age of 84. Enoch and Posidonius have further thisin comm on

,that it i s only in recent times modern scholars have

recognised their importance as representative of the age in whichthey lived . It is in the person of Posidonius, we are told, that theheathen Philosopher became a Prophet of Religion

z; through Posi

donius, m ore than any other man, was effected that fusion Of Orientalreligions and Greek speculation which gave birth to the WesternMysteries of Isis and of Mithra, to the cul t of the Sun and thePlanets that surv ives in our names for the days O f the week, and,more important than all

,to the Natural Religion of cultivated men

under the Empire, to the creeds O f Seneca , of Plutarch, Of Marcus

1 For the re ference in Enoch v i 6 to the sam e stretch Of country , see Appendix I .2 Reitzenstein, Die H ellenis tischen il lysterienreligionen , p . 5 .

32 THE BOOK Q F ENOCH

impure were ever drawn back into it anew.

” 1 The impure were tiedto their earthly body : the body , the tomb of the rational spirit

(s5 m a— sém a), —that was the underlying formula. And so the lightand purified souls of good men ascend to the heavens and

,as

Mr Bevan puts it,following Seneca and Cicero, watch the stars go

round : f elix gu i potu it rerum cognoscere causas .

2 And when youknew the causes Of things, what did you see ? What was the worldin which you learned to be at home ? After all, it was a dull affair,l ike a glass of muddy water, in which the only effective motion wasthe slow settling down of the sediment towards the bottom .

This was the world that Israel refused to accept . The rarefied airof the Stoic heaven was one in which the Jew did not easily breatheand small blam e to him . He demanded an ultimate reward for hislabour, even at the price of punishment for his faults otherwise theworld seemed to him meaningless . And so, when the Jew does contemplate the world as a whole, as i s done in Enoch , it is all placedunder the eye of God, who made it, and whose Judgement upon itwill give it its meaning. In construction , i n its deniz ens, it i s verymuch like the world of Posidonius, but i t does not exist for itself.Be hopeful

,

”says Enoch to the righteous,

“ aforetime ye have beenput to shame through evil and affliction , but now ye Shall shine as thelights of heaven . Fear not

,when ye see the Sinners growing strong

and prospering in their ways : be not companions with them, but keepafar from their v iolence ; for ye shall become companions of the hostso f heaven .

” 3 Yes,but this glorious future does not come Kara (thaw,

according to Nature,according to the inevitable course of things we

see around u s . It comes because the names of the righteous arewritten in the presence of the glory Of the Most High .

4

In the last resort the diflerence between Posidonius and Enoch ,between late Hellenic Civ ili z ation and the Jews that refused to bedominated by it

,is symboliz ed in the sentence from 4 E z ra, which

says directly and in so many words The Most High hath not madeone world , but two This i s the essential thing, the central doctrinethat anim ates all the Apocalypses . In one sense it i s a confessionof fa ilure, a confession that the Universe cannot be reduced to aharmonious whole . Posidonius professed to do this, but he and his followers only achieved it by denying the existence of evil in the world .

I am not a philosopher and I do not believe that philosophy, orindeed reflexion i n general, is really creative. Instinct and conviction,often inarticulate

,are creative, and man uses his powers Of thought

1 Bevan, p . 109 .

2pp. 1 1 1 , 112.

3 Enoch civ 2, 6 .

Enoch civ 1 .

5 4 Ezra V I I 5 0.

MEANING OF HISTORY 33

and reflexion to j ustify the actions to which his instincts and con

v ictions have led him . SO I do not imagine that either Enoch or

Posidonius moved the minds of men , but they reflected them l ikea mirror. The Macedonian Empire had once for all put an end tothe old city- states Of Greece and the wonderful progressive development of the human spirit that they had fostered . In Asia the conquests Of Alexander had acted as a solvent upon the Old rel igions ofthe East . East and West flowed together, under new political conditions. The result was a new semi - Greek sem i - Oriental civil iz ation,which after a few generations became articulate and systematic inPosidonius and his followers. This civiliz ation was rej ected by onepeople

,the Jews, who clung with passionate loyalty to the God of

their fathers . They believed Him to be the only true God, and consequently that in the end He would not desert them in their struggle

to maintain His worship and His sacred Law . I t was the action

of the Jews that produced the Apocalyptists, j ust as the actions ofAlexander the Great were the real m akers Of Posidonius and hisphilosophy . The promises and warnings in Enoch give articulateexpression to the impulse s that moved the Jews to die rather than lettheir ancestral Religion be assimilated to that of the Gentiles .And those who cling to the belief that human history i s not

altogether meaningless and that it marches,however slowly and

haltingly, to a definite goal ought to regard the ideas enshrined inbooks like Enoch with sympathy. It i s by thi s doctrine Of a purposeunderlying history

,and of an unerring Judgement to be pronounced

upon it somewhen,somewhere

,that these books st ill strike a chord

in our hearts tod ay. But their main value was as an encouragement for their contemporaries

,to nerve the Jews to continue the

struggle for the national ideals,which their instincts had led them

to begin . Some of the Apocalypses, l ike Daniel, must have beenfirst issued at moments of cri si s ; others, l ike Enoch, may have seenthe l ight at calmer and more prosperous seasons

,when the Apocalyptist

could extend his outlook over the whole known Universe and considermankind in general. Such times were perhaps more dangerous for theJewish ideals than moments of open persecution ; at such times wecan see most clearly that the true antagonists are not King Antiochusand the Maccabees but the scientific ’ and the religious ’ view of theworld and of human fate. Enoch has the faults of a pioneer. Hiswork i s rough, he i s unacquainted with the country, he often loseshis way . But his guiding star i s a belief that the confused dramaOf History is not without a purpose, and that in the end the Judgeof all the Earth can and will do right.

D

I I I . TH E M INOR JEW ISH APOCALYPSES .

AN adequate treatment of the problems raised by the minor Jewi shApocalypses would require a long course of Lectures

,and I shall

not attempt to cover the ground in a single discourse. My aimrather is to bring out certain points of interest from these writings

,

which more or less illustrate what I have already said in the twoformer lectures about the Apocalyptic Idea and the Book of Enoch .

The first work to claim our attention is the Testam ents of the

Twelve Patriarchs . Perhaps the m ost rem arkable and interestingfeature in this work is its title, or rather I should say, its generalscope and plan . The Testam ents profess to be the last dying speechesand adm onitions Of the ancestors Of the Twelve Tribes of Israel ,Reuben

,Sim eon, Lev i, &c .

,to their immediate descendants . Here at

once we have a problem . We ask ‘for whom was the work intended ? ’

What specia l interest have the sayings o f Reuben or Naphtali for theJews of the Maccabean age

? We all know that the Ten Tribes hadgone into capt iv ity centuries ago . What

,then , was the point of

writing in the nam e of their eponymous ancestors ?

The answer to thi s question is found in the contents Of the work ,which conta ins internal ev idence of its original date . Much asI differ from Dr . Charles’s somewhat fancifu l theories about theMS transmiss ion of the Testam ents, I am glad to be in full agreementwith him in his general view of the work , which he places during theprosperous reign o f John Hyrcanus, nephew of Judas Maccabaeus .The insistence upon the future glories O f Lev i fit nothing in historybut the Asm onaean dynasty . To quote Dr. Charles himself 14,

p . xli i) : Reuben admonishes his sons ‘TO Levi draw near in lowliness of your heart, that ye may receive a bless ing from his mouth , forhim hath the LORD chosen to reign before all the people ’ (R v iHere a High - priest who is also a king is referred to . Such a combination of Oflices naturally makes u s think of the Maccabean Priest- kingsO f the second century B. C . The possibility of doubting this referenceis excluded by the words that immediately follow : and ye shall doObeisance to his seed, for on your account it shall die in wars both seenand unseen and among you it shall be k ing for ever.’ Thus the Highpriest i s not only a high - priest and civil ruler, but also a warrior.

TESTAMENTS OF THE XII PATRIARCHS 35

That the Maccabean high- priests are here designed cannot be reasonably doubted.

” 1

What I wish to bring out is that the political conditions of thereign of John Hyrcanus give point to the choice of the TwelvePatriarchs as the Speakers in the book . The realm of John Hyrcanuswas extensive . For the first time since Solomon an Israel ite monarchwas ruling over the whole of the Promised Land. But who were theinhabitants of his domin ions ? In Judaca, of course, and above all inthe district round Jerusalem

,there were the Jews pur sang, the

unmixed descendants of the returned Exiles. But who were theSamaritans that lived in Samaria ? Who were the inhabitants of theregion beyond Jordan ? And who, towards the end of the 2nd centuryB. e . , were the Galileans ?

The answer to these questions involves a good deal of ancient andrecent history and

,as in most ethnological questions, it i s fairly easy

to produce a plausible case for directly Opposite conclusions . On theone hand it may be urged that the inhabitants o f Galilee and theother outlying dominions of H yrcanus were not Israel ites at all . InI Mace v 23, 45 ff. , we read how Judas Maccabaeus and his brotherSimon collected the loyal Israelites from Gilead, i . e . Peraea, andfrom Galilee, and brought them with their wives and children toJudaea . Thus, whatever may have been the State of things beforethis, all the Holy Land was denuded of Israel ites except Judaca itself.A generation later the victorious Jews occupy the surroundingterritories . A great movement of religious proselytism i s then seton foot : the Samaritan Temple i s burnt

,and we read in Josephus

how the inhabitants of Idumaea and Ituraea were Offered the alternative of circumcision or exile . It was under such circumstances thatGalilee and Peraea became Jewish districts : the inhabitants weremore or less forcibly converted to Judaism , but they were predominantly of Gentile blood .

On the other hand it is probable that the accounts of wholesaledepopulation which we read of i n ancient history are never ent irelytrustworthy . The people of south - eastern England are not as fairhaired and blue - eyed as they ought to be, if the Keltic aborigineshad been really as completely exterminated

,both men and women

,as

the Saxon Chronicle would have us imagine . And Similarly we maybelieve that the Assyrian and Babylonian Captiv ities did not really

1 I t shou ld b e added that all our extant texts of the Testam ents , even the Arm enian

version, conta in Christian glosses and interpolations . See Journa l of Theologica lStudies x 135 —141 (Oct , where the present writer stated his reasons at lengthfor rejecting Charles’s textual theories .

36 THE MINOR JEWISH APOCALYPSES

mean the entire removal Of the population O ff the soil. The greatmen were taken away, bu t the poor and landless, who were equallyIsraelites, rem ained . Gentile immigrants were afterwards introduced ,and much mixture of race followed, but the main stock persisted .

