The problem of sin, and how to remove it, plagues all sentient beings in a "guilt" society. Sure, if you do another man wrong, that other man can forgive you. But can you forgive yourself?
Saint Paul proposed that Adam came to the world, where he sinned and left a legacy of sin onto all humankind after him. This sin, Jesus came to remove; through his own redemptive sacrifice.
Elsewhere, other sects have proposed other salvation-histories. One parallel shows up in Enochian literature. There exists a cycle in the Slavonic language, which came to be written down in the Middle Ages. Andrei Orlov proposes a "polemic" - that the documents which we label "2 and 3 Enoch" react to earlier literature. This goes to the short recension too, which survives in Coptic as well; but my comment here addresses the Slavonic-only long recension.
That 2 and 3 Enoch do belong after "1 Enoch" - after at least four of the five books in the Ethiopic, and we can throw in Jubilees - is the starting-point in this discussion. Orlov points out that the Slavonic books are concerned with Adam where the ancient Enochian texts are not. 1 Enoch eventually came to include the "Similitudes" which elevates Enoch to demigod status.
Orlov's essay really gets going p. 299f. In the Long Recension of 2 Enoch, ch. 64, Enoch is not just crowned in Heaven, but also given the authority to expiate sin. More: LR-2E 64 claims that Enoch has redeemed us already. For the earliest Enochian books, sinners aren't forgiven; they are simply killed. Sin came into the world through the fallen angels, and the Flood erased their wicked followers and progeny. Classic Enoch is like Noah: the righteous man avoids the storm; at most offering some advance warning to others, but we know they won't take it. 2 Enoch by contrast offers its protagonist as al-Ghafûr.
I think Orlov is right: 2 Enoch deals in polemic. The long recension's target is - I think - Christianity. 2 Enoch accepts Paul that Adam left a legacy of original-sin; but it insists, Enoch dealt with it already. (2 Enoch is vague about how. Since we know Enoch didn't die : did he invent the Temple dove-offerings? was he martyred docetically?) Anyway 2 Enoch doesn't - ultimately - care about Enoch. What matters is that Enoch precedes Jesus. Jesus is left with nothing to do. Jesus may be a prophet and/or a worldly-messiah. Jesus might be called upon to endorse Enoch. But that's it. The long recension of 2 Enoch plays the same trick on Jesus as 1 Enoch had on the Abrahamic / Mosaic Torah.
As for who came up with this notion, I am unsure. I don't think it is Muslims; Enoch goes unmentioned by that name in the Quran (its warner against the Flood's imminence is Noah himself), and Enoch never gets redemptive properties in the Hadith. I also don't find these themes in the Talmuds nor elsewhere among Rabbinic or Karaite Jews. The "Metatron" (metathronos?) takes on some Enochian properties in Jewish speculation, but even Qabbalists couldn't have Metatron redeem sin; Metatron is just there to shield us from Divine Perfection.
I'd look to post-Christians outside the Syriac world: Paulicians in the greater Armenia certain Manichees, perhaps. The community of 2 Enoch may have contributed to Bogomilism, as noted (not well I'm told) in 1918 by ASD Maunder (of "Maunder Minimum" fame), “The Date and Place of Writing of the Slavonic Book of Enoch”. This would explain how 2 Enoch ended up in Slavonic. UPDATE 3/23/23: We can rule out Paulicians, as a postMarcion Pauline LARP.
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