for whatever random reasons, i have been reading #enoch again
i think i have now read through the ethiopian orthodox version, and have got part way through what reads like the jewish version
or maybe the first version is the eastern orthodox, and the second is the jewish, because to be honest i don't recall reading any of the text before and i read through an entire version about 18 months ago and there was some key sections that were missing.
it seems very obvious to me that there was a vastly larger volume of text tied to these versions, and all of them are either tiny segments or highly mangled tiny segments of the original text.
if you are christian, you would believe that Enoch was a real man and he did in fact write a giant tome that he passed on to his son Methuselah, famous for being the longest lived person in the entire text of the (catholic compiled) bible.
the first version i read was reasonably easy to follow, and even included a really nice summary of the calendar, and conflicts with the genesis assertion of a 360 day year, by saying that it was not 90 days per season but 91 (which is 13*7 btw).
this second version i'm reading seems highly condensed. i am going to have to scan the preface and contents and index to figure out what i'm actually looking at because the second text that i seem to be reading now seems highly disembodied and specious, although it clearly states that angels can mate with humans, almost everything else is incredibly fantastical, where the previous text seemed almost plausible.
the way the second part of this text describes God (who i interpret to mean the highest archangel, who presumably is Jesus) in ways that make him seem like a fantastical being and it repeatedly talks about creatures with hundreds of eyes and half a dozen wings and greatly inflates the likely facts of the angels being pale skinned to sound like they were glowing like their flesh was luminous.
it's quite instructive to see how inflated things can get as fanatics translate original texts and then add their "touch" to it.
like how tyrants rewrite the history books.
same vibes.
