Dating The Book of Enoch

The consensus among scholarship is that the book of Enoch is Second Temple Jewish sectarian literature. How does someone arrive at such a view though? Here I am going to look at one way of dating the book of Enoch.

In chapters 85-90 we are given a series of dreams that Enoch supposedly has and passes on to his son Methuselah. The dreams that Enoch has here are fairly easy to correlate with historical events. Things are given enough detail to be able to tell from the passage what historical event is being referred to. For instance, 89:1-9 covers the biblical flood. 89:10-27 covers the period from the death of Noah to the Exodus.

89:23. But the wolves began to pursue those sheep till they reached a sea of water. 24. And that sea was divided, and the water stood on this side and on that before their face, and their Lord led them and placed Himself between them and the wolves. 25. And as those wolves did not yet see the sheep, they proceeded into the midst of that sea, and the wolves followed the sheep, and [those wolves] ran after them into that sea. 26. And when they saw the Lord of the sheep, they turned to flee before His face, but that sea gathered itself together, and became as it had been created, and the water swelled and rose till it covered those wolves. 27. And I saw till all the wolves who pursued those sheep perished and were drowned.

89:28-40 covers the period of wilderness wandering and giving of the Law at Sinai.

89:41-50 covers the time from the Judges to the building of the first temple.

89:51:67 covers the period from the splitting of the Davidic kingdom to the destruction of Jerusalem.

At this point, the "sheep" are blinded and they are given over to a series of wicked shepherds. We find reference to to building of the second temple (89:73) and the conquering of the Greek empire under Alexander the Great (89:74-75). In all, 35 [wicked] 'shepherds' lead God's people during this period. Then we are confronted with the period of Seleucid domination where another 23 [wicked] 'shepherds' rule God's people (90:2-5). So far 58 shepherds have ruled God's people since the return from Babylon. This is noteworthy, because Enoch only envisions 70 shepherds total ruling over God's people before the great judgment would occur (90:22).

At this point, the blindness of some of the sheep begins to be lifted (90:6). These sheep try to "wake-up"the other sheep which refuse to listen to their warnings (90:7). Here we are looking at a correlation between the last 12 shepherds and the Maccabean Revolt. At this point, the correlations between the dreams and historical events becomes very vague, esoteric, and frankly non-existent. The reason is due to when the author was writing. He lives around the time of the Maccabean Revolt; a time when he expects the last of the 70 shepherds to be ruling before the great judgment. The visionary experiences of "Enoch" correlate with historical events up the Maccabean Revolt very easily because it's actually prophecy ex eventu (after the fact) as it's very easy to recount events of one's own time of living. Things become vague and esoteric at the point just beyond the Maccabean Revolt in the visions because predicting the future with such accuracy is much more difficult for the author than recalling past events is and it's much more difficult than the familiarity of, and ease of writing about, one's own time. Had he known that the Romans would conquer Israel in 63BC or that the temple would be destroyed again in AD 70, he might have rethought or rewritten the book of Enoch.

Further, the point in the visions where the blindness of the sheep begins to be removed (90:6-7) probably indicates the time to where this Jewish sect traced it's origins. Their particular sect had the blinders removed and they tried to persuade the other 'sheep' of the "truth", but the other sheep were still blind and wouldn't listen. This might correspond to the time of the high priest Onias III who was murdered and replaced by a Hellenistic-influenced high priest (Jason).

This is one of the methods used to date the book of Enoch to the Second Temple period.