Chapter " Enoch’s Travel to Heaven ",
translation
from Russian
IgnoranceOF THE TERMS. When the Torah lists all of Adam’s descendants, it says at what age each
of them died, except Enoch, about whom it speaks in a different way: “Enoch
walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” Genesis, 5, 24. 24.
The Talmud gives
the details: “Once, when Enoch was
teaching people, the God’s angel appealed to him, and gave him a message that
it had been decided to summon him to the heaven, so he would teach the sons of
the God, as he had been teaching the sons of men before that. <...> And
so the storm fell upon… A fiery chariot with fiery horses appeared in a
whirlwind, and Enoch ascended into heaven.” (“Sefer Gaiashar”).[1]
Once my
grandmother Malvina whose mother tongue was Hungarian needed to say in Russian,
which was comprehensible to us, the words “a wheat field’. For a long time, she
desperately tried to find an equivalent of it, and, in the long run, she said,
“Bread on feet.”
At first we did
not understand what she meant, but when we did, we burst out laughing. Since
then this bread on feet became a favorite saying in our family, as a
synonym to wheat field.
This episode is an
example of how people who have a very poor vocabulary do somehow find the way
out: using figurativeness (it is most frequently done by children)… Something
like this happened to the above-mentioned quotation from the Talmud.
One has an impression that the old Jew who recorded this episode with
Enoch just did not know the technical terms which must have already existed at
that time: space ship (“fiery chariot”) with rocket motors (“fiery
horses”) and exhaust in the back (“appeared in a whirlwind”; a variant in
“The Second Book of Samuel” is “on the wings of the wind”). The notion angel is used here in its original meaning of messenger:
“the God’s angel appealed to him, and gave
him a message”.
the first. Why was Enoch so
honored that the God took him into heaven? The answer to this question can be
found in a well-known apocrypha: “And he was the first among men that are born on earth who learnt
writing and knowledge and wisdom and who wrote down the signs of heaven according
to the order of their months in a book, that men might know the seasons of the
years according to the order of their separate months. And he was the first to
write a testimony and he testified to the sons of men among the generations of
the earth, and recounted the weeks of the jubilees (fifty years), and made
known to them the days of the years, and set in order the months and recounted
the Sabbaths of the years as we (angels) made them, known to him.” The Book of Jubilees, p. 24.
That is, he was
the first literate man in history (“learnt writing”), the first writer
(“to write a testimony”), the first wise man (“learnt… wisdom), the first scientist (“wrote down the signs of heaven according to the order of their months in
a book, that men might know the seasons of the years according to the order of
their separate months”), the first prophet (“testified to the sons of men among the generations of the earth”).
Strictly
speaking, Adam had approximately the same qualities, and he precisely was the
first prophet, while Enoch was the second one. However, there is no mistake in
the given information from “The Book of Jubilees”, as Adam was not given birth
by a woman, but was created by the God-Extraterrestrial in his residence unknown
to us, and Enoch, indeed, was the first prophet “among men that are born on earth”.
The mostANCIENT BOOK. Enoch was a
descendant of Adam in the 7-th generation: his great great great great
grandson, and simultaneously Noah’s great grandfather, — the Noah who had saved
himself in his ark during the Deluge. We have already said that the life of the
patriarchs who had lived before the Deluge was ten times longer than ours, that
is why Enoch lived at the same time as his great great great great grandfather
Adam: “When Adam, the forefather of mankind, was still living, Enoch (a
contemporary of Adam during three hundred years) prophesied the inevitable
advent of the God (Messiah) with His angels at the end of the centuries to
render justice to dishonest people.”[2]
This must have been the oldest prophecy about the Messiah.
If one goes out of the Judaist chronology that now it is the year of
5763 from the creation of the world, then Enoch had lived two thousand years
before Moses; but if we go out of the archeologists’ hypothesis that the
Deluge took place 7750 years ago, then Enoch had lived four thousand years
before Moses.
The fate of “The
Book of Enoch” was uneven: “In the old Christian world “The Book of Enoch” was
considered, though not canonical, but of exceptional authority. It was directly
cited by the author of the Epistles Judah, indirectly hinted at by Apostle
Peter, referred to by Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Tertullianus, and also
the author of the non-canonical Epistle of Varnava (the latter even spoke about
it as a part of the Holy Writ). After the canon of the Holy Writ was formed,
the authority of “The Book of Enoch” died away, and the text of it was lost.
