The book of Enoch

In all the books belonging to this literature which have come down to us this hope is expressed more or less vividly; nor is the dark background wanting, with prophecies of coming wrath. It will, therefore, be realized that the Apocalyptic Literature is almost wholly concerned with the future; it is true that again and again the Apocalyptist glances at the contemporary history of the world around him, to which many a cryptic reference is made—a fact which necessitates some knowledge of the history of this period (circa 200 B.C.-A.D. 100) for a full understanding of the books in question—but these references are only made with a view to comforting the oppressed and afflicted with the thought that even the most mighty of earthly powers are shortly to be overthrown by the advent of the new and glorious era when every injustice and all the incongruities of life will be done away with. So that every reference to the present is merely a position taken up from which to point to the future. Now, since, as we have seen, the Apocalyptists despair of any bettering of the present world, and therefore contemplate its destruction as the preliminary of the new order of things, they look away from this world in their visions of the future; they conceive of other-worldly forces coming into play in the reconstitution of things, and of society generally; and since these are other-worldly forces the supernatural plays a great part in the Apocalyptic Literature. This supernatural colouring will often strike the reader of this literature as fantastic, and at times bizarre; but this should not be permitted to obscure the reality which often lies behind these weird shadows. Mental visions are not always easily expressed in words; the seer who in a vision has received a message in some fantastic guise necessarily has the impress upon his mind of what he has seen when giving his message; and when he describes his vision the picture he presents is, in the nature of the case, more fantastic to the ear of the hearer than to the eye of him who saw it. Allowance should be made for this; especially by us Westerns who are so lacking in the rich imaginativeness of the Oriental. Our love of literalness hinders the play of the imagination because we are so apt to “materialize” a mental picture presented by another. The Apocalypses were written by and for Orientals, and we cannot do justice to them unless we remember this; but it would be best if we could get into the Oriental mind and look at things from that point of view.

Another thing which the reader of the Apocalyptic Literature must be prepared for is the frequent inconsistency of thought to be found there, together with variableness of teaching often involving contradiction. The reason of this is not to be sought simply in the fact that in the Apocalypses the hand of more than one author is frequently to be discerned, a fact which would easily account for divergence of views in one and the same book—no, the chief reason is that, on the one hand, the minds of the Apocalyptists were saturated with the traditional thoughts and ideas of the Old Testament, and, on the other, they were eagerly absorbing the newer conceptions which the spirit of the age had brought into being. This occasioned a continual conflict of thought in their minds; the endeavour to harmonize the old and the new would not always succeed, and in consequence there often resulted a compromise which was illogical and which presented contradictions. Inconsistency of teaching on certain points is, therefore, not surprising under the circumstances.

Again, to realize the significance of much that is found in these Apocalypses one has to reckon with a rigid predestinarianism which was characteristic of the Apocalyptists as a whole. They started with the absolute conviction that the whole course of the world, from beginning to end, both as regards its physical changes and also in all that concerns the history of nations, their growth and decline, and of every single individual, was in every respect predetermined by God Almighty before all time. This belief of the Apocalyptists is well illustrated in one of the later Apocalypses by these words:

“For He hath weighed the age in the balance, And by number hath He numbered the seasons; Neither will He move nor stir things, Till the measure appointed be fulfilled.”

(ii. (iv.) Esdras iv. 36, 37.)

Thus “the times and periods of the course of the world’s history have been predetermined by God. The numbers of the years have been exactly fixed. This was a fundamental postulate of the Apocalyptists, who devoted much of their energy to calculations, based upon a close study of prophecy, as to the exact period when history should reach its consummation ... the underlying idea is predestinarian.”[2] But all these things, according to the Apocalyptists, were divine secrets hidden from the beginning of the world, but revealed to God-fearing men to whom was accorded the faculty of peering into the hidden things of God and of understanding them; upon these men was laid the privilege and duty of revealing the divine secrets to others, hence their name of Apocalyptists or “revealers.” It was because the Apocalyptists believed so firmly in this power which they possessed of looking into the deep things of God that they claimed to be able to measure the significance of what had happened in the past and of what was happening in the present; and upon the basis of this knowledge they believed that they also had the power, given them by God, of foreseeing the march of future events; above all, of knowing when the end of the world would come, a consummation towards which the whole history of the world had been tending from the beginning.

In spite of all the mysticism, sometimes of a rather fantastic kind, and of the frequently supra-mundane vision with which the Apocalyptic Literature abounds, the Apocalyptists fully realized the need of practical religion; they were upholders of the Law, the loyal observance of which they regard as a necessity for all God-fearing men. In this the Apocalyptists were at one, in principle, with Pharisaism; but their conception of what constituted loyal observance of the Law differed from that of the Pharisees, for, unlike these, the Apocalyptists laid all stress on the spirit of its observance rather than upon the letter. Characteristic of their attitude here are the words in 1 Enoch v. 4:

“But ye—ye have not been steadfast, nor done the commandments of the Lord, But ye have turned away, and have spoken proud and hard words With your impure mouths against His greatness, O ye hard-hearted, ye shall find no peace.”