A Brighter Day Begins with His Word.

James Hastings • SECTION 464

Section 464

← Dictionary of the Apostolic Church — Volume 1

(2) The enmity of Jew and Gentile was notorious. After smouldering for centuries, it finally burst into the flames of the Bellum Jvdaicum. The con- tempt of Greek for barbarian was equally pro- nounced. Christ came to end these and all similar racial antipathies. By His Cross He ' abolished ' and ' slew ' the enmity (Eph 2^^- ^% creating a new manhood which is neither Jewish, Greek, nor Roman, but comprehensive, cosmopolitan, catholic, fulfilling the highest classical ideal of human

334

ENOCH

ENOCH, BOOK OF

fellowship — ' humani nihil a me alienum puto ' (Terence, Heaut. I. i. 25) — all because it is Christian.

(3) The Christian, however, cannot help having enemies. Just because he is not of the world, the world hates him (Jn 15'®^- )• But the spirit of Christ that is in him constrains him to feed his enemy when hungry, give him drink when thirsty (Ro 1220), and so endeavour to change him into a friend.

(4) Every preaclier, because he is bound to be a moralist and reformer, runs a special risk of being mistaken for an enemy. Truth, though spoken in love, may arouse hatred : Cbtrre ix^pbs vfiQv yiyova d\r}9e^wv v/xTv ; (Gal 4'*). Yet a moment's thought would make it clear that the aim is not to hurt but to heal, and the surgeon who skilfully uses the knife is ever counted a benefactor.

(5) The courageous faith of the early Church assumed that Christ would put all His enemies under His feet (1 Co IS^^; of. He V^ W^), i.e. that every form of evil, moral and physical alike, would finally be subdued. 'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death ' (1 Co 15"^).

(6) A single passage seems, 'prima facie, to imply that men may sometimes be enemies of God sensii passivo. To tlie Romans St. Paul says of the Jews, ' They are enemies for your sake' (Ro IP^). They are treated as enemies in order that salvation may come to the Gentiles. But the enmity is far from being absolute ; they are all the time ' beloved ' (ayainjTol dia roiis Traripas, 11"^).

James Strahan.

ENOCH CEj'wx)-— 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. Gn 5^ is referred to (1) by the writer of Hebrews (IP), 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 LXX version : Kal evripiar-qaev 'Evcix tQ deifi' Kal ovx rjvpicrKeTO, didri ixeriO-qKev avrbv 6 debs. The phrase ' he pleased God ' — which is used in other places (Gn 17^ 24^" 48^®, 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 has rather to be imported into the original words, which, as Calvin saAV, might imply no more than ' mors quaedam extra- ordinaria.' But the thought that Enoch escaped death had already been suggested by Sirach (49^'') in his eulogy of famous men: 'No man was created upon the earth such as was Enoch ; for he was taken up {dve\ifi/x(pdT)) from the earth.' In 4 Ezr. vi. 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' (dvexi^pv^f '"'pbs rb Oelov), but instead of venturing to infer that this implies actual death- lessness, the historian merely adds : ' whence it is that his death is not recorded' (Ant. I. iii. 4). The 'two witnesses' in Rev 11^ are generally re- garded 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 Sir 44" he is described as ' an example of knowledge' (changed in the Greek into {nr65eiyij.a /xeravoias rah yeveais), and the Book of Jubtlecs says, ' He was the first among men . . . who learned writing and knowledge and wisdom. . . . And he was witii the angels of God these six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on earth and

in the heavens ' (ch. iv. [Charles, Apoc. and Pseud- epig., 1913, p. 18 f.]). Enoch the saint was thus transformed into the patron of esoteric knowledge, and became the author of apocalyptic books. In Jude" he is designated ' the seventh from Adam,' a phrase taken from the Book of Enoch (Ix. 8, xciii. 3), and a passage is quoted in which he is re- presented 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 [Gn 521-24] 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 [ICC, 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.

Public-domain historical reference work (1915–1916); OCR text from Internet Archive. Historical scholarship and terminology reflect its era; OCR may contain errors. Verify quotations and current scholarly claims independently.

Project Gutenberg source record →