Fortress Press

". . . The commentary could only have been produced by a mature scholar who has worked on the materials, taking into account a multiplicity of issues—text–, source–, and literary–critical—for a long time. This is undoubtedly a landmark study in early Enochic tradition and, indeed, it could be said, in the study of Judaism of the Second Temple period. Nickelsburg has succeeded in commenting with linguistic and historical acumen on one of the most complex collections of documents preserved to us from Jewish antiquity. The breadth of his linguistic skills and his wide knowledge of Jewish, Greek, and Christian tradition lend an exemplary balance to his discussions of passage after passage on almost every page. This is a work the value of which will continue to be discovered in the years ahead. Based on this achievement, scholars and students can only look forward to the appearance of the second volume."

"A welcome addition to the Hermeneia commentary series . . . extremely valuable for its careful historical, textual, and literary analysis; its very accurate and readable translation; its attention to both the details and the overall shape of the text; and its constant awareness of the importance of social context. It contains countless new, small contributions to scholarship on Enoch, and it brings together the many important contributions that Nickelsburg and others have made over the past thirty years."

"We are dealing here with the life achievement of one of the very few real specialists on 1 Enoch. . . . It is clearly written, systematically structured, up to date, easy to use, and a monument of critical, literary, and historical scholarship, a compliment to the Hermeneia series. It avoids the fashionable use of methodologies but, instead, treats us with an abundance of textual analyses, helpful observations, and a richness of tradition–and religion–historical parallel material that makes the study of Second Temple Judaism so rewarding. It deserves its place on the bookshelves of all academic institutions in the study of religions in antiquity, as it goes far beyond the field of biblical studies. A great work."