There was much to be said for the view that i f you wanted to findthe descendants O f the Ten Tribes, you should look for them on thespot

,that Joseph was in Samaria, Naphtali in Galilee, Reuben and

Gad in Peraea. True, they have abandoned the practice of religion,but that can be remedied : let them be circumcised and keep theLaw, and they will be as good Israel ites as their fathers .This last theory certainly represents the later policy Of the Asm o

naean princes, and the Testam ents of the Twelve Patriarchs , the bookthat so warmly glorifies the Asmonaeans, seems to me to try to putthat policy on a quasi - scientific and historical basis. 1 I regard it asoriginally addressed to these newly- made Israelites, calling them ,

inthe nam e of their ancestors

,to rally round Levi in the person Of the

priest- king, John Hyrcanus . These new subj ects were not Jews,in

the narrower sense of men of the tribe of Judah ’

, but they mightclaim to be genuine representatives of the Ten Tribes .And that is why there is so large a quantity O f ethical instructionin the Testam ents . It is because the converts needed instruction inJewish morality as well as in Jewish patriotism and the Jewish Law.

It cannot be too Often repeated that we wrong the Jews, i f we thinkOf their great struggle against Helleni z ation as merely a blind preference for their ancestral ceremonial . The Law o f the LORD wasa canon o f family and social l ife as well as a ritual system, and thepious Martyrs whose steadfastness had consecrated the revolt againstAntiochus Epiphanes had laid down their lives for an ethical andSocial idea l quite as much as for a food law. In the 2nd century B. C. ,

in Palest ine, the two things , to us so different, were inseparable.

The hopeful anticipations with which the reign o f John Hyrcanusbegan had clouded over before his death . It soon became evidentthat the Anointed of God could not be recognised in the later repre

1 See especially Joseph xix 1 if . in the Arm enian recension. Joseph says “ I sawtwe lve harts feeding, and nine were dispersed, b ut the three were preserved and thenext day they also were dispersed . And I saw that the three harts were becom ingthree lam bs , and they cried unto the Lord and the Lord brought them into a wellwatered place . And there they cried unto the Lord until there the nine hartswere gathered unto them and they becam e as twelve sheep And ye m ychildren, honour Levi and Judah for from them will arise the salvation of Israel.H ere evidently the Tribes of Northern Israe l are regarded as being in the sam e

place as the “ Jews i. e . in Palestine .

THE PSALMS OF SOLOMON 37

sentatives of the Maccabean dynasty. Judas Maccabaeus and hisbrothers had risen to power as the leaders of the revolt against theintroduction of Gentile ways of li fe into Israel . They actually didaccomplish the restoration of the Tem ple worship at Jerusalem . Butby no possible means could the great- nephews of Judas be regardedas the Messiah : they were worldly

,tyrannical

,weak . And in a

couple of generations the Holy City had been taken by Pompey, andHerod— an Edomite— was on the throne, ruling over the ChosenPeople .It i s no wonder that in the later Apocalypses the Maccabean

princes, when they are noticed at all, are regarded as a mere incidentin Jewish history.

1 With the rise Of Herod to power, and the outwardtriumph of mere state - craft and worldly diplomacy

,the hopes and

aspirations Of religious Jews became more and more centred on awholly miraculous intervention of God for the Redemption of Israel .

Even the author O f the Psalms of Solomon , a writer who hardlybelongs to the circle we are considering, gives up all hope of thepriest - kings . He is perhaps better acquainted with the Old Testament than with the actual state of affairs in Jerusalem ,

but he knowsat least that nothing is to be expected from the Asmonaeans or thepriestly ari stocracy, and he takes refuge in the hope that somehow or

other— how,he does not explain— a Prince of the House of David

will appear, raised up providentially by God, in accordance with Hispromise recorded in Holy Writ .2 The LORD Himself is King overIsrael for ever and ever, but this Son Of David may also be calledChrist the Lord Happy they that shall be in those days, to seethe good things of Israel in the gathering of the Tribes,— may Godperform it "4 It i s a last fl icker of the old prOphetic conception ofthe Messiah as a victorious earthly ruler

,a conception that does not

include the new Apocalyptic doctrine of the New World.

Very different from the Psalms of Solomon , and characteristicallySemitic

,i s the work known as the Assump tion of ill oses . There can

be little doubt that this i s a Palestinian document and that it waswritten a few years after the death of Herod the Great. 5 I fear this

1 I m ention here , by way Of protest , the theory of Dr Charles , who regards the

kings and the m ighty and all who possess the earth of Enoch lxii 6 (and e lsewherein the Sim ilitudes) as m eant for the Maccabean princes : see his Note to Enochxxxviii 5 . I think the author of the Sim ilitudes Of Enoch takes a m ore general viewof things , and that these kings and potentates represent the great Gentile Em piresand World-

powers com pare Rev vi 15 .

2 P s . Sol. xvii 5 , 23 .

3v . 36.

4v . 5 0.

5 The m ost probable date is A . D . 6, soon after the deposition of Arche laus . See


curious pi ece 18 not so well known as it deserves to be . NO doubtthis i s mainly because of the unsatisfactory state of the text . TheAssump tion of .Moses i s extant only in a single very ancient LatinMS

,a palimpsest, and very hard to decipher. The Latin text of this

MS is itself full of all sorts of absurd blunders of transcription, andthe lost Greek

, of which the Latin is a literal translation, must havecontained some serious errors, which often quite spoil the sense .And then, as in the case of Enoch, the Greek was a translation froma lost Semitic original, either Hebrew or Aramaic . It is no wonderthat the meaning Of whole sentences i s Often quite obscure, and thatscholars differ seriously in their attempts to restore the original .But the general interpretat ion and tendency of the work is clearenough . The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs were the lastdying- speeches Of the ancestors Of the Tribes

,the “ Assumption of

Moses gives the last speech of Moses to Joshua before he is taken upMount Pisgah to disappear from mortal eyes . As i n SO many otherOf the Apocalypses the matter takes the form of prophetical historyOf Israel . N0 names are mentioned, of course , l but the Captivity andthe Return are clearly indicated ? Then follows

,according to the

Apocalyptist, an evil time . Those who Offer the sacrifices will not bepriests but slaves, born o f slaves 3

: these are the Helleniz ing priests,such as that Menelaus of whom we read in 2 Maccabees . Then willcom e a l ine O f k ings who will be called Priests Of the Most High God,i . e . the Maccabean princes, and after them “

an insolent k ing not ofthe race of the priests, a m an bold and shameless

,who will j udge

them as they deserve, for 34 years 4: this is obv iously Herod. Next

comes a reference to Varus, the Roman Governor Of Syria, who suppressed a Jewish rebellion in 4 B. C .

,but here the history ends and the

Apocalyptist looks into the future . He sees luxury and oppressionon every s ide in high places and anticipates another visitation of

wrath,when the king of the kings of the earth will crucify the faithful

who confess circumcision and give their wives to the Gentiles and maketheir chi ldren blasphem e? Then there will be a man of the tribe ofLevi

,whose nam e will be Taxo, who will take his seven sons into the

wilderness to fast for three days and then die,rather than transgress

the commandments O f the Lord Of lords ; 6 thereupon the Kingdomof God will appear and Israel will be avenged. For

the article ca lled llf oses , Assum p tion of , in Hastings ’ Dictionary of the Bible by thepresent writer.

1 See above , p. 19 .

2 Ass . Moscos i - iv.

3 I bid. v.

5 I b id. vn, viii.


Meanwhile, in the Interim, while the sun and moon still continue,what strikes us in the expectations of the writer of the Assump tioni s the resemblance to Christian expectations as preserved in theSynoptic Gospels. The Woes on the Pharisee s and Sadducees, thegreat Tribulation, the i reipac ii o

’

cr or trial which lies before the faithful,the hopelessness of resisting evil, the abomination of desolation inthe holy place, the fl ight o f the Saints into the wilderness, —all theEschatology of the Gospel except the Central Figure,— it i s allimplied in the Ass um p tion of M oses . And more than this : it i s notonly in the m ise- en- scene that we find the analogy. It is in theSacred drama also . The voluntary death of the holy Taxo hasa redeeming value

,for i t hastens the End 1 ; i t i s effective, it acts

like the death o f the son of the Lord O f the Vineyard in the Parableof the Wicked Husbandmen .

Thus by following the chronological order we arrive at the Apocalyptic idea as presented by the Gospels themselves. But before weleave strictly Jewish ground, we must go forward and glance ata couple Of remarkable works, the two latest of the great JewishApocalypses, both Of them wri tten after the Destruction of Jerusalemby Titus .The Apocalypse of Baruch and the book best known to English

r eaders as S econd Esdras are so closely related in thought andlanguage that they have been conj ectured to be the work of thesame author. Some scholars, on the other hand, split up each ofthe two books into several documents, in which different tendenciesare detected . Speak ing generally, it may be said that the div isionof Apocalypses into their original conj ectured constituents i s anextremely delicate task , for it assum es that these anticipations, thesedreams of the future, will be self- consistent. A certain degree of

consistency we must indeed expect . The work Of the same man will,

to a certain extent,always breathe the same spirit . But his pictures

of the future will not always harmoniz e in detail. Moreover,I ven

ture to think that we must allow for the disturbing influence o f real

V isions, i . e. pictures seen by the writer in dream or ecstasy . Therehas probably been every grade of imaginative writing in this classof l iterature . Some Of the so - called V i sions in the Apocalypse of

Baruch, l ike the dreams Of Nebuchadnez z ar in the canonical Daniel ,read like conscious inventions : every detail in them is completely

1 Hoc enim si f aciem u s et m oriem ur, sangu is noster u indicabitur coram Dom ino.

’

Et tune p arebit Regnum I llius (ix 7 , x

THE END OF THE SERIES 41

and satisfactorily explained in the subj oined explanation . On theother hand, i t is surely impossible to read the first chapter O f thecanonical Apocalypse of John and not feel that, whatever explanationwe may choose to make O f the V i sion, something like it was reallyexperienced by the Seer. And similarly it seems to m e that someof the difliculties and incoherencies Of the Eagle -V i sion in SecondEsdras may arise from honest remin iscence Of a monstrous figureseen by the writer in a vivid dream ,

itself partly suggested byDan vi i 19 .

So far as the Apocalypse of Baruch is concerned, I really do notsee why it should be regarded as composite . Esdras, on the otherhand , as read in the English Bible, does require some stripping of

extraneous matter. Of the 16 chapters, the two first and two lastare only found in Latin

,and have no claim to be part of the original

Apocalypse . The remainder, viz . i i i—xiv of Second Esdras ’

, i s whatwe have to consider . It is no longer extant in Greek , but it survivesin Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic and Arabic translations . Iti s on the composition of this work

,which I shall call simply Ez ra ’

,

that scholars are divided .

