Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [217]
Where this material actually fits in the development of Enoch tradition is not clear. The received text, Ethiopic Enoch, is canonized by the Ethiopian Christian church and has a regular part in their Bible. But that is not the only extant version of this book. At Qumran, 1 Enoch is present except chapters 37-71 are missing. In its place we find a “Book of the Giants” in Aramaic. Chapters 37-71, “The Parables,” are therefore known to us primarily in a Christian edition, where the “Son of Man” has already been identified as the Christ. How it is possible for Enoch to be absorbed into the figure who will later be identified as the Christ in Ethiopian Christianity has never been fully explained. But it may be that the Christian community, like Jewish communities before and after it, interpreted “the manlike figure in heaven” (“Son of Man”) not as a title but merely as “a human figure,” as the archetype for the angelification of all the saints at the end of time. The ge’ez (the ancient Ethiopic language) actually uses several closely related terms for the “Son of Man,” suggesting that it is not a title. “Son of Man” does not seem like a title in the Gospels either, since it only occurs in the mouth of Jesus. Likely, “Son of Man” was not originally a title in Judaism either, merely one more reference to the unnamed, human figure in Daniel 7:13 ff.8
Because the ecstatic ascent of the living parallels exactly the ascent of the dead after death, Enoch 70-71 may retell Enoch’s previous earthly ascent. More likely, it refers to Enoch’s ascent at the end of his short (only 365-year!) life. The number, of course, connects Enoch with the solar calendar, which the Qumran community used instead of the more usual lunar calendar of Semitic lands. The sun was also, as we have seen, an important symbol of regeneration and afterlife, since it visits the lands of the dead underground. And it was the basis of their 365-day solar calendar, which makes them “the children of light,” in opposition to the “children of darkness,” who are evidently everybody who observes the lunar calendar—or, essentially, everyone else.9
That would suggest even more that the path Enoch takes in mystical ascent is the path to secret knowledge and the same path that the righteous person takes at life’s end. It is a path upward through the workings of the zodiac and the heavens, which is known because Enoch’s journey there in primeval times was recorded in the secret literature of the group. The puzzling superscription to chapter 70, the composite nature of the text, and some possible imprecision in chronology prevent complete surety on this issue: “And it happened after this that his living name was raised up before that Son of Man and to the LORD from among those who dwell upon the earth” (1 En 70:1).
The journey was taken by Enoch’s “name,” not precisely his “soul,” again reflecting a level of mystical speculation that predates the full effects of the importation Platonic notion of immortality of the soul into Jewish culture. Enoch’s name is, in effect, an anomalous way to resolve the question of identity, another way to express the “self.” What is the continuity between the earthly Enoch and his heavenly twin? It is his “name.” Very likely, this is meant to be a unique expression of Enoch’s identity and may refer to the tradition that the names of the righteous and the messiah were stored under God’s throne at the beginning of time.
Ordinary folk have souls. There are “souls” in the holding pens; what exactly is implied by the term “souls” is not precisely explained. They could be equally pre-Platonic psychai or the more Biblical Hebrew nefashot. But they are not explicitly immortal in themselves, because not all of them will be resurrected in bodies at the end; nor are they explicitly the carriers and recipients of the consciousness