Xihuaru Kilcher

Life Blog

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 03:37:15 +0000

George Hawkins Pember matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1856; took the B.A. in 1860, being placed in the Second Class Classical Tripos; and his M.A. in 1863. He died July 5, 1910, in his seventy-third year. He studied the classics in his unconverted days for his own glory, but since his conversion he sought to use the knowledge so gained for the good of God’s church. How extensive and accurate was his classical knowledge, and how very widely he had read, may be seen in The Great Prophecies and in Earth’s Earliest Ages.
“He was preeminently a teacher of teachers, and one of the best exponents of prophetic Scripture during his period, so rich in great teachers of the Word of God”.
~ G. H. Lang
“This is a book of distinct and conspicuous mark on the exhaustless theme of Scripture Prophecy. It is evident that the conscientious labour and thought of years are embodied in the volume. While the author shows that he has studied with care the literature of his subject, he has at the same time wrought out an independent scheme of interpretation marked by great comprehensiveness and self-consistency.”
~ United Presbyterian Magazine
“Pember was one name (among two or three) that dominated prophetic study in the Victorian age, a writer foremost in scholarship, in expository insight, in literary clarity, who had the added gift of interpreting facts in the light of Scripture; and Earth’s Earliest Ages was to many of us a key book in our earlier years.”
“One of the deplorable facts of today is the disappearance of these giants, and even of their works, with few if any to take their place; and the value of this present volume becomes correspondingly greater as it gives to the present generation a summary of one who knew his Bible, and fearlessly stated a drama of all-comprehensive gravity now obviously at the doors.”
~ D. M. Panton
“One of the most valuable expositions of prophecy ever published. It is written in a popular and interesting style, and handles with masterly discriminating, scholarly research, and eloquent description the principal prophecies of the Bible.”
~ Prophetic News
The Days Of Noah by G.H. Pember
The Days of Noah
By G.H. Pember Extract from Earth’s Earliest Ages by G. H. Pember,
© Kregel Publications, 1975, Ch. 8 & 9, pp. 127-148. Footnote numbering adjusted from the original.
The sixth chapter of Genesis contains an account of the days of Noah, a description of momentous interest to us: for our Lord has declared that a similar epoch of worldliness will at length exhaust the forbearance of God towards the present dwellers upon earth, and cause Him to come with fire, and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire; to plead with all flesh by fire and by His sword (Isa. lxvi. 15, 16).
It becomes, therefore, an obvious duty to consider the progress of wickedness and corruption among the antediluvians, so far as it has pleased God to inform us of it: to acquaint ourselves not merely with the sowing but also with the watering, the growth, and the ripening, of that hideous crop against which the gleaming sickle of the Almighty at length flashed forth from heaven; to note the various incentives to evil as they successively appeared, and to observe the particular influence of each upon the rapidly decomposing masses of society. For by so doing we shall arm ourselves against the errors and temptations which are daily multiplying around us, and be enabled to discern the threatening signs of our own times.
Now the first-mentioned characteristic of those former days of wickedness and peril is the rapid increase of population (Gen. vi. 1); a circumstance which in itself has ever tended not merely to diffuse but at the same time to intensify sin. For every form of evil which exists in thinly populated countries will also be found where men have multiplied; where there are countless vices peculiar to crowded districts. And, if they are numerous, men support each other in rebellion, and are prone to become far more daring and defiant of God. Among ourselves, the strongholds of rationalism and atheism are always to be found in large cities.
But while the families of the earth were thus increasing in number, they were at the same time making vast progress in civilization and knowledge. Cain had taught them to settle in communities and build cities (Gen. iv. 17); and the sons of Lamech—speedily followed, no doubt, by many others—

