Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotton Mission of Jesus Christ by Michael S. Heiser

2016·1.91 MB·English

Reversing Hermon:
Enoch, the Watchers, and the
Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ

by Michael S. Heiser
© Copyright 2017
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.

Cover design by Jeffrey Mardis.
ISBN: 978-0-9981426-3-0
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section Preview: Part I
Chapter 1: The Sons of God and the Nephilim
Chapter 2: The Sin of the Watchers
Chapter 3: The Mesopotamian Apkallu, the Watchers, and the Nephilim
Section Preview: Part II
Chapter 4: The Sin of the Watchers and the Birth of Jesus
Chapter 5: The Sin of the Watchers and the Genealogy of Jesus
Chapter 6: The Sin of the Watchers and the Ministry of Jesus
Section Preview: Part III
Chapter 7: The Sin of the Watchers and Human Depravity
Chapter 8: The Sin of the Watchers and the Head Covering of 1
Corinthians 11
Chapter 9: The Sin of the Watchers and Baptism
Section Preview: Part IV
Chapter 10: The Sin of the Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Antichrist
Chapter 11: The Sin of the Watchers and the Apocalypse
Conclusion
Appendix I: The Question of the Inspiration of 1 Enoch in the Early
Church
Appendix II: The Dating and Manuscript Evidence for 1 Enoch and the
Book of Giants
Appendix III: Scholarly Bibliography on 1 Enoch and the Book of
Giants
Appendix IV: New Testament Allusions to Books of the Pseudepigrapha
Appendix V: The Ancient Antichrist Profile: Jew or Gentile?
Notes
Dedication

For “Booma” Miriam I. Heiser (1903–1992)
Acknowledgments This book has been
a long time in coming, both in terms of
finally producing something for my friend
Tom Horn, but also because no book like it
exists. Readers will discover in these pages
that much time and effort in high biblical
scholarship has been devoted to the study
of 1 Enoch (more popularly known as “the
Book of Enoch”) and its importance for
New Testament theology. Hundreds of
scholarly journal articles and doctoral
dissertations have explored the literary
and theological relationships between the
two, but to date that research has never
been collected and put forth in one volume
—for either the academy or interested
non-specialists. I’m thankful for Tom’s
encouragement to produce Reversing
Hermon to fill that void to some degree.
Thanks are also due to my listeners at the Naked Bible Podcast. Several
of the topics covered in this book were enthusiastically received as podcast
episodes some time ago. The reception encouraged me to take the step and
move forward with this project.
Lastly, the efforts of Kay Anderson were most appreciated. Kay worked
quickly and efficiently to proofread the manuscript. Her eye for detail and
thoroughness are duly noted.
Introduction
This book is about the important influence that the
story of the sin of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 6–16 had on the thinking of
New Testament authors. For those to whom 1 Enoch sounds unfamiliar, this
is the ancient apocalyptic literary work known popularly (but imprecisely)
[1]
as “the Book of Enoch.” Most scholars believe that 1 Enoch was
originally written in Aramaic
[2]
perhaps as early as the third century B.C. The oldest fragments of the
book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and dated to roughly the
second century B.C. This places the book squarely in the middle of what
scholars call the Second Temple Period (ca. 500 B.C.—A.D. 70), an era
more commonly referred to as the “Intertestamental Period.” This book will
use the more academic designation (“Second Temple Period”).
The Task
[3]
The term “Watchers” is a biblical one. The Watchers (Aramaic: ʿirin)
appear only in the book of Daniel in the Bible (Daniel 4:13, 17, 23), where
they are also called “holy ones.” In Daniel, they are therefore “good”
members of God’s entourage. The term occurs more frequently outside the
Bible in Jewish literature composed between the Old and New Testament
periods.
The Watcher story of 1 Enoch, as many readers will recall, is an
expansion of the episode described in Genesis 6:1–4, in which “the sons of
God (Hebrew: beney ha-ʾelohim) came in to the daughters of man”
(Genesis 6:4, ESV). Consequently, “Watchers” is the Enochian term of
[4]
choice (among others) for the divine “sons of God.” While the story of
this supernatural rebellion occupies scant space in Genesis, it received
considerable attention during the Second Temple Period. As we shall see,
this attention is not peripheral to biblical theology.
The reason for this assertion is straightforward and will be demonstrated
in detail: The Enochian version of the events of Genesis 6:1–4 preserves
and transmits the original Mesopotamian context for the first four verses of
the Flood account. Every element of Genesis 6:1–4 has a Mesopotamian