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Rating: 
Summary: Better late than never
Review: This volume represents a lifetime of work by one of the most brilliant and influential scholars of Second Temple Judaism. It has been a long time in coming--the author was awarded the contract while still a graduate student, and this volume (the first of two volumes on 1 Enoch) came out the year after his retirement.I cannot recomend strongly enough that students of early Christianity familiarize themselves with this volume, as well as its forthcoming companion volume to be co-authored by George Nichelsburg and James Vanderkam. The book of Enoch is, after the canonical book of Daniel, the most important work of Jewish apocalyptic thought--the fertile ground from which earliest Christianity sprung. As a testament to the importance of this book in the earliest years of Christianity's growth, one need look no farther than the canonical book of Jude--which cites the book of 1 Enoch as if it itself were canonical scripture (which it clearly was to the author of Jude and numerous Christians and Jews of the time). Nickelburg's commentary is a landmark in the study of 1 Enoch, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins. I certainly do not concur with all of Nickelburg's conclusions regarding the book (particularly in his insistence that the work be classified with the pseudepigraphic testamentary literautre)--however, no serious student of incipient Christianity and Judaism can afford to ignore this important study.
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