ebook img

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Volume 1: Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam PDF

408 Pages·2018·28.473 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Volume 1: Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Volume I Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam JOHN C. REEVES AND ANNETTE YOSHIKO REED OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © John C. Reeves and Annette Yoshiko Reed 2018 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943298 ISBN 978-0-19-871841-3 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Preface "He (i.e., Enoch) is associated with many wonders, and he also has a famous book. It is unnecessary to recount the marvels connected with him in this place:' 1 This book-Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-represents the public form of a research project begun over twenty-five years ago under the title "The Recovery oft he Enochic Library:' Its initial objective was twofold: (1) to assemble the multitudinous citations of and references to writings attributed to the biblical antediluvian forefather Enoch in post-biblical Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literary sources (ranging in age from roughly the third century BCE up through the thirteenth and four teenth centuries CE) into one convenient collection; and (2) to compare, clas sify, and analyze these references and citations in order to develop a clearer picture of the scope and range of the "Enochic library;' or the entire corpus of works attributed to Enoch and his subsequent interreligious avatars. As first conceived, the intent of the project was to focus primarily upon those sources which explicitly mentioned or quoted from Enochic books, but the numerous allusions within these literatures to specific characters, motifs, and themes of an indubitably Enochic pedigree inevitably led to the expansion of the project's parameters so as to also embrace passages from the aforementioned literatures which betray an acquaintance with the extant Enochic materials of Second Temple Jewish and early Roman Jewish and Christian provenance. This allows the inclusion not only of those later testimonia which display knowledge of particular Enochic literary themes (e.g., the story about the descent of the Watchers), but also those sources whose representation of the character of Enoch approximates the distinctive curriculum vitae assigned to him in early works like 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, or Jubilees. As a result, the complete work divides conveniently into two parts. The pres ent volume, Volume 1, is devoted to textual traditions about the narratological career of the character Enoch: the distinctive epithets frequently paired with his name, his cultural achievements, his societal roles, his interactions with the celestial world, his eventual fate, and the various identities he assumes outside the purely biblical world of discourse within other discursive networks and intellectual circles. Volume 2, currently under preparation, will feature those 1 Ms. Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. arab. 243, as cited by Ernst Trumpp, ed., Gadla 'Adam: Der Kampf Adams (Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe der koniglich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 15.3; Miinchen: Verlag der K. Akademie, 1881), 120 n. 5. vi Preface sources which arguably display a knowledge of the contents of extant Enochic literature, including but not limited to 1 Enoch (the Ethiopic Book of Enoch). Within both volumes, the separate chapters are arranged thematically and then sub-divided according to subject or motif. The sources appear in roughly chronological order, from oldest to youngest regardless oflanguage or religious affiliation. Critical analysis or assessment of the citations has been deliberately minimized in order to invite readers to think about these texts and their vari ous interconnections in new ways. Abbreviations of primary sources, learned journals, and monographic series follow for the most part the system estab lished by The SBL Handbook of Style. The long gestation period for this project has naturally occasioned a number of debts and obligations which I owe and now want to acknowledge before the wider scholarly community. First I want to thank my co-author, Annette Yoshiko Reed, who has encouraged me and cheerfully labored together with me on this lengthy work for approximately the past fifteen years; her sagacious contributions to the final form of the book are quite simply incalculable. Two scholars who took a keen interest in this project from its earliest days, William Adler and Steven M. Wasserstrom, provided me with a number of useful ana lytical and bibliographical suggestions. When he heard that I was beginning to assemble examples of post-biblical Enochica, James C. VanderKam forwarded to me (unsolicited!) a xerox copy of his pre-publication draft for his eventual 1996 article on "l Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature" (see Bibliography), an unexpected kindness for which I remain grateful. My conversations and correspondence over the years with two titans of Enochic scholarship, Michael E. Stone and George W. E. Nickelsburg, have helped mold the shape and the substance of this work. Research on various facets of this project was supported by major fellowships from the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (fall 2007) and the American Council of Learned Societies (fall 2015), and facilitated at an early stage by grants from the Society of Biblical Literature (1992), Winthrop University (1993-4), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (sum mer 1994). Since 1996 I have been indebted to the Blumenthal Foundation for its continuing generous financial support of my research and teaching efforts in Jewish and cognate studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. And last, but not least, I want to voice a special note of gratitude to the editorial staff at Oxford University Press for their extraordinary patience while awaiting the final delivery of this manuscript. John C. Reeves, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Contents Introduction 1 1. Stock Epithets and Cross-Cultural Cognomens 17 2. Enoch as Culture Hero: What Enoch Discovered, Learned, Taught, and Wrote 53 3. Enoch's Roles in Human Society lll 4. Enoch's Interactions with Angels 170 5. Enoch's Escape from Death 210 6. Enoch's Association or Equation with Other Figures 254 7. The Books of Enoch and their Reputation 304 Bibliography 335 Index of Citations 3 77 Index of Scriptural and Parascriptural Characters 389 Index ofA ngels, Deities, Demons, Epic, and Mythological Characters 391 Index ofA ncient and Medieval Scholars, Teachers, Authors, and Tradents 392 Index ofA ncient and Medieval Book or Story Titles 394 Index ofM odern Authors 396 Introduction Across the ancient and medieval literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam one finds references to the antediluvian sage Enoch. The only biblical notice about Enoch is brief and cryptic, placing him the seventh in the line from Adam and recounting his mysterious removal from human society ( Gen 5:21-4). Perhaps partly as a result, traditions soon flourished about his escape from death and his otherworldly travels.1 By the third century BCE, Enochic lore had found extensive written expression in Aramaic. Enoch, in fact, is the subject of two of the oldest known Jewish books outside of the Hebrew Bible: the Book of the Watchers (1 En. 1-36) and the Astronomical Book (1 En. 72-82).2 These books claim to record Enoch's own words and writings about what he saw in heaven and at the ends of the earth, his knowledge of the cosmos and celestial cycles, and his interactions with heavenly and fallen angels (cf. Gen 6:1-4).3 The Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book are themselves reservoirs of even older lore, including some materials with connections to ancient Near 1 For a survey of early traditions about the figure of Enoch, see James C. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (C olumbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). 2 See now George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 2001), 129-332 on the Book of the Watchers, as well as 9-17 for a summary of the Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic witnesses to it. On the Astronomical Book, see Henryk Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book from Qumran: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 2012), 334-574. 3 On the knowledge attributed to Enoch in these early works, see Kelly Coblentz Bautch, A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17-19: "No One Has Seen What I Have Seen" (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Annette Yoshiko Reed, "Heavenly Ascent, Angelic Descent, and the Transmission of Knowledge in 1 Enoch 6-16;' in Ra'anan S. Boustan and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds, Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004b ), 47-66; Jonathan Ben-Dov and Seth L. Sanders, eds, Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Judaism (ISAW Series; New York: New York University Press, 2014). The Book of the Watchers, in particular, also contains early examples of some of the hall marks of apocalyptic literature, such as heavenly ascent, angelic hierarchies, revelatory frame narratives, and detailed concern for the post-mortem and eschatological fate of humankind; see further, e.g., John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 43-62; Michael E. Stone, "Enoch and Apocalyptic Origins;' in Paul D. Hanson, ed., Visionaries and their Apocalypses (IRT 4; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 92-100; Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 2 Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages Eastern mythology and Babylonian divination and sciences. 