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Religious Pron – Forbidden Fruit II – The Book of Enoch

Mar 30, 2022, 7:04 PM

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The Christian Bible doesn’t get too much into the 7 Heavens (one for each planet plus the sun and moon), aside from one line...”I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven” -2 Cor 12:2 NIV. As far as I know, there is only one heaven presented in the whole book. But in the Jewish tradition, the detail on the 7 Heavens is extensive.

According to the Book of Enoch, some of the angels in the heavens were rotten apples, or at least really, really lusty. Shamsiel was both a gate watcher in Eden and 2nd in command of 5th Heaven. He was one of the Watchers that was cast out for mating with human women while he was supposed to be teaching mankind about the sun. Naughty boy. How many people have been sunburned because he was up to hanky-panky instead of teaching?

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Another angel flunky, Armaros, was supposed to teach man counter-magic to ward off evil spells. But he was also too busy “makin’ it with the ladies” to be an effective teacher. Luckily, we learned some of his knowledge before he got canned, too. This is a Jewish anti-magic ward from about 500 AD. It blocks the “evil eye,” among other things.

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The angel Azazel taught us how to make swords and shields. These are some of the oldest ever found, Assyrian, from about 3300 BCE. As you can see, we got pretty good at killing pretty early on. And stylishly, too.

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The angel Gadreel taught us about cosmetics. These are 2700 year old AVON cosmetic cases, from China. Try taking a woman out on a date before she “puts on her face”, and you’ll see how important cosmetics were, very early on.

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The angel Baraquel taught us astrology. This is a Sumerian star calendar, from about 700 BCE. A handy, pocket sized one, in fact. Calendars are as important for guys as cosmetics are for women. Trust me, you don’t want to forget the date of your date with her. Or it might be your last one.

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Religious Pron - Forbidden Fruit II – The Book of Enoch

Last time we covered the Book of Jubilees, or Book of Years, which is an un-Biblical recounting of the Biblical Noah story, with a double dose of angels.

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In fact, it was those angels themselves that possibly got the book booted from both the Bible and the Torah. Early Jews just couldn’t seem to stop worshiping other things along with Yahweh, and early (though not original) Christians had a thing about sex, so the idea of male angels getting it on with human women was a no-go for them. So, good bye, Book of Jubilees.

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Another banned book was the Book of Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It’s yet a third retelling of the Noah flood story, but again with details that didn’t quite fit the evolving narrative of the time.

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Sorry, this post is about Enoch, not Enos. Maybe next time.

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The Book of Enoch was also among the scriptures found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Several copies in fact. It was sort of the companion guide to the Book of Jubilees in its day. And, it was very popular.

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Dead Sea Scrolls on display, featuring the Books Enoch, and the better known Book of Isaiah

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The Book of Enoch also talks about fallen angels, the creation of demons and the Nephilim hybrids, and even predicts a messiah will come from Judah (in southern ancient Israel, not northern Nazareth up by the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was). It’s about 100 years older than the Book of Jubilees and covers much of the same creation story ground.

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The Christian theologian Tertullian wrote that the Jews punted the Book of Enoch from their canon because it predicted Christ’s arrival, but as a Christian theologian, you might expect he’d read it that way.

Who knows the actual reason it was rejected? Despite Tertullian’s claims, Jews still anticipate a messiah to this day. Just a different one, with a military background and a male genealogical line to King David.

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Simon Bar Kochba. The almost messiah. He was great Jewish military leader who led a successful rebellion against Rome in 132 AD. Then he died in combat. That tended to break his mystique somewhat.

His revolt was followed by another revolt, 30 years later in 160AD. You can read all about it in Maccabees (in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles).

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Although the whole Book of Enoch didn’t make it into either the Jewish or Christian Bibles (except in Ethiopia), it did get some credit in Jude 1:14:

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints”

You can tell that phrase was well known by the writers of the Bible because the Book of Enoch itself says:

“And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His Saints.” Enoch 1:9.

That’s kinda verbatim. Directly copied from Enoch to Jude. Syncretism.

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There was a lot of copying going on back then, at that’s how a lot of the Bible books are dated...who said what first, etc. The Book of Enoch is a little like Dante’s Inferno, except that Enoch gets a tour of Heaven instead of Hell. Curiously, Genesis 5:24 says Enoch “walked with god.” Some interpret this to mean he didn’t die, but was simply taken up into Heaven. Like on a tour, maybe? Cool, huh?

