Table of Contents
Paul Wallis sets the Book of Enoch beside Mesopotamian narrative and treats both as memories of contact with powerful beings. Gods coming down from the sky are one example, and he hears in the creation tablets a figure who brought agriculture long ago. Genesis 6 tells the sons of God so briefly that the writer must have expected readers to know the plot already. Tales of people taken into the sky sit in the same family. Enoch supplies the marriages, the giant children, and the fight over food that Genesis only sketches. Later editors, he thinks, worked to thin any family feeling with those older stories, which is why Enoch stayed outside the usual canon and survived mainly in Ethiopia. Flood, plague, and harder childbirth line up, in his reading, with the older flood tablet as punishments when humans become too many. Enoch’s crystal wall and fiery beings are an attempt to describe craft among the stars by analogy. What was seen and what was said may differ, but Wallis does not treat the shared plot as private fancy.
Key points
- Mesopotamian stories of gods coming down and of people taken upward are, for Wallis, memories of contact.
- Genesis 6 is so brief, he says, because the writer assumed the audience already knew the plot.
- Enoch is presented as the fuller account of those marriages, the giant children, and the conflict that followed.
- He says later editors tried to weaken any sense of kinship with the Mesopotamian versions.
- Flood, plague, and painful birth are lined up across Enoch, Genesis, and the older flood tablet.
- The starry ceiling and fiery beings in Enoch’s vision are read as analogy for craft moving in the sky.
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Short quotes
One example would be the descent of the gods from the heavens.
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on Enoch and Mesopotamia
Sky descent is his first picture of what the old stories may remember. Watch at 1:25
It's told very curtly in Genesis 6 as if the writer assumes we know the story from somewhere else.
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on Enoch and Mesopotamia
The short biblical version, he says, expects knowledge from another source. Watch at 4:57
And one of the agendas of those writers was to diminish any sense of fellow feeling or family feeling with the Mesopotamian stories.
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on Enoch and Mesopotamia
Later editors, in his view, worked to cut the family tie with Mesopotamia. Watch at 7:57
Aren't we being shown the stars of space and fiery craft moving through them?
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on Enoch and Mesopotamia
He asks whether the vision is really stars with fiery craft among them. Watch at 27:13
Clearly, Enoch is trying to describe by analogy what he is seeing.
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on Enoch and Mesopotamia
The strange architecture is, for Wallis, analogy rather than a literal room. Watch at 30:05
Video by Paul Wallis. Watch on YouTube.