Texts in Conversation

1 Enoch depicts God asking rhetorical questions, similar to the questions asked of Job, that challenges humans' ability to understand divine power or purpose. 1 Enoch reshapes this tradition for an apocalyptic setting where these details are revealed.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE

Job 38:4

Hebrew Bible
3 Get ready for a difficult task like a man; I will question you, and you will inform me. 4Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you possess understanding. 5 Who set its measurements—if you know—or who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its bases set, or who laid its cornerstone— 7 when the morning stars sang in chorus, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 “Who shut up the sea with doors when it burst forth, coming out of the womb,
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)

1 Enoch 93:11

Pseudepigrapha
10 For who is there of all the children of men that is able to hear the voice of the Holy One without being troubled? And who can think His thoughts? And who is there that can behold all the works of heaven? 11 And how should there be one who could behold the heaven, and who is there that could understand the things of heaven and see a soul or a spirit and could tell thereof, or ascend and see all their ends and think them or do like them? 12 And who is there of all men that could know what is the breadth and the length of the earth, and to whom has been shown the measure of all of them? 13 Or is there anyone who could discern the length of the heaven and how great is its height, and upon what it is founded, and how great is the number of the stars, and where all the luminaries rest?
Date: 200-50 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References

#5242
"... 1 Enoch 93:11–14 combines the literary features of rhetorical questions and a catalogue of the hidden aspects of creation. Wisdom texts, such as Job 38–39 and Proverbs 30:1–4, also combine rhetorical questions and lists of places and things. The combination in Job and Proverbs makes the point that humankind cannot fathom the profound character of God’s works in much of creation. In so-called apocalyptic literature, however, such combinations serve an entirely different purpose. Michael Stone suggests that some primitive formulaic lists were first modified by verbs and then expanded by references to regularity and proportionality. In 1 Enoch 93:11–14, the speculative content of such lists has been further adapted to the interrogative formulation of the wisdom tradition. The rhetorical questions imply that human knowledge of (esoteric) created phenomena is now possible because it was revealed to Enoch and has been imparted to the righteous as an eschatological gift ..."

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