1 Enoch

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Chapter 23

1 From there I went to another place to the west of the ends of the earth. 2 And I saw a burning fire which ran without resting, and did not pause in its course day or night⁠ but ran regularly. 3 And I asked saying: 'What is this that does not rest?' 4 Then Raguel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered me and said to me: 'This course of fire which you have seen is the fire in the west that pursues all the lights of heaven.'⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 23:4 and Bava Batra 84a

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Rabbinic

Summary

Rabbinic tradition in tractate Bava Batra explains that the red of the sunset is caused by the sun going over Gehenna at the edge of the world, echoing a cosmological tradition found in Jewish apocalyptic texts such as 1 Enoch.

Passages

1 Enoch 23:4

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

2 And I saw a burning fire which ran without resting, and did not pause in its course day or night but ran regularly. 3 And I asked saying: 'What is this that does not rest?' 4 Then Raguel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered me and said to me: 'This course of fire which you have seen is the fire in the west that pursues all the lights of heaven.'

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

Bava Batra 84a

Rabbinic · Babylonian Talmud

The Gemara asks: And according to that which entered our mind initially, that the sun is white, doesn’t it redden in the morning and evening? The Gemara answers: In the morning it becomes red as it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden, whose reflections give the light a red hue. In the evening the sun turns red because it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, whose fires redden the light. And there are those who say the opposite in explaining why the sun is red in the morning and the evening, i.e., in the morning it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, while in the evening it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden.

450–550 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Bava Batra

References

... connecting Enoch’s journey with voyages to the underworld. In the present form of the text, however, we would have only an allusion and not a functioning element. The verb in verse 4b is textually doubtful (see note b). According to the Greek (“provides”) the fire of the west reflects on the sky (and the sun) at the time of sunset. A similar idea is found in the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 84a. The sun’s rosy hue at dawn and sunset reflects the roses of Eden and the fire of Gehenna, through whose gates it passes. The reading of the Ethiopic (“receives”) may indicate that the sun sinks into a fire that renews it for its next rising. It is doubtful whether this fire is to be equated with the fire mentioned in chapter 23 (see commentary on 23:4). ...

George W. E. Nickelsburg, A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 1-36, 81-108 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 282, 310–311.

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 23:4 and Bava Batra 84a

Summary

Passages

1 Enoch 23:4

Bava Batra 84a

References

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