Ez ra starts O ff with a phrase that invites the application of thecritical knife, for the writer describes himself as I Salathiel who amalso Ez ra The natural inference

, of course, i s that the author hasadapted an older Salathiel - apocalypse for a new Ez ra - apocalypse .There i s nothing improbable in thi s

,for there can be little doubt

that most of the Apocalypses were largely based on previouslyexi sting literary works . The mischief i s, that acknowledging theexistence Of separate ‘ sources ’ in an ancient writer does not greatlyhelp us to reconstruct them . Biblical scholars have talked so longabout J and E and D and P for the O ld Testament

,and about Q

for the Gospels, that it i s easy to delude oneself into the idea thatwe are actually in possession of these venerable documents. But wedo not possess them , and we cannot reconstruct them w ith anycertainty, any more than we could reconstruct S . Mark’s Gospel outof S . Matthew and S . Luke, i f S . Mark’s Gospel was not already inour hands to tell us how to do it. Therefore even if we assume thatour E z ra i s based on a lost Apocalypse of Salathiel, we cannot tellwhat that lost Apocalypse contained. We cannot tell how much or

how little of our extant Ez ra is taken from the lost Salathiel,still

less can we tell what those parts of Salathiel were like which thewriter of Ez ra rewrote or dropped altogether . All we can do i s toattempt to understand the extant work

,to put ourselves into the

1 iii 1 .


attitude of the writer, whether we choose to call him an ‘author ’ ora ‘redactor ’. He must have regarded his own work as a more or

less satisfactory unity . We can more or less hope to reali z e forourselves his point of v iew : the point of view of the lost sourceswhich he m ay have used must remain for us a matter of conj ecture .For these reasons I must continue to treat E z ra as a whole . Itmay be that an earl ier work , dating perhaps from j ust after theDestruction of Jerusalem by Titus, has been revi sed to fit the timesof H adrian . But I cannot follow Kab isch and Mr Box in consideringthe conj ecturally restored earl ier form .

1

In any case,the main interest of Ez ra and Baruch is the light that

these works throw upon the state o f mind Of the Jews after theDestruction of Jerusalem , those who braced them selves to remainloyal to the religion Of their fathers

,even after the downfall Of the

system upon which it had seemed to be founded.

Of the two,Baruch is perhaps the m ore illum inating

,j ust because

it is m ore comm onplace . The writer has been utterly cast down bythe loss of Jerusalem , but he com es to bel ieve that the M ighty One 2

11 ultim ately m ake the Israelites triumph in this world,and that

afterwards in the world to com e the righteous will be abundantlyrewarded and the s inners tormented . His main interests are immediate and practical . He has a definite message for his fellow - countrymen . Let those who are left in the Holy Land stay there

,

3 and letone and all, especially the exiles, hold fast by the Law,

though theTem ple be destroyed . Zion hath been taken from us, and we havenothing now save the M ighty One and His Law,

4 but ‘ if ye haverespect unto the Law and are intent upon wisdom, the lamp will notfai l and the shepherd will not depart and the fountain will not rundry This is the last message of the great series of Jewish Apocalypses . As Daniel shews u s what was the spirit that nerved thepious Hasidim to resi st Antiochus, so Baruch lets us see in whatfram e of m ind it was possible for the Rabbis under Johanan benZakka i and his successors to sit do im and adapt the religion andthe hopes of Israel to the times of the long dominion of the Gentiles .

The interest o f Ez ra is somewhat difl‘

erent, and lies in the personality of the writer . The fate anticipated for Israel in Ez ra i s notvery unlike that in Baruch, but it affects the seers differently . The

1 Especially in rejecting iv 5 2—v 13 a , vi 1 1—29 , v n26—44, viii 63 - ix 12, from the

Salathie l -apocalypse2 This is the usua l title of God in Baruch.

’

c vpéor actually occurs in the sm al lsurviving fragm ent Of the Greek : it im plies El in the original Sem itic.

3 Bar uch lxxvii 6 .

4 lxxxv 3 .

5 lxxvii 16 .

THE MESSAGES OF BARUCH AND EZRA 43

author Of Ez ra i s not really a pessimist, in the sense Of bel iev ing thatevil i s u ltimately victorious in this world . The last act in theworld - drama

,according to him

,i s the glorious 400 years’ reign of

Messiah : then comes the other world Of full retribution .

1 Thescheme satisfies

‘

the Most High,Who say s Let the multitude perish

which was born in vain ’ 2 The really interesting thing is that itdoes not satisfy Ez ra .

‘This i s my first and last saying ’

, says he,that it had been better that the earth had not given Adam , or elsewhen it had given him to have restrained him from S inning .

’ 3 ‘Weare tormented, because we perish and know it . Let the race of menlament and the beasts of the field be glad

,for it is better with them

than with us for they look not for j udgement, neither do they knowof torments or of salvat ion promised unto them after death .

‘1 Therei s nothing of thi s arraignment of Providence in Baruch indeed, therei s very little like it either in Jewish or in Chri stian literature, till wecome to modern times .

1 Ezra vii 28—33 : My Son the Messiah (sic) shal l b e revealed and shallrejoice them that rem ain 400 years . And after these years My Son the Messiahshall die and all that have the breath of life , and the world shall b e turned into theancient silence seven days , like as in the first beginning , so that no m an is left . And

after seven days the earth will give up those that s leep in it and the Most

H igh will b e revealed upon the throne of judgem ent.”The Messiah is not killed by

enem ies or disease he just ceases (like the e lectric light when the switch is turnedoff ) at the he ight of his trium phal career, and no one outlives him . Thus this worldends with the discom fiture of the ungodly , and the next world of individual retrib ution follows at once .

A som ewhat s im ilar idea underlies the conception of the End sketched in 1 Corxv24, 26 , 28, where death is destroyed as the last enem y. S . Pau l , however, has a

specia l ‘m ystery for his initiates , bywhich the necessity of death for the survivingChristians is avoided. The Christian Messiah , of course , will not have to die, forH is death is past and H e is a lways living in the NewAge ; S . Pau l further instructsthe Corinthians that the surviving Christians will b e transubstantiated instead of

dying and ris ing again (1 Cor xv2 Ezra ix 22.

3v ii 46 vii 64 if .

I V . EARLY CHR ISTIAN APOCALYPTIC

WR ITING .

CHRISTIAN Apocalypses may be conveniently grouped in three mainclasses. First come those which do not differ in their general scopeand tendency from the Jewish Apocalypses which we have been considering. I do not mean that it is impossible to tell whether it i sa Christian or a Jew who is speaking . What I mean is that thegeneral subj ect - matter i s the same and the Obj ect of expectation i sthe same . When we hear from the Gospel the Di scourse on theMount of Ol ives, 1 or read the final chapter Of the Didache

,we are

wholly within the region of Jewish apocalyptic thought . The subj ectis the near - approaching End o f all things in this world

,when the

Elect of God spoken of by Daniel and by Enoch will come with theclouds of heaven . The Christians know Who the Messiah will be, butthat is the only difference .To Chri stian converts trained in Jewish thought and literature thi swas a natural way, in fact the natural way, to assert eternal Providence ’

, but it was very far from being the natural way for theconverts from the heathen world . Moreover

,as the years went by

and the End was not yet,the fact Of dead individual Christians

awaiting the End demanded ever more press ing recognition . TheGentile converts had j oined the Church without having clear expectations of a common general cata strophe which was at the same timea vindication of right and truth and a punishm ent of wrong anderror, but many Of them did believe that the man of insight andv irtue would ga in a happy immortality when he was freed at deathfrom the burden Of the flesh . In direct accordance with these ideasthere sprang up at least as early as the end of the first Christiancentury a new apocalyptic, dealing not with the Last Judgement, butwith the fate of indiv idual souls and indiv idual courses of conduct.So far as we know, thi s second series of Christian Apocalypses beginswith the Apocalyp se of Peter, happily rediscovered about a quarterof a century ago . The Apocalypse of Peter, in its original form, wascondemned as heretical, but it survived in countless imitations andadaptations, and at last was set forth on the grandest scale in Dante

’s

1 Mk xiii and parallels.

THE ASCENSION OF ISAIAH 45

Divine Com edy . The general scheme is Of the very simplest ; thedead souls are taken one by one to the place they deserve and anattempt i s made

,more or less, to make the punishment fit the crime

AS I pointed out at the very beginning Of these Lectures, thi s i sa fundamentally different idea from that of the Last Judgement andOf the genuine Jewish Apocalypses, which are animated by the ideaof the impending catastrophe that i s going to usher in a New Age forall the world .

But besides the Jewish Apocalypse and the Pagan Apocalypse therei s a third form of Christian Apocalypse, worth some attention, notso much for its intrinsic value as for the way in which it illustratesthe profound difference which really, though to some extent unconsciously , separated the Christian view of history from the Jewish .

The ancient Christian work called the Ascension of I saiah i s the bestillustration Of this third type of Apocalypse, which while Jewish inform i s essentially Chri stian in its outlook .

The Ascens ion of I saiah in its general plan recalls the Book o f

Daniel . Of the eleven chapters into which the book is now divided,

chaps . vi—xi give the vision of Isaiah when he was transported intothe seventh heaven and witnessed the Descent of the Beloved (i . e . theHeavenly Christ, the Son of God), through the seven heavens downto earth

,followed by His v ictorious return . The earlier chapters,

which also contain the account of a vi sion , give a historical settingto the vision at the end . They tell u s how Isaiah saw the vision inthe days Of Hez ekiah and how he was sawn in sunder with a woodensaw by Manasseh, Hez ek iah

’s wicked son, who was instigated to dothe deed by Beliar, i . e . the evi l spirit who dwells in man and theadversary of everything to do with Christ. 1

I sometimes fancy that the spirit Of Beliar must be dwelling insome of my friends when they use the wooden saw to dissect theAscension of I saiah. Notwithstanding their efl

'

orts i t continues tothe end to speak with a Christian voice, j ust as Isaiah did ? I shallventure here to treat it as a unity and as the work of a Christianthroughout . Of course, I do not mean to deny that some details inthe fanciful story of Isaiah’s martyrdom may have been ultimatelyderived from Jewi sh sources . But that i s a very different thing fromregarding the narrative portions of the Ascension of I saiah as aJewish document which can be detached from the rest of the workand represented as an independent whole . On the contrary

,I regard

it as an integral part of the Ascension, constructed from the writer’s

1 S . Pau l u ses the nam e Beliar in a sim ilar way , 2 Cor v i 15 .

2 See Asc. I sa i. v 14 f .

46 EARLY CHRISTIAN APOCALYPSES

knowledge of the early im perfect Greek translation O f the Books ofKings, supplem ented here and there by stray fragments of Jewishlore . 1

The interest of the Ascension of I saiah lies in its early date . In theearlier apocalyptic section we find that Beliar i s expected to descendfrom his firm am ent in the likeness O f a man, a lawless king, the slayerof his mother ” ? This is Obviously a reference to Nero . It i s truethat the Antichrist here announced is Beliar in the likeness of Nero,not Nero him self. But it appears that Nero is the only persecutingEm peror known to the apocalypti st

,and in any cas e I do not believe

that the Nero - myth was a creative force after the first third Of the2nd century . Descriptions of Antichrist modelled on the belief inNero redivivu s pers i sted for centuries

,but I do not imagine that they

were newly made after about 130 or 140 A . D .

