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 [pg 084] 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.”[141]
Further on, it is confessed that:
It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority of the Old Testamentto the Book of Enoch.... The Book of Enoch teaches the preëxistence of the Son of man, the Elect One, the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in secret,[142] 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.[143] [We maintain that it applies as well to the Hindu Nârâyana—the “mover on the waters.”] We have thus the Lord of Spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly foreshadowing this Trinity [as much as the Trimûrti] 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.[144]
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[145]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.[146]
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 preëxistent work, accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians among apocryphal productions.[147]
This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of the Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the Book of Enoch.
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: