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Subject: The Apocryphical Book of Enoch
                                   
                             The Lost Text
                                   
   "One of the most important apocryphic works of the Second Temple
   Period is Enoch."
   - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of
   Qumran Cave 4
   
   The Book of Enoch is "an ancient composition known from two sets
   of versions, an Ethiopic one that scholars identify as '1 Enoch',
   and a Slavonic version that is identified as '2 Enoch', and which
   is also known as The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Both versions,
   of which copied manuscripts have been found mostly in Greek and
   Latin translations, are based on early sources that enlarged on
   the short biblical mention that Enoch, the seventh Patriarch
   after Adam, did not die because, at age 365, 'he walked with God'
   - taken heavenward to join the deity."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
   
   "In the Book of Enoch the arcane wisdom is said to have been
   betrayed to mankind by fallen angels, but a Talmudic tradition
   claims that God whispered it to Moses on Mount Sinai. According
   to this tradition its secrets were then imparted to seventy
   elders who thereafter transmitted them orally to their
   successors."
   - David Conway, Ritual Magic
   
   1 Enoch is an unmistakable product of Hellenistic civilization.
   quot;A world view so encyclopaediac that it embraced the
   geography of heaven and earth, astronomy, meteorology, medicine
   was no part of Jewish tradition - but was familiar to educated
   Greeks, but attempting to emulate and surpass Greek wisdom, by
   having an integrating divine plan for destiny, elaborated through
   an angelic host with which Enoch is in communication through his
   mystical travels.quot;
   - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"
   
   "The Book of Enoch is a pseudoepigraphal work (a work that claims
   to be by a biblical character). The Book of Enoch was not
   included in either the Hebrew or most Christian biblical canons,
   but could have been considered a sacred text by the sectarians.
   The original Aramaic version was lost until the Dead Sea
   fragments were discovered."
   "The original language of most of this work was, in all
   likelihood, Aramaic (an early Semitic language). Although the
   original version was lost in antiquity, portions of a Greek
   translation were discovered in Egypt and quotations were known
   from the Church Fathers. The discovery of the texts from Qumran
   Cave 4 has finally provided parts of the Aramaic original.
   ...Humankind is called on to observe how unchanging nature
   follows God's will."
   - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of
   Qumran Cave 4
   
   Although the Book of Enoch is considered as apocryphal, it was
   clearly known to early Christian writers as the following quote
   from 1 Enoch 1:9 indicates:
   
     "In the seventh (generation) from Adam Enoch also prophesied
     these things, saying: 'Behold, the Lord came with his holy
     myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the
     ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed
     in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which
     ungodly sinners spoke against him'."
     - Jude 14-15
     
   "Prior to the eighteenth century, scholars had believed the Book
   of Enoch to be irretrievably lost: composed long before the birth
   of Christ, and considered to be one of the most important pieces
   of Jewish mystical literature, it was only known from fragments
   and from references to it in other texts. James Bruce changed all
   this by procuring several copies of the missing work during his
   stay in Ethiopia. These were the first complete editions of the
   Book of Enoch ever to be seen in Europe.
   - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
     ____________________________________________________________
   
                          The Patriarch Enoch
                                   
   "According to the biblical narrative (Genesis 5:21-24), Enoch
   lived only 365 years (far less than the other patriarchs in the
   period before the Flood). Enoch 'walked with God; then he was no
   more for God took him'."
   - Milik, Jazef. T., ed. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of
   Qumran Cave 4
   
   "According to Sumerian chronicles of the earlier times, it was at
   Eridu's temple that Enki, as guardian of the secrets of all
   scientific knowledge, kept the ME's - tabletlike objects on which
   the scientific data were inscribed. One of the Sumerian texts
   details how the goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar), wishing
   to give status to her 'cult center' Uruk (the biblical Erech),
   tricked Enki into giving her some of those divine formulas.
   Adapa, we find, was also nicknamed NUN.ME, meaning "He who can
   decipher the ME's'. Even unto millennia later, in Assyrian times,
   the saying 'Wise as Adapa' meant that someone was exceedingly
   wise and knowledgeable....The 'wide knowledge' imparted by Enki
   to Adapa included writing, medicine, and - according to the
   astronomical series of tablets UD.SAR.ANUM.ENLILLA ('The Great
   Days of Amu and Enlil') - knowledge of astronomy and astrology."
   "...It is almost certain that the biblical 'Enoch' was the
   equivalent of the Sumerian first priest, EN.ME.DUR.AN.KI ('High
   Priest of the ME's of the Bond Heaven-Earth'), the man from the
   city Sippar taken heavenward to be taught the secrets of Heaven
   and Earth, of divination, and of the calendar. It was with him
   that the generations of astronomer-priests, of Keepers of the
   Secrets, began."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
   
