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chaos , and favoured with visions of future times , which he writes down for the benefit of his descendants . Although some of the fathers have apparently taken the book for a real
specimen of antediluvian writing , the author ' s purpose was probably nothing more than to give a venerable and picturesque air to the theology and philosophy of his day , by attributing
them to the patriarch ; and he is in no other sense a forger than as we apply the same epithet to the author of Paradise Lost , or the World before the Flood . Dr . Laurence speaks thus of its general character and merits :
. * ' Upon the whole , then , if this singular book be censured , as abounding in some parts with fable and fiction , still should we recollect , that fable and fiction may occasionally prove both amusing and instructive , and can then only be deemed injurious when pressed into the service
of vice and infidelity . Nor should we forget , that much , perhaps most , of what we eensure , was grounded upon a national tradition , the antiquity of which alone , independent of other considerations , had rendered it respectable . That the author was uninspired , will be scarcely now questioned ; but , although his production
was apocryphal , it ought not therefore to be stigmatized as necessarily replete with error ; although it be on that account incapable of becoming a rule of faith , it may nevertheless contain much moral as well as religious truth , and may be justly regarded as a correct standard of the doctrine of the times in which it was
composed . Non omnia esse concedenda antiquitatiy is , it is true , a maxim founded upon reason and experience ; but , in perusing the present relic of a remote age and country , should the reader discover much to condemn , still , unless he
be too fastidious , will he find more to approve ; if he sometimes frown , he may oftener smile ; nor seldom will he be disposed to admire the vivid imagination of a writer who transports him far beyond the ilaming boundaries of the world ,
extra Processit longe flam man tia moenia mundi ; displaying to him every secret of creation ; the splendors of heaven and the terrors
of lieil ; the mansions of departed souls ; and the myriads of the celestial hosts , the Seraphim , Cherubim and Ophanim which surround the blazing throne , and magnify the holy name of the great Lord of spirits , the Almighty Father of men and of angels . *—Prtf . pp . xlvii . xlviii .
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The first questions which the reader naturall y asks himself respecting the production thus unexpectedl y reco ^ vered , are , when , where and by whom it was written ? To the latter ques , tion an answer can hardly be expected since , writing in the name of Enoch '
the author of course conceals his own . The country in which it must have been written , Dr . L . endeavours to fix by means of the 71 st chapter , which is astronomical , and in which it is said that at the solstice " the day is length ' ened from the night , 'being twice as
long as the night , and becomes twelve parts , but the night is shortened , and becomes six parts . " He must , there - fore , have divided the whole day and night into eighteen parts , and the longest day , being twelve of these , must have borne the same proportion to the whole that sixteen hours of our
division do to twenty-four . But no country lying in the latitude of Judea has a day 16 hours long at the solstice , and consequently the author cannot have lived there , nor in any country which does not lie between 45 ° N . L .
and 49 ° N . L ., m which the longest day varies from 15 hours and a half to 16 . We must leave the investigation of this argument to those of our readers whose evening amusements have been more directed to astronomy than our own . Dr . L . ' s conjecture that it was written by a Jew , one of the ten
tribes whom Shalmaneser carried away captive to the neighbourhood of the Caspian , appears to us utterly improbable . If the astronomical argument hold good , we should think it more likely to have had its origin from some of those Jews whom the love of
gain had diffused through the Greek cities on the Euxine , and who appear , from Acts iL 9 , 1 Pet . i . 1 , to have been numerous , and connected with their brethren in Judea . The translator endeavours by internal marks to fix the period when it was written . The most important circumstance in
the inquiry , the age of the Epistle of Jude itself , he assumes , apparently considering the doubts which have been raised against its genuineness as groundless . Were it certain that the Book of Enoch had been quoted by a writer in the apostolic age , the inference would be just that it must have existed a considerable time before , in order to have acquired such authority *
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412 Review . —The Book of Enoch the Prophet .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1821, page 412, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2502/page/32/
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