Theos-Talk Archives (December 2008 Message tt00349)

THE BOOK OF ENOCH, THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY

While making a good deal of the Merkabah, the Jews, or rather their 
synagogues, rejected the Book of Enoch, either because it was not 
included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian 
thought, it was

. . . disavowed by the Jews like all other scripture which speaks of 
Christ.*

But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would 
have nothing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic 
than a purely kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both 
Latin and Protestant Churches class it among apocryphal productions. 
Nevertheless the New Testament, especially in the Acts and Epistles, 
teems with ideas and doctrines, now accepted and established as 
dogmas by the infallible Roman and other Churches, and even with 
whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch, or the "pseudo-Enoch," who 
wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic, as asserted by

??????????
* Book of Enoch. Archbishop Laurence's translation. Introduction, p.v.
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Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian text.
The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of The Evolution of 
Christianity, who edited Bishop Laurence's translation, was compelled 
to make some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On internal 
evidence* this book is found to have been written before the 
Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does not matter). 
As correctly argued by the Editor, it is

. . . either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet, 
predicting with miraculous accuracy the future teaching of Jesus of 
Nazareth, or the Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed His 
conceptions of the triumphant return of the Son of man, to occupy a 
judicial throne in the midst of rejoicing saints and trembling 
sinners, expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal fire; and 
whether these celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine, they 
have exercised so vast an influence on the destinies of mankind for 
nearly two thousand years, that candid and impartial seekers after 
religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the relationship of 
the Book of Enoch with the revelation, or the evolution, of 
Christianity.?

The Book of Enoch

. . . also records the supernatural control of the elements, through 
the action of individual angels presiding over the winds, the sea, 
hail, frost, dew, the lightning's flash and reverberating thunder. 
The names of the principal fallen angels are also given, among whom 
we recognize some of the invisible powers named in the incantations 
[magical] inscribed on the terra-cotta cups of Hebrew-Chaldee 
conjurations.?

We also find on these cups the word "Halleluiah," showing that

. . . a word, with which ancient Syro-Chaldaeans conjured, has 
become, through the vicissitudes of language, the Shibboleth of 
modern "Revivalists." §

The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty-seven verses from

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* The Book of Enoch was unknown to Europe for a thousand years, when 
Bruce found in Abyssinia some copies of it in Ethiopic; it was 
translated by Archbishop Laurence in 1821, from the text in the 
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
? Op. cit., p. xx.
? Op. cit., pp. xx-xxi.
§ Op. cit., p. xiv, note.
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various parts of the Gospels and Acts, with parallel passages from 
the Book of Enoch, and says:

The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the passage in 
the Epistle of Jude, because the author specifically names the 
prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of language and ideas in 
Enoch and the authors of the New Testament Scripture, as disclosed in 
the parallel passages which we have collated, clearly indicates that 
the work of the Semitic Milton was the inexhaustible source from 
which Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names, 
borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment, 
immortality, perdition, and of the universal reign of righteousness, 
under the eternal dominion of the Son of man. This evangelical 
plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which adapts the 
visions of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we miss 
the sublime simplicity of the great master of apocalyptic prediction, 
who prophesied in the name of the antediluvian patriarch.*

In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been 
suggested, that the Book of Enoch in its present form is simply a 
transcript?with numerous pre-Christian and post- Christian additions 
and interpolations?from far older texts. Modern research went so far 
as to point out that Enoch is made, in Chapter lxxi, to divide the 
day and night into eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day 
in the year as consisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, 
while a day of sixteen hours in length could not have occurred in 
Palestine. The translator, Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus:

. . . the region in which the author lived must have been situated 
not lower than forty-five degrees north latitude, where the longest 
day is fifteen hours and a half, nor higher perhaps than forty-nine 
degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen hours. This will 
bring the country where he wrote as high up at least as the northern 
districts of the Caspian and Euxine seas . . . the author of the Book 
of Enoch was perhaps a member of one of the tribes which Shalmaneser 
carried away, and placed "in Halah and in Habor by the river Goshen, 
and in the cities of the Medes . . . ."?

