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The Lost Prophet: The Book of Enoch and Its influence on Christianity

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The Lost Prophet is a slim book first published over two decades ago by SPCK and is now available as a reprint. It still deserves to be read. In addition to providing a good introduction to Margaret Barker's scholarship, it will in many ways remind Latter-day Saints of Hugh Nibley's fascination with noncanonical texts that carry the name Enoch and also with related textual materials. Scholarly interest in these texts was stimulated by the discovery of fragments of an important Enoch text among the Dead Sea Scrolls (pp. 12-14). Barker sees the Book of Enoch as "very strange," and she argues that the very "shock of its strangeness can be a very good thing" (p. 16) since early Christians were at home in the world those texts depict (p. 16). She also believes the Enoch texts provide a window into the world of the faithful prior to the Babylonian captivity (p. 19), as well as into the world of Palestine during the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

In addition, it is in the Enoch materials that we see references to an Elect One (the Son of Man), to heavenly ascensions, special endowments, commissions and covenants, and so forth (pp. 52, 58), all of which Barker sees as central elements in the conceptual furniture of the world of Jesus and his immediate followers.

It was in one of these journeys to heaven that Enoch encountered angels and the tree of life (p. 24), as well as heavenly or holy mountains (pp. 24, 48, 51-53), and was endowed with wisdom and learned of many marvelous things. These are all temple motifs familiar to Latter-day Saints, and Barker's reflections on such things should be of interest to them. Even though they might question some of her views, as a Latter-day Saint I still learn from her own perceptive encounter with a literature later despised by Jews and then suppressed by Christians, a portion of which was recovered by Joseph Smith very early in his career as a seer.

The book of Enoch, while not in the traditional Western Christian Canon, is in the Canon of the Coptic church. This book tells of its influence as a first century BC text. It is an interesting read, but not as good as some of Barker's other books.

For all those people searching for this book, it is being republished, April 2005, by Sheffield-Phoenix Press. Look for ISBN 1 90504 8181 . I am sure Amazon.com will carry it when it is out.