The Third Parable

Chapter 58

1 And I began to speak the third Parable concerning the righteous and elect. 2 Blessed are you, righteous and elect, for your destiny shall be glorious. 3 The righteous will be in the light of the sun, and the elect in the light of eternal life; their days shall be endless, and the days of the holy beyond count.⁠ 4 They shall seek the light and find righteousness with the Lord of Spirits; there shall be peace for the righteous in the name of the Eternal Lord.⁠ 5 After this, it shall be said to the holy in heaven that they should seek out the secrets of righteousness, the heritage of faith; for it has become as bright as the sun upon earth, and the darkness has passed. 6 There shall be a light that never ends, and they shall not experience a limit of days, for the darkness will have been destroyed, and the light established before the Lord of Spirits; the light of uprightness established forever before the Lord of Spirits.

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 58:4 and Matthew 6:33

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · New Testament

Summary

In 1 Enoch, those who seek the light and righteousness are promised a future where they will find peace. In Matthew, Jesus uses similar language in urging his audience to seek righteousness above all else.

Passages

1 Enoch 58:4

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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

Matthew 6:33

New Testament

31 So then, don’t worry saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For the unconverted pursue these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But above all pursue his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.

70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Matthew

References

"... In the book of Parables, the narrator affirms to have been given “a lot of eternal life” 1 Enoch 37:4. Does that mean life of special quality or life which lasts long, or even both? In 1 Enoch 40:9, eternal life is promised to the righteous (1 Enoch 40:9). At the beginning of the second parable, God predicts that He will transform heaven. The New heaven is full of blessing and light for eternity (1 Enoch 45:4). The future age consists then of blessing and of light. The idea of transformation implies the introduction of something new, something that did not exist before. In other words, the present age lacked blessing and light. This does not mean that the present age was deprived totally of blessing or of light. Besides, the light of the future age differs from the light of the present one, at least in degree, if not also in kind. In the future age, there will be light of the Sun, for the righteous; and light of life, for the chosen (1 Enoch 58:3). One may notice a parallelism here between Sun and life. The future tense here indicates that we are not dealing with the luminaries of the present age. The “light of the Sun” is already available in the present age. There is no need to announce it as an integral part of the transformed reality. Similarly, in the same verse, the expressions like “there is no end during the days of their life”, “the days of the holy ones is without number” are never used to describe the present age. Together with light and life, peace is mentioned as part of the future age (1 Enoch 58:4) ..."

Daniel Assefa, “The Future in 1 Enoch,” Laurentianum (2020): 193–194.

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

The Third Parable

1 Enoch108 chapters

Compare 1 Enoch 58:4 and Matthew 6:33

Summary

Passages

1 Enoch 58:4

Matthew 6:33

References

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