     "The learned savant
     who guards the secrets of the gods
     will bind his favored son with an oath
     before Shamash and Adad...
     and will instruct him in the secrets of the gods."
     "Thus was the line of priests created,
     those who are allowed to approach Shamash and Adad."
     - Sumerian tablet (W. G. Lambert, Enmeduranki and Related
     Material)
     
   "The legend [of Enoch] begins...with the Sumerian King List. This
   is a list of rulers before the Flood, and is preserved in several
   forms, including Berossus. Here one of the kings, often given as
   the seventh (as Enoch is in his list), is called Enmeduranki or
   Enmeduranna. He is generally associated with the city of Sippar,
   which was the home of the cult of the sun god Shamash. Moreover,
   in other texts this Enmeduranki was the first to be shown, by
   Adad and Shamash, three techniques of divination: pouring oil on
   water, inspecting a liver, and the use of a cedar (rod), whose
   function is still unclear. These were to be transmitted from
   generation to generation, and in fact became the property of the
   guild of baru, the major group of diviners in Babylon.
   "These details show how the biblical portrait of Enoch may have
   been compiled from Enmeduranki: each is seventh in the
   antediluvian list; the biblical 365 preserves the affinity to the
   sun, rather than the sun god; walking with God (or perhaps,
   'angels'?) suggests the intimacy between god(s) and man. The
   final connection links not with Enmeduranki, but with a fish-man
   (apkallu), with which each of the first seven kings associated
   and from whom they learnt all kinds of knowledge. Enmeduranki's
   apkallu, called Utu'abzu, is mentioned in another cuneiform text,
   where he is said to have ascended to heaven. This last link
   remains provisional, but at all events, the writer of Genesis
   5:21-24 appears to either have created Enoch as a counterpart of
   Enmeduranki or, equally probably, to have alluded to an already
   existing Jewish tradition about Enoch, already modeled on the
   earlier figure."
   - John Rogerson and Philip Davies, The Old Testament World
   
   "One cannot rule out the possibility that, as Enmduranki and
   Enoch, Adapa too was the seventh in a line of sages, the Sages of
   Eridu, and thus another version of the Sumerian memory echoed in
   the biblical Enoch record. According to this tale, seven Wise Men
   were trained in Eridu, Enki's city; their epithets and particular
   knowledge varied from version to version. Rykle Borger, examining
   this tale in light of the Enoch traditions ('Die
   Beschworungsserie Bit Meshri und die Himmelfahrt Henochs' in the
   Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 33), was especially
   fascinated by the inscription on the third tablet of the series
   of Assyrian Oath Incantations. In it the name of each sage is
   given and his main call on fame is explained; it says thus of the
   seventh: 'Uta-abzu, he who to heaven ascended'. Citing a second
   such text, R. Borger concluded that this seventh sage, whose name
   combined that of Utu/Shamash with the Lower World (Abzu) domain
   of Enki, was the Assyrian 'Enoch'.
   "According to the Assyrian references to the wisdom of Adapa, he
   composed a book of sciences titled U.SAR d ANUM d ENLILA -
   'Writings regarding Time; from divine Anu and divine Enlil'.
   Adapa, thus, is credited with writing Mankind's first book of
   astronomy and the calendar."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
   
     "And I saw there something horrible: I saw neither a heaven
     above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place chaotic and
     horrible. And there I saw seven stars of the heaven bound
     together in it, like great mountains and burning with fire.
     Then I said: 'For what sin are they bound, and on what account
     have they been cast in hither?' Then said Uriel, one of the
     holy angels, who was with me, and was chief over them, and
     said: 'Enoch, why dost thou ask, and why art thou eager for
     the truth? These are of the number of the stars of heaven,
     which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and are
     bound here till ten thousand years, the time entailed by their
     sins, are consummated.' And from thence I went to another
     place, which was still more horrible than the former, and I
     saw a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and
     blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss, being
     full of great descending columns of fire: neither its extent
     or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture. Then I said:
     'How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!' Then
     Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and
     said unto me: 'Enoch, why hast thou such fear and affright?'
     And I answered: 'Because of this fearful place, and because of
     the spectacle of the pain.' And he said unto me: 'This place
     is the prison of the angels, and here they will be imprisoned
     for ever.'"
     - Enoch 21:1-10
     
   Enoch's description of the punishment prepared for the fallen
   angels has clear parallels with the chaotic void in the
   Necronomicon.
   
