Response to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism- Second Response, Fifth Installment (#2-#5)
Response to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism– #2-#5
Second Response- Fifth Installment
Enoch, Shame Versus Glory, Martyr Vindication
In my final installment of my first response to Elton Hollon- (#7)– I discussed the critical role that the ancient societal idea of shame versus glory plays in understanding Biblical eschatology. Be sure to read Hollon’s article.
Hollon sought to dismiss my argument by an appeal to a quote from James Charlesworth:
‘To deny any relation between Jesus and those within the Enoch cycle, living at the same time and same place, proclaiming similar insights with similar words, is to be myopic.’
Hollon concludes concerning the parallels between Jesus and Enoch: “These parallels are the Achilles’ heel of Preston’s argument from the OT to symbolic-historicized interpretations of Mark 13:24-27.”
I believe that Charlesworth’s comment (and Hollon’s) widely miss the mark, however. It is not a question of whether there are verbal parallels between Enoch and Jesus’ language. I do not deny them. The question is, did Jesus and his apostles have the same literalistic view of the “decreation language” of the eschaton that Enoch seemed to have?
As Tom Holland has noted: “While the vocabulary of the NT could be found throughout the Hellenistic world, it did not have the same meaning when it was used in the religious sense within the Jewish community.” (Tom Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology, Christian Focus Publications, Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-Shire IV20 1TW, Scotland, UK, 2004), 252). Holland notes that when a NT writer wrote in Greek it was “Hebrew in its mind-set and essential meaning.” (P. 52).
It appears that Charlesworth and Hollon are assuming that since the language of Enoch and the language of Jesus is similar that we must conclude that they both had the identical view as to the meaning of that language. In other words, it is being assumed that since Enoch had a literalistic view of the end times, this demands that Jesus had the same idea. But this is presumptive. This argument also seemingly posits (implies) that Enoch as determinative for the proper meaning of Jesus’ use of that language.
I do not agree that Enoch is the primary source of the motifs that Jesus used. Enoch himself was in fact drawing on long established ideas of the vindication of the martyrs at the Day of the Lord – which – significantly – both Scripture and Enoch posited for the first century and the destruction of Jerusalem. In other words, Enoch got the timing right, but he got the nature of the event wrong.
That motif of martyr vindication is found in a host of OT prophecies concerning Israel’s last days.* That was to be the time of the reversal of the “shame” of the martyrs and their glorification.
* – See for just one example Isaiah 2-4, which predicted the last days Day of the Lord, when He would “arise to shake the earth mightily” (2:2, 10-12, 19-21). Men could run to the hills to escape that Day (2:19-21). It would be a time of famine in Jerusalem (3:1-3), and the War, when Israel’s men would fall by the edge of the sword (3:18f, cf. Luke 21:24). But it would also be the time: “And it shall come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy—everyone who is recorded among the living in Jerusalem. When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and purged the blood of Jerusalem from her midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning” (4:3-4). We see here the vindication of the martyrs, i.e. the reversal of their shame. And that Day of the Lord patently cannot be an earth burning, cosmos destroying event.
Notice some motifs from Enoch that neither Charlesworth or Hollon noted:
And in those days shall have ascended the prayer of the righteous, and the blood of the righteous from the earth before the Lord of Spirits.” In those days the holy ones who dwell above in the heavens shall unite with one voice and supplicate and pray [and praise, and give thanks and bless the name of the Lord of Spirits] on behalf of the blood of the righteous which has been shed, and that the prayer of the righteous may not be in vain before the Lord of Spirit. That the judgment may be done unto them, and that they may not have to suffer for ever. In those days I saw the head of Days when He seated Himself upon the throne of His glory and the books of the living were opened before Him, and all His host of heaven above and His counselors stood before Him, and the hearts of the holy were filled with joy: because the number of the righteous had been offered, and the prayer of the righteous had been heard, and the blood of the righteous been required before the Lord of Spirits.” (1 Enoch 47:1-4, p. 65- The Book of Enoch, Translated by R. H. Charles (London; SPCK, 1993), 65f.).
What is important to note is that this judgment would be the reversal of the “shame” of the martyred saints, when their persecutors would be turned to shame (46:4-8, p. 64-65). Of course, Enoch is not “inventing” this motif. He was, as I have suggested, drawing on the long established canonical history of that concept (Cf. Isaiah 26:21; Isaiah 61:7; Psalm 79:10). Not only that, but we need to examine closely the tenets that Enoch mentioned in regard to that vindication.
This vindication would take place at:
1. The judgment by the Son of Man (Isaiah 26-27). Of course, Jesus posited the coming of the Son of Man in the judgment of the persecutors for the first century generation. There is nothing to suggest that he was using prolepsis; he was overtly predicting that event for his generation (Matthew 10:22-23; 16:27-28; Matthew 24:29-34).
2. The opening of the books- Daniel 7 / Revelation 20. This delimits the time of the parousia to the first century, the days of Rome.
3. The time of the judgment and the vindication of the martyrs was to be when the Old Covenant earthly Temple was removed, “folded up,” replaced by the New heavenly temple, which would be the abode of the vindicated martyrs and the righteous:
And I stood up to see till they folded up that old house; and carried off all of its pillars. And all the beams and ornaments of that house were at that same time folded up with it, and they carried it off and laid it in a place in the south of the land. And I saw till the Lord of the sheep brought a new house greater and loftier than that first, and set it up in the place of the first, and set it up in the place of the first which had been folded up: all its pillars were new and its ornaments were new and larger than those of the first, the old one, which He had taken away, and all the sheep were in it (Enoch XC: 23-38, p.127).
Thus, Enoch was positing the final judgment, the vindication of the martyrs, the reversal of the martyrs’ shame, firmly in the context of the destruction of the Old Covenant temple and the full arrival of the New Covenant temple of the Messiah.
4. That judgment would be in the 70th Generation From Adam which was the first century (Enoch, X. 10f, p. 38).
These facts support – if one wishes to appeal to Enoch – the full preterist paradigm. They show that Enoch was reliant on the diachronic Old Covenant passages, upon which he drew extensively. And they show that Enoch posited the consummation in Jesus’ generation, with the dissolution of the Old Jerusalem temple. (For a helpful resource, see: Book of Enoch with Scripture References– https://bookofenochreferences.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/the-book-of-enoch-chapter-47/).
I thus fail to see how any appeal to Shame V- Glory in the Enochian work counters my argument. That motif was widespread throughout the ANE; and it is found throughout the Tanakh (Cf. Isaiah 61:7). I did not suggest that it was distinctive to the NT writers.
I suggest that the claim that Enoch must serve as a normative source for the eschatological tenets, (the Elect, the gathering, etc.– per Charlesworth & Hollon, p. ) is untenable. Each of the tenets listed from Enoch were present in the Tanakh in passage after passage that are demonstrably non-literal- and long antecedent to Enoch. Enoch consistently cited those much earlier works. Enoch did not alter the time or context for the fulfillment of reversal of the shame motif.
So, I suggest that rather than Enoch being in any way counter to the preterist view, he is fully supportive. He certainly does so in regard to the time and framework for the vindication of the martyrs – the reversal of their shame at the removal of the Old Covenant Temple- and that was the first century judgment of Old Covenant Jerusalem.
More to come.
Response to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism- Second Response, Fifth Installment (#2-#5)