New Testament References
The New Testament
authors refer to these concepts in a way that assumes them as the majority position
of the Jewish faithful in the first century AD. The authors do not argue for or
demonstrate these ideas; they merely allude to and reference them. The New
Testament mentions Enoch three times: The first is a brief reference in St.
Luke’s genealogy of Christ from Adam, as would be expected (Luke 3:37). The
second occurs in Hebrews 11:5 in the listing of faithful figures and their
legacy, where the author uses the same terminology as the Greek Genesis and
Wisdom of Sirach to state that Enoch had been translated from this world. The
emphasis of Hebrews is clearly on the fact that Enoch, unlike all other figures
in the genealogies of Cain and Seth, does not die.
The third mention
of Enoch comes in Jude 14-15 and is especially significant because it includes
a quotation ascribed to him, from 1 Enoch 1:9. In these two verses. St. Jude is
clearly drawing deeply from Enochic traditions. First, he identifies Enoch as “the
seventh from Adam.” Through this is apparent from counting generations in the
Genesis genealogy, its ascription as a title occurs in 1 Enoch 60:8. This title
has a particular relationship to Enoch as the origin of the Enochic calendar .
. . Further, St. Jude portrays Enoch through the quotation as a preacher of
repentance to the unrighteous. Enoch does no preaching in the text of Genesis,
though Sirach possibly alludes to this (W. Sir. 44:16). The Enochic literature,
however, repeatedly describes Enoch’s “walking with God” as his preaching of
righteousness to the wicked and corrupt generation that surrounded him. Finally,
the first chapter of Enoch, where St. Jude draws this quotation, is a midrashic
commentary on Deuteronomy 33:2, which describes Yahweh coming forth in judgment
from ten thousands of His holy ones. Saint Jude, therefore, is not quoting the
general idea from the Deuteronomy text but rather the particular interpretation
and application of this text from 1 Enoch. While this interpretation may have
been widespread, St. Jude explicitly places this interpretive word in the mouth
of Enoch himself.
Beyond these
direct references to Enoch, the New Testament books also contain a number of allusions
and references to various parts of the text. These are particularly concentrated
in the Epistles of Ss. Eter and Jude, and, as one might expect, the Apocalypse
of St. John. Perhaps less expectedly, St. Matthew’s Gospel features several
references to Enochic material. Many of these surround the way in which Christ
speaks of the Son of man as an apocalyptic figure. Others, however, are
simpler, such as the meek inheriting the earth:
Blessed are
the meek, because they will inherit the earth. (Matt. 5:5)
But for the
elect there will be light and joy and peace, and they will inherit the earth.
(1 Enoch 5:7)
In some cases,
these allusions, once understood, bring out an added dimension of meaning. As
just one example, Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Banquet ends with the unworthy
one being bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness: “Then the
king told his servants, ‘Bind this one hand and foot, take him away, and cast
him into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’”
(Matt. 22:13).
This precise
phrasing—of being bound hand and food into darkness—is used to describe the
fate of Azazel, the prince of demons, in 1 Enoch: “Then in the second place,
the Lord said to Raphael, ‘Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the
darkness.’ And he made a hole in the desert which was in Dudael and threw him there”
(10:4).
This
connection reveals that the fate of the wicked person is to share in the fate
of the rebellious spiritual powers, as Christ states elsewhere in that Gospel
(Matt. 25:41). In fact, this fate, the lake of fire itself, seems to have its
origin as an image in the Enochic literature (e.g., 1 Enoch 54:6). (Stephen De
Young, Apocrypha: An Introduction to Extra-Biblical Literature [Chesterton,
Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2023], 38-40)
Significance to the Early Church
The Church’s
reception of 1 Enoch may surprise many modern people who assume anything
outside of a rigid “Old Testament” canon was basically rejected. It is relatively
well known that because of the authority of the text has always exercised
within Ethiopian Judaism, it was immediately received into the Old Testament of
Ethiopian Christianity, centuries before the Council of Chalcedon. Beyond this,
however, 1 Enoch found wide use in the ancient Church. The Epistle of Barnabas
twice cites 1 Enoch as Scripture: Barnabas introduces one set of quotations
with “for the scripture says” and the other with “for it is written” (4:3;
16:5).
