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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 1 Enoch 85:3 and Jubilees 4:20

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

Jubilees and 1 Enoch both name Enoch’s wife, calling her Edni or Edna. This detail, not found in Genesis, points to an expanded tradition and connection between the two texts and reflects later Jewish traditions that give biblical figures extra detail.

Passages

1 Enoch 85:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
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

Jubilees 4:20

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
19 And what was and what will be he saw in a vision of his sleep, as it will happen to the human beings throughout their generations until the day of judgment; he saw and understood everything, and wrote his testimony, and placed the testimony on earth for all the human beings and for their generations. 20 And in the twelfth jubilee, [582-88] in its seventh week, he married a woman named Edna, the daughter of Danel, the daughter of his father's brother, and in the sixth year in this week [587] she bore him a son and he named him Methuselah. 21 And he was moreover with the angels of God these six jubilees of years, and they showed him everything which is on earth and in the heavens, the rule of the sun, and he wrote down everything.
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

References

"... Jubilees 4:20 ... Enoch's wife, Jubilees notes, was Edni ... 'Edna' in 1 Enoch 85:3 ..."
James L. Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 49.

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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1 Enoch 85:3 and Jubilees 4:20

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