The One God Took

If you were with us last Sunday, we began to tackle one of everyone's favorite parts of the Bible: a genealogy. Specifically, Genesis chapter 5 is the family line through Seth that connects Adam to Noah. But even though it gets pretty repetitive, we got some understanding by comparing it to a list Sumerians kept of cities and kings they said were before the flood. We appreciated, by contrast, that Genesis 5 doesn't celebrate kings but focuses on people as husbands and dads. But this litany of life also hammers home, time and again, the inevitability of death – Adam dies, Seth dies, Enosh dies, and so on – as “death reigned from Adam to Moses” (Romans 5:14).

Except... there's one weird paragraph in the genealogy that breaks the mold. I warned you last Sunday that we have a troublemaker on our hands! So who is this Enoch fellow? At first, he seems to follow all the rules, fit all the formulas. He, like the rest, is somebody's son, entering the picture when fathered by Jared (Genesis 5:18). He's got brothers and sisters (Genesis 5:19), he gets married, he has sons and daughters (Genesis 5:21-22). All pretty normal. But if you can count even on your fingers, you know to pay attention to him. Starting with Adam as #1, Enoch is placed as the seventh in line – and you know how the Bible likes that number!

There are three things about Enoch that break the mold. We expect we'll read that, after he fathered his heir, he lived such-and-so-many years; instead, we read that “Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years” (Genesis 5:22). Those words crop up out of nowhere! Whatever it means, it's different than living an ordinary life this side of Eden's gates. Second, we're used to everybody in this genealogy living between 890 and 1000 years, but Enoch's number is way off. “All the days of Enoch were 365 years” (Genesis 5:23). If these numbers are all symbolic, that one should be a symbol we understand. What pops into your head, even today, when you hear the number '365'? It was a year, wasn't it? But what kind of year? What defines that year of 365 days? It's the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun; it's a solar year. Which isn't the kind of year that Israel recognized with their mainstream calendar; it's never 365 days from one Passover to the next. This is... odd.

But then, third, we expect to read, after adding up Enoch's days to just 365 years, that 'he died.' It's been the promised pattern – after all, death reigns over humanity, it's a universal law. Given that Enoch's life has been so much shorter than the rest, if it ends in his death we'll judge him as low in honor.¹ But Enoch was different: he didn't just live, he walked with God – and so, even here where we expect his death, “Enoch walked with God.” So, rather than die, Enoch suddenly disappears. “He was not,” Genesis says. Nobody could find him, no matter where on earth they looked! Why? Genesis responds cryptically that “God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The last time in Genesis God 'took' anybody, it was back when “the LORD God took the human being and put him in the garden of Eden” (Genesis 2:15).² So early Christians accepted that this verse here means that “God transported him,” Enoch, “to paradise,”³ whether this meant the Garden of Eden on earth,⁴ or some paradise in heaven.⁵ As for the details, “we should not pry into secrets but be grateful for what is written.”⁶

To appreciate what Genesis wants to tell us about this Enoch fellow, it invites us to make three comparisons, the first of which takes us outside the Bible. Remember that this whole genealogy is in dialogue with the Sumerian list of kings before the flood. That list usually reserved its seventh spot for a man named Enmedurana, also known as Enmeduranki.⁷ His name means something like 'Lord of the Cosmic Ordinances of the Bond between Heaven and Earth.' The standard length of his reign was 21,000 years, but actually different editions of the king list give him anywhere from 4,000 to 72,000 years.⁸ He ruled from Zimbir (others called it Sippar), a northern Sumerian city sacred to Utu, the Sumerian god of justice and of the sun. (No wonder Enoch's linked to the solar year.⁹) The Babylonians had a tradition where this sun-god and the storm-god summoned Enmeduranki into the assembly of the gods, put him on a golden throne, and taught him secret mysteries to reveal when he returned to his city.¹⁰ But where Enmedurana visits his gods, Enoch walks always with the only true God. Finally, the Babylonians paired Enmedurana with a wise counselor, Utuabzu, who – according to their lore – “ascended into heaven.”¹¹

