1 Enoch

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Chapter 104

1 I swear to you, that in heaven the angels remember you for good before the glory of the Great One: and your names are written before the glory of the Great One.⁠ 2 Be hopeful; for previously you were shamed through suffering and affliction; but now you shall shine as the lights of heaven,⁠ you shall shine and you shall be seen, and the portals of heaven shall be opened to you.⁠ 3 And in your cry, cry for judgment, and it shall appear to you; for all your tribulation shall be visited on the rulers, and on all who helped those who plundered you. 4 Be hopeful, and do not cast away your hopes for you shall have great joy as the angels of heaven. 5 What shall you be obliged to do? You shall not have to hide on the day of the great judgment and you shall not be found as sinners, and the eternal judgment shall be far from you for all the generations of the world. 6 And now, do not fear, you righteous, when you see the sinners growing strong and prospering in their ways: do not be companions with them, but stay away from their violence; for you shall become companions of the armies of heaven. 7 And, although you sinners say: 'All our sins shall not be searched out and written down,' nevertheless, all your sins shall be recorded every day. 8 And now I show you that light and darkness, day and night, see all your sins. 9 Don't be godless in your hearts, and do not lie nor alter the words of uprightness,⁠ nor charge with lying the words of the Holy Great One, nor take account of your idols; for all your lying and all your godlessness do not result in righteousness but in great sin.⁠ 10 And now I know this mystery, that sinners will alter and pervert the words of righteousness in many ways, and will speak wicked words, and lie, and practice great deceits, and write books concerning their words. 11 But when they write down truthfully all my words in their languages, and do not change or diminish anything from my words but write them all down truthfully - all that I first testified concerning them. 12 Then, I know another mystery, that books will be given to the righteous and the wise to become a cause of joy and uprightness and much wisdom. 13 And to them the books will be given, and they will believe in them and rejoice over them, and then all the righteous who have learned from all the paths of uprightness will be recompensed.

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 104:2 and Matthew 13:43

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · New Testament

Summary

In Matthew 13, Jesus describes the righteous shining like the sun, drawing on Daniel and 1 Enoch where the wise and faithful are said to shine like the stars. Jesus uses this language to describe the transformation of the righteous in the age to come.

Passages

1 Enoch 104:2

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

1 I swear to you, that in heaven the angels remember you for good before the glory of the Great One: and your names are written before the glory of the Great One. 2 Be hopeful; for previously you were shamed through suffering and affliction; but now you shall shine as the lights of heaven, you shall shine and you shall be seen, and the portals of heaven shall be opened to you. 3 And in your cry, cry for judgment, and it shall appear to you; for all your tribulation shall be visited on the rulers, and on all who helped those who plundered you.

300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

Matthew 13:43

New Testament

40 As the poisonous weeds are collected and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom everything that causes sin as well as all lawbreakers. 42 They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The one who has ears had better listen! 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field, that a person found and hid. Then because of joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.

70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Matthew

References

"... In the Pseudepigrapha the association of stars with angels is even more explicit in the context of the angelic transformation of the seer. Martha Himmelfarb claims that part of the reason for the use of star terminology may lie with the widespread idea of astral immortality in the Graeco-Roman world. Yet since the connection between stars and angels was clearly long held in the Old Testament, surely the astral terminology could just have easily come from this identification; once people came to assume angelic status for the righteous they also used the astral symbolism so normal to description of the heavenly hosts. Himmelfarb lists the Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 104:2-6), the Similitudes of Enoch 39:4-7 and 2 Baruch 51:10 as pseudepigraphic passages which identify angels and stars ... As Matthew Sim has noted it is the fact that Christ's garments are described as gleaming like the sun, or brighter than any fuller could reproduce, that indicates that he has entered some kind of angelic state. Sim likewise connects the bright garments of Christ during the resurrection with the appearance of the angel at the tomb in Mt 28:2-3 (who is described as having the appearance of lightning and a garment of snow) and the fact that the righteous are also described in Matthew (13:43) as shining like the sun when in their resurrected state. Thus the righteous are clothed in the same garb as the angels. ..."

Norman Ricklefs, “An Angelic Community: The Significance of Beliefs about Angels in the First Four Centuries of Christianity” (PhD diss., Macquarie University, 2002), 57, 155.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

1 Enoch108 chapters

Compare 1 Enoch 104:2 and Matthew 13:43

Summary

Passages

1 Enoch 104:2

Matthew 13:43

References

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