The story of Melchizedek’s birth printed at the back of 2 Enoch is in neither recension of the book — that is why it is an appendix. Charles, who printed it in 1896, said so plainly: No hint of this large addition is found in A or B. This page measured that sentence. In the 568 verses of A and B held here, in one translator’s English, Melchizedek is named 0 times, Nir 0, Noah 0, Sopanima 0 — and the word priest does not occur once; in the appendix’s 104 verses it occurs 33 times. And yet one sentence crosses. In B, at 65:11, Enoch says: For I know, that this will end in tumult and will perish, only my brother will be preserved on that day. It is the only my brother in either recension, and neither gives Enoch a brother. In the appendix, at III.32, five clauses that match these in sense stand in the same order — For I know that this generation shall end in confusion, and all shall perish. And Noe, my brother, shall be preserved in that day — and they are Nir’s, speaking of Noah. One more measurement: the appendix’s thousand and seventy years to the priest-king of Salem is exactly a sum in the Greek Genesis 11 — while its 3432 years from Adam match no Genesis figure measured here. It is not Scripture for us, and there is no Slavonic, Greek or Hebrew of it on this disk: every word here is English, and the page says whose. See the method →
2 Enoch, the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, survives in Slavonic manuscripts in a longer and a shorter form, which Charles called A and B; this shelf holds both in English. The story printed here is a separate piece. Morfill, who translated it, described the manuscript that carries it and wrote: Though this legend does not belong to this Book of Enoch, it is added as an Appendix (1896, p. xiii). Charles judged it the work of an early Christian heretic; this page reports that judgement and does not test it. It is not Scripture for us. We read it as we read the other books on this shelf — as a witness to how Genesis was retold — critically, and testing everything by the canon. The Melchizedek Pleasant Springs teaches is the one of Genesis 14:18–20, Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 7; this page sets the appendix beside those texts and does not read them through it. Sopanima’s death, and Nir’s accusation that precedes it (III.6–9), are reported as the text tells them, without comment on either.
⚠️ What this page can and cannot measure — read this first.
HELD: Morfill’s English of the appendix (1896; 104 verses); Forbes’s English of 2 Enoch A (340 rows, the unnumbered prologue included) and B (228 rows) — the 568 verses counted on this page are these 568 rows, among them three combined labels (A 30:14,15 and 40:4,6,7; B 28:1,2) and three half-verse rows in B (22:4b, 40:9b, 40:10b) — as printed in parallel in APOT 2 (1913); scans of both books, so Charles’s introductions and notes can be read; Charles’s English of 1 Enoch and of Jubilees; the Masoretic text; the CATSS Greek Old Testament (30,348 units screened); the Greek New Testament (SBLGNT, 7,927 verses); and the Samaritan Genesis (MS Chester Beatty 751).
NOT HELD: any Slavonic text of 2 Enoch or of this appendix; Sokolov’s text, through which alone, Morfill says (1896, p. xiii), he knew the manuscript that carries this appendix; any Greek or Latin 2 Enoch; and the modern translations (F. I. Andersen, who numbers this material 69–73, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1, 1983; A. Vaillant, 1952).
CONSEQUENCE: no word of this text can be measured against the Greek or Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament run screen this shelf runs on every Greek book cannot run here. Every comparison with Genesis 14, Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7 below is a comparison of content, set out side by side. The word-run measurements on this page are English against English, and the page says every time whose English it is.
2 Enoch, Appendix I–V — thirteen verses, each with what was measured
English: W. R. Morfill (1896), public domain · no Slavonic, Greek, Latin or King James text of it exists on this diskThe first of three priests the appendix installs. The word priest (with priests, priestly, priesthood) occurs 33 times in chapters I–IV — and not once in the 568 verses of A and B (Forbes’s English). It stops at IV.11, after him there was no priest among the people; chapter V, the flood, never uses it.
Genesis 5 names one son of this Lamech, Noah. After Noah, Lamech fathered sons and daughters (Genesis 5:30, in the Hebrew and the Greek alike) and none is named. The appendix names Nir 53 times; A and B, 0.
Methuselah has just died (II.16) and been buried in the place Aruzan (II.17), so in the appendix he dies more than 202 years before the flood. Measured on Genesis 5 and 7: in the Masoretic and Samaritan numbers he dies in the flood year itself; in the CATSS Greek numbers, fourteen years after it (Stage 4).
Set beside Hebrews 7:3, this verse supplies what Hebrews lists as absent — a mother, named, and a conception. Sopanima is named 12 times in the appendix; Stage 4 sets the two texts side by side.
1 Enoch tells Noah’s birth with the same marvel: the newborn opened his mouth and blessed the Lord of heaven (1 Enoch 106:11, Charles’s English of the Ethiopic). Two translators, two languages: a parallel of content, set out in Stage 2.
The name’s first appearance, at the naming. The child is given the blessed bread, the appendix’s only bread. In Genesis 14:18 it is Melchizedek who brings out bread and wine.
A disagrees. A’s 32:1 ends: And Adam was five and half hours in paradise. (B has no chapter 32). Seven years is the figure in Jubilees: Adam and his wife were in the Garden of Eden for seven years (3:15).
