Two Slavonic forms of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch survive, and the edition this page reads — R. H. Charles’s Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Oxford, 1913) — prints them side by side in one translator’s English. This page measured the two against each other for chapters 23–42, and one finding was not guessable. The longer text, A, tells creation as a counted week: in these twenty chapters an ordinal day — the first day to the eighth day — is named fourteen times, five days are marked by an evening and a morning, the seventh is blessed as the Sabbath, and the eighth is appointed the first-created after my work. The shorter text, B, tells the same creation — the light, the darkness, the waters, the fire, the trees, the creatures of the sea — and numbers no day at all. It has no Sabbath, no eighth day, no Adam formed and named, no Eve and no devil. And where A says Enoch wrote 366 books, B says 360. Every word measured here is one man’s English, so the page can say what each recension carries; it cannot say what the Slavonic reads, and it never says which recension added or dropped anything. 2 Enoch is not Scripture for us, and not deuterocanonical either. See the method →
2 Enoch — the Book of the Secrets of Enoch — is a revelation in Enoch’s voice: his ascent through the heavens, the Lord’s own account of creation and of the books Enoch is to give his sons, and his return to earth to instruct them. Charles’s introduction (1913) says it “has, so far as is yet known, been preserved only in Slavonic” and that “2 Enoch in its present form was written somewhere about the beginning of the Christian era.” That date is Charles’s, reported and not tested. It is not Scripture for us, and it is not deuterocanonical either. We read it as we read the other books on this shelf — as a witness to how Genesis and the hope of judgment were retold outside the canon — critically, gratefully for the light it throws, and testing everything by the canon. Where it carries what Genesis does not — an eighth day, angels made from fire, a man of seven consistencies, a devil who sets himself against Adam — this page reports it and does not adopt it.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD: both recensions in N. Forbes’s English as printed in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), pp. 425–469, public domain — A, the longer (340 rows with the prologue), and B, the shorter (228 rows); the editorial section titles, kept apart from the text; the verse-boundary file; the OCR of Charles’s notes in that volume and of the 1896 edition (Morfill and Charles). For comparison: the Masoretic Hebrew, the CATSS Greek Old Testament (30,348 units screened), the SBLGNT (7,927 verses), Charles’s English of Jubilees and the Revised Version (1895) of 4 Ezra.
NOT HELD, and not available in clean public-domain form: any Slavonic text of 2 Enoch, of either recension; any later edition or translation (Stage 5 names them); the page images of the 1913 volume.
CONSEQUENCE: no word run can be computed between 2 Enoch and any Greek or Hebrew text. The Septuagint and New Testament screens this shelf runs on other books cannot run here, so every Genesis, Septuagint and New Testament connection on this page is set side by side and named, never measured. What IS measured is A against B in one translator’s English — which labels each has, how long each is, which words and names each carries, and the longest run of consecutive English words each verse shares with the other recension. That tracks shared content. It cannot speak to Slavonic wording, and it cannot say which recension is older or which added or dropped anything. The Greek counts in Stage 3 measure the Greek Bible, not 2 Enoch.
2 Enoch 23:1–42:14 — twelve places, in both recensions
English: N. Forbes in R. H. Charles, APOT 2 (Oxford, 1913) · A (longer) and B (shorter), named on every lineB · shorter 23:1 “…And Vretil was telling me thirty days and thirty nights, his lips talking unintermittently. And I did not rest thirty days and thirty nights writing all the signs, and when I finished, I had written three hundred and sixty books.”
Three hundred and sixty-six in A; three hundred and sixty in B. A gives 366 again at 68:2, and its editorial title over chapter 23 says it a third time; B has no chapter 68, and this is its only count of the books. Both recensions give Enoch 365 years at 1:1. The days differ in shape too: A has double thirty days and thirty nights — Charles’s note on it begins “double thirty days. Cf.” and points to the sixty days of A 68:1 — while B has thirty of telling and thirty of writing. The page does not say which number is older or what either was meant to mean.
B · shorter 27:4 — no row in B — B’s chapter 27 has two verses, 27:1 and 27:2
The first evening and morning, and the first numbered day of creation, in either recension. In A the light out of Adoil (25), the darkness out of Archas (26) and the waters with their seven circles (27:1–3) all come before it, and so do all three of A’s I saw that it was good (25:3–4, 26:3, 27:3). B tells the same three things — Idoil, Aruchas, a road of water over the darkness — and closes no day.
B · shorter 29:1 “And for all the heavenly troops I formed the sun out of the great light, and put it in the heavens that it should shine over the earth.”
The same seven words, and then two different worlds. And for all the heavenly troops I is the deepest run either verse makes with the other recension — seven words, tie band 1 from both sides. In A it comes after the second day and after Charles’s square brackets round Monday is the first day (his note: “bracketed as a Christian interpolation”, like the Tuesday to Friday of chapter 30), and it leads to fire and to angels. In B it opens the verse and leads to the sun, formed out of the great light — so in B the sun stands before the trees of 30:1, where in A (30:1, then 30:2–5) and in Genesis (1:11–12, then 1:14–19) the plants come first.
B · shorter 29:4–5 — no row in B — B’s chapter 29 has 29:1 and 29:3 only
The text names no one. The name stands in the editorial title printed above 29:4 — “Here Satanail with his angels was thrown down from the height.” — and Charles’s note says “This is clearly Satan.” In A’s text Satanail stands once, at 18:3; at 31:4 the devil is called Sotona (inside Charles’s daggers) and Satomail. In all 228 rows of B none of those names, and not the word devil, occurs. Isaiah 14:13–14 is set beside this in Stage 4; it cannot be measured against it.
B · shorter 30:1 “And the earth I commanded to bring forth all kinds of tree and high hills, all kinds of grass and all kinds of seed that are sown, before I created living souls, and prepared food for them.”
