xci. 12-17) to have emanated from Sadducæan circles, and that the

special object of the book in its original form was that of bringing about the reform of the calendar.[282] He points first of all to the ascription of the book to Enoch as supporting his contention; Enoch lived 365 years, i.e. his years correspond to the number of days in the solar year, which, as we have seen, was one of the fundamental differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees, these latter reckoning time by the lunar year. Further, Enoch ascended into the heavens and would therefore be just the one to know all about the heavenly luminaries; he was thus the most appropriate author of a book which was to deal with astronomical questions. “The Sadducæan character of the original work,” says Leszynsky, “is seen most clearly in the discussion regarding the calendar; chapter lxxii.-lxxxii. are rightly called the Book of Astronomy[283]: ‘the book of the courses of the luminaries of the heaven, the relations of each, according to their classes, their dominion and their seasons, according to their names and places of origin, and according to their months ... with regard to all the years of the world and unto eternity, till the new creation is accomplished which endureth till eternity’ (lxxii. 1). That sounds almost as though the author of the Book of Jubilees had written it. That it is not a merely scientific interest which impels the writer to give expression to his astronomical theories may be seen from the words at the conclusion of the section: ‘Blessed are all the righteous, blessed are all those who walk in the way of righteousness, and sin not as the sinners in the reckoning of all their days, in which the sun traverses the heaven, entering into and departing from the portals for thirty days ...’ (lxxxii. 4-7). Herein one can discern quite clearly the tendency of the writer. He desires the adoption of the solar year, while his contemporaries wrongly followed a different reckoning and therefore celebrated the feasts at the wrong time. The ‘sinners who sin in the reckoning of the year’ are the Pharisees; and the righteous ones who are blessed, the _Zaddîkim_,[284] who walk upon the paths of righteousness (_Zedek_), as the name was made to imply, were the Sadducees.” Leszynsky works out his argument in much detail, the study of the whole of which is necessary to grasp the full force of his contention. The other portions of the book he does not hold to be Sadducæan. In the concluding portion he sees a bitter polemic by a Pharisee against the Sadducees (see especially cii. 6 ff.). Regarding the important section called the “Similitudes” (xxxvii.-lxxi.) Leszynsky has nothing definite to suggest other than that it is not Christian, still less Jewish. He says: “We know too little about the sects which existed about the time of the beginning of Christianity to be able to say to what circle the author of this writing belonged.”

The contentions of Charles and Leszynsky are thus diametrically opposed. To the present writer the great difficulty in accepting either as it stands lies in the fact that, broadly speaking, the Apocalyptic Literature, of which the Book of Enoch is the most striking example we possess, was acceptable to neither Pharisees nor Sadducees. No doubt Charles is right in assigning the earlier portions of the book (i.e. the pre-Maccabæan) to the _Chassidim_; but we have sought, in an earlier chapter,[285] to show that Friedländer is justified in maintaining that the _Chassidim_ were the forbears of both Apocalyptists and Pharisees, two branches of the parent stock which diverged widely in spite of some fundamental points of family likeness. The Book of Enoch, therefore, may, in its pre-Maccabæan portions, well be ascribed to the _Chassidim_; but it is not on that account necessary to ascribe all the later portions to the Pharisees; three points especially militating against this: the Messianic doctrine, the, generally speaking, universalistic spirit, and the attitude to the Law not being the Pharisaic one.[286] The Apocalyptists, on the other hand, were also the descendants of the _Chassidim_; and no sufficient reason exists for not ascribing the bulk of the later portions of our book to them. Regarding Leszynsky’s view, while we feel that that part of it is justified which ascribes to the Sadducees the “Book of Astronomy” (lxxii.-lxxxii.) and possibly certain other portions, there is a grave difficulty in regarding such parts as i.-xxxvi. and xciii., xci. 12-17, in which the apocalyptic element is prominent, as of Sadducæan origin, for nothing that we know of the Sadducees leads us to suppose that they cultivated apocalyptic studies. What we feel to be of extreme importance in assigning authorship to Jewish books belonging to the last two pre-Christian centuries is the fact well expressed by Friedländer: “... But who would maintain that these two parties, i.e. the Pharisees and Sadducees, constituted in reality the Jewish people at this period, however much they may have been pushed into the foreground of historical events? The Pharisees and Sadducees, no less than the Essenes, who were far removed from the sphere of politics, were only sects of the Jews. The Pharisees formed, even on Josephus’ showing (_Antiq._, XVII, ii. 4), only a fraction of the people, and did not number much more than six thousand all told; they were thus not much more numerous than the Essenes with their four thousand (Philo, _Quod omn. prob._, II, 457; Josephus, _Antiq._, XVIII, i. 5). And if it be willingly granted that the Pharisees had many adherents among the people, yet this was very far from being the People itself.... And where remain then the great masses of the ‘people of the land,’ the really deciding factor, who were neither Pharisæan nor Sadducæan, but among whom the Jewish spirit-of-the-people (_Volksgeist_), developed under favourable conditions during the memorable days of the Ptolemys, was not yet wholly extinguished and still possessed sufficient power to protect itself against the yoke which Pharisaism sought to put upon the people?”[287]

