2 Enoch

The Second Book of Enoch (abbreviated as 2 Enoch and also known as Slavonic Enoch, Slavic Enoch, or the Secrets of Enoch) is a pseudepigraphic text in the apocalyptic genre. It describes the ascent of the patriarch Enoch, ancestor of Noah, through ten heavens of an Earth-centered cosmos. The Slavonic edition and translation of 2 Enoch is of Christian origin in the 8th century but is based on an earlier work.^[1] 2 Enoch is distinct from the Book of Enoch, known as 1 Enoch, and there is also an unrelated 3 Enoch, although none of the three books are considered canonical scripture by the majority of Jewish or Christian bodies. The numbering of these texts has been applied by scholars to distinguish each from the others.

The cosmology of 2 Enoch corresponds closely with beliefs of the Early Middle Ages about the metaphysical structure of the universe. It may have been influential in shaping them. The text was lost for several centuries, then recovered and published at the end of the nineteenth century. The full text is extant only in Church Slavonic, but Coptic fragments have been known since 2009. The Church Slavonic version itself represents a translation from an earlier Greek version.^[2]

Some scholars attribute 2 Enoch to an unidentified Jewish sect, while others regard it as the work of first-century Christians.^[3][4] Some consider it a later Christian work.^[5] It is not included in either the Jewish or the Christian canon, except that it was heavily utilized by the Bogomils.^[6]