This verse stands inside Morfill’s (Some MSS. add—, opened at the end of III.30 and closed after III.33. And B gives Enoch, at 65:11, a sentence whose first five clauses match this verse’s five in sense and order: For I know, that this will end in tumult and will perish, only my brother will be preserved on that day — the only my brother in A or B. Stage 4 lays the two out clause by clause.
Count the names: twelve — Seth, Enos, Rusii, Almilam, Prasidam, Maleleil, Seroch, Arusan, Aleem, Enoch, Methusalam and Nir — and the verse says twelve priests who lived before. Five are Genesis 5 names, standing in Genesis 5’s order. This is one of the two verses Charles cites for his judgement that the fragment is the work of an early Christian heretic.
A priest-king — and a grave. Hebrews 7:3 says having neither beginning of days nor end of life; the appendix gives this Melchizedek a birth (III.17) and a burial place. Akhuzan is where, in A, Methosalam and his brethren build the altar at the place called Achuzan (68:5).
The appendix’s only Salem — and it belongs to another Melchizedek, found on the ark’s mountain after the fashion of this Melchizedek. Measured in Stage 4: the begetting ages of the nine fathers from Arpachshad to Terah in the CATSS Greek Genesis 11 add to exactly 1,070 (Masoretic 290, Samaritan 940); and counting Noah’s generation as the first, Abram is the twelfth only on a line that carries Kainan. 3,432 years from Adam matches no Genesis figure measured here. The appendix names neither the just man nor the point its thousand and seventy years run from.
Three of the four conversions multiply by fifty; the height does not. Thirty to 900 is thirty-fold — fifty-fold would be 1,500. The 900 was read on the page image (1896, p. 93). V.11 gives the measures again — In another way it is written here — in six pairs, every one fifty-fold, and four of its six (100, 20, 10, 5) are not among Genesis 6:15–16’s measures (300, 50, 30, 1).
The sum does not close. 600 years at the flood (V.8) and 250 after it make 850, not 950. Genesis 9:28 gives 350 after the flood in the Masoretic, the CATSS Greek and the Samaritan alike, and 9:29 the 950. The square brackets are the 1896 edition’s own.
Versification — a third state, stated because it is not the usual one. There is no Masoretic, Septuagint, Vulgate or King James text of this appendix, and no modern English Bible prints it, so there is no Hebrew/Greek offset and no English or Latin shape to report: the shelf’s King James loader has no 2 Enoch, and the Clementine Vulgate on this disk has no Enoch book at all.
The numbering on this page is the 1896 edition’s: five chapters, I–V, of 19, 26, 37, 11 and 11 verses — 104 in all, 4,057 words of Morfill’s English. Later editions number the same material as chapters 69–73, with different verse numbers; no such edition is held, so no concordance is attempted and none should be inferred — a reference like “2 Enoch 71:2” elsewhere cannot be converted from anything on this page.
Where it sits: Charles (1896, p. 85) reports that in Sokolov’s manuscript the story follows A 68:7 directly, the words after merry for three days being omitted, so that the appendix’s first words, And on the third day, continue that feast. In the 1913 English held here A ends at 68:7 and B at 67:3.
Inside the verses the printed text carries manuscript alternatives: alia lectio at III.29 and IV.10; some MSS. add twice at III.30, the second opening a parenthesis that closes only at the end of III.33. So III.31–33 are an alternative inside a verse, not three verses of the base text, and the structure below treats them that way.
The Shape of the Passage
Sequence: three priests, then the flood (counted)⚠️ Where this page sits. Filed under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple, with 2 Enoch. It is not Scripture for us, nothing taught at Pleasant Springs rests on it, and on its first editors’ own account it is not part of 2 Enoch either.
Author
Anonymous, and known from late Slavonic copies. Morfill (1896, p. xiii) describes the manuscript that carries it as found by Sokolov in the Public Library of Belgrade — a Bulgarian recension, probably of the sixteenth century — and Charles (p. 85) reports Sokolov’s word that it appears in several MSS. to which he had access. Nothing on this page dates it.
Charles’s judgement, reported and not tested: This fragment seems to be the work of an early Christian heretic as we may infer from iii. 34; iv. 8. III.34 calls the child, at last, the great high priest, the Word of God. In the numbering printed beneath that note, iv. 8 is Nir’s answer to Michael, blessing the Lord; the line about the great Igumen … who shall bring forth all things visible and invisible is IV.7. The page reports the reference as printed and does not guess which line Charles meant.
Its opening matches the scene with which A ends. The story opens at an altar on the place Akhuzan (I.1–4); A ends with Methuselah and his brethren raising an altar at the place called Achuzan, where Enoch was taken up (68:5–7), and Charles’s 1913 note to that passage points to the fragment for Methusalem’s sacrifice. Beyond the Genesis names A also uses and the angel Michael, that altar-place is what the appendix shares with the book; its own named cast is absent from A and B (Stage 3, where one near-spelling is noted).