“And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”

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Enoch in a 14th century fresco

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Enoch being taken up. From a 1728 rendering of “Figures in the Bible”. I don’t know what all that smoke is about.

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The first part of Enoch is called “The Book of Giants.” Sort of a book within a book. Enoch calls the fallen angels “Watchers.” It’s the same term that is used in Daniel 4:13 KJV, a book that did make it into the Bible.

“I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven;”

So whoever wrote Daniel clearly knew about the Book of Enoch. Or vice-versa. Because they both use almost the exact same language. It happens a lot.

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Daniel in the lion’s den. I hope he’s got some Meow-Mix.

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Enoch is kind of the same story as Jubilees, only more violent and gruesome. Enoch has a dream:

“And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three hundred ells (cubits, or, forearms), who consumed all the goods of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood.”

Devouring flesh and drinking blood? How Goth.

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Siouxsie approves.

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As does Ozzie, the original connoisseur of bat heads. Anyways, it’s a gruesome story.

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And Enoch’s dream goes on…

“And I looked at them and saw, and behold, all of them let out their private parts like horses and began to mount the cows of the bulls, and they all became pregnant and bore elephants and camels and axxes.”

Whoa. Maybe the world did need a good washing away about that time.

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From the prophets Tool. Maybe they were on to something...

Here in this hopeless f**king hole we call L.A.
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away
Any f**king time, any f**king day
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay
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Enoch even gives names to a lot of the 200 bad guys...or rather Watcher angels, who were supposed to protect and teach man but instead violated our wimmen and got booted out of Heaven. The head honcho was an angel named Samyaza.

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Here’s an artist’s rendition of Samyaza himself, wrapped in a modern e.r.o.t.i.c. novel for women. Twilight’s Edward and Jacob have nothing on this guy.

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And, just as told in Jubilees, one of the Watcher’s offspring was named Mastema (aka, Satan), the leader of the half-breed Nephilim giants from human mothers.

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Poor Mastema. I’m sure this was all he ever heard. No wonder he learned to hate the word.

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These bad angels are also known as the Sons of God in the tamer, and much more gentile, Book of Genesis. No mention of animal b.e.s.t.i.a.l.i.t.y or blood drinking at all.

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,” - Genesis 6:4
Refreshingly blah.

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She’s a good-hearted women in love with a good-timing angel. 1923 sculpture of the Watchers and the women.

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Anyway, the Sons of God go on to teach man all sorts of forbidden knowledge like astronomy, writing, cosmetics, jewelry, meteorology, and the phases of the moon. Rotten, trouble making bast**rds with their forbidden knowledge.

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Those angels were supposed to protect us from the dangers of the unskilled use of cosmetics and jewelry…

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The Book of Enoch also provided man with a completely new calendar, based on the sun, including charts and graphs and everything. The only problem is that the Temple in Jerusalem, and all its religious holidays, were based on a lunar calendar. So that’s another problem with accepting it.

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Then Enoch tells a lengthy allegory of Hebrew history from Noah to the Romans using animals. Which tells you it was at least partially written during the time of Roman occupation. Otherwise, how could they have include Roman details?

It’s wildly symbolic and very confusing unless you know the un-allegorical history in advance. Sort of like Animal Farm on steroids. Spoiler: Boxer dies.

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Maybe some day we’ll look closer at it, but for a single poast it’s

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Enoch’s allegory makes for a pretty tough read, and so if you are trying to present a simple message and a simple concept, it’s a literary dud.
Just say “Obey God, and bad things don’t happen.”

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Make it

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So just like with Jubilees, mainstream Judaism ultimately didn’t like The Book of Enoch because of anticipated angel worship, its possible message that Jesus was the Messiah, and the idea of corrupt angels.

It seems odd, but to put it in simple political terms, Jews were for The Book of Enoch before they were against it. Or, to be more nuanced, some were for it but they lost out to what became the orthodoxy.

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But like everything else, Judaism did change over time, and the idea that God would create divinely imperfect beings ultimately became unacceptable, though it was obviously acceptable when Jubilees and Enoch were written.

In a famous 2nd century debate with the Christian Justin Martyr, Trypho the Jew said "The utterances of God are holy, but your [Christian] expositions (defending The Book of Enoch) are...blasphemies, for you assert that angels sinned and revolted from God."

