Unknown Ethiopian artist
Elijah, Enoch, Ezra, and Elisha, 15th or 16th century, Ink on parchment, Gunda Gundē Monastery, Tegrāy Ethiopia; C3-IV-2 f. 1v, akg-images / Fototeca Gilardi
The Eligibility of Enoch
Commentary by Kelsie Rodenbiker
This is a page from a manuscript written in Ge’ez, ancient Ethiopic, from the Gunda Gundē monastery in the Tegrāy region of Ethiopia. It shows four biblical figures from the Hebrew Bible (clockwise from top left): Elijah, Enoch, Ezra, and Elisha.
Enoch holds a writing instrument and a page or tablet, with extra pens and ink to his side. That he is shown in the company of other prophets from the Hebrew Bible, as well as actively writing, is significant. While Enoch appears in Genesis, he does not prominently feature—the most notable thing about him is that he lived 365 years before ‘he was no more, because God took him away’ (5:22–24).
Elijah, too, was ‘taken up’ by fiery horses and chariots, after which Elisha inherited his cloak and prophetic mantle (2 Kings 2:10–15). Ezra wears several hats in both canonical and now-noncanonical literature. He is remembered as a priest and scribe, responsible for leading the renewal of Israel’s reading and adherence to the law in the wake of the destruction of the Temple (Nehemiah 8). He is also celebrated as a prophetic figure like Moses who dictates new revelatory scriptures (4 Ezra 14:38–48).
Like Elijah, Enoch did not die; like Elisha he wore a prophetic mantle; like Ezra, he wrote scripture. And as with Ezra, scripture attributed to Enoch now falls outside the widely accepted biblical canon. The author of Jude introduces Enoch as an authoritative prophetic figure, ‘seventh from Adam’, and then quotes from the text of 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15). In other words, as we see in the Ethiopian manuscript illustration, the author of this New Testament apostolic epistle values Enoch both as a prophet and as an author of scripture.
