Texts in Conversation
In Genesis, God's spirit moves above the waters at creation. In 3 Enoch, that spirit is named as a wind beneath the cherubim, turning language about creation into a description of what surrounds God's throne.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 1:2
Hebrew Bible
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was hovering11 over the surface of the water. 3 God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light! 4 God saw that the light was good, so God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day. 6 God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water.”
3 Enoch 23:1
Hebrew Book of Enoch
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
R. Ishmael said: Metatron, the Angel, the Prince of the Presence, said to me: There are numerous winds blowing under the wings of the Kerubim. There blows "the Brooding Wind", as it is written (Gen. i. 2): "and the wind of God was brooding upon the face of the waters". There blows "the Strong Wind", as it is said (Ex. xiv. 21): "and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night". There blows "the East Wind" as it is written (Ex. x. 13): "the east wind brought the locusts". There blows "the Wind of Quails" as it is written (Num. xi. 31): "And there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails".
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Notes and References
“... Interestingly, too, the lengthy passage that describes the winds (3 Enoch
23, §35)59 does not make use of the metrological imagery that I noted to be sig-
nificant in the Parables; rather, it brings together an array of biblical texts that
speak of the winds and combines their imagery. In fact, there is only one point
in 3 Enoch where scales/balance imagery is used, in 18:20 (§27):
Why is his name called Šoqedḥozi? Because he weighs men’s merits in
scales in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he.60
So, while there appears to be more entanglement with the content of Parables
of Enoch and 2 Enoch than is seen in the biblical material or even in b.Ḥagigah, ...”
Macaskill, Grant
The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity
(p. 138) Brill, 2024
* 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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