Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (review)

To readers of this journal the name of Annette Reed is likely not unknown since she provided the lead article in JECS 12.2 (2004) on the innovative use of the demons in the writings of Justin Martyr. Her interest in the topic of the fallen angels goes back to her Princeton dissertation of 2002; this book is a revision of that thesis. Its theme is tracing "the reception-history of the Book of the Watchers [BW = 1 Enoch 1–36] from its composition in the third century bce until the early Middle Ages, by focusing on its distinctive treatment of the fallen angels as corrupting teachers of humankind" (5). Reed's emphasis throughout the volume is on the role of Enochic literature within early and middle Judeo-Christian relations.

After a twenty-three page introduction she pens three chapters which will likely be of more interest to scholars of ancient Judaism than early Christianity. Starting with the fourth chapter our author begins dealing in earnest with material that directly affects the study of patristics. Here she stresses "continuous communities" (= Jewish, then Jewish Christian, then gentile Christian) that kept Enochic literature alive (127–29) rather than any early parting of the ways. She feels the usual explanation of the church's "appropriation" of Jewish pseudepigrapha is undesirable, preferring "to focus instead on the elements of continuity that are present even in Christian innovations on earlier Jewish traditions" (157). Reed spends substantial space considering the difficult issue of canon, finding that for some writers (Justin, Tertullian) 1 Enoch functioned as Scripture. One provocative idea in chapter 4 comes from her documenting how quickly rabbinic Judaism came to reject the interpretation that the phrase "sons of God" at Gen. 6.1–4 refers to the angels who sinned (the second century c.e.) and how those who held to Enoch's being translated to heaven were condemned as minim (heretics). She suggests that the "likely candidates" for the rabbinic opprobrium were Christians in light of "their continued cultivation of Enochic texts and traditions" (136–39).

Chapter 5 expounds the popularity of the "Enochic myth of angelic descent" (160) among various second and third century writers as well as the account's diverse early Christian application. Justin's use is a condensation of her JECS article mentioned above: he employed the Enochic exposition not only to explain the origins of pagan wickedness but also to depict "the fallen angels' transmission of knowledge as the exact inversion of divine revelation" (172). Later authors turned toward applying the fallen angels theme to practical matters: the demonization of "heresy" (Irenaeus), the wiles of women and the use of cosmetics (Tertullian, Cyprian), and contrariwise the legitimization of pre-Christian Greek philosophy (Clement). She highlights the work of Richard Bauckham, who argues that Clement's statements here indicate a perhaps widespread but poorly attested early Christian undercurrent that Greek philosophy was intrinsically bad because of its revelation by the fallen angels (à la Hermias's Irriso).

The sixth chapter shows that the issue of the Jewish canon played a role in the eventual Christian repudiation of Enochic literature, as witnessed in authors who rejected its authority as heretical or untrustworthy (Athanasius, Ephrem, Jerome, Augustine), who accepted it (Tertullian), and who changed their views over time (Origen). Its survival seems to have been largely due to monks and chronologers. As for the interpretation of the "sons of God" as Sethites (first found in Julius Africanus), Reed, building on the work of W. Adler and A. Klijn, explores whether a connection with Josephus's statements on the matter can be made with Christian sources. She concludes that "our evidence cannot be readily explained through a simple model of influence" (225).

The final chapter on the reemergence of Enochic material (especially the Book of the Watchers) within medieval Judaism is the most conjectural part of the book. The author takes issue with the long...