Our holy religion, so superior in every thing to our understanding, teaches us that the world has been created only about six thousand years, according to the Septuagint. The interpreter of this ineffable religion teaches us that Adam had intuitive knowledge, and that all the arts were transmitted from Adam to Noah. If this is really the opinion of the church, we will adopt it with a firm and invariable faith, submitting, moreover, all we write to the judgment of that holy church, which is infallible. It is in vain that the emperor Julian, otherwise so respectable for his virtue, valor, and knowledge, says in his discourse, censured by the great and moderate St. Cirille, that whether Adam had intuitive knowledge or not, God could not have forbid him to touch the tree of knowledge of right and wrong; that God, on the contrary, should have commanded him to eat much of the fruit of this tree, in order to improve his intuitive knowledge, if he was possessed of it, or to acquire it, if he had it not. In a word, we constantly warn the reader, that we do not interfere in any respect with holy things. We protect against all erroneous interpretations, against all malicious inferences that may be adduced from our words.
This Book of Enoch must nevertheless be of some antiquity; for we find it frequently quoted in the Testament of the twelve Patriarchs, another Jewish book corrected by a Christian of the first century; and this Testament of the twelve Patriarchs is even quoted by St. Paul in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, if repeating the page word for word can be called quoting it. In the sixth chapter of the Patriarch Reuben, we find, “The scholar of God at length fell upon them,” which St. Paul says verbatim. These twelve Testaments are not in other respects entirely conformable to Genesis. The incest of Juda, for example, is not related in the same manner. Juda says, that being drunk, he abused his daughter-in-law. The testament of Juda is remarkable in this respect, that it allows of seven organs of sense in man, instead of five; he reckons life and the act of generation as two senses. Moreover, all these patriarchs repent, in this Testament, having sold their brother Joseph.