Audience
The question the text answers is one Genesis leaves open. Genesis 14 gives Melchizedek no parents, no birth and no death. This appendix supplies a mother, a birth, a priestly line to stand in and a grave. Whether its first readers were asking that question, the text does not say.
The ark section speaks of the Jews in the third person. According to this number the Jews keep this measure of the ark of Noe (V.3), and both of its conversion tables set those (V.2) or their (V.11) ells against ours. The writer converts into a measure he calls his own.
And it reads Genesis with numbers. Noah’s 500, 600 and 601 years and Enoch’s 365 agree with Genesis; Noah’s 250 years after the flood and the ark’s converted height do not close on the appendix’s own figures (Stage 3).
Orient on Melchizedek, on 2 Enoch, and on why this story is printed as an appendix.
Search by topic: Melchizedek; Melchizedek traditions; 2 Enoch / Slavonic Enoch / Book of the Secrets of Enoch; Methuselah; priesthood before the flood; 11QMelchizedek; Hebrews 7. Charles himself sent readers there: For the other forms it took see Bible Dictionaries in loc. (1896, p. 85).
Which articles are relevant?
- Anchor Bible Dictionary — entries on Melchizedek, on Enoch and the Enoch literature, and on Hebrews.
- Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism — entries on 2 Enoch, Melchizedek and priesthood. 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 says which Slavonic manuscripts carry the Melchizedek story, and which chapter-and-verse numbering it uses. An article that cites ‘2 Enoch 71’ is using a numbering this page does not hold; the 1896 numbering here is I–V.
- On sigla — Charles’s A is the longer recension and his B the shorter; the 1983 translation reportedly calls the longer J and the shorter A. Never carry a letter from one edition to another. This page uses Charles’s letters only.
Bibliography surfaced:
- W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896) — the Appendix, pp. 85–93. Held (scans and verse file); the text of this page.
- N. Forbes and R. H. Charles, “2 Enoch, or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch”, in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913) — A and B in parallel, chapters 1–68. Held.
- 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.
- F. L. Horton, The Melchizedek Tradition (1976). Not held; not consulted.
Two Enoch books, Jubilees, and a story about a priest that the Bible does not tell.
Every comparison in this stage is of content, between English translations made by different men from different languages. No word count or run below is evidence of contact, and no direction of influence is asserted.
How long was Adam in paradise? Three answers on this disk:
- 2 Enoch A 32:1 (Forbes 1913): And Adam was five and half hours in paradise. B has no chapter 32.
- The appendix, III.28 (Morfill 1896): in the garden where Adam was formerly during a period of seven years, having the heaven always open until the time of his sin.
- Jubilees 3:15 (Charles): And in the first week of the first jubilee, Adam and his wife were in the Garden of Eden for seven years tilling and keeping it, and we gave him work and we instructed him to do everything that is suitable for tillage.
- So on this one point the appendix agrees with Jubilees and not with the book it is printed after. A does share the appendix’s open heaven — I made the heavens open to him (31:2) — but not its seven years. Morfill in 1896 put it in one line: “Though this legend does not belong to this Book of Enoch, it is added as an Appendix” (p. xiii).
A miraculous birth, told twice — 1 Enoch 106 and Appendix III:
Near its end (chapters 106–107) 1 Enoch tells the birth of Noah to Lamech: a child who lights up the house and who, in the midwife’s hands, speaks; a father who fears he is not his. The appendix tells the birth of Melchizedek to Nir’s dead wife. Three points line up, and on a fourth they part:
| 1 Enoch 106 — Noah (Charles 1912, from the Ethiopic) | Appendix III — Melchizedek (Morfill 1896, from the Slavonic) | |
|---|---|---|
| the newborn speaks | And he arose in the hands of the midwife, and opened his mouth and blessed the Lord of heaven. (106:11) | spake with its lips, and blessed the Lord (III.18) |
| the face | his countenance is glorious (106:5) | it was glorious in countenance (III.19) |
| the man of the house doubts | did not believe that he was sprung from him (106:12) | And Nir did not believe his wife (III.8) |
| how long the flood lasts | a great destruction for one year (106:15) | rain came on the earth 150 days (V.4); altogether they were in the ark 120 days (V.7) |
And they differ where it matters most. Noah’s father is alive, doubts, and is told the child is in truth his son (106:18); Melchizedek’s mother dies before the birth, and Nir did not sleep with her (III.2). 1 Enoch makes the flood last one year; the appendix gives rain for 150 days (V.4) and a stay in the ark of 120 days (V.7). Charles’s English and Morfill’s stand between the two texts; the page measures nothing here and asserts no dependence either way.
Which other texts shed light — and which were not read?
- Genesis 14:18–20 and Psalm 110:4 → the only places the Hebrew Bible names Melchizedek; Hebrews 5–7 → the only place the New Testament does. Set beside the appendix in Stage 4.
