Mahijah

In the account of Enoch in the Pearl of Great Price, we read that the people feared him and would not lay their hands on him because he walked with God.  There are many details that we have about Enoch in the account in the book of Moses that aren’t in the Bible, and one of them is this interesting detail: “And there came a man unto him, whose name was Mahijah, and said unto him: Tell us plainly who thou art, and from whence thou comest?” (Moses 6:40)  The language of the verse is somewhat similar to this question that the Jews posed to Christ: “Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly” (John 10:24).  It seems to me, though, that Mahijah’s inquiry was much more sincere than that of the Jews who were looking only to accuse Christ.  Mahijah is nowhere else mentioned in the scriptures, but the name of a place called Mahujah is mentioned a little later in the story as a place where Enoch heard a voice out of heaven (Moses 7:2).  Elder Maxwell also wrote a short book called The Enoch Letters in which he depicted Mahijah as an eventually believer in the words of Enoch.  Written like the Screwtape Letters, Mahijah wrote to a friend describing Enoch and his people and city.  But we really know very little about the real Mahijah. 

               In an Ensign article many years ago Hugh Nibley provided some interesting information about the names Mahijah and Mahujah.  He observed that the name Mahijah is the only person named in the book of Moses who is not also in the Bible. He wrote this about his examination of the book of Enoch found in the Dead Sea Scrolls: “After having looked through all but the last of the Aramaic Enoch fragments without finding anything particularly new, and coming to those very last little fragments, I found the name Mahujah leaping out of the pages again and again.  Could this be our Mahujah or Mahijah?  As a matter of fact it could be either, not only because the semi-vowels w and y are written very much alike in the Aramaic script and are sometimes confused by scribes, but also because the name as written in 4QEn, MHWY, is the same as the MHWY-EL who appears in Gen. 4:18 as the grandfather of Enoch….  So what? A coincidence—a giant or a Watcher called Mahujah or Mahijah.  But far more than a coincidence when taken in its context. The only thing the Mahijah in the Book of Moses is remarkable for is his putting of bold direct questions to Enoch, thus giving the patriarch an opening for calling upon the people to repent, referring them to the book of remembrance, and telling them of the plan of salvation. And this is exactly the role, and the only role, that the Aramaic Mahujah plays in the story.  The name is found in none of the other Enoch texts and neither is the story: it is peculiar to the version Joseph Smith gave us and the oldest known Enoch manuscripts.”  Our account of Enoch in the Pearl of Great Price is a “portion of the ancient Book of Enoch” according to one manual, and the fact that the name Mahijah, or at least something very similar, is found in the oldest known text of the Book of Enoch helps give credence to that claim.  Perhaps Mahijah’s greatest contribution, though, was his simple reminder to us to both listen sincerely to the Lord’s messengers and ask sincere questions that will help us discover the messages the Lord has for us.