Further on, it is confessed that:

It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority of 
the Old Testament to the Book of Enoch . . . . The Book of Enoch 
teaches the pre-existence of the Son of Man, the Elect One, the 
Messiah, who "from

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* Op. cit., pp. xxxiv-xxxv.
? Op. cit., p. xiii.
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the beginning existed in secret,* and whose name was invoked in the 
presence of the Lord of spirits, before the sun and the signs were 
created." The author also refers to the "other Power who was upon 
Earth over the water on that day"?an apparent reference to the 
language of Genesis i, 2.? [ We maintain that it applies as well to 
the Hindu Narayana?the "mover on the waters."] We have thus the Lord 
of spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly foreshadowing 
the Trinity [as much as the Trimãrti] of futurity; but although 
Enoch's ideal Messiah doubtless exercised an important influence on 
primitive conceptions of the Divinity of the Son of man, we fail to 
identify his obscure reference to another "Power" with the 
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as "angels 
of power" abound in the visions of Enoch.?

An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said "Power." The 
Editor concludes his remarkable reflections by adding:

Thus far we learn that the Book of Enoch was published before the 
Christian era by some great Unknown of Semitic [?] race, who, 
believing himself to be inspired in a post-prophetic age, borrowed 
the name of an antediluvian patriarch§ to authenticate his own 
enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic kingdom. And as the contents 
of his marvellous Book enter freely into the composition of the New 
Testament, it follows that if the author was not an inspired prophet, 
who predicted the teachings of Christianity, he was a visionary 
enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by Evangelists and Apostles 
as revelation?alternative conclusions which involve the Divine or 
human origin of Christianity.||

The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor:

. . . the discovery, that the language and ideas of alleged 
revelation are found in a pre-existent work, accepted by Evangelists 
and Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians among 
apocryphal productions. * *

This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians 
of the Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the Book of 
Enoch.
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* The Seventh Principle, the First Emanation [H.P.B.]
? Op. cit., pp. xxxvii, and xl.
? Op. cit., pp. xl-xli.
§ Who stands for the "Solar" or Manvantaric Year. [H.P.B.]
|| Op. cit., pp. xli-xlii.
** Op. cit., p. xlviii.
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The prophecies of the Book of Enoch are indeed prophetic, but they 
were intended for, and cover the records of, the five Races out of 
the seven?everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus 
the remark made by the Editor of the English translation, that:

Chapter xcii records a series of prophecies extending from Enoch's 
own time to about one thousand years beyond the present generation,*

is faulty. The prophecies extend to the end of our present Race, not 
merely to a "thousand years" hence. Very true that:

In the system of [Christian] chronology adopted, a day stands 
[occasionally] for hundred, and a week for seven hundred years.?

But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system adopted by Christians to 
make Biblical chronology fit with facts or theories, and does not 
represent the original thought. The "days" stand for the undetermined 
periods of the Side-Races, and the "weeks" for the Sub-Races, the 
Root-Races being referred to by an expression that is not even found 
in the English translation. Moreover the sentence at the bottom of 
page 150:

Subsequently, in the fourth week . . . the visions of the holy and 
the righteous shall be seen, the order of generation after generation 
shall take place, ?

is quite wrong. It stands in the original: "the order of generation 
after generation had taken place on the earth," etc.; that is, after 
the first human race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up 
in the Third Root-Races; a change which entirely alters the meaning. 
Then all that is given in the translation?as very likely also in the 
Ethiopic text, since the copies have been sorely tampered with?as 
about things which were to happen in the future, is, we are informed, 
in the past tense in the original Chaldaean MSS., and is not 
prophecy, but a narrative of what had already come to pass. When 
Enoch begins "to speak from a book"§ he is reading the account given 
by a great Seer, and the

??????????
* Op. cit., p. xxiii.
? Loc. cit.
? Chapter xcii, 9.
§ Op. cit., xcii, 4.
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prophecies are not his own, but are from the Seer. Enoch or Enoïchion 
means "internal eye" or Seer. Thus every Prophet and Adept may be 
called "Enoïchion," without becoming a pseudo-Enoch. But here, the 
Seer who compiled the present Book of Enoch is distinctly shown as 
reading out from a book:

