Category:Enochic Studies--1850s

August Dillmann

• BACK to the ENOCHIC STUDIES--INDEX

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

< ... -- 1400s -- 1500s -- 1600s -- 1700s -- 1800s -- 1850s -- 1900s -- 1910s -- 1920s -- 1930s -- 1940s -- 1950s -- 1960s -- 1970s -- 1980s -- 1990s -- 2000s -- 2010s -- ... >

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 available increased dramatically 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 (Brunet, 1856), English (George H. Schodde, 1882), and Hebrew (Lazarus Goldschmidt).

In the meantime, the 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 in 1888 of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The knowledge of 1 Enoch was advanced by the availability of a greater number of Ethiopic manuscripts and by the publication in 1892-93 of a new Greek text (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 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.

• 

  Eliphas Lévi

• 

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

• 

  Aleister Crowley in Golden Dawn garb