Describing the literal and figurative weeping of the heavens at the time of Enoch, Hugh Nibley writes:1
One of nature’s ironies is that not enough water usually leads to too much. Enoch’s world was plagued by flood as well as drought; we are regaled by the picture of lowering heavens ceaselessly dumping dismal avalanches of rain and snow upon the earth. The constant weeping of Enoch and all the saints is matched in the powerful imagery of the weeping heavens and the earth veiled in darkness under the blackest of skies: In the book of Enoch the same imagery is applied to the meridian and the fulness of times as well as the Adamic age.
In this Essay, we will survey examples of the weeping of the heavens from the time of Creation through the time of Noah.
The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Creation
Providing a plausible echo of the imagery of the weeping of the heavens in Enoch’s account is an ancient Jewish theme that is always associated with the second day of Creation, when the heavenly and earthly waters were separated by the firmament. According to David Lieber:2
The Midrash pictures the lower waters weeping at being separated from the upper waters, suggesting that there is something poignant in the creative process when things once united are separated.
So painful was the command of God for the waters to separate that they were seen as having actually rebelled.3 As Heschel recounts:4
On the second day of creation, the Holy and Blessed One said: “Let there be an expanse (raki’a) in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water. God made the expanse, and it separated the water that was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse.”5 God said to the waters: “Divide yourselves into two halves; one half shall go up, and the other half shall go down”; but the waters presumptuously all went upward. Said to them the Holy and Blessed One: “I told you that only half should go upward, and all of you went upward?” Said the waters: “We shall not descend!” Thus did they brazenly confront their Creator. … What did the Holy and Blessed One do? God extended His little finger, and they tore into two parts, and God took half of them down against their will. Thus it is written: “God said, ‘let there be an expanse’”6 (raki’a)—do not read “expanse” (raki’a) but “tear” (keri’a).”
Heschel makes it clear “that the waters rebelled against their Creator not out of competitiveness or jealousy but rather out of protest against the partition made by the Holy and Blessed One between the upper and lower realms.”7
Avivah Zornberg has the lower waters complaining:8 “We want to be in the presence of the King.” This statement is made meaningful in the understanding that the partition that divided the upper and lower divisions of the waters was an allusion to the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from other precincts in the temple. Because of their separation, the lower waters no longer enjoyed the glory of the direct presence of God.9
The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Enoch
Jewish tradition records that the weeping of the heavens at the time of Enoch included not only the figurative drenching of the world in rain, but also the literal weeping of God, the angels, and the patriarchs. For example, in 3 Enoch, Enoch is led on a tour of heaven where he sees the righteous who have ascended to heaven pray to the Holy One:10 “Lord of the Universe, how long will you sit upon your throne, as a mourner sits in the days of his mourning, with your right hand behind you, and not redeem your sons?” Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the rest of the righteous wonder when God will show his compassion and save his children, with the same “right hand” by which he created the heavens and the earth.
God answers the petitioners, explaining that He cannot save His people “in their sins”11 : “Since these wicked ones have sinned thus and thus, and have transgressed thus and thus before me, how can I deliver my sons from among the nations of the world, reveal my kingdom in the world before the eyes of the gentiles and deliver my great right hand which has been brought low by them?”12
Metatron (Enoch) then calls out for the book of remembrance to be read, in which the wicked deeds of the people were recorded, with every letter of the law having been violated from A to Z.13 “At once, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob began to weep. … [And] Michael, the Prince of Israel, cried out and lamented in a loud voice, saying: ‘Lord, why do you stand aside?’”14
Summing up the scene, Elder Neal A. Maxwell observed:15 “When Enoch saw the heavens weep, they reflected the same drenching and wrenching feelings of the Father.” Sadly, mankind was heedless and the suffering was needless.
The Weeping of the Heavens at the Time of Noah
Even though the heavens are usually conceived of as being far above the earth, Jewish sages knew them as being very near. In one story, Simeon ben Zoma is recorded as having said:16
I was pondering the creation of the universe and I have concluded that there was scarcely a handbreadth’s division between the upper and lower waters. For we read in Scripture, “The spirit of God hovered over the waters.”17 Now Scripture also says: “Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, hovering over his young.”18 Just as an eagle, when it flies over its nest, barely touches the nest, so there is barely a handbreadth’s distance separating the upper and lower waters.”
Given the creation setting of this motif, it is not surprising that the Book of Moses associates the weeping of the heavens with the story of the Flood, which, in essence, recounts the destruction and the re-creation of the earth.19
To appreciate the complex symbolism in the stories of the Creation and the Flood with respect to the separation and uniting of the waters, one must see the imagery of the Ark as it would have been seen through ancient eyes.20 Briefly, in the story of the Ark’s bird-like “hovering” motions upon the waters, we are made to understand that, figuratively speaking, the very sky has fallen. As a consequence, the “habitable and culture-orientated world lying between the heavens above and the underworld below, and separating them”21 by “a handbreadth’s distance,”22 has utterly disappeared.23
New life, of which the Ark was a portent, cannot come into being without some measure of pain and destruction, as Enoch’s account reminds us when it compares the elements of mortal birth to those involved in spiritual rebirth.24 Like human birth, the re-breaking of the waters when the earth was created anew involved pain—and the action of tearing:25 “The tear in the waters was necessary to create space in which life could develop, and the tear of birth is necessary for the baby to begin an independent life.” The weeping of the heavens witnessed by Enoch as a prelude to the Flood, and the rains that attended the Flood itself were inevitable accompaniments to the pain of the birthing of a new telestial earth, separated for a second time from heaven.
Figure 2. Boleslaw Parasion, 1950–: Noah’s Ark
The sculpture above is drawn from former mission president Walter Whipple’s large collection of Polish folk art. It “depicts a thoughtful God guiding the Ark with his hands.”26
Although the Bible does not mention explicitly God’s role during the Flood at the time of Noah, the scene shown in the sculpture is described in 1 Enoch 67:2:27 “I will put my hand upon [the Ark] and protect it.” George Nickelsburg conjectures that “God’s placing a protective hand on the Ark corresponds either to Genesis 7:16 (“and YHWH shut him in”), or to the covering of the Ark mentioned in Genesis 6:16; 8:13, or both.”28
However, we discover a better parallel to 1 Enoch than anything in Genesis in the Grand Vision of Enoch found in Moses 7:43: “Enoch saw that Noah built an ark; and that the Lord smiled upon it, and held it in his own hand.” The language of the Lord smiling upon the Ark is reminiscent of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:25 (“The Lord make his face shine upon thee”) but the passage finds an even greater resonance in 3 Nephi 19:25 when Jesus visited his disciples and “his countenance did smile upon them, and the light of his countenance did shine upon them.”
In this connection, some ancient interpreters saw in the mention of a tsohar in the Ark an allusion to a shining stone that was said to have hung from its rafters in order to lighten the darkness within.29 Readers of the Book of Mormon will not miss the similarity to the story of the shining stones divinely provided to the brother of Jared to provide light for their barges.30
While the heavens wept for the destruction of the earth, the light of the Lord smiled upon the Ark as a portent of a new Creation. And not only can God hold the Ark “in his own hand,”31 He has already told Enoch that He can “stretch forth [his] hands and hold all the creations which [he has] made.”32 In passages resonating with this Book of Moses imagery, Jewish mystical tradition envisions Enoch as protectively holding the cosmos in his hands in a joint effort with God Himself.33
This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 108–110, 148 n. 37d, 149 n. 40a, 259.
Further Reading
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 108–110, 148 n. 37d, 149 n. 40a, 259.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005, pp. 128–129, 133, 134–137.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 198–200.
Nibley, Hugh W. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004, pp. 284–285.
References
Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014. www.templethemes.net.
Dant, Doris R. “Polish religious folk art: Gospel echoes from a disparate clime.” BYU Studies 37, no. 2 (1997-1998): 88-112.
Freedman, H., and Maurice Simon, eds. 1939. Midrash Rabbah 3rd ed. 10 vols. London, England: Soncino Press, 1983.
Gardner, Brant A. Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary of the Book of Mormon. 6 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007.
Ginzberg, Louis, ed. The Legends of the Jews. 7 vols. Translated by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909-1938. Reprint, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962, 1965, 1995. Heavenly Torah as Refracted Through the Generations. 3 in 1 vols. Translated by Gordon Tucker. New York City, NY: Continuum International, 2007.
Lieber, David L., ed. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. New York City, NY: The Rabbinical Assembly of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, produced by The Jewish Publication Society, 2001.
Maxwell, Neal A. Moving in His Majesty and Power. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2004.
Neusner, Jacob, ed. Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation. 3 vols. Vol. 1: Parashiyyot One through Thirty-Three on Genesis 1:1 to 8:14. Brown Judaic Studies 104, ed. Jacob Neusner. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.
———. “The Babylonian Background.” In Lehi in the Desert, The World of the Jaredites, There Were Jaredites, edited by John W. Welch, Darrell L. Matthews and Stephen R. Callister. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 5, 350-79. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1988.
———. 1957. An Approach to the Book of Mormon. 3rd ed. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 6. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1988.
———. 1989-1990. Teachings of the Book of Mormon. 4 vols. Provo, UT: FARMS, 2004.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Orlov, Andrei A. “Adoil outside the cosmos: God before and after creation in the Enochic tradition.” In Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, edited by April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson. Gnostica: Tests and Interpretations, eds. Garry Trompf, Iaian Gardner and Jason BeDuhn, 30-57. Bristol, CT: Acumen, 2013.
Ouaknin, Marc-Alain, and Éric Smilévitch, eds. 1983. Chapitres de Rabbi Éliézer (Pirqé de Rabbi Éliézer): Midrach sur Genèse, Exode, Nombres, Esther. Les Dix Paroles, ed. Charles Mopsik. Lagrasse, France: Éditions Verdier, 1992.
Reeves, John C., and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 2 vols. Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Wolski, Nathan, ed. The Zohar, Pritzker Edition. Vol. 10. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Wyatt, Nicolas. “The darkness of Genesis 1:2.” In The Mythic Mind: Essays on Cosmology and Religion in Ugaritic and Old Testament Literature, edited by Nicholas Wyatt, 92-101. London, England: Equinox, 2005.
Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. Genesis: The Beginning of Desire. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1995.
Notes on Figures
Figure 1. Moses 7:28. Image from https://wallpaperaccess.com/rain-cloud (accessed April 15, 2020). Photo ID: 701643. Public domain.
Figure 2. Item photographed is from the collection of Walter Whipple, with permission. With thanks to Jennifer Hurlbut and Marny Parkin of BYU Studies Quarterly.
3 N. Wolski, Zohar 10, pp. 54.55 recounts that the firmament was created so that the “waters flowing from Hell would [not] mingle with other waters, injuring [God’s] creatures.”
4 A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, p. 124, citing Midrash Konen, Otzar Midrashim, 254.
9 Note Louis Ginzberg’s reconstruction of Jewish tradition about the days of Creation (L. Ginzberg, Legends, 1:51):
God told the angels: On the first day of Creation, I shall make the heavens and stretch them out; so will Israel raise up the Tabernacle as the dwelling place of my Glory (see Exodus 40:17–19). On the second day I shall put a division between the terrestrial waters and the heavenly waters, so will [Moses] hang up a veil in the Tabernacle to divide the Holy Place and the Most Holy (see Exodus 40:20–21).
11 See Alma 11:36–37. Some late Islamic Enoch accounts focus specifically on the deeds of the giants. For example, in Ṣaḥā’if Idrīs and Sunan Idrīs it is said that “they shed blood to the point that their deeds made the earth and the heavens weep”(J. C. Reeves et al., Enoch from Antiquity 1, pp. 327-328). By way of contrast, the Jewish Bereshit Rabbati reports that Shemḥazai, the father of prominent giants, also lamented. However, it was not for the wickedness of his sons but rather for the fact that his sons might starve if the world were destroyed: “for each of them would eat one thousand camels, one thousand horses, and one thoustand of every kind of cattle (daily)” (ibid., pp. 182-183).
29 See, e.g., H. Freedman et al., Midrash, 31:11, Genesis 6:16, 1:244; M.-A. Ouaknin et al., Rabbi Éliézer, 23, pp. 139-140. Cf. H. W. Nibley, Babylonian Background, pp. 359-364; H. W. Nibley, Approach, pp. 336-337, 343-348; H. W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, 4:288-289; B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 6:195-199.
33 Thanks to Matthew L. Bowen for this suggestion. In A. A. Orlov, Adoil Outside the Cosmos, p. 45, we read:
It is intriguing that Enoch-Metatron’s governance of the wolrd includes not only administrative functions but also the duty of the physical sustenance of the world. Moshe Idel refers to the treatise The Seventy Names of Metatron where the angel and God seize the world in their hands. This motif of the Deity and his vice-regent grasping the universe in their cosmic hands invokes the conceptual developments found in the Shiur Qomah and Hekhalot materials, where Enoch-Metatron possesses a cosmic corporeality comparable to the physicque of the Deity and is depicted as the measurement of the divine Body.
In a previous Essay,1 we observed that three distinct parties weep for the wickedness of mankind: God,2 the heavens,3 and Enoch himself.4 In addition, a fourth party, the earth, complains and mourns—though she doesn’t specifically “weep”—for her children.5 In the present article, we discuss affinities in the ancient Enoch literature and in the laments of Jeremiah to the complaint of the earth in Moses 7:48–49.
Valuable articles by Andrew Skinner6 and Daniel Peterson,7 following Hugh Nibley’s lead,8 discuss interesting parallels to these verses in ancient sources. Peterson follows J. J. M. Roberts in citing examples of Sumerian laments of the mother goddess and showing how a similar motif appears in Jeremiah in the guise of the personified city as the mother of her people9 by way of analogy to the role of the mourning earth as “the mother of men”10 in the Book of Moses. Roberts illustrates this by citing Jeremiah 10:19–21:11
Woe is me because my hurt!