Philantrophy

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 02:36:43 +0000

I believe the text to be in good condition generally. It seems to be almost complete, with a beginning and an end, and it is self-consistent. Even more significant is the way that Enoch’s character and style of writing are still apparent. The only parts that I suspect were written by different authors I have separated out, as the Book of Methuselah, and the Book of Noah, (chapters 10 & 11).
The translation by Michael Knibb, into English, is very good, and I have had to do very little to the text in order to change it from a good translation into clear English. I have added quite a lot of punctuation and improved the presentation, but I have made only very minor changes to the text (such as substituting ‘before’ with ‘in front of’ where appropriate. In a few places I have substituted “sky” for Heaven where it makes the meaning clearer. Where Enoch says “the face of Heaven” he means the sky but I have left it unchanged. I only changed Heaven to sky where I was sure that was the intended meaning. Similarly, I have tried to use Earth with a capital where I think the meaning is the whole planet and earth, without a capital, where the meaning may just be the ground – which Enoch often differentiates himself by referring to “the dry ground” rather than “the earth”.
Fortunately, Enoch’s style was to use a simple vocabulary, and he assumed no pre-knowledge by the reader. Anything complicated, he explains at length, with quite a lot of repetition. This has helped to preserve the book through many translations. There are a few places, even so, where there are problems. I have marked these with dots (…..) where some words seem to have been lost. Fortunately, there are not many of these, and nothing important appears to be missing.
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The Book of Enoch
I did find a few translocations in the text: • Methuselah’s book had been inserted near the back, • Noah’s book and ‘The Storehouses’ had been inserted into the Third
Parable. • Part of the Prophecy of the Ten weeks was in the wrong order. I have kept the Ethiopian ‘chapter and verse’ numbers, in all cases, so that my changes to the order of presentation can easily be seen. I have split the book into sections – where there seems to be a natural break, and given each one a title. I inserted Noah and Methuselah’s works into the middle – where there seems to be a major break in Enoch’s book. The first section of Enoch is mainly the story of what occurred whereas the second part is mainly written from the notes that Enoch took while he was with the Watchers. Additionally, the end of Noah’s short book conveniently serves as an introduction to Enoch’s Book of Parables.
Andy McCracken (August 2002)

News Blog

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:35:10 +0000

The History of the Book of Enoch
The book was thought to have been lost, for over 2,000 years, with many ancient sources referring to it, and even quoting parts, but no complete copies were known. Then in 1773, James Bruce brought three copies back from Ethiopia, having spent some years exploring the country.
Enoch had two main reasons for writing his book. The first was because the Watchers instructed him to do it, (see section 15 at 81.5 and 81.6). The second reason; was to save his family from the flood. Enoch wrote his book, after his grandson Lamech was born, but before Noah was born. Noah is only named in the section that Methuselah wrote, (see section 10 at 107.3), and of course in his own section (section 11, The Book of Noah). So, there may still have been 40 – 80 years left before the flood, at the time when Enoch wrote his book.
There is a long gap between the time of the flood and the time when Moses gave praise to Enoch in Genesis. Genesis dates from around 1400 BC, and forms part of the Torah (the first five books of the bible). In Genesis, there is Enoch’s family; as named by him in this book, and a quick recap of some of Enoch’s story.
It seems likely therefore, that copies of the Book of Enoch survived into Egyptian times, 3500 BC, and was known to Moses around 2,000 years later. Moses presumably took a copy of the book with him when they all left Egypt, and he was no doubt pleased to see Enoch’s prophecy fulfilled.
The book probably existed mainly in Hebrew during the thousand years after the exodus. No Hebrew copies exist today, however, although there are some Hebrew passages quoted in some of the Aramaic fragments that survive from a few centuries BC.
The appearance of the book in Ethiopia, is probably due to events in 5
The Book of Enoch
Jerusalem during the reign of King Manasseh of Judah, (695 – 642 BC), which are documented in the Bible, (2Chronicles 33:1 – 20, and at 2Kings 21:1 – 18). King Manasseh was not of the Jewish faith, he erected alters to Baal and Asherah in Solomon’s Temple. In Kings at 21:16, it says that so much innocent blood was shed that it filled Jerusalem from end to end. At this time, the religious establishment left the country, taking the Ark of the Covenant and all the important religious texts with them.
After a number of years in Egypt, the refugees went further south, near to the source of the Nile, at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. The descendants of these people are the Falashas, who even today follow the form of Judaism that had been practiced in Israel only before 620 BC. The Ethiopians translated The Book of Hanokh into Ge’ez, and had enough respect to look after it. Meanwhile, all Hebrew versions disappeared but a substantial part of the book had survived in Greek, and some parts in Aramaic, but until Scottish traveler, and freemason, James Bruce, returned from Ethiopia in 1773, with three manuscripts, no one in the west had ever seen the whole book.
The two commonly available translations were done soon after this and the book was received with an embarrassed silence, for the most part, and not widely read. This book is based on a new translation published in 1978, which was produced as a result of research into a large number of the Ethiopian manuscripts and a review of all other surviving fragments. My hope is that this present edition will be the best version of Enoch’s book available in English.
I think this is an important book, and I have done my best to present it as clearly as possible, and in a way that I hope Hanokh would have approved of.