Excursus: Heavenly Books and Angelic
Scribes in 1 Enoch and Israelite and Christian Literature
The idea of heavenly books has a
long history in the ancient Near East and can be traced back to the texts of
ancient Sumer, where one reads about tablets of life and tablets of human
destiny. Such heavenly books are also mentioned a few times in the Hebrew
Bible. Malachi assures those who fear God that “a book of remembrance” (ספר זכרון)
has been written in God’s presence (3:16-18). It contains their names, and perhaps
their deeds, and will serve as a memorandum on the day of judgment. In a similar
vein, Isa 4:2-6 implies a book that will serve as a register of those who will
live in the new, glorified Jerusalem. Such a “book of the living” is mentioned
in Ps 69:29 (28).
Heavenly books, however, play a
special role in beliefs about the final judgment, as these are articulated in
all the major strata of 1 Enoch except the Book of the Luminaries. They are a
graphic way of guaranteeing the reality and inevitability of that judgment. What
is already written down in the heavenly courtroom cannot be expunged. In 1
Enoch heavenly books have three kinds of contents. They record: human deeds,
notably those of the sinners who oppress the righteous; the names of the righteous;
and the rewards of the righteous. These books are often explicitly associated
with the angels who are their scribes.
The idea of a book of deeds is
probably implied in the earliest stratum of the Book of the Watchers, where God
commands Raphael to write an epitaph over Asael's tomb that records "all
the sins" for which the rebel watcher is responsible (8:8). The content of
the heavenly book is here transferred to earth. Chapter 9, however, with its
vivid account of angelic intercession, makes no mention of the four holy
watchers writing a book; their communication with God is direct and oral. In
chaps. 13-14, where Enoch plays the role of an angelic intercessor and
messenger, he first writes out on earth the waters' petition (13:4-7) and then
returns from heaven with "the book of the words of truth and the reprimand
of the watchers," where is a faithful record of their sentence and doom
(14:1).
In a section that appears to
preserve a fragment of Enoch's last vision in the Book of the Watchers, the
seer reads the heavenly tablets on which are written "all the deeds of men
and all the sons of flesh" (81:2). A reference back to this vision appears
in the introduction to the Apocalypse of Weeks (93:2), which claims to be a
summary of those books . . . The determinism implied in this prewritten account
of human deeds is explicit elsewhere in the Enoch corpus only in the Animal
Vision (chaps. 85-90)—there in the form of a dream that depicts the whole of
human history (90:41).
The Animal Vision, however,
presents a more dynamic notion of heaven's knowledge of human sin. As Israel's
sin escalates near the time of the exile, God commissions seventy angels to be shepherd
them and then commissions one of the seven archangels to record the shepherds'
sins, one by one, as they are committed. The narrator weaves reference to his
heavenly book of (angelic) misdeeds and to its angelic author through the whole
last part of the Vision, depicting him both as scribe and intercessor
(89:61-64, 68-71, 76-77; 90:14, 17). The heavenly books then play a central
role in the judgment (90:20), although it seems to be implied that God has
books containing the sins of all who are condemned.
The conception of the heavenly
books is enhanced in the Epistle and runs like a thread through these chapters.
The deeds of the sinners are written down “day by day” (98:6-8; 104:7-8). On
the day of judgment these deeds will be read out in the presence of God (97:6).
In addition, when humans pray for vindication, their prayers are written down
as a “memorandum” to be presented to God (99:3; cf. 97:1). In 103:1-4, employing
language reminiscent of 81:1-2, Enoch claims to have seen heavenly tablets that
contain a record of the rewards that have been prepared and thus must be given
to the righteous who have died. The similarity to 81:1-2 suggests that these
books are the counterpart to the book of human sins, containing not only the
deeds of the righteous but the wards that result from these deeds. Finally, angels and books are mentioned together in
104:1. In parallelism Enoch promises the righteous that the angels remind God
of them and that their names are written in God’s presence. Implied is the
angels’ role as scribes; explicit is their function as intercessors. The
pattern repeats the action in chaps. 89-90. The books here mentioned might be a
separate register of the righteous, but the author may simply be referring to
the same books mentioned in 103:1-4 . . . The last chapters of 1 Enoch refer
briefly to the heavenly books. In the story of Noah’s birth, Enoch tells Lamech
that he knows certain “mysteries” revealed by the angels and that he has read
the orderly record of human history inscribed on the heavenly tablets
(106:19-107:1). Chapter 108 mentions the “books of the holy ones” from which
the names of sinners will be erased and books in which their punishment is
inscribed (108:3, 15). In other books the angels can read about the destiny of
the righteous (108:7). Thus books and their scribes are again mentioned
together. In the Book of Parables, heavenly books are mentioned only in 47:3, a
text that interprets “the books” of Dan 7:10 as “the books of the living.”
In Daniel 7 these books belong to
the trappings of the heavenly court, where judgment is pronounced on the
Seleucid Empire, and they appear to contain a record of the misdeeds of the
Seleucid Empire, and they appear to contain a record of the misdeeds of the
last beast. Heavenly books are mentioned twice in the last vision of the Book
of Daniel. In 10:21 the angel who grants the vision cites “the book of truth”—evidently
an account of human history—as the source of his information about the end
time. At the end of the vision (12:1-3), Michael and “the book” are juxtaposed
in a context that probably draws on a tradition that is also attested in 1
Enoch 104:1-6. The wordings of Dan 12:1 also parallels 4QDibHama
6:14 and its reference to “the book of the living,” which may indicate that the
book in Dan 12:1 is the register of the righteous.
Heavenly books appear elsewhere in
contemporary and later Jewish and early Christian literature. In 4Q417 1
1:14-16 Malachi’s book of remembrance is paired with a book that contains the
punishments that God has ordained against the wicked. According to Jubilees
the halakah in that book was dictated to Moses by angels who read from the heavenly
tablets. The notion emphasizes the eternity and immutability of the Torah. 1QH 1(9):23-26
alludes to the existence of heavenly tablets that contain the ages of creation and
the human deeds on which God will render judgment. The opening of heavenly
books of deeds (cf. Daniel 7) is mentioned in several apocalypses from ca. 100
C.E. (4 Ezra 6:20; 2 Bar. 24:1; Rev 20:12-13), and such a book is
also mentioned in rabbinic literature (m. ‘Abot 2:1; 3:17). In Testament
of Abraham 12-13 A, al elaborate judgment scene that draws on motifs from
the Egyptian Book of the Dead depicts two angelic scribes as the keepers of two
books containing the records of human sins and righteous deeds. In the counterpart
to this scene in Testament of Abraham 10-11 B, Enoch is the scribe of
human deeds, as he is in Jub. 4:23-24. A similar idea seems to be
attested in a Christian Coptic text of the fifth century. In a particular twist
to the juxtaposition of angelic scribes and books of deeds, T. Jud.
20:1-5 identifies the human hearts as the book associated with “the angels of truth”
and “the angel of deceit” (cf. 1 Enoch 96:4). Finally, the book of the living
of the book of lie is also a continuing motif in Jewish and Christian
literature (Jub 36:10; Apoc. Zeph. 3:6-9; 9:3; Luke 10:20; Phil
4;3; Rev 3:5; 13:8; 21:11-12; cf. Heb 12:23). (George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 [Hermeneia—A
Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2001], 478-80)