So Genesis is in dialogue here with the Sumerians and Babylonians. But it's also in dialogue with itself. In this genealogy, we've got to keep Cain's family in our peripheral vision. It's not for nothing that this descendant of Seth is named Enoch when Cain had a son also named Enoch (Genesis 4:17)! Like Enmedurana in Zimbir, the Enoch in Cain's family is absorbed in the city of this world. That's why Cain's son has that name, which can mean 'dedication,' like laying a cornerstone for a building project. But it can also mean 'initiated one,'¹² for this Enoch goes beyond the other and gives his attention to spiritual things.¹³ He answers his Cainite namesake that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). And so instead of an urban frenzy, this Enoch is set apart from the other one by his “exceptional piety and devotion to God.”¹⁴

As seventh in Seth's line from Adam, Enoch represents the fullness of Seth's way to be human, just as Lamech, the seventh in Cain's line from Adam, represents the fullness of Cain's way to be human. Where one blossoms in brutality, the other blooms in peace.¹⁵ Lamech clings tightly to defense of his earthly life and goods by any deadly means necessary. But Enoch, because he trusts God completely, is so unconcerned with these things that he freely gives them away; and so God snatches him away from Lamech's world without tasting death.¹⁶

Enoch shows us that, while “death may reign from Adam to Moses” (Romans 5:14), God doesn't take that as a final word. Enoch, born in original sin like the rest of us, may pay the wages of sin eventually, but that payday is deferred indefinitely for a special purpose.¹⁷ Early Christians concluded that “God took Enoch away to himself... to make known to Death that its power is not forever over all children of Adam.”¹⁸ He serves advance notice to Death itself that Christ is on the way! Enoch's sign “suggests the resurrection that was to come.”¹⁹

And if we want to know why it was that Enoch was chosen to step outside the “vicious cycle of sin and death,”²⁰ look no further than the double declaration that “Enoch walked with God” (Genesis 5:22, 24). We've turned that expression into something of a cliché, I'm afraid. But it's actually quite radical. Walking with God was how Adam and Eve were meant to live in the Garden, but after they taste sin, they do the exact opposite thing: they hide from God, avoiding fellowship with him. Enoch picks up, somehow, on the sort of relationship with God that the Garden was about. Different commentators describe Enoch's 'walk' as an “ongoing companionship of life” between himself and God,²¹ as a “supernatural, intimate fellowship with God,”²² or even as “a habitual, consistent, and constant relationship with God... each moment of each day.”²³

The prophet Amos asks, “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet?” (Amos 3:3). The answer is no. Enoch walking with God is no accident, but a daily intention of his pious devotion. He chooses to go with God where God is going, he chooses to submit his decisions to God and be responsive to God, he chooses a life that is consistently about more than the life of this world. As one medieval monk put it, Enoch “followed the will and commandments of God in everything..., God tarrying in him and possessing and ruling his heart.”²⁴ That's what it means to walk with God, and not aimlessly or away from God. And, as one old bishop observed, “it was for no short period that he followed this virtuous way,” but for the fullness of his life to the end.²⁵ We are, then, far too flippant about the phrase 'walk with God.' We use it much too loosely. It's a rare and precious gift, this walking with God. And yet we are meant, we are called, to walk with him, to allow God to be our ongoing companion each day, to have fellowship with him undisturbed by even lighter sins, to cultivate an observance of his will and a relationship with God through his Spirit poured out to us beyond what Enoch knew.

What's remarkable about Enoch's walk with God, moreover, is that Enoch didn't have to withdraw from his life in order to do it. Enoch walked with God while married to his wife. Enoch walked with God while changing Methuselah's diapers. Enoch walked with God while doing whatever he did to put food on the family table for a growing number of sons and daughters. In the words of one reader, Enoch proved “capable of achieving the highest moral perfection while remaining intimately concerned with the world around him.”²⁶ Enoch proves that eternity isn't only for a spiritual elite in the sense of ascetics who strive to distance themselves from worldly life to live like angels on the earth – as much praise as Jesus has for those who become “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12), and as much as Paul worries that “the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided” (1 Corinthians 7:33-34). To prove that you can walk with God outside a monastery, Enoch “was temperate and begot children.”²⁷ Enoch shows us, in the words of one great bishop, that “as long as we are on our guard, neither marriage nor bringing up children nor anything else will be able to stand in the way of our being pleasing to God.”²⁸