With A’s 30:1, B’s shares no run longer than two words (I created, I commanded, the earth, and the), and only A’s counts a day. (B 30:1’s deepest run with any verse of A is three words, the earth I, tie band 2 — A 28:3 and 40:4,6,7.) A: the third day was. [Tuesday]. On the third day. B: no day. A plants Paradise on the third day, as Charles’s English of Jubilees 2:7 puts “the garden of Eden, in Eden” among the works of the third day; Genesis 2:8 plants the garden and gives it no day.
B · shorter 30:7 “And the sea I commanded to bring forth and give birth to its fishes, all kinds of reptiles that creep over the earth, and wild beasts and cattle. and all kinds of feathered birds.”
Both recensions put the land animals into the sea’s command — A’s creatures going forth over the earth on four legs, B’s wild beasts and cattle. In the CATSS Greek of Genesis 1:24 it is the earth that is told ἐξαγαγέτω ἡ γῆ ψυχὴν ζῶσαν κατὰ γένος τετράποδα (let the earth bring forth living soul after its kind, four-footed things), on the sixth day. Charles’s note: “Note that most of the sixth day creations are here assigned to the fifth day.” But the word fifth stands only in A.
B · shorter 30:13–15 — no row in B — B’s chapter 30 has 30:1, 30:7 and 30:8 only
The verse Charles numbered first among his proofs that part of the book was written in Greek. His introduction: “Adam’s name is here derived from the initial letters of the Greek names of the four quarters” — and “This fancy was first elaborated in Greek, as this derivation is impossible in Semitic languages.” Forbes’s English gives the quarters as east, west, south, north, an order whose Greek initials run Α, Δ, Μ, Α; Charles’s note on 30:13 says of the Sibylline line he compares, “the order of letters is wrong”. Stage 3 counts the four Greek words in the Greek Bible. The verse starts of 30:14,15 are a low-confidence editorial inference, so 30:13 and 30:14,15 are printed together.
B · shorter 32:2–33:2 — no row in B — B has no chapter 32, and its chapter 33 begins at 33:3
The word Sabbath stands once in all 340 rows of A, here, and nowhere in B. The phrase eighth day stands twice in A, both in 33:1, and nowhere in B. The verse says the seventh thousand and the eighth thousand; it does not say seven thousand years — that phrase is in the editorial title above chapter 33: “its existence of seven thousand years”. The word first-created stands twice in A, at 33:1 and at 28:5 (This day I called me the first-created) — an echo, but Charles’s note on 28:5 reads “This verse should be read immediately after xxix” and “together with that chapter should be restored before xxviii” — “This is clear from the analogy of xxx. 1, 2, 7, 8” — and judges it “impossible in its present position”. The page does not adopt the reorder, and builds nothing on 28:5.
B · shorter 33:10–11 “…because thy handwriting and the handwriting of thy fathers Adam and Seth shall not be destroyed till the end of time,…”
Six fathers in A, so Enoch is the seventh — the count Jude 14 makes in ἕβδομος ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ Ἑνὼχ (seventh from Adam, Enoch), and the same six fathers, in the same order, as the CATSS Genesis 5:3–18. B names two, Adam and Seth, and goes on (33:11–12) to the angels Orioch and Marioch keeping the handwriting through the deluge — rows A does not have. Forbes’s English titles Michael the archistratege in A and my general in B; whether that is one Slavonic word or two, an English translation cannot show. B’s split between 33:10 and 33:11 falls inside the quoted sentence and is a medium-confidence inference (B’s low-confidence break here is the start of 33:10), so the two are quoted as one.
B · shorter 35:1 “And I shall leave over one just man with all his house, who shall work according to my will (sc. who shall be found to have been working, &c.), and from their seed shall rise another race afterwards, very numerous and insatiable.”
The editorial title over A’s chapter 35 announces a man whom only B’s verse contains. It reads “God leaves one righteous man of Enoch’s tribe with his whole house, who did God’s pleasure according to his will.” — and no verse of A’s chapter 35 has the one righteous man. B’s does: one just man with all his house. Neither names him, and neither says of Enoch’s tribe; Charles’s note reads B’s man as “just man (B), i.e. Noah.” The identification is Charles’s.
B · shorter 41:2 “‘Blessed is he who has not been born, or who having been born has not sinned before God, that he may not be come to this place, nor have borne this yoke.’”
Seven consecutive English words in common, tie band 1 from both sides — who has not been born or who — one of the ten shared labels where the two recensions reach seven words or more. Ecclesiastes 4:3 and Matthew 26:24 are set beside it in Stage 4.
B · shorter 42:12 “Blessed is he in whom is truth, that he may speak truth to his neighbour.”
The beatitude Blessed is stands eight times in B’s 41:2–42:14 and once in A’s chapters 23–42 (41:2, the one beatitude both have; A also has the verb blessed at 31:7, 32:1 and 32:2, and B the adjective twice at 42:3). The shorter recension carries the longer run of beatitudes. Zechariah 8:16 and Ephesians 4:25 are set beside this one in Stage 4.
The two are not a text and its variants. In chapters 23–42 A runs to 104 rows and 3,608 words; B to 66 rows and 1,815. They share 50 verse labels; A has 54 that B lacks (1,623 words) and B has 16 that A lacks (345 words). At the 50 shared labels no verse is the same in both, and the median longest run of consecutive words is 4.5. So every line above names its recension, and nothing on this page is merged.
On the columns. Every English line is cut by code from the corpus transcription (four OCR passes of three printed copies, voted word by word) and compared with it character for character by the page’s self-check. Forbes’s glosses in parentheses — (sc. …), (lit. …), (sic) — are his and are kept. Charles’s signs are kept: [ ] words he judged interpolated, † † words he judged corrupt. Italics in the 1913 print (words the translator supplied) could not be carried into the transcription. Italic English in the prose that is not labelled A or B is this page’s own gloss.
Versification — a third state, stated because it is not the usual one. There is no Masoretic, no Septuagint, no KJV, no Vulgate and no Slavonic 2 Enoch on this disk: the shelf’s King James loader raises on 2 Enoch, the Clementine Vulgate has no such book, and the CATSS loader finds no file. So there is no MT/LXX offset, no KJV shape and no Vulgate shape to report.
