Creation Encrypted: Ontology through Metaphor (The Books of the Holy Secrets of Enoch the Just)

Cosmogony in 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch is dominated by the theme of the inner relationship and mutual reciprocity between the Macrocosm and Microcosm, spelled out by metaphorical descriptions. The emergence of the Universe is envisaged in terms of (meta)physical conception, pregnancy and birth, whereas the begetting of mankind is imagined as an act of craftsmanship. God is portrayed as an artisan, whilst Adam is perceived as a metonymic icon of the Universe: his flesh is of earth, his blood is from dew and sun, his bones from stone, his eyes from “the abyss of the sea”, his thoughts from “angelic alacrity and from clouds”, his sinews (and hair) “from the grasses of the earth”, his soul “from God’s Spirit and from wind”. Man and World are conceived as alloforms. The analysis is based on the 16th century manuscript of 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch (MS № 321, fols. 269a–323a), once part of the Collection of the National Library in Belgrade (the text is translated into English by the author for the first time). The roots of the Enochic apocryphal corpus go back to the apocalyptic tradition of the Second Temple period; what we now consider to be 2 Enoch was composed in either Hebrew or Aramaic, most probably no later than the 2 cent. BCE; subsequently it was translated into Greek, with no extant manuscripts. Finally, it was translated in Bulgaria into Old Church Slavonic using the Glagolitic alphabet, most probably in the 10th century CE; it survived in two recensions, longer and shorter, with many text-witnesses. The metaphoric description of the correlation and interdependence between the Macrocosm and Microcosm, as presented in 2 Enoch, was also attested in some other apocryphal writings (The Legend of the Sea Tiberias, Erotapocriseis, etc.), as well as in oral tradition (the spiritual stanza of The Book of the Dove, etc.).