- 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) — the Qumran text in which Melchizedek is commonly described as a heavenly figure of judgement and release. Not read for this page: its Hebrew is on this disk only inside the raw ETCBC Dead Sea Scrolls dataset filed with Ben Sira, and was not opened for it. It matters here for one reason: that description has been applied to this appendix on another page of this shelf, and the appendix does not bear it. The words ‘atone’, ‘judge’, ‘deliver’ and ‘redeem’ (in any form) occur 0 times in its 104 verses.
- The burial of Abel taught by a bird (III.36: Adam saw a bird called a jackdaw, burying its fledgling). A raven teaches the burial of Abel in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 21 and in the Qur’an, 5:31. Neither is held here; both are named from general reference and were not checked. Genesis 4 says nothing of Abel’s burial.
- Jubilees 8:19 (Charles) calls Mount Zion the centre of the navel of the earth; the appendix puts Melchizedek’s priest-kingship at Akhuzan, in the middle of the earth where Adam was created (III.35), and the second Melchizedek in the town of Salem (IV.6). It never says whether Akhuzan and Salem are one place, and the page does not say so for it.
A word the book never uses, a name the Bible uses twice, and the numbers.
Counts in the appendix and in A and B are over the English files named on this page, whole words, case-insensitive: 104 verses and 4,057 words of Morfill; 568 verses and 17,346 words of Forbes. Counts in the Bible are over the Masoretic corpus, 30,348 CATSS Greek Old Testament units and 7,927 SBLGNT verses. A spelling is not a word: Morfill writes Methusalam and Noe; Forbes writes Noah, and Methosalam or Mathusal in A but Mefusailom in B; every count below was run on each of these spellings.
13 times in the appendix (12 verses, all in III–IV) — and twice as another Melchizedek (III.37, IV.6). 0 in A and B. In the Bible: twice in the Masoretic text (Genesis 14:18, Psalm 110:4), twice in the 30,348 CATSS Greek units (Genesis 14:18, Psalm 109:4 in the Greek numbering), and 8 times in the Greek New Testament, all in Hebrews 5–7. This English appendix names him more often (13) than the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament do together (10).
33 occurrences in 23 verses, I.2 to IV.11, and none in chapter V. In the 568 verses of A and B — 17,346 words of Forbes’s English — not one. That single count is the plainest measure on this page of how far the appendix stands from the book it is printed with. (Measured in English; whether the Slavonic of A and B lacks the word too cannot be checked here.)
53 times in 42 verses; 0 in A and B. Genesis 5:30 gives Lamech sons and daughters after Noah and names none of them, in the Masoretic and the CATSS Greek alike. Noah is named 0 times in A and B; the appendix names him 22 times (Noe 20, Noah twice). Sopanima: 12 times; 0 in A and B.
The appendix: Akhuzan at I.3 and III.35, Aruzan at II.17 (and Arusan as a priest’s name at III.34). A: Achuzan at 64:2 and 68:5; B: at 64:2. Charles’s 1913 note to A 68:5–7: The place of sacrifice, and here of Enoch’s assumption, is called Achuzan in i. 3, but Aruzan in ii. 17 — the appendix’s own verse numbers. Of the appendix’s own cast — Nir, Lamech, Noah, Sopanima, Melchizedek, Shem, Ham, Japheth, Cain, Abel, the elders Sarsan, Kharmis and Zazus (I.8), and the six priests of III.34 who are not Genesis names (Rusii, Almilam, Prasidam, Seroch, Arusan, Aleem) — A and B name none. One near-spelling: Kharmis, an elder at I.8, and Chermion, one of Methuselah’s brothers at 57:2 in A and B; whether one Slavonic name stands behind both cannot be checked here. The people they share are Genesis names and an angel: Enoch, Methuselah (in A Methosalam 5 times and Mathusal 3, at 1:1, 1:10 and 38:3; in B Mefusailom 3 times, at 1:10, 56:1 and 57:2; Methusalam 35 times here), Adam, Seth, Enos, Mahaleleel and Michael.
my chief captain Michael (III.28), the chief captain Michael (IV.4), I am the chief captain of the Lord (IV.5). Forbes’s A has the archistratege Michael (22:6; 33:10), a Greek title left in English, and his B the Lord’s archistratege Michael (22:6) and my general Michael (33:10). That Greek word, ἀρχιστράτηγος, stands 24 times in the CATSS files, first of Phicol, Abimelech’s commander (Genesis 21:22), and at Joshua 5:14 (B text) in the self-introduction ἐγὼ ἀρχιστράτηγος δυνάμεως κυρίου, I am chief captain of the power of the Lord; 0 times in the Greek New Testament, where Michael is the archangel (Jude 9). Whether one Slavonic word stands behind both Englishes cannot be checked here.