Every chapter and verse number on this page is an editor’s. Forbes’s introduction (1913, p. 426) says “in the incomplete version (B) there is no division into paragraphs” and “in neither A nor B is there any division of the paragraphs into verses”; its footnote: “This division into verses was necessarily made by the General Editor when he edited this book in 1896.” B’s numbers are assigned by its parallels with A.
Shapes, counted (rows per chapter, 23–42): A 5·5·5·3·4·5·5·17·8·2·10·3·3·2·2·3·8·10·2·2 = 104; B 1·5·5·2·2·2·2·3·–·–·9·3·3·2·1·–·4·8·2·12 = 66 (no chapters 31, 32 or 38).
The offsets that do exist are between the two recensions, and there are four kinds. (1) Labels one has and the other lacks: 50 shared, 54 in A only, 16 in B only. A has no 23:3 and no 40:5, and nothing between 42:1 and 42:14; B’s 23 is a single verse, its 30 has only 1, 7 and 8, and its 33 begins at 3. (2) Combined labels: A prints 14, 15 against one verse of chapter 30 and 4, 6, 7 against one of chapter 40 (Charles’s note there reports an addition in Sokolov’s text, which is not held); B prints 1, 2 against one verse of chapter 28. (3) B’s printed order: its 39 runs 2, 7, 6, 9; its 40 runs 1, 8, 9, 10 and then a second 9 and 10 (held as 9b and 10b), 11, 12; its 42 runs …7, 9, 8, 10… (4) Verse starts are inferred from numbers printed only in the margin: in these chapters 16 of A’s 104 starts and 5 of B’s 66 are rated low-confidence in the transcription’s boundary file. Where the page prints one, it prints it joined to its neighbour, so no quoted word hangs on the inferred break.
The picker cells are chapters 23–42 of this numbering (Charles 1896, kept in 1913). No later edition is held, so the page has not compared this numbering with any other.
The Shape of the Passage
Frame (measured) around a sequence — not a chiasmInside the frame the two recensions part company. A’s week is built two ways: the first two days are closed, in the printed order, by the formula after their works (27:4, 29:1; Charles would move chapter 29 before 28, see the codex), the third to the sixth are announced before them (On the third day I commanded…, 30:1, 2, 7, 8), the seventh is blessed (32:2) and the eighth appointed (33:1). B has none of the three.
This is NOT offered as a chiasm. What follows the second frame (37–42) does not mirror what comes before the first; the page claims a frame of vocabulary, measured, and a sequence.
⚠️ Where this page sits. 2 Enoch is filed here under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple. It is not Scripture for us and not deuterocanonical; it is read as a witness and tested by the canon. Nothing taught at Pleasant Springs rests on it.
Author
Anonymous, and speaking as Enoch. Chapters 23–42 are Enoch’s report in the first person: in 23 an angel dictates and he writes; from 24 to 36 the Lord speaks to him, so that the account of creation is the Lord’s own I — the pronoun stands 128 times in A’s chapters 23–42 and 70 times in B’s; from 39 Enoch speaks to his sons.
What Charles thought, labelled as Charles’s. His introduction (1913): “Its final editor was an Hellenistic Jew, and the place of its composition was Egypt.” He also wrote that “The whole Messianic teaching of the Old Testament does not find a single echo in the work of this Hellenized Israelite” — worth knowing before reading the words My second coming at A 32:1, which the Lord speaks there and which Charles’s note takes as “God’s coming to judge the earth”. None of this is tested here.
The manuscripts are late. Forbes’s introduction describes A’s manuscript as a South Russian copy of the second half of the seventeenth century (published by Popov, 1880) and B’s as a Serbian copy of the sixteenth century in the Public Library at Belgrade (published by Novaković, 1884). Reported from the 1913 introduction; neither manuscript is held.
Audience
Inside the book, Enoch’s household. Let all my household come together (A 38:3); Oh my children, my beloved ones (A 39:1). My children stands four times in A’s chapters 39–40 and four times in B’s 39–42 (twice in 42:6).
And, by the book’s own claim, readers much later. The Lord says the books will be shown to the faithful men and workers of my pleasure (A 35:2) in a generation that arises much afterwards (A 35:1). It is presented as a book written to be found.
Whoever first read it, these two copies were not the same book. As Forbes renders them, the sixteenth-century Serbian copy tells a creation with no days in it, and the seventeenth-century Russian copy a week with an eighth day. That is as far as the text itself takes the question of audience.
Orient on the book, on its two Slavonic forms, and on why the second one matters.
Search by topic: 2 Enoch; Slavonic Enoch; Book of the Secrets of Enoch; Enoch traditions; Adoil; Satanail; world-week; millennium; eighth day; creation accounts in Second Temple literature.
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — entries on Enoch, the books of Enoch, and the Pseudepigrapha.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — entries on 2 Enoch, Enoch, angels and creation.
- Dictionary of New Testament Background (IVP) — entries on the Enoch literature and the Pseudepigrapha. These are subjects to look up; exact entry titles were not checked, and none of these works is held on this disk.
- On the text — any article that keeps the longer and the shorter recension apart. The sigla are not stable across editions: in the 1913 volume quoted here A is the longer; Andersen’s translation in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1983) is reported in this shelf’s acquisition notes to call the longer J and the shorter A. That report is not checked here; never carry a letter from one edition to another.
Bibliography surfaced:
- W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford, 1896) — one eclectic text; Charles resolved, its introduction says, “to follow A in the main.” Held here as OCR only.
- N. Forbes and R. H. Charles, “2 Enoch, or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch”, in R. H. Charles (ed.), APOT 2 (Oxford, 1913), pp. 425–469 — the edition quoted on this page.
- F. I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch”, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (1983). Not held; not consulted.
- A. Vaillant, Le livre des secrets d’Hénoch (Paris, 1952) — Slavonic text with a French translation. Not held; not consulted.
