I wrote a short paper on Jude’s quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9 for my course on the Epistles and Revelation that was entitled “Enoch the Prophet.” The paper had to be short so I was unable to explore all of the implications of this quote, but those implications continue to intrigue me. The commentaries that I studied were unable to explore all of the implications of the quotation; of course, that is not the fault of the commentators. Issues such as this are better suited for discussion in academic journals or monographs. However, after reading the commentaries, monographs, and academic journals I couldn’t help but leave feeling cheated out of a full explanation. There are so many interesting issues that this quotation raises.
Most of the commentaries and articles said something to the extent of, “This quotation does not mean that 1 Enoch should be part of the canon.” Ok, but that doesn’t explain why Jude quoted 1 Enoch.
Other’s concluded that this prophecy was an actual, divinely inspired prophecy that was preserved in 1 Enoch, but the rest of the book of 1 Enoch is not inspired. This argument doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems to be based on an a priori assumption that Jude is inspired while 1 Enoch is not and not on the evidence that is presented in the text.
Before I show my hand, I want to throw some questions out there to see what others think about this odd quotation. Has anyone ever thought about this quotation before? What are your thoughts?
I think this quotation has some implications concerning our understanding of “canon” compared to the understanding of “canon” that Jude had. I also think it has implications concerning how we understand Scripture to be “true.” (I’m not saying Scripture isn’t true…just that, perhaps, our understanding of what a “true” document looks like might be more affected by modernity, or even post-modernity, than the Biblical text itself). This quotation also has implications, I believe, on how we read Scripture and how we understand what type of book Scripture is.
Anyway, any thoughts?
4 December 2007 at 9.36 am
Interesting. I’ve thought about that quotation from Jude before, and my current thinking on it basically amounts to this: we don’t understand how we got our canon. Christianity didn’t have an established “canon” until well after Jude was written. I know many of my protestant brothers and sisters see the inspiration of Scripture as coming on the writing end of the spectrum (ie, God inspired Jude to quote 1 Enoch). However, I’m slowly beginning to see the inspiration coming on the other end of the spectrum (ie, God inspired the editors and collectors and proclaimers of the canon). So, I’m not willing to say 1 Enoch should be on the same level as our accepted Canon, but I’ve no problem seeing it as an important document that should be read.
How’s that for tipping my hand?
4 December 2007 at 12.35 pm
Amen. So far on this question, I have found Craig Allert’s new book most helpful. I think that Jude quoted 1 Enoch because he found it to be ‘inspired,’ by which I don’t mean everything that modern evangelicalism has impregnated that term with. Again, Allert is helpful in this by giving evidence for what the Patristics would have thought of “inspiration.”
I think many modern evangelicals have a real problem with these ‘enigmas’ because their paradigm of canon doesn’t allow for progression and development within the canon or the importance of the community of faith in canonization but is static, monolithic, and (untenably) based on sole authorship of the majority of the canon (e.g. the “authors” are inspired). I too think I have just tipped my hand.
4 December 2007 at 12.42 pm
Jared: I am about 1/3 of the way through Allert’s book and have also found it very helpful. I’m planning on finishing it after finals and then doing a review. I like the way he approaches the question of canon by first starting off with a history of evangelicalism as a way to get one’s bearings then moving onto the history of canon and patristic understandings of canon.
I, also, think that modern understandings of “canon” are too often thrown back onto the context of Scripture and early Christianity…as if all the authors of the Bible had actually read Revelation or accepted books like the Song of Songs or Qoheleth in their “canon” or as if early Christians did not read and/or accept books in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in their “canon.” All roads point the other way and Christians need to deal with these facts and their implications for our understanding of “canon.”
9 December 2007 at 9.58 am
1. Does that mean aratus (or is it epimenides?) is inspired when Paul quotes him in Acts 17? Did Paul think he was inspired? Was Jude self-conscious at all of being inspired and his epistle being cannonized? Does he need to have this self-consciousness?
2. Isn’t all theology trying to rule out what you can’t say about God and what he says. So inspiration might be more than what evangelicals say it is but it is certainly not less. Is it? That is, the present (and perhaps inadequate) description of inspiration may not capture all that the Bible is or how it came to us. However, inadequacy doesn’t rule out the partial correctness (or usefulness) of the basic belief as scripture coming from God and therefore its trustworthy nature. We too are historically situated blessed to understand more than some generations and doomed to be the dark ages for some other generation(s). Do God’s ‘regular’ sheep (non-seminarians and non-vocational theologians) need to figure out what inspired means and how Scripture came to be so before they believe and apply what God tells them through Scripture?