My wound is grievous.
But I said, “Truly this is my punishment,
and I must bear it.
My tent is plundered and all my cords are broken;
my children have gone out from me, and they are no more;
there is no one to spread my tent again,
and to set up my curtains.
For the shepherds were stupid,
And did not inquire of Yahweh;
Therefore they did not prosper,
And all their flock is scattered.”
Emphasizing the appropriateness of a Sumerian-Akkadian milieu for this concept in Moses 7, Skinner12 cites S. H. Langdon as follows:13
The Sumerian Earth-mother is repeatedly referred to in Sumerian and Babylonian names as the mother of mankind … This mythological doctrine is thoroughly accepted in Babylonian religion. … In early Akkadian, this mythology is already firmly established among the Semites.
Although the motif of a complaining earth is not found anywhere in the Bible, it does turn up in 1 Enoch and in the Qumran Book of Giants.14 In 1 Enoch we find the following references:
·1 Enoch 7:4–6; 8:4:15 And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought accusation against the lawless ones .… (And) as men were perishing, the cry went up to heaven.
·1 Enoch 9:2, 10:16 And entering in, they said to one another, “The earth, devoid (of inhabitants), raises17 the voice of their cries to the gates of heaven … And now behold, the spirits of the souls of the men who have died make suit; and their groan has come up to the gates of heaven; and it does not cease to come forth from before the iniquities that have come upon the earth.
·1 Enoch 87:1:18 And again I saw them, and they began to gore one another and devour one another, and the earth began to cry out.
In the Book of the Giants 4Q203, Frag. 8:6–12 we read:19
6. ‘Let it be known to you th[at ] [
7. your activity and (that) of [your] wive[s ]
8. those (giants) [and their] son[s and] the [w]ives o[f ]
9. through your fornication on the earth, and it (the earth) has [risen up ag]ainst y[ou
and is crying out]
10. and raising accusation against you [and ag]ainst the activity of your sons[
11. the corruption which you have committed on it (the earth) vacat [
12. has reached Raphael. …
Consistent with other comparisons that have been made between the accounts of Enoch in the Book of Moses, the Qumran Book of Giants, and 1 Enoch, Skinner finds that resemblances to the Qumran Enoch text are more compelling than those found in 1 Enoch. First, he notes that the nature of the wickedness in the Book of Giants is described as “fornication,”20 which corresponds semantically to the term “filthiness” used in the Book of Moses.21 By way of contrast, the wickedness being complained of in 1 Enoch is the crimes of murder and violence.
Second, Skinner notes that in both the Qumran Book of Giants fragment and “Moses 7 the earth itself complains of and decries the wickedness of the people, while the [first two] 1 Enoch texts emphasize the cries of men ascending to heaven” 22 by means of the earth.23
Skinner also notes that in the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses, “the ultimate motivation behind the earth’s cry for redress against the intense wickedness on her surface” is a plea “for a cleansing of and sanctification from the pervasive wickedness by means of a heavenly personage and heavenly powers. In the Book of Moses the earth importunes,24 ‘When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which has gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?’”25 Likewise, in the Book of Giants, the earth complains about how the wicked have corrupted it through licentiousness and anticipates a destruction that will cleanse it from wickedness.26
Conclusions
From a literary standpoint, the complaint of the earth is moving poetry. O. Glade Hunsaker gives two examples:27
Enoch hears and describes the personified soul of the earth alliteratively as the “mother of men” agonizing from the bowels of the earth28 that she is “weary” of “wickedness.” [When the earth began her speech, she commenced with “Wo, wo,” prefiguring the latter echo.] The tension of the drama resolves itself as the voice uses assonance in pleading for “righteousness” to “abide” for a season.
But it is more than poetry, of course. It is also history—and prophecy. Moses 7:61, 64 happily proclaim that “the day shall come that the earth shall rest … for the space of a thousand years” and then woefully inform us that before that relief finally is given, the earth will again suffer great filthiness just before the Lord returns:
The heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth;29 and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve.30
This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 107–108, 154, 157–158, 188–189.
Further Reading
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 107–108, 154, 157–158, 188–189.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005, pp. 140–141, 144–146, 148–150.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 11–12, 198–199.
Peterson, Daniel C. “On the motif of the weeping God in Moses 7.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 285–317. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.
Skinner, Andrew C. “Joseph Smith vindicated again: Enoch, Moses 7:48, and apocryphal sources.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 365–381. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.
References
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014.
Faulring, Scott H., Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004.
Hunsaker, O. Glade. “Pearl of Great Price, Literature.” In Encyclopedia of Mormonism, edited by Daniel H. Ludlow. 4 vols. Vol. 3, 1072. New York City, NY: Macmillan, 1992. http://www.lib.byu.edu/Macmillan/. (accessed November 26, 2007).
Langdon, Stephen H. “Semitic.” In The Mythology of All Races. Vol. 5, 12-13. New York City, NY: Cooper Square, 1964.
Maxwell, Neal A. 1975. Of One Heart: The Glory of the City of Enoch. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1980.
Mika’el, Bakhayla. ca. 1400. “The book of the mysteries of the heavens and the earth.” In The Book of the Mysteries of the Heavens and the Earth and Other Works of Bakhayla Mika’el (Zosimas), edited by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1-96. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1934. Reprint, Berwick, ME: Ibis Press, 2004.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Parry, Donald W., and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader Second ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.
Peterson, Daniel C. “On the motif of the weeping God in Moses 7.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 285-317. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.
Roberts, J. J. M. 1992. “The motif of the weeping God in Jeremiah and its background in the lament tradition of the ancient Near East.” In The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays, edited by J. J. M. Roberts, 132-42. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.
Skinner, Andrew C. “Joseph Smith vindicated again: Enoch, Moses 7:48, and apocryphal sources.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 365-81. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.
Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. New York City, NY: Harper-Collins, 1996.
20Or “licentiousness” in the translation of M. Wise et al., DSS, 4Q203 Frag. 8:9, p. 294. Aramaic znwtkwn.
21A. C. Skinner, Vindicated, p. 377 argues that “filthiness, immorality, and idolatry are closely associated with each other in Semitic-based biblical culture. See, for example, Ezra 6:21; 9:11; Ezekiel 16:36; 24:13; Revelation 17:4.”
23Nickelsburg relates this accusation to Genesis 4:10–11, and cites “an Aramaic technical term for bringing suit in court” (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 187 n. 6), recalling the context of Isaiah 1 discussed in Essay #25.
29Compare Moses 7:56 (“the heavens were veiled”) and D&C 38:8 (“the veil of darkness shall soon be rent”), which imply that this veil will cut off direct communication from heaven. Cf. D&C 110:1: “The veil was taken from our minds.” See also a phrase added to the end of Genesis 9:26 in the JST: “and a veil of darkness shall cover him” (S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, pp. 118, 632. See also J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Genesis 9:26, p. 323).
30Elder Neal A. Maxwell commented (N. A. Maxwell, One Heart, p. v): “God preserved and prepared Enoch’s people in the midst of awful and enveloping evil, and, reassuringly, he has promised his people in our own time that though ‘great tribulations shall be among the children of men, … my people will I preserve.’”
Within the Book of Moses, the stories of rescue and exaltation in the accounts of Noah and Enoch share a common motif of water. On one hand, Noah’s waters are the waters of destruction, the floods of an all-consuming deluge that cleanses the earth as a prelude to a new creation.1 On the other hand, Enoch’s waters are the waters of sorrow, the bitter tears that precede the terrible annihilating storm. Indeed, in the vision of Enoch found in Joseph Smith’s revelations, not one but three distinct parties weep for the wickedness of mankind: God,2 the heavens,3 and Enoch himself.4 In addition, a fourth party, the earth, complains and mourns—though does not specifically “weep”—for her children.5
The present Essay gives a general overview of the “chorus of weeping” described in the first part of what has been called Enoch’s “Grand Vision.”6 Subsequent Essays will discuss affinities in the ancient Enoch literature and in the laments of Jeremiah to the detailed descriptions of the individual members of this chorus we read about in Moses 7.
Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 as Models for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Vision
The structure of the first part of Enoch’s Grand Vision is a beautiful example of a general model best exemplified in two classic chapters of the Old Testament: Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32. Before discussing these two chapters as models for Enoch’s vision, we will give some general background on them and their relationship to each other.
Ronald Bergey describes Isaiah 1 as “a case of early intertextuality” with Deuteronomy 32.7 Evidence indicates that both of these texts are very old. Despite controversy about the dating of other chapters in Isaiah, the first chapter is regarded by most contemporary scholars as belonging to “major collections of judgment speeches authentic to the prophet Isaiah ben Amoz.”8 As for the Song of Moses (Shirat Ha’azinu) that is found in Deuteronomy 32:1–43, it is thought to be “an independent composition, older than the rest of Deuteronomy,”9 “perhaps considerably older.”10
Referring to controversies about the genre of Isaiah 1, John F. Hobbins wisely cautions against pigeon-holing prophetic speeches into rigid categories:11
In my view, the greatest stumbling block to understanding is created by the false expectation that prophetic speech will adhere to any conventions beyond its own in a sustained and predictable fashion. To the contrary, prophetic discourse exploits whatever genres and topoi serve its purposes without reproducing them in full or slavishly following them. In [Isaiah] 1:2–20, notions of a deity calling on heaven and earth to witness a grievance against a client nation; of a relationship of privilege and obligation established by a deity on a nation’s behalf, whereby he is understood as father and they as sons; of procedures a parent might follow when faced with a wayward and defiant son; … and of conceivable resolutions to a quarrel between two parties, are all exploited for rhetorical ends.12
Below we will give an overview of the structure for the first part of Enoch’s Grand Vision contained in Moses 7:18–41 (see Appendix for a provisional version of the full structure), highlighting themes similar to some of those mentioned by Hobbins above in his outline of Isaiah 1, including:
·God’s call for heaven and earth to witness His grievance
·The relationship of privilege and obligation entailed by a Father and His children
·The actions God will take in view of the wayward and defiant state of His children
·God’s proposal for a merciful resolution of their troubles
Analogues to each of these themes will be seen in the summary below. In our discussion, we will draw liberally from the analyses of Hobbins and others to demonstrate how Enoch’s grand vision, like Deuteronomy 32 and Isaiah 1, artfully combines seemingly contradictory aspects of God’s “justice” and “mercy” within a single passage.
1. Zion Is Blessed, But the Residue of the People Is Cursed
The passage opens with a statement by Enoch that serves as a prologue to and catalyst for the vision. Rejoicing in the happy fate of his people, Enoch exulted: “Surely Zion shall dwell in safety forever.”13 God’s reply was a gentle rebuke, affirming Enoch’s hopes for Zion while reminding him that His Fatherly care extends beyond the righteous to those who suffer because of their wickedness: “Zion have I blessed, but the residue of the people have I cursed.”14 With “all the nations of the earth … before him,”15 Enoch witnessed that “the power of Satan was upon all the face of the earth”16 “generation upon generation.”17 Though “many … were caught up by the powers of heaven into Zion,” 18 after the testimony of angels, “Satan … had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness.”19
2. The Heavens Weep for the Residue of the People—God’s Children and Enoch’s Brethren
The opening verses of Moses 7:28–41 recall the opening verse of Isaiah 1:1 and Deuteronomy 32:1, where the heavens and the earth are called upon to witness the Lord’s lament. However, in this case the heavens are not passive observers, but rather active participants who weep with God in His sorrow.
In the form the passage was originally dictated in OT1, the momentum of the previous narrative is carried forward as it steadily builds up to an almost unbearable intensity of sorrow. The weeping “God of heaven”20 leads out in a heavenly “chorus”21 that eventually comes to include “all the workmanship of [His] hands”22 —at which point Enoch, the protagonist of the account, also joins in, with full heart and soul.
In a few verses that precede Moses 7:28, we see additional support for the logic of the OT1 narrative that has God weeping and Enoch bearing record. Note the significant sequence when angels descend “out of heaven” to warn the earth,23 followed by angels that come down “out of heaven” to bear testimony of the Godhead.24 In parallel to this sequence, we are then told that the “God of heaven” weeps, while Enoch bears record.25 Such references seem to be anticipated in the statement of God in Moses 6:63: “All things are created and made to bear record of me.”
2a. Enoch’s question: “How is it that thou canst weep?” Enoch is dumbfounded when he sees God weep. Mirroring a pattern found elsewhere in scripture,26 Enoch’s initial, indirect inquiry (“How is it that the heavens weep?”27) is immediately followed with a more pointed version of the question: “How is it that thou canst weep?”28
Despite the plural “heavens” that are mentioned in OT1’s initial description of the addressee of Enoch’s question, any ambiguity about whether the “thou” in the question (“How is it that thou canst weep?”) refers to the “heavens” or to “God” is resolved not only by the singular “thou” but also by his description of his interlocutor as being not only “holy and from all eternity to all eternity” but also as the Creator of the heavens and the earth.29
Note also that the answer to Enoch’s question comes directly from God. Since God’s answer is given with no intervening explanation, it is evident that the reader is meant to understand that God and the members of His heavenly retinue are perfectly conjoined as one in their sorrow, as Terryl Givens rightly observed.
Remarkably, other accounts from the ancient Near East also describe how the heavens (or, more precisely, the heavenly host) joined the chief divinity in weeping over impending destruction. For example, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which scholars have linked to the Enoch account in the Book of Giants,30 the goddess Ishtar laments her support for the destruction of humanity, portrayed as her children, by means of a cataclysmic flood:31
The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth,
Belet-ili wailed, whose voice is so sweet:
“The olden times have turned to clay,
because I spoke evil in the gods’ assembly,
How could I speak evil in the gods’ assembly,
And declare a war to destroy my people?
