The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch, Charles translation) · 106 of 141 · tr. R.H. Charles
Chapter LXXXIII
THE DREAM-VISIONS (LXXXIII-XC.) LXXXIII. LXXXIV. First Dream-Vision on the Deluge . CHAPTER LXXXIII. 1. And now, my son Methuselah, I will show thee all my visions which I have seen, recounting them before thee. 2. Two visions I saw before I took a wife, and the one was quite unlike the other: the first when I was learning to write: the second before I took thy mother, (when) I saw a terrible vision. And regarding them I prayed to the p. 112 [paragraph continues] Lord. 3. I had laid me down in the house of my grandfather Mahalalel, (when) I saw in a vision how the heaven collapsed and was borne off and fell to the earth. 4. And when it fell to the earth I saw how the earth was swallowed up in a great abyss, and mountains were suspended on mountains, and hills sank down on hills, and high trees were rent from their stems, and hurled down and sunk in the abyss. 5. And thereupon a word fell into my mouth, and I lifted up (my voice) to cry aloud, and said: 'The earth is destroyed.' 6. And my grandfather Mahalalel waked me as I lay near him, and said unto me: 'Why dost thou cry so, my son, and why dost thou make such lamentation?' 7. And I recounted to him the whole vision which I had seen, and he said unto me: 'A terrible thing hast thou seen, my son, and of grave moment is thy dream-vision as to the secrets of all the sin of the earth: it must sink into the abyss and be destroyed with a great destruction. 8. And now, my son, arise and make petition to the Lord of glory, since thou art a believer, that a remnant may remain on the earth, and that He may not destroy the whole earth. 9. My son, from heaven all this will come upon the earth, and upon the earth there will be great destruction. 10. After that I arose and prayed and implored and besought, and wrote down my prayer for the generations of the world, and I will show everything to thee, my son Methuselah. 11. And when I had gone forth below and seen the heaven, and the sun rising in the east, and the moon setting in the west, and a few stars, and the whole earth, and everything as †He had known† it in the beginning, then I blessed the Lord of judgement and extolled Him because He had made the sun to go forth from the windows of the east, †and he ascended and rose on the face of the heaven, and set out and kept traversing the path shown unto him.
Themes
◆Divine Providencetheology
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text describes God knowing the beginning and actively ordering the cosmos, such as making the sun traverse the path shown unto him.
The 1 Enoch narrative in which a class of originally-good angelic beings (the Watchers) descends, mates with women, and teaches forbidden arts — the substrate that Gnostic archons inherits and inverts: archons are born malevolent, the Watchers fall through transgression.
The reference to the 'secrets of all the sin of the earth' alludes to the transgression of the Watchers central to the broader 1 Enoch narrative.
Final, collective cosmic judgment as an event in which the wicked are sentenced and the cosmos restored; distinct from psychopomp_journey (individual passage at death) and emphasising verdict where Zoroastrian frashokereti emphasises restoration.
[auto] The passage centers on a vision of the earth's destruction and the Lord of judgement sentencing the sin of the earth to the abyss.