And Enoch did this – early Christians made a big deal out of this observation – long before the commandments and covenants given through Moses or Abraham or even Noah. Therefore, Enoch was “able to please God without the burden of the law.”²⁹ How? The New Testament answer is that “by faith... he was commended as having pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). His reverent obedience, his mature worship – they all stemmed from the fact that Enoch had a fullness of faith.³⁰ Before any of the revelations given through Moses, Enoch had the faith that God exists and rewards those who seek him, and by that faith Enoch was able to walk closely with God (Hebrews 11:6). So, again as a medieval monk put it, by faith Enoch “performed the life and discipline of those who, in the faith of the Lord's passion, await the joy of eternal salvation, denying themselves and bearing their cross daily..., walking with the Lord and directing their course toward the entrance to Paradise.”³¹ Enoch shows us a lived faith amidst of everyday life, faith that yields “a long obedience in the same direction,” as they say.³²

By our standards, Genesis gives Enoch a long, long obedience indeed – over three centuries. Of course, by the lights of Genesis 5, Enoch disappears as practically a young man in his prime. But even at his departure, that doesn't mean Enoch was done living, or that he didn't have a future ahead of him. Your vocation may be bigger than your days. Early Christians remarked that Enoch is “preserved until now as a witness of God's just judgment.”³³ And not only that, but in the Bible's last book, there's a mysterious passage where God will “grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth..., and when they have finished their testimony, the Beast that rises from the abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them..., but after the three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet..., and they went up to heaven in a cloud” (Revelation 11:3-12). Already by the third century, some wondered if Enoch and Elijah might be those witnesses.³⁴ Christians came to wait for Enoch to “return with Elijah for the conversion of this age.”³⁵ Though his 365 years were done, they believed Enoch still had work to do in God's plan – and though heaven is resting in God from earthly labors, our calling is bigger than our days, too.

Enoch receives so few lines in the Bible, and yet when it comes to this cryptic passage of Genesis that gives us so much wisdom, Martin Luther thought these words “should be written in letters of gold and be impressed most deeply on the heart.”³⁶ Ancient Jews certainly thought so, because of the earliest Jewish books we have outside the Old Testament, many of them are books about Enoch. People were fascinated by this mysterious guy in Genesis 5, they knew there had to be more to the story, and they weren't satisfied to have Enoch vanish without a trace or legacy left behind.³⁷ If Moses had his books, they were sure there ought to be “books of Enoch the Righteous.”³⁸ So some Jews began to write them themselves.

Out of the crucible of exile in Babylon, and then through a flood of Greek culture courtesy of Alexander the Great, ancient Jews were dazzled with a wealth of new ideas.³⁹ After Alexander the Great died in Babylon in June of 323 BC, Judah became frontier territory during decades of civil war between his generals fighting over pieces of his empire; they seemed to stride the earth like giants.⁴⁰ In that context, Jews turned to the perplexing passage where “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good, and they took for themselves wives, whichever they chose” (Genesis 6:2), and so “the Nephilim were on earth in those days..., when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them” (Genesis 6:4). They came up with a story – and I'm not saying the Bible teaches this – about a group of 200 angels called Watchers (cf. Daniel 4:17) who descended to earth during the days of Enoch's father 'Jared,' whose name means 'descent'; one of those angels, Shemihazah, led the others in swearing an oath at Mount Hermon (north of Galilee) to marry human women and have children, despite knowing this would be a sin.⁴¹ These women proceeded to give birth to giants, whose fleshly human bodies could barely handle the spiritual immensity of having angels for fathers, leading to the giants experiencing intense hunger and therefore engaging in horrific violence, cannibalism, drinking blood – nasty stuff.⁴²

In this Book of the Watchers, when God gives orders to his chief angels to execute judgment on the Watchers and their violent giant children (since both angel fathers and hybrid sons had become unclean through their behavior),⁴³ God's angels task Enoch, the 'scribe of righteousness,' with announcing to them their judgment.⁴⁴ The fallen Watchers beg Enoch to be their go-between with God, and to present their pleas for mercy,⁴⁵ but after he prays for them, Enoch dreams he enters God's heavenly palace and hears the bad news that the Watchers' sins are simply unforgivable and that when the giants die, because they're half-angel and half-man, their spirits will roam the earth as unclean 'evil spirits,' continuing to trouble and lead humanity astray until the day of judgment.⁴⁶ 

