This writer, in grouping the periods of time from the creation till his own day, gives as the third that of the dominion of the 7o shepherds over the people on whom righteous punishment had fallen (ch. lxxxix. 59 -xc. 13). This reaches from the Sth and 7th centuries before Christ to the author's present. He seems to have divided the 70 into 12 + 23 23 + 12, four series of foreign rulers. The first twelve kings consist of Assyrian, Baby lonian, and Egyptian kings ; the five Assyrian ones from Pul to Esarhad don, and the three Chaldman ones, besides the four Egyptian, from Necho Amasis. The first 23 begin with Darius the Mede, and Cyrus. The 12 + 23 make 35, the half of 70. The second 23 consists of Alexander and his next two successors, Cassander, Antigonus, Demetrius ; the next five kings of the new Macedonian house ; the first seven Ptolemies ; and the first five Sele'i The last twelve consist of the twelve Seleu cidm, from Antiochus the Great to Demetrius II. The 36, or as it may be read 37 shepherds, in xc. should be 35, as Laurence conjectured on a wrong ground; Ewald on a right one. The author of this book lived under John Hyrcanus, a little later than the writer of the second Enoch book. It does not seem to us worth while to enter minutely into the various views and computations of the seventy shepherds that have been put forward by scholars. It may 'suffice to say that Laurence, Gfrorer, Krieger, Liicke, Hoffmann, are all more or less in error, as Dillmann and Ewald have ela borately demonstrated. (See Dillmann's Day Ruch Henoch, allgerneine Einleitung, p. 47, et seqq. ; and Ewald's Abhandlung, p. 51, el seqq. ; Ewald's Geschiclite des Volkes Israel, vol. iv., p. 397, et seqq., zd edition.) Besides these three Enoch books, there is the book of Noah existing in an abridged, mutilated, and fragmentary form. Being now scattered in disjointed pieces through the Enoch books, it is difficult of detection. It may be seen, however, in vi. 3-8 ; ix. 7; x. 1-3, 11-22 b, 17-19; liv. 7-Iv. 2 ; IX. 1-10, 24, ff. 64 ; lxv. I-Lxix. 2-16 a, and a few other passages. The production referred to the secrets of the angelic and heavenly world, and human inventions and errors. The end of the old world which was destroyed by the flood, the deliverance of Noah and his house, threatenings and promises in relation to the new world, are described in it. It is evident that the author of the Noah book had the other three productions before him; and that he was mainly influenced and guided by the third. How long after the Enoch books this Noah production was composed, cannot be exactly determined. It was probably so years later.
An editor subsequently undertook to put them together so as to form the entire work. In doing so he proceeded very freely and independently. He transposed, abridged, and added, putting the parts into the order that seemed best. The ap pendix to the third Enoch book had been composed before ; thus making six persons concerned in the whole. Probably the editor belonged to the middle of the first century B.C.
Such is Ewald's theory of the composition of the book, an ingeniously elaborated and complex one, that admits of question and doubt. But it is im possible at the present day to arrive even at pro bability in relation to the structure of the whole. Plausible theories may be proposed very different in their nature. We believe that Ewald has assumed too many separate writers. That there are two Enoch books is plain. That there are also pieces of a Noah book is unquestionable. Under these three heads we should put all, a final compiler having interwoven the parts so as to give a kind of unity to the whole. In constructing the second Enoch book it is unnecessary to assume so much dismemberment as Ewald does. With all the
allowance that can be reasonably made for corrup tion of the text in the process of translation and transmission, it cannot well be supposed that a later redactor would put or leave the alleged second and third Enoch books in so disjointed a form as Ewald's theory implies. That the entire produc tion appeared before the Christian era is clearly deducible from the fact that the Roman empire never appears as a power dangerous to Israel.
Stuart has laid considerable stress on the Christ ology of the book as indicative of an acquaint ance on the authors' part with the N. T., espe cially the Apocalypse. But the Christological portions do not possess sufficient distinctness to imply a knowledge of the N. T. The name Jesus never occurs. Neither are the appellations Lord, Lord 7eszis, 7esus Christ, or even Christ, employed. The words faith, believers, God and his anointed, deny, etc., can hardly be claimed as Christian terms, because they occur in the Ethiopic O. T. as the representatives of Hebrew Greek ones. All that can be truly deduced from the Christology is, that it is highly developed, and very elevated in tone ; yet fairly derivable from the O. T. in all its essential and individual features. Nor is there anything in the eschatology or angelology to necessitate a Christian origin. We allow that the Messiah is spoken of in very exalted terms. His dignity, character, and acts surpass the descriptions presented in other Jewish books. But they are alike in the main, coloured by the highly poetical imagination of the writers, in conformity with the sublimity and animation of their creations. We must therefore reject Stuart's opinion of a Jewish-Christian origin. All the argu ments adduced on its behalf are easily dissipated, since Dillmann's edition and Ewald's criticisms have led to a better acquaintance with the text of the work itself. Nor is Hilgenfeld's attempt to skew that the first Enoch book (xxxvii.-lxxi.) proceeded from Christian gnostics more successful, as Dill mann has remarked (Pseudepigraphen des A. T. in Herzog's Encyklopadie, vol. xii., pp. 309, 31o). Equally futile is Hoffmann's endeavour to shew that the work did not appear till after the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century, when both Jude's epistle and the Apocalypse had been written (Die Zeitschrift der deuischen morgeulandischen Ges ellschaft, vol. vi., p. 87, et seqq.) Not very dis similar is Bottcher's view, that the book, like the Sybilline oracles, was made up in the first and second centuries after Christ, of pieces belonging to different times (De 1:uteri's, i. sec. 505). Nothing is more certain than that the work belongs to an ante-Christian world ; and therefore the only problem is how to distribute the different books incorporated, and when to date them separately and collectively. After Laurence, Hoffmann and Gfrbrer had erred in placing the whole under Herod the Great ; Krieger and Liicke rightly as signed different portions to different times ; putting ch. i.-xxxvi. and lxxii.-cviii. to the early years of the Maccabean struggle ; and xxxvii.-lxxi. to 33-34 B.C. How far we believe this apportionment in correct will be seen from the preceding statements (see Krieger's Beitrtige ear Kritik and Exegese, 1845 ; and Li_icke's Versuch einer vollsaindigen Einleitang in die Offlizbarung des y'olzannes,u. s. sec. It, 2d ed.) The mention of books of Enoch in the Testa ment of Judah, in the Testament of Benjamin, in Origen (c. Cels. and Homil. in Num.), and of the first book of Enoch in the fragments preserved by Syncellus, consists with the idea that the whole was then divided into different books. Tertullian leads us to believe that it was of the same extent in the Greek text then existing as it is in the present Ethiopic.