9 December 2007 at 1.15 pm
m: Thanks for you comment and questions.
1. Paul actually quotes from both Epimenides of Knossos and Aratus of Soli in Acts 17. I wouldn’t take the view that Paul believes they were inspired, although some commentators would say that those verses from these two poets were inspired by God. I don’t think that is the best way to look at it.
I think it might be able to be argued based on his epistles to the Corinthians that Paul might have understood his words as coming from God, but I don’t know if he would have formulated the doctrine of inspiration the same way it is seen today. I’m not sure Jude knew he was, but both of these questions lead to admittedly speculative conclusions. I don’t think an author needed to be self-aware of being inspired.
2. I never meant to imply that the doctrine of inspiration is wrong. What I meant to convey is that most current formulations inadequately deal with the text as it stands. I definitely believe that there is some good in the current formulation, but that it needs to be nuanced in places and perhaps even changed in others.
I don’t think everyone is going to have the curiosity or desire to understand inspiration in relationship to some of the questions I am asking. I think it would be good for them to know, but I don’t think its a necessity to belief or application of the gospel. For instance, Luther didn’t think James, Jude, Revelation, or Esther was inspired while he accepted Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. Yet he was able to apply the gospel to his situation.
I’m just writing about my curiosities and questions. Perhaps other believers will have the same questions. Maybe they have been shown the inadequacies of the current formulation of inspiration by a college professor or unbelieving friend and are looking for a Christian who has also seen these and is trying to work through it. I never meant to imply or convey the idea that any ‘good’ Christian would bring up these questions or even be interested in them. I’m simply sharing my interests.
10 December 2007 at 12.00 am
Art, it’s interesting in your last comment that you say coming to a conclusion on the question of whether Jude knew he was inspired necessitates speculation (I tend to agree) but you seem to imply in your post that we need not speculate to know what Jude thought about the status of 1 Enoch as that book relates to the concept of canon.
In other words, it seems like you’re saying that we can’t know how Jude thought of his own letter, but we can know how Jude thought of 1 Enoch.
I appreciate that you want to push beyond some of the scholarly literature to say something on why Jude quoted 1 Enoch, but I would maintain that we can’t say any more than that. We can say why he quoted it, but I would maintain that inferring how Jude conceived of 1 Enoch based on his quotation of it will always lie in the realm of speculation. Unless Jude tells us what he thought about 1 Enoch, we’ll never know.
10 December 2007 at 12.20 am
jason: I definitely agree that attempting to understand what Jude thought of 1 Enoch does lie, in some ways, in the realm of speculation. There are a lot of issues that need to be dealt with in order to come to a firm conclusion on the matter:
Did the early Christians have a limited “canon”?
If they did, was that canon solely the OT as we know it?
Did the false teachers that Jude was talking about actually accept 1 Enoch as Scripture which drove Jude to quote from it (ala Paul in Acts 17)?
Did Jude simply “revere” 1 Enoch while not believing it to be from God as the OT was, much like the Qumran community treated both 1 Enoch and books like Jubilees?
These are questions which also necessitate speculation which further leads to another speculation (i.e. what Jude thought of 1 Enoch).
One window into the situation is the introductory formula which Jude uses. The key terms he uses are επροφητευσεν (prophesied) and λεγων (saying). This is the same type of formula and key words that Matthew places on the tongue of Christ in Matthew 15.7: επροφητευσεν and λεγων.
No one would want to say that Matthew is presenting Christ as seeing the prophecy of Isaiah as non-inspired or non-authoritative or non-canonical. Yet when the identical words occur before a quotation of 1 Enoch all of the sudden we are hesitant in making the same step.
So while it is admittedly speculative, there is inter-Biblical ground for the view that Jude understood 1 Enoch as Scripture or canonical or authoritative. If he did, it raises a bunch of other questions that beg answers.
But I do agree with you that it is speculation and was very careful in my paper to show that it was mere speculation and not a proven thesis.
10 December 2007 at 1.20 pm
I think that finding something of significance for the doctrine of Scripture in the link between Jude 14 and Matthew 15:7 rests on the assumption that Jesus is referring to Isaiah as text rather than Isaiah as prophet.
