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In Genesis, people begin calling on God's name in Enosh's time. In 3 Enoch, Enosh leads people in worshipping idols instead, making the same generation responsible for the beginning of false worship.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 4:26
Hebrew Bible
23 Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, listen to me! You wives of Lamech, hear my words! I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for hurting me. 24 If Cain is to be avenged seven times as much, then Lamech seventy-seven times!” 25 And Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son. She named him Seth, saying, “God has given me another child in place of Abel because Cain killed him.” 26 And a son was also born to Seth, whom he named Enosh. At that time people began to worship the Lord.
3 Enoch 5:6
Hebrew Book of Enoch
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
When the Holy One, blessed be He, went out and went in: from the Garden to Eden, from Eden to the Garden, from the Garden to Raqia and from Raqia to the Garden of Eden, then all and everyone saw the splendour of His Shekina and they were not injured, until the time of the generation of Enosh who was the head of all idol worshippers of the world. And what did the generation of Enosh do? They went from one end of the world to the other, and each one brought silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in heaps like mountains and hills making idols out of them throughout all the world. And they erected the idols in every quarter of the world: the size of each idol was 1000 parasangs.
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Notes and References
“... Here, the exegetical context is important to note. Although
1 Kgs
22:19 describes the heavenly worship of God, this prooftext is used in
3 Enoch 5 (§§7-8) to explain the opposite: the exact nature of the ido-
latry of Enosh’s Generation. As such, this passage presupposes rabbinic
exegetical traditions about Gen 4:26, which understood this verse as
specifying the “Generation of Enosh” as the predeluvian era in which
idolatry first arose.4? The Targumim, for instance, depict people at the
time of Enosh calling idols by the name of the Lord (Tg. Neof., Tg. Ps.-
J., Frg. Tg. ad Gen 4:26). As such, the origins of idolatry are under-
stood as the exact inversion of divine worship or, more specifically, as
the innovative adaptation of a proper mode of worship for an improper
object: idols. ...”
Annette Yoshiko Reed
From Asael and Semihazah to Uzzah, Azzah, and Azael: 3 Enoch 5 (§§7–8) and Jewish Reception-History of 1 Enoch
(p. 118) Mohr Siebeck, 2001
* 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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