The numbers, beside Genesis:
Every Genesis figure below was re-read from the Masoretic text, the CATSS Greek and the Samaritan Genesis held here (Chester Beatty 751) by the page’s self-check.
| The appendix says | Genesis says (Masoretic · CATSS Greek · Samaritan) | Measured |
|---|---|---|
| Noah in the 500th year begat three sons (V.5) | 500 (5:32) · 500 · 500 | agrees |
| into the ark being 600 years; out in the sixth hundred and first year (V.8) | 600 (7:6) and the 601st year (8:13), all three | agrees |
| Then he lived 250 years … altogether 950 (V.9) | 350 after the flood (9:28), 950 in all (9:29) — all three | does not close: 600 + 250 = 850 |
| Enoch was altogether 365 years old (V.10) | 365 (5:23), all three; A 68:1 also 365 | agrees |
| ark 300 × 50 × 30 ells (V.1) | 300 × 50 × 30 cubits (6:15), all three | agrees |
| two stories in the midst (V.1) | lower, second and third decks (6:16, Masoretic); two-storied and three-storied (CATSS) | content differs |
| converted: 300→15,000, 50→2,500, 30→900, 1→50 (V.2) | — | three ×50, one ×30 |
| converted In another way: 300, 100, 20, 10, 5, 1 → ×50 each (V.11) | — | all six ×50; 100, 20, 10 and 5 are not Genesis measures |
| rain came on the earth 150 days (V.4) | rain 40 days and 40 nights (7:12); the waters prevailed 150 days (7:24) | 150 attached to the rain |
| the ark floated forty days. And altogether they were in the ark 120 days (V.7) | in from the 2nd month, 17th day (Masoretic, Samaritan) or 27th (CATSS) of year 600, to the 2nd month, 27th day of 601 (7:11; 8:14) | 120 days against about a year |
| in: Hebrew Itsars, Egyptian Famenoth, day 18; out: Egyptian Farmut, Hebrew Nisan, about day 28 (V.6, V.8) | Genesis dates by numbered months (7:11; 8:4, 5, 13, 14) | — |
Two of the appendix’s figures do not close on its own terms — the converted height and Noah’s years after the flood — and both were read on the page image of p. 93, so they are not slips in the transcription. Whether they are slips in the manuscript, in Sokolov’s edition or in the translation, nothing on this disk can say.
Counted here, not assumed:
- 104 verses: I 19, II 26, III 37, IV 11, V 11. 4,057 words of Morfill’s English.
- Three night visions in one formula (I.5, II.3, III.27): appeared to him in a nightly vision and said to him, eleven words, in all three. I.5 and II.3 share 25 consecutive words, the deepest repetition in the appendix.
- The phrase before the face of occurs 26 times in Morfill’s 4,057 words, and 11 times in Forbes’s 17,346 (A 6, B 5). That is a difference between two English texts. Whether it is the Slavonic’s or the translators’, English cannot say — which is why no run between them is treated as evidence on this page.
- 202 years of peace under Nir (II.22); 282 days to the birth (III.4); the child like one of three years old (III.18); forty days under Nir’s roof (IV.1); seven years twice — Adam in paradise (III.28) and the second Melchizedek hidden on the mountain (IV.6). None of these has a Genesis figure to set beside it.
- The months. In Charles’s 1896 apparatus to chapter 68 (p. 83, read from the page image), where A dates Enoch’s birth and ascent to Tsivan, the text he cites as Sokolov’s reads Pamorus and Nisan. The appendix’s exit month is Farmut according to the Egyptians, and according to the Hebrews Nisan (V.8). Reported as printed; the page does not identify Pamorus, Itsars, Famenoth or Farmut.
One screen that cannot run, two that can, and three tables of content.
The New Testament run screen cannot run: it needs the text in Greek, and there is no Greek (or Slavonic) of this appendix on this disk. What can be measured is English: the appendix against itself (one translator, so repeated wording tracks repeated content) and A and B against the appendix (two translators, so the runs measure the translators as much as the texts). English is lower-cased and reduced to letters and digits, apostrophes dropped; a run is consecutive whole words; the tie band is how many rows reach the same depth. A measured run is printed in small capitals, lower-cased as it was measured — it is a measurement, not a quotation. Everything with Genesis, Psalm 110 and Hebrews is content, set out side by side — never a run.
The appendix against itself — the distribution, then the doubles:
Each of the 104 verses screened against the other 103: 100 reach a run of three, 60 reach five, 23 reach eight, 11 reach ten, and two reach 25 — I.5 and II.3, each the other’s only partner (band 1). A story that repeats its own formulas: ‘before the face of the Lord, and before the face of all the people’ alone carries I.1 and I.17 to fourteen, band 1 both ways.
The doubles the edition marks, measured: III.32 and III.37 share ten words, this generation shall end in confusion and all shall perish (band 1 from both sides); III.33 and IV.2 share nine, and melchizedek shall be the chief of the priests (band 1); III.31 and III.34 share five, honour him with thy servants (III.31 reaches five with two verses, III.34 with four). V.2 and V.11, the two conversions of the ark, share seven tokens, 300 ells, and of ours 15,000 — six words, the tokeniser splitting 15,000 at its comma (band 1 both ways).
⚠️ And the measured double of IV.2 is not the one the footnote names. The 1896 footnote calls IV.2 Clearly a variant of iii. 37; in Morfill’s English IV.2’s deepest run is nine words with III.33 and only four with III.37. The note reads content (another race, another Melchizedek, the head of the priests); the run reads wording (‘chief’, not ‘head’). The page prints both and decides neither.