“It is I who give birth, these people are mine!
And now, like fish, they fill the ocean!”
In response, the heavenly host join in a chorus of weeping over the dire situation:32
The Anunnaki gods were weeping with her,
wet-faced with sorrow, they were weeping [with her,]
their lips were parched and stricken with fever.
2b. The Lord’s judgment: “I will send in the floods upon them.” Book of Moses parallels to the general model of Isaiah 1 and Deuteronomy 32 continue in this section: Having called all Creation together to witness His suffering, the Lord now explains His grievance and describes the “punishment for defection.”33
The Lord’s compassion for the victims of wickedness compels Him to put an end to the machinations of those who have stubbornly-persisted in “hat[ing] their own blood,” being wholly “without affection” for both God and man.34 As Abraham Heschel expresses it with respect to Isaiah 1:35
The destructiveness of God’s power is not due to God’s hostility to man, but to His concern for righteousness, to His intolerance of injustice. The human mind seems to have no sense for the true dimension of man’s cruelty to man. God’s anger is fierce because man’s cruelty is infernal.
In marked contrast to the descriptions found in the pseudepigraphal 1 Enoch, where the wicked Watchers are condemned for eternity without possibility of reprieve,36 the God of the Book of Moses, while condemning the sin, is moved by mercy for the sinner. He sorrows for the (self-induced) suffering of the wicked (v. 37) and provides a way for their salvation by offering the gift of the atonement of Christ (v. 39) and its accompanying invitation to “all men, everywhere” (v. 52) to repent and be made whole. Sadly, because of the “agency” God irrevocably gave humankind in the beginning (v. 32), He realizes that there is nothing he can do to help them unless they freely choose love over hate (v. 33). The needlessness of their suffering brings God great sorrow.37
In all this the Book of Moses, like Isaiah 1:2–9, “echoes Deuteronomy 32:1–35 measure for measure.”38 As Hobbins describes it:39
First comes the call to heaven and earth to witness the indictment of Israel on charges of disloyalty; then, the playing off of Yahweh’s love for the people, the love of a father for his children, against the people’s insensate disobedience. … The tone is one of exasperation.
God’s reminder to the people in Moses 7:33 that He is “their Father” is consistent with similar descriptions in Isaiah 140 and Deuteronomy 32.41 The pointed emphasis on God’s filial relationship to humankind is significant in light of Bergey’s observation that such “father-son imagery” is “rare in the prophets and elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures.”42 According to Heschel, Isaiah “pleads with us to understand the plight of a father whom his children have abandoned.”43
Importantly, the defiant defection of the people does not lessen God’s love, nor does it slacken His patient, painstaking effort to bring them to their senses. As Heschel observes:44
There is sorrow in God’s anger. It is an instrument of purification and its exercise will not last forever.
2c. The Lord’s lament: “Misery shall be their doom.” Further demonstrating that God’s foremost concern is over the misery of His children, He quickly abandons the theme of judgment, and launches into a stanza of lament. Hobbins aptly captured the pathos45 of the corresponding passage in Isaiah 1 as follows:46
The nation’s malaise [is described] as though the nation were an injured and uncared-for body, with the implication that, if not for estrangement, it would be cared for by the one committed to do so. The tone is accusatory and plaintive at the same time, a return to the text’s emotional point of departure.
The Book of Moses passage ends poignantly with God’s recital of the tragic fate of his rebellious children, followed by a rhetorical question:47
But behold, their sins
shall be upon the heads of their fathers;
Satan shall be their father,
and misery shall be their doom;
and the whole heavens shall weep over them,
even all the workmanship of mine hands;
wherefore should not the heavens weep,
seeing these shall suffer?
2d. The Lord’s mercy: “Inasmuch as they will repent.” Describing the next part of the pattern in Isaiah 1, Hobbins writes:48 “Yahweh’s decision not to blot the people out entirely, despite the defection, is then recounted.” Similarly, in Moses 7:38–39, God explains that His “Chosen” will suffer for the sins of the penitent and release them from “prison,” “inasmuch as they will repent.”49
Enoch’s question about the weeping of the heavens in verse 29 had formed the opening of a powerful inclusio whose closing bookend is finally found in verse 40. Having concluded His answer to Enoch, God now reiterates his solidarity with the sorrowing of the heavens (“Wherefore, for this shall the heavens weep”), while in eloquent brevity He acknowledges the overflow of that bitter cup to the earth and its creatures (“yea, and all the workmanship of my hands”).
3. Enoch Weeps and His Heart Swells “Wide as Eternity”
Only now does the realization of the depth of God’s empathy finally draw out Enoch’s full response as “his heart swelled wide as eternity”—in other words, as wide as God’s heart.50 Now Enoch unites his own voice with the heavenly chorus of weeping in a grand finale.51
Note that in the OT2 revision of Moses 7:28, in contrast to the OT1 dictation that appears in the canonized version of the Book of Moses, Enoch weeps prematurely, thus defusing the deliberate forestalling of the dramatic moment of Enoch’s sympathetic resonance with the heavens until after God’s poignant speech.52
Beyond the beautiful literary unity and the striking echoes of the narrative structure to two notable Old Testament exemplars, what do we find of interest in this passage? These verses provide an overwhelming witness of the depth of God’s love as the central theme of the chapter, where “justice, love, and mercy meet in harmony divine.”53
Daniel C. Peterson54 has discussed at length the resemblance between the composition of this chorus of weeping and three similar voices within the laments of the book of Jeremiah: the feminine voice of the mother of the people (corresponding in the Book of Moses to the voice of the earth), the voice of the people (corresponding to Enoch), and the voice of God Himself. We will describe each of these three voices in turn, plus the weeping voice of the heavens, in the next few Essays.55
This article is adapted from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and Ryan Dahle. “Textual criticism and the Book of Moses: A response to Colby Townsend’s ‘Returning to the sources’.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2020): in press. www.templethemes.net.
Further Reading
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 106–107, 137–151.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and Ryan Dahle. “Textual criticism and the Book of Moses: A response to Colby Townsend’s ‘Returning to the sources’.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2020): in press. www.templethemes.net.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005, pp. 125–138, 140–141, 144–146, 148–150.
Givens, Terryl L., and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. Salt Lake City, UT: Ensign Peak, 2012, pp. 24–25, 105–106.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 11–16, 198–199, 220, 244–248, 266–268.
Nibley, Hugh W. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004, pp. 284–285.
Appendix: Provisional Proposal for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Grand Vision
Appendix: Provisional Proposal for Structuring the First Part of Enoch’s Grand Vision
The text below generally follows the OT1 manuscript as originally dictated, with spelling, grammar, and punctuation modernized. Exceptions and notable differences in subsequent editions are shown in square brackets and described in the endnotes. Italicized text within brackets indicates phrases added to clarify implicit parallels. Different colors indicate different speakers: blue for God, green for Enoch, red for the angels, and black for the narrator. We are grateful to Noel Reynolds for sharing his expertise in structuring scripture, though any resulting faults are ours.
1. Zion Is Blessed, But the Residue of the People Is Cursed
20 And it came to pass that Enoch talked with the Lord;
yea, and all the workmanship of mine hands [shall weep].
3. Enoch Weeps and His Heart Swells “Wide As Eternity”
41 And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Enoch,
and told Enoch all the doings of the children of men;
wherefore Enoch knew,
and looked upon their wickedness, and their misery,
and wept
and stretched forth his arms,
and his heart swelled wide as eternity;
and his bowels yearned;
and all eternity shook.
References
Agourides, S. “Apocalypse of Sedrach.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 605-13. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Andersen, F. I. “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 91-221. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Bergey, Ronald. “The Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:1-43) and Isaianic prophecies: A case of early intertextuality.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament28, no. 1 (2003): 33-54. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/030908920302800102. (accessed April 5, 2020).
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Jacob Rennaker, and David J. Larsen. “Revisiting the forgotten voices of weeping in Moses 7: A comparison with ancient texts.” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture2 (2012): 41-71. www.templethemes.net.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014. www.templethemes.net.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005.
Faulring, Scott H., Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004.
Faulring, Scott H., and Kent P. Jackson, eds. Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible Electronic Library (JSTEL) CD-ROM. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University. Religious Studies Center, Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2011.
George, Andrew, ed. 1999. The Epic of Gilgamesh. London, England: The Penguin Group, 2003.
Gillum, Gary. Observations of Hugh Nibley. In Brigham Young University Library. https://sites.lib.byu.edu/nibley/journal/. (accessed May 4, 2020).
Givens, Terryl L., and Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. Salt Lake City, UT: Ensign Peak, 2012.
Goff, Matthew. “Gilgamesh the Giant: The Qumran Book of Giants’ appropriateion of Gilgamesh motifs.” Dead Sea Discoveries16, no. 2 (2009): 221-53.
———. “The sons of the Watchers in the Book of Watchers and the Qumran Book of Giants.” In Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Enrico Morano. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, ed. Jörg Frey, 115-27. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962. The Prophets. Two Volumes in One ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.
Hobbins, John F. 2007. The rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20: An exploration (last revised 2 February 2007). In Ancient Hebrew Poetry. https://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/files/isa_1_220_rhetoric.pdf. (accessed April 5, 2020).
Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985.
Kósa, Gåbor. “The Book of Giants tradition in the Chinese Manichaica.” In Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Enrico Morano. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, ed. Jörg Frey, 145-86. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.
Laurence, Richard, ed. 1821. The Book of Enoch, the Prophet: Translated from an Ethiopic Manuscript in the Bodleian Library, the Text Now Corrected from His Latest Notes with an Introduction by the [Anonymous] Author of ‘The Evolution of Christianity’. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1883. http://archive.org/details/bookofenochproph00laur. (accessed January 15, 2013).
Lemaire, André. “Nabonide et Gilgamesh: L’araméen en Mésopotamie et à Qoumrân.” In Aramaica Qumranica: Proceedings of the Conference on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran in Aix-en-Provence 30 June-2 July 2008, edited by Katell Berthelot and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 94, eds. Florentino Garcia Martínez, Peter W. Flint and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, 125-44. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010. http://www.digitorient.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/LemaireAramaicQumranica.pdf. (accessed April 11, 2020).
Martinez, Florentino Garcia. “The Book of Giants (4Q203).” In The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, edited by Florentino Garcia Martinez. 2nd ed. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson, 260-61. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996.
Maxwell, Neal A. That Ye May Believe. Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1992.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Parry, Donald W., and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader Second ed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.
Peterson, Daniel C. “On the motif of the weeping God in Moses 7.” In Reason, Revelation, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks, 285-317. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2002.
Reeves, John C. Heralds of that Good Realm: Syro-Mesopotamian Gnosis and Jewish Traditions. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies41, ed. James M. Robinson and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996.
Roberts, J. J. M. 1992. “The motif of the weeping God in Jeremiah and its background in the lament tradition of the ancient Near East.” In The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays, edited by J. J. M. Roberts, 132-42. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002.
Tigay, Jeffrey H., ed. Deuteronomy. The JPS Torah Commentary, ed. Nahum M. Sarna and Chaim Potok. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996.
Woodworth, Jed L. “Extra-biblical Enoch texts in early American culture.” In Archive of Restoration Culture: Summer Fellows’ Papers 1997-1999, edited by Richard Lyman Bushman, 185-93. Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2000.
Notes on Figures
Figure 1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Michelangelo_Buonarroti_027.jpg (accessed April 6, 2020). Public domain. For more on the background of this painting see J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, caption for Figure M7-6, p. 112.
It seems like water is always associated with death and destruction. What is important is what comes after the water whether the water is a flood, rain, or immersion. So we have the example of baptism (already covered in Moses 6), the rebirth of the earth after Noah’s cleansing flood and even the fertility and growth that is associated with the aftermath of the storms brought by the Aztec deity Tlaloc. So different types of water events that all represent trials and all that can have positive outcomes.
The questions is what is the outcome from the weeping? An increase of empathy or compassion?
In an unfinished and unpublished paper Hugh Nibley wrote: “Why then did the world have to be a vale of tears? For learning and for testing: to be without experience of the whole spectrum of suffering would leave one woefully unequipped to deal with the throngs of anguished spirits and sinful inhabitants that to our certain knowledge swarm around us. If our mission is to save others, we must know what they must be saved from” (As quoted in G. Gillum, Observations, Entry for 3 Dec 1997).
11J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 10.
12Hobbins goes on to mention significant resemblances elsewhere in the Old Testament ibid., p. 10):
In terms of deployment of topoi and themes, Isaiah 1:2–20 compares well, if not in every detail, with Deuteronomy 32:1–43, Hosea 4:1–19, and Micah 6:1–16. Its affinities with Micah 1:2–3:12, Amos 5:18–27, and Psalm 50 deserve note. It also shares language and themes with texts now integral to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
21For an extensive discussion of this “chorus” of weeping and its resemblances to Jeremiah and other ancient accounts in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Revisiting.
25Moses 7:28. With regard to Enoch’s bearing record of God’s weeping, note the emphasis in both Mosiah 18:9 and 24:14 on standing “as witnesses” of God through similar sympathetic interaction.
26R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 128 give instances of the indirect approach:
in Abraham’s appeal to the Lord not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah before his nephew Lot and family escaped (see Genesis 18:23–32), and in Jared’s requests through his brother that they keep their language and, later and most important, that the Lord lead their families to a promised land (see Ether 1:34, 38).
33J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 11.
34The Lord’s “test of affection” described in the Book of Moses Enoch account is echoed in 2 Enoch 30:14–15, where the Lord instructs Adam: “And I said to him, ‘This is good for you, but that is bad,’ so that I should come to know whether he has love toward me or abhorrence, and so that it might become plain who among his race loves me” (F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 30:14 [J], p. 152).
