Category:Enochic Studies--1850s

August Dillmann

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Enochic Studies in the 1850s (second half of the 19th century)--Works and Authors

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Overview

In 1851 August Dillmann published the first eclectic edition of 1 Enoch based on 5 manuscripts, and in 1853 a German translation with commentary. The number of manuscripts of 1 Enoch available to Western scholars increased exponentially during the second half of the 19th century as the result of new expeditions in Ethiopia and acquisitions from antique dealers. By the end of the 19th century, copies of 1 Enoch were present in libraries in England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. New translations appeared: in French (Gustave Brunet, 1856), English (George H. Schodde, 1882), Russian (Aleksandr V. Smirnov, 1888), and Hebrew (Lazarus Goldschmidt, 1892).

Increasingly divorced from the scholarly debate, esoteric speculations found new forms to survive and prosper, based on the claim that the Ethiopic book of Enoch was nothing more than a corrupted, forged and censored copy of the "true" wisdom of Enoch. In 1836 Anacalypsis by Godfrey Higgins had inaugurated what would be later called the new genre of “Fantastic Archaeology,” by collecting evidence to prove his assumptions about the existence of a primeval religion of humankind. In a similar fashion, in 1872 Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy related Enoch to the myth of Atlantis by making him king of Atlantis and the historical founder of universal wisdom.

Pseudo-science was not the only means of survival of Enochic esoteric traditions. In 1861 French occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Lévi) revived a neo-Christian-Kabbalist tradition, based on the works of Panteo and John Dee. Constant's work directly influenced the development in England of the system of Enochian Magic and the birth of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The first initiations into the new Order took place at Mark Mason's Hall, London in March 1888. The Order dissolved in 1903 due to internal conflicts, but all contemporary forms of Enochian Magic have their roots in the experience of that group.

Free of the burden of esoteric speculations, Enochic scholarship flourished. August Dillmann published the first German translation (1850-51) and the first critical edition of the Ethiopic text (1859) of the Book of Jubilees, of which Antonio Maria Ceriani made available in 1861 also large portions of the old Latin version. The editio princeps of the Hebrew text of 3 Enoch in Lemberg in 1864, and the first critical edition of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs by Robert Sinker in 1869 further advanced the scholarly knowledge of Enochic traditions. Major progress in the study of the text of 1 Enoch was also made thanks to the publication in 1892-93 of a new Greek fragment of the document (containing chs. 1-32). The ms (found in 1886-87 in Egypt) gave scholars not only a text larger than the one provided by the fragments of George Syncellus, but also a better understanding of the history of transmission of the text from the Semitic original to the Ethiopic. The English translation of 1 Enoch by Robert Henry Charles in 1893 was the first to use critically all this new material, thus opening a new stage in the history of research. Charles also published with W.R. Morfill the first English translation of 2 Enoch in 1896, making the Enochic traditions preserved in Slavonic available to specialists and the public in the West.

By the end of the 19th century the three major writings attributed to Enoch (1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch) had been published and the emancipation of Enochic Studies from esoteric and magic concerns had been definitively accomplished. Contemporary Enochic scholarship was born.

@2014 Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan

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  Eliphas Lévi

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  S.L.M. Mathers performing a Golden Dawn ritual

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  Aleister Crowley in Golden Dawn garb