1 Enoch

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Chapter 22

1 And from there I went to another place, and he showed me in the west another great and high mountain of hard rock. 2 And there were four deep, wide, and very smooth hollow places⁠ in it. How smooth and deep and dark they are to look at. 3 Then Raphael, one of the holy angels who was with me, said to me: 'These hollow places have been created specifically for the spirits of the souls of the dead to gather, so that all the souls of the children of men should gather here. 4 They are meant to assemble here until the day of their judgment and until their appointed time, until the great judgment comes upon them.' 5 I saw the spirit of a dead man pleading, and his voice rose to heaven and made a plea. 6 And I asked Raphael the angel who was with me, and I said to him: 'This spirit that pleads, whose is it, whose voice rises and makes a plea to heaven?' 7 And he answered me saying: 'This is the spirit of Abel, whom his brother Cain killed, and he pleads against him until his seed is wiped from the face of the earth, and his descendants are destroyed among the seed of men.' 8 Then I asked about it, and about all the hollow places: 'Why is one separated from the other?' 9 And he answered me and said: 'These three have been made so that the spirits of the dead might be separated. And such a division has been made for the spirits of the righteous,⁠ which includes the bright spring of⁠ water.⁠ 10 And one has been made for sinners when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not been executed on them in their lifetime. 11 Here their spirits shall be kept in great pain until the great day of judgment and punishment and torment of those who are cursed forever, and retribution for their spirits.⁠ There they shall be bound forever. 12 And such a division has been made for the spirits of those who make their plea, who testify about their destruction, when they were killed in the days of the sinners. 13 Such has been made for the spirits of men who were not righteous but sinners, who were complete in transgression, and they shall be companions of the transgressors; but their spirits shall not be slain on the day of judgment nor shall they be raised from there.' 14 Then I blessed the Lord of glory and said: 'Blessed be my Lord, the Lord of righteousness, who rules forever.'

Texts in conversation

Compare Epic of Gilgamesh VII 184 and 1 Enoch 22:2

Ancient Near East, Babylonian · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

Summary

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu dreams of the House of Dust where all the dead dwell together. 1 Enoch 22 reshapes this tradition, describing hollow places within a mountain where the spirits of the dead are separated by their conduct in life.

Passages

Epic of Gilgamesh VII 184

Ancient Near East, Babylonian

184 to lead me captive to the house of darkness, the seat of Irkalla: 185 to the house which those who enter cannot leave, 186 on the journey whose way cannot be retraced; 187 to the house whose residents are deprived of light, 188 where dust is their sustenance, their food clay. 189 They are clad like birds in coats of feathers, 190 and they cannot see light (but) dwell in darkness. 191 On the door [and the bolt the dust lies thick,] 192 on the House [(of Dust) a deathly quiet is poured.] 193 In the House of Dust that I entered, 194 I looked and (saw) the crowns stowed away: 195 there sat [kings], the crowned heads who ruled the land since days of old, 196 who used to serve roasted meat [at the] tables of Anu and Enlil, 197 who used to serve baked (bread), to pour chilled water from skins. 198 In the House of Dust that I entered, 199 there sat en-priests and lagar-priests; 200 there sat purification priests and lumaḫḫu-priests,

2100 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Epic of Gilgamesh

1 Enoch 22:2

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

1 And from there I went to another place, and he showed me in the west another great and high mountain of hard rock. 2 And there were four deep, wide, and very smooth hollow places in it. How smooth and deep and dark they are to look at. 3 Then Raphael, one of the holy angels who was with me, said to me: 'These hollow places have been created specifically for the spirits of the souls of the dead to gather, so that all the souls of the children of men should gather here. 4 They are meant to assemble here until the day of their judgment and until their appointed time, until the great judgment comes upon them.' 5 I saw the spirit of a dead man pleading, and his voice rose to heaven and made a plea. 6 And I asked Raphael the angel who was with me, and I said to him: 'This spirit that pleads, whose is it, whose voice rises and makes a plea to heaven?'

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

References

“… This is precisely the most important divergence between the Homeric beyond and that of the Gilgamesh epic. In the latter, the idea of post-mortem rewards and punishments is treated most extensively. For instance, in Enkidu’s description the category of sexuality/fecundity is discussed so extensively as to embrace almost all kinds of people who descend to the netherworld. At the same time this criterion is not the only one applied to the defunct in order to determine their post-mortem situation: there are many other criteria, such as various circumstances of death, as well as categories including disobedience to parents, perjury or incorrect behaviour toward the gods. The picture drawn in the Epic of Gilgamesh implies that the post-mortem destiny of all people is defined either by how they conducted their lives or by the events of their lives. Focusing on this principle, we should note that the idea, reflected in the journey of Enoch, that all people after death will be classified according to certain circumstances of their lives even before the last eschatological judgement, with some of them receiving punishment and others being treated well, corresponds to the Mesopotamian principle and contradicts the Homeric one. …”

Ekaterina Matusova, “The Post-mortem Divisions of the Dead in 1 Enoch 22:1–13,” in Evil and Death: Conceptions of the Human in Biblical, Early Jewish, Greco-Roman and Egyptian Literature (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 157–159.

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 Epic of Gilgamesh VII 184 and 1 Enoch 22:2

Summary

Passages

Epic of Gilgamesh VII 184

1 Enoch 22:2

References

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