A and B against the appendix — a weak screen, and why the page still runs it:
All 568 rows of A and B screened against the 104 of the appendix: 562 reach two words, 331 reach three, 84 four, 24 reach five, 10 reach six, and one reaches seven. The deepest are formulas. The seven is A 9:1 → before the face of the lord and, with a tie band of 9 from A’s side — and a band of 1 from each of those nine appendix verses, which is why a band is read from both sides; seven of the nine sixes are runs on the elders of the people — five rows of A and B reach I.7 and I.12 with and the elders of the people, and A 57:2 and A 68:7 reach II.11 with all the elders of the people and the elders of the people and (bands 1 to 3 from A and B; from the appendix side, 5 at I.7 and at I.12 and 3 at II.11). Depth is not rarity, and a formula is not contact.
B 65:11 reaches only five — for i know that this, five of the commonest words in English — but with a band of 1 from both sides: III.32 is the only appendix verse it reaches five with, and B 65:11 is the only one of the 568 that III.32 reaches five with. The run is not the finding. The order of the clauses is:
| B 65:11 — Forbes 1913 — Enoch speaking | III.32 — Morfill 1896 — Nir speaking | III.37 — Morfill 1896 — Nir | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | For I know, | For I know | I know |
| 2 | that this will end in tumult | that this generation shall end in confusion, | that a great confusion has come and this generation shall end in confusion, |
| 3 | and will perish, | and all shall perish. | and all shall perish |
| 4 | only my brother will be preserved | And Noe, my brother, shall be preserved | except that Noe my brother shall be preserved, |
| 5 | on that day, | in that day. | — |
| 6 | placed in... and those of his tribe and the sun. | — | and afterwards there shall be a planting from his family, |
Six clauses; five of them in the same order in B 65:11 and III.32. In B the speaker is Enoch, addressing his children (64:5 ends And Enoch said to all the people:; chapter 65 opens Hear, my children). Neither recension gives Enoch a brother: the word brother occurs in A and B only in the precept of 50:5 and here (the plural brethren is used of Methuselah’s brothers at 57:1–2 and A 68:5, and in A of the Grigori at 18:6–8), and my brother only here. In the appendix the brother is Noah, and the speaker is Nir. B’s preceding sentence, The Lord will send down great destruction on to earth, has its counterpart in God’s word to Nir at III.27, I wish now to send a great destruction upon the earth; A has neither sentence (its chapter 65 ends at verse 10). Genesis 7:23 has the same ‘only’: וַיִּשָּׁאֶר אַךְ־נֹחַ — the Greek κατελείφθη μόνος Νωε, ‘only Noah was left’.
It shows that Charles’s sentence — No hint of this large addition is found in A or B (1896, p. 85) — holds for the story’s own cast and its priesthood, and does not hold for one sentence of B as Forbes translated it in 1913. Whether Charles had that sentence before him in 1896 the page cannot say: his apparatus to chapter 65 (pp. 79–81; p. 81 read from the page image) records no such reading of B.
It does not show which way anything went. Two translators, two manuscripts and a lacuna (‘placed in . . .’) stand between the two lines in the table, and no Slavonic is held to look beneath them. The page reports the alignment and stops.
Genesis 11 and the thousand and seventy years:
IV.6 gives two numbers for the coming of the second Melchizedek: when the twelfth generation shall be, and a thousand and seventy years shall be. Measured on the three Genesis texts held here, with the CATSS numbers as they stand:
| Masoretic | CATSS Greek | Samaritan | The appendix (IV.6) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| begetting ages, Arpachshad to Terah (Genesis 11:12–26) | 290 | 1,070 (with Kainan’s 130) | 940 | a thousand and seventy years shall be |
| from the flood to Abram’s birth (adding 11:10’s two years) | 292 | 1,072 | 942 | — |
| generations from Noah to Abram, counting both | 11 | 12 | 11 | when the twelfth generation shall be |
| Abram born, year of the world (Genesis 5 + 600 + the line above) | 1948 | 3314 | 2249 | — |
| Abram aged 75 to 86 (12:4; 16:16) — Genesis 14 falls in between | 2023–2034 | 3389–3400 | 2324–2335 | 3432 years shall be fulfilled till that time from the beginning and creation of Adam |
| Methuselah dies (5:27), against the flood year | the flood year | 14 years after | the flood year | more than 202 years before (II.16–22) |
The begetting ages of the nine fathers from Arpachshad to Terah in the CATSS Greek add to exactly 1,070 — the Greek line carries a second Kainan between Arpachshad and Shelah, καὶ ἔζησεν Καιναν ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα ἔτη καὶ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Σαλα (and Kainan lived a hundred and thirty years and fathered Sala, 11:13), whose 130 years the Masoretic וְאַרְפַּכְשַׁד חַי חָמֵשׁ וּשְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וַיּוֹלֶד אֶת־שָׁלַח (11:12) and the Samaritan do not have. Counting Noah’s generation as the first, Abram is the twelfth only on that line — the line Luke’s genealogy also carries: τοῦ Καϊνὰμ τοῦ Ἀρφαξὰδ τοῦ Σὴμ τοῦ Νῶε τοῦ Λάμεχ (Luke 3:36; see Luke 3). On the Masoretic and Samaritan lines he is the eleventh.
