Category:Parables of Enoch (text)

This page is edited by David W. Suter, St Martin’s University (Lacey, WA), United States of America

The Parables of Enoch is a Jewish writing, a section of 1 Enoch, generally included in collections of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

Overview

Also known as the Similitudes of Enoch, this work comprises chapters 37-71 of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch. It is a Jewish apocalypse that is likely to be dated from the early to mid first century CE, or perhaps in the latter part of the first century BCE. It was initially composed either in Aramaic or Hebrew but at present is preserved only in Ge’ez (ancient Ethiopic) as a part of the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch.

The Parables of Enoch is divided into three sections, each designated as a “parable,” in which the sage Enoch is lifted into heaven and shown visions of a messianic figure being named and seated in judgment in conjunction with the celestial praise of the angels and the revelation of cosmological secrets. The meaning of “parable” (Hebrew mashal or Aramaic metal) in this context seems to indicate some sort of comparison between celestial and cosmological order on one hand and the disorder of human society on the other, to be set right by an act of judgment by the messianic figure revealed in each of the parables. The comparison between nature and humanity has its origin in the Wisdom tradition of ancient Israel, from whence it passes over into the ideology and formal expression of apocalyptic literature. The designation of mashal does not reflect a genre per se (there are a number of genres or literary types associated with the mashal) but rather the use of a variety of topics that are typical of meshalim. The Parables of Enoch addresses the fate of the righteous and the wicked through a patterned set of likenesses linking cosmology and eschatology.

The work is noted for the distinctive character of its "Son of Man"/”Elect one” angelomorphic messianism based on Daniel 7 and the Servant Songs of Deutero-Isaiah, for its revelatory scenes set in the temple of heaven in which the praise of the angels presages the celestial worship in the later Jewish Hekhaloth literature, for its continued interest in the cosmological lore characteristic of the Enochic tradition in Early Judaism, and for its advancement of the pseudonymous career of the sage Enoch, the recipient of the revelations of “that Son of Man” seated upon “his glorious throne” to judge “the kings and mighty of the earth.” In an addendum at the conclusion of the Parables, Enoch is informed that he is “that Son of Man.” While this final revelation seems incongruous with the Parables as a whole, where Enoch is the recipient rather than the subject of the revelation, it may well anticipate Enoch’s metamorphosis into an angelic or celestial being in later examples of the Enochic literature.

Other features of note include an interest in the fall of the Watchers derived from the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36), which the Parables links to the fate of the kings and the mighty, and several passages associated in one way or another with the figure of Noah rather than Enoch. In general, scholars tend to consider the Parables of Enoch to be a critique of the oppression of the Romans and their clients. It is quite possible, for example, that the crisis that precipitates the work is the oppressive policy of Herod the Great or the effort of Gaius Caligula to install his statue in the Holy of Holies of the Temple.

The Parables became prominent in the 1970’s when J.T. Milik announced that it was not included in the Aramaic fragments of Enoch discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, opening a heated controversy among scholars concerning its dating and its implications for messianism in early Judaism and the associated Jesus movement. Milik’s effort to treat the Parables as a third century Christian document composed in Greek on the basis of the gospels has been soundly rejected by other scholars, who tend to date the work as a Jewish document composed somewhere between the coming of Rome to the region and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 C.E. Such a dating represents a fairly narrow window in time for the composition of the work; however, where one dates the document during this period can make a dramatic difference in how one reconstructs the religious history of the time.