Sondra Brasile wrote:
>
> Has anyone ever studied the book of Enoch? I mean with regard to whether
> it's a fake or not? All I can find is why it wasn't cannonized, which
> doesn't seem like a very scholarly approach, they didn't even try to see if
> the book was historically or scientifically accurate?
Sondra -
You would need to specify more clearly what you mean by "fake." The practice of
attributing writings to some person of long ago in order to give it added authority was
fairly common in the ancient world and was not thought of as "fakery" in the same way
that we would think of someone today writing a political document and attributing it to
Jefferson or Lincoln.
Virtually no biblical scholars today think that "Enoch" was actually written by
an ante-diluvian patriarch named Enoch. It is made up of several parts which were
probably written at different times between ~200 B.C. & the beginning of the Christian
era. Jude 14-15 is the only direct citation of it in the NT but possible influences of
it can be found in other passages.
The 2+ page article "Enoch, Book of " in the Supplementary Volume of the
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible would be one good place to get started on this.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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