Fallen Angels: Soldiers of Satan's Realm

PART TWO The Outside Books; Introduction

Fallen Angels PART TWO The Outside Books Introduction story of the fallen angels, which we did not find in the Bible, appears fully in works which Jewish tradition characterizes as the Outside Books, that is9 books left out of the Scriptural canon. They are writings which imitate the biblical style, usually with indifferent success. The oldest of them are contemporary with the latest biblical books (the second pre-Christian century); and the rest were written at different times down to about the year 100 of the Christian era. Most of them were composed in Hebrew or Aramaic, a few in Greek. Frequently these writings were attributed by their authors to heroes of an earlier age: Abraham, Noah, Moses. Because of this, the whole literature is often called the Pseudepigrapha. • • • 15 16 • • • Fallen Angels Some of these books were included in Greek manuscripts of the Bible, and thence were taken over by the Catholic Church as sacred scripture. They are known as the Apocrypha ("hidden books'*); in Jewish tradition they have no more status than the bulkier literature which was rejected by the Catholic Church as well. Some of the latter writings (such as the Book of Enoch, to which we shall come at once) exercised considerable influence on early Christianity; but then they were discarded and were preserved only in such ecclesiastical backwaters as the Coptic and Armenian Churches. Most of these books, though written by Jews, represent a type of Judaism off the main line of Jewish religious development. In some cases there is doubt whether the book is of Jewish or Christian authorship. Few of the Hebrew originals have survived—in tattered fragments recovered from the attic of the old synagogue in Cairo. The rest are known to us only in translations and in translations of translations—from Hebrew to Greek, and thence into Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavonic, Armenian! These versions were made by Christian scribes; many contain manifestly Christian insertions. There must be other instances that have not been detected. Moreover, when a text has passed through the hands of several Christian translators, its tone and flavor may have been considerably modified. Despite much careful scholarship, the text and interpretation of many of these writings is still far from certain; and there is often sharp disagreement as to their respective dates and their relation one to another. They are indispensable for our inquiry, but we must approach them with a somewhat skeptical humility. CHAPTER THREE The Ethiopic Enoch 0; Iver a century ago the explorer Bruce brought back to England from Abyssinia three manuscripts of an Ethiopic work called the Book of Enoch. It has now been established that the original of this work was composed in Palestine , in Hebrew or Aramaic—or perhaps some sections in one ...