This would give the early part of the 2nd century as the date ofthe Nero passage in the Ascens ion of I sa iah, and it seems to me thatthe rest of the work cannot be later . The only exception is xiof the Ethiopic text, a passage which excites suspicion by namingJoseph and Mary, aga inst the usual rule that apoca lypt ic propheciesare s ilent about names . At this point a Slavonic and a Latin text O fthe Ascens ion are extant , and they omit most o f the passage,3 so thatwe m ay safely conclude either that the Ethi opic is here interpolated,o r that the origi nal form O f the passage was quite di fferent .“f ith all respect to the great scholars who have worked at the

Ascension of I saiah, I cannot but think that the author of the workis more skilful than they take him to be, and that the unsatisfactoryim pression which it makes as a whole is due more to the nature of thetask which the writer set before him than to the manner in which hehas carried it out . It is the Old m i stake, which has spoilt so manyclever works of art, the mistake Of trying to do two things at once,of trying to serve two masters .In this case the two masters are the Last Judgement and theIncarnation .

The emotional effect of apocalyptic writing, as exhibited in thegreat series which extends from the Book of Daniel to the Apocalypseof Baruch , i s that everything is subordinated to the announcement

1 See Appendix I I .2 A se. I sa i. iv 2. The Greek conta ins the rare word unrpaAa o

'

: where e lse inChrist ian literature does it occur ? The writer of the Ascens ion uses one or two wordsnot very com m on in eccles iastical G reek . such as éfaq ue

’

va i , to desert or neglect .

’

And has not the epithet of Beliar, which the Ethiopic version renders Matanb i'

i chi‘

i s

(i i 4) or I II eche'

m bechus (v som ething to dowith m etem psychosis See further, p . 74 .

3 Including all m ent ion of Joseph and Mary.

48 EARLY CHRISTIAN APOCALYPSES

done . Of course there are inconsistencies,which learned persons

detect, who read the book as it was never intended to be read . Buton the whole the Ascens ion of I saiah gives me the impression of aliterary unity, and the inconsistencies seem to me to be due rather tothe divided aim of the author than to the mechanica l combination ofseparable documents .

The Apocalypses have surely had rather hard measure dealt out tothem during the last fifty years . They were written for a very differentk ind of public from the learned persons who study them now so conscientiously . Now they are hardly read save by trained scholars

,men

trained in the use of ancient historical documents,who moreover have

no illusions as to the historical value of the ‘ revelations ’ which theApocalypses profess to contain . They study them to learn the ideasand prej udices, the hopes and fears, of their writers . It is all done bythe most sc ientific methods, and the chief danger now is that too stricta standard of consistency and rationality may be exacted from writersto whom cons i stency and rat ional ity were quite secondary considerations . Consistency and rationality belong to the past

,and to the

course o f events in this world the Apocalyptist’s part i s to stimulatehis comrades by sketches of the future . And a future in which everything is consistent and in which , nevertheless, universal j ustice i s doneis a Vision which the heart of man has not conce ived .

Think for a moment of some patent inconsistencies to be found in

the Apocalypse of S . John . In what state does the Seer see the soulso f them who had been sla in for the word of God ? Are they not

underneath the Altar, crying out ‘How long, 0 Lord And they

are told to rest yet a little longer, till the number of the martyrs ismade up .

1 They also,l ike the Lamb that had been slain , are a

sacrifice, and they are impatient for the long - delayed consummation .

But then who are the great multitude that no man could number,who com e from the great tribulation and have made their robes whitein the blood of the Lamb, who for that very reason are now before thethrone of God 2 Are these better off than the Martyrs ? Both visionsbelong to this time

,the time before the End . And again, how does

the picture of the impatient Martyrs harmoni z e with ‘Blessed are thedead which die in the Lord from henceforth, for they rest ’ P3

These inconsistencies are in a sense real, and I am qu ite ready to

1 Rev v i 9 - 1 1 : that this is no isolated figure , taken m echanically from earlierdocum ents , appears from xvi 7 , where the Altar voices the u ltim ate satisfaction of

the s lain souls .

2 Rev v ii 9—17.

3 Rev x iv 13.

THEIR I NHERENT INCONSI STENCY 49

believe that the ultimate cause of them is a m ingling of different andinconsi stent sources . There i s the authentic Jewish source whichdefers the Judgement and the great Adj ustment of all things to thefast- approaching End ; there i s the Pagan sentiment that the Adj ustment, i f it take place at all, must take place at once after the deathof each indiv idual ; and there i s the specifically Christian belief thatsomehow the Coming of Jesus Christ has made all the difference, andthat the New Age must date from His Passion and Resurrection , evenif that be patently not the Harvest but merely an early Paschal sheafof firstfru its.

But these three distinct ideas exist simultaneously in the mind ofthe Christian Apocalyptist . It i s not a question of the fitting togetherof documents, of scissors and paste, but of the alternate emergence ofindependent convictions into consciousness and expression . In moments

of cris i s and emotion these convictions sometimes attain an artisticunity

,held together by a feeling of passionate and unshaken loyalty

to God and His Christ, but they do not attain, and cannot attain , to

logical consi stency .

After all,a logical Apocalypse would most likely be a dull Apoca

lypse. And unless the point of view which I have put before you inthese Lectures is altogether mistaken

,the impulse which produced the

great Apocalypses was not a logical theory,but a passionate conviction ,

roused to utterance by the events of Jewish history. The doctrine of

the Apocalypses i s the doctrine of the approaching Judgement, andthe doctrine of the approaching Judgement was in essence an expression

of the Jews’ unquenchable conviction that God would not altogetherallow His Chosen People to perish in their struggle with the Civ iliz ation of the heathen world.

The Apocalyptic l iterature i s thus the product of one particular setof historical conditions . In accordance with this , real historical eventswhich can be identified are often referred to or indicated, and suchindications where they are certain are most valuable for giving us thedate of particular passages or even of whole works . But it is possibleto press some of the details too closely

,to look for references to con

temporary history in passages where the Apocalypti st’s points of v iewwere more vague and general

, or more frankly supernatural . I do notthink we find the squabbles of Jewish factions reflected in the Judgement - scene of the S im ilitudes of Enoch ; I do not think there i s anyprophecy of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus in the D iscourse on theMount of Ol ives as given in S . Mark . It is true that the apocalypticHope was evoked by the pressure of contemporary struggles and tookits classical shape from books that directly reflect those struggles . But

E

they have come up out o f their graves and have been brought intotheir own land again

,we moderns, both o f the Church and of the

Synagogue,may be grateful to the Early Christians for preserving

thenL

APPEND IX I .

ON THE GREEK TEXT OF ENOCH .

THE primary obj ect of this Note i s to give some j ustification forthe general approval of the text of the Giz eh MS (G), now at Cairo,as compared with the Ethiopic (E) and the extracts in Georgius theSyncellus (S), expressed in Lecture II, pp . 26, 27.

1 . The Descent of the Angels (Enoch vi 1

I give a translation of the text of G, with the variants of E and S .

1 . And it came to pass when the sons of men were multipl ied, in thosedays there were born daughters beautiful and fair. 2. And the Angels,sons of Heaven , saw them and desired them, and said to one another‘Come, let us choose for ourselves wives from men and beget forourselves children ’

. 3 . And Sem iaz as said to them , he who was theirleader, ‘I fear lest ye will not be willing to do this deed and I shall bealone guilty of a great sin So they all answered him ‘We willswear all of us with an oath and bind one another with a curse not tofrustrate this plan until we accomplish it and do this deed 5 . Thenthey all sware together and bound each other with a curse in it .

1 in those days] om . S born]+ to them ES and fair] om . S 2 init. And

the Watchers desired them and went astray after them and said S Com e] om . Sm en]+ of the earth S and beget children] om . S 3 he who was] om . S4 So (ownAnd ES answered him ] and said S (and som e m ssE) and do thisdeed] om . S f or until deed E has and we will do for this plan the deed6 . See be low.

It will be seen that in vi 1—5 the variants are trifl ing, but theSyncellus habitually abridges redundant expressions, while in ver. 2

he frankly paraphrases . This i s exactly what one expects in a manquoting a work which he does not regard as textually authoritative,and it should make u s very wary of regarding variations attested bythe Syncellus alone as resting on anything else than his own freealterations .For ver. 6 we are most unluck ily deprived of G, the scribe

’s penhaving wandered from Kai &veeepdrwav &Ahfihovo év wire"to the correSponding words in ver. 6. S has

fiaav 5 2 0 13

1-

0 1. etaxo'

fn oc oi. xarafiavrea év raid i ma’

paw’

I cipeB GioA

m y Kopvcbiiv rov‘

Epaom ein 6'

pov0'

Ka t éxdkw av To ripoo‘

Eppcép ,I V 5 l l 3 9 A

nation (apoc av Ka t avefieuarwav ahhnhovo eu awe) .

5 4 ON THE TEXT,OF ENOCH

The literal translation of E isAnd they in all were two hundred, and they came down uponArdis which is the top of Mount Armen

,and they called the

mountain Armen, because they sware in it and bound each otherwith a curse .

Dr Charles accepts S as substantially genuine and regards E ascorrupt. He further accepts Halevi’s conj ecture that there was in theoriginal text not only a play upon the name of Hermon

,but also

upon the name of Jared . Jared seems to mean ‘Descent ’

,

from the Hebrew word for to descend the word does not occur inAramaic, so that on this v iew the passage was originally written inHebrew .

Our first business i s to retranslate the Ethiopic into the underlying Greek . This is fairly easy. Am en i s the standing equivalentfor Hermon (or Hermonim For the decisive clause we thus get

oi. Kare'

finoav GU IAPhelCKOPY¢HN Tofit

E. o'

povo .

A glance at S shews us that the - is of Ardis i s the preposition d o,

required before KOpvdniv. We have therefore em apA corresponding

to e’

v i' a fjpépaw

’

I dpeB in S . I venture to suggest that these fourwords are nothing more than an ingenious paraphrase made by theSyncellus himself.That it is wrong I j udge for the following reasons : (1) theEthiopic has nothing corresponding to 81) raio fip e

’

paw except thepreposition Ea t. It is most unlikely, even if grammatically j ustposs ible

,that the original Greek translation of Enoch would have

expressed ‘ i n Jared’s time by e’

vri’

ldpe§ (or éw’ without any

note of office or qualification . (2) The proper place for specifyingthe time of the descent of the Sons of God is not here but in vi 1 .