Four retellings of the week are on this disk. Read side by side, the two recensions of 2 Enoch are the odd ones out on the animals, and B is alone in counting nothing.
Content compared, not wording: each cell reports what that text’s English (or, for Genesis, its Hebrew and Greek) says, with its verse. No run is computed between these English texts — Charles translated Jubilees, Forbes 2 Enoch and the Revisers 4 Ezra, and a run between translators measures translators. A dash means the passage named carries nothing of the kind.
Where does each retelling put things?
| Genesis 1:1–2:3 MT and CATSS | Jubilees 2 Charles’s English | 4 Ezra 6:38–54 RV 1895 | 2 Enoch A Forbes | 2 Enoch B Forbes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Days named | first to sixth, and the seventh | first to sixth, and the seventh | first to sixth | first to eighth | none |
| Angels made | — | on the first day (2:2) | — | from fire, after the second day (29:1–3) | from the stone and the fire, no day (29:3) |
| Eden / Paradise | planted, no day (2:8) | on the third day (2:7) | — | on the third day, with flaming angels as guards (30:1) | — (not in 23–42) |
| Land animals | the earth brings them forth, sixth day (1:24–25) | sixth day (2:13) | the earth brings them forth, sixth day (6:53) | at the sea’s command, fifth day (30:7) | at the sea’s command, no day (30:7) |
| Work finished | MT: on the seventh day · CATSS: on the sixth (2:2) | on the sixth day (2:16) | — | — | when I had finished all (30:8) |
| The seventh day | blessed and hallowed; no noun Sabbath (2:3) | the Sabbath, kept in heaven, given to Israel alone (2:17–33) | — | blessed, which is the Sabbath (32:2) | no row |
| An eighth day | — | — | — | appointed, the first-created after my work (33:1) | no row |
Read across the land-animal row. Genesis, Jubilees and 4 Ezra all make the earth’s creatures on the sixth day; both recensions of 2 Enoch put them into the sea’s command, and A numbers that command the fifth day. Jubilees 2:13 (Charles): “on the sixth day He created all the animals of the earth”; 4 Ezra 6:53 (RV): “upon the sixth day thou gavest commandment unto the earth, that it should bring forth before thee cattle, beasts, and creeping things”.
Read across the seventh-day row. A calls the seventh day the Sabbath and says no more about it: no Israel, no keeping of it in heaven, no sign. Those are Jubilees’ — “but Israel alone” (2:31). B has no seventh day at all.
- Charles’s notes on the cosmology, reported as his: on Adoil and 25:1–3, “In this and the two subsequent verses we have an adaptation of an Egyptian myth.”; on 26:1, “very red. So A, but B reads ‘very black’”; on 30:13, “This verse may either be the source of or else derived from the Sibyll. Or. iii. 24-6”. The Sibylline Oracles, the Egyptian texts and Philo, which his notes cite on page after page, are not held here.
- Charles on the world-week, reported as his: on 33:1–2 he speaks of “a world-week of 7,000 years” and says “this step we find was taken by the author of our text”. The verse itself, as Forbes renders it, says the seventh thousand and the eighth thousand and gives no number of years; see Stage 3.
- Charles on the devil, reported as his: on 29:4 “If this is genuine we must take clouds in the sense of heavens.”; on 31:3 “On Satan’s envy see Wisdom, ii. 24”. His summary of the book’s demonology reads “Satan envied him and wished to make another world” and “Out of envy he tempted Eve to her fall” — a reading of A; B carries none of it.
- Charles on the two ways at 30:14–15: “This does not harmonize with the account in Gen.”, “the knowledge of good and evil follows on eating the forbidden fruit”. In A, God shows Adam the two ways and says This is good, and that bad on the day he is made.
A compass that cannot spell ADAM in the Greek Bible, planets that are gods, and a Sabbath only one recension has.
Counts in 2 Enoch are over Forbes’s English of chapters 23–42 unless a whole recension is named. Greek counts are over the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened (the Odes excluded) and the 7,927 verses of the SBLGNT, on normalised word forms; they are not counts over ‘the Septuagint’, and they say nothing about what 2 Enoch’s Slavonic reads.
The third letter of Charles’s ADAM — and, in that spelling, a word the Greek Bible held here never uses; it writes the bear ἄρκος and never uses it as a point of the compass. Charles’s note on 30:13 reports a Latin treatise, De Montibus Sina et Sion, “formerly ascribed to Cyprian”, and its account: “At each of the four quarters four stars were set by the Creator, called anatole, dysis, arctus, mesembrion” — there the four names are stars. Measured: in the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units screened, ἄρκτος occurs 0 times — the only word on its stem is ἀρκτοῦρον, a star, at Job 9:9; the bear itself is spelled ἄρκος (17 tokens in 17 of the 30,348 units, e.g. 1 Samuel 17:34, and once in the SBLGNT, ὡς ἄρκου, Revelation 13:2), always of the animal — and in the 7,927 SBLGNT verses 0 times. The word for north in these files is βορρᾶς: 161 times in the Greek Old Testament, twice in the New. δύσις, setting, stands once in each (ὁ ἥλιος ἔγνω τὴν δύσιν αὐτοῦ, Psalm 103:19 LXX; and in the shorter ending of Mark, which the SBLGNT prints inside ⟦ ⟧ at 16:8); west is otherwise δυσμαί, 62 times in the Greek Old Testament and 5 in the New. μεσημβρία stands 30 times on its stem in the Greek Old Testament and twice in the New. No unit in either corpus carries all four of the acrostic’s words. Of the units that carry an east word, a west word (or the sea), a north word and a south word together (east ἀνατολ-; west δυσμαί, δύσις or θάλασσα; north βορρᾶς, βορέας or ἄρκτος; south νότος, λίψ or μεσημβρία) — thirteen in the Greek Old Testament, two in the New — every one has βορρᾶς for north and none has ἄρκτος. Luke 13:29: ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν καὶ δυσμῶν καὶ ἀπὸ βορρᾶ καὶ νότου. The nearest miss is Daniel 8:4 in the Old Greek — πρὸς ἀνατολὰς καὶ πρὸς βορρᾶν καὶ πρὸς δυσμὰς καὶ μεσημβρίαν — three of the acrostic’s initials, Α, Δ, Μ, and a Β where the second Α should be. The Greek Bible held here never spells ADAM with its own compass words: its north is Β, not Α. And B has no 30:13.
