Echoes Across Empires


1 Enoch VI · The Watchers descend

6And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. 7And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl.

R. H. Charles's translation, 1917 — set as he marked it.

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The complete 1 Enoch All five books · 108 chapters · PDF

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What this is

1 Enoch is a Jewish apocalyptic work, parts of it older than the book of Daniel. It takes the four strange verses of Genesis 6 and expands them into a full account: two hundred heavenly beings descend, take human wives, and teach humanity metallurgy, weaponry, sorcery, and the beautifying of the eyelids. Their children are giants. The flood follows.

The letter of Jude quotes it directly. Tertullian argued it belonged in scripture. But the West let it go, and for centuries the complete text survived in one place only — the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, in Ge'ez. Aramaic fragments recovered from the caves at Qumran later confirmed that its oldest sections were circulating well before the Christian era.

Why this edition

Most free copies of Enoch strip out Charles's brackets and daggers, which makes for smoother reading and quietly removes the most interesting thing in the book: the places where the ancient witnesses disagree with each other.

This edition keeps every mark, and explains each one. Where the Greek preserves a phrase the Ethiopic lacks, you can see it. Where the text is beyond repair, you can see that too. Set in EB Garamond and Cinzel, with the marks drawn by hand — no font contains them.

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