📚 24 - June
___ (ca. 300-10 BCE). The Book of Enoch. (trans. R.H. Charles)
Pseudepigraphical Second Temple-era Hebrew text that didn't quite make it into the canon.
For me the most interesting part was near the beginning—Enoch's travels through the heavens as he goes to intercede on behalf of fallen angels. The descriptions of mountains, caverns, abysses—And I went in till I drew nigh to a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues of fire: and it began to affright me. Visionary poetry.
The scholarly consensus is this book was cobbled together by different writers over the course of centuries, which makes sense—though all the sections are purportedly written by Enoch, different personalities shine through strongly. One writer spills a great deal of ink over a small potatoes claim about the length of the solar year (exactly 364 days)—which apparently Uriel the archangel himself personally affirmed to Enoch.
Toward the end, things get darker: the apocalypse. I'd always thought about the apocalypse as a vision of total obliteration, but in this text it's presented positively: a great score-settling, where the oppressed are finally freed (and the oppressors, their sons, and their cattle are all annihilated). This section in its scope and anger becomes a bit flowery with the imagery—a description for instance of a horse trudging breast-deep in the blood of the sinful.
The visionary poet, the emphatic astronomer, the chronicler of fantasias of retributive violence—seeing the personalities of the authors so distinctly gave me a new perspective on other holy texts I've read. I could see the humanity of this text much more strongly than I did when I (years ago) read, for instance, Genesis or Exodus.
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