4 In turn, the oldest Enochic books were influential in the growth of a distinctive discourse about the antediluvian era. In the Second Temple period, a common perception developed wherein Enoch was considered to be an exemplary righteous individual who was transported to heaven and granted access to divine secrets regarding the govern ance of the cosmos, the progression of history, and the final judgment of the cre ated order. Enoch was associated, moreover, with the rebuke of angelic Watchers who sinned by taking human wives, teaching secret knowledge to humankind, and siring Giants whose disembodied spirits now roam the earth as demons. Both the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book were long known from their Ethiopic versions, which are preserved as part of Ma~fJafa Henok Nabiy ("Book ofEnoch the Prophet")-an Enochic compendium known in the West as "1 Enoch."5 Since the discovery of Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, these books have attracted renewed attention as important sources for ancient Judaism.6 Among the results has been the recognition of the surprisingly long and varied tradition surrounding Enoch. Within 1 Enoch alone, for instance, we find evidence for intensive literary creativity. The two books from the third century BCE are here anthologized with materials attributed to Enoch from the second century BCE, such as the Book of Dreams (1 En. 83-90) and Epistle of Enoch (1 En. 91-108), together with the possibly first-century Parables ofE noch (1 En. 37-71).7 This compendium 4 Pierre Grelot, "La geographie mythique d'Henoch et ses sources orientales;' RB 65 (1958a): 33-69; Paul D. Hanson, "Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6-11;' JBL 96 (1977): 195-233; James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth ofa n Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS 16; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984); Helge S. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son ofM an (Neukirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988); Matthias Albani, Astronomie und Schopfungsglaube: Untersuchungen zum astronomischen Henochbuch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1994); Mark J. Geller, "New Documents from the Dead Sea: Babylonian Science in Aramaic;' in Meir Lubetski, Claire Gottlieb, and Sharon Keller, eds, Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon (JSOTSup 273; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 224-9; Henryk Drawnel, "Some Notes on Scribal Craft and the Origins oft he Enochic Literature;' Henoch 31 (2009): 66-72; Henryk Drawnel, "Between Akkadian tupsarrutu and Aramaic spr: Some Notes on the Social Context oft he Early Enochic Literature;' RevQ 24 (2010): 373-403. 5 That is, as chapters 1-36 and 72-82 respectively. The Book of the Watchers is also partially extant in a Greek MS (c.fifth century CE; Codex Panopolitanus) as well as in excerpts preserved by the Byzantine chronographer George Syncellus. The Aramaic, Greek, and Ge'ez versions of the Book oft he Watchers correspond relatively closely, while the extant Aramaic and Ge'ez versions of the Astronomical Book are notably divergent, and only a small possible fragment of a Greek ver sion survives. 6 i.e., 4Q201-202, 4Q204-205, 4Q208-211. Aramaic fragments of these and other Enochic books were first published in J. T. Milik, The Books ofE noch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). The full array of Aramaic evidence for the Astronomical Book, how ever, was not available until E. J. C. Tigchelaar and F. Garcia Martinez's publication of 4Q208-209 in Stephen J. Pfann and Philip Alexander, eds, Qumran Cave 4 XXVI: Cryptic Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1 (DJD 36; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 95-131. 7 For varying assessment of the formation of 1 Enoch itself, see Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 21-8; Devorah Dimant, "The BiographyofEnoch and the Books ofEnoch;' VT33 (1983): 14-29; Annette Yoshiko Reed, "The Textual Identity, Literary History, and Social Setting of 1 Enoch: Reflections on Introduction 3 thus preserves some of the process by which the cosmological, angelological, and demonological interests of the earliest stage of Enochic tradition came to be expanded to embrace historical, eschatological, and ethical concerns as well. Yet 1E noch reflects only a selection of the Second Temple texts and traditions surrounding Enoch. Fragments of the Book of Giants, for instance, were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and bear intriguing connections to later Manichaean and Jewish traditions about Enoch's interactions with the sons of the fallen angels.8 An apocalypse of possibly Egyptian Jewish origin, 2 Enoch, survives in Slavonic and Coptic translations, and claims to report on Enoch's journeys through multiple heavens.9 An apocalypse of possibly Byzantine Christian origins, Vision ofE noch the Just, survives in Armenian and predicts the end-times.10 One late Hekhalot text, Sefer Hekhalot or 3 Enoch, attests continued interest in