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ENOCH AND THE MESSIAH SON OF MAN: REVISITING THE BOOK OF PARABLES. Edited by Gabriele Boccaccini. Pp. xv + 539. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007. Paper $50.00
This volume brings together main and short papers presented at the third Enoch Seminar held at Camaldoli monastery, Italy, June, 2005. The Enoch Seminar is an ongoing research initiative led by Gabriele Boccacini, bringing together international scholars to focus on major documents of "Enochic Judaism," or, at least, Jewish writings associated with and inspired by Enochic tradition. This includes the collection preserved as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and 2 Enoch, the theme for 2009.
The subtitle more adequately reflects the book's theme and significance: "Revisiting the Book of Parables," namely, 1 Enoch 37-71, the section of 1 Enoch not preserved at Qurnran. Much interest in the past has been on its potential relevance for the evolution of Christology, but its significance is much wider than that and this is reflected in the contributions. Thus of the six parts, only one deals with the "Son of Man." The work begins with an introduction to previous research, which was characterized by concern with dating, absence from Qurnran being taken as an indicator of later origins. Pointing to the conclusions of Sacchi and Nickelsburg, that the work was produced around the turn of the era, Boccaccini reports: "After the Camaldoli meeting, it can now be confidently said that the position of Nickelsburg and Sacchi is confirmed and supported by the overwhelming majority of specialists in the Enoch literature and Second Temple Judaism" (p. 15). None dated it prior to the Roman period or beyond the end of the first century CE. This is a major outcome of the seminar.
Part one addresses "The Structure of the Text." In "Discerning the Structure(s) of the Enochic Book of Parables" (pp. 23-47), George Nickelsburg identifies the threefold structure based on the three parables as reflecting the early shape of the work, which includes some rewriting of the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36), conflated with material from elsewhere. He proposes some rearrangement of the material especially in the first parable around the account of Wisdom's descent. The work underwent a Noachic redaction, identifiable in four interpolations, which depicts Noah as recipient of the Book...