1 Enoch

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Chapter 3

1 Observe and notice how, during winter, all the trees appear as if they have withered and lost all their leaves, except for fourteen trees that do not shed their foliage⁠ but keep the old leaves for two to three years until the new ones arrive.

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 3:1 and Testament of Levi 9:11

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Pseudepigrapha, Testaments

Summary

1 Enoch describes fourteen evergreen trees that keep their leaves all winter. The Testament of Levi treats follows a similar tradition, interpreting it as a priestly rule, naming twelve leafy trees as the only wood fit for the altar.

Passages

1 Enoch 3:1

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

1 Observe and notice how, during winter, all the trees appear as if they have withered and lost all their leaves, except for fourteen trees that do not shed their foliage but keep the old leaves for two to three years until the new ones arrive.

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

Testament of Levi 9:11

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs

10 “Take, therefore, for yourself a wife without blemish or corruption, while you are still young, and not from the lineage of foreign nations. 11 And before entering the holy place, bathe; and when you offer the sacrifices, wash; and again, when you finish the sacrifice, wash. Of twelve trees having leaves, offer to the Lord, as Abraham also taught me. 12 And of every clean beast and bird, offer a sacrifice to the Lord.

100 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Testament of Levi

References

"... priestly halakhah in the Aramaic Levi Document (4Q214b [4QLevif ar] fragments 2-6 and Bodleian c, Athos Greek), in Testament of Levi 9:12, and in Jubilees 21:13 is emphatic that the wood to be used on the altar should not be seasoned or dry. To this effect it should come, rather, from a prescribed list of (twelve or fourteen) evergreen trees (Jubilees 21:12, 14). And bringing it to the temple in late summer helps ensure that, unlike later rabbinic practice, even the evergreen wood that will be used in abundance in Tishri has not been unnecessarily dried out by the intense heat of summer. In Jubilees these regulations are found “written in the books of [Abraham’s] forefathers, in the words of Enoch and the words of Noah” (21:10). ..."

Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “The Book of Watchers and the Cycle of New Year Festivals,” in With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism in Honor of Rachel Elior, ed. Daphna V. Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov, Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 161.

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 3:1 and Testament of Levi 9:11

Summary

Passages

1 Enoch 3:1

Testament of Levi 9:11

References

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