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Book of Enoch (Part 3): How Sin Entered the World and the Fallen Angels

posted by Krista | 4/4/2004 12:08:38 AM | Permalink | Stumble It!

Book of the Watchers: Cause of Sin Entering the World

The cause of sin entering the world is different in each of these stories. In the Shemihazah story, sin enters the world through contamination by marriage between angels and humans and the procreation of giants, whereas in the Asa'el story, sin enters through his revealing of heavenly secrets. The Asa'el narrative also implies that the time before the angelic transgression was therefore free of evil.

Both of these stories can be compared to the Genesis story about the sons of God and the daughters of men (Gen 6:1-4) , but both have elaborated on the text. For example, while Genesis presents the intermixing of the angels and women and the offspring of their union in a neutral way, both 1 Enoch narratives present the interaction between angels and humans as the root of evil and violence. Later passages in Genesis 6 explain that the human heart is inclined towards evil, and that God sent the Flood to destroy the wickedness in the world without connecting humanity's sins to the transgressions of the Watchers, whereas the Enoch passages explain that evil entered the world through the angels.

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Book of the Watchers: Enoch as Intermediary
After the stories of the fall of the Watchers (chs. 6-11), Enoch is reintroduced again in ch. 12. Here, he serves as an intermediary between God and the fallen angels, and partially performs the jobs given to Raphael (the punishment of Asa'el in 10:4-6) and Michael (the punishment for Shemihazah and his colleagues in 10:11-13). Enoch also intercedes for the Watchers and reprimands them (13:4,6-10;14:1,3-7;15:2;16:2-4) - an element that demonstrates the role reversals between the Watchers and Enoch. It was the angels' duty to intercede for humankind (15:2), but they instead mislead humankind into corruption (15:2-16:4). On the contrary, Enoch, who should have received the benefits of angelic assistance, acted as the mediator for the Watchers.

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Book of the Watchers: Angels' Punishment

Enoch also explains why the Watchers have been punished. He states that the angels had become contaminated when they united with humans because they were pure spirits (15:6-7) who did not need to procreate since they did not perish. The offspring of this union, the giants, were killed, however, their souls remained upon the earth to assault humans and produce evils (15:11). In this sense, God was able to eliminate most of the evil produced by the angels, but not all, hence evil can still be accounted for in the world.