A names the planets by Greek gods — Forbes’s spellings of Kronos, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus and Hermes — on circles it numbers first, second, third, fifth, sixth and seventh; the word fourth does not occur in 30:3–4 (the break between them is a low-confidence inference), and the sun is placed on the lower at 30:5. B has no 30:2–6. Measured as gods, in the 30,348 Greek Old Testament units and the 7,927 SBLGNT verses: Kronos 0 and 0; Aphrodite 0 and 0; Ares 0 and 0; Hermes 0 in the Greek Old Testament (Αρης is a Levite at 1 Chronicles 9:15, Ἄρειος a Spartan king at 1 Maccabees 12:7 and 12:20 and the Areopagus in Acts 17:19 and 22). Zeus: three times in the Greek Old Testament, all in 2 Maccabees — twice at 6:2, the temple in Jerusalem renamed Διὸς Ὀλυμπίου and the one on Gerizim Διὸς Ξενίου, and once as the name of a month (11:21). In the New Testament Zeus and Hermes stand together, once: ἐκάλουν τε τὸν Βαρναβᾶν Δία, τὸν δὲ Παῦλον Ἑρμῆν (Acts 14:12; and the priest of Zeus, 14:13). Romans 16:14 greets a man named Hermes. In the Greek Bible held here these names belong to temples, a month, a hill, men and two apostles — never to a star.
Forbes writes the title as a Greek word in English letters: the archistratege Michael (A 22:6 and 33:10; B 22:6), where his B at 33:10 has my general Michael. In the Greek Old Testament units screened the word occurs 24 times in 23 units — among them Abimelech’s Phicol (Genesis 21:22), Saul’s Abner, Sisera, David’s Joab, Holofernes six times in Judith, and the figure who meets Joshua, ἀρχιστράτηγος δυνάμεως κυρίου (Joshua 5:14), with Daniel 8:11 in both Greek texts — and not one of the 23 names Michael. The New Testament has the word 0 times; where it gives Michael a title it is Μιχαὴλ ὁ ἀρχάγγελος (Jude 9; Revelation 12:7 names him without a title).
Eva stands three times in A’s chapters 23–42 (30:18, 31:6, 41:1) and in none of B’s 228 rows. A 30:17–18: I took his last word and called her name mother, that is to say, Eva — Charles’s note: “I took his last word. Corrupt.” At Genesis 3:20 the Masoretic text names her חַוָּ֑ה and the CATSS Greek names her Ζωή, Life; both then explain the name as mother of all living. The CATSS Genesis first writes Ευαν at 4:1 (again 4:25, and Tobit 8:6 in both recensions); the New Testament has Εὕα twice (2 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 2:13).
A 32:2 is the only verse in A’s 340 rows that has the word, and B’s 228 rows never have it. Genesis 2:2–3 has the verb, not the noun — the Masoretic שָׁבַת֙, the CATSS κατέπαυσεν — and in the CATSS Greek σάββατ- occurs 137 times and not once in Genesis; it first stands at Exodus 16:23. And the two Genesis columns disagree on the day the work was finished: the Masoretic 2:2 has בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י, on the seventh day; the CATSS Greek has ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἕκτῃ, on the sixth day.
A 33:1–2 never says years of its thousands. It says the first seven revolve in the form of the seventh thousand and at the beginning of the eighth thousand; the word years in 33:2 belongs to neither years nor months nor weeks. The seven thousand years is in the editorial title. In the Greek Bible held here the phrase χίλια ἔτη stands twice in the Old Testament — χίλια ἔτη ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς σου ὡς ἡ ἡμέρα ἡ ἐχθές (Psalm 89:4 LXX; 90:4 in English Bibles) and Sirach 41:4 — and eight times in the New: twice in 2 Peter 3:8 and six times in Revelation 20:2–7.
Counted here, recension by recension:
| counted in chapters 23–42 | A (104 rows, 3,608 words) | B (66 rows, 1,815 words) |
|---|---|---|
| first … eighth day | 14 (13 outside Charles’s brackets) | 0 |
| evening / morning | 5 / 5 | 0 / 0 |
| Monday … Friday | 5, all in Charles’s brackets | 0 |
| Sabbath | 1 (32:2) | 0 |
| eighth / thousand | 3 / 2 | 0 / 0 |
| seven… (seven, seventh, sevenfold) | 10 | 1 (sevenfold, 42:11) |
| Adam / Eva | 8 / 3 | 1 (33:10) / 0 |
| devil / Paradise | 2 / 3 | 0 / 0 |
| Blessed is (the beatitude) | 1 | 8 |
| write … handwriting / book(s) | 20 / 9 | 9 / 5 |
| the pronoun I | 128 | 70 |
The week is A’s. Every word of the week this page could think to count — the numbered days, the evenings and mornings, the weekday names, the Sabbath, the eighth, the thousands — stands in A and in no row of B. The beatitudes are B’s: eight Blessed is to A’s one (A also blesses the creatures and the seventh day, 32:1–2). Counts in one man’s English, of what each recension carries; they do not say what either recension’s scribe added or dropped.
Names, too. Besides Enoch, Adam and Seth, two names are spelled alike in both recensions here — Gabriel (24:1) and Michael (33:10). Five figures go by different names in each: Pravuil / Vretil (23), Adoil / Idoil (25), Archas / Aruchas (26), Samuil / Semil and Raguil / Rasuil (33:6). Charles on the first: “Pravuil. I cannot find this name anywhere else.”
One measurement is possible here — the two recensions against each other — and it is the finding of the page.
