The Pre-Pentateuchal Enoch

Abstract: Scholars have long recognized that the Second Temple–period literature regarding the figure of Enoch draws from much older traditions dating from the same general period as the pentateuchal texts that mention him. Chief among these are the genealogical narratives in Genesis 4–5, widely recognized as deriving from distinct sources. Insufficient attention, however, has been devoted to the conceptual overlaps between these sources, which point to a pre-pentateuchal tradition regarding Enoch shared by the writers behind Genesis 4–5. I argue that a pre-pentateuchal Enoch tradition connected the legendary patriarch Enoch to esoteric knowledge related to the ancestral cult and chthonic mythology, one that drew from an even older set of circumstances where rival forms of Transjordanian Yahwism took root in premonarchic Israel. The different sources behind Genesis 4–5 show awareness of this tradition even as it was transformed into a new narrative setting. This carries significant implications for the way Jewish scribes reengaged the Enoch tradition in the Second Temple period, especially in the Book of the Watchers ( 1 Enoch 1–36).