So you have a 2nd century Jew arguing against ancient Jewish texts, that are being defended by a Christian, which is ultimately rejected by the Christian church. Oy Vey. That will blow your mind. Welcome to religious history.

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Politics aren’t the only thing that makes strange bedfellows. Religion is pretty good at it too.

The Christians didn’t like The Book of Enoch because of angel sex and because it was simply too anti-Jewish even for them. We’ll take a closer look at that next time.

But for now, just know that attacking Jews is not good for appearances or recruiting, when the foundation of your new religion is Judaism, and many of your possible converts are Jews. SMH.

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Possibly the most famous Jew that ever lived, in a crowd of 5 million Filipinos in Manila (pop. 25 million).

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If you look closely, you might even see him. He’s the black guy near the middle.

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And on top of all that The Book of Enoch was just a confusing read open to a lot of interpretation, like Nostradamus or other crystal ball readers.

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There’s an interesting aside here that we’ll get back to later. The Jews rejected a lot of books because of the interpretation that those books predict a spiritual messiah, like Enoch does.

That’s because the Jews never needed or expected a spiritual messiah. They expect a military messiah. For them, atonement for sins was through sacrifice, and since their temple was destroyed in 70 AD, through worship. So they don’t need a Jesus, in their mind.

They don’t have the concept of Original Sin, so having a messiah to save you from that makes no sense to them. Or to Buddhists, or to Hindus, or others.

The Jewish messiah is all about land, and who will get it, and hold it, for them. You might expect that from a group of prior nomads without a historical homeland.

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If you look at their covenants with God, you have three (some say five, if you include the promises of the priesthood and the line of David).

1. The Noah covenant says God won’t kill them with water again, sealed with a rainbow.
2. The Abraham covenant says God will make them a great nation, sealed with circumcision.
3. The Moses covenant says they will be God’s chosen people (and rewarded by following the commandments and law), sealed with the sabbath.

There’s nothing in there, for them, about the need for salvation or being saved from sin in any way. That’s all Christian, not Jewish, theology. For Jews, its about land, and the means to get and keep that land.

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So that’s just a taste of all the good stuff you don’t get in our streamlined Bible of today. There are tons more books just like Jubilees and Enoch that all got relegated to the trash heap as the early Church fathers decided what was in, or out.

We’ll take a look at one more really crazy one next time before moving on. In the meantime, lets thank some more Watcher angels for the knowledge they gave us before they got “busy”...

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The angel Chazaqiel taught us all about clouds and meteorology. Not sure if the terminology was his, or ours, though.

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The angel Kokobiel taught us more astrology. I guess there was a lot to learn to learn because that took two angels. Sort of like Algebra I and Algebra II. Here’s a piece of the Zodiac (Cancer) carved in ivory, about 200 BCE.

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The angel Penemue taught us paper writing. Not sure who is responsible for those clunky clay tablets we were using for a while, but yeah, paper is MUCH better. Here’s the oldest known example of papyrus writing, from 2500 BCE in Egypt.

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The angel Arakiel taught us divination, which I guess includes dowsing, tarot cards, reading tea-leaves, and other assorted predictive arts. Not considered magic back then I guess, since it came from angels.

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And the angel Sariel taught us all about the moon and its phases, as shown here in top center. As far as farming, vegetables, gourds, and pumpkins, smashing or otherwise, no word on that. I guess we had to teach ourselves once we got booted from Eden. But we’ve gotten pretty good at it, even with no help.

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>Say, did any them old scribblings mention mushrooms or fungi or whatever?

Lol. Thanks Pawa. Well, off the top of my head I'm not sure about mushrooms, but I know Rastafarianism considers this plant a holy sacrament.

I will say that in general, Eastern religions are dramatically different than Western ones. Western religions often come with a burden to be overcome, like removing sin or obeying the law, while Eastern religions focus on gaining spiritual insight (Buddhism and Hinduism) or adapting to nature (Taoism or Shintoism).

Just completely different views of the world. I saw a western years ago (no idea of the name now) but a native American was talking with a settler about "owning" land.

The native said "how can you own something that was here before you, and will be here after you? YOU are the transient, not the land.

That's 180 degrees away from the Jewish and Christian traditions of owning land. Just a completely different way of looking at existence, really. But that's what's cool about people. Everybody sees things in different ways. And the "why" is the fun part to me.

Religious Pron – Forbidden Fruit II – The Book of Enoch

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