Why was the Book of Enoch omitted from the Bible..

by jam 28 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Apognophos

  not to mention broken natural laws like floating axe, man living in a whale belly, talking dunkey, or sun moving during the battle to extend daylight.

  Ah, these are better examples. But it was the foremost prophet of the time who caused the axehead to float, which implies that power from God was involved. We would have a bigger problem if it was some regular guy who did that to get his axehead back.

  Living in the whale's belly is easier to believe; whales breathe air like we do, and he was only in there three days, which is the limit on how long someone can survive without fresh water.

  I was taught as a Witness that the talking donkey had an angel giving him his voice like the serpent in Genesis 3, but (just like in Genesis!) it doesn't actually say that in the account. So yes, that's a bit weird. This account always stood out for me as a child.

  The sun ceasing to move was not breaking a physical law from an ancient perspective, and that was the perspective I was speaking from. The Bible canon was decided on long before the Earth was theorized to revolve around the Sun.

  I sitll say that, compared to all these examples, 450 (or 4500) foot tall men are harder to believe in and were probably a basis for rejecting the text. of course, there may have been theological parts that were troubling, too; I haven't read it so I don't know how well it would mesh with the Bible canon.

  If the Book was written as late as 100-50BCE like HTBWC indicated, then it was possibly too late to be accepted by Jews as OT canon and thus was omitted by Christians as well.
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  pbrow

  450 ft tall men would be incredibly easy to believe in!! Their femurs would be MASSIVE!! and probably relatively easy to find. Can you imagine a 100 foot femur bone!! They would have kicked the terrible lizards ass!! To bad the flood killed them all. Thanks alot... jehovah

  Correct me if I am wrong but if the sun or earth ceased to rotate at any point in our history, regardless of whether or not the ancients had a "perspective" not only would the enemy be smited (?smittened, smitified, smitentated,crushified,beaten?) the "good guys" would also be pretty effed. If the initial "snap" of going from 1000/mph to 0 didn't kill you, I bet whatever you hit at the end of your tumble would do the trick.

  pbrow
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  Apognophos

  450 ft tall men would be incredibly easy to believe in!! Their femurs would be MASSIVE!! and probably relatively easy to find.

  Well, it may be the case that myths of giants were spurred by finding dinosaur bones, but there were no dinosaurs that big. Even the massive argentinosaurus had a tibia of 58 inches, which would hardly support the concept of a 450 foot tall man. There had to be a reasonable upper limit on how big of a giant someone could believe in. Why didn't the writer of the David and Goliath story make Goliath 100 feet tall instead of 9 feet?

  Correct me if I am wrong but if the sun or earth ceased to rotate at any point in our history, regardless of whether or not the ancients had a "perspective" not only would the enemy be smited (?smittened, smitified, smitentated,crushified,beaten?) the "good guys" would also be pretty effed.

  Strictly from the perspective of the laws of physics, yes, we'd be screwed if the sun and moon stopped moving in the sky. But since the idea of the earth moving around the sun and a concept of the enormous size of the sun were unknown to the men compiling the Bible canon, they saw no problem with the sun stopping in the sky. The question of the OP was why the Book of Enoch was omitted, not "Does the Bible accord with modern science?".
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  Jeffro

  The question of the OP was why the Book of Enoch was omitted, not "Does the Bible accord with modern science?".

  I don't see much reason for concluding that the reason for rejecting the book of Enoch was that it was more ridiculous than much of the content that was retained. The people who decided what to keep weren't exactly the greatest scientific minds to ever walk the earth. Lots of things were omitted from the 'canon' and many that were kept contradict each other.

  Even worse, the Watch Tower Society insists that the books accepted by so-called 'apostate Christians' are necessarily and exclusively the ones that are 'inspired'.
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  Apognophos

  Well, I was engaging in a little speculation because I see differences in credibility between some of the texts that are primary canon and the texts that are marked "apocryphal" or "deuterocanonical" like this one. I think you confuse the issue when bringing up the concept of "scientific minds". My contention was that if something violated common sense for an early church figure, then they would be less likely to accept the book.

  If we want to stick to the facts, though, then all I can glean from the article on Wikipedia is that Enoch was considered too theologically troubling or that maybe it over-taxed some readers' credulity in terms of the intimate knowledge of heavenly events that it claimed.
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  Jeffro

  Apognophos:

  My contention was that if something violated common sense for an early church figure, then they would be less likely to accept the book.

  If a man made of dirt and a woman made from his rib being tricked into eating magical fruit by a talking snake doesn't violate common sense for an early church figure, there probably isn't much they wouldn't believe.
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  Apognophos

  Maybe. I still think there's an important distinction between things that God did himself, to which the reader does not apply common sense because they're miraculous acts, and the idea of a 450 foot man.
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  Jeffro

  Apognophos:

  I still think there's an important distinction between things that God did himself, to which the reader does not apply common sense because they're miraculous acts, and the idea of a 450 foot man.

  You never know. They accept the dimensions for Solomon's temple and the amounts of gold and silver it supposedly contained, even though they are physically impossible. Even if the main temple structure were a completely solid block of silver, there would be extra silver left over to go on top of the portico, which would have to be a solid block of gold 4.5 metres high.
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  Apognophos

  Ha, didn't realize that. I knew that the temple was supposedly built by way more people over way longer a time than should actually have been necessary.