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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.

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.

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.