“A principio fuit canonicus”: The Controversy over 1 Enoch in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Abstract The past decade has seen significant advances in our understanding of the early modern reception of 1 Enoch, thanks to the pioneering work of Ariel Hessayon, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and Gabriele Boccaccini among others. Building on their research, this article reconstructs the dynamics that generated interest in 1 Enoch in early modernity, focussing on the reception of the Syncellus fragments published in 1606 by Joseph Scaliger. To do so, it offers three observations. Firstly, it expands our understanding of the nature of interest in 1 Enoch prior to 1606. Secondly, it corrects a common misinterpretation of Scaliger’s comments on the Syncellus fragments. Finally, it reconstructs three trends which arose after Scaliger and which functioned to perpetuate interest in 1 Enoch. This account should interest both scholars of Enoch’s afterlives and historians of scholarship for the light it sheds on the development of early modern biblical criticism.