CHAPTER XIII

THE BOOK OF ENOCH
Enoch's
reputation
as an
astrologer
in the
middle
ages.
Enoch's reputation as an astrologer in the middle ages — Date and influence of the literature ascribed to Enoch — Angels governing the universe ; stars and angels — The fallen angels teach men magic and other arts — The stars as sinners — Effect of sin upon nature — Celestial phenomena — Mountains and metals — Strange animals.
In collections of medieval manuscripts there often is found a treatise on fifteen stars, fifteen herbs, fifteen stones, and fifteen figures engraved upon them, which is attributed some- times to Hermes, presumably Trismegistus, and sometimes to Enoch, the patriarch, who "walked with God and was not."^ Indeed in the prologue to a Hermetic work on astrol- ogy in a medieval manuscript we are told that Enoch and the first of the three Hermeses or Mercuries are identical.^ This
* Ascribed to Enoch in Harleian MS 1612, fol. I5r, Incipit: "Enoch tanquam unus ex phi- losophis super res quartum librum edidit, in quo voluit determinare ista quatuor : videlicet de xv stellis, de xv herbis, de xv lapidi- bus preciosis et de xv figuris ipsis lapidibus sculpendis," and Wolfenbiittel 2725, 14th century, fols. 83-94V; BN 13014, 14th cen- tury, fol. 174V; Amplon, Quarto 381 (Erfurt), 14th century, fols. 42-45 : for "Enoch's prayer" see Sloane MS 3821, 17th century, fols. 190V-193.
Ascribed to Hermes in Harleian 80, Sloane 3847, Royal 12-C- XVni; Berlin 963, fol. 105; Vienna 5216, 15th century, fols. 63r-66v; "Dixit Enoch quod 15 sunt stelle / ex tractatu Here- meth (i- e. Hermes) et enoch compilatum" ; and in the Cata- logue of Amplonius (1412 A.D.), Math. 53. See below, H, 220-21.
The stars are probably fifteen in number because Ptolemy distin- guished that many stars of first magnitude. Dante, Paradiso, XHI, 4, also speaks of "quindici stelle." See Orr (1913), pp. 154-6, where Ptolemy's descriptions of the fif- teen stars of first magnitude and their modern names are given.
*Digby 67, late 12th century, fol. 69r, "Prologus de tribiis Mercuriis." They are also identi- fied by other medieval writers. Some would further identify with Enoch Nannacus or Anna- cus, king of Phrygia, who fore- saw Deucalion's flood and la- mented. See J. G. Frazer (1918), I, 155-6, and P. Buttmann, Myth- ologus, Berlin, 1828- 1829, and E. Babelon, La tradition phrygienne du deluge, in Rev. d. I hist. d. religs., XXHI (1891), which he cites.
Roger Bacon stated that some would identify Enoch with "the
340
CHAP. XIII
THE BOOK OF ENOCH
341
treatise probably has no direct relation to the Book of Enoch, which we shall discuss in this chapter and which was composed in the pre-Christian period. But it is inter- esting to observe that the same reputation for astrology, which led the middle ages sometimes to ascribe this treatise to Enoch, is likewise found in "the first notice of a book of Enoch," which "appears to be due to a Jewish or Samaritan Hellenist," which "has come down to us successively through Alexander Polyhistor and Eusebius," and which states that Enoch was the founder of astrology.^ The statement in Genesis that Enoch lived three hundred and sixty-five years would also lead men to associate him with the solar year and stars.
The Book of Enoch is "the precipitate of a literature. Date and once very active, which revolved . . . round Enoch," and of ^j^g
in the form which has come down to us is a patchwork from 'iterature
ascribed "several originally independent books." ^ It is extant in the to Enoch.
form of Greek fragments preserved in the Chronography of G. Syncellus,^ or but lately discovered in (Upper) Egypt, and in more complete but also more recent manuscripts giv- ing an Ethiopic and a Slavonic version.^ These last two versions are quite different both in language and content, while some of the citations of Enoch in ancient writers apply to neither of these versions. While "Ethiopic did not exist as a literary language before 350 A. D.," ^ and none
great Hermogenes, whom the Greeks much commend and laud, and they ascribe to him all secret and celestial science." Steele (1920) 99.
'R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, Oxford, 1893, p. 33, citing Euseb. Praep. Evan., ix, 17, 8 (Gaisford).
* Charles (1893), p. 10, citing Ewald.
*ed. Dindorf, 1829.
* Lods, Ad. Le Livre d'Henoch, Fragments grecs decouverts a Akhmin, Paris, 1892.