   "...The Book of Enoch has always been of great significance to
   Freemasons, and...certain rituals dating back to long before
   Bruce's time [1730-1794] identified Enoch himself with Thoth, the
   Egyptian god of wisdom."
   - Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
   
     "Enoch was the first who invented books and different sorts of
     writing. The ancient Greeks declare that Enoch is the same as
     Mercury Trismegistus [Hermes], and that he taught the sons of
     men the art of building cities, and enacted some admirable
     laws...He discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac, and the
     course of the Planets; and he pointed out to the sons of men,
     that they should worship God, that they should fast, that they
     should pray, that they should give alms, votive offerings, and
     tenths. He reprobated abominable foods and drunkenness, and
     appointed festivals for sacrifices to the Sun, at each of the
     Zodiacal Signs."
     - Hebraeus
     
   According to Masonic lore, Enoch was the inventor of writing,
   "that he taught men the art of building", and that, before the
   flood, he "feared that the real secrets would be lost - to
   prevent which he concealed the grand Secret, engraven on a white
   oriental porphyry stone, in the bowels of the earth."
   - Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia
   
   "In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus writes that Adam had
   forewarned his descendants that sinful humanity would be
   destroyed by a deluge. In order to preserve their science and
   philosophy, the children of Seth therefore raised two pillars,
   one of brick and the other of stone, on which were inscribed the
   keys to their knowledge. The patriarch Enoch....also constructed
   an underground temple [at Moriah] consisting of nine vaults, one
   beneath the other, placing in the deepest vault a triangular
   tablet of gold bearing upon it the absolute and ineffable name of
   Deity. According to some accounts, Enoch made two golden deltas.
   The larger he placed upon the white cubical altar in the lowest
   vault and the smaller he gave into the keeping of his son,
   Methuselah, who did the actual construction work of the brick
   chambers according to the pattern revealed to his father by the
   Most High. In the form and arrangements of these vaults Enoch
   epitomized the nine spheres of the ancient Mysteries and the nine
   sacred strata of the earth through which the initiate must pass
   to reach the flaming Spirit dwelling in its central core."
   - Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian
   Symbolical Philosophy
   
   Methuselah " took the object back to Sippar. Enoch remained at
   Moriah, to become the old man on the mountain. He lived 365
   years, according to Genesis, and then he died. Or did he vanish
   into thin air?"
   - Brian , "ENOCH The Greatest Story Never Told "
   
   Enoch's "name signified in the Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The
   legend of the columns, of granite and brass or bronze, erected by
   him, is probably symbolical. That of bronze, which survived the
   flood, is supposed to symbolize the mysteries, of which Masonry
   is the legitimate successor from the earliest times the custodian
   and depository of the great philosophical and religious truths,
   unknown to the world at large, and handed down from age to age by
   an unbroken current of tradition, embodied in symbols, emblems,
   and allegories."
   - General Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
   
   There was a substantial Zoroastrian Influence on Judaism when
   Jewish exiles were exposed to the Persian religion during the
   Babylonian captivity.
   
   "Some Jews adopted Enochian tradition in Babylon during the Exile
   and brought it back to Canaan when Cyrus gave them leave to
   Return. The Enochian Jews were detested by the priesthood in
   Jerusalem, and they were forced to 'flee' into the desert before
   300 BCE. Naturally, they supported the Maccabees during the
   uprising of 165 BCE. The Enochians at Qumran 'updated' the text
   to include Judah the Hammer in the big story."
   "The last of the Essene stragglers buried it [the secret book] in
   Cave IV at Qumran c.70 CE. The urban Christians and Jews of the
   Near East rejected it. The authors of the Apocalypse rewrote and
   retitled it, but they didn't understand the heptadic structure of
   the original lines, the arrangement of sevens. (The Revelation of
   St John is pure gibberish, a sloppy rehash of Babylonian myths
   and legends.) Only the students of the Merkabah (in Babylonia)
   possessed the key to the Enochian mystery."
   - Brian , "ENOCH The Greatest Story Never Told "
     ____________________________________________________________
   
                              The Secrets
                                   
     "At that hour, that Son of Man was given a name, in the
     presence of the Lord of the Spirits, the Before-Time, even
     before the creation of the sun and the moon, before the
     creation of the stars, he was given a name in the presence of
     the Lord of the Spirits."
     - 1 Enoch 48:4
     
   The Messiah "first appears as preexistent in the apocryphal First
   Book of Enoch, which was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic
   about 150 BC. From that period on, the concept of the Messiah who
   was created in the six days of Creation, or even prior to them or
   who was born at variously stated subsequent dates and was then
   hidden to await his time, became a standard feature of Jewish
   Messianic eschatology.
   - Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts
   
     "From the beginning the Son of Man was hidden, And the Most
     High has preserved him In the presence of His might, And
     revealed him to the elect."
     - 1 Enoch 62:7
     
   "...When the righteous dead are mentioned in 1 Enoch or Jubilees,
   they seem to be destined for a blissful existence as disembodied
   souls, a notion so un-Jewish that it is presumed to be a Greek
   idea. No particular sect is identified in these works although
   they were used extensively at Qumran."
   - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"
   
