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Like Ben Sira and Tobit, the presence and impact of 1 Enoch in Second Temple period Palestine suggests that it was also well positioned to exercise ongoing influence on thoughtful Jews. Each constitutive part of 1 Enoch is examined in turn: first its contents and historical situation and “agenda” are treated, followed by a discussion of points of possible impact on the teachings of Jesus, James, and Jude (the last, indeed, quotes 1 Enoch explicitly and refers to the story of the Watchers in detail). Special attention is given to establishing the relationship of the “Parables of Enoch” to early Christian literature and the authenticity of Jesus' uses of the title “Son of man” to refer to God's end-time agent.

Chapter four addresses the apocalypses of the Apocrypha. The social conditions that gave rise to apocalypses are examined, as well as the elements that are typically found in these texts. The two axes of apocalypses are discussed, the historical/eschatological axis and the spatial/cosmic axis. The role of an angelic interpreter, the importance of the revelation of a transcendent reality through dreams or visions, and its transmission to the learned scribe through writing in books are also central to the apocalypses. The challenging recent discussions on the genre of apocalypse are also surveyed. The relation of apocalypses to wisdom texts is noted, as is the special role of the scribe from long ago, such as Enoch, Ezra, or Daniel, and the focus of apocalypses on the transmission of secret knowledge. The texts treated here are 1 Enoch—composed of what were likely separate texts: Book of the Luminaries, Book of the Watchers, Animal Apocalypse, Epistle of Enoch and the Apocalypse of Weeks, and Parables or Similitudes of Enoch—and also Jubilees, 2 Esdras (or 4 Ezra, 5 Ezra, and 6 Ezra), and 2 Baruch.

The period between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries is a crucial yet neglected period in the reception history of Enochic traditions. The Enoch books were “lost” in the West; Enoch, however, was anything but forgotten in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hermetic circles. The Christian Cabalists (Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Guillaume Postel) were the first to actively pursue the search for the lost Enoch. In the mid-sixteenth century with the arrival of the first Ethiopic monks from Ethiopia also came the news that 1 Enoch was there preserved. Rumors about the presence of an Enoch manuscript in the library of Nicolas de Pereics were widespread but proved to be unfounded. While Enoch remained popular in esoteric and visionary circles, the publication of the Greek fragments by Scaliger in 1606 led to the composition of the first scholarly commentaries by Sgambati (1703), Sarnelli (1710), and Fabricius (1713). Eventually, in 1773, James Bruce came back from Ethiopia with four MSS of 1 Enoch. Having emancipated the text from esoteric and magic concerns, contemporary research on Enoch could now begin with the publication, in 1821, of the first English translation of 1 Enoch by Richard Laurence.

Biblical, post-biblical, and rabbinic literature portray women as sorcerers, but as The chapter demonstrates, the traditions vary substantially depending on the rhetorical and ideological context of the texts in which they appear. The bible, for example, presents an ambivalent position on the sex of magic practitioners in pre-Exilic Israel. The chapter traces this ambivalence through second temple writings, such as 1 Enoch, and rabbinic literature to show that while some texts do seem to identify women (or nations personified as women) with sorcery and forbidden knowledge, other texts do not, concluding that the relationship between women and sorcery as presented in early Jewish sources resists reduction to a single charge of misogyny.

This chapter provides an introductory survey of the study of extant Enochic literature like 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and other fragmentary remains associated with the name of Enoch found in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Arabic sources. It summarizes the previous work that has been expended on Enochic literature since its rediscovery by Western scholars in the sixteenth century. It calls attention to the abundance of evidence for understudied Enochic literary works which survives in early Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and non-biblical testimonies, articulates the need for assembling these remnants into a convenient collection for the progress of research, and describes the methodology that is employed for their arrangement in the present volume.

This chapter considers more broadly how early Jews imagined their own inventory of sacred writing. While concepts of “rewritten Bible” and “biblical interpretation” describe important modes of text production, they do not reflect the mental architecture that structured how early Jews conceptualized their own literary landscape and the relationships between their texts. Ancient concepts of the literary inventory did not always presuppose biblical texts as the fountainhead of creativity: a picture emerges of a large and not fully discovered written world, including revelations to ancient patriarchs and writing in heaven, never completely reflected in available texts. The chapter discusses how nonbiblical texts have been framed for modern readers, showing how published collections from the eighteenth century to today have made it difficult to approach the sources in any other way than as derivative or peripheral to a complete, unitary Bible. Finally, the chapter considers Jubilees as an example of a “native theory” of writing, a bibliographic history of written texts and their tradents from Enoch through Moses. The literary imagination manifest in Jubilees sees the ongoing history of writing, multiform and revealed to multiple figures over time, as tightly intertwined with the history of Israel.

The heavenly ascent texts used in the heuristic comparison are introduced. Basic details of language, genre, and dating are given. They can be divided into three categories. Firstly, there are the ascent apocalypses: 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, Testament of Levi, and Ascension of Isaiah, which are pseudonymous accounts of the heavenly journeys of biblical heroes. Secondly, there are texts which contain liturgical or theurgic material: Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the later Hekhalot texts. It may have been believed that those who recited them experienced the journey for themselves. Thirdly, there is rabbinic material from tractate Ḥagigah of the Babylonian Talmud. This construes the ‘work of the chariot’ as rabbinic exegetical activity, but displays a profound ambivalence towards it, and is anxious to stress its dangers. 3 Enoch spans the three categories, belonging to the Hekhalot literature, but with strong affinities to apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions.

Chapter 1 traces how ancient ideas regarding the primordial “disablement” and misplacement of the demonic inform Jesus’s ritual “enablement” in the Gospel of Mark. The chapter first examines Mark’s portrayal of demons as impaired entities, which closely mirrors ancient Jewish traditions that identify demons as the residual souls of antediluvian giants. The second part of the chapter traces how the demons’ misplacement as foreign “spiritual” entities in a fleshly world contributes to Mark’s demarcation of relations between Jewish and non-Jewish members of the Jesus movement. The chapter concludes by exploring how Mark constructs the human body as prone to possession by external spirits, as evidenced in the exorcism narratives as well as Jesus’s claim to being possessed by the “holy spirit.” In antiquity, such porosity was characteristic of “weak” bodies. The Gospel of Mark, however, emphasizes Jesus’s masculine potency through his “binding” of the Devil through exorcism.

The conclusion provides a summary of the key findings of the book, including major points at which the extra-biblical literature explored here has exercised a positive, formative influence upon the sayings and self-understanding of Jesus and the teachings of James and Jude.

Chapter 3 explores Justin Martyr’s claim that demons assumed polymorphic forms in order to deceive humans, promote improper worship, and inspire persecution against Christians. The chapter first argues that Justin’s distinctive highlighting of demonic changeability emerges alongside his counter-emphasis on the “immovability” of the Christian God, which, in turn, functions to undercut the polymorphic Greco-Roman pantheon’s collective claim to divinity. The second part of the chapter explores Justin’s distinctive retelling of the myth of the Watchers in his 2 Apology, which omits the characters of the giants in its recounting of demonic origins. In doing so, Justin promotes a closer correspondence between fallen angels and demons, highlighting his simultaneous ascription of polymorphic capabilities to both angelic fathers and demonic sons. The chapter concludes by examining how Justin associates demonic changeability with “magical” trickery, which aids the Apologist’s constructions of proper Christian exorcism as a “simple” practice distinct from “magical” alternatives.