Significantly, the hard words described in Job 21:7-15 seem to have been directly witnessed, not by Job, but by Enoch himself (P. S. Alexander, 3 Enoch, 4:3, p. 258): “When the generation of the Flood sinned and turned to evil deeds, and said to God, ‘Go away! We do not choose to learn your ways’ [cf. Job 21:14], the Holy One, blessed be he, took me [Enoch] from their midst to be a witness against them in the heavenly height to all who should come into the world, so that they should not say, ‘The Merciful One is cruel!’” See J. C. Reeves, Heralds, p. 187. For a list of ancient sources, see ibid., pp. 183, 200n17.
In defiance of the Lord’s entreaty to “love one another, and … choose me, their Father” (Moses 7:33), the wicked are depicted as “say[ing] unto God, … Depart from us: for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him?” (Job 21:14–15. Cf. Exodus 5:2; Malachi 3:13–15; Mosiah 11:27; Moses 5:16). Reeves characterizes these words as “a blasphemous rejection of divine governance and guidance … wherein the wicked members of the Flood generation verbally reject God” (ibid., p. 188). Enoch is said to have prophesied a future judgment upon such “ungodly sinners” who have “uttered hard speeches … against [the Lord]” (Jude 1:15, G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 1:9, p. 142. See also 5:4, p. 150; 27:2, p. 317; 101:3, p. 503. 2 Peter 2:5 labels this same generation as “ungodly”).
36Jed Woodworth eloquently summarizes this contrast (J. L. Woodworth, Enoch, pp. 191–192):
What is the fate of those who perish in the flood? In [1 Enoch], there is one fate only: everlasting punishment. Those who are destroyed in the flood are beyond redemption. For God to be reconciled, sinners must suffer forever. Enoch has nothing to say because God has no merciful side to appeal to. In Joseph Smith, however, punishment has an end. The merciful side of God allows Enoch to speak and be heard. God and Enoch speak a common language: mercy. “Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look,” God says to Enoch after the flood (Moses 7:44). There is hope for the wicked yet (Moses 7:37–38):
I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them. And that which I have chosen hath pled before my face. Wherefore, he suffereth for their sins; inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my Chosen shall return unto me, and until that day they shall be in torment.
The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch 45–47] and in Joseph Smith function in different ways. In Joseph Smith, the Chosen One will come to earth at the meridian of time to rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. After the Messiah’s death and resurrection, “as many of the spirits as were in prison came forth, and stood on the right hand of God” (Moses 7:57. Compare 1 Peter 3:20). The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch] does not come down to earth and is peripheral to the text; he presides over the “elect” around God’s throne (R. Laurence, Book of Enoch, 45:3–5, pp. 49–50, 56:3, p. 64) but does not rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. “In the day of trouble evil shall [still] be heaped upon sinners” (ibid., 49:2, pp. 55–56. Cf. 49:3–4, p. 54), he tells Enoch [in that account].
Similar in attitude to the Book of Moses and somewhat different in tone from 1 Enoch, the Book of Giants records Enoch’s hope for them if they repent (F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q203), 8:14–15, p. 261): “set loose what you hold captive … and pray” (D. W. Parry et al., DSSR (2013), 4Q203, 8:14–15, p. 481). For discussions of hints in Mani’s Book of Giants that some of the wicked repented and were saved as the result of Enoch’s preaching, see M. Goff, Sons of the Watchers, pp. 124–127; G. Kósa, Book of Giants Tradition, pp. 173–175.
37See Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s discussion of this passage (N. A. Maxwell, That Ye May, pp. 29, 81):
Enoch saw the God of Heaven weep over needless human suffering. …
God’s empathy is not to be defined by man’s lack of empathy or by our sometimes stupid and cruel use of moral agency!
All of us should be very careful, therefore, about seeming to lecture God on suffering. God actually weeps over the suffering of His children. Enoch saw it! He questioned God about those divine tears-especially in view of God’s omnipotence and His omniscience. Why cry over one people on one planet—especially in view of how far God’s vast creations stretch out?
The Lord rehearsed for Enoch that humanity and this earthly habitat are “the workmanship of [God’s] own hands,” and, further, that He gave us our knowledge and our agency. Most strikingly, the Lord then focused on the fact that the human family should love one another and should choose God as their Father. The two great commandments! Then the Lord lamented, yet “they are without affection, and they hate their own blood.”
38See the comparison of key words in R. Bergey, Song of Moses.
39J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, p. 11, 13.
40See the Lord’s declaration to the people: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. … children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord” (vv. 2, 4).
41See the explicit description of God as a “father” (vv. 6–7) to His “children” (vv. 5, 8, 20)—His “sons” (vv. 8, 19) and “daughters” (v. 19).
43A. J. Heschel, Prophets, 1:80. For an example that depicts the anguish of the rejected father but—in contrast to Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 1, and Moses 7 — without tendering any hope of forgiveness, see S. Agourides, Sedrach, 6:1–6, p. 610:
And God said unto him: “Be it known to you, that everything which I commanded man to do was within his reach. I made him wise [cf. Moses 7:32] and the heir of heaven and earth, and I subordinated everything under him and every living thing flees from him and from his face. Having received my gifts, however, he became an alien, an adulterer and sinner. Tell me, what sort of a father would give an inheritance to his son, and having received the money (the son) goes away leaving his father and becomes an alien and in the service of aliens [cf. Luke 15:11–15]. The father then, seeing that the son has forsaken him (and gone away), darkens his heart and going away, he retrieves his wealth and banishes his son from his glory, because he forsook his father. How is it that I, the wondrous and jealous God, have given everything to him, but he, having received them, became an adulterer and sinner?”
45In the older sense of the term described in ibid., pp. 269–272 (“the ancient classical ideas of pathos [that] included all conditions of feeling and will in which man is dependent on the outer world”), not its more recent and limited sense of “painful emotion” (p. 272) and the modern notion that the “sublime” and the “pathetic” “have nothing to do with each other” (p. 270).
46J. F. Hobbins, Rhetoric of Isaiah 1:2-20, pp. 13–14.
47Moses 7:37. Somewhat of a more sympathetic variant to Hobbins’ description of the passage as “a leading question and exclamation that recall by way of context and choice of terminology the status of the addressees as punished and disobedient children” (ibid., p. 13).
52Compare S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT1, Moses 7:28, pp. 105–106 to ibid., OT2, Moses 7:28, p. 618. In the present Essay, the narrative drama of OT1 is described only in summary fashion. Additional examples of where the reading of OT2 is inferior to OT1 could be given.
For example, the replacement of “bosom” by “presence” in OT2 breaks the connection to a meaningful string of six uses of the term “bosom” in varying contexts within the chapter (Moses 7:24, 30, 31, 47, 63, 69). See a summary discussion of this key term in J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, pp. 143–144). Moses 7 is the only chapter in the Book of Moses in which the word “bosom” appears. It shows up in a key part of the culminating verse of the chapter, when God receives Zion “up into his own bosom” (Moses 7:69). For more on the term “bosom” and its role in this chapter, see Essay #30.
Moreover, Elder Maxwell notes the importance of the seemingly inconsequential three-letter word “yet,” which is omitted in OT2 (N. A. Maxwell, That Ye May, p. 205, emphasis in original):
Notice, however, what reassured and assuaged Enoch most about Jesus amid His creations: “And yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever.”
The omission of this tiny adverb greatly weakens the strength of the phrase.
53Hymns (1985), Hymns (1985)#195, How Great the Wisdom and the Love.
54D. C. Peterson, Weeping God, building on the analysis of Jeremiah found in J. J. M. Roberts, Motif of the Weeping God. Peterson also discusses analogues in the Mesopotamian lament literature.
58Taking God’s weeping as a form of divine speech.
59OT1: “her”; OT2 revision by Sidney Rigdon: “their.”
60The 2013 Latter-day Saint canonized version reads: “unto the Lord.”
61OT1 reads (S. H. Faulring et al., JST Electronic Library, Moses 7:28–29 OT1):
the g God of heaven looked upon the residue of the peop[le a]nd he wept and Enock bore record of it saying how is it the heavens weep and Shed fourth her tears as the rain upon the Mountains and Enock said unto the heavens how is it that thou canst weep seeing thou art holy and from all eternity to all eternity
OT2 reads (ibid., Moses 7:28–29 OT2):
the God of Heaven <Enock> look=ed upon the residue of the people & wept. And Enoch bore record of it Saying how is it the heavens weep the heavens wept also> & shed forth h[er] tears upon the Mountains And Enoch S†aid unto the heavens how is it that thou canst weep Seeing Thou art holy & from all eternity to all eternity
The symbol “†” that is shown between the “S” and the “a” in the transcription of OT2 Moses 7:28 above signals a change from lowercase to uppercase in the manuscript.
This Essay relates the end of the end for the wicked, and the beginning of the beginning for the people of God who start to lay the foundation of Zion. Similar events are well-attested in the ancient Enoch literature.
“The Earth Trembled and the Mountains Fled”
The Book of Moses records that when Enoch had finished prophesying to the people, “the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, … and the rivers of water turned out of their course.” 1 The pattern whereby the voice of warning is immediately followed by the voice of the elements is also described in Doctrine and Covenants 88:89–90:
For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, … and also the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.
In a previous Essay,2 we described ancient and modern witnesses to Enoch’s turning of rivers “out of their course.”3 In this section, we will describe similar ancient witnesses to the shattering seismic events that came “according to [the] command”4 of Enoch.
Whereas most of the prophecies of destruction in 1 Enoch describe events of the “latter days,”5 its Epistle of Enoch is also addressed to the “double audience”6 of Enoch’s living posterity, called his “sons.”7 Echoing the themes of Moses 6:46–47, Enoch reminds the sinners that their actions are recorded in a heavenly book of remembrance,8 telling them that “from the angels inquiry will be made into your deeds in heaven.”9 Then, Enoch asks them:10
When [the Most High] hurls against you the flood of the fire of your burning, where will you flee and be saved? And when he utters his voice against you with a mighty sound, will you not be shaken and frightened? The heavens and all the luminaries will be shaken with great fear; and all the earth will be shaken and will tremble and be thrown into confusion. All the angels will fulfill what was commanded them; and all the sons of earth will seek to hide themselves from the presence of the Great Glory, and they will be shaken and tremble. And you, sinners, will be cursed forever; You will have no peace.
Note that the passage from the Epistle cited above not only echoes the “trembling of the earth” in Moses 7:13 but also the shaking of the heavens in Moses 7:61. The shaking and trembling of the elements reverberates sympathetically to the shaking and trembling of the wicked, an ancient motif found in the Book of Moses that we have discussed in a previous Essay.11 The “curse upon all people that fought against God” in Moses 7:15 is consistent with the declaration in the Epistle that the sinners “will be cursed forever.”
Pouring Out and Drawing Back of the Waters
Hugh Nibley has summarized Jewish traditions that tell of the perturbation of the waters of the earth before and after Enoch’s time:12
The really spectacular show in the Enoch literature is the behavior of the seas. Like the alternating drought and flood from the skies, there is either too much sea or not enough. Before “the floods came and swallowed them up,”13 the sea first drew back in places, leaving its coastal beds high and dry in anticipation of the great tsunami (sea wave) which came with the earthquake.
Although the biblical flood of Noah has received greater attention, Jewish tradition also remembers an earlier flood14 covering a large portion of the ancient world in the days of Enosh, Enoch’s great-grandfather:15
When people began to call their idols by the name of the Lord, the ocean rose from Akho to Jaffa and flooded a third of the world. Then said the Lord: You have prepared a new thing for yourselves and called it by my name; now I want to do something new and tell you my name. Is it not written? “He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: the Lord is his name.”16
Figure 2. Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797): An eruption of Vesuvius seen from Portici, ca. 1774-1776
The Decisive Battle
“The land which came up out of the depth of the sea.” An unexpected detail in Moses 7 is a mention of “the land which came up out of the depth of the sea”17 There are hints in Jewish tradition that volcanic activity could have been behind this event. According to one such text, among the “four things [that] changed in the world at the time of Enoch” was that “the mountains that had previously been plowed and sown were made rocky.”18
“Wars and bloodshed.”19 Moses 7:16 gives us the brief notice that “from that time forth there were wars and bloodshed among them.” Unfortunately, the extant fragments of the Aramaic Book of Giants likewise preserve only a few words about what must have been a long series of bloody battles. In one fragment, the leader of Enoch’s adversaries is said to have lamented: “I went up against all flesh, and I made war against them; but I did not [prevail, and I am not] able to stand firm against them. … And they were not [defeated, for they] are stronger than I.”20
Attributing the brevity of the Aramaic witness of these battles to “the sparsity of the preserved remains,” John Reeves goes on to describe how “the Manichaean remnants of the Book of Giants preserve extensive testimony regarding this conflict.”21 For example, here is an extract from a Manichaean Book of Giants fragment that gives a more detailed account of the final combat:22
[The angels] took and imprisoned all the [rebellious Watchers] that were in the heavens. And the angels themselves descended from the heaven to the earth. And (when) the two hundred demons saw those angels, they were much afraid and worried. … they went to fight. And those two hundred demons fought a hard battle with the [four angels], until [the angels used] fire, naphtha, and brimstone.
As angels from heaven and the very elements of earth joined to defend the people of Enoch, the battles entered a new phase. Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes explained:23
Heretofore we have found reference to “enemies” who “came to battle” against the people of God.”24 The account in Moses 7:15 [i.e., “the people that fought against God”] makes it clear that battling against God’s people [had become] the same as battling against God Himself.
The End of the Wicked and the Beginnings of Zion
Doctrine and Covenants 88:91 describes the human consequences that inevitably follow destruction of such devastating extent:
And all things shall be in commotion; and surely men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.
