2 Enoch

2 Enoch / Book of the Secrets of Enoch — Morfill & Charles — Section 115

1 Bom. 3 From thence I was taken to the place of judgement, and I saw hell, B. I append here chapter XL in tull,as it appears in B. This chapter in B is manifestly fragmentary and disarranged, and serves to justify the originality of the fuller form as preserved in A Sok. 1. My children, I know all from the lips of the Lord. For mine eyes saw from the beginning to the end, 8. and the dwelling places of the clouds, 9. with those which bring storms and thunder. And the angels showed me the keys which guarded them. 10. I saw the treasure of snow and ice, 9. and the path by which they go: they are brought forth in bonds in measure, and let go in bonds, so that with grievous vehemence they should not oppress the clouds and destroy in the earth, 10. both the air and the cold. I saw at that time how the clouds are restrained by them as a key does prisoners, and they are not allowed to exhaust their treasuries. 11. I saw the abodes of the winds, how those who hold the keys of their prisons bear with them the balances and the measures: in the first place they lay on the balances; in the second they measure, and in measure do they let them go over the whole earth: so that by their powerful breath they should not shake the earth. 12. From thence I was taken to the place of judgement and I saw hell open and the prisoners and the eternal judgement. 12. Down to the lowest hell. We coms here upon a conception irre- concilable with the general scheme of the author. Hell, according to this scheme, is really located in the third heaven. See x, where the place, its horrors, and the classes it is prepared for, are described at length. But the old Jewish beliefs of an underworld of punishment are too strong to be wholly excluded, and so consistency is here sacrificed to For an analogous comparison cf. xviii. 7. It is possible, further, that the author may have had some idea of a series of seven hells, as he speaks here of ‘the lowest completeness.