⚠️ The page’s own counter-example: the second number does not come out. On the same CATSS sums Abram is born in the year of the world 3314 and Genesis 14 falls between 3389 and 3400; 3,432 lies 32 years past that window, and on the Masoretic and Samaritan sums it is further still. So one number in IV.6 lands exactly on a Greek Genesis sum and the other lands on nothing measured here. The appendix names neither the just man nor the point its thousand and seventy years start from, and the page does not name them for it.
Melchizedek in the canon, beside the appendix — content only:
Genesis 14 and Psalm 110.
| Genesis 14:18 · Psalm 110:4 (with the page’s own literal gloss) | The appendix |
|---|---|
| וּמַלְכִּי־צֶדֶק מֶלֶךְ שָׁלֵם הוֹצִיא לֶחֶם וָיָיִן וְהוּא כֹהֵן לְאֵל עֶלְיוֹן καὶ Μελχισεδεκ βασιλεὺς Σαλημ ἐξήνεγκεν ἄρτους καὶ οἶνον ἦν δὲ ἱερεὺς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; and he was priest of God Most High. | Salem once, of another Melchizedek: he shall be priest, and the first king in the town of Salem after the fashion of this Melchizedek (IV.6). The child is a priest and king in the place Akhuzan (III.35). Bread once: given to the child (III.21). Wine, Abram and any tithe: 0. |
| נִשְׁבַּע יְהֹוָה וְלֹא יִנָּחֵם אַתָּה־כֹהֵן לְעוֹלָם עַל־דִּבְרָתִי מַלְכִּי־צֶדֶק ὤμοσεν κύριος καὶ οὐ μεταμεληθήσεται σὺ εἶ ἱερεὺς εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα κατὰ τὴν τάξιν Μελχισεδεκ The Lord has sworn and will not relent: You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek. (Greek Psalm 109:4 = Hebrew 110:4) | a priest of priests for ever — but only in the bracketed alia lectio of III.29; the base text there reads that he may be the chief of the priests who were before. |
Hebrews 7:3, phrase by phrase. Hebrews 7:3 describes Melchizedek in seven phrases, and five of them say what he is without; Genesis 14:18–20 records none of those five things. Laid side by side, the appendix supplies something against six of the seven — all but the likeness to the Son of God:
| Hebrews 7:3 (SBLGNT) — with the page’s own literal gloss | The appendix (Morfill 1896) |
|---|---|
| ἀπάτωρ fatherless | Nir the priest did not sleep with her, nor knew her (III.2) — yet Nir calls him this son of mine (III.34) |
| ἀμήτωρ motherless | a mother, named: Sopanima, 12 times (III.1–30) |
| ἀγενεαλόγητος without genealogy | the Lord renews the consecration according to our blood (III.20), and a line of twelve priests before him (III.34) |
| μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν having neither beginning of days | when 282 days were accomplished (III.4); then came an infant from the dead Sopanima (III.17) |
| μήτε ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων nor end of life | there shall at last be his grave (III.35) — and of Eden, there shall he be for ever (IV.5) |
| ἀφωμοιωμένος δὲ τῷ υἱῷ τοῦ θεοῦ but made like the Son of God | — nothing set against it: the words ‘Son of God’ do not occur in the appendix |
| μένει ἱερεὺς εἰς τὸ διηνεκές he remains a priest perpetually | that he may be a priest of priests for ever (III.29, in the alia lectio only) |
And two titles in III.34. III.34’s the great high priest — ἀρχιερέα μέγαν stands once in the Greek New Testament, at Hebrews 4:14, of Jesus (and in the CATSS files at 1 Maccabees 13:42 and 14:27, of Simon). III.34’s the Word of God — the phrase, logos or logon tou theou, stands in 33 of the 7,927 SBLGNT verses (11 of them in the exact nominative form with the article, ho logos tou theou, that Revelation 19:13 has), and in one of the 33 it is a name: κέκληται τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ ὁ Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ. (Revelation 19:13). Morfill’s English cannot be measured against either; the parallels are of content. Both titles stand in III.34, one of the two verses Charles cites for his judgement of a Christian author.
It settles three things, all narrow. The appendix shares almost nothing with A and B in people, places or vocabulary — and five clauses of one sentence of B line up, in sense and in order, with words the appendix gives Nir. One of IV.6’s numbers is exactly a CATSS Genesis 11 sum and the other matches no Genesis figure measured here. And against Genesis 14 and Hebrews 7 the appendix is a story of what the canonical texts do not say.
It settles nothing about date, author or direction. No Greek or Slavonic was measured, the brother sentence rests on two translators’ English, and the Genesis arithmetic rests on the CATSS numbers as held. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted.
What this page could not check, and where it is weakest.
This is the section that makes the shelf trustworthy. For a text held only in one 1896 English translation, it is long.