In that verse it is vaguely described as ‘ in those days by G and E,

but this note o f time is left out by S, obviously because in ver. 6 hewas going to date it precisely. (8) The argument that there i sin Enoch a play upon the name ‘Jared ’ and the verb ‘to descend isa modern conj ecture : the play upon the ‘curse ’ (herm ) and the name‘Hermon ’

, on the other hand, i s definitely pointed out in the textitself.Further, I think we can guess that the actual source from whencethe Syncellus deri ved his conj ecture was the Book of Jub ilees, a workelsewhere expressly quoted by him . In Jab . iv 1 5 the birth of Jaredi s mentioned : “ and he [Mahaleel] called hi s name Jared ; for in hi sdays the angels of the Lord descended on the earth, those namedthe Watchers .” Here no doubt we have a Hebrew original and

5 6 TRANSLATION OF THE PROLOGUE

I l The word of the blessing of Enoch, how he b lessed elect righteous m en,

who will b e there in the day of distress for taking away all theadversaries and righteou s m en shall be saved.

2 And he took up his parable and saidEnoch

,a righteou s m an is he,

a v ision from God for him was opened 1-having1the vision of the H oly One and of heaven H e shewed m e,

and holy apologu es1 I m yself heard

,

and as I heard from them all things and I m yself knewas I looked .

And not for the present generation did I consider,

b u t for one far distant do I sp eak ;

3 and concerning the e lect I now say it,

and concerning them have I taken up m y parable .

And m y H oly One,the Great One

,will com e forth from H is hab itation,

4. and the God of eternity upon the earth will tread on Mount Sinai,and w ill appear from H is encam pm ent

,

and will appear in the power o f H is m ight from the heaven ofheavens .

5 And all will fear, and the Watchers willand Tthey will sing+ secret things in a ll the ends of the [earth],and a ll the ends of the earth will be shahen

,

and trem bling and great fear will take hold of them unto the

u tterm ost parts of the earth.

6 And high m ountains will shake andf all and dissolve,and h igh hills w ill b e laid low,

that m ounta ins should waste away ,

and they w ill m elt like wax in front of the tfire in flam e .

7 And the earth will b e torn into p ieces by a rent,

and all things that are on the earth will be destroyed .

And there will b e a judgem ent on all things and

8 with the righteou s H e will m ake peace,and upon the e lect there will be protection and peace,

and upon them shall b e m ercy,

and they will all belong to God and H e will give them prosperity,2

and H e will bless them a ll and protect them a ll and help as,

and light will shine for them ,

and H e will m ake peace upon them .

9 For H e com es with H is ten thousands and H is holy onesto do j udgem ent on all

,

and will destroy all the ungodly,1 Read anv rwN not arsv rwN the MS m ight b e either.

prosperity etoatavngood—pleasure G (ciao/day ) so Charles.

TO THE BOOK OF ENOCH 5 7

I l The word of the blessing of Enoch,how he blessed elect and

righteou s m en who will b e there in the day of distress for thetaking away of all the adversaries and ungodly .

2 And he answered further and saidEnoch, a righteou s m an

,

who from the Lord while his eyes were Open, and he was seeingthe vision of the Holy One in heaven which the angels shewed m e,

and I heard from them all things, and I myself understoodwhat I was seeing.

And not for this generation,b u t for one far distant that will com e,

3 concerning the elect I said it,and I answered concerning them a parab le .The H oly and Great One wi ll com e forth from H is hab itation,

4. the God of eternity,and from thence he will tread upon Mount Sinai,

and will appear in H is encam pm ent,and will appear in the power of H is m ight from heaven .

0

5 And all will fear, and the Watchers will quake,

and fear and great trem b ling will take hold of them unto theutterm ost parts of the earth .

6 And high m ountains will trem b le,and high hills will be laid low,and they will m elt like wax from the flam e .

7 And the earth will b e rent,and all things that are on the earth will be destroyed.

And there will b e a judgem ent on all things and on all the righteous

8 with the righteou s H e will m ake peace,

and H e will protect the elect,and there shall be m ercy upon them

,

and they will all b elong to God and they will prosper,1

and they will b e b lessed,and God

’

s light will shine for them .

9 And 10 , H e cam e with ten thou sands of holy Ones,to do judgem ent on them ,

and to destroy the ungodly,

1 Com p. Ju bilees xxv u 16 and the H ebrew hislih.

1 Observe all the things in heaven, how they do not changethe ir ways

,

and the lum inaries in heaven,how they all rise and set,

each one ordered in its appointed tim e,and in theirfeasts they appear,

and they do not transgress their own order.

2 See the earth and consider about the things that com e to pass ifrom the beginning to the end

,

[things which] are corrup tible,

how they change not,no, nothing upon earth

,

but a ll things appear to you as works of God.

3 See the sum m er and the winter

III exam ine and see all the trees,

how

the leaves are green in them ,covering the trees,

and a ll their fru it is f or honour and glory .

Consider and know abou t all H is works,and perce ive that a Living God has m ade them thus,and H e lives for ever and ever.

2 And a ll H is works that H e has done for ever from yearall com e to pass thu s,

and all things that the works accom plish for H im ,

and they do not change their works,

TO THE BOOK OF ENOCH 5 9

Enoch Ethiop ic

and to convict all flesh ab out all that they have doneand Tpreparedt

1

the ungodly and sinnersagainst H im .

I I 1 Ob serve all the things in heaven, how they do not changetheir ways

,

the lum inaries in heaven,how they all rise and set,

each one ordered in its tim e,

and they do not transgress their order.

2 See the earth and consider abou t the things that are done in itfrom the b eginning to the end,

how there changes notany work of God as it appears .

3 See the sum m er and the winter,how a ll the earth isfi lled with water,and clouds and dew and rain rest upon it.

III Ob serve and see all the trees,

how they appear to be withered and all their leaves to befallen,excep t 14 trees which do not let them fall but keep som e

of the old until the new com es, f or two or three y ears .

And again, observe the day s of sum m er,how the sun has

been over it in its beginning, and y e seele shade and

shelter because of the heat of the sun and the earth also

burns with the warm th of the glow, and y e cannot tread the

earth or a roclc because of the heat.V 1 Observe how the trees with greenness of leaves cover them selves

and b ear fru it .And consider about all

and perceive that 1-ye have m ade -rall of themWho lives for ever

2 And H is work s b efore H im each yearthat shall be

and all H is works serve H imand change not,b u t as God com m anded so all things com e to pass .

3 See how the seas and the rivers sim ilarly accom plishtheir work .

1prepared] apparently altered from ungodly done by the change of one letter

60 TRANSLATION OF THE PROLOGUE

4 But ye, ye have not continu ed nor done according to H iscom m andm ents

,

b ut have turned away and uttered great and stub born wordswith your unclean m outh against H is m aj estybecause y e have uttered (thus ) in your lies,0 hard of heart, there will b e no peace for you

5 Therefore your days ye shall curse,and the years of your life shall b e destroyed,and the y ears of your destr uction shall be m ultiplied with

an eternal curse,

and there will not be for you m ercy and peace

6 Then wi ll your nam es be for an eternal curse to all the righteous,and by you shall cu rse a ll they that curse,and all the sinners and ungodly shall swear by you .

And all the innocent 1 will rej oice, and there will bef or themforgiveness of sins and every m ercy and peace and gentleness .

there will bef or them salvation, good light,

and they will inherit the earth

andf or a ll y ou sinners there will com e no salvation,

but on a ll of you there will lodge2a curse.

7 And for the elect there will b e light and joy and peace,and they w ill inherit the earth,b u t for you ungodly there will b e a curse .

8 Then will be given to the elect light and grace,and they will inherit the earth

then will be given to all the elect wisdom ,

and they will all live ,and they will not sin any m ore ,

neither by ignorance 3 nor by presum ption,and there will b e light in an enlightenedand in an intelligent m an understanding,

9 and they will incur no gu ilt,neither will they sin all the days of their life,nor will they die b y the anger of wrath,b ut the num ber of the days of their life they will fulfil,and their life will be lengthened in peace,and the years of their joy will be m u ltiplied

gladness and peace eternalall the days of their life .

1 Read dvapdp‘

rn‘

rm (with Swete)] G appears to have anapralrou but the lettersare very faint, like som e others at the end of lines on this page .

2 Read gam m a“ na-ra

’

zpa (so Raderm aeher and Charles )] KaraAycm KATAPAN G .

3KaraAaeeuaN G : see the Note below.

TO THE BOOK OF ENOCH 61

Enoch— Ethiopic

4 But ye,ye have not continu ed nor done the Lord’s

com m andm ents,b ut have transgressed and u ttered great and stubborn wordswith your unclean m outh against H is m aj esty ;

0 hard of heart, there will be no peace for you5 And therefore your days ye shall curse,and the years of your life shall ye destroy,and it shall b e m u ltiplied with

an eternal curse,and there will not b e for you m ercy [righteous,

6 And in those days ye will give your nam e for an eternal curse to all the

and you they shall cursethe sinners i always to you together with

-t the sinners.

7 And for the elect there will b e light and joy and peace,

and they will inherit the earth,b ut for you ungodly there will be a curse .

8 And then will b e given to the elect

wisdom,

and they will all live,

and they will not sin any m ore,

neither by ungodliness nor by presum ption,b ut they in whom is wisdom will hum b ly worship,

9 and they will not sin any m ore,

neither will they b e condem ned all the days of their life,nor will they die b y anger nor b y wrath,b ut the num b er of the days of their life they will fulfil,and their life will b e lengthened in peace,and the years of their joy will b e m u ltiplied

in gladness and in peace eternalin all the days of their life .

62 COMPARISON OF THE TEXT

Before considering the above passage in detail some general remarksupon method may not be out of place . I have printed the Prologuein full in an intentionally quite literal English rendering, in orderthat my readers may gather some idea of the general condition of theextant Greek text of Enoch and of the Ethiopic version of the Greek .

It is evident at the first glance that neither the Cairo text northe Ethiopic has any pretensions to literary excellence . This was notso evident in the passage from Enoch vi, a piece of plain prose . ThePrologue is more ambitious and more poetical in style and demandedgreater sk ill in the translator .It is

,of course, highly probable that the original Aramaic or

Hebrew text was a better composition than the Greek translation : itmay not have had the l iterary merits of Amos or Isaiah, but itwas probably idiomatic and forcible. The analogy of Amos andIsaiah, in fact, shews us what our position is ; i t i s as if we hadto understand and reconstruct the Prophets from the Septuagintalone . But after all it i s not quite certain that the original authorof the Prologue was a great styl i st . In Dr Hort’s words (I ntrod.

to N . T. ,

‘There is m uch literature, ancient no less thanmodern

,in which it i s needful to rem ember that authors are not

always grammatical , or clear, or consi stent, or felicitous ; so that notseldom an ordinary reader finds it easy to replace a feeble or halfappropriate word or phrase by an effective substitute ; and thus thebest words to express an author’s meaning need not in all casesbe those which he actually em ployed .

’ The passage now beforeus seems to me to fall under this condemnation, at least so far as‘ vain repetitions ’ are concerned . Here, as elsewhere in Enoch,especially xciv- c iv (a section that seems to me certainly writtenby the writer of the Prologue), the author think s he will be heard forhis much speaking. Such passages read like a shorthand report of anextempore sermon ; the same thing is said over and over again without

real difference of meaning.

