Abstract
IF WE CONCLUDED OUR INQUIRY HERE, WE MIGHT IMAGINE THAT THE Nachleben of the Book of the Watchers provides a parade example for the “Parting of the Ways” between Judaism and Christianity. In the pre-Rabbinic period, the Book of the Watchers and the Enochic myth of angelic descent influenced many Jews, informing the exegesis of Gen 6:1–4 and shaping the religious landscape from which the Jesus Movement emerged. It is only after the Bar Kokhba Revolt that conflicting approaches arose among learned Jews and Christians. These reflect the parallel efforts at self-definition by the Rabbinic movement and proto-orthodox Christianity, and they led these groups in opposite directions. Early Sages seem to have abandoned the Enochic literature and mounted an offensive to invalidate its connections with the interpretation of Genesis. At the same time, proto-orthodox Christians embraced the very elements of the apocalyptic heritage of Second Temple Judaism that these Jews rejected. Furthermore, proto-orthodox Christians redeployed early Enochic traditions for distinctively Christian aims. Consistent with the general consensus among pre-Rabbinic Jews, they read Gen 5:21–24 as signaling Enoch's escape from death. They, however, used this exegesis to claim Enoch as a pre-Christian Christian whose righteousness in God's eyes demonstrates to the possibility of salvation apart from Torah-observance. Likewise, they followed the precedents in Second Temple Judaism for interpreting Gen 6:1–4 through the traditions about the fallen angels in the Book of the Watchers , but they simultaneously developed new approaches to the Enochic myth of angelic descent, which addressed the ambivalent relationship between an increasingly gentile church and its pagan past.
Published Version
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