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If we are to accept an Enochan authorship for the Book of Enoch, we'd have to conclude that later books were vague on the subject of heaven and hell due to the purpose for which those works were written.I've been paying a little more attention to Enoch as of late and one issue I find inconsistent is that it has a very developed sense of Hell (Sheol, abyss, Tartarus, etc..) and much of it seems to be influenced by Greek mythology. Now one could say the greeks copied the book of Enoch not the other way around... perhaps but it's understanding of hell is well beyond any OT book and it demands the question why?
In the OT Sheol is a mysterious place of the dead where all pass through and no book offers any insight as to what this place is; it is a place of ignorance and mystery liken to death itself or metaphorically with depression. Than there is the Book of Enoch which apparently pre-dates any book of the bible but has a laser focus on Hell that is unparalleled to the rest of scripture. It's concept of Hell is simply far beyond its time and is vastly different than the Sheol presented in the OT.
The bible actually offers us very little knowledge of what Heaven and Hell is and I've always said this is because it is written for the living not the dead, it gives is broad strokes but not fine detail... well for Enoch it seems to flip this focus which is very counter-focus from the rest of scripture.
The question needs to be asked if this is a pre-flood text why did it have no apparent influence on OT authors especially with its highly developed sense of Hell. OT authors were very ignorant of the afterlife but why should they have been if they were exposed to the Book of Enoch? I think the weight of all this points to the book of Enoch as a hellenistic pseudepigrapha text heavily influenced by greek mythology and some sort of infatuation with the pre-flood myth-like accounts.
Enoch is of the apocalyptic genre type. Other books in that genre are obviously Revelation, as well as Daniel and Zechariah. Isaiah and even Moses contain little apocalypses in their pages. Apocalypses are characterized by revelatory visions of things in the realm of the spirit. Common topics are the blessing after life for the righteous and the torment after life for the ungodly. Other topics are visions of the last judgement, the activities of angels, etc. An apocalypse is a peek behind the veil of the everyday world.
So, I agree, the rest of the Bible, except for Revelation, reveals very little about heaven and hell. But, in my opinion, its not because the writers knew very little about it, but because the subject matter did not have that sort of relevance to the purpose for which those writers were writing in other non-apocalyptic genres.
Also, imagine a corpus of books (since they had no bound Bibles) in which Enoch and some other missing works WERE included. There would not be much need to write on the subject of heaven and hell simply because they already had Enoch for that. To this point, have you ever had the impression when reading Moses in Gen. 6:1-4, that he seems to open a can of worms and pass over it waaaay to fast? Its as if Moses was thinking, 'I do not need to explain this one because people are already aware of the details of this story', or maybe, 'they have Enoch for that'.
Truth is, there is a long list of Bible topics which present puzzles (like the one referenced above) if we do not inject Enoch into the mix. If we do include Enoch, these puzzles disappear.
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