. . .I have been born the seventh in the first week [the seventh 
branch, or Side-Race, of the first Sub-Race, after physical 
generation had begun, namely, in the third Root-Race] . . . But after 
me, in the second week [second Sub-Race], great wickedness shall 
arise [arose, rather] . . . in that week the end of the first shall 
take place, in which mankind shall be safe. But when the first is 
completed, iniquity shall grow up . . .*

As translated it has no sense. As it stands in the Esoteric text, it 
simply means that the First Root-Race shall come to an end during the 
second Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race, in the period of which time 
mankind will be safe; all this having no reference whatever to the 
biblical Deluge. Verse 10th speaks of the sixth week [sixth Sub-Race 
of the Third Root Race] when

. . . all those who are in it shall be darkened, the hearts of all of 
them shall be forgetful of wisdom [the divine knowledge will be dying 
out], and in it shall a man ascend.

This "man" is taken by the interpreters, for some mysterious reasons 
of their own, to mean Nebuchadnezzar; he is in reality the first 
Hierophant of the purely human Race (after the allegorical Fall into 
generation) selected to perpetuate the dying Wisdom of the Devas 
(Angels or Eloh§m). He is the first "Son of Man"?the mysterious 
appellation given to the divine Initiates of the first human school 
of the Manushis (men), at the very close of the Third Root-Race. He 
is also called the "Savior," as it was He, with the other 
Hierophants, who saved the Elect and the Perfect from the geological 
conflagration, leaving to perish in the cataclysm of the Close? those 
who forgot the primeval wisdom in sexual sensuality.

??????????
* Op. cit., Ch. xcii, 4-7.
? At the close of every Root-Race there comes a cataclysm, in turn by 
fire or water. Immediately after the "Fall into generation" the dross 
of the third Root-Race?those who fell into sensuality by falling off 
from the teaching of the Divine Instructors?were destroyed, after 
which the Fourth Root-Race originated, at the end of which took place 
the last Deluge. (See the "Sons of God" mentioned in Isis Unveiled, 
Vol. I, pp. 593 et seq.)
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And during its completion [of the "sixth week," or the sixth Sub-
Race] he shall burn the house of dominion [the half of the globe or 
the then inhabited continent] with fire, and all the race of the 
elect root shall be dispersed.*

The above applies to the Elect Initiates, and not at all to the Jews, 
the supposed chosen people, or to the Babylonian captivity, as 
interpreted by the Christian theologians. Considering that we find 
Enoch, or his perpetuator, mentioning the execution of the "decree 
upon sinners" in several different weeks,? saying that "every work of 
the ungodly shall disappear from the whole earth" during this fourth 
time (the Fourth Race), it surely can hardly apply to the one 
solitary Deluge of the Bible, still less to the Captivity.
It follows, therefore, that as the Book of Enoch covers the five 
Races of the Manvantara, with a few allusions to the last two, it 
does not contain "Biblical prophecies," but simply facts taken out of 
the Secret Books of the East. The editor, moreover, confesses that:

The preceding six verses, viz., 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 
18th, are taken from between the 14th and 15th verses of the 
nineteenth chapter, where they are to be found in the MSS.?

By this arbitrary transposition, he has made confusion still more 
confused. Yet he is quite right in saying that the doctrines of the 
Gospels, and even of the Old Testament, have been taken bodily from 
the Book of Enoch, for this is as evident as the sun in heaven. The 
whole of the Pentateuch was adapted to fit in with the facts given, 
and this accounts for the Hebrews refusing to give the book a place 
in their Canon, just as the Christians have subsequently refused to 
admit it among their canonical works. The fact that the Apostle Jude 
and many of the Christian Fathers referred to it as a revelation and 
a sacred volume, is, however, an excellent proof that the early 
Christians accepted it; among these the most learned?as, for 
instance, Clement of Alexandria?understood Christianity and its 
doctrines in quite a different light from their modern successors, 
and viewed Christ