Around this tale are added an introduction, which is quoted in the New Testament (Jude 14-15),⁴⁷ and then Enoch's angel-guided tour of creation.⁴⁸ The last stretch of this tour sums up another early Enoch book, the Book of the Luminaries or Astronomical Book, where instead of the sun-god Utu/Shamash teaching Enmeduranki from the 'tablet of the gods,' Enoch is taught Babylonian astronomy from the 'tablets of heaven' by an angel named Uriel, 'God is my light.'⁴⁹ This book fiercely argues for use a 364-day solar calendar; following any other calendar, the Book of the Luminaries suggests, is a sin.⁵⁰

Living under contentious but stable Greek rule, Jews kept writing books starring Enoch.⁵¹ One, the Dream Visions of Enoch, consists of two dreams Enoch had during his younger days before he got married, which now he decides to share before he leaves earth.⁵² One of those visions includes a story called the Animal Apocalypse, which retells the entire history of the Old Testament using animals, dubbing God as 'Lord of the Sheep.'⁵³ The other book, the Epistle of Enoch, is set up as Enoch's last words to his family.⁵⁴

But after these books, another was written in Mary Magdalene's hometown in Galilee while Jesus was growing up less than thirty miles away in Nazareth: the Parables of Enoch.⁵⁵ In it, Enoch relays messages about the final judgment from three 'parable' visions. In the first one, he sees that God, the 'Lord of Spirits,' has entrusted his secrets to a Chosen One who will vindicate all those who live righteously in the face of oppression.⁵⁶ In the second vision, Enoch learns that the Chosen One is also known as the Son of Man, who has been known by God since before the stars were made and who is destined to rule an everlasting kingdom while seated on God's own throne.⁵⁷ In the third vision, Enoch sees that this Chosen One, this Son of Man, is the one who will judge humanity.⁵⁸ And the kings of the earth “will fall on their faces in his presence, and they will worship and set their hope on that Son of Man, and they will... petition for mercy from him,” but time's up.⁵⁹ At the very end of the book, there's a great twist: God emerges from his fiery house, Enoch says, “and all my flesh melted, and my spirit was transformed,” and God announces to Enoch face-to-face: “You are that Son of Man!”⁶⁰

Are these books Scripture? Again, no, no they are not (though they make for interesting reading as speculative fiction). But because these ideas were floating around Galilee at the time, they help us understand Jesus' ministry in his context. In the Book of the Watchers, God tells Michael to “bind [the Watchers] for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth until the day of their judgment..., then they will be led away to the fiery abyss.” When Luke traces Jesus' family back to Adam, guess how many generations Jesus is after Enoch? You guessed it: Luke counts seventy (Luke 3:23-37)! And if the Watchers mixed heaven and earth with unnatural bonds of sexual defilement, Jesus unites heaven and earth supernaturally by being born of a virgin.⁶¹

In his ministry, where so many of his neighbors put their hopes in a heavenly Enoch and his revelations, Jesus declared that “no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (John 3:13). He makes clear that Enoch isn't that promised Son of Man; Jesus himself is the Son of Man. He reveals his identity to his disciples with Mount Hermon off in the background (Matthew 16:13-17).⁶² His appearance on earth opens a window for mercy to those who repent, because if he's got authority to judge, he's got authority on earth to forgive sins (Mark 2:10).⁶³ And where Enoch held out hope for the righteous to one day feast beside the Son of Man,⁶⁴ even while admitting that “no human is righteous before the Lord,”⁶⁵ Jesus invites even sinners to eat at his table here and now (Luke 7:34). Jesus travels the land, overpowering the monstrously strong unclean spirits (Mark 5:1-13),⁶⁶ and teaching in parables that share many themes with some of the Parables of Enoch.⁶⁷ Jesus (rather than Enoch) has the authority to “reveal the eternal mysteries that are in heaven,”⁶⁸ and none is greater than the gospel “kept secret for long ages but now disclosed... to bring about the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:25-26).

