Abstract: The Book of Giants (BG), an Enoch text found in 1948 among the Dead Sea Scrolls, includes a priceless trove of stories about the ancient prophet and his contemporaries, including unique elements relevant to the Book of Moses Enoch account. Hugh Nibley was the first to discover in the BG a rare personal name that corresponds to the only named character in the Book of Moses besides Enoch himself, a finding that some non-Latter-day Saint Enoch scholars considered significant. Since Nibley’s passing, the growth of new scholarship on ancient Enoch texts has continued unabated. While Nibley’s pioneering research compared the names and roles of one character in Moses 6–7 and BG, scholars have now been able to examine the names and roles of nearly all of the prominent figures in the two books and analyze their respective accounts in more detail. Not only are the overall storylines of the two independent accounts more similar than could have imagined a few years ago, a series of recent studies have added substance to the claim that the specific resemblances of the Book of Giants to Moses 6–7—resemblances that are rare or absent elsewhere in Jewish tradition—are more numerous and significant than the resemblances of any other single ancient Enoch text—or, for that matter, to all of the most significant extant Enoch texts combined. Of particular note is new evidence in BG that relates to the Book of Moses account of Enoch’s gathering of Zion to divinely prepared cities and the ascent of his people to the presence of God.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the Latter-day Saint community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

[Page 96]See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “Moses 6–7 and the Book of Giants: Remarkable Witnesses of