the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Enoch (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Ἐνώχ)
Enoch (along with Elijah) was regarded as having a unique destiny among the saints of the OT, in that when his earthly life was ended he was taken directly to heaven. Genesis 5:24 is referred to 1 by the writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 11:5), who gives Enoch the second place in his roll of the faithful. Instead of the Hebrew text (‘and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him’), the writer had before him the Septuagint version: καί εὐηρέστησεν Ἐνώχ τῷ καὶ θεῷ· οὐχ ηὑρίσκετο, διότι μετέθηκεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεός. The phrase ‘he pleased God’-which is used in other places (Genesis 17:1; Genesis 24:40; Genesis 48:15, etc.) where the original has ‘he walked with (or before) God’-is regarded by the author of Hebrews as a testimony to Enoch’s faith. To the statement that ‘God took (or translated) him’ the writer adds the explanatory words ‘that he should not (or did not) see death.’ The idea of immortality hag rather to be imported into the original words, which, as Calvin saw, might imply no more than ‘mors quaedam extraordinaria.’ But the thought that Enoch escaped death had already been suggested by Sirach (Sirach 49:14) in his eulogy of famous men: ‘No man was created upon the earth such as was Enoch; for he was taken up (ἀνελήμφθη) from the earth.’ In 4 Ezr. 6:26, Enoch and Elijah are spoken of as men ‘who have not tasted death from their birth.’ Josephus preserves the ambiguity of the original in a characteristic phrase, ‘he departed to the deity’ (ἀνεχώρησεν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον), but instead of venturing to infer that this implies actual deathlessness, the historian merely adds: ‘whence it is that his death is not recorded’ (Ant. I. iii. 4). The ‘two witnesses’ in Revelation 11:3 are generally regarded as Enoch and Elijah.
(2) In later Judaism the words ‘and Enoch walked with God’ were interpreted as meaning that he was made the recipient of special Divine revelations. In the recovered Hebrew text of Sirach 44:16 he is described as ‘an example of knowledge’ (changed in the Greek into ὑπόδειγμα μετανοίας ταῖς γενεαῖς), and the Book of Jubilees says, ‘He was the first among men … who learned writing and knowledge and wisdom.… And he was with the angels of God these six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on earth and in the heavens’ (ch. 4. [Charles, Apoc. and Pseudepig., 1913, p. 18f.]). Enoch the saint was thus transformed into the patron of esoteric knowledge, and became the author of apocalyptic books. In Judges 1:14 he is designated ‘the seventh from Adam,’ a phrase taken from the Book of Enoch (lx. 8, xciii. 3), and a passage is quoted in which he is represented as threatening judgment upon the false teachers of the early Christian Church.
‘The extraordinary developments of the Enoch-legend in later Judaism could never have grown out of this passage [Genesis 5:21; Genesis 5:24] alone; everything goes to show that the record has a mythological basis, which must have continued to be a living tradition in Jewish circles in the time of the Apocalyptic writers. A clue to the mystery that invests the figure of Enoch has been discovered in Babylonian literature’ (Skinner, Genesis [International Critical Commentary , 1910, p. 132). He is there identified with Enmeduranki, who is described in a ritual tablet from the library of Asshurbanipal as a favourite of the gods, and is said to have been initiated into the mysteries of heaven and earth, and instructed in certain arts of divination which he handed down to his son.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Enoch (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/e/enoch-2.html. 1906-1918.