Saint Justin
the Philosopher, in the mid-second century, refers more than once to the
Watchers story as reflected in 1 Enoch and related literature. He is likely our
most important witness to the separation between Christianity and other
Judaisms (In the Second Temple period, the religious practice of Judean people
in various places was highly varied. There was no single Judaism or a single
religion of which all Jewish people were a part) that took place during his
lifetime. In 1 Enoch, the Son of Man plays a central role as the second
hypostatic of Yahweh, which likely doomed the book to immediate repudiation by
non-Christian Jewish communities. However, in his Dialogue with Trypho.
St. Justin makes a tantalizing reference that another central emphasis of 1
Enoch was also a point of contention among Jews. Trypho accuses St. Justin, and
thereby Christians, that their “expositions are mere contrivances, as is plain
from what has been explained by you; may, even blasphemies, for you assert that
angels sinned and revolted from God” (79).
Tertullian,
writing about AD 200, defends the authoritative status of 1 Enoch in part by
saying that nascent Rabbinic Judaism had rejected it because of its many
prophecies pertaining to Christ (On the Apparel of Women, 1.3). Also, in
the late second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons gives a fairly detailed account
of the teaching of 1 Enoch regarding the origin and fate of the powers of darkness,
ascribing this teaching to the prophets (Adv. Haer. 10.1). Another
second-century Father, St. Athenagoras of Athens, describes Enoch as a prophet
and makes great use of the book’s descriptions of the angelic realm (Legatio).
Origen states that he had previously accepted 1 Enoch as Scripture but later
found that others did not consider it so; thus he moderated his stand (see De
Principiis 4.1.35; Contra Census 54). (Ibid., 40-42)
. . . modern
readers often presume that this acceptance shifted in the post-Nicene Church,
with 1 Enoch marginalized and set aside along with the rest of the Enochic
material. This is incorrect on at least two counts. First, the teachings of 1
Enoch represents the earliest textual witness to the principles of Christology,
angelology, demonology, hamartiology (the doctrine of sin), and eschatology
that became doctrinally normative for the Christian Church. The ubiquitous understanding
of demons as “fallen angels,” for example, testifies to this influence. While 1
Enoch does not function as Scripture and is not read in the Church
liturgically, many of its central teachings passed through the textual witness
of the New Testament and of the early Fathers, eventually coming to rest on the
authority of the Church rather than on the authority of the book itself as a
document.
In the second
place, despite this dynamic, in various places throughout the later history of
the Orthodox Church, the authoritative use of 1 Enoch arises without
controversy. For example, the great eighth-century Byzantine chronicler George
Synkellos, a close adviser to St. Tarasios, the Patriarch of Constantinople,
used 1 Enoch’s text for the early portions of his Chronography, thereby
indicating that he viewed it as accurate world history. A generation later, St.
Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople, identified 1 Enoch as one repository
of the teachings of the apostles not written explicitly in the New Testament—an
apostolic apocryphon. This means that as late as the ninth century, the Church
remembered that the earliest written record of these apostolic traditions regarding
angels, demons, sin, and the end of days is, in fact, the Book of Enoch. It is
evident that 1 Enoch and other significant Second Temple literature preserved
through the centuries by the Church occupy a place in relationship to the Old
Testament similar to the place that the Apostolic Fathers hold in relation to
the New Testament. (Ibid., 42-43)
With respect to St. Nikephoros I, Patriarch of
Constantinople, calling 1 Enoch “an apostolic apocryphon”:
Literally, “a
hidden thing.” In St. Nikephoros’s usage, apocryphon more commonly means
“private” rather than “public.” He saw the Book of Enoch as a text that
influenced the apostles without being openly cited, with the exception of St.
Jude. (Ibid., 94 n. 24)