If, however, Jesus is referring to Isaiah’s prophetic action (or words) itself rather than its inscripturation, then I would say that it isn’t so much that Jesus sees the prophecy of Isaiah as inspired or non-inspired, canonical or non-canonical. The inspiration of the canonical text of Isaiah is incidental to the point Jesus is making, which is that Isaiah the prophet spoke correctly concerning the scribes and Pharisees, just as Jude finds that Enoch spoke correctly concerning Jude’s own opponents. In the same way, then, the inspiration or non-inspiration and the canonicity or non-canonicity of 1 Enoch is not in view at all in Jude.
10 December 2007 at 1.27 pm
On a linguistic note, I think λεγων is a far too common word to put much stock in, and both John’s father Zechariah (Luke 1:67) and Caiaphas the high priest (John 11:51) επροφητευσεν, but neither of them wrote anything that we possess today. I think this only substantiates that Jesus and Jude are speaking of prophetic action (or words) rather than any text per se.
26 April 2008 at 5.30 pm
By normal Fundamentalist logic, Jude’s quotation is an inerrant guarantee of the inerrant truth of the words he attributes to Enoch. The logic may be wrong-headed in its application, but it is the logic used to “prove” that Jesus was guaranteeing the actuality of Jonah’s submarine peregrinations, & the Davidic authorship of Psalm 110, & much else.
For those who don’t read the Bible as Fundamentalists, there is no case to answer; but if one is to insist that the Bible is totally inerrant, & that all attributions of sources & authorship in it – & even some it does not make – are therefore guaranteed as God-breathedly true. If Daniel is a real historical individual because Jesus as quoted in the inerrant Bible says so, then Enoch is equally historical & prophetic, because Jude as quoted in the inerrant Bible says so.
If Enoch is, despite the explicit words of the inspired Apostle, not “the seventh from Adam”, not “prophesying”, & not an inspired text in exactly the same sense as (say) the Book of Isaiah – then the logic of that position is being inconsistently applied. Unless those who apply it can show cause why it does not apply to Jude’s quotation. Or unless there has been a shift in Fundamentalist apologetic which makes these remarks out of date
– which is always possible.
Caiaphas & Zechariah are not counter-examples, because whereas no texts circulate under their names, 1 Enoch claims on its face to be a production of Enoch; & what Jude quotes – it is the only book he does quote – tallies with words in 1 En. 1.9.
*Can* it be contrasted with the canon in the Church ? Was there a Christian canon of the OT in Jude’s time ? If there was a canon in use by the churches, but one of the limits were not certain (as in due course they came to be in (most of ?) the Church), then it makes no sense to say that 1 Enoch is not treated as canonical; & without the use of “the books called Apocrypha”, the Fathers who used them to articulate dogma might have given us a very different orthodoxy.
1 Enoch was treated as holy writ within the Great Church until the fourth century – the Ethiopian Church treats it as such to this day.
AFAICS, discussions about the canon need to include discussion of the literature on the “fringe” – not just of the “Apocrypha”, but also of the “Pseudepigrapha”: specifically of those which to any degree & for any time found acceptance as inspired. This would mean discussing Jubilees, & 1 Enoch, & presumably others.
26 April 2008 at 5.33 pm
1 Enoch was treated as holy writ within the Great Church until the fourth century [b]by some of its readers[/b]
5 July 2008 at 10.36 pm
In my opinion, Jude was quoting not from the Book of Enoch, but only an oral tradition based on the actual words of Enoch.
Indeed, Jude quoted Enoch, not the apocryphal book, in describing how Enoch condemned the “ungodly” gainsaying of ungodly men, which Jude tied in association with the current gainsaying of those who were apostates that Jude was referring to in this Epistle. Both Jude and Peter (2 Peter 2) warned of false teachers who would “bring in damnable heresies.” Apparently, this belief was somewhat widely known and Jude and Peter had compared notes on it and shared urgently to their respective constituencies in these Epistles. Paul also referred to the same while addressing the Ephesian believers when he departed from them for Jerusalem in Acts 20:28-31. Even a generation later, John the Elder in his second letter, verses 7-11, made similar remarks, and called such “deceivers” numerous and sought reassurance of “children walking in truth.”
The Book of Enoch is widely accepted by scholars as a Jewish Apocryphal work and is neither authentic nor canonical.
20 July 2008 at 12.35 pm
In addition to the prophecy that Jude quotes from the book of Enoch, there are numerous prophecies throughout the book of Enoch. So, is the book of Enoch not included because it is not inspired – or is it not included because much of what Enoch wrote is not ‘understood’. Is this misunderstansding of Enoch due to mistranslation of ancient texts or the result of misinterpreting what has been translated?