Every verse of each recension in chapters 23–42 run against every verse of the other: Forbes’s English, his glosses in parentheses removed, lower-cased, whole words, contiguous runs only. Unigram fallback off: a 0 here means the verse shares no two consecutive words with any verse of the other recension. The tie band is the number of verses in the other recension that reach the same depth, and it is given from both sides. English against English, one translator: this tracks shared content, and nothing on this page runs English against Greek or Hebrew.
The distribution, both ways:
B against A, 66 rows: 65 reach two, 58 reach three, 45 reach four, 29 reach five, 21 reach six, 12 reach seven, 6 reach eight, 1 reaches nine, and nothing reaches ten.
A against B, 104 rows: 103 reach two, 81 reach three, 53 reach four, 35 reach five, 22 reach six, 14 reach seven, 6 reach eight, 1 reaches nine, and nothing reaches ten.
At the 50 labels both have, no verse is the same, and the median longest run is 4.5 words. All of these figures are on the transcription’s verse division.
The deepest run between the two recensions anywhere in these twenty chapters is nine words, at 25:3, tie band 1 from both sides: to create, and I saw that it was good — A 25:3–4: “showed all creation, which I had thought to create. And I saw that it was good.”; B 25:3: “all creation, which I had wished to create, and I saw that it was good.” Two cautions, both printed because both matter. A’s break between 25:3 and 25:4 is a low-confidence inference, and the transcription’s second choice would move And I saw that it was good into 25:4; read instead as running text, ignoring verse numbers, the same place gives eleven — to create, and I saw that it was good. And I — and is still the deepest in chapters 23–42. And it is Genesis’s refrain, and depth is not rarity: six of its words, and I saw that it was, also join B 26:3 to three verses of A (25:3, 26:3, 27:3) — a run of six with a band of 3, a refrain repeating, not a contact.
Where the two do not meet at all:
A 29:4–33:2 — 31 rows, 984 words: the angel thrown down, the third to the sixth days, the man of seven consistencies, Adam, Eve, the devil, the Sabbath, the eighth day. Against every one of B’s 66 rows in chapters 23–42, the deepest any of these 31 reaches is four words, at three rows, each with a tie band of 1: my wisdom to create (30:8, against B’s 30:8), the darkness, and I (30:14–15, against B 27:2) and I said to him (32:1, against B 26:3). The finding does not hang on a verse break: read as one running text, the 984 words share no more than four consecutive words with the whole running text of B’s chapters 23–42 — my wisdom to create. Only three of the 31 labels exist in B at all (30:1, 30:7, 30:8).
And the street runs both ways. B carries 16 labels A does not — 345 words: 28:1,2; the handwriting kept through the deluge by Orioch and Marioch (33:11–12); the earthly ruler (39:9); a second 9 and 10 in chapter 40; and ten rows of 42:2–13, six of them blessings. Labels, not all content: 28:1,2 is B’s joint number where A numbers 28:1 and 28:2 apart, and B 39:9, 40:9b and 40:10b reach A 39:8, 40:9 and 40:10 with runs of 4, 5 and 3 words, each with a tie band of 1 — the earthly ruler, the chain and the treasure-houses stand in A too, under other numbers. B 33:12 reaches A 35:2 with four, handwriting of thy fathers, band 1, but A there has the books shown to a later generation, not kept through the deluge.
The two zeros, printed and set aside. One row in each recension shares no two consecutive words with any row of the other — A 30:4 and B 27:1. Both sit at a low-confidence verse break (the start of A 30:4, the end of B 27:1), and on the transcription’s second choice of break each would pick up a pair of words. The page builds nothing on either.
Two English versions by one man can differ where their Slavonic agrees, and agree where it differs. At 33:10 Forbes writes the archistratege Michael for A and my general Michael for B; whether that is one Slavonic word rendered twice or two words, this page cannot know. So no run on this page is evidence about wording.
What one translator’s English does track is content — that a day is numbered, that a Sabbath is named, that a man is called Adam — and on content the measurement is not close. Fourteen ordinal-day phrases against none; a Sabbath against none; three Eves against none; 31 consecutive rows of A whose best match in B’s chapters 23–42 is four words of common English. Which recension’s scribe added, and which left out, is not measurable here and is not asserted.
Genesis 1:1–2:3, day by day — content, not wording:
| day | Genesis 1:1–2:3 | 2 Enoch A | 2 Enoch B |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | light; day and night named; ἡμέρα μία / י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד (1:3–5) | light out of Adoil above the throne; darkness out of Archas below; water and seven circles; light and darkness parted; evening … morning the first day (25:1–27:4) | light; Idoil; Aruchas; a road of water over the darkness (24:4–27:2) — no day |
| 2 | the firmament (1:6–8); God saw that it was good stands here in the CATSS Greek (καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι καλόν) and not in the Masoretic | firmament, the dry called earth, the sea bound (28:1–4); the second day (29:1); then the angels from fire and one angel thrown down with his order (29:1–5) | rocks, the dry, the sea’s bound (27:2–28:4); the sun from the great light (29:1); the troops from fire (29:3) — no day |
| 3 | dry land, seas, plants (1:9–13) | the heavens; trees, hills, seed; Paradise planted and guarded (30:1) | trees, hills, grass, seed (30:1) — no day |
| 4 | lights (1:14–19) | lights on the circles; planets named; sun, moon, zodiac, months (30:2–6) | no row (B’s sun is at 29:1) |
| 5 | the waters bring forth creeping things and birds (1:20–23) | the sea brings forth fishes, birds and four-footed creeping animals (30:7) | the sea brings forth fishes, reptiles, wild beasts and cattle, birds (30:7) — no day |
| 6 | the earth brings forth the four-footed; humankind (1:24–31) | man from seven consistencies; seven natures; named Adam; a wife from his rib (30:8–18) | I told my wisdom to create me man (30:8) — no day |
| 7 | finished, rested, blessed, hallowed (2:1–3) | I blessed the seventh day, which is the Sabbath (32:2) | no row |
| 8 | — | the eighth day … the first-created after my work (33:1) | no row |
The evening-and-morning formula stands six times in Genesis 1 (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 — the same six in the Masoretic text and the CATSS Greek) and not at the seventh day. A has it five times (27:4, 29:1, 30:2, 30:7, 30:8) and announces the third day without it; B has it no times.
