Tumah
Veteran Member
Sorry this is wrong. I actually own a book of Enoch with commentary by one of the major Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis. It isn't in our Bible because it doesn't qualify for it, same as all other Rabbinic books. The reason we don't spend too much time with it, is because since it wasn't considered a vital text, it wasn't preserved and so there is likely mistakes. But from a theological standpoint there's nothing wrong with it.While Jewish Enoch was extremely popular as evidenced by the number of copies found in the Qumran library - (11 copies were found, and, outside the Pentateuch, only psalms was evident in more numbers). However popular Jewish Enoch was in the various early Judaisms and their various canons, later rabbinic Judaism would have eschewed it for various reasons. For example, it would fall prey to the later rabbinic prohibition regarding questions and study surrounding the pre-creation time periods.
Deuteronomy 4:32 in Hebrew Masoretic translation reads : “For inquire now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day when God created man on the earth and from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven:...”
The rabbinic Jews interpreted this scripture as a prohibition of inquiry regarding periods of time BEFORE God created the earth. In Gen Rabba, the rabbis teach the Jews : "IT is forbidden to inquire what existed before creation, as Moses distinctly tells us (Deut. 4. 32): 'Ask now of the days that are past which were before thee, since the day God created man upon earth.' Thus the scope of inquiry is limited to the time since the Creation.–(Gen. Rabba 1)
Such prohibitions against inquiring and learning about conditions that existed in heaven before the creation create barriers to learning many, many of the earlier doctrines concerning God; concerning his plan and his motives and conditions that allow mortality to make much more sense.
Similarly, your citation from sacred-texts is wrong. The prohibition is not against studying what happened before G-d created man on earth - and that's not what Gen. Rabbah says either. The author misunderstood the Midrash, only quoted half of the statement from the particular Rabbi and was unaware that the passage is actually a paraphrase of a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud. The prohibition is from before the first day of creation. In Jewish sources angels are created after the first day of creation.
Jumping to conclusions while relying on faulty translations are typical of which religion, everybody?