Florentina Badalanova Geller

Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch. Neue Folge, Volume 9 (2021), Issue 1, Page 1 - 45

Questions about the origins of the Universe, angels and man in The Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch (2 Enoch) are expressed through the conceptual thesaurus of theodicy, whilst Myth explicates Law – both in terms of Human and Divine. While in 1 Enoch the Watchers myth is concerned with the breach of epistemological borders and the collapse of the ontological division between the incorporeal and corporeal, resulting from the carnal union between the angelic and the human and the disclosure of heavenly secrets to earthly agents, the narrative in 2 Enoch is free of the concept of the illicit transmission of knowledge; instead, it focuses on the trope of the violated contract between God and a congregation of rebellious angels, as a result of the “free will” wrongly exercised by them. Thus the issue of the origin of evil is presented in terms of juridical ontology as a matter of legal reasoning. The length of the Watchers narrative varies in different Slavonic manuscripts, while offering alternative spellings of the term for the Fallen Angels; the latter represents a transliterated version of the Greek angelonym Gregoroi [Γρήγοροι, Ἐγρήγορoι] (used by Synkellos in his Universal History). The discussion in the present article is based on the analysis of twelve text witnesses (e.g. Codex Belgradensis, Codex Chludovianus, Codex Belgradensis Serbius, Codex Vindobonensis Slavonicus 125, Codex Moscovitanus Barsovii, etc.), with reference to all published manuscript sources.