Magic Library (1826) - Page 24

IV. The Book of Enoch in relation to the present investigation.

This is the most appropriate place to deal with a book and to cite the passages from it that serve our investigation, a book that can rightly be considered the most abundant source for the explanation of Gen. VI. 1—4. Although it was written before the times of Christianity, it clearly received a revision later by a Christian; therefore, it is assigned the best place here in chronological terms. It is a remarkable book that we have only come to know more precisely and completely in the last thirty to forty years through the combined efforts of inquisitive travelers, who found it among the Ethiopian Christians and brought it from there to Europe. Previously, we knew it only from the (not insignificant) fragments collected by Grabe in his Spicilegium Patrum Gleanings of the Fathers, Vol. I, page 547 et seq., and Fabricius in the Bibl. gr. Vol. I. I mean, as our learned readers will already have guessed, the ancient, so-called Book of Enoch, which is extremely important in several respects for prehistoric views of the world, life, and the Bible. It stood in high general esteem in the early Christian period (this can be seen from the way it is commonly cited by the church fathers, as noted by Grabe in his Spicilegium I, p. 343 et seq., Münter, Münscher xc. etc. in their histories of dogma) and is even mentioned in the New Testament in the Epistle of Jude *).

*) I must note here that the Enochian fragments