The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its Influence on Christianity

129 Pages·2005·13.27 MB·English

by  Margaret Barker

THE LOST PROPHET
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Older Testament
The Gate of Heaven
The Great Angel
On Earth as it is in Heaven
The Risen Lord
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
The Great High Priest
Temple Theology
An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels
THE LOST PROPHET
The Book of Enoch and its Influence on Christianity
Margaret Barker
Sheffield
Phoenix Press
Copyright © Sheffield Phoenix Press 2005
First published by SPCK 1988
Reprinted by Sheffield Phoenix Press 2005
Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd
Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield
Sheffield S102TN UK
www.sheffieldphoenix.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any
information storage or retrieval system, without the publisher's permission in
writing.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed by Lightning Source UK Ltd
ISBN 1-905048-18-1
Contents
Note: Non-Biblical books ix
Introduction I
i The Lost Prophet 5
2 The Book of Enoch 16
3 The Origin of Evil 33
4 The Vision of God 49
5 The Parables 65
6 The Cosmic Covenant 77
7 The Son of Man 91
Postscript 105
Index 114
In Memory of
Roger Cowley
who died on 5 April 1988
The Prophet
With fainting soul athirst for Grace,
I wandered in a desert place
And at the crossing of the ways
I saw the sixfold seraph blaze;
He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night:
And like a frightened eagle's eyes,
They opened wide with prophecies.
He touched mine ears, and they were drowned
With tumult and a roaring sound:
I heard convulsion in the sky,
And flights of angel hosts on high,
And beasts that move beneath the sea,
And the sap creeping in the tree.
And bending to my mouth he wrung
From out of it my sinful tongue,
And all its lies and idle rust,
And twixt my lips a-perishing
A subtle serpent's forked sting
With right hand wet with blood he thrust.
And with his sword my breast he cleft
My quaking heart thereout he reft,
And in the yawning of my breast
A coal of living fire he pressed.
Then in the desert I lay dead,
And God called unto me and said:
'Arise, and let my voice be heard,
Charged with my will go forth and span
The land and sea, and let my word
Lay waste with fire the heart of man.'
A. S. Pushkin
tr. Maurice Baring in
Have You Anything to Declare? (Heinemann 1936)

Note: Non-Biblical Books
This is a short but inaccurate title to describe the less well-known texts
mentioned in this book. Several of the texts mentioned below are, or
have been, biblical. Some are now classed as apocryphal, or deutero-
canonical. Others are pseudepigraphical, and can be read in any of
the collections of texts listed on p. 15.
The Odes of Solomon (not to oe confused with the Psalms of Solomon)
is an early Christian hymnbook from the end of the first century. The
Odes have many Jewish features (as does Christianity!), and it is not
certain whether they were originally Jewish or Christian. The most
complete version has survived in Syriac, but there are some in Coptic
and one in Greek.
The Ascension of Isaiah is another text of unknown origin which
probably had a Jewish core and was expanded by Christian writers. It
tells of the martyrdom of Isaiah in the time of the evil king Manasseh
(2 Kings 21.1—18) and of his visionary ascent through seven heavens
to the great throne of God. The book gives a valuable picture of
Christian belief at the end of the first century; it has survived com­
plete in Ethiopic, and in fragments in Greek, Latin, Coptic and Old
Slavonic.
Jubilees is a rewriting of Genesis, and takes its name from the author's
way of reckoning time in Jubilees, periods of forty-nine years. He
writes to show that the Law of Moses was observed even before the
time of Moses, and that the patriarchs kept even the later, non-biblical
expansions of the Jewish Law. It survives in Ethiopic, and there are
Latin fragments. Several manuscripts in fragment form have also
been found at Qumran, suggesting a date in the early or middle second
century BC.
The Testaments of tfie Twelve Patriarchs are the 'death-bed' speeches of
each of Jacob's twelve sons, the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. They
warn their descendants of future evils, and exhort them to an upright
ix