I listened to 1 Enoch as an audiobook (R. H. Charles’ classic translation) and was struck in a way I hadn’t been before by the well-known description of Noah’s birth, which leads Lamech his father to worry that he might be the child of an angel rather than his own offspring. 1 Enoch 106:2 (in the aforementioned translation) describes Noah as follows:
His body was white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose, and the hair of his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes beautiful. And when he opened his eyes, he lighted up the whole house like the sun, and the whole house was very bright.
The response to Lamech’s concern is an emphasis that Noah is not a child of a Watcher or other supernatural entity. Yet in the process the idea is expressed that this is what one might expect a child with both angelic and human parentage to look like.
In the case of the Book of Revelation we have a description of Jesus in this way (Rev. 1:14):
among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
The hair white as wool and eyes that blaze are a direct connection. Both works may draw from Daniel 7:9 or at least inhabit a framework of shared assumptions. There are points that connect 1 Enoch and Revelation that cannot be explained simply in terms of both drawing on Daniel.
The Christology of Revelation has been described as “angelomorphic.” Apocalypse of Abraham describes the angel Yahoel as having hair like wool. Ascension of Isaiah is also related and illustrates the possibility of transformation as one ascends to or descends from the celestial realm.
Any thoughts about the connection between 1 Enoch and the depiction of Jesus in the Book of Revelation?
There’s an Ancient Aliens connection to all this – or rather, to be unambiguously clear, the Ancient Aliens crowd on the “History” Channel makes such a connection. If you want a discussion of this have a listen to this reaction video by Matthew Korpman:
More broadly on Jesus, here’s a recent post from Bart Ehrman about Pontius Pilate and the historicity of Jesus. A sample of what he says there: ” If [Jesus] is not mentioned much, it has little relevance to the question of his existence. It could just as well be because his impact was not significant enough, just as was true of the overwhelming mass of people who lived in the Roman empire of the first century. Many Christians do not want to hear that Jesus did not make an enormous splash on the world of his day, but it appears to be true. Does that mean he did not exist? No, it means that to establish his existence, we need to look to other kinds of evidence.”
https://ehrmanblog.org/do-we-have-any-reliable-sources-for-pontius-pilate/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=do-we-have-any-reliable-sources-for-pontius-pilate
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