Jesus emphasized the perplexing idea that the Son of Man, this glorious chosen figure, had come to earth to suffer with the outcasts (Mark 8:31). And that's exactly what Jesus does: after betrayed by a disciple who ought to wish he'd never been born (Mark 14:21),⁶⁹ Jesus carries his cross to Calvary; he dies beneath the mockery of the 'bulls of Bashan' (Psalm 22:12; cf. Matthew 27:39-44). But he rises from the dead in life more immortal than Enoch's, and the Apostle Peter adds that in the spirit he “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison,” the ones who disobeyed God before the flood – that is, the Watchers (1 Peter 3:19).⁷⁰ If Enoch was sent to warn of God's preliminary judgment, Jesus goes to proclaim that he's accomplished God's victory at last!

Where Enoch was at best assumed into heaven, 'taken' by God, Jesus ascends through his own power and choice which perfectly harmonize with God's will. Enoch may have been taken God-knows-where, but, although he portrays these greater things as a sign of them, even Enoch hasn't yet “received what was promised, since God has provided something better for us, that apart from us [Enoch] should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40).⁷¹ On that day, Jesus will be the Son of Man seated on “the throne of his glory” (Matthew 19:28; 25:31), sending those who rejected him into “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), but welcoming his sheep to his side in “the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).⁷² “Formerly you were worn out by evils and tribulations,” he might say, “but now you will shine like the luminaries of heaven..., and the portals of heaven will be opened for you.”⁷³ On that day, we will know what it means to confess Jesus Christ as our Lord, the Son of Man, the one to whom faithful Enoch pointed by his faith all along! For not Enoch the taken, but Christ the Taker, is Lord! “Blessed will be all who listen” to his words, for “that they may lean on him and not fall,” and so “they will be saved.”⁷⁴ “Our Lord is faithful in all his deeds and his judgment and his justice.”⁷⁵ “All who dwell on the earth will... worship before him!”⁷⁶ Amen.

1  Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 43.

2  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 252.

3  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 5.2.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:133.

4  Augustine of Hippo, Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian 6.30.A5, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/25:692.

5  Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.20, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:168.

6  Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 45, in Library of Early Christianity 1:95.

7  Sumerian King List, line 26, <https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm>. See comparison of Enoch to Enmedurana/Enmeduranki in Donald E. Gowan, From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1-11 (Eerdmans, 1988), 80; Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 43; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2013), 69; etc.

8  Jöran Friberg, A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer, 2007), 240.

9  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 256; John Day, From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2021), 107.

10  Enmeduranki and the Diviners lines 1-18, in Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 102.

11  Bīt Mēseri, quoted in Rykle Borger, “The Incantation Series Bīt Mēseri and Enoch's Ascension to Heaven,” in Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura, eds., I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 1994), 230-231, and in Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 106.

12  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 250.

13  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 4:17, in Luther's Works 1:314; James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 46; Bryan C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis: A Study of the Use of Time in Genesis 1-11 in Light of Its Ancient Near Eastern and Literary Context (Wipf & Stock, 2011), 130.

14  Johnson T.K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 162.

15  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 76; cf. Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 139.

16  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 100.

17  Thomas Aquinas, Lectures on Hebrews 11.2 §571, in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 41:247.

18  Aphrahat the Persian, Demonstrations 22.3, in Moran 'Eth'o 24:232.

19  Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 45, in Library of Early Christianity 1:97.

20  Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 88.

21  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 119.

22  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 114.

23  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 186.

24  Bede, On Genesis 5:21-22, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:164.

25  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:60.

26  Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 74.

27  Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus 98.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 128:196.

28  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 21.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:59.

29  Tertullian of Carthage, Against the Jews 2.13, in Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian, The Early Church Fathers (Routledge, 2004), 49; cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 19.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 6:176.

30  Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 9:2-3, in Loeb Classical Library 24:51.

31  Bede, On Genesis 5:24, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:166.

32  Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (InterVarsity Press, 2000).

33  Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.16.2, in Ancient Christian Writers 72:46.

34  Tertullian of Carthage, On the Soul 50.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 10:290; Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel 4.35.3, in T. C. Schmidt, Hippolytus of Rome's Commentary on Daniel (Gorgias Press, 2022), 168; Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah 4:7-19, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:747-748.

35  Bede, On Genesis 5:23-24, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:165.

36  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 5:21-24, in Luther's Works 1:344.

37  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 253.