Enoch among late antique Jews, recounting Enoch's transformation into the exalted angel Metatron.11 George Nickelsburg's Commentary on 1 Enoch 1-36; 81-108;' ARG 5 (2003): 279-96; Michael A. Knibb, "Christian Adoption and Transmission ofJewish Pseudepigrapha: The Case ofl Enoch;' JS! 32 (2001): 396-415; Michael A. Knibb, "The Book of Enoch or Books of Enoch? The Textual Evidence for 1 Enoch;' in Gabriele Boccaccini and John J. Collins, eds, The Early Enoch Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 21-40; Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91-108 (Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007a), 5-15. On the puzzling Parables of Enoch, see the contributions collected in Gabriele Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book ofP arables (G rand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). 8 John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions (HUCM 14; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992); Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Book ofG iants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary (TSAJ 63; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano, eds, Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfa n: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences (WUNT 360; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). 9 For up-to-date bibliography and discussion of 2 Enoch, see Andrei A. Orlov and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds, New Perspectives on 2 Enoch: No Longer Slavonic Only (Studia Judaeoslavica 4; Leiden: Brill, 2012). For the Coptic fragments, see Joost L. Hagen, "No Longer 'Slavonic' Only: 2 Enoch Attested in Coptic from Nubia;' in Orlov and Boccaccini, eds, New Perspectives on 2 Enoch, 7-34. On the Slavonic manuscripts, see Grant Macaskill, The Slavonic Texts of 2 Enoch (Studia Judaeoslavica 6; Leiden: Brill, 2013). For an assessment of the Egyptian Jewish provenance of 2 Enoch, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, "2 Enoch and the Trajectories of Jewish Cosmology: From Mesopotamian Astronomy to Greco-Egyptian Philosophy in Roman Egypt;' JJTP 22 (2014a): 1-24. 10 See Jacques Issaverdens, trans., The Uncanonical Writings of the Old Testament Found in the Armenian MSS oft he Library ofS t. Lazarus (2nd edn; Venice: Armenian Monastery of St Lazarus, 1934), 237-48, and the discussion in Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1997), 299; Anders Hultgard, "The Vision of Enoch the Just and Medieval Apocalypses;' in Valentina Calzolari Bouvier, Jean-Daniel Kaestli, and Bernard Outlier, eds, Apocryphes armeniens: Transmission-traduction-creation-iconographie (Lausanne: Editions du Zebre, 1999), 156-8; Annette Yoshiko Reed, "Enoch in Armenian Apocrypha;' in Kevork B. Bardakjian and Sergio La Porta, eds, The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective (SVTP 25; Leiden: Brill, 2014b ), 149-87; cf. Milik, Books ofE noch, 116-17. See now, more broadly, Michael E. Stone, "Some Texts on Enoch in the Armenian Tradition;' in Jeffrey Stackert, Barbara Nevling Porter, and David P. Wright, eds, Gazing on the Deep: Ancient Near Eastern and Other Studies in Honor ofTsvi Abusch (Bethesda: CDL Press, 2010a), 517-30. 11 On so-called 3 Enoch, see Philip S. Alexander, "The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch;' JJS 28 (1977): 156-80; Philip S. Alexander, "3 Enoch and the Talmud;' JS! 18 (1987): 4 Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages The decades since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls have seen a renais sance in the study of Eno chic literature. Even today, however, few scholars have attempted to correlate their studies of the surviving literature with analysis of the wealth oflater citations and allusions to Enoch and his writings. The reason is largely logistical. Such references are spread across a remarkably broad range of religious traditions, literary corpora, and languages. At present, there is no single guide to them. The wide diffusion ofEnochic texts and traditions signals their unique significance for understanding the intertwined religious cultures of the late antique and medieval Near East. Yet it also poses a practical chal lenge: in order to utilize these later references and allusions, scholars must consult texts ofd iverse languages in a variety of print and manuscript resources, many of which are not readily available in convenient form. The aim of the present volume is to provide a comprehensive set of core ref erences for easy and accessible consultation. In creating such a resource, it is our hope that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions. Specialists in the Second Temple period-the era in which Enochic literature first appears-will be able to trace (or discount) the survival of Enochic motifs and mythemes within Jewish literary circles from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, thereby shedding light on the trajectories of Jewish apocalypticism and its possible intersections with Jewish mysticism.12 Students of Near Eastern esotericism and Hellenistic philosophies will have further data for exploring the origins of "gnosticism'' and its possible impact upon sectarian currents in Judaism, 40-68; Annette Yoshiko Reed, "From Asael and Semihazah to Uzzah, Azzah, and Azael: 3 Enoch 5 (§§7-8) and the Jewish Reception-History of 1 Enoch;' JSQ 8 (2001): 1-32; Daniel Boyarin, "Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism;' JS! 41 (2010): 323-65; Peter Schafer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 103-49; Klaus Herrmann, "Jewish Mysticism in Byzantium;' in Ra'anan S. Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schafer, eds, Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia (TSAJ 153; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 85-139. 12 For the debate, see Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980); Moshe Idel, "Enoch Is Metatron;' Immanuel 24-5 (1990): 220-40; Martha Himmelfarb, "Heavenly Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature;' HUCA 59 (1988): 73-100; Martha Himmelfarb, "Merkavah Mysticism since Scholem: Rachel Elior's The Three Temples:' in Peter Schafer, ed., Wege mystischer Gotteserfahrung: Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 65; Miinchen: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006b), 19-36; Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004); Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (TSAJ 107; Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); Philip S. Alexander, "What Happened to the Jewish Priesthood after 70?" in Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley, eds, A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour ofS ean Freyne (JSJSupp 132; Leiden: Brill, 2009), 3-34; Peter Schafer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Annette Yoshiko Reed, "Categorization, Collection, and the Construction of Continuity: 1 Enoch and 3 Enoch in and beyond 'Apocalypticism' and 'Mysticism;" MTSR 29 (2017): 268-311. Introduction 5 Christianity, and Islam.13 Those interested in the intellectual symbiosis among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages-and especially in the trans mission of the ancient sciences associated with Hermeticism (e .g., astrology, theurgy, divinatory techniques, alchemy, angelology, demonology)-will be able to view a chain of tradition reconstructed in its entirety for the first time in textual form.14 In the process, we hope to provide historians of religion with a new tool for assessing the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and for understanding the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East. RECOVERING THE ENOCHIC LIBRARY In light of the current status of 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch in the modern West-as "non-canonical" books often categorized as "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha'' - it might be tempting to dismiss Enochic books as "esoteric" or to limit their influence to the periods prior to the closing of Jewish and Christian biblical canons. Yet the continued significance of Enochic texts and traditions is sug gested by the dazzling scope and variety of ancient and medieval references to them. Texts in a broad array oflanguages-including Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Arabic-integrate motifs or mythemes from known Enochic books. In addition, direct references to words, "prophecies;' or "books" of Enoch can be found across a broad continuum of writings created by Jews, Christians, Muslims, Manichaeans, and "gnostics:' Premodern estimates of Enoch's literary productivity ranged from the early Muslim tradent Wahb b. Munabbih's "thirty scrolls" to 2 Enoch's 360 or 366 books. However fantastical these claims, they point to widespread familiarity with Enochic materials. Only a few indubitably Enochic "books" survive today. From the ancient and medieval testimonies to Enoch's loquacity, however, it seems probable that texts like 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch represent only a small por tion of what was once a much larger tradition.15 For many centuries, both old and new Enochic writings appear to have circulated in various forms among 13 John C. Reeves, Heralds of That Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions (NHMS 41; Leiden: Brill, 1996). 14 Steven M. Wasserstrom, "Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Muslim Literature: A Bibliographical and Methodological Sketch;' in John C. Reeves, ed., Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (SBLEJL 6; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994c), 87-114; Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Kevin van Blade!, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 15 So already Jonas Greenfield and Michael E. Stone, "The Books of Enoch and the Traditions ofEnoch;' Numen 26 (1979): 89-103; see also Pierre Grelot, "Henoch et ses ecritures;' RB 82 (1975): 481-500.

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.