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* Op. cit., Ch. xcii, 11.
? Op. cit., Ch. xcii, 7, 11, 13, 15.
? Op. cit., note, p. 152.
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under an aspect that Occultists only can appreciate. The early 
Nazarenes and Chr`stians, as Justin Martyr calls them, were the 
followers of Jesus, of the true Chr`stos and Christos of Initiation; 
whereas, the modern Christians, especially those of the West, may be 
Papists, Greeks, Calvinists, or Lutherans, but can hardly be called 
Christians, i. e., the followers of Jesus, the Christ.
Thus the Book of Enoch is entirely symbolical. It relates to the 
history of the human Races and of their early relation to Theogony, 
the symbols being interblended with astronomical and cosmic 
mysteries. One chapter is missing, however, in the Noachian records 
(from both the Paris and the Bodleian MSS.), namely, Chapter lviii, 
in Sect. X; this could not be remodelled, and therefore it had to 
disappear, disfigured fragments alone having been left of it. The 
dream about the cows, the black, red and white heifers, relates to 
the first Races, their division and disappearance. Chapter lxxxviii, 
in which one of the four Angels "went to the white cows and taught 
them a mystery," after which, the mystery being born "became a man," 
refers to (a) the first group evolved of primitive }ryans, (b) to the 
"mystery of the Hermaphrodite" so called, having reference to the 
birth of the first human Races as they are now. The well-known rite 
in India, one that has survived in that patriarchal country to this 
day, known as the passage, or rebirth through the cow?a ceremony to 
which those of lower castes who are desirous of becoming Brâhmans 
have to submit?has originated in this mystery. Let any Eastern 
Occultist read with careful attention the above-named chapter in the 
Book of Enoch, and he will find that the "Lord of the Sheep," in whom 
Christians and European Mystics see Christ, is the Hierophant Victim 
whose name in Sanskrit we dare not give. Again, that while the 
Western Churchmen see Egyptians and Israelites in the "sheep and 
wolves," all these animals relate in truth to the trials of the 
Neophyte and the mysteries of initiation, whether in India or Egypt, 
and to that most terrible penalty incurred by the "wolves"?those who 
reveal indiscriminately that which is only for the knowledge of the 
Elect and the "Perfect."
The Christians who, thanks to later interpolations,* have

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* Those interpolations and alterations are found in almost every case
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made out in that chapter a triple prophecy relating to the Deluge, 
Moses and Jesus, are mistaken, as in reality it bears directly on the 
punishment and loss of Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion. The 
"Lord of the sheep" is Karma and the "Head of the Hierophants" also, 
the Supreme Initiator on earth. He says to Enoch, who implores him to 
save the leaders of the sheep from being devoured by the beasts of 
prey:

. . . I will cause a recital to be made before me . . . how many they 
have delivered up to destruction, and . . . what they will do; 
whether they will act as I have commanded them, or not.
Of this, however, they shall be ignorant; neither shalt thou make any 
explanation to them, neither shalt thou reprove them; but there shall 
be an account of all the destruction done by them in their respective 
seasons.*
. . . He looked on in silence, rejoicing they were devoured, 
swallowed up, and carried off; and leaving them in the power of every 
beast for food . . . . . ?

Those who labor under the impression that the Occultists of any 
nation reject the Bible, in its original text and meaning, are wrong. 
As well reject the Books of Thoth, the Chaldaean Kabalah or the Book 
of Dzyan itself. Occultists only reject the one-sided interpretations 
and the human element in the Bible, which is an Occult, and therefore 
a sacred, volume as much as the others. And terrible indeed is the 
punishment of all those who transgress the permitted limits of secret 
revelations. From Prometheus to Jesus, and from Him to the highest 
Adept as to the lowest disciple, every revealer of mysteries has had 
to become a Chr`stos, a "man of sorrow" and a martyr. "Beware," said 
one of the greatest Masters, "of revealing the Mystery to those 
without"?to the profane, the Sadducee and the unbeliever. All the 
great Hierophants in history are shown ending

