Kelley Coblentz Bautch
a concern for intermarriage or sexual misdeeds, boundary crossing, and il
licit knowledge. These concerns influence as well the depiction of women in
Enochic literature.
In conjunction with the story of the angels' descent, women are espe
cially defined in Enochic literature as sexual beings, though they are not par
ticularly condemned or demonized as such.^42 As if to underscore the point,
the Book of the Watchers has God announce that women were essentially
created to reproduce and perpetuate the male line (cf. l En 15:7).^43 It is clear
from some of the strata that women are not faulted for the angels' decision
to descend, as they are in one of the earliest traditions concerning the watch
ers' sin, a narrative that focuses on the descent of Shemihazah and his band
of rebellious angels.^44 In this narrative, for example, the angels led by
Shemihazah hatch a plan to choose for themselves wives and through them
to beget children (l En 6:2). As VanderKam has observed of this stratum, the
guilt for the sinful union lies with the angels alone and not the women.^45
The wives appear as rather ambivalent figures in Enochic literature,
however, for two reasons. First, they become associated with forbidden
knowledge and the practice of illicit crafts, a topic we address below. Second,
variant readings of 1 En 8:1 (Syncellus) and 1 En 19:2 (Eth. MSS Tana 9, Berlin,
and Garrett) suggest that the wives led astray or seduced the angels, and cer
tain later traditions outside the Enochic corpus (TReu 5:5-6; Targum Pseudo-
- As Loader demonstrates, sexuality and procreation are not deemed negative for
humankind within these traditions. See his Enoch, Levi, and jubilees, 80. On women as sex
ual beings, thusly defined through their service to husbands, see G. W. E. Nickelsburg,
1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book ofi Enoch 1-36, 81-108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: For
tress, 2001), 1:272, and Marie-Theres Wacker, "'Rettendes Wissen' im athiopischen Henoch-
buch," in Rettendes Wissen. Studien zum Fortgang weisheitlichen Denkens im Fruhjudentum
und im fruhen Christentum, ed. K. Loning, AOAT 300 (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002), 115-54
(here 150). - According to 1 En 15:5, men, mortal beings, are given women so that they might
have children through them; angels, eternal spirits, have no need for children, and therefore
women are not created for them (15:7). This latter statement implies that heavenly, spiritual
beings are male. See K. Sullivan, "Sexuality and Gender of Angels," in Paradise Now: Essays
on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, ed. A. DeConick (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Litera
ture, 2006), 211-28 (here 214). - On this stratum within 1 En 6-11, see, for example, S. Bhayro, The Shemihazah and
Asael Narrative of 1 Enoch 6-11: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary with Refer
ence to Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Antecedents, AOAT 322 (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag,
2005), 29-31. - See J. C. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1995), 32-33.