Texts in Conversation
1 Enoch 99:2 employs covenant language that recalls texts like Leviticus 23, which links Israel’s festivals to God’s covenant with his people. While references to the covenant are rare in 1 Enoch, this passage draws on familiar vocabulary to frame its warnings, perhaps connecting it to the permanence of the Torah.
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Leviticus 23:41
Hebrew Bible
39 “‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather in the produce of the land, you must celebrate a pilgrim festival of the Lord for seven days. On the first day is a complete rest and on the eighth day is complete rest. 40 On the first day you must take for yourselves branches from majestic trees—palm branches, branches of leafy trees, and willows of the brook—and you must rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. 41 You must celebrate it as a pilgrim festival to the Lord for seven days in the year. This is a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you must celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You must live in temporary shelters for seven days; every native citizen in Israel must live in shelters, 43 so that your future generations may know that I made the Israelites live in shelters when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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1 Enoch 99:2
Pseudepigrapha
1 Woe to you who engage in godlessness, and glory in lying and extol them: You shall perish, and no happy life shall be yours. 2 Woe to those who distort the words of truth, and violate the eternal law, and transform themselves into what they were not [into sinners]: They shall be trodden underfoot upon the earth. 3 In those days, prepare yourselves, righteous ones, to raise your prayers as a memorial, and set them as a testimony before the angels, that they may present the sins of the sinners as a memorial before the Most High. 4 In those days the nations shall be stirred up, and the families of the nations shall rise on the day of destruction.
Date: 200-50 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Many scholars familiar with the Enochic corpus are struck by the lack of attention the collection pays to the law. To begin with, there are few references to the Sinaitic covenant and to torah, as Nickelsburg notes. The only explicit mention of the Sinai covenant occurs in the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:6). In contradistinction, the author of the Animal Apocalypse, while transparently alluding to the Sinai theophany, neglects to mention the establishment of a covenant or the giving of torah (compare 1 Enoch 89:29–35). Even the word for ‘covenant’ is rare, according to Nickelsburg; in addition to 1 Enoch 93:6, it occurs with the sense of ‘covenant’ in 1 Enoch 99:2 and 106:13. In the case of 1 Enoch 99:2, Nickelsburg maintains, it is uncertain that the expression ‘eternal covenant’ found in this verse refers to the Mosaic covenant; in the second instance, 1 Enoch 106:13 refers expressly to a heavenly covenant violated by the watchers. Still Nickelsburg admits, following the conclusions of Hartman, that covenantal language familiar from the Pentateuch is used in 1 Enoch 1–5 ..."
Bautch, Kelley Coblentz
A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17-19: “No One Has Seen What I Have Seen.”
(pp. 289-290) Brill, 2003
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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