It was again
discovered only in 1773 in the Ethiopian language (amhara) in the double
translation from Aramean or Hebraic through Greek, but in full which was very
rare. Later two big fragments of the Greek text were found during diggings in
Ahmima (
As to me, I
consider this book genuine. But with one correction that, as it is almost twice
as old as Torah, then, correspondingly, it was considerably more edited,
copied, and translated from one language to another, — and so it was in
considerably greater degree distorted. However, if we take into account its
record breaking age, — then, thank God, that it has been preserved, even in
such state, till our time.
WHO ARE THE
WATCHERS? Why was the location where the
extraterrestrials landed called
This is something like missionaries, and, at the same time, volunteer
militia.
And what is the connection between the name “Jared” and descendance of
the angels on the Earth (“and he called his name Jared, for in his days the
angels of the Lord descended on the earth”)? The connection is the
following: “The pun: «Jared» and the verb «descend» have the same root -yrd-“.[5]
One of the first duties of the angels-watchers on the planet of Earth was
to guard the Garden of Eden, especially the tree of life (the tree of
immortality), — first of all, from Adam and Eve driven out: “So He drove the man out; and at the east of
the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim (angels) and the
flaming sword which turned every direction (laser weapon) to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis, 3, 24.
What did those cherubim look like? “The cherubim mentioned in this episode are
known from ancient Near Eastern lore as mythological winged animals, usually with
human faces (extraterrestrial with a
helicopter-knapsack).” [6]
And one of the archangels was appointed governor of Eden: “Gabriel, who is described as possessing 140
pairs of wings (in a helicopter with the 140 blades of propellers), is the governor of Eden and ruler of the
cherubim.” [7]
But, in general, there must have been a more serious reason to call the
angels watchers. If we pursue Sitchin’s hypothesis, then, at least in the
beginning, the most responsible task of the extraterrestrials on the Earth was
guarding their cosmodrome, and their dwelling, and it means that the
uncivilized terrestrials contacted to the extraterrestrials primarily as the watchers
who did not let them in a certain place. At that time, there was not yet
such word, as extraterrestrial in the language of the terrestrials that
was the very reason why the word watcher became their first name.
Contacts with angels were, apparently, intensive in ancient time, — and
religion is trying to shade it now: “Part of the reason the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha failed to become authoritative was that later
rabbis believed the authors of these texts overemphasized the role and
importance of angels so much that Judaism was on the verge of falling into the
apostasy of polytheism. <...> Despite this move to downplay angels, much
significant angel lore was codified in the Talmud, for example, the following
ideas: Angels walk upright, speak Hebrew, and are endowed with understanding;
they can fly in the air, move from one end of the world to another...” [8]
Note: “Pseudepigrapha” are works attributed to “to
authorities of the remote antiquity”.[9]
arrived by flight. According to Dal, newcomer is “a
man who came, who dropped in, who called at; a stranger, a foreigner, an alien”.[10] And writers of science
fiction began to use another meaning of this word: “an extraterrestrial who
arrived on the Earth by flight”.[11]
Besides, the
basic vocabulary in ancient time already had a very close word — angel: “Hebraic
word malah (טלאך)
and Greek angelos (αγγελος) mean envoy, messenger”.[12] And from Qumran
manuscripts (II century B. C. — II century A. D.) discovered half a century
ago, we can see, “that the religious conscience of the community of the Dead
See presupposed the existence of the world inhabited with numerous heavenly
being, whose mission was to govern all action of man, being permanently and
invisibly near him”.[13] And the Christian theologist
Ioann Damaskin (VIII century A. D.) wrote, “They are strong and ready to execute divine will, and due to agility
inherent to their nature, immediately turn up everywhere, wherever the divine
sign tells them; and guard the regions of the Earth; and govern the people and
the countries, conformably to what is ordered by the Creator; and manage our
affair, and help us. In general, by both the divine will, and the divine order
they are higher than we, and are always near the God.” (“About Angels”).[14]
As the word “angel” adjoins the word “newcomer”, so, in its turn, does
the word “angel” to the word “God”. The matter is that these two notions — God
and angel (or angel of the God) are not always distinctly
separated speaking about one of them; sometimes, they clearly speak about both
of them and sometimes it remains unclear.
In general, angels are just common gods. Or, on the other side,
the God is just the principal angel.
Thus, the
contemporary newcomer and the ancient angel… And maybe these
words are not only close lexicologically, but in their essence, as well? Maybe,
the ancient people, in the beginning, assumed that angels were just
men-newcomers from another planet; and only later to this assumption was added
the whole specific stereotype of religious behavior: FEAR OF GOD, REVERENT
TREMBLE, HOLY SECRET, BLIND FAITH.
I must add that
in my opinion, the word newcomer in this meaning is not quite accurate,
it would be more accurate to say: the one who arrived by flight.