It is not necessary to assume that all the literature produced by the Jews during these centuries emanated either from Pharisaic or Sadducæan circles. There are other alternatives; and in the present case it seems most probable that the bulk of this book was written by apocalyptists who belonged neither to Pharisaic nor yet to Sadducæan circles.

The Book of Enoch was originally written partly in Aramaic (vi.-xxxvi., lxxxiii.-xc., according to Charles) and partly in Hebrew (the rest of the book). No portion of the book in its original form has come down to us; the Ethiopic version is the only complete one extant, it was translated from the Greek version of which only fragments remain.[288] The Latin version, which was also made from the Greek, is not extant with the exception of i. 9, cvi. 1-18. That the book is Palestinian is generally acknowledged; its original language of itself points to this.

The Book of Enoch is in many respects the most important of all the apocalypses, since it is without a rival for the history of doctrinal development during the last two pre-Christian centuries. The teaching of the book is sometimes contradictory, which is not to be wondered at in view of its composite authorship; for example, in lxix. 11 it is said that man was originally created without sin, “like the angels,” but that death came through sin and destroyed him; but elsewhere the entering in of sin from the first is traced to the spiritual world. The doctrines of angels and demons appear in a developed form in this book. The teaching concerning the Kingdom is likewise contradictory; vi.-xxxvi. are full of materialistic ideas, whereas xci.-civ. are marked by conceptions which are entirely spiritual. So, too, with regard to the Messiah; at one time He is represented as without having any special _rôle_ to fill, at another He appears as the “Righteous One,” or as the “Elect One,” “The Son of Man,” and “The Christ” or “Anointed One.” Regarding the Last Things, the teaching about the Judgement varies according as to whether the Messianic Kingdom is conceived of as an eternal earthly kingdom, in which case the final Judgement precedes it, or as only a temporary earthly kingdom, when the Judgement takes place at its close; in xxxvii.-lxxi. (“The Similitudes”) it is taught that the Messianic Kingdom is eternal and embraces heaven and earth, here it is initiated by the final Judgement. The punishment of the wicked takes place in Sheol, part of which is a place of fire, and equivalent to the later Gehenna conception; another part of Sheol is described as an intermediate resting-place of the righteous. In the oldest portions of the book both soul and body, a physical body, rise and abide eternally in the earthly Messianic Kingdom; in “The Similitudes” it is a spiritual body which rises to a spiritual kingdom; while in the latest section of the book it is taught that only the spirit rises, and only the righteous attain to the resurrection.

Most of the New Testament writers have been influenced by the book in thought and diction. “It is quoted as a genuine production of Enoch by St. Jude (verses 14, 15), and as Scripture by St. Barnabas. The authors of the Book of Jubilees, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and 4 Ezra laid it under contribution. With the earlier Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a canonical book.”[289]

(_b_) THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES

[LITERATURE.—Schürer, II, iii. pp. 270-292, German ed., III, pp. 555-592; Blass, in Kautzsch, II, pp. 177-217; Lanchester, in Charles, II, pp. 368-406; M. S. Terry has published this book in blank verse (New York, undated). See also an article on this book in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1877, pp. 31-67.]

This work consisted originally of fourteen books, twelve of which have survived; but we are here concerned only with the Proœmium and books iii.-v., the remainder belonging to later times. The Proœmium and books iii.-v. belong, like the rest of the work, to different dates, but the bulk of the Proœmium and book iii. belong to about the middle of the second century B.C., books iv. and v. to the latter half of the first century A.D. These portions are all Jewish in the main, though interspersed with Christian elements.

Of authorship little can be said; the main portion of the Proœmium and book iii. were probably written by a Jew of Alexandria, parts of