SECTION VIII. THE BOOK OF ENOCH THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF

CHRISTIANITY. While making a good deal of the _Mercavah_, the Jews, or rather their synagogues, rejected the _Book of Enoch_, either because it was not included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian thought, it was Disavowed by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of Christ.(135) But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would have nothing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic than a purely kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both Latin and Protestant Churches class it among apocryphal productions. Nevertheless the _New Testament_, especially in the _Acts_ and _Epistles_, teems with ideas and doctrines, now accepted and established as dogmas by the infallible Roman and other Churches, and even with whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch, or the “pseudo‐Enoch,” who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro‐ Chaldaic, as asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian text. The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of _The Evolution of Christianity_, who edited Bishop Laurence’s translation, was compelled to make some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On internal evidence(136) this book is found to have been written before the Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does not matter). As correctly argued by the Editor, it is Either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet, predicting with miraculous accuracy the future teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, or the Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed His conceptions of the triumphant return of the Son of man, to occupy a judicial throne in the midst of rejoicing saints and trembling sinners, expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal fire; and whether these celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine, they have exercised so vast an influence on the destinies of mankind for nearly two thousand years that candid and impartial seekers after religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the relationship of the _Book of Enoch_ with the revelation, or the evolution, of Christianity.(137) The _Book of Enoch_ Also records the supernatural control of the elements, through the action of individual angels presiding over the winds, the sea, hail, frost, dew, the lightning’s flash, and reverberating thunder. The names of the principal fallen angels are also given, among whom we recognize some of the invisible powers named in the incantations [magical] inscribed on the terra‐cotta cups of Hebrew‐Chaldee conjurations.(138) We also find on these cups the word “Halleluiah,” showing that A word with which ancient Syro‐Chaldæans conjured has become, through the vicissitudes of language, the Shibboleth of modern Revivalists.(139) The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty‐seven verses from various parts of the _Gospels_ and _Acts_, with parallel passages from the _Book of Enoch_, and says: The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the passage in the _Epistle of Jude_, because the author specifically names the prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of language and ideas in Enoch and the authors of the _New Testament_ Scripture, as disclosed in the parallel passages which we have collated, clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic Milton was the inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names, borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment, immortality, perdition, and of the universal reign of righteousness, under the eternal dominion of the Son of man. This evangelical plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which adapts the visions of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of the great master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of the antediluvian patriarch.(140) In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been suggested, that the _Book of Enoch_ in its present form is simply a transcript—with numerous pre‐Christian and post‐Christian additions and interpolations—from far older texts. Modern research went so far as to point out that Enoch is made, in Chapter lxxi, to divide the day and night into eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day in the year as consisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, while a day of sixteen hours in length could not have occurred in Palestine. The translator, Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus: The region in which the author lived must have been situated not lower than forty‐five degrees north latitude, where the longest day is fifteen hours and a‐half, nor higher perhaps than forty‐ nine degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen hours. This will bring the country where he wrote as high up at least as the northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas ... the author of the _Book of Enoch_ was perhaps a member of one of the tribes which Shalmaneser carried away, and placed “in Halah and in Habor by the river Goshen, and in the cities of the Medes.”(141) Further on, it is confessed that: It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority of the _Old Testament_ to the _Book of Enoch_.... The _Book of Enoch_ teaches the preëxistence of the Son of man, the Elect One, the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in secret,(142) and whose name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, before the sun and the signs were created.” The author also refers to the “other Power who was upon Earth over the water on that day”—an apparent reference to the language of _Genesis_, i. 2.(143) [We maintain that it applies as well to the Hindu Nârâyana—the “mover on the waters.”] We have thus the Lord of Spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly foreshadowing this Trinity [as much as the Trimûrti] of futurity; but although Enoch’s ideal Messiah doubtless exercised an important influence on primitive conceptions of the Divinity of the Son of man, we fail to identify his obscure reference to another “Power” with the Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as “angels of power” abound in the visions of Enoch.(144) An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said “Power.” The Editor concludes his remarkable reflections by adding: Thus far we learn that the _Book of Enoch_ was published before the Christian Era by some great Unknown of Semitic [?] race, who, believing himself to be inspired in a post‐prophetic age, borrowed the name of an antediluvian patriarch(145) to authenticate his own enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic kingdom. And as the contents of his marvellous book enter freely into the composition of the _New Testament_, it follows that if the author was not an inspired prophet, who predicted the teachings of Christianity, he was a visionary enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as revelation—alternative conclusions which involve the Divine or human origin of Christianity.(146) The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor: The discovery that the language and ideas of alleged revelation are found in a preëxistent work, accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians among apocryphal productions.(147) This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of the Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the _Book of Enoch_. The prophecies of the _Book of Enoch_ are indeed prophetic, but they were intended for, and cover the records of, the five Races out of the seven—everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus the remark made by the Editor of the English translation, that: