1 Enoch 69

1 Enoch 69:8-11

“And the fourth was named Penemue: he taught the children of men the bitter and the sweet, and he taught them all the secrets of their wisdom.  And he instructed mankind in writing with ink and paper, and thereby many sinned from eternity to eternity and until this day. For men were not created for such a purpose, to give confirmation to their good faith with pen and ink.  For men were created like angels, to the intent that they should continue pure and righteous, and death, which destroys everything, could not have taken hold of them; but through this their knowledge they are perishing, and through this power it is consuming me.

According to etymology, the root "pen" means "inside" or something in relation to "enclosed", and the name Penemue can refer to the "inside secrets" that he taught mankind.

Penemue corrupted mankind by teaching them the art of pen and paper.  Just shows how unnatural it is to keep records of things; makes me wonder how human beings were meant to live and what many other things that may seem normal and harmless to us are actually sinful.

This even correlates with my own philosophy (which is the reason I am trying to give up this addiction of writing things down).  If anything, record keeping discourages the mind from keeping good memory, just like calculators discourages the mind from doing mental calculation.

Another fun fact, Arabs have good long term memory because their ancestors were used to not writing things down, it was only until recently the Qur’an was physically copied; back then it was only transferred verbally.

Moving on…

The verses say that the flaw with mankind was that they gave confirmation of their good faith with pen and ink, instead of continuing their good faith.  Sometimes we feel justified in resting from doing good because of the good that we have already done. 

It is even worse now, with videos and pictures.  Once we have an image of us doing something impressive, we feel satisfied with our efforts and do not strive any longer to be any better.  Instead of living in glory, we look nostalgically into the past, and depend on our memories of our deeds to make us feel some sort of satisfaction.   We do not even think it’s possible to be in glory continuously.

May 27, 2012