The critical emendation of the text of such works i s a very delicatematter

,if the aim be to reproduce the original, because the more

forc ible reading i s not always the more ancient . The main rulei s that in rhetorical passages l ike thi s no wholly new idea is onlyexpressed once ; what cannot be paralleled either in the immediatecontext or elsewhere in the book i s l ikely to be an interpolation, while

on the other hand genuine clauses which only repeat what has been

said before with sl ight verbal changes are liable to be dropped as

superfluous, especially by impatient translators .To come now to details, I wish to give some reason for suggesting

64 ON THE TEXT OF ENOCH

the part of Greek - speak ing Christ ians, for which we have no warrantin general history . And if it be replied, that not Christians butGreek - speak ing Jews were the correctors, then we should have toassume the preservation in Christian circles of more than one line ofEnoch - codices,— in this case , the Cairo text which has the doubletsand the Ethiopic text which has escaped them .

If v 6b be regarded as a doublet to v 7 I can only suppose that v 6b

i s the rough original and v 7 a literary improvement of it,the rough

original having somehow in G escaped deletion . But if so, G mustbe regarded as preserving traces of an older form of text, of which E isa l iterary rev i sion .

The moral I draw is that the transmitted text of Enoch is too badto be thoroughly emended . Methodical exegesis of such a text is likeart - criticism on the Monna Lisa based upon reproductions in the halfpenny press . Such reproductions are quite good so far as they go— insome ways they give a truer impression than a carefully fakedengrav ing

,but they cannot be used for m inute details, and the more

you look at them under the microscope the greater is the chance ofmisinterpretation .

The following Notes, the result of ‘microscopical ’ study of thePrologue

,are offered as suggestions, with a full acknowledgement of

the small degree of certainty attainable .

i 2 is very confused, but Tip" {Spam v roii ay i'

ou surely goes with

é’

bei fév pm . The preceding words HNeXm N I cannot translate,and b’paaw dvfl pype

'vr) is, so far as I can make out, a unique com

bination Visions are not opened ’

, b ut seen In the nextclause we ought perhaps to read (in?) Ao

'

ywv, not anv'

ywv, asapologues seem hardly ever to be mentioned in Jewish or

Christian literature .There i s a lso a difficulty as to where Enoch’s own words are supposedto begin

,whether at

’

Eveix, or at dudpwu oa , or at rip) 3pa 0' w. The

analogies of Balaam and of Job, who also take up their parable’

,

help us very l ittle to emend the text of G . It seems to me that ifEnoch begins in the 3rd person , then his words must begin with hisown name .i 5 . The plus of G is here so odd that i t must be genuine, butboth m m ta ovaw and Kauacwcm seem to be corrupt. Thedu o

'

xpvcpa must be hiding- places ’ cf. Enoch c 4The angels shall descend into the secret placesAnd gather together into one place all those who brought

down sin,

NOTES ON THE PROLOGUE 6 5

And the Most High will arise on that Day of judgementTo execute great j udgement amongst sinners .

11 2 stow (Mam et

. Swete prefixes 650 , or we might read it claw

(Map-

ré. The sense must surely have been ‘though they becorruptible (yet do they notv 8 of; Kar

’

d Gei av oiire Karel finepncbavt’

av. So G. Charles readsxar

’

do t/Belay with E, but this makes no contrast to vnepncpaviav.

Surely we must read xar’

dyvocav.

The phrase oz’; Kara a re Karabu epncpaviav almost nece ssari lysuggests the contrast of sins of presumption with those of accident, asin Ps xix (xvii i) 13 , 14, where both c

’

iyvm a and vnepncpavta occur togetheri n Aquila’s version see also Lev xxn 14 (Heb . and LXX ) . The

Aramaic phrase i s 131 73 1529) NS (lei bshi'

l li", rvlii biz ddnu) .

Between KATAFNOlAN and KaraAneelan there i s not much difference

~ = H,

8. Enoch and the Valley s of the Dead (chap . xxu ) .l

‘And from thence I j ourneyed to another place, and he shewed metowards the West another great and high mountain of hard rock ,2 and there were four places in it

,hollow, deep, and very smooth, three

of them dark,and one light with a fountain of water in the midst of

it .

2 And I said How smooth these hollows are,and deep and dark

to look at " 3 Then answered Raphael , the one of the holy angelsthat was with me, and said to me ‘These hollow places are forgathering together the spirits of the souls 3 of the dead . For thi svery purpose have they been assigned,4 that here should be gatheredtogether all the souls of men , 4 and these places for containing them ,

they have been made 5 until the day of their j udgement and until the

1 See Lecture I I , p . 20.

2 Punctuate thus , i . e . o’

e orewoi, real ( to (pan-

(woo real 17177 7) flbaroa dud uéaov abroi) .5 Throughout Enoch the soul

’

(wvxr'l) is the total personality , with a‘spirit

’

(rweiiua) be longing to it : see especially Enoch xvi l , and J T S viii 445 .

4assigned] énptenaav G Aram . 11m m : or H eb .

"

mm see Dan ix 24 LXX.

5 éwoiq aav G , also E. Charles em ends to énoifionacw, and this no doubt gives thereq u ired sense , b ut possibly the preceding words are a nom ina tivus p endens , and

éwroc’

q aav m ay b e the 3rd pers . plur. taken im personally, as so of ten in Aram aic , alsoLk xii 20

66 ON THE TEXT ' OF ENOCH

appo inted time and season, when the great judgement shall be uponthem .

’

5 I noticed [the spirit]1 of a dead man petitioning, and its voice

even to heaven was going forth and petition ing, 6 and I asked Raphael,the angel that was with me and said to him ‘This spirit petitioning,whose is it, that its voice so goes forth and petitions even untoheaven ? ’ 7And he answered me

,saying ‘This spirit i s what came

out from Abel, whom Cain his brother slew, and Abel i s petitioningabout him, until his seed be destroyed from off the earth, and fromthe seed of men hi s seed shall vanish

8 Then I asked about all the hollows, why they were separated onefrom the other ? 9 And he answered me

,saying ‘These three were

m ade that the spirits of the dead should be separated, and this one 2

was separated for the spirits of the j ust, where the fountain of wateris shining.

1 0 And this one (of the three)2 was created [for the

spirits] of the sinners when they die and are buried in the earth, andno j udgement has befallen them in their li fe . 1 1 Here their spirits areseparated for this great torment until the great day of the j udgement,of the scourgings, and of the torments of the accursed for ever ; therequital 3 o f the spirits shall bind them there for ever. 1 2And thisone

2 was separated for the spirits of those that are petitioning, whomake disclosures about their destruction when they have been slainin the days of the sinners . 1 3 And this 2 was created for the spirits ofthe men who will not be pious nor ungodly sinners,4 and yet with thelawless wil l be parta kers ; but these spirits, because those who sufferhere are less punished than the others, wi ll not be sentenced in theday of j udgement, nor will they be raised from thence .

’

1“Then I blessed the Lord of Glory, and said Blessed be Thou ,O Lord of righteousness

,who art Lord of eternity "’

I n v . 5 G has rede’aua i dq cbrrova vexpoiza e’

vrvyxdvovroa (sic), E hasI saw the spirits of men who were dead and their voice wentforth . Lods and Charles

,seeing that in the next verse only one

petitioning spirit is referred to,suggest that the original Greek was

rede’

aua i u vefiua dufipcbnov vexpofi évrvxdvovroa .

It may be further remarked that according to Enoch lxxxi 6 thewhole book i s supposed to be written in the year preceding Enoch

’

s

1 For the text, see below.

2 this one (obroa)] oii‘e ' GE, in all four places.

3read 1) dw anbboaw for 17” our .

2 See note below for the text.

THE VALLEYS OF THE DEAD 67

translation . If we take the Masoretic chronology (as i s suitable fora Palestin ian book) thi s year is 986 A . H . But Enoch’s j ourneys andvisions fall before that time ; in fact, xxxh 6 assumes that the agedAdam and Eve are still al ive . This explains how it is that the hollowgorges are all empty

,except for the wuefiua of Abel at the time when

Enoch saw them only Abel is dead of all the human race . Had theLXX chronology been followed, Enoch must have seen the m am ofAdam and Seth

,i f not others . Thus a consideration of this chapter

m akes it clear that Enoch i s Palestinian .

v. 13“ runs in G Ka t ovrwa 0 :1a row m /evuaaw rawa z/Opwm w oaor our: wax/“rat om or

akA apaprwkoz , oaoz aaeBeta, Ka t new rawauouwu war/ra t p eroxm .

Var iants of E GO'

OVTat] were E OO'

tOt righteous E

aaeBa a] who are com plete in transgression E avouwr] transgressors E

It i s evident that E only represents the same text as G, and failedto make any sense of it . b

’

a or da efiei‘

a reads like mere ‘ translationGreek ’

,as if the original translator was uncertain of the meaning.

But the general sense of the whole passage,together with the clear

words oin< dawnand ( in of; riuwpndfiaovrat e’

v inue’

parijo xpia ewa ,

makes it ev ident that these spirits ’ are some intermediate class betweenthe pious and the wicked. I venture to suggest that the original to

which oinc— dAA’ corresponds was not NSN—NS but NSl—Ns, i . e .

neither— nor. The Greek of Enoch according to this ought to have

run 60 0 i oinc é’

a ovra i b’

cn oc obbe duaprwhoi. da efieia , the following Ka i

having the Semitic sense of but auapm kol c’

wefieio i s a combinationassured for the Greek Enoch by i 9, but I do not know exactly whatSemitic formula is intended .

With regard to the general picture sketched in Enoch xxn themost noticeable thing is the separate place assigned to the spirits ’

of the slain, especially when unburied. This i s altogether in accor

dance with ancient, as distinct from modern thought . With usmoderns the seemly disposal of dead bodies is mainly a matter of

sentiment and hygiene ; with the ancients, on the other hand, spiltblood and corpses not properly interred with due rites remained botha source of discomfort to the dead and an active pollution to the landin which they lay. Of the righteous, speaking generally, it wasbelieved that their bodies are buried in peace 1 but in Abel ’s case,though he may have been righteous his spirit cannot rest with therighteous because he has been slain . In the Chri stian Apocalypse ofJohn the souls of those slain for the word of God, though they arekept underneath the heavenly Altar

,yet cannot rest .

1 Cf . also Isaiah liii 9.

F 2

68 ON THE TEXT O F ENOCH

4. [Miscellaneous Conj ectures and Notes to Enoch.