   "Written both as a personal testament and as a historic review,
   the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, whose earliest title was probably The
   Words of Enoch, describes his journey to Heaven as well as to the
   four corners of Earth."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven
   
     "And after that I saw all the secrets of the heavens, and how
     the kingdom is divided, and how the actions of men are weighed
     in the balance. And there I saw the mansions of the elect and
     the mansions of the holy, and mine eyes saw there all the
     sinners being driven from thence which deny the name of the
     Lord of Spirits, and being dragged off: and they could not
     abide because of the punishment which proceeds from the Lord
     of Spirits.
     And I saw the chambers of the sun and moon, whence they
     proceed and whither they come again, and their glorious
     return, and how one is superior to the other, and their
     stately orbit, and how they do not leave their orbit, and they
     add nothing to their orbit and they take nothing from it, and
     they keep faith with each other, in accordance with the oath
     by which they are bound together."
     - 1 Enoch 41:1-2, 5b -6a
     
   "In the Book of Enoch it was the archangel Uriel ('God is my
   light') who showed Enoch the secrets of the Sun (solstices and
   equinoxes, 'six portals' in all) and the 'laws of the Moon'
   (including intercalation), and the twelve constellations of the
   stars, 'all the workings of heaven'. And in the end of the
   schooling, Uriel gave Enoch - as Shamash and Adad had given
   Enmeduranki - 'heavenly tablets', instructing him to study them
   carefully and note 'every individual fact' therein. Returning to
   Earth, Enoch passed this knowledge to his old son, Methuselah."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
   
   The knowledge granted Enoch included:
   
     "All the workings of heaven, earth and the seas, and all the
     elements, their passages and goings and the thunderings of the
     thunder, and of the Sun and the Moon; the goings and changings
     of the stars; the seasons, years, days, and hours."
     - The Book of the Secrets of Enoch
     
   According to the The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, "it seems that
   when the prophet Enoch was 'taken up', he saw the air and then
   the ether. Then he reached the first heaven, where 'two hundred
   angels rule the stars' and where he saw a sea 'greater than the
   earthly sea'.
   "The second heaven was gloomy. In the third heaven, he saw the
   Tree of Life, with four streams, of honey, milk, oil, and wine,
   flowing from its roots. The Place of the Righteous is in this
   heaven and the Terrible Place where the wicked are tortured.
   There was also the 'place on which God rests when he comes into
   Paradise'.
   "In the fourth heaven, he saw luminaries, wondrous creatures, and
   the Host of the Lord. There were many 'hosts' in the fifth, and
   in the sixth he saw 'bands of angels who study the revolutions of
   the stars'. Finally, in the seventh heaven he saw great angels
   and he got a distant glimpse of the Lord on His Throne."
   - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities
   
     "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up
     to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the
     body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this man -
     whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but
     God knows - was caught up to Paradise. He heard inexpressible
     things, things that man is not permitted to tell."
     - 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 (the apostle Paul describing his own
     experience)
     
   "Enoch's third heaven...seems very similar to the region known as
   Ilavrta-varsa, which is described in the Fifth Canto of the
   Bhagavata Purana. Thus, in Ilavrta-varsa there are four gigantic
   trees, and four rivers flow from their roots, including a river
   of honey. There is also a city called Brahmapuri, which is
   visited by Lord Brahma and which may correspond to the 'place on
   which God rests when he comes into Paradise'."
   The Venerable Bede, an eighth-century English theologian and
   historian, wrote that "the seven heavens are (1) the Air, (2) the
   Ether, (3) Olympus, (4) the Element of Fire, (5) the Firmament,
   (6) the Angelical Region, and (7) the Realm of the Trinity."
   "According to the Fifth Canto of the Bhagavata Purana, Brahmapuri
   and the residences of eight prominent Devas [administrators of
   the Universe] are situated on the top of a mountain in
   Ilavrta-varsa called Meru, and therefore Mount Meru corresponds
   to the Greek Olympus. Thus, if Ilavrta-varsa corresponds to
   Enoch's third heaven, then it is also reasonable to say that this
   third heaven corresponds to the Greek Olympus."
   - Richard L. Thompson, Alien Identities
   
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                       Other Enoch-related Sites
                                   
     Library of Ethiopian Texts, Prague
   Link to the complete Charles translation of the Ethiopic Book of
   1 Enoch organized by chapter
     ____________________________________________________________
   
  Hyperlinks
  
     * The Book of Revelation
     * John Dee
     * Sons of God
     * H. P. Lovecraft
     * Jesus in Jerusalem
     * Masonic Beliefs and Practices
     * The Messianic Elite
     * Mysterious Manuscripts
     * The Necronomicon
     * The Nephilim
     * Satan and the Forces of Chaos
     * The Secret Knowledge
       
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