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Along the way we who are not yet initiated into the secret wisdom but who read the story of Enoch are treated to a narrative demonstrating that God is running the universe well and fairly, explaining all the magnificent machinery of the heavenly economy, and revealing in detail how God’s justice rewards the dead in heaven and punishes the wicked. It also warns us to be prepared for the sudden breakthrough of the apocalyptic end, which will devour the evil powers who have oppressed God’s saints and turn the earth over to the righteous for the peaceful reign of God forever. So besides giving us a short course on the heavenly economy, it develops the standard apocalyptic themes that evil may be in control on earth, but God has plans for the world which will very soon even the score.

The solar calendar is evidently one of the secrets which Enoch imparted to the Qumran community. Qumran observes a solar calendar made up of twelve months of thirty days, divided up into priestly courses, and supplemented by the appropriate number of intercalated days fit between the weeks. These intercalated days stand outside the normal week; as a result the holidays always fall on the same day of the week; no other sect observed such a symmetrical calendar. And since the other sects in Judea figured their calendars by the phase of the moon, it also gives an extra dimension to the apocalyptic work, “The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness,” found for the first time at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It seems likely that the title refers to the calendar and designates the group as the “sons of light” marking them off from the rest of the Jews as well as the gentiles.24 In short, it is an independent witness to the sectarian nature of the Enoch literature.

The Enoch literature has been known for many centuries in Greek, but also in more obscure languages like Ethiopic, Armenian, Slavonic, Mandaean, Arabic and even Turkic dialects in Central Asia. From this varied literature it becomes clear that there are at least five separate compositions present in the contemporary version of 1 Enoch. The various versions of 1 Enoch come to us in Aramaic (from Qumran), Greek, and the major text, as it is received from the Ethiopian Christian church. The Aramaic versions at Qumran seem to be the earliest editions but from the variety of different versions and a variety of secondary texts that existed in the first century, it is also evident that the tradition was much more fluid than the received Ethiopic version. Different communities may have picked those parts of the tradition that most suited them.

When Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch were found at Qumran Cave 4, it became clear that the story was very ancient-some of it going back to the third century BCE. In some sense, the Enoch literature is the link between the prophecies in Daniel and the Qumran community.25 Some of the Jewish version of the tradition, then, may be earlier than the visionary material in Daniel. In fact, a number of scholars have assumed that the material in 1 Enoch is older than the story in Genesis 5, Genesis forming a précis of yet older material. The idea that Enoch literature is older than Genesis which is therefore dependent on it, and not the other way around, is still shocking and not established.26 It is more likely both Genesis and Enoch drew on earlier sages.

Luckily, to look at the afterlife material, we do not have to solve these thorny problems. For our purposes all three documents, 1 Enoch (in its primary Ethiopic, Greek, and Aramaic versions), 2 Enoch (Slavonic) and 3 Enoch (Hebrew) are relevant but in very different ways. We will look at the latter two books in future chapters. 1 Enoch or, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, is the first of many books based on the terse Biblical report. It provides us with a reservoir of information about life after death, scenes of judgment and apocalyptic ideology. In chapter 14, Enoch begins his journey to heaven to intercede for the fallen angels:

And