Set side by side — named, not measured:
- A and B 24:2 → Hebrews 11:3 and 2 Maccabees 7:28. Both recensions say creation came from non-being (A) or from non-existence into existence (B), and visible things from invisible (A) or from invisible to visible (B). Hebrews 11:3: εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον γεγονέναι (so that what is seen came to be not from things that appear); 2 Maccabees 7:28 in the CATSS Greek: οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ θεός (not out of things that were did God make them).
- A 29:4–5 → Isaiah 14:13–14. A: a throne higher than the clouds, to be equal in rank to my power. CATSS Isaiah: ἐπάνω τῶν ἄστρων τοῦ οὐρανοῦ θήσω τὸν θρόνον μου … ἀναβήσομαι ἐπάνω τῶν νεφελῶν ἔσομαι ὅμοιος τῷ ὑψίστῳ (above the stars of heaven I will set my throne … I will go up above the clouds, I will be like the Most High). And thrown down with his angels: Revelation 12:9, καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἐβλήθησαν; Luke 10:18, Ἐθεώρουν τὸν Σατανᾶν ὡς ἀστραπὴν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πεσόντα. In A only; B has no 29:4–5.
- A 30:17–18 → Sirach 25:24 and Romans 5:12. A: that death should come to him by his wife. Sirach 25:24: ἀπὸ γυναικὸς ἀρχὴ ἁμαρτίας καὶ δι' αὐτὴν ἀποθνῄσκομεν πάντες (from a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die). The canon’s own sentence names one man: Romans 5:12, δι’ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἡ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθεν (through one man sin entered the world). A’s sentence is reported; the page does not adopt it.
- A 31:3–6 → Wisdom 2:24. A: the devil understood that God wanted to create another world, because Adam was lord on earth, and later entered and seduced Eva. Wisdom 2:24: φθόνῳ δὲ διαβόλου θάνατος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον (by the envy of the devil death entered the world). 2 Corinthians 11:3: ὁ ὄφις ἐξηπάτησεν Εὕαν (the serpent deceived Eve). A’s word for the agent is devil; 2 Corinthians’ is serpent.
- A 32:1 → Genesis 3:19. A: Earth thou art, and into the earth whence I took thee thou shalt go. The CATSS Greek: γῆ εἶ καὶ εἰς γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ (earth you are, and to earth you shall depart); the Masoretic: עָפָ֣ר אַ֔תָּה (dust you are). Forbes’s English has the Greek column’s word, earth, not the Hebrew’s, dust; what Slavonic word lies under it cannot be checked here.
- A 33:1–2 → Psalm 89:4 LXX and 2 Peter 3:8. μία ἡμέρα παρὰ κυρίῳ ὡς χίλια ἔτη καὶ χίλια ἔτη ὡς ἡμέρα μία (one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day). Named because Charles’s note on 33:1–2 starts from the thought that a thousand years is one world-day. Neither verse speaks of an eighth day or a seventh thousand, and A does not say a day is a thousand years.
- A 33:10 → Jude 14. See the codex: A’s six fathers make Enoch the seventh, as Jude does. Words close to those Jude goes on to give stand in 1 Enoch 1:9, which is measured on the 1 Enoch 1–5 page; in Forbes’s English of 2 Enoch, both recensions, the words saints and ungodly do not occur, and myriads only once (A 11:4, of angels attending the sun).
- A and B 41:2 → Ecclesiastes 4:3 and Matthew 26:24. Blessed is the man who has not been born … Ecclesiastes 4:3: ἀγαθὸς ὑπὲρ τοὺς δύο τούτους ὅστις οὔπω ἐγένετο (better than both is he who has not yet been); Matthew 26:24: καλὸν ἦν αὐτῷ εἰ οὐκ ἐγεννήθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος (it would have been good for that man if he had not been born).
- B 42:12 → Zechariah 8:16 and Ephesians 4:25. B: that he may speak truth to his neighbour. Zechariah 8:16: λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος πρὸς τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ; Ephesians 4:25: λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος μετὰ τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ. In B only.
It settles what each recension, in one man’s English, carries. The week, the Sabbath, the eighth day, Adam made and named, Eve, the devil, the acrostic verse: A. The beatitudes of 42, the handwriting kept through the flood, the one just man: B. The light out of the lowest, the throne, the waters, the fire, the books, the thirty days, the frozen face, the lament and the blessing of 41: both.
It does not settle any Greek or Hebrew contact. Every verse set beside 2 Enoch above is a comparison chosen by this page or by Charles’s notes; none is measured, and no direction of influence is asserted in either direction.
What this page could not check, what it found wrong in its own sources, and where it is weakest.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy, and for 2 Enoch it is long, because almost everything a reader would want to check lies outside what this disk holds.
⚠️ Faults found in the transcription while building this page — reported, not buried:
- A 27:1 carries a stray bracket. The transcription reads And I] commanded; no bracket is opened anywhere in the verse. The four OCR passes behind it read the pronoun as |], 1, | and I. The page does not print 27:1, and the fault is reported for correction.
- A 26:3 may have lost a closing quotation mark. Two OCR passes read lower things,’ and it happened and two read no mark; the vote split two and two and went to the base scan, so the transcription leaves the Lord’s words unclosed. Not checked against the page image, which is not held. The page does not print 26:3.
- A note and a column that disagree. Charles’s note on chapter 41 says “In B this chapter occurs after xlii. 1.” The B column printed in the same volume runs 40:12, 41:1–2, 42:1. This page follows the printed column and does not resolve the note.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- Any Slavonic. Not one word of 2 Enoch’s Slavonic, in either recension, is held. Every measurement on this page is a measurement of Forbes’s English.