Similarly, we read in the Book of Moses that “the fear of the Lord was upon all nations”25 and that “the giants of the land … stood afar off.”26 Elder Neal A. Maxwell commented:27
The gospel glow shining about a righteous individual or a righteous people usually attracts persecution. But this is not the only accompanying sign. Enoch could tell us something about this phenomenon; those in his ancient Zion were resented by some who “stood afar off.” Latter-day Saints are not yet a fully worthy people, but even now there is building a visible ring of resentment around Zion today.
Figure 3. ‘Cheonhado’ map of the square earth and the round cosmos, Seoul, Korea, ca. 1800. In the central area is an internal continent surrounded by an internal sea, which is in turn surrounded by an external continent and an external sea. The names of real places are shown exclusively within the internal continent, while the names that appear elsewhere describe mythological locations “where immortals live.”
Elder Maxwell’s idea of Zion (or perhaps more precisely the temple of Zion or, for that matter, any temple) as a “center place”28 radiating holiness to the world, with increasingly strident “rings of resentment” formed by the wicked corresponding in strength to degrees of distance from the divine nucleus, is a general concept that might resonate in many ancient cultures. Though symbolic representations of a “hierocentric”29 universe vary in significant details, many ancient maps and diagrams in various cultures around the world are constructed around a sacred center.
This sacred center not infrequently coincides with the location of a mountain.30 For example, with respect to the structure of the Korean map shown above, Mark E. Lewis notes “there is a progressive decline as one moves away from the center.”31 Typically, in the ancient world, such movement away from the center is represented as being in an eastward direction. Correspondingly, there is an increase in sacredness as one travels (or returns) toward the center, generally in a westward direction.32 Note the large medallion with the name of China that is shown near the middle of the map—just east of Mount K’un-lun,33 anciently revered as the sacred center of the universe where heaven and earth meet and from which four great rivers emanate.
Though we are not suggesting that Cheonhado maps such as the one above and the Sogdian fragments of the Book of Giants have any necessary relationship, there is some evidence of “weak and distant influence”34 in the resemblance of the symbolic geography of Mount K’un-lun to that of Mount Mēru. Of relevance for the present article is that Mount Mēru—the sacred mountain of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—is mentioned in the Manichaean Book of Giants as the place of resort for the righteous. When seen in the light of hierocentric maps of the world, certain details relating to the layout of sacred, symbolic geography in both ancient Enoch accounts and the Book of Moses take on greater meaning. Though the symbolic geography tells us little— or, more likely, nothing—about the physical geography of the story, knowing something about it helps unravel the significance of events in this section of the narrative.
Figure 4. “In the conception of the universe in the book of [1 Enoch], the sun emerges fromt eh six eastern gates, moves in the six months between the winter and summer solstices, and sets in the western gates. The seven great mountains are based on the ancient Babylonian conception of the universe. Adapted from Milik’s reconstruction.” Among other differences from the Cheonhado map that make it more similar to the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses and different from 1 Enoch, this reconstruction lacks the significant feature of one or more sacred mountains in the center.
For example, in answer to Mahijah’s question in Moses 6:41, Enoch replied:
I came out from the land of Cainan, the land of my fathers, a land of righteousness unto this day.
Amplifying the Book of Moses description of Enoch’s home as a “land of righteousness,” the leader of the gibborim in the Book of the Giants stated that his “opponents”35 “reside in the heavens and live with the holy ones.”36
In line with the presumed hierocentric, symbolic geography of Enoch’s world, we are not surprised to read the significant detail that his missionary journey in the Book of Moses took him away from the “sacred center”—in other words, he went out “from the land of Cainan,”37 “a land of righteousness”38 in the west, to the land of the wicked presumably near the western edge of “the sea east.”39 Remarkably, the Book of Moses description of Enoch’s journey and vision “by the sea east” recalls the direction of his voyage in 1 Enoch 20–36, where the text seems to imply that he continued his travels even further east—to the “ends of the earth” (“from the west edge of the earth to its east edge” 40). Significantly, 1 Enoch also records a vision that Enoch received “by the waters of Dan,”41 arguably a “sea east.”42
Figure 5. Camille Flammarion (1842–1925): Flammarion Engraving, 1888. “The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption … translates to ‘A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and earth meet’” In line with the idea that the Garden of Eden is at the eastern end of the earth, note the prominent tree just behind the man.
Though the mountain at the center of the symbolic geography of the world represents the most sacred place on earth, its “east edge,”43 the dawn horizon,44 the location of the boundary where the round dome of heaven meets the square plane of earth,45 is not only where visions of God are situated in the relevant literature, but also the place from which actual heavenly ascents were thought to occur in many ancient cultures.46 Enoch describes his journey as being to “the ends of the earth, on which the heaven rests, and the gates of heaven open,”47 and gives a brief account of its great beasts48 and birds with beautiful voices.49 Likewise, descriptions of Methuselah’s journey to the end of the earth,50 where Enoch’s “dwelling is with the angels,”51 “can be plausibly understood as [allusions] to the [Garden of] Eden.”52
In a fragment of the Manichaean Book of Giants, one of Mahaway’s journey to visit Enoch53 “is clearly from the west to the east and back again.”54 Among his other qualifications to make this voyage to the eastern end of the earth,55 he seems to be “the only giant with wings.”56 Just as Enoch, who flew east with the angels, used “this mode of transportation …to visit areas that normally humans cannot reach,”57 so also:58
the flight of Mahaway should be understood in a similar way. [He] is able to reach Eden because he can fly over a desolate desert that would be, following this logic, impossible to cross on foot. This underscores the extraordinary and difficult nature of [his] voyage. Asking Mahaway to undertake such an arduous journey highlights how seriously [the gibborim] wanted an interpretation to the two visions of ’Ohyah and Hahyah.
Once Enoch’s presence has been “veiled” after his heavenly ascent,59 Jens Wilkens observes that “only Enoch’s voice is mentioned.”60 In explanation of this state of affairs, Wilkens mentions a Uyghur fragment of the Book of Giants where a speaker (likely Mahaway referring to Enoch) says, “But I did not see him in person.”61 From the combined evidence, it seems that we are meant to understand that the scene of Mahaway’s voice-to-voice (not face-to-face) visit with Enoch “takes place in the sky”62 rather than on earth on this occasion. Presumably, Mahaway can speak with Enoch through the “veil,” but is not permitted to see Enoch in his transfigured state in the divine realm.
There is evidence of both supporters and detractors of Enoch among the gibborim. For example, a Sogdian fragment of the Book of Giants tells us that a righteous faction “are glad at seeing the apostle,” who is obviously Enoch, and “assembled before him.”63 But those who are called “tyrants and criminals” are “afraid.”64
According to the Manichaean Book of Giants, angels ultimately led the wicked to their eventual destruction in the east—away from the “sacred center”—while the righteous went westward to inhabit cities near the foot of the holy mountain that had been prepared for them “in the beginning”:65
And they led one half of them eastwards, and the other half westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains, towards the foot of the Sumēru [= “good Mēru] mountain, into thirty-two towns which the Living Spirit had prepared for them in the beginning.
In the highly symbolic account of the geographical history of the two opposing groups, the Book of Giants describes the righteous dwelling “westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains.” Significantly, this imagery recalls Moses 7:17, which relates that the righteous “were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.” Where in all the ancient Enoch tradition do we find the remarkably similar story of the gathering of Enoch’s converts to a community of refuge in the mountains? Only in the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses.
In a later Essay,66 we will describe the rise of this holy place of refuge, whose residents the Lord called “Zion.”67
Conclusions
Though the glory of God’s presence no longer fills the whole earth as it did at the creation of Adam and Eve, it has not been completely withdrawn. In a movement similar to the divine concealment that the Lurianic kabbalah terms “contraction,”68 the fulness of God’s glory is, as it were, concentrated in a series of “center places”—temples—which continue to represent in microcosm the image of what will someday again become the model for a fully renewed Creation, happy in the divine rest of a perpetual Sabbath.69 Until that day, according to Jon Levenson, the temple remains “to space what the Sabbath is to time, a recollection of the protological dimension bounded by mundane reality. It is the higher world in which the worshiper wishes he could dwell forever. … The temple is the moral center of the universe, the source from which holiness and a terrifying justice radiate” 70 to the dark and fallen world that surrounds it.
Fittingly, just as the first book of the Bible, Genesis, recounts the story of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden, its last book, Revelation, prophesies a permanent return to Eden for the sanctified.71 In that day, the veil that separates man and the rest of fallen creation from God will be swept away, and all shall be “done in earth, as it is in heaven.”72 In the original Garden of Eden, “there was no need for a temple—because Adam and Eve enjoyed the continual presence of God”—likewise, in John’s vision “there was no temple in the Holy City, ‘for its temple is the Lord God.’”73 To reenter the renewed74 “Garden” at that happy day will be to return to the original spiritual state of immortality and innocence through forgiveness of sin, and to know the oneness that existed at the dawn of Creation, before the creative processes of division and separation began.75 The premortal glory of the righteous shall then be “added upon”76 as they receive a fulness of the blessings of sanctification, “coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”77
This is the glory that the people of Enoch began to enjoy as they laid the foundations of Zion.
This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness 2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 46, 70, 97, 105, 133–136.
Further Reading
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 46, 70, 97, 105, 133–136.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005, pp. 119–122.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 201–204.
Nibley, Hugh W. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004, p. 282–283.
Appendix 1: The Battle of the Angels and the “Giants” in the Manichaean Book of Giants
Below, we give an annotated version of Henning’s translation of text G (Sogdian):78
… they [i.e., the angels] took and imprisoned all the helpers [i.e., the rebellious Watchers79] that were in the heavens. And the angels80 themselves descended from the heaven to the earth. And (when) the two hundred demons saw those angels, they were much afraid and worried. They assumed the shape of men and hid themselves [i.e., in disguise81]. Thereupon the angels forcibly removed the men from the demons, (10) laid them aside, and put watchers over them . … the giants . … were sons … with each other in bodily union . … with each other self- … and the . … that had been born to them, they forcibly removed them from the demons. And they led one half of them (20) eastwards, and the other half westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains, towards the foot of the Sumeru mountain [i.e., the mountain in the Himalayas82], into thirty- two [or thirty-six in other texts83] towns which the Living Spirit had prepared for them in the beginning. And one calls (that place) Aryānwaižan [i.e., “Homeland of the Aryans84]. And those men are (or: were) . … in the first arts and crafts. (30) . … they made … the angels … and to the demons … they went to fight. And those two hundred demons fought a hard battle with the [four angels], until [the angels used] fire, naphtha, and brimstone.85
Appendix 2: The Journey of Mahaway to Enoch in the Manichaean Book of Giants
Below we give an annotated version of Jens Wilken’s English translation of the Mainz 317 fragment (Old Uyghur):86
[Mahaway said:] (01) “Fire was rising.87 (01–02) And furth[ermore I saw] that the sun was rising. (02–03) [Its] palace wa[s] revolving without being carried over.88 (04–05) Then, from heaven above came a voice [of an archangel?89]. (05–06) It called me and said: (06–07) “You, son of Virōgdād [i.e., Mahaway90], the order for you is exactly this: (07–08) You [h]ave seen more than enough! (08–09) Do not die prematurely now! Return quickly [from] here!” (09–11) And then, besides this, I heard the voice of the apostle Enoch from the south. (11–12) But I did no[t] see him in person. (12–13) Then, very affectionately, he called out my name. (13–14) And down from [heaven] (the voice) s[aid]: (14–16) “[O son] of [Virōgdād], now … (17) Ow[n] […] [small lacuna] (18) [W]hy? (18–19) The door of the enclosed [s]un will open up. (19–20) The [sp]lendor and heat of the sun will descend. (20–22) It will burn your wings; you will catch fire and die.” (22–24) Then, at that time, upon hearing the voice I shook (or: beat) my wings and quickly descended fr[o]m heaven. Again I looked back. (24–25) Dawn had [br]oken.91 (25–26) The sun with its splendor was rising on the bluish mountain.92 (26–27) And again from above came a voice. (27–29) It conferred the words of the apostle Enoch. It said: (29–31) “I call you, o son of Virōgdā[d], I know [th]is: you are [l]ike some of them.93 You are … (31–33) [An]d quickly … with that people … sickness …”
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Hamblin, William J., and David Rolph Seely. Solomon’s Temple: Myth and History. London, England: Thames & Hudson, 2007.
Henning, W. B. “The Book of the Giants.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London11, no. 1 (1943): 52-74. http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/giants/giants.htm. (accessed January 25, 2018).
Kee, Howard C. “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. Vol. 1, 775-828. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Kulik, Alexander. “Apocalypse of Abraham.” In Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman. 3 vols. Vol. 2, 1453-81. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2013.
Levenson, Jon D. “The temple and the world.” The Journal of Religion64, no. 3 (1984): 275-98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202664. (accessed July 2).
Lewis, Mark Edward. The Construction of Space in Early China. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Lidzbarski, Mark, ed. Ginza: Der Schatz oder das Grosse Buch der Mandäer. Quellen der Religionsgeschichte, der Reihenfolge des Erscheinens 13:4. Göttingen and Leipzig, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, J. C. Hinrichs’sche, 1925. https://ia802305.us.archive.org/7/items/MN41563ucmf_2/MN41563ucmf_2.pdf. (accessed September 7, 2019).
Loewe, Michael. Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality. London, England: George Allen & Unwin, 1979.
Machiela, Daniel A. The Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon [1QapGen]: A New Text and Translation with Introduction and Special Treatment of Columns 13-17. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah79. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. https://books.google.com/books?id=7O4oKMuLeaQC. (accessed June 11, 2020).
Major, John S. Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the Huainanzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Martinez, Florentino Garcia. “The Book of Giants (4Q531).” In The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, edited by Florentino Garcia Martinez. 2nd ed. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson, 262. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996.
Maxwell, Neal A. We Will Prove Them Herewith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1982.
