Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (29 page)

Here is the text from the actual book of 1 Enoch that Jude is quoting:

1 Enoch 1:9

“And behold! He cometh with ten
thousands of His holy ones to execute judgement upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”
[14]

But not only does Jude explicitly quote a passage out of 1 Enoch regarding God coming with the judgment of his divine council of holy ones (Sons of God), but
all three texts
refer to the Enochian notion of the angelic Watchers’ punishment for cohabiting with humans as a violation of the divine/human separation; another main theme of 1 Enoch.

1Pet. 3:18–20

[Christ],
being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to
the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey,
when God’s patience waited
in the days of Noah
.

Jude 6-7

And angels who did not keep
their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode,
He has kept in eternal
bonds under darkness
for the judgment of the great day,
just as Sodom and Gomorrah
and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these
indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh
, are
exhibited as an example
in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

2Pet. 2:4-10

For if
God
did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [
Tartarus
] and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment
; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah…and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter… then the Lord knows how to…keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially
those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority
.

Just in case anyone would question this fantastical interpretation of the carnal sin of the angels, Peter and Jude quote a common doublet that linked the sexual violation of the angelic Watchers (and their giant progeny) with the sexual violation of the inhabitants of Sodom who sought sexual intercourse with angels. The common theme of both instances was the transgression of heavenly and earthly separation of flesh.

There’s just one big problem: This doublet of the sin of Sodom and the sin of the Watchers in the days of Noah
“made as an example” is not found anywhere in the Old Testament, but only in non-canonical ancient Jewish texts.
[15]

Here is the list of some of those extraBiblical texts containing this doublet of connection, and we see clearly that the angelic sexual sin is usually connected to the judgment on giants as well:

Sirach 16:7-8

He forgave not the
giants of old
,
Who revolted in their might.

He spared not the
place where Lot sojourned
,
W
ho were arrogant in their pride.
[16]

Testament of Naphtali 3:4-5

[D]iscern the Lord who made all things, so that you do not become
like Sodom
, which departed from the order of nature.
Likewise the Watchers departed from nature’s order
; the Lord pronounced a curse on them
at the Flood
.
[17]

3 Maccabees 2
:4-5

Thou didst destroy those who aforetime did iniquity,
among whom were giants
trusting in their strength and boldness,
bringing upon them a boundless flood of water
. Thou didst
burn up with fire and brimstone the men of Sodom
, workers of arrogance, who had become known of all for their crimes, and
didst make them an example to those who should come after
.
[18]

Jubilees 20
:4-5

[L]
et them not take to themselves wives from the daughters of Canaan; for the seed of Canaan will be rooted out of the land. And he told them of the
judgment of the giants
, and the
judgment of the Sodomites
, how they had been judged on account of their wickedness, and had
died on account of their fornication, and uncleanness, and mutual corruption through fornication
.
[19]

2 Enoch 34
:1

God convicts the persons who are idol worshipers and
sodomite
fornicators, and
for this reason he brings down the flood
upon them.
[20]

The New Testament literary reference to non-canonical sources does not mean those sources are the inspired Word of God, nor that everything in them is true; but it certainly does illustrate that the Bible itself draws meaningfully and favorably from interpretive traditions that engage in imaginative embellishment of Biblical stories. Unlike some Christians, God
does
appreciate
creative imagination.

Jude’s references to the book of Enoch are not limited to material citations. He uses the same poetic phraseology throughout his letter that indicates an intimate interaction with the entirety of 1 Enoch on the incident of the Watchers and their condemnation. Researcher Douglas Van Dorn has put together a helpful chart of these linguistic comparisons.
[21]

1 Peter 3:18-20 speaks of Christ going down into Sheol to proclaim his triumph to the “spirits imprisoned” at the time of the flood. This act appears to be a typological replay of Enoch’s own vision journey into Sheol to see the “prison house of the angels” who disobeyed at the flood (1 Enoch 21:9-10).

But the story does not yet end there. You will notice that the location of punishment and binding of the fallen angels that we have already seen in 2 Peter is
Tartarus
in the Greek.

2Pet. 2:4

For if
God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [
tartarus
] and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.

What is important to realize is that the Greek word translated as “hell” in this English translation is not one of the usual New Testament Greek words for hell,
gehenna
or
hades
, but
tartarus
.

The Greek poet Hesiod, writing around 700 B.C., described
this commonly known underworld called Tartarus as the pit of darkness and gloom where the Olympian Titan giants were banished following their war with Zeus.

Hesiod,
Theogony
lines 720-739

as far beneath the earth as heaven is above earth; for so far is it from earth to
Tartarus
…There by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it, and a wall runs all round it on every side.
[22]

Obviously, Peter does not affirm Greco-Roman polytheism by referring to Tartarus, but he is
alluding to a Hellenistic myth that his readers, believer and unbeliever alike, would be very familiar with, subverting it with the Jewish traditional interpretation.

Extra
-Biblical Second Temple Jewish legends connected this legend of gods and bound Titans in Tartarus to the bound angelic Watchers and punished giants of Genesis 6.

Sibylline Oracles 1:97-104, 119

enterprising
Watchers
, who received this appellation because they had a sleepless mind in their hearts and an
insatiable
personality. They were mighty, of great form, but nevertheless
they went under the dread house of Tartarus guarded by unbreakable bonds, to make retribution
, to
Gehenna
of terrible, raging, undying fire…draping them around with great
Tartarus, under the base of the earth
.
[23]

Other well-known Second Temple literature reiterated this binding in the heart of the earth until judgment day:

Jubilees 4:22; 5:10

And he wrote everything, and bore witness to
the Watchers
, the ones who sinned with the daughters of men because they began to mingle themselves with the daughters of men so that they might be polluted…

And subsequently they
[the Watchers] were
bound in the depths of the earth forever, until the day of great judgment
in order for judgment to be executed upon all of those who corrupted their ways and their deeds before the LORD.
[24]

This “binding” or imprisoning of supernatural beings in the earth is expressed in 2 Peter’s “cast into pits of darkness reserved for judgment” (3:19), 1 Peter’s “disobedient spirits in prison” (v. 6), and Jude’s “eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (2:4). But it is not altogether unheard of in the Old Testament.

Isa. 24:21–23

On that day the
Lord
will
punish
the host of heaven
, in heaven,

and the kings of the earth, on the earth.

They will be
gathered together

as
prisoners in a pit
;

they will be
shut up in a prison
,
and
after many days they
will be punished
.

Isaiah here is speaking of judgment upon Israel by the Babylonians around 600 B.C., but he evokes the same Enochian imagery of the angelic host of heaven (often linked to the astronomical heavenly bodies
and
earthly rulers) being overthrown and imprisoned in the earth until judgment day.

Robert Newman notes that the Qumran Hebrew of the Isaiah scroll of this passage refers to a past event as its reference point: “They
were
gathered together as prisoners in a pit” (past tense).
[25]
This past event could very well be the antediluvian binding of the fallen host of heaven (
bene ha Elohim
) as an analogy for the future captivity of Israel.

So what shall we make of all this wild exploration of Biblical stories, pagan myths, and Jewish legends? Does this mean that Biblical writers tried to integrate their theology with pagan mythology (syncretism)? Is the Bible just an unoriginal adaptation of other religious myths?