Enoch x 4 Afia ov réu noa in Kai xepm’

v,Ka i

,

BdAe abrc‘

iv d o 7 6

a xo'

roa . These words are so l ike Matt xxi i 13, that it i s notunreasonable to suggest that they may have been the actual modelfor the form of words in the Gospel . If this be granted, i t almostinev itably decides the text of Matt xxi i 13 in favour of that attestedby NB andW’estcott and Hort against that of D latt and v . Soden,in which latter there i s no mention of binding ’

(see Evangelion

da Mepharreshe i i

Enoch x 7 that all the sons of men may not perish e’

v n?) uva rnptp b’

mp

<5 e’

ndrafav oi e’

ypfiyopoe. This i s nonsense, though G and E agreeword for word . The Syncellus by substituting cinov for e

’

ndrafavtries to make a sort of sense

,but it i s most improbable that if

said was the original it should have been corrupted in any language into smitten I venture to suggest that the text of G iscorrect, and that e

’

v uva rnptrp stands for h : in the Syriac senseo f ‘after the manner of ’ (e . g. Carrn. N is . xxix The originalArama ic of this sentence, then , will be

pnun‘a nm was m m 53 m

and the meaning of the whole passage wil l be

‘ that the sons of men may not perish after the manner of all thosewhom the“’

atchers sm ote,when they taught their sons (the unlawful arts) and all the earth was made a desert with the works ofA z ael

’

s teaching

The and before é’ba fav, here translated when ’

, carries on theconstruction as in Apoc i 1 Kat e

’

m juavev, and Apoc vii 14 "at

Enhvuav.

Enoch xii 4 7 6 dy iaapa rfia a rda ewa roii a ldvocr. Charles translatesthis the holy eternal place in apposition to the high heavenBut m am can hardly be a ‘ place except in the sense of ‘anappointed place ’ for some one to stand in . The context says thatthe Watchers left high heaven , n"dy iaana ‘

rfia a rda ewa f oii a ié’

ivoa .

Put back into Aramaic all i s clear . a rdaw is D’1P, i . e . covenant,as in the Targum s to Gen ix 16 : the Watchers left the sanctuary

of the eternal covenant, and were defiled with women . The Watcherswere like the Enui Ii i/(Em a i n the early Syriac- speak ing Church,and they left their Kyam c

‘

i, their ‘ status’

, as Professor Wensinck

would translate it . But their ‘ status ’, as also always with the

Bnai Ky c’

im a, implied abstinence from marriage .

MISCELLANEOUS CONJECTURES 69

Enoch xiv l l , 12 And its roof (ai. ore’

ya i , of the House of God inheaven) was like the path of the stars and lightnings andobpavba avré

’

w iibwp1 2

1m l 1n'

3p (Meyo'

pevov m im e) réiv roixwv. Themention of water comes in very oddly here possibly the Aramaiccorresponding to stam p Kai may have been 1? i . e . ‘ l ike to ’

,

PD? being plural to agree with jlfi’DW The passage would then

mean ‘the ceiling thereof was like to flaming fire round about the

walls

Enoch xx (The Li st of the Great Angels) . It would add a l ittle tothe order and form of Enoch ’ to treat this chapter as a sort o fNote or Heading, like Isaiah xxx 62 . It merely serves to introducethe names and functions of the several Angels mentioned in thecourse of Enoch’s j ourneys .

Enoch xxvii 2 in the day of j udgement here shall the ungodly

(oi doe/Beta ) bless the Lord of Glory . For da efiei‘

a E reads merciful or

‘gentle — a mere guess . Dr Charles also does not acceptda efieia , and emends it into eva efleia . But the following verse shewsthat the ungodly are intended ‘ in the days of their j udgement theyshall bless H im

,in mercy

,as He has allotted to them ’

,i . e . the

ungodly will as a favour be allowed to bless God . Compare Enochlxi i i , in which the m ighty and the k ings in their punishment sayWe have now learnt that we should glorify and bless the Lord of

kings

Possibly in the original e’

v e’

Ae’

ei stood for something meaninga cryf or mercy .

Enoch xxix 2 {boy Kpta ewa Be’

ubpa . Charles, following Beer andPraetorius, emends trees of j udgement (NT

-HYinto trees of smell

(airway . But this does not account for the abnormal order.Read, therefore, 1

1721 there ’) instead of i’T

'

i , so that the clau seruns I saw there trees blowing spices

Enoch lxix 9, 10. It i s perhaps worth notice that what i s hereblamed i s not writing in itself, but written contracts . What theevi l Péném iie taught mankind was the Art of legal documents

,

secured with curses, &c. , or binding formulae, whereby a man

’smere word became of no account : cf. Matt v 37 . Books in themselves, especially the ‘Books of Enoch ’

(cf. c iv are good anda joy to the righteous .

70 ON THE TEXT -OF ENOCH

Enoch en 2, 3 . Dr Charles regards the beginning of en 3 as corruptand says I cannot emend But i s anything more needed than totransfer the first line of ci i 3 to the preceding verse ? The passagethen runs

‘2 And all the luminaries shall be affrighted with great fear,and all the earth shall be affrighted and tremble and be alarmed,and all the [holy] angels shall execute their commands .

‘3 And [men] shall seek to hide themselves from the GreatGlory

,and the children of earth shall tremble and quake And

ye sinners shall be cursed for ever ’

5 . On the Astronom ical teaching of Enoch.

As remarked on p . 21 the Third Book o f Enoch (lxxu—lxxxu ) i salmost wholly astronomical . It teaches that the heavenly bodiescomplete the year in 364 days (lxxiv according to Enoch

,and

great stress is la id upon the perfection of this arrangement,whereby

the year is exactly 5 2 weeks long. This has seemed a difficulty,for

two reasons . On the one hand we have to explain why the author oreditor of ou r Enoch thought it appropriate to insert a scientifictreatise in his work . In chapters lxx i i - lxxix, to quote Dr. Charles,“ the author’s i nterest is scientific , and “ through all these chap tersthere is not a s ingle ethical reference ’ ( I ntrod. , p .

“ But,

” he

goes on to say ,“ in lxxx 2 - 8 the interest i s ethical and nothing else

,

and though it recogni z es an order of nature , this order is m ore conspicuou s in its breach than in its observance .

” On the other hand itis a l ittle disconcert ing to find a writer like the author of lxxi i—lxxix

,

who is so much interested in the Sun and Moon and the exact timesand manner o f their ris ing and setting, who yet can assert that theastronom ical year is only 364 days long. And this as late as thel st century B. c .

It seems to me that a fresh view is possible and that our authorwas really a better practical astronomer than his modern criticsimagine . I think he was quite aware that in the wicked days of theSeleucids the so lstices and midsummer only came round after 365 oreven 366 days .This I take to be the meaning of chapter lxxx . In the days ofthe sinners, says Enoch, many bad things will happen . Amongstothers the moon shall alter her orbit and not appear in her time,

APPENDIX 11 .

ON THE MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH .

THE pseudo- historical introduction to the Visions i n the Ascens ion

of I saiah, commonly supposed to be a Jewish Legend, has beentreated in the body of this work as a Greek Christian romance,especially composed so as to put the Visions in a historical setting.

1

In itself this theory needs less defence than one which should regardthe fantastic tale as Jewish and of independent origin, and I shallnot attem pt a formal dem onstration . The obj ect of this Note isma inly explanatory

,to point out one or two expressions in the story

which seem to me to spring from dependence upon the Greek Biblerather than from Semitic lore.The Ascens ion of I sa iah is preserved in a very ancient MS of theoriginal G reek (G ), in a very ancient Latin translation (L), and in anEthiopic vers ion (E ) . A different Latin version and a Slavonic versionof the latter part of the work do not call here for special mention .

It should be remembered that the text o f the Books o f Kings

(3 and 4 Regn), as they stand in the great uncials A and B, are

a late rev i sion greatly influenced by Origen . Where extant, the OldLatin gives an earlier type of text than either A or B or the so - calledLucianAse. I s. i i 5 Sadduc i s the reading of G , changed by the editors into

Zadok who remark “ The spelling CAAAOYK i s not found in the

LXX , where the normal form is Eabcéx (Am herst Papy ri, p .

But in E z ekiel the Greek Bible has Eabbovx, and in the HistoricalBooks this form is usual in Lucian , including 4 Regn xv 33, wherethe Latins have Saddoc (Vind.) and Sadduc

’

(Lucca) . And inthe genealogy of Ez ra, both according to the Greek of 1 Ez ra vii i 2and 2 Ez ra vi i 2, the name of Solomon’s high Priest is 2 515 80v

or Babbovx, not Eabcéx. It looks very much as if in NewTestamentt im es there was no difference between Zadok ites and Sadducees

possibly P173 (Zadok, Saddle) i s a later and artificial form .

2

1 See above , p. 45 if .

2 The oldest testim ony to‘ Z adok

’

is Josephus’s Straw/coo. Josephus was a

Pharisee .

THE ASCENSION OF ISAIAH 73

Ase. I s . 11 9 ICACOc (also IACOYB, iv the son of Isaiah . This

i s, of course, the person called in Isai vi i 3 Shear- j ashub, but theLXX speak s of him as 6 rcaraAac eZa

’

I aa ovfi. The Targum, on

the other hand,has ‘a remainder that have not sinned and that

have repented from sin, thy disciple’

(sic) . In pick ing out thelast two syllables of Shear- j ashub as alone representing a personalname, the Ascension thus goes with the Greek Bible againstJewish lore .

Asc. I s. i i 12 the 400 prophets 7 75 0 Bdah . In treating Baal asfemin ine the Ascension follows a method which no doubt wasoriginally Jewish but which now only survives inGreek

, e .g. Soph i 4 ; 4 Regn i 2 A, 6 AB,16 AB ; xx i 3 . In

a great many places in our present text of the Greek Bible Baal ’

has become mascul ine again (as of course it ought to be), probablythrough the influence of Origen ; but that this i s not original i ssuggested by S . Paul’s quotation of 3 Regn xix 18 which hasEdah, while A and B have BdaA.

Ase. I s . i i 16 flaa lhea Foudppwv . By the context, this i sAhaz iah, king of Samaria . Probably IND?) was misread HWDV,

”

says Dr Charles " But the genitive of ‘Gomorrha ’ i n Greek is

Fouo'

ppaa (e . g. Asc. i i i More probably therefore rom oPpi s a miswriting of COMOPOON, the alternative Greek name forSamaria (Isai v i i 9 , also 3 Regn xv i 24 Lucian, and 2 E z ra xiv

Ase. I s . i i i 2 Mfibwv Thither was Israel carried captive, accordingto 4 Regn xvi i 6, xv111 1 1 , in the Greek : the Masoretic text hascit ies not mountains ’ .

Asc. I s. i i i 5 7 631) u a ibwu The Greek Of the Historical Bookstends to distinguish ( in the plural ) between the BofiAoc who arebondmen or else worshippers of a God , and the flatbed who areofficials of a king, both classes being represented by the sameHebrew. The walbea of King Hez ekiah, for instance, are mentionedin 4 Regn xix 5 , so that here also the Ascension of I saiah conformsto the phraseology of the Greek Bible .