Migne, Jacques P. “Livre d’Adam.” In Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, ou, Collection de tous les livres Apocryphes relatifs a l’Ancien et au Nouveau Testament, pour la plupart, traduits en français, pour la première fois, sur les textes originaux, enrichie de préfaces, dissertations critiques, notes historiques, bibliographiques, géographiques et théologiques, edited by Jacques P. Migne. Migne, Jacques P. ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Troisième et Dernière Encyclopédie Théologique 23, 1-290. Paris, France: Migne, Jacques P., 1856. http://books.google.com/books?id=daUAAAAAMAAJ. (accessed October 17, 2012).
Milik, Józef Tadeusz, and Matthew Black, eds. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from Qumran Cave 4. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976.
Muir, Lynette R. The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Neusner, Jacob, ed. Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis, A New American Translation. 3 vols. Vol. 1: Parashiyyot One through Thirty-Three on Genesis 1:1 to 8:14. Brown Judaic Studies 104, ed. Jacob Neusner. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.
Nibley, Hugh W., and Michael D. Rhodes. One Eternal Round. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley19. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2010.
Nibley, Hugh W. 1951. “The hierocentric state.” In The Ancient State, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10, 99-147. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1991.
———. 1981. Abraham in Egypt. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley14. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2000.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., and James C. VanderKam, eds. 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 37-82. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012.
Orlov, Andrei A. The Enoch-Metatron Tradition. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism107. Tübingen, Germany Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
Parry, Donald W., and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader. 6 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
Reeves, John C. Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College14. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992.
Rubinkiewicz, Ryszard. L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave : Introduction, texte critique, traduction et commentaire. Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolikiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, Zrodlai i monografie129. Lublin, Poland: Société des Lettres et des Sciences de l’Université Catholique de Lublin, 1987.
Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Stuckenbruck, Loren T. The Book of Giants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.
VanderKam, James C. Enoch: A Man for All Generations. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Welburn, Andrew, ed. Mani, the Angel, and the Column of Glory: An Anthology of Manichaean Texts. Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books, 1998.
Whitlock, Stephen T. E-mail message to Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, May 3, 2020.
Wilkens, Jens. “Remarks on the Manichaean Book of Giants: Once again on Mahaway’s mission to Enoch.” In Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Enrico Morano. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, ed. Jörg Frey, 213-29. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.
Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. New York City, NY: Harper-Collins, 1996.
Wyatt, Nicolas. Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Near East. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
Notes to Figures
Figure 1. Photograph copyright Stephen T. Whitlock, with permission. Photo ID: EtnaJul1977.jpg (July 1977). Stephen tells the following story (S. T. Whitlock, May 3 2020):
While I was in the USAF in Italy we sent out teams to remote sites for about 10 days. And on one of those trips I was in Reggio de Calabria to calibrate equipment for the radar site there. I was with a Sgt. Rafael Leal and we looked across the strait (the Scylla and Charibdis of Greek mythology) and could see Etna erupting with lava running down the side. So since we had to stay somewhere over the weekend anyway Rafael and I stayed at a B&B on the edge of the slopes of Etna and then on Saturday climbed up the mountain. We drove part way and then had to walk past the twisted remains of a ski lift that had been wiped out a couple of years earlier. The last third we were walking on pumice and it was three feet up and then two feet sliding back on each step. But coming down we surfed on our shoes. At around 10,000 feet it was cold as we got near the top but the ground was too hot to touch in most places. And at the top there were places where you would breath in and nothing would happen—clear gases that weren’t air. My intent was to get pictures looking down the crater—but it was steamy and irregular. … Overall this was not the smartest thing I did … .
Figure 2. Art collection of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, CA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_-_Vesuvius_from_Portici.jpg (accessed April 4, 2020). Public domain.
Figure 3. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/cheonhado-world-map (accessed April 14, 2020). British Library, Shelfmark: Maps C.27.f.14. Public Domain. The description on the website reads:
This world map is from an atlas produced in Korea in around 1800. It is one of a group of maps known as ‘Cheonhado’, meaning ‘Map of all under heaven’. The map shows a large inner continent surrounded by sea. This represents China and its surrounding lands. Beijing, the Yellow River and Great Wall of China are visible, with the sacred Mount Mēru at its center. The rest of the world appears as outer islands, with the Trees of Sun and Moon beyond.
The concentric circle structure of the map and many of the mythological names come from the Chinese Shan Hai Jing (The Classic of Mountain and Seas), a text that was probably compiled from older texts in the first or second century BCE. For detailed background on these and similar maps, see S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps. Among other things, Oh establishes the fact that even though such maps are round, they do not depart from the “square earth-round heaven” principle. The circular form of the map represents the round shape of heaven.
For a general introduction to cartography and the cosmic ocean in the ancient Near East, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 80–88, 113.
Among these mythical locations are the mountains and trees typically shown as sacred trees and mountains at the location of the rising and setting of the sun and moon (east and west) and at the north (S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 31, 32):
To the east, where the sun and moon rise, Mt. Yupa and Busang tree are depicted. Mt. Bang and the Bangyeoksong pine tree are also depicted to the west, where the sun and moon met. … It is presumed that Mt. Yupa was chosen [from among the many mountains where the sun and moon were supposed to rise] because it is located in the East Sea, a great distance away or farthest from thee center. …
It would be … appropriate to believe that the maps tried to show where the sky and the earth meet. Circular world maps are still based on the traditional view that the heaven is round and the earth is square. As this differs from the theory of the round Earth, circular world maps have east and west poles, and the locations of sunrise and sunset, and moonrise and moonset visibly represent the poles.
No tree in the south is shown on the map in this figure, and we do not currently have access to an interpretation of what is shown there. However, from another time and culture we have the report of Severus of Antioch (fl. 512–518) that avers, similar to other anti-Manichaean sources that “those (regions) which lie to the south and to the meridian belong to the Tree of Death, which they call Hyle [i.e., Matter], being very wicked and uncreated” (as cited in B. Bennett, Iuxta Unum, p. 69). In Mandaean and Zoroastrian cosmogonies the north and south are associated with “above” and “below” (i.e., the underworld).
S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 32–33.
Figure 4. H. W. Nibley et al., One Eternal Round, p. 364, Figure 43 and caption.
Figure 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flammarion.jpg (accessed May 25, 2020). Public domain. Published in Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, France: Librairie Hachette, 1888), pp. 163, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k408619m/f168.image (accessed May 25, 2020).
14H. Freedman et al., Midrash, Genesis (Bereshith) 5:6 (Genesis 1:9), 1:37. Cf. J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, Parashah Five, 6:6:1, p. 50.
15M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Von der Urzeit, Zweites Buch: Von Adam und seinem Geshlecht, Die Adamsöhne, 3 Der erste Götze, p. 153. Cf. M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Die Sagen (1997), pp. 122–123. English translation by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.
16Amos 5:8, 9:6. “Thus He reversed His previous decree that the waters should be confined to one place” (H. Freedman et al., Midrash, 1:37 n. 1 commentary). Jacob Neusner comments (J. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah 1, p. 46 commentary):
The main point contrasts the gathering together of the water, done so obediently, to the rebellion of man, punished by the flood. … The water was originally spread over the whole earth. The water praised God. … God … ordered the water to draw back into one place—hence Psalm 104:7—so that there would be dwelling space for humanity. But in light of the record of humanity, God called the water back and restored it to its place over the whole earth.
18M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Von der Urzeit, Zweites Buch: Von Adam und seinem Geshlecht, Die Adamsöhne, 3 Der erste Götze, p. 153. Cf. M. J. bin Gorion (Berdichevsky), Die Sagen (1997), pp. 122–123. English translation by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.
19For more on the wars in which the gibborim were defeated, see Essay #12.
20Edward Cook, 4Q531 (4QEnGiants(c) ar), 22:5–6 in D. W. Parry et al., Reader, 3:495.
32For more on the symbolism of the sacred center, see J. M. Bradshaw, Tree of Knowledge, pp. 50–52. On the symbol on eastward movement as distancing oneself from God and westward movement as approaching God, see J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary 3:8-b, pp. 160–161. The symbolism of east-west orientation and the symbolism of the sacred center are conjoined in the symbolic layout of the Israelite temple and the Garden of Eden (J. M. Bradshaw, Moses Temple Themes (2014), pp. 57–58, 77, 88–89). The east-west, right-left layout also recall the vertical bisecting of almost all Egyptian hypocephali and corresponding visions of the cosmos given to Jewish seers. Hugh Nibley(H. W. Nibley, Abraham 2000, p. 45) describes this bisecting view of the cosmos in terms of as “a graphic representation of ‘the whole world [and] its circle,’ (G. H. Box, Apocalypse, 12:8, p. 51) in which the human race, God’s people and the others (See A. Kulik, Apocalypse of Abraham, 22:5, p. 1471) confront each other beneath or within the circle of the starry heavens, on opposite halves of the picture.” In terms that echo the vertical and horizontal divisions of the hypocephalus in Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham, Rubinkiewicz explains this feature in the cosmic vision of the Apocalypse of Abraham, a Jewish pseudepigraphon that has close affinities with Moses 1 (R. Rubinkiewicz, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham, p. 171 — also cited and explained in more detail within Essay #40. See also a discussion of possible allusions to some of the general features of hypocephalus-like images in Essay #34):
If we pay attention to our account, we will see an astonishing thing. Abraham sees the earth peopled by the wicked (v. 3), but he also sees Eden inhabited by the righteous (v. 6); God shows him the sea ruled by Leviathan (v. 4), but Abraham also contemplates the “upper waters” that are above the firmament (v. 5). At the conclusion, he sees people at the left and right of the picture. What should Abraham understand by this vision? The answer is simple: the division between the righteous and the wicked is based on the structure of the world, where both the forces of evil (the earth and the wicked; the sea and Leviathan) and the forces of good (the “upper waters,” Eden) each have their place. The entire universe has thus been projected by God and “it is pleasing to Him” (22:2).
Rubinkiewicz (ibid., p. 171 n. adds): “This idea is not unique, for it is also found in the Testament of Naphtali 2:7–8” (see H. C. Kee, Testaments, p. 811). On affinities between the Apocalypse of Abraham and Moses 1, see J. M. Bradshaw et al., Moses 1.
33For cogent summaries of the mythology of the mountain paradise of K’un-lun, see A. Birrell, Mythology, pp. 183–185; M. Loewe, Ways, pp. 110–112. For traditions surrounding the primeval couple, Fu Xi and Nü Gua, whose stories are intertwined with K’un-lun, the Creation, and other temple themes, see J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, pp. 654–657.
With respect to the placement of Kunlun on the map, J. S. Major, Heaven, p. 155 explains how physical and mythological geography became inextricably intertwined in Chinese thought:
Kunlun has two closely related aspects: First, it is the world-mountain or axis mundi, pillar that at once separates and connects heaven and earth. As such it is the highest of mountains, the terrestrial plane’s closest approach, and stepping-stone, to the celestial vault. … Second, Kunlun is a paradise, a magical and beautiful land that is the home and kingdom of Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West.
One problem that immediately arises in dealing with these two aspects of Kunlun is that the Kunlun Mountains are, and from early times have been known to be, an entirely real and terrestrial mountain range on China’s northwestern frontier [“on the borderland of Xinjiang province and Tibet” (S. Allan, Turtle, p. 99)]. … In fact it is not unusual for real but distant places to take on paradisiacal qualities; think of Serendip, or Shambala.
Thus in early China the name Kunlun attached to a geographical mountain and a mythical one, and the two were soon hopelessly conflated.
34In support of the possibility of such influence, J. S. Major, Heaven, pp. 154–155 writes:
It is not clear how one was intended to visualize the nine-fold walls of Kunlun, but the most obvious image is as a peak of tremendous height, rising in nine steps like a ziggurat. Such a nine-tiered heaven … makes little sense in terms of the overall gaitian cosmology of Huainanzi [an ancient Chinese work of cosmological geography]: might there be here a hint of weak and distant Indian influence to go along with the possible Indian origin of the Jupiter Cycle names in Huainanzi 3. XXXIII? Certainly tiered-roof pagodas in later Chinese Buddhism reflect the Indian nine-tiered cosmos; earlier influence of the same sort is unattested but hardly impossible. The Nine-fold Shade mountain … associated with the Torch Dragon, is suggestive of a multitiered parasol of state of the sort found ubiquitously in Indic civilizations; it too may hint at an Indian-style nine-fold heaven weakly impinging on early Chinese cosmology.
Ibid., p. 337 n. 17 goes on to explicitly imply a common symbology in Mount Kunlun and Mount Mēru:
In the Indian tradition the link between architecture and cosmology is explicit. In Balinese Hinduism, for example, multitiered (often nine-tiered) temple towers are called meru, imitative in name as well as in structure of the classical Indian nine-tiered axis mundi or cosmic mountain.
35M. Wise et al., DSS, 4Q531, 22:5, p. 293. Cf. L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q531, 17:5, p. 164: “adversaries.” J. T. Milik et al., Enoch, p. 308 and F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q531), 2:5, p. 262 translate the term as “accusers.”
36F. G. Martinez, Book of Giants (4Q531), 2:6, p. 262. Cf. J. T. Milik et al., Enoch, p. 308: “they dwell in [heaven]s and they live in the holy abodes”; L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 4Q531, 17:6, p. 164: “and in the heavens are seated, and among the holy places they dwell.”
40G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 290. See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-20, p. 97.
41G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 13:7–8, p. 237.
421 Enoch arguably identifies the “waters of Dan” as the sea of Galilee and the nearby sacred mountain of Hermon (see J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-21, p. 97). See also G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 250 n. 9–10 on “Abel-Main” and, more generally, on the sacred geography of this region on pp. 238–247. While Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that Enoch’s ministry took place in the New World (D&C 107:53–57), the general story line in ancient Enoch accounts is not inconsistent with the symbolic geography of the Book of Moses.