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where figures are given?especially whenever the numbers eleven and 
twelve come in?as these are all made (by the Christians) to relate to 
the numbers of Apostles, and Tribes, and Patriarchs. The translator 
of the Ethiopic text?Archbishop Laurence? attributes them generally 
to "mistakes of the transcriber" whenever the two texts, the Paris 
and the Bodleian MSS., differ. We fear it is no mistake, in most 
cases.
* Op. cit., Ch. lxxxviii, 99, 100.
? Loc. cit., 94. This passage, as will be presently shown, has led to 
a very curious discovery.
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their lives by violent deaths?Buddha,* Pythagoras, Zoroaster, most of 
the great Gnostics, the founders of their respective schools; and in 
our own more modern epoch a number of Fire-Philosophers, of 
Rosicrucians and Adepts. All of these are shown?whether plainly or 
under the veil of allegory?as paying the penalty for the revelations 
they had made. This may seem to the profane reader only coincidence. 
To the Occultist, the death of every "Master" is significant, and 
appears pregnant with meaning. Where do we find in history that 
"Messenger" grand or humble, an Initiate or a Neophyte, who, when he 
was made the bearer of some hitherto concealed truth or truths, was 
not crucified and rent to shreds by the "dogs" of envy, malice and 
ignorance? Such is the terrible Occult law; and he who does not feel 
in himself the heart of a lion to scorn the savage barking, and the 
soul of a dove to forgive the poor ignorant fools, let him give up 
the Sacred Science. To succeed, the Occultist must be fearless; he 
has to brave dangers, dishonour and death, to be forgiving, and to be 
silent on that which cannot be given. Those who have vainly labored 
in that direction must wait in these

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* In the profane history of Gautama Buddha he dies at the good old 
age of eighty, and passes off from life to death peacefully with all 
the serenity of a great saint, as Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire has it. 
Not so in the Esoteric and true interpretation which reveals the real 
sense of the profane and allegorical statement that makes Gautama, 
the Buddha, die very unpoetically from the effects of too much pork, 
prepared for him by Tsonda. How one who preached that the killing of 
animals was the greatest sin, and who was a perfect vegetarian, could 
die from eating pork, is a question that is never asked by our 
Orientalists, some of whom made [as now do many charitable 
missionaries in Ceylon] great fun at the alleged occurrence. The 
simple truth is that the said rice and pork are purely allegorical. 
Rice stands for "forbidden fruit," like Eve's "apple," and means 
Occult knowledge with the Chinese and Tibetans; and "pork" for 
Brahmanical teachings?Vishnu having assumed in his first Avatara the 
form of a boar, in order to raise the earth on the surface of the 
waters of space. It is not, therefore, from "pork" that Buddha died, 
but for having divulged some of the Brahmanical mysteries, after 
which, seeing the bad effects brought on some unworthy people by the 
revelation, he preferred, instead of availing himself of Nirvana, to 
leave his earthly form, remaining still in the sphere of the living, 
in order to help humanity to progress. Hence his constant 
reincarnations in the hierarchy of the Dalai and Teshu [Panchen] 
Lamas, among other bounties. Such is the Esoteric explanation. The 
life of Gautama will be more fully discussed later on.
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days?as the Book of Enoch teaches? "until the evil-doers be consumed" 
and the power of the wicked annihilated. It is not lawful for the 
Occultist to seek or even to thirst for revenge; let him

Wait, until sin pass away; for their [the sinners'] names shall be 
blotted out of the holy books [the astral records]; their seed shall 
be destroyed, and their spirits slain.*

Esoterically, Enoch is the "Son of man," the first; and symbolically, 
the first Sub-Race of the Fifth Root Race.? And if his name yields 
for purposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs the meaning of the 
solar year, or 365, in conformity to the age assigned to him in 
Genesis, it is because, being the seventh, he is, for Occult 
purposes, the personified period of the two preceding Races with 
their fourteen Sub-Races. Therefore, he is shown in the Book as the 
great grandfather of Noah who, in his turn, is the personification of 
the mankind of the Fifth, struggling with that of the Fourth Root-
Race?the great period of the revealed and profaned Mysteries, when 
the "sons of God" coming down on Earth took for wives the daughters 
of men, and taught them the secrets of the Angels; in other words, 
when the "mind-born" men of the Third Race mixed themselves with 
those of the Fourth, and the divine Science was gradually brought 
down by men to Sorcery.

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* Op. cit, Ch. cv. 21.
? In the Bible [Genesis iv and v] there are three distinct Enochs 
[Hanokh]?the son of Cain, the son of Seth, and the son of Jared; but 
they are all identical, and two of them are mentioned for the 
purposes of misleading. The years of only the last two are given, the 
first one being left without further notice.