Source: Margaret Barker, Restoring Solomon’s Temple
This raises again the question of the sources of material found in later Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Were they simply later elaborations of the biblical stories, or were they remembered and included by the later storytellers? The most famous example is the story of the fallen angels, mentioned briefly in Genesis 6 as the cause of the wickedness that led to Noah’s flood. A much more detailed version of the story is told in 1 Enoch, but it would be unwise to assume that Enoch’s story was the product of a later imagination. It was in fact the major myth of the first temple. Sins that Enoch attributed specifically to the fallen angels – metal working to make weapons, predicting the future with charms, even the invention of kohl to beautify eyelids – were known to Isaiah in the late eighth century BCE (Isaiah 2.6-8; 3.16- 17), and there is much in Isaiah to suggest that he did know the story of the fallen angels. Presumably the story was not included in Genesis because that compiler did not want to include the major myth of the first temple that contradicted a fundamental of the pro-Moses group: personal responsibility for keeping the Law given to Moses. The myth of the fallen angels blamed their influence for human sin. The myth of the fallen angels – the sons of God – is the key to understanding the Book of Revelation, because it had been the myth underlying the day of atonement which preceded Tabernacles in the cycle of temple festivals. The goat who represented their leader Azazel was driven out into the desert, taking with him the sins he had caused. This link between the fallen angels in 1 Enoch and the day of atonement can only be reconstructed, however, from non-biblical sources such as the Targums, the Mishnah and 1 Enoch.[1] The pro-Moses group even removed the day of atonement from their festival calendar (Deuteronomy 16.1-17).
[1] See ‘Atonement. The Rite of Healing’ in Margaret Barker’s book The Great High Priest, London: T&T Clark, 2003, pp. 42- 55.