43G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, p. 290. See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Endnote M6-20, p. 97.
44For an overview and examples of the Egyptian concept of the horizon, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 184–185, 187–192. See related discussion in Essay #34.
452 Enoch locates paradise “between the corruptible [earth] and the incorruptible [heaven]” (F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 8:5, p. 116 and p. 116 n. l).
46N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 183–184 discusses the “two seemingly opposed ideas … of the end of the world, often represented by the notion of a ‘cosmic ocean,’ and … the center of the world” in the ancient Near East. See ibid., pp. 77–78, 83–84, 184–207 for examples from the ancient Near East of traversals of cosmic boundaries in heavenly ascent and of symbolic boundaries as part of ritual ascent in the temple.
Specifically with respect to Manichaean thought, Severus of Antioch (fl. 512–518), similar to other anti-Manichaean sources, reported (as cited in B. Bennett, Iuxta Unum, p. 69):
And they [i.e., the Manichaeans] say: That which is Good, also named Light and the Tree of Life, possess those regions which lie to the east, west, and north; for those (regions) which lie to the south and to the meridian belong to the Tree of Death, which they call Hyle [i.e., Matter], being very wicked and uncreated.
However, Bennett clarifies that the interpretation of the cardinal direction might best be understood in light of an an eastern rather than western frame of reference (ibid., pp. 76–77):
There are … some remarkable parallels for this teaching [about the primordial state] in both the Mandaean and Zoroastrian cosmogonies, suggesting that this teaching may have been formulated for an eastern audience who had the background beliefs necessary to comprehend and value it. The interpretation of the four cardinal directions as lines inscribed on a vertical plane (so that north and south are identified with above and below respectively) is found in the Mandaean cosmogony. Several other features can be paralleled in Middle Persian accounts of the Zoroastrian cosmogony.
Whatever the origin of the author’s knowledge of these animals, they are envisioned primarily in mythic terms. Evidence for such a mythic tradition appears at a number of points in the cartology of the ancient world. In the Babylonian Mappa Mundi of the fifth century BCE, the sixth island that lies east of the Bitter River is said to be the place where “a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer.” Much later maps from the Common Era depict sea monsters and other beasts lurking in the farthest recesses of land and sea. Doubtless these reflect a tradition much older than the charts on which they are found.
50D. A. Machiela, Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon, 2:23, p. 37: “And [Methusaleh] went through the length of the land of Parvain, and there he found the end of[the] ea[rth.”
52M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, p. 488. Cf. S.-H. Oh, Circular World Maps, pp. 31, 32: “Mt. Yupa … is located in the East Sea, a great distance away or farthest from the center. … Given that pine trees are one of the ten traditional symbols of longevity, the trees in the [north, east, and west] of the [circular world maps] can be regarded as deeply related to [the] ‘Taoist idea of immortality.’”
In medieval times, European biblical drama sometimes contained portrayals of Elijah and Enoch that had them situated in the Garden of Eden (L. R. Muir, Biblical Drama, p. 139):
As Christ leads the redeemed souls out of Hell … a few plays include the scene of their arrival in Earthly Paradise (usually escorted by Michael) where they meet Elijah and Enoch, who have not yet died and will return to earth to fight against Antichrist.
53Scholars do not agree as to whether it is Mahaway’s first or second journey (J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 219–222, 224–225).
57M. Goff, Where’s Enoch?, p. 488: “Or as it says in 1 Enoch 17:6, ‘where no human walks,’” emphasis Goff’s. Cf (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 17:7, p. 276: “where no flesh walks. See also ibid., 19:3, p. 276: “I, Enoch, alone saw the visions, the extremities of all things. And no one among humans has seen as I saw.”
59Enoch’s “similarity to, and perhaps derivation from, the [Mesopotamian] figure of Enmeduranki is widely accepted” (N. Wyatt, Space, p. 101. See also A. A. Orlov, Enoch-Metatron, pp. 23–29; J. C. VanderKam, Enoch, pp. 6–14; A. Annus, On the Origin of Watchers; H. Drawnel, Mesopotamian Background; J. Day, Enochs of Genesis 4 and 5). For an excerpt with commentary of a Mesopotamian account of the ascent of Enmeduranki, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 195–196.
67Moses 7:18. For a discussion of Zion as God’s holy mountain, see N. Wyatt, Space, pp. 156–157.
68Hebrew tzimtzum. See also the gradual and seemingly reluctant departure of God from Jerusalem and its temple in Ezekiel (T. D. Alexander, From Eden, pp. 56-57). A number of other Jewish sources likewise describe the similar process of the removal of the Shekhinah—representing God’s presence—in seven stages (H. Schwartz, Tree, p. 51, cf. pp. 55-56).
69Articles of Faith 1:10. See J. D. Levenson, Temple and World, pp. 297-298; T. D. Alexander, From Eden, pp. 24-26, 42.
73W. J. Hamblin et al., Solomon’s Temple, pp. 14-15. See Revelation 21:22. Levenson finds a similar concept in his retranslation of the proclamation of the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision. Rather than chanting: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: The whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3), Levenson (J. D. Levenson, Temple and World, pp. 289-290) gives the more accurate rending of: “The fulness of the whole earth (or, world) is his glory”:
In cultic contexts, the term for “glory” (kabod) has a technical meaning; it is the divine radiance… that manifests the presence of God [cf. Exodus 40:34, 1 Kings 8:11] … If my translation of Isaiah 6:3 is correct, then the seraphim identify the world in its amplitude with this terminus technicus of the Temple cult. As Isaiah sees the smoke filling the Temple, the seraphim proclaim that the kabod fills the world (verses 3–4). The world is the manifestation of God as He sits enthroned in His Temple. The trishagion is a dim adumbration of the rabbinic notion that the world proceeds from Zion in the same manner that a fetus, in rabbinic etymology, proceeds from the navel.
74Article of Faith 1:10: “the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.”
This line perhaps refers to those “archons” of Darkness … in Manichaean cosmogony. … Apparently two hundred archons managed to escape this imprisonment and fled to earth.
In I. Gardner, Kephalaia, chapter 38 (codex 92), p. 97, these archons are equated with the Watchers of 1 Enoch 6–16 and the Book of Giants (J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 384).
80It is possible that in the Manichaean version Enoch is not to be counted among the angels, but rather as one protected by the angels (W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i). However, the Mandaean accounts speak of Enoch and his two companions (for total of three rather than four as in the Manichaean version) having come “from on high” (J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 21–23). See Essay #4. Likewise, in the Book of Giants one of Enoch’s adversaries complains that his “opponents [are angels who] reside in [heav]en, and they dwell in the holy places” (Edward Cook, 4Q531 (4QEnGiants(c) ar), 22:5–6 in D. W. Parry et al., Reader, 3:495).
81A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. See also W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i. In the Mandaean version, it appears that the “fleeing and hiding” referred to their going up into heaven rather than disguising themselves (J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 21–23). See Essay #4.
82A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. Cf. J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 385:
According to Indian tradition, Mount Mēru or Sumēru (“Good Mēru) was the great mountain which stood at the center of the earth. See Mahābhārata 1(5) 15.5ff.: … “The great mountain rises aloft to cover with its heights the vault of heaven.”
83See comments in W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 59 comparing text S to text G. Cf. I. Gardner, Kephalaia, chapter 45 (codex 117, lines 5-8), p. 123 which also speaks of thirty-six towns. See also J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 386; J. Wilkens, Remarks, pp. 220–221.
84A. Welburn, Mani, p. 205. See also J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, p. 160 n. 387.
85See also W. B. Henning, Book of the Giants, p. 61 fragment i and the discussion of other, similar sources in J. C. Reeves, Jewish Lore, pp. 160–161 n. 389. Cf. J. P. Migne, Livre d’Adam, 21, p. 170; M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, Ginza Right 11, p. 268, lines 25–27, where it is not Enoch and his companions, but rather their enemies who use “fire against them.” See also Essay #4.
87Ibid., p. 216: “The fire is rising before the door [that lets the sun pass through] has opened. That being so, then whence does the fire emerge as we are told in the very first sentence? If we assume that the cosmology underlying the Manichaean Book of Giants is essentially Enochic [see G. W. E. Nickelsburg et al., 1 Enoch 2, 72:2–3, 7, p. 416], then we may assume that the flames come forth from one of the window openings located to the left and to the right of each gate.”
88J. Wilkens, Remarks, p. 215, 216: “The text probably wants to stress that the sun is revolving without any other cosmic force interfering. … Contrarily, in the Ethiopic Book of Enoch there is mention that the chariots of the sun and the moon are both driven by the wind. It is possible that in Mani’s work the force of the wind was deliberately minimized with regard to the ‘palace of the sun’ because of the high status the luminary is accorded in Manichaean doctrine. It is the residence of several divinities” but also a divinity in itself.
91Ibid., p. 222: “The journey as described in the Manichaean piece is clearly from the west to the east and back again. In one sentence [Mahaway] says: ‘Again I looked back. Dawn had [br]oken.’ This statement only makes sense if Mahaway is on his way back to the west again. In the Qumran fragment … 4Q530 7 ii 5, [Mahaway] crossed ‘bare regions,’ ‘the Great Deserts.’ In the Book of Watchers (G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 13:9, p. 248) Enoch travels east and—as remarked by Stuckenbruck—‘Mahaway’s journey takes him from Abel-Mayya across this desert toward the paradisiacal garden in the east [where Enoch may be thought to live]” (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, pp. 133–134). The reference to Enoch’s voice issuing from the south in the Old Uyghur text [Mainz 317] is relevant only after Mahaway has arrived in the east. And, what is more, the scene takes place in the sky.”
There are further questions to be resolved: is the kögmän mountain mentioned in the text really the Sayan range in South Siberia? In the Old Turkic runiform sources kögmän is attested several times. If the Manichaean text should refer to the same mountain range, then the Old Uyghur version of the Book of Giants would be adapted to an Inner Asian environment. According to Henning, kögmän “may reflect the ‘Mount Hermon,’” the place where the watchers had started their descent from heaven. But, the morpheme +mAn can also be just a suffix indicating similarity to the base word. We would then have to transcribe the word as kök+män (“bluish”), derived from kök (“blue”) with a voiceless stop. This explanation is followed here.
93Ibid., p. 224: “Does the phrase ‘like some of them’ allude to a distinction between the [gibborim]? We have evidence from other fragments that this seemingly was the case. Stuckenbruck has detected evidence for factions among the [gibborim] in two fragments from Qumran (L. T. Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, p. 107).
Having concluded his teachings on the plan of salvation,1 “from that time forth Enoch began to prophesy … unto the people.”2 Like Moses and the brother of Jared,3 Enoch spoke with the Lord “even as a man talketh one with another, face to face” (Moses 7:4).4
Notably, each of the three major works of Enoch pseudepigrapha contain stories of Enoch’s activities in heaven. In 1 Enoch 14, Enoch is taken up into heaven and kneels before the throne of God.5 2 Enoch 22:5 more closely echoes the wording of Moses 7:4 (“stood before my face”), when the Lord says: “Be brave, Enoch! Don’t be frightened! Stand up, and stand in front of my face forever.”6 In 2 Enoch 22:1, Enoch similarly relates: “I saw the view of the face of the Lord.”7 Because of the significance of the fact that Enoch is allowed to see God’s face, in 2 Enoch he is given the title “Prince of the Divine Face.”8
In Moses 7:5–12, we learn that Enoch was shown (in capsule form) “the world for the space of many generations,”9 a vision that stops short of Noah’s Flood. In the present Essay we discuss this limited vision of the tribes. In subsequent Essays,10 we will describe Enoch’s “Grand Vision.” In this latter vision, which starts in Moses 7:20, Enoch saw God’s work on the earth from beginning to end.11
Enoch’s Prophecy about the Tribes of Canaan and Shum
In Enoch’s “vision of the tribes,” contained in verses 5–8, he was told to prophesy about the war that would come among the two peoples of Canaan and Shum. In verses 9–12, he is called to teach repentance and baptism to other peoples besides Canaan lest they suffer a similar fate.12 We are not aware of any direct parallels to this two-part account in ancient Enoch literature, however we can conjecture some things about the background of these verses from a knowledge of the Old Testament and the ancient Near East.
The tribe of Shum. With respect to the brief reference to the first tribe of Shum in verse 5, Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes point out the joint reference to the “people of Shum” and the “valley of Shum” as a precedent for naming places after a notable ancestor in this account.13 They suggest that the name “is likely a variant of Shem, itself meaning ‘name.’”14 There are many mentions in the early chapters of Genesis of peoples who lived in tents.15
The tribe of Canaan. As to the second tribe seen in vision, Draper et al. conclude that the “people of Canaan” mentioned in verse 6 are “not the same as ‘the seed of Cain.’16 Although both groups were ostracized because of skin pigmentation,17 their tribal names are of different origin.”18 Neither should the people of Canaan or the descendants of Cain be confused with the people of “Cainan.”19 Cainan, Enoch’s great-grandfather, and others of the “people of God … dwelt in a land of promise,”20 which Enoch had referred to during his preaching mission as “a land of righteousness unto this day.”21
The similar-sounding names of “Canaan” and “Cainan” mentioned in close proximity within the Book of Moses follow the same pattern of wordplay elsewhere in the corresponding Genesis chapters. For example, it is no coincidence, according to Hugh Nibley, that the descendants of the Sethite ancestors of Enoch “run in seven lines with almost the same names [as the descendants of Cain]. But,” he continues, “they are read differently as if you were punning on them, like twin names. This is a typical trick. The Egyptians do it all the time.”22
Whether there is meant to be any connection between these antediluvian Canaanites and the later group of the same name that inhabited the area of Palestine is unknown. The first mention of “Canaan” in the Bible is as the name of the son of Ham, who was the son of Noah.23 The “Canaanites” mentioned in Abraham 1:21–22 are said to have been Ham’s descendants, but no explicit connection is made between them and the land of “Canaan” where Abraham was commanded to go when he left Ur of the Chaldees.24
The cursing of the land of Canaan. Enoch’s prophecy that the land of the Canaanites “shall be barren and unfruitful” is a “measure for measure” form of punishment that will continue indefinitely (“the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever”25). Because the Canaanites will wickedly conspire to exterminate the people of Shum and take their land, their own land will be cursed. The curse and its murderous provocation parallel the experience of Cain on a larger scale.26
The curse of barrenness recalls the prophecy of Enoch to the sinners in 1 Enoch 100:11:27
And every cloud and mist and dew and rain will testify against you;
for they will all be withheld from you, so as not to descend upon you,
and they will be mindful of your sins.
