Texts in conversation

Compare Testament of Levi 3:2 and Pseudo Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32:7

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · Classical

Summary

The Testament of Levi and Pseudo-Philo build on details found in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish tradition where wind, snow, and hail are kept in divine storehouses, connecting it with traditions that describe cosmology with multiple heavens.

Passages

Testament of Levi 3:2

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs

1 Hear, therefore, about the heavens that have been shown to you. 2 The lowest is for this reason gloomy to you, since it sees all the unrighteous deeds of men. 3 And it has fire, snow, and ice made ready for the day of judgement, in the righteous judgement of God; for in it are all the spirits of the retributions for vengeance on men. 4 And in the second are the hosts of the armies which are ordained for the day of judgement, to work vengeance on the spirits of deceit and of Beliar.

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

Pseudo Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32:7

Classical

7 “And when their adversaries treated them harshly, the people cried out to the Lord, and their prayer was heard, and he brought them out from there, and led them to Mount Sinai, and revealed to them the foundation of understanding which he had prepared from the creation of the world; and then the foundation shook, the hosts sent forth the lightning on their paths, and the winds blew from their storehouses, and the earth was moved from her foundation, and the mountains and the rocks trembled in their places, and the clouds raised their waves against the flame of the fire that it should not consume the world. 8 “Then did the depths awake from their sources, and all the waves of the sea gathered. Then did Paradise exhale the scent of her fruits, and the cedars of Lebanon were uprooted from their foundations. And the animals of the field were frightened in the homes of the forests, and all his creations came together to witness the Lord when he established a covenant with the children of Israel. And all things that the Almighty said, these he observed, having Moses his beloved as a witness.

1–100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Pseudo Philo, Biblical Antiquities

References

"... Testament of Levi 3:2 is often noted as a parallel text to those in the Enochic corpus that speak of storehouses for the elements. While neither “storehouse” nor “treasury” is used, the text describes the heavens that Levi has seen, the lowest of which “contains fire, snow, and ice, ready for the day determined by God's righteous judgment.” One striking feature of this text (which is not paralleled in the Aramaic Levi Document) is that these elements are represented as substances of punishment. The parallel with the Enoch texts, which are interested in the elements as they contribute to meteorological phenomena and not only as they function in the eschatological judgement, is actually quite limited. If anything, there is a closer parallel to bḤagigah 12b, although this is also limited, since the elements listed do not entirely correspond. A limited correspondence can also be noted in Pseudo-Philo 32:7, and its description of God’s appearing at Sinai ..."

Grant Macaskill, “Meteorology and Metrology: Evaluating Parallels in the Ethiopic Parables of Enoch and 2 (Slavonic) Enoch,” JSP 29.2 (2019): 79–99.

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

Testament of Levi19 chapters

Compare Testament of Levi 3:2 and Pseudo Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32:7

Summary

Passages

Testament of Levi 3:2

Pseudo Philo, Biblical Antiquities 32:7

References

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