Charles, R. H., The Book of Enoch, Oxford, 1893, "translated from Professor Dillman's Ethi-
opic text, amended and revised in accordance with hitherto uncol- lated Ethiopic manuscripts and with the Gizeh and other Greek and Latin fragments, which are here published in full." The Book of EnocJi, translated anezv, etc., Oxford, 1912. Also translated in Charles (1913) II, 163-281. There are twenty-nine Ethiopic MSS of Enoch.
Charles, R. H., and Morfill, W. R., The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, translated from the Sla- vonic, Oxford, 1896. Also by Forbes and Charles in Charles (1913) II. 425-69.
"Charles (1893), p. 22.
342 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
of the extant manuscripts of the Ethiopic version is earlier than the fifteenth century/ Charles believes that they are based upon a Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic original, and that even the interpolations in this were made by an editor living before the Christian era. He asserts that **nearly all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it," and influenced by it, — in fact that its influence on the New Testament was greater than that of all the other apocrypha together, and that it "had all the weight of a canonical book" with the early church fathers.^ After 300 A. D., however, it became discredited, except as we have seen among Ethiopic and Slavonic Christians. Be- fore 300 Origen in his Reply to Celsus ^ accuses his opponent of quoting the Book of Enoch as a Christian au- thority concerning the fallen angels. Origen objects that "the books which bear the name Enoch do not at all circu- late in the Churches as divine." Augustine, in the City of God,'^ written between 413 and 426, admits that Enoch "left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle." But he doubts if any of the writings current in his own day are genuine and thinks that they have been wisely excluded from the course of Scripture. Lods writes that after the ninth century in the east and from a much earlier date in the west, the Book of Enoch is not mentioned, "At the most some medieval rabbis seem still to know of it." ^ Yet Alexander Neckam, in the twelfth century, speaks as if Latin Christendom of that date had some acquaintance with the Enoch literature. We shall note some passages in Saint Hildegard which seem parallel to others in the Book of Enoch, while Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale in the thirteenth century, in justify- ing a certain discriminating use of the apocryphal books, points out that Jude quotes Enoch whose book is now called apocryphal.^
'Charles (1913), II, 165-6. "Introd., vi.
' Charles (1893), pp. 2 and 41- "Spec. Nat., I, g. A Latin frag-
• v., 54. ment, found in the British Museum
* XV, 23. in 1893 by Dr. M. R. James and
XIII THE BOOK OF ENOCH 343
The Enoch literature has much to say concerning angels, Angels and implies their control of nature, man, and the future. fhJ^uni"^ We hear of Raphael, "who is set over all the diseases and verse: wounds of the children of men"; Gabriel, "who is set over angels, all the powers" ; Phanuel, "who is set over the repentance and hope of those who inherit eternal life." ^ The revolution of the stars is described as "according to the number of the angels," and in the Slavonic version the number of those angels is stated as two hundred.^ Indeed the stars them- selves are often personified and we read "how they keep faith with each other" and even of "all the stars whose privy members are like those of horses." ^ The Ethiopic version also speaks of the angels or spirits of hoar-frost, dew, hail, snow and so forth.* In the Slavonic version Enoch finds in the sixth heaven the angels who attend to the phases of the moon and the revolutions of stars and sun and who superintend the good or evil condition of the world. He finds angels set over the years and seasons, the rivers and sea, the fruits of the earth, and even an angel over every herb.^
The fallen angels in particular are mentioned in the Book The fallen
of Enoch. Two hundred angels lusted after the comely f"^?|^ •' o J teach men
daughters of men and bound themselves by oaths to marry magic and them.^ After having thus taken unto themselves wives, they instructed the human race in the art of magic and the science of botany — or to be more exact, "charms and enchantments" and "the cutting of roots and of woods." In another chap- ter various individual angels are named who taught respec- tively the enchanters and botanists, the breaking of charms, astrology, and various branches thereof."^ In the Greek frag- ment preserved by Syncellus there are further mentioned pharmacy, and what probably denote geomancy ("sign of
published in the Cambridge Texts ^ Book of Enoch, XLIII; XC,
and Studies, II, 3, Apocrypha 21.
Anecdota, pp. 146-50, "seems to * Ibid., LX, 17-18.
point to a Latin translation of ^Secrets of Enoch, XIX.
Enoch"— Charles (1913) H, 167. 'Caps. VI-XI in both Lods and
^ Book of Enoch, XL, 9. Charles.
* Ibid.,y.U.ll; Secrets of Enoch. 'Book of Enoch, VIII, 3, in