⚠️ What this page could NOT check:
- Any Slavonic. Not one word of this appendix was read in the language it survives in. Every count and every alignment is of Morfill’s English (1896) or Forbes’s (1913).
- The numbering of later editions. The 1983 translation numbers this material 69–73 with different verse numbers. None is held, so this page cannot convert its references, and readers should not convert them by guesswork.
- The manuscripts. Which Slavonic manuscripts carry the story, and whether any of the shorter recension’s carry it whole, is reported in later scholarship this page did not consult. The page knows only what Morfill and Charles printed in 1896 and Forbes in 1913.
- Whether anyone has noticed the brother sentence before. The page does not claim to be first; the modern editions that would say were not consulted.
- Charles’s judgement of a Christian heretic, and every date. Reported as his, not tested.
- 11QMelchizedek, Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, the Qur’an — named in Stage 2 and none read; 11Q13 is on this disk in the raw ETCBC Dead Sea Scrolls dataset, the other two are not held.
- Greek manuscript variants in Genesis 5 and 11. The 1,070 is a sum of the CATSS numbers as held (Kainan 130 at 11:13, Nahor 79 at 11:24, Methuselah 167 at 5:25). Other witnesses were not surveyed; a different reading at any of the nine would change the sum.
⚠️ Where this page is weakest:
- Its headline rests on one sentence of B, in English, with a hole in it. B 65:11 ends placed in . . . and those of his tribe and the sun — Forbes marks a gap, and the last words do not make sense as printed. The alignment uses its first five clauses only.
- The English-against-English runs are weak evidence by design, and the page says so beside them: before the face of stands 26 times in Morfill’s 4,057 words and 11 times in Forbes’s 17,346, a difference that may belong to the translators.
- The structure diagram is a sequence of counted repetitions — three robings, three night visions, one word’s distribution. It is expressly not a chiasm.
- The transcription has two known faults, neither printed here. At IV.10 the verse file carries the 1896 running head (Appendix. 93) inside the sentence, as OCR left it; at III.11 it has a single opening quotation mark where the page prints a double. Neither verse is quoted on this page, and both are reported for repair. The IV.10 fault also puts four stray tokens inside the 4,057-word count, which counts whitespace-separated tokens in the verse file; without them it is 4,053.
- The 1896 apparatus was read from OCR and three page images (pp. 81, 83, 85), not from every page. The quotations of Charles’s and Morfill’s introductions agree in all three scanned copies.
Commentaries & studies:
- W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (1896) — introduction §§2–3 and the Appendix. Held and read.
- R. H. Charles (ed.), APOT 2 (1913) — Forbes’s A and B and Charles’s notes. Held and read where cited.
- F. I. Andersen, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1 (1983). Not held.
- A. Vaillant, Le livre des secrets d’Hénoch (1952). Not held.
- F. L. Horton, The Melchizedek Tradition (1976). Not held.
Hebrews says what Melchizedek is without; this story supplies it.
Name what you learned, why it matters, and one concrete response.
What should we carry away — and do?
- Hebrews 7:3 says what Melchizedek is without. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life — and Genesis 14 records none of those five. This appendix, set beside them, supplies a mother by name, a birth, a family line and a grave. Reading the three side by side shows exactly what Hebrews’ phrases describe, and what the appendix carries that neither canonical text has.
- An appendix is not the book. The word priest occurs 33 times here and never in the 568 verses of 2 Enoch’s two recensions, in Forbes’s English. When someone quotes ‘2 Enoch’ on Melchizedek, it is fair to ask: which manuscript, which edition, which chapter number?
- Check the numbers. One of IV.6’s figures is exactly a Greek Genesis sum; the other matches no Genesis figure measured here; and V.2 and V.9 do not close on their own terms. Arithmetic is a way of reading carefully.
- One concrete response. Read Genesis 14:18–20, Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 7:1–3 aloud, in that order, and write down every detail Hebrews repeats from the two older texts — and every phrase in Hebrews 7:3 that neither older text states.
2 Enoch, Appendix III.32 · to share
Morfill 1896 · with B 65:11 (Forbes 1913)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: this appendix is not Scripture for Pleasant Springs; it is filed with 2 Enoch under Pseudepigrapha & Second Temple and read as a witness. English: W. R. Morfill, Appendix to W. R. Morfill and R. H. Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Oxford, 1896), pp. 85–93, public domain, quoted verbatim from a verse file voted from three scanned copies (Internet Archive), with the 1896 numbering I–V. Comparison English: N. Forbes’s A and B in R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament 2 (Oxford, 1913), public domain; R. H. Charles’s English of 1 Enoch (1912; SPCK 1917) and of Jubilees (1917 reprint). Hebrew: the Masoretic text (Miqra according to the Masorah); the Samaritan Pentateuch, MS Chester Beatty 751, Text-Fabric dataset of Højgaard, Naaijer and Schorch (CC BY-NC 4.0), numbers only. Greek: the CATSS morphological Septuagint; the SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT). Literal English beside Greek or Hebrew is the page’s own gloss. No Slavonic text was consulted. Direction of influence is nowhere asserted.
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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