- Any Greek or Hebrew 2 Enoch. None is held and, on Charles’s account, none is known. So the Greek Old Testament and New Testament screens this shelf runs on Tobit, Sirach or 1 Enoch cannot run here at all — there is no result to report, not even a null one.
- The page images. Quotations of Charles’s notes are checked against the OCR of two printed copies (1913) and three (1896), not against images; the transcription of the text was voted from four OCR passes. Where an OCR pass misread, a quotation could carry the misreading.
- Which recension is older, or nearer whatever was first written. Forbes’s introduction calls A “the complete version (A)” and B the incomplete version, and Charles’s note on 42:2–13 (quoted in the codex) puts the difference down to A. Those are the editors’ words. This page reports what each recension carries and adopts neither direction.
- Charles’s acrostic as a fact about composition. The page can show that the four Greek words never stand together in the Greek Bible held here, and that Forbes’s English gives the quarters in an order that does not spell ADAM. It cannot test whether an author built the verse on Greek words, because the verse survives only in Slavonic, and in A only.
- The date and place. Charles’s about the beginning of the Christian era and Egypt are reported as his. Whether later scholarship agrees is not checked here: none of it is held, and the page does not adjudicate.
- The later editions. Vaillant (1952), Andersen (1983) and every edition since are in copyright and were not consulted; their numbering, their sigla and their judgments are not on this page.
- The Melchizedek appendix and chapters 1–22 and 43–68 — on the other pages of this series.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- The English is quotation, and also the measured text. On every other page of this shelf a translation is printed beside a Hebrew or Greek column that is measured. Here the translation is all there is, so a choice of Forbes’s — archistratege or my general — can move a number. The page says so beside the numbers.
- Verse starts are inferred. Sixteen of A’s and five of B’s starts in these chapters are low-confidence, and a run can shift by a clause at a boundary. Printed verses are joined to their neighbours where that matters.
- The section titles are editorial. Charles (1896): “The titles at the head of the chapters are given by A.” “I have enclosed them in square brackets, as they have no claim to antiquity.” Four of them say things the A text beneath them does not: Satanail (29:4), seven islands where 27:3 has seven circles, seven thousand years where 33:1–2 has the seventh thousand, and a righteous man of Enoch’s tribe whom A’s chapter 35 does not contain.
- The structure diagram claims one frame, counted in both recensions, and a sequence; in B the chapters after the frame (35:3–42:14) are as empty of book words as the creation account, which weakens the frame there. It is expressly not a chiasm. The echo of first-created (28:5, 33:1) is printed and then set aside, because Charles judged 28:5 out of place.
- The content tables compare translations made by three different hands (Charles, Forbes, the Revisers). They report what each says; they measure no wording.
Commentaries & studies:
- R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913) — Forbes’s translation and Charles’s notes. Held; quoted.
- W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford, 1896). Held as OCR; its introduction quoted.
- F. I. Andersen, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch”, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (1983). Not held; not consulted.
- A. Vaillant, Le livre des secrets d’Hénoch (Paris, 1952). Not held; not consulted.
A week, a book count and a blessing list that depend on which copy you open.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- “2 Enoch says” can mean “one copy of 2 Enoch says.” The eighth day, the Sabbath, the seventh and eighth thousand, Adam’s name from the four quarters — all of it is in the longer recension, and none of it in the shorter. When someone quotes this book, it is fair to ask which copy.
- Count before you cite. The verse that carries the seventh thousand does not say seven thousand years; an editor’s title does. The verse that Charles read as a Greek acrostic gives its four quarters, in Forbes’s English, in an order that does not spell the name. Measure before you repeat.
- Genesis does not count what the longer recension counts. Its seventh day has no evening and no morning; it names no eighth day; it does not put the animals in the sea. Read Genesis 1:1–2:3 where it is.
- The church’s view, labelled as such: the canon names no eighth day of creation and no world-week of thousands. Pleasant Springs reads the rest of God from Genesis 2:1–3 and from Hebrews 4:9, ἀπολείπεται σαββατισμὸς τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ (a Sabbath-rest is left for the people of God), and builds nothing on 2 Enoch 33.
- One concrete response. In both recensions Enoch tells his sons he speaks not from his own lips but from the Lord’s (39:2). This week, read Genesis 1:1–2:3 aloud with someone and count the days together — and notice the one day that is not given an evening.
2 Enoch 32:2 · to share
A (longer) · Forbes, 1913B · shorter 32:2 — no row in B — B has no chapter 32
Every Deep Research page traces its passage across the whole sweep — the Old Testament, the Second-Temple world between the testaments (historical witnesses, not Scripture), and the New Testament. Follow the thread:
Pleasant Springs Church — Deep Research
Research method after Michael S. Heiser’s Bible Research Method (examine dictionaries → ancient literature → important words → textual connections → academic publications → share), with the Pleasant Springs “Author & Audience” foundation. Scripture set in the Hebrew, the Greek editions named on each page and the ESV (Old Testament), and the Greek New Testament and the ESV (New Testament), per the practice of Pleasant Springs Church. ⚠️ Status: 2 Enoch is not Scripture for Pleasant Springs and not deuterocanonical; it is filed under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple and read as a witness. English: N. Forbes’s translation of both Slavonic recensions, A (longer) and B (shorter), in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913), pp. 425–469, public domain; transcribed from four OCR passes of three copies on archive.org, never merged; quoted by code and checked character for character. Notes and introductions: Charles (1913) and Morfill & Charles (1896), quoted from the OCR of the printed volumes. No Slavonic, Greek or Hebrew text of 2 Enoch is held. Comparison texts: the CATSS morphological Septuagint; the SBLGNT; the Masoretic text (Miqra according to the Masorah); Charles’s English of Jubilees (1902; SPCK reprint 1917); the Revised Version of 4 Ezra (1895, eBible.org). No modern Bible translation is printed on this page; italic English that is not labelled A or B is the page’s own gloss. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted, and neither recension is said to have added or dropped anything.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license, and the ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. www.esv.org
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