38  Testament of Judah 18:1, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:800.

39  Ida Fröhlich, “Mesopotamian Elements and the Watchers Traditions,” in Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, eds., The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress Press, 2014), 11-12; Anathea Portier-Young, “Symbolic Resistance in the Book of the Watchers,” in Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, eds., The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress Press, 2014), 41-42; Henryk Drawnel, “1 Enoch 6-11 Interpreted in the Light of Mesopotamian Incantation Literature,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 273-278.

40  Anathea Portier-Young, “Symbolic Resistance in the Book of the Watchers,” in Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, eds., The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress Press, 2014), 45-46.

41  1 Enoch 6:1-6, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 23-24.

42  1 Enoch 7:1-5, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 24-25. See also Archie T. Wright, “The Demonology of 1 Enoch and the New Testament,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 242.

43  1 Enoch 10:1–11:2, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 27-31.

44  1 Enoch 12:3–13:3, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 31-32.

45  1 Enoch 13:4-7, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 32.

46  1 Enoch 14-16, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 33-38.

47  1 Enoch 1-5, especially 1:9, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 19-23. On Jude's use of the Enochic Book of the Watchers, see also Eric F. Mason, “Watchers Traditions in the Catholic Epistles,” in Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, eds., The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress Press, 2014), 71-73.

48  1 Enoch 17-36, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 38-49.

49  John Day, From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies on Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2021), 113-115.

50  1 Enoch 82, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 112-113.

51  John C. Reeves and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Oxford University Press, 2018), 10.

52  1 Enoch 83-90, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 116-135.  See also Devorah Dimant, From Enoch to Tobit: Collected Studies in Ancient Jewish Literature (Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 69.

53  Daniel Olson, A New Reading of the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch: “All Nations Shall Be Blessed” (Brill, 2013).

54  Devorah Dimant, From Enoch to Tobit: Collected Studies in Ancient Jewish Literature (Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 69-70.

55  James H. Charlesworth, “Did Jesus Know the Traditions in the Parables of Enoch?”, in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 180-191.

56  1 Enoch 39:6-7; 41:1-2, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 52-53, 55.

57  1 Enoch 46:1-6; 48:3-6; 51:3; 55:4, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation, 59-62, 65, 69.

58  1 Enoch 61:8-9; 69:27-29, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 78, 91-92.

59  1 Enoch 62:9-12, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 80-81.

60  1 Enoch 71:9-14, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 94-95. See discussion in Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Building Blocks for Enoch as the Son of Man in the Early Enoch Tradition,” in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 318.

61  Amy E. Richter, “Unusual Births: Enochic Traditions and Matthew's Infancy Narrative,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 53; Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Defender, 2017), 73.

62  Leslie Walck, “The Parables of Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels,” in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 250-251; Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Defender, 2017), 95-96.

63  Leslie Walck, “The Parables of Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels,” in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 240; Gabriele Boccaccini, “Forgiveness of Sins: An Enochic Problem, a Synoptic Answer,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 165-167.

64  1 Enoch 62:14, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 81.

65  1 Enoch 81:5, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 111.

66  Archie T. Wright, “The Demonology of 1 Enoch and the New Testament Gospels,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 238-243; Henryk Drawnel, “1 Enoch 6-11 Interpreted in the Light of Mesopotamian Incantation Literature,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 279-281.

67  Leslie Baynes, “The Parables of Enoch and Luke's Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality (SBL Press, 2016), 136-137.

68  1 Enoch 9:6, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 26.

69  Compare Mark 14:21 (“Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born”) to 1 Enoch 38:2 (“Where will be the resting place of those who have denied the Lord of Spirits? It would have been better for them if they had not been born” [George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 51]) – on which, see Leslie Walck, “The Parables of Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels,” in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 267.

70  Eric F. Mason, “Watchers Traditions in the Catholic Epistles,” in Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, eds., The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Fortress Press, 2014), 75-78.

71  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 119-120.

72  Grant Macaskill, “Matthew and the Parables of Enoch,” in Darrell L. Bock and James H. Charlesworth, eds., Parables of Enoch: A Paradigm Shift (T&T Clark, 2013), 228-230. Macaskill and others observe that the phrase 'throne of his glory' is unique to the Parables of Enoch and the Gospel of Matthew.

73  1 Enoch 104:2, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 160.

74  1 Enoch 48:4, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 62.

75  1 Enoch 63:8, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 83.

76  1 Enoch 48:5, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 62.