Note that this prophecy about the unfruitfulness of the land is in direct contrast with the Lord’s promise given in Exodus 23:26 to the Israelites who were to be given their own land of Canaan: “There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren.” In 2 Peter 1:8, following a list of godly virtues, is a similarly worded promise of a spiritual nature: “if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Enoch also prophesies that “none other people shall dwell there but the people of Canaan.”28 This is a second contrast to the later Israelites in their land of Canaan. The Israelites were told that the other peoples inhabiting the land would be driven out “little by little”29 rather than all at once. Subsequent events make it clear that the Israelites were never successful in possessing the entire land for themselves alone.30
The prophecy that “the Lord shall curse the land”31 of the people of Canaan is again reminiscent of the story of Cain.32 This is an explicit contrast to Moses 7:17, where the Lord is said to have “blessed the land” on behalf of the people of God.
The “blackness” of the people of Canaan. Of significance in connection with the “much heat” that was to come upon the land, is the mention that a blackness “came upon” the children of Canaan.33 The description that this blackness “came upon” them seems to contradict the conjecture that these people inherited dark skin because they were of the lineage of Cain.34 Hugh Nibley’s explanation of the Arab concept of aswad (black) verses abyad (white) is of interest here: those Arabs who live out in tents in the heat are called “black” while those who live in the shelter of stone houses in the city are seen as “white.”35 Also of interest is the fact that “black” and “white” in Arabic can be used to refer to levels of moral cleanliness and purity.36 Indeed, such a distinction is found in 3 Enoch 44:6, where Rabbi Ishmael is shown the spirits suffering in Sheol and comments that “the faces of the wicked souls were as black as the bottom of a pot, because of the multitude of their wicked deeds.”37 Thus, the more straightforward modern assumption that the blackness of the children of Canaan refers to a difference in skin pigmentation is not an automatic given.
In Moses 7:22, we similarly find the mention that “the seed of Cain were black.” Commenting on the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch in which Cain is depicted as a “black calf,”38 George Nickelsburg concludes that “the color of the bulls …—like their species—is symbolic. Adam’s whiteness suggests his purity, and … at the very least, the black or dark color attributed to Cain foreshadows his murder of Abel (cf. Job 6:16, of the treachery of Job’s enemies).”39 With specific reference to the “mark of Cain,”40 it is not a straightforward matter to decode the nature of the mark:41
Though readers have often assumed that the mark was a dark skin, the text of the verse itself fails to give warrant for any particular conclusion about the nature of the mark given to Cain. Nor is the verse explicit about whether the mark was passed on to his descendants.42 Of possible relevance to this question is Moses 7:22 which states that “the seed of Cain were black.”43 Allred, however, finds even this statement inconclusive, arguing that it could be a figurative expression referring to “those who followed Cain in his wicked practices,” referring to them “in the same manner that the Jews were called the children of the Devil.”44 Similarly, Goldenberg has argued that, as with the four horsemen of Revelation 6:1–8, the blackness of individuals depicted in 1 Enoch and in other ancient Near Eastern sources is used in a purely symbolic fashion to represent evil and exclusion from the covenant community.45 He conjectures that beliefs about Cain’s skin becoming black were the result of textual misunderstandings.46
Consistent with this view is al-Kisa’i’s report of a tradition that Lamech (the son of the Sethite Methuselah—not to be confused with the Cainite Lamech of Moses 5:43–54) married Methuselcha, a descendant of Cain. Though mentioning the fact that there was “enmity that existed between the children of Seth and the children of Cain,” the story implies that there was nothing in their outward appearance that would identify them as being of different lineages, since Lamech had to tell her his parentage explicitly. Described in wholly positive terms, Methuselcha was said in this tradition to have become the mother of Noah.47
Enoch’s Teachings to the Other Tribes
In Moses 7:9, Enoch has a vision of “the land of Sharon, and the land of Enoch, and the land of Omner, and the land of Heni, and the land of Shem, and the land of Haner, and the land of Hanannihah, and all the inhabitants thereof.” Here is what can be said about the names that are mentioned in the verse:
Sharon. “Sharon” appears as a place name in the Bible in 1 Chronicles 5:16, 27:29; Song of Solomon 2:1; Isaiah 33:9, 35:2, 65:10.
Enoch. Presumably this place was not named after the prophet, but rather after Enoch, the son of Cain.48
Omner. “Omner” appears in the Book of Mormon as the personal name of one of the sons of Mosiah.49
Heni. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.
Shem. Besides being the name of Noah’s son,50 “Shem” is the name of a land in the Book of Mormon.51 It is also used as a personal name in Mormon 6:14.
Haner. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.
Hanannihah. This name does not appear elsewhere in scripture.
Apparently the “people” to which Enoch was commanded to preach included the groups named above, but not the people of Canaan.52 These groups were told to “Repent, lest I [the Lord] come out and smite them with a curse.”53 The requirement that the people repent or be cursed is found throughout Scripture. For example, the commandments given to Israel in Deuteronomy 28 include blessings and cursings conditioned on obedience. The result of continued rebellion is destruction or death.54
Figure 2. Details of a statue in St. Stephan’s Platz, Vienna, Austria with plaques for the God the Father (Creator), God the Son (Redeemer), and God the Holy Spirit, 2003.
In verse 11, the people are instructed to “baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, which is full of grace and truth, and of the Holy Ghost.” The instructions to repent and be baptized should be compared to the guidelines that the Lord gave to Adam regarding the teaching of his children.55 Although Moses 6:52 states that baptism should be performed in the name of the Son and in verses 57–59 God refers to the Son and the Spirit in His explanation of spiritual rebirth, Moses 7:11 marks the first example of using titles of all three members of the Godhead in the baptismal ordinance as is done in the Church today.56
Moses 7:12 concludes Enoch’s prophecy, stating that “Enoch continued to call upon all the people, save it were the people of Canaan.” The restricted scope of Enoch’s ministry outlined here is in contrast to the universal extent of the teachings of the “preachers of righteousness”57 that preceded him. There is no explanation for why the people of Canaan are excluded from Enoch’s preaching. Following the narrative, we may suppose that the reason may be due to their acts of violence against the people of Shum.58
Conclusions
The interesting interlude in these verses continues to echo themes in the Enoch literature as well as the Old Testament. Enoch’s prophecy to the tribes is a bridge between his teachings on the plan of salvation and the events that led to the establishing of Zion. His warning leaves the people without excuse, allowing them to choose either to participate in the devastating events of “wars and bloodshed” among the wicked or to dwell with the Lord and “his people … in righteousness.”59
This article is adapted and expanded from Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 105, 130–133.
Further Reading
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014, pp. 105, 130–133.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005, pp. 115–118.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986, pp. 178, 194–198.
Nibley, Hugh W. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004, pp. 249, 281–282.
References
al-Kisa’i, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah. ca. 1000-1100. Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiya). Translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr. Great Books of the Islamic World, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Chicago, IL: KAZI Publications, 1997.
Alexander, Philip S. “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 223-315. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Allred, Alma. “The traditions of their fathers: Myth versus reality in LDS scriptural writings.” In Black and Mormon, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and Darron T. Smith, 34-49. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Andersen, F. I. “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch.” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. Vol. 1, 91-221. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1983.
Bradley, Don. The Lost 116 Pages: Reconsructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2019.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. Creation, Fall, and the Story of Adam and Eve. 2014 Updated ed. In God’s Image and Likeness1. Salt Lake City, UT: Eborn Books, 2014.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., and David J. Larsen. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel. In God’s Image and Likeness2. Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2014.
Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. 2018. Did Joshua ‘Utterly Destroy’ the Canaanites? In Interpreter Foundation Old Testament KnoWhy JBOTL18A. https://interpreterfoundation.org/knowhy-otl18a-did-joshua-utterly-destroy-the-canaanites/. (accessed November 23, 2018).
Cassuto, Umberto. 1944. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Vol. 1: From Adam to Noah. Translated by Israel Abrahams. 1st English ed. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1998.
Dahl, Larry E., and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds. The Lectures on Faith in Historical Perspective. Religious Studies Specialized Monograph Series 15. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1990.
Draper, Richard D., S. Kent Brown, and Michael D. Rhodes. The Pearl of Great Price: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2005.
Faulring, Scott H., Kent P. Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews, eds. Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004.
Feyerick, Ada, Cyrus H. Gordon, and Nahum M. Sarna. Genesis: World of Myths and Patriarchs. New York City, NY: New York University Press, 1996.
Gardner, Brant A. Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary of the Book of Mormon. 6 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2007.
Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Ibrahim, Zaynab M., Sabiha T. Aydelott, and Nagwa Kassabgy. Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in Arabic and English Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 2000.
Martins, Marcus H. Blacks and the Mormon Priesthood. Setting the Record Straight. Orem, UT: Millennial Press, 2007.
Nibley, Hugh W. Enoch the Prophet. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley2. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986.
———. 1986. Teachings of the Pearl of Great Price. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), Brigham Young University, 2004.
Nickelsburg, George W. E., ed. 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108. Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Orlov, Andrei A. The Enoch-Metatron Tradition. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism107. Tübingen, Germany Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
Smith, Joseph, Jr. 1902-1932. History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Documentary History). 7 vols. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1978.
Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1985.
Wenham, Gordon J., ed. Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary 1: Nelson Reference and Electronic, 1987.
Westermann, Claus, ed. 1974. Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary 1st ed. Translated by John J. Scullion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.
Notes for Figures
Figure 1. In A. Feyerick et al., Genesis, p. 127.
Figure 2. Copyright Stephen T. Whitlock. Image IDs: DSCN1022, 1019, and 1023 (12 July 2003).
3 Cf. Moses 1:2: “And he saw God face to face, and he talked with him, and the glory of God was upon Moses”; Exodus 33:1: “And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” Regarding the brother of Jared, see Ether 3:4–20. See also D. Bradley, Lost 116 Pages, pp. 236–238; B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 6:191–194, 199–210.
4 See also J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary Moses 1:2-a, p. 44; J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 6:68-a, p. 84. Cf. L. E. Dahl et al., Lectures, 2:55, p. 51: “Enoch, the brother of Jared, and Moses … obtain[ed] faith in God, and power with Him to behold him face to face.”
5 G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 14:8–24, pp. 257, 267.
6 F. I. Andersen, 2 Enoch, 22:5 [J], pp. 136, 138.
11 See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 7:20-a, p. 137.
12 Moses 7:7–11. On the themes of repentance in the Enoch tradition, see Essays #10–11, on the subject of baptism and the Son of Man, see Essays #14–20.
18 R. D. Draper et al., Commentary, p. 115. Other than a possible allusion in a JST addition to Genesis 9:26, there is no explicit connection in scripture made between the “seed of Cain” (i.e., “who were black”) and the people of Canaan mentioned in Moses 7:8 (i.e., “there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan”). See J. M. Bradshaw et al., God’s Image 2, Commentary Moses 7:22-b, p. 139; Commentary Moses 6:17-c, p. 54; Commentary Genesis 9:26-b, p. 142.
42 For arguments that the account of the mark of Cain should not be interpreted as referring to something that was passed on to future generations, see, e.g., U. Cassuto, Adam to Noah, pp. 227–228; C. Westermann, Genesis 1–11, pp. 312–313.
43 Cf. J. Smith, Jr., Documentary History, 25 January 1842, 4:501. Note also the statement that a “blackness came upon all the children of Canaan,” seemingly in direct consequence of a notable act of genocide (Moses 7:7–8). See M. H. Martins, Blacks, pp. 10–11.
45 D. M. Goldenberg, Curse, pp. 152–154. See also manuscript versions of Moses 1:15 (S. H. Faulring et al., Original Manuscripts, OT1, p. 84, OT2, p. 592), as well as J. M. Bradshaw, God’s Image 1, Commentary 1:15-a, p. 55.
46 D. M. Goldenberg, Curse, pp. 178–182. For similar conclusions relating to the mark imposed upon the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon (e.g., 1 Nephi 12:23, 2 Nephi 5:21–24, Alma 3:6–19, 3 Nephi 2:14–16), see B. A. Gardner, Second Witness, 2:108–123; J. L. Sorenson, Ancient, p. 90.
54 See, e.g., Deuteronomy 11:26–28; 30:19; 2 King 22:16–19; Malachi 3:8–12; 4:5–6; Matthew 25:31–46; 1 Nephi 17:38; Jacob 2:29; 3:3; Alma 3:19; Alma 17:15; 45:16; D&C 41:1; Moses 5:25; 5:52.
55 Moses 6:57–59. See Essay #14. The reference to “the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of the Father and the Son” is also used in Moses 5:9. The use of the term “record” recalls the titles of the Holy Ghost given in Moses 6: “the record of heaven” (Moses 6:61) and “the record of the Father and the Son” (Moses 6:66). See also Moses 6:63: “all things are created and made to bear record of me.” For more on the use of the term “record” in the teachings of Enoch, see Essay #16.
