Texts in conversation

Compare 2 Enoch 25:3 and Chagigah 12a

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Rabbinic

Summary

2 Enoch and Rabbinic tradition in tractate Chagigah echo a tradition that addresses the question of how light could exist before the creation of the stars by describing a unique, divine, primordial light created independent of any physical source.

Passages

2 Enoch 25:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Secrets of Enoch

1 I commanded in the very lowest parts, that visible things should come down from invisible, and Adoil came down very great, and I saw him, 2 and he had a belly of great light. And I said to him: 'Become undone, Adoil, and let the visible come out of you.' 3 And he came undone, and a great light came out. And I was in the middle of the great light, and as light is born from light, a great age emerged, and showed all creation, which I had thought to create. 4 And I saw that it was good. And I placed for myself a throne, and took my seat on it, and said to the light: 'Go up higher and fix yourself high above the throne, and be a foundation to the highest things.'

1–100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Enoch

Chagigah 12a

Rabbinic · Babylonian Talmud

The Gemara poses a question: And was light created on the first day? But isn’t it written: “And God set them in the firmament of the heaven” (Genesis 1:17), and it is also written: “And there was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day” (Genesis 1:19), indicating that light was created on the fourth day. The Gemara answers: This should be understood in accordance with Rabbi Elazar, as Rabbi Elazar said: The light that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created on the first day was not that of the sun but a different kind of light, through which man could observe from one end of the world to the other. But when the Holy One, Blessed be He, looked upon the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion and saw that their ways were corrupt and that they might misuse this light for evil, He arose and concealed it from them, as it is stated: “And from the wicked their light is withheld” (Job 38:15).

450–550 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Chagigah

References

"... God says on the first day, 'Let there be light' (Genesis 1:3). But the light created on the first day could not have been sunlight or the light of the moon or stars, since these heavenly bodies were not created until the fourth day. Many ancient writers therefore said that it was a special light that enabled God to see as He created the world ... If so, then perhaps it was a light unlike any other, one that illuminated all of creation at once ... Another possibility was that the light that was later to come from heavenly bodies was created, or conceived, on the first day, even though the heavenly bodies themselves were not created until the fourth ..."

James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 57.

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

2 Enoch73 chapters

Compare 2 Enoch 25:3 and Chagigah 12a

Summary

Passages

2 Enoch 25:3

Chagigah 12a

References

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