Asc. I s . i i i 6 . Isaiah is accused of prophesying that Jerusalem andJudah shall go into captivity év yaAeciypa (sic) m i 61) ne

’

baw ( i i iThis word yaAedypa i s from the nature of the case not of verycommon occurrence, as it seems to mean a sort of trap . But itcomes in Ez ek xix 9, where Jehoiachin being taken captive toBabylon i s compared to a lion brought home alive in a trap or cage .Here again the choice of words in the Ascension i s derived from theGreek Bible .

74 ON THE MARTYRDOM OF ISAIAH

Asc. I s . i i i 1 5 rob dyye'

hov riia rfia e’

u obpam'

p. Here theEthiopic is said to have “ the angel of the Chri stian Church whichi s in the heavens ”. It may be worth while to point out that thisgross contravention of the rule not prematurely to name namesin prophecy i s only the result of awkward translation . The regularrendering of éxxAna i

’

a in Ethiopic (e . g. Acts vii i l ) i s “ Houseof Chri stians here the Ethiopic has the angel of the House - ofChri stians but this simply corresponds word for word to 7 06

dyye‘o rfia EKKAna iao .

Ase. I s . 11 4 Beliar whose name is M atanbiichiis’

,v 3 ‘ in M echem

béchus’

.

1 So the Ethiopic : most unfortunately neither the Greeknor the Latin i s extant at either place . I n the Ascens ion of I sa iahBeliar i s “ the angel of lawlessness, the ruler of this world ”, thegreat opponent of the Christ and the true doctrine about theChrist. But he does not appear in a separate visible form . Hes its upon Manasse ( i in the heart of Manasse and his princes

( i i i 1 1 , v The story of the actual Martyrdom runs thusBeliar was wrath with Isaiah and sat in the heart of Manasse, 2 andwhile Isa iah was being sawn asunder Balchira (the false prophet)stood accus ing him

,

3 and Balchira by [or, in] Méchém b échus stood

(pl.) mocking,4 and Beliar said to Isaiah Say

,the ways of Balchira

are good 8 and I will turn the heart of Manasse ’

.

1 5 These things did Beliar to Isaiah by the hand o f Balchira andby the hand o f Manasse . 3

It is clear from this that Beliar i s speaking out of the mouthof Balchira . But j ust before he was ‘ in the heart of Manasse ’

.

Beliar therefore goes from one to the other. Is not this m etem

psy chosis ? I t seems to me that ba - m echém béchiis in v 3 stands forb id nereuxlf vxuia ewa and that in i i 4 M atanbitchiis stands for usre

’

u

wvxoa , or some such form .

1 See above , p . 46 , note .

2 i. e . M . is devil- ridden as in the Syriac phrase .

3 v 14 5 , com pressed .

APPEND IX I I I .

ON SOME OTHER KINDS OF APOCALYPSES .

I N the three Schweich Lectures it was impossible to pass i n reviewall Jewish and Christian Apocalypses . In the first place I have saidvery l ittle directly about the New Testament

,because I considered

that the matter in itself i s familiar, and its discussion, to be profitable,would need extended treatment . M k xi ii, or 1 Cor xv, alone wouldrequire a whole Lecture . But besides the New Testament there areother well - known works which I have passed over. This has not beenfrom considerations of space, but because I venture to think theybelong to an essentially d ifferent order of thought and represent adifferent movement from that which produced the Jewish Apocalypsesand gave birth to the Christian Church . Two of these call forspecial mention .

The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (called also 2 Enoch), preservedonly in Slavonic and edited by Dr Charles in 1896, i s a work composed in Greek , apparently in Egypt . It teaches that there are sevenheavens, that the year i s 365 1; days long ( i . e . the Julian reckoning) ,and that this world will last 7000 years . There is nothing abouta Messiah, Christian or Jewish . It i s evident that, even if we allow

for a millennial reign on earth at the end of this state of things,the author does not expect it to begin for some 800 years . I n otherwords

,the practical outlook of the Slavonic Enoch upon the world is

utterly different from that of the Jewish Apocalypses considered inthi s volume and from that of the New Testament . In these theEnd of all things i s at hand

,in the Slavonic Enoch the world is com

paratively stable and the End is far off.When we ask what the date of the Slavonic Enoch is, or what kindof person compiled it, no very certain answer can be given . DrCharles ( I ntrod. 5 ) has collected together a number of parallels

with early Christian literature,comprising e . g. the passages which

assume the exi stence of seven heavens, or the derivation of the nameAdam from the initial letters of the four quarters of the world

Alio’

to‘

,

"Apm

'

oa , Meannfipta . But in no instance i s the

76 OTHER K INDS or APOCALYPSES

l iterary connexion assured . It appears to me that this is one of them any cases in which we ought to take account of the choice of

pseudonym . The only passage which has been held to prove a datebe fore 70 A . D. i s lix 2, in which the offering of clean beasts as a sacrifice is mentioned, and sacrifices could only be offered in Jerusalem

’

(Charles, on 2 Enoch li But the whole book i s supposed to bewritten before the Flood , long before the promulgation of the MosaicLaw . Enoch’s sons are all mankind

,and the book actually closes

with an account of Methusalem ’s sacrifice to the Lord on the occasionof his father Enoch’s translation ( lxvi i i 5 , I do not know thata Christian romance of Enoch need differ very much from a Jewishromance of Enoch . And further, the whole question of the channels

by which rare and curious literature found their way into Slavonicrequires fresh and independent investigation .

1

The Apocalypses of Elias and S ophonias and the other works

edited by Steindorff in T. u . U. (N .F . ) i i 3a in 1899 are most curiousdocuments . The MSS from which they are edited are very ancient(4th or 5 th though unfortunately they are mere fragments,li ke m ost early Coptic MSS . For our present purpose, the specialinterest of the Apoca lypse (f Elia s i s that it is generally supposed tohe Jewish

,or at least that i ts subj ect - matter is derived directly from

Jewish legends . I have com e to doubt this , and to think that theJewish colouring of parts o f the book is to be explained by the samerule as I have used to explain the universalism o f Enoch, viz . that ifa work professes to be the work of a Jewish Prophet it was not cons idered appropriate that it should be too explicitly Christian,especially in the naming of names . It may be not iced here that thestory o f Susanna is m entioned (p . and the name Shadrach appearsin the form Seara le 2 Further, the true Messiah will be distin

gu ished by the s ign of the Cross (p . 161 while Antichrist, for all his

miraculous powers, will be unable to raise the dead or have power overl ife I cannot help thinking that S . Cyril of Jerusalem knewof this book , or something very l ike it, and that it forms the background of the picture of Antichrist at Jerusalem , given by Cyril in

Catechesis xv 1 4, 1 5 , notwithstanding his express profession of relyingon no apocryphal document.

1 I wonder that in the new edition of 2 Enoch (Ap ocrypha and P seudepigrapha n

p . 437) no notice is taken of M . R . Jam es’

s discovery that in xv l‘every bird ’

shou ldb e

‘every cock ’

, and that what the cock says at cockcrow is given in xv see

Ap ocrypha Anecdota I I , p. lxv.

2 i. e . ceapax for ceApax (or ceApax) .

OTHER KINDS OF APOCALYPSES 77

Further investigation may possibly reveal a genuine Jewish elementin these Egyptian works, but it seems to me that they owe a greatdeal more to native ideas of appropriate punishment meted out toindividual ev ildoers as they arrive after death in Hell . Coptic writersfreely borrow their vocabulary from Greek, but they always use thevernacular for Am ente, where all the souls of the dead are collectedfrom the Flood to the present day (p .

80

PAGE

21, 70 f .

2 18n .

47, 74

46

5 4

5 5

5 7 n.

MOSES(Assum p tion of

19, 37—40

SOLOMON(Psalm s of )xvii

XI I PATRIARCH SRea v i 10

Jos x ix 1 ff .

Tendency of

1 5,34 f .

,47

Abe l Beth -Ma'

acha 30

Aboth, Park? 8 n . , 9

A . D. 70,Effects of

4, 8 ff. , 13 , 40 til , 7

Akib a 9,12 n .

, 21Am ente 77

Ant1ochu s Epiphanes

Apam ea 30Aq u i laAsm oneans

,seeMaccabees

Az ael (Azazel ) 20, 28, 68

INDEX

PAGEBaal (fem . )Bachcr, W.

BardaisanBarnabas , Ep. of 10Beliar 45 f. 74Bereshi th rabba 44 12 n.

Bevan , Edwyn 7, 30 f.

Box, G . H .

Eliou (d )noch (S lavonic) 75 f .

Eph raim Syrusxx ix 22 68

Esdras , see 4 EzraEv. da -Mepharreshc 68

Gal i leeGeopon ica x i 1

Gospe ls , Synoptic21 iii

,40

I ncarnation,the

I nconm stencies

Judaism and H e l lenism 8, 25 , 3of. , 5 o

Judgem ent, Last23 112, 31 f . , 43, 49 , 71

K ingdom of God

7, 12 f. , 15 , 22K ip ling 20 n .

K yam a , Bnai 68

Maccabees 16, 35 37 f .

Martyrs, Maccab

’

ean

6 f . , 36, 42Mead, G . R . S . 18n .

Mess iah 37, 43

see also Son of ManMetem psychos is 46 n.

,74

Nephi limNero redivivu s

Peter, Apocalypse of 44

Ph i lo 5Pastis Sophia 35 4 18n .

Pos idonius 30 ft.Pseudonym ity 5 f. , 19, 76

Qoran liv l

Rab b inic Religion8,14

, 80Reitzenstein 30 n .

Sa lath ie l 4 1

Sim on the Just 8n .

Son of Man f .

Sophonias , Ap. of 76Sou rces , lost,reconstruction Of 41

,62

Sp i rit 22,65 n .

Stars 3, 30 f ., 70 f .

Stoics 3 , 30 f . ,Synce l lus , see EnochSyncretism

Taxo (Eleazar) 39 n . ,40

Tertu l lian 10,18

,39

V ergi l , Geor. i i 490

V is ions

We llhau senWens inck

, A. J.

Year, length of 70 f .

,75

Z adok, Sadduk

Canon, Jewish

Charles , R. H . 26 f . , 34,3 5 m , 37 n , 5 4, 63 ,

65 f ., .69 f

, 73 , 75Civi lization,

4, 32

, 49Cosm os , the 7, 21 , 3 1 f .Cyri l (Of Jerus .

Dan,Waters of

Dante 2, 44 f .

Dem ons 22 11 , 31DidacheDoublets (in Enoch ) 63

Jam es, M . R . 39 n . , 76 n .

Jam nia 8 n.,1 1

Jannaeus 1 1Jared 5 3 if .

Jerom e , De V. I ll. 1 7Johanan b . Z akkai

42Jordan, Soii rces of 28 f .Josephu s 72 11 .

Joshua b. H anania 8n.

Journ. of Theol. S tud ies

vii i 445 65 n .

x 135 3 5

xii i 374 19

preface this book contains the three schweich lectures for 1913, printed almost exactly as they were...

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