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1 Enoch

About this book

Enoch's Second Dream Vision

Chapter 85

1 After this I saw another dream, and I will tell you the whole dream, my son.⁠ 2 Enoch raised his voice and spoke to his son Methuselah: 'To you, my son, I will speak. Listen to my words, and pay attention to the dream-vision of your father.⁠ 3 Before I married your mother Edna, I saw in a vision on my bed:⁠ a bull came up out of the earth, and this bull was white; and after it came a heifer, and along with this heifer came two young bulls, one of them black and the other red. 4 The black bull attacked the red one and chased him across the earth,⁠ and after that I could no longer see the red bull. 5 But the black bull grew, and the heifer went with him, and I saw that many oxen came from him which looked like him and followed him. 6 The first cow left the presence of the first bull to search for the red one, but could not find him, and mourned for him with a great lamentation and searched for him. 7 I watched until the first bull returned to her and calmed her, and from that time on she cried no more. 8 Afterward she bore another white bull, and following him she bore many bulls and black cows. 9 In my sleep I saw that white bull also grow and become a great white bull, and from him came many white bulls that resembled him. 10 They began to produce many white bulls, which resembled them, one following another, many.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 2:7 and 1 Enoch 85:2

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

1 Enoch 85 begins a major section that contains an allegorical re-telling of biblical history, starting with the creation of Adam and going all the way through Israel's history through 2 Kings. It may also contain details from Ezra and Nehemiah.

Passages

Genesis 2:7

Hebrew Bible
7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.)
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

1 Enoch 85:2

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 After this I saw another dream, and I will tell you the whole dream, my son. 2 Enoch raised his voice and spoke to his son Methuselah: 'To you, my son, I will speak. Listen to my words, and pay attention to the dream-vision of your father. 3 Before I married your mother Edna, I saw in a vision on my bed: a bull came up out of the earth, and this bull was white; and after it came a heifer, and along with this heifer came two young bulls, one of them black and the other red. 4 The black bull attacked the red one and chased him across the earth, and after that I could no longer see the red bull.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... The author of the Vision has constructed his allegory through the creative and tendentious use of traditional materials. The outline of Enoch's account of human history and most of its details have been drawn from the narrative biblical books: Genesis through 2 Kings, and perhaps Ezra-Nehemiah ..."
George W. E. Nickelsburg, A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 1-36, 81-108 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 358.

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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Genesis 2:7 and 1 Enoch 85:2

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