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1 Enoch

About this book

Enoch's Journey to the Northwest

Chapter 17

1 And they brought me to a place where those present were like flaming fire, and when they wished, they appeared as men.⁠ 2 And they led me to a place of darkness,⁠ and to a mountain whose peak reached to heaven.⁠ 3 And I saw the places of the sun and moon and the treasuries of the stars and of the thunder in the utmost depths, where there was a fiery bow and arrows and their quiver, and a fiery sword and all the lightnings.⁠ 4 And they took me to the living waters,⁠ and to the fire of the west, which receives every setting of the sun.⁠ 5 And I came to a river of fire where the fire flows like water and pours into the great sea towards the west.⁠ 6 I saw the great rivers and came to the great river and to the great darkness, and went to the place where no flesh walks. 7 I saw the mountains of the darkness of winter and the place from where all the waters of the deep flow. 8 I saw the mouths of all the rivers of the earth and the mouth of the deep.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Genesis 3:24 and 1 Enoch 17:3

Septuagint · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

1 Enoch 17 refers to a flaming sword, echoing the imagery found in the Greek Septuagint translation of Genesis 3 where a flaming sword guards the tree of life. Some translations of 1 Enoch are clearly aware of Hellenistic Greek traditions.

Passages

LXX Genesis 3:24

Septuagint
22 And God said, Look, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now for fear that at any time he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life and eat, and so he shall live forever... 23 So the Lord God sent him forth out of the garden of Delight to cultivate the ground out of which he was taken. 24 And he cast out Adam and caused him to dwell over against the garden of Delight, and stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the way of the tree of life.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

1 Enoch 17:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And they brought me to a place where those present were like flaming fire, and when they wished, they appeared as men. 2 And they led me to a place of darkness, and to a mountain whose peak reached to heaven. 3 And I saw the places of the sun and moon and the treasuries of the stars and of the thunder in the utmost depths, where there was a fiery bow and arrows and their quiver, and a fiery sword and all the lightnings. 4 And they took me to the living waters, and to the fire of the west, which receives every setting of the sun. 5 And I came to a river of fire where the fire flows like water and pours into the great sea towards the west.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... The Ethiopian has in addition “and a flaming sword,” for which compare the “flaming sword” of Genesis 3:24 (LXX) ..."
Michael A. Knibb, “The Use of Scripture in 1 Enoch 17–19,” in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome: Studies in Ancient Cultural Interaction in Honour of A. Hilhorst, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, JSJSup 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 167.

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

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LXX Genesis 3:24 and 1 Enoch 17:3

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