ANGELS IN
SPACESUITS. Unlike the God, the angels were seen by many
men, “There was a man,
whose appearance was like appearance of brass…” The book of Ezekiel, 40, 3. “His body also was like beryl (emerald), his face
had the appearance of lightning, his eyes were like flaming torches, his arms
and feet like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of his words like the
sound of a tumult.” The Book of Daniel, 10, 6.
I understand it in such a way.
In the atmosphere of the Earth not quite fit for them, the
extraterrestrials preferred to stay in spacesuits (“whose appearance was like appearance of brass”; “his body also was like beryl… like the gleam of polished bronze”);
in his helmet there was a transparent, if one look from the inside, window (“his
face had the appearance of lightning”); in the forehead of the helmet — two
small lanterns-searchlights (“his eyes were like flaming torches”); his
voice was amplified with a dynamo (“the sound of his words like the sound of
a tumult”).
The spacesuits
of the extraterrestrials gleamed in darkness with electric light, “And they took and brought me to a place in
which those who were there were like flaming fire, 2 and, when they wished,
they appeared as men.” The
Book of Enoch, 4, 1.
That is, with a spacesuits on, the extraterrestrials looked like “flaming
fire”, and without their spacesuits — “when they wished, they appeared
as men”.
We can see analogy in Muhammad’s opinion, “They (angels) are
created, according to Alkoran «from fire» (7, 12), according to hadithes (legends) — from light”.[15]
One must say
that the special clothes of cosmonaut were already known to Sumerians, “Lady of Heaven: she puts on the Garment of Heaven, she valiantly ascends
towards Heaven”.[16] At the same time, in case of need, those clothes “Garment of
Heaven” protected one from mechanical action, i.e. using our terminology, they
were bullet-proof, “Ninurta
was at first astounded by her decision to «enter alone the enemy land»; but since her mind was made up, he
provided her with «clothes which should make her unafraid». [17]
Similar clothes were
known to ancient Egyptians, too: “And Ammon of Pnub (god of Sun[18]) came out of the
The question mark in the
parentheses belongs to the author of the book, professor Boris Turayev who died
in 1920 when a serious scholar could not afford interpreting this armour as a
spacesuit of a cosmonaut. Nevertheless, even his question mark is significant…
About other wonderful peculiarities of the
garments of angels the extraterrestrials we can judge by our contemporary
scientific works: ”The employees of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working
at the project of creating a superuniform for American Army soldiers. 50
million dollars were allotted to the new research center named
Note: Nanotechnology is “the
technology of objects
with sizes are of 10-9m (atoms,
molecules). Processes of nanotechnology are governed by the
laws of quantum mechanics. Nanotechnology includes atomic assembling of molecules, new methods
of recording and reading information, local stimulation of chemical reactions
on molecular level and other things.” [21]
According to apocalyptic work “Ascent of Moses”, he once put on a
similar spacesuit, as well: “As
reward for modesty displayed by Moses when the God sent him to the Pharaoh to
demand liberation of the Jewish people, the God orders to Metatron (Enoch) to
allow Moses to ascend to heaven. After Metatron transformed Moses’s body into a
fiery one, similar to the bodies of angels, he himself carries him (on
a spaceship) through all seven
heavens (orbits of seven planets).” [22]
THE FACE OF THE CHIEF. EHIND THE WINDOW OF SPACE HELMET. According
to Enoch, it was a taboo to see the face of the Chief Extraterrestrial: “None of the angels could enter and could
behold His face by reason of the magnificence and glory and no flesh could
behold Him. <...> And
until then I had been prostrate on my face, trembling: and the Lord called me
with His own mouth, and said to me: «Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.»
And one of the holy ones came to me and
waked me, and He made me rise up and approach the door: and I bowed my face
downwards.” The Book of Enoch, 3, 35; 3, 38-39.
About the same taboo Sitchin speaks in his retelling of an ancient
Egyptian epos: “On his way
down, the king sees "faceless gods" - gods whose faces cannot
be seen. Offended or simply curious, he pleads with them: "Uncover your
faces, take off your head coverings, when ye meet me; for, behold, I [too]
am a mighty god come to be among you." But they do not heed his plea to
show their faces; and the texts explain that even they, "these
hidden beings, neither see nor look upon" their own chief, the god
Seker "when he is in this form himself, when he is inside his abode
in the earth."" [23]
Four thousand years after Enoch, and,
maybe, above-mentioned pharaoh, the taboo to see the God’s face was infallibly
observed by Moses, too.
