INTRODUCTION

§ 1. THE BOOK OF ENOCH—ITS FORTUNES. ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN PROSE AND VERSE, AND PARTLY IN ARAMAIC AND PARTLY IN HEBREW.

IT is seldom that authors attain to the immortality which they hope for, and it is still more seldom that anonymous authors achieve this distinction. And yet it is just such a distinction that the authors of the Book of Enoch have achieved. That such should be ultimately his lot was the deep-rooted conviction of one of this literary circle. He looked forward (chapter 104, verses 11, 12) to the time when his writings would be translated into various languages, and become to the righteous ‘a cause of joy and uprightness and much wisdom.’ This hope was in a large degree realized in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, when the currency of these apocalypticA genre of ancient religious writing focused on revealing heavenly secrets or the end of the world. works was very widespread on account of their distinctively religious and predictive contents. But from the fourth century of our era onward they fell into discredit, and under the ban of such authorities as Hilary Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310–367 AD), a prominent bishop and theologian., Jerome The scholar responsible for the Vulgate, the standard Latin Bible translation., and Augustine Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential Latin Church Fathers. they gradually passed out of circulation and became lost to the knowledge of Western Christendom till about a century ago. It was not, however, till recent years that the Book of Enoch and similar works have begun to come into their own, not indeed on the ground of their intrinsic religious worth, but from their immeasurable value as being practically the only historical memorials of the religious development of Judaism during the two centuries which preceded the birth of Christianity, and particularly of the development of that side of Judaism to which historically Christendom in large measure owes its existence.

In the course of editing the present work it suddenly dawned upon the editor that much of the text was originally written in verse. This discovery has frequently proved helpful in the criticism of difficult passages.

Another conclusion, to the adoption of which a prolonged study of the text has led the editor, is that the Book of Enoch like the Book of Daniel was originally written in two languages—in Hebrew and Aramaic.