Enoch (7106 - 6741 B.C.)

The story of Enoch the Scribe is only briefly mentioned in the Bible, yet his story is told elsewhere such as the Book of the Giants.  For this article I will refer only to that which is said about Enoch in the Book of Enoch and the Fragment of the Book of Noah.  He was seventh generation from Adam and also the grandfather of Noah.

The story starts as two hundred angels descended from heaven following the one but bound by an agreement to him, the angels took women and taught them secrets of herbology, astrology, forging of metals, how to write and other secrets.  But the women gave birth to giants who could not be sustained by the supplies of the community, so the giants turned against men, making war.

So Enoch was given visions and was told that because of the wickedness the Deluge would come to punish the wicked.  So he was given power over the 200 and the wicked and he took the message to declare the coming destruction to the two hundred, the giants and the wicked.  But they pleaded with him for mercy, and so he promised them to make a petition of their behalf.  But their petition was refused and their fate was decided.

The story carries on, telling how he sought wisdom "I wish to know about everything" and so angels come and start to teach him knowledge about everything., although sometimes the vision become too much for him to bear.  He is shown the places where the 200 will go for imprisonment.  He is shown where souls go after death, the good separated from the bad and is shown how the spirits of the giants will become the evil spirits as they are neither man nor angel (angel as in the 200).

Then he was shown all the secrets of the earth and the universe, the laws of the universe and then a vision of the end of all things.  He is then shown the future, of the one who will be like the Lamb (Jesus) and everything that happens between the deluge and Jesus concerning his descendants.  One prophecy relates to the moon changing orbit and stars changing position suggesting a polar shift.

At the end Enoch spoke to his family in regards to all his knowledge, and his son Methuselah is taught and given Enoch's books of knowledge and from there Noah is taught, books are to be kept safe to ensure safety for future, one book contains a complete doctrine of wisdom.  Then he was taken from the earth and did not die like all other men.

Jacob Boehme (1575 - 1624)

Jacob Boehme was born in Poland, and was raised in a Christian family,as a young lad he became a shoemakers apprentice and stayed with the family who were not Christians, which opened his eyes to the world around him.  It is recorded that he regularly studied the Bible yet also took time to read works by visionaries such as Paracelcus.

Boehme had numerous mystical experiences, the highlight of which occurred in 1600 when he received a vision which revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world and gave him a great understanding of good and evil and the ongoing relationship between man and God.  It was not until twelve years after this that he started to write, but his writings gained mixed success, at one point he was even asked to leave his town.  But by the time of his death in 1624, he had written many documents of various subjects such as 'Of the Last times' (1620) , 'Answers to forty questions regarding the soul' (1620) and 'The Supersensual Life' (1624)

I came across references to Boehme made by the famous John Wesley and others during the 18th century who looked upon Boehme's writings as a great source of knowledge, and indeed he was considered as the original thinker in the Lutherian tradition and maintained many followers after his death who became known as Behmenists.  I am planning to get a hold of some translations of his writings and review them here at a later date.

Old Document Review 'Book of the Bee'

The Book of the Bee is a collection of theological and historical texts compiled by Solomon of Akhlat in the thirteenth century(est1222). The book consists of 55 chapters discussing various topics including the creation, heaven and earth, the angels, darkness, paradise, Old Testament patriarchs, New Testament events, lists of kings and patriarchs, and the final day of resurrection.

I have to say upon the reading of this book I am very intrigued as its like it gives partial history that complies with the Bible yet it gives additional information on many topics. For example Chapter XXXII is a history on how all the prophets died, listing some as dying in peace and others who were killed or assassinated. This is strange to me because when I researched the biblical perspective of the 12 minor prophets, very little is actually known about many of them, so, this collection of histories of their demise is very interesting to me and I wonder where the original content comes from. It may be that the author collected various beliefs or maybe he simply published a copy of some earlier document concerning the prophets.

In many places this book attempts or succeeds to fill in the missing facts from the Bible, including for example the details of the wise men who came to visit Jesus after his birth, this document names 12 kings who made the journey to visit him (please note the bible does not provide a quantity of visitors only that there were three gifts).

I have had my own theory about the authorship of Revelations for a while now knowing that there was still some debate on the matter. In Chapter XLVIII it is said when the disciple was on Patmos that he himself had a disciple called John who later became the bishop of Ephesus, and that he was the author of the Book of Revelations and that everything he had written down he had heard from John the disciple.

Furthermore there is a chapter dedicated to the end of times and another dedicated to the Antichrist, yet these are written with the ideal that there will be peace after tribulations, that cities will be rebuilt and everything will continue on except in peace.

Prophecy Collector Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

In1926 old documents written by Isaac Newton around 1704 turned up for auction. These old documents are said to be secret research done by Isaac at the height of his career which he never published in his life due to fear of being arrested for heresy. Newton was a devout Christian who became obsessed with the prophecies contained in the Bible. He believed that 'the authority of prophecies is divine' and named his writings 'the history of things to come' based around simple mathematical calculations. He was also interested in alchemy much the same as Nostradamus and Paracelcus.

In his first maths prediction, he takes the number 1290 from the Book of Daniel and adds it to the year 609A.D. (the year in which the Romans start to give power to the church) and ends up with a figure of 1899. The 1890s was when the Zionist movement took hold, a group of people who want the holy land to be given back to the Jews. This is central to Newtons beliefs, that these are the stepping stones towards the ends times.

In his second prediction, he takes the number 1335 from the Book of Daniel and once again adds it to the date 609A.D. Which ends up with the date of 1944 which is around the end of World War 2, another turning point towards Israel becoming a nation once again.

In the third prediction, he takes the sayings 'a time, two times and half a time' from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations and comes up with the figure of 1260 which he adds to the year 800A.D. (the year in which the holy roman empire was formed) and comes up with the year 2060 which he believed would be the end of the world.

The figure of 2060 is also highlighted in 'The prophecy of the Tiburtine Sibyl'

Sambethe (estimated to have lived from 5000B.C.)

Sambethe, otherwise known as the Persian Sibyl or the Hebrew Sibyl lived from about 5000 B.C. And is believed to be the first ever Sibyl (meaning prophetess). Some of the books of the Sibylline oracles is attributed to her, and in which she identifies her family; father Gnostos, mother Circe, sister Isis. More interestingly, in the oracles she is identified as the daughter-in-law of Noah which places her at being in existence at the time of the Great Flood.

Technically she has married into the family of Enoch (the first prophet) who was the grandfather of Noah's wife, a family very knowledgeable in the ways of the prophet. As I researched the names of Noah's family further, the more varied the possible names became, it seems that each religion that recorded the story of Noah gives different possible names for his wife and his son's wives, and some religions even give multiple possible names. I do not wish to get dragged into a debate about Noah here so I will leave this part of the discussion till another time.

Again the topic comes up about the ages people lived to in those days, as various documents that mention Sambethe, mention that she lived many centuries. And as we all know loads of people in the Bible are listed have lived very long years. Anyways, the Sibylline oracles say that some years after flood, Sambethe mobed to Greece and began to write oracles.