However, the God promised not to hide His face from the people of
Israel in the future: "«Then
they will know that I am the Lord their God because I made them go into exile among
the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave
none of them there any longer. I will not hide My face from them any longer,
for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of
But why was it taboo to see God’s face before advent of this
future? We do know from the Torah that the God created “man in Our image, according to Our
likeness…" Genesis, 1, 26. What is here to hide?
We can only make assumptions about it. Such, for instance: the
extraterrestrials could not stay on the planet of Earth without their
spacesuit, or, at least, without their helmets, except in special rooms with
the air composition they needed, like the one on their planet (the terrestrial
cosmonauts in our days found themselves in the same situation on the Moon).
Therefore, the God could not even physically show Enoch His face, as it was
hidden behind the helmet impenetrable from outside.
It is natural that the extraterrestrials did not want to show their
vulnerability to the indigenes of Earth. The history of conquering
Hence, the following conclusions are drawn: many monarchs on the Earth
(pharaohs, kings, sultans, and so on) inherited from the extraterrestrials a
custom of hiding their faces from their subjects; to see their faces was a
privilege of court only — as to the people, they had to lower their eyes and
prone on the ground, at the fear of death, while the monarch was passing or
riding by.
As to the monarch, there is a purely physical aspect here, as well. The
matter is that animals take a direct look into their eyes as a challenge; in
the behavior of the monarchs such a natural biological reaction evolved into
another way of propagating among their subjects servile reverence — the eternal
phenomenon of cult of personality. Besides, the
monarchs propagated a notion of themselves as handsome giants, but, in fact,
some of them were feeble, rachitic, with defective faces, sometimes still silly
children, sometimes already ape-like old men — so, how could they help hiding
their appearance?
PERSONAL BAN. One of many sons of King David raped his own sister, David’s daughter,
and another son, Absalom, killed the rapist and ran away from the king’s palace,
in fear of being punished for taking the law into his own hands. However the
king said, “However the king
said, «Let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face.»
So Absalom turned to his own house and did
not see the king's face. <...>
Now Absalom lived two full years in
So Absalom's servants set the field on fire.
Then Joab arose, came to Absalom at his house and said to him, «Why have your servants set my field on fire?»
Absalom answered Joab, «Behold, I sent for you, saying, `Come here,
that I may send you to the king, to say: why have I come from Geshur? It would
be better for me still to be there. Now therefore, let me see the king's face,
and if there is iniquity in me, let him put me to death.`»
So when Joab came to the king and told him,
he called for Absalom. Thus he came to the king and prostrated himself on his
face to the ground before the king, and the king kissed Absalom.” The Book of Joshua, 14, 24;
14, 28-33.
Thus, a ban to see the king proved to be a very
efficient punishment, for Absalom preferred death to this ban: “if there is iniquity in me, let him put me to death”.
The deputes. The duties of the Chief Extraterrestrial’s deputies
were specialized: “And I, Enoch,
alone saw the vision, the ends of all things: and no man shall see as I
have seen. And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel, one of the
holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus. Raphael, one of the
holy angels, who is over the spirits of men. Raguel, one of the
holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of the
holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over
chaos. Saraqael,
one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one of the
holy angels, who is over
In this case “angels who watch” means: have their duties. What duties?
Uriel (“who is over the world and over
Tartarus”) — the astronomer; Raphael (“who is over the spirits of men”) —
gathering a computer dossier on men; Raguel (“who takes vengeance on the
world of the luminaries”) — heads energy effect on the orbits of planets
and other elements of heaven mechanics; Michael (“he that is
set over the best part of mankind”) — taking care of the mongrels,
descendants of Adam and Eve (later — of Israelites); Saraqael (“set
over the spirits, who sin in the spirit”) — providing watch over the
“detrimental elements”; Gabriel (“who is over Paradise and the
serpents and the Cherubim”) — is responsible for “concomitant economy.
Now I want to go
back to the words I put in the capital letters, bold type, at the beginning of
this long quotation from the “Book of Enoch”: saw the vision, the ends of all THINGS, in order to
draw the readers’ attention to the fact that, by Sumerian record, god Ea who
created Adapa let him, as well as Enoch later, “the inside of heaven and
Earth”.[24]
And, as in Enoch youth Adam was still living, Enoch, most likely, had heard his
stories about what he saw for himself later, when he was taken to heaven.
PLANETARIUM OR OCEANARIUM? When
Enoch was ascended to the space station, he found himself in a palace that
struck his imagination: “I went in
till I drew nigh to a wall which is built of crystals and surrounded by tongues
of fire: and it began to affright me.
