Loading...I have taken a hiatus in a thread I was doing on the “Apostolic Fathers in a Nutshell.” In case you need a reminder: the Apostolic Fathers are a group of early proto-orthodox Christian writers/books, most of them from the first half of the second century (a couple were contemporaneous with New Testament writers; a couple were later in the second century). These writings were originally gathered together because the authors were thought to have been companions with the apostles, though now it’s clear none of them was.
I have discussed in several posts each the writings of 1 Clement, the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the Epistle of Barnabas – all of them striking on their own terms and quite different in many ways from one another.
I now turn to the longest and apparently most widely read writing in the collection, called
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There is some chatter I’ve come across online talking about a resurgence in the interest in the Book of Enoch particularly among Evangelicals. One blog I read claims that Book of Enoch, which preceded Christianity by centuries, actually makes even more explicit, specific and vivid claims about Jesus of Nazareth than those found in Isaiah or Micah. Is this a scholarly understanding of the book?
No, not at all. It doesn’t mention Jesus and isn’t about him.
1 Enoch is a complicated book — it’s actually made up of a number of different writings that have been patched together The part called the Similitudes has messianic passages in it, in which the Son of Man (who is actually identified as Enoch himself) is the Messiah. It’s interesting that this portion of the book (chs. 37-71) is the only one of the various writings that did not turn up at all among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some scholars have maintained that this shows it was written after the Christian movement began and was influenced by it; others insist it is pre-Christian. I haven’t waded into that debate for a very long time, so I don’t know what the consensus view is today (but I suspect most consider it pre-Christian)disabledupes{9e2f394539fb9fae7fd55c99fbcb2817}disabledupes
Bart, Could you someday discuss why early Christians (and many today) consider their God to be so savage toward people, including Christians, who have sinned and died before repenting? That seems very much like attributing human emotions to a Being supposedly capable of creating the universe and often described as a loving God. Kinda like the Greek Gods. If you have already discussed this, can you suggest a search term for finding it in the archive? Many thanks.
I touch on the issue in my recent book Armageddon. Talk about a savage God!!