And I went into the tongues of fire and drew nigh to a large house which was
built of
As we see, the palace was made of
transparent materials unfamiliar to Enoch: “the walls of the house were like
a tessellated floor (made) of crystals, and its groundwork was of crystal”.
And they were lit with bright electric light also unfamiliar to Enoch: “I
went into the tongues of fire”; “a flaming fire surrounded the walls,
and its portals blazed with fire”; “it was built of flames of fire”;
“its floor was of fire”; “its ceiling also was flaming fire”. Enoch
was stunned at the sight of this palace: “in every respect it so excelled in
splendour and magnificence and extent that I cannot describe to you its
splendour and its extent”; “I drew nigh to a wall… <...> it began
to affright me”.
The ceiling of
the palace looked like a planetarium, and the walls (?) — like oceanarium: “and
above it were lightnings and the path of the stars, and its ceiling also was
flaming fire”; “Its ceiling was like the path of the stars and the
lightnings, and between them were fiery cherubim, and their heaven was (clear
as) water”.
The motif of an oceanarium is also
traced later, in the Gospel: “And before the throne there was something
like a
On the seventh heaven. Heaven got from the uncivilized, antediluvian Earth to the space station
of the extraterrestrials, Enoch, as far as his inadequate terrestrial knowledge
allowed him, joined their science of astronomy: “The book of the courses of the luminaries of the heaven, the
relations of each, according to their classes, their dominion and their
seasons, according to their names and places of origin, and according to their
months, which Uriel, the holy angel, who was with me, who is their guide,
showed me; and he showed me all their laws exactly as they are, and how it is
with regard to all the years of the world and unto eternity, till the new
creation is accomplished which dureth till eternity. <...> Such is the
picture and sketch of every luminary which Uriel the
As we see, Enoch was introduced to this knowledge by both: a
professional astronomer (“Uriel, the holy angel, who was with me, who is
their guide, showed me”; “Uriel the archangel, who is their leader”),
and a special reference book on astronomy (“the book of the courses of the
luminaries of the heaven”). And the instruction was being given not so much
for the sake of hospitality on the part of Uriel toward the guest from the
Earth, as for Enoch’s enlightenment (and through him — the ignorant
terrestrials, as well): “And I saw how the stars of heaven come forth,
and I counted the portals out of which they proceed, and wrote down all their
outlets, of each individual star by itself, according to their number and their
names, their courses and their positions, and their times and their months, as
Uriel the holy angel who was with me showed me. He showed all things to me and
wrote them down for me: also their names he wrote for me, and their laws and
their companies.” The Book of Enoch, 5, 64-65.
That is, the scheme of the stars of heaven in “the book of the
courses of the luminaries of the heaven” was divided into sectors named by
Enoch — “the portals out of which they proceed”.
Enoch studied
separately the scheme of the movement of the two main luminaries: “And
I saw the chambers of the sun and moon, whence they proceed and whither they
come again, and their glorious return (to another side of the Earth), and how one is superior to the other, and
their stately orbit, and how they do not leave their orbit, and they add
nothing to their orbit and they take nothing from it (move strictly by
their orbits), and they
keep faith with each other, in accordance with the oath by which they are bound
together (according
to the laws of gravity).
And first the sun goes forth and traverses his path according to the
commandment of the Lord of Spirits, and mighty is His name for ever and ever;
and after that I saw the hidden and the visible path of the moon (the full cycle of moving by orbit), and she accomplishes the course of her path in that place by day
and by night-the one holding a position opposite to the other before the Lord
of Spirits; and they give thanks and praise and rest not; for unto them is
their thanksgiving rest; for the sun changes oft for a blessing or a curse; and
the course of the path of the moon is light to the righteous; and darkness to
the sinners in the name of the Lord, who made a separation between the light
and the darkness (the
cycle of day and night); and divided
the spirits of men; and strengthened the spirits of the righteous, In the name
of His righteousness.” The Book of
Enoch, 7, 35-37.
Serious knowledge
of astronomy existing at Enoch’s time is also confirmed by contemporary
“Sumerian” findings: “A lens of
considerable power was found in the ruins of
And also: “If this Sumerian map had been discovered and studied two
centuries ago, astronomers would have deemed the Sumerian totally uninformed,
foolishly imagining more planets beyond Saturn. Now, however, we know that
Uranus and Neptune and Pluto are really there”.[26]
In general, there is in the Bible a notion “about many heavens” [27]:"Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven
and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it…” Deuteronomy, 10, 14; "But will God indeed dwell on the
earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how
much less this house which I have built!” Book of the Kings, 8, 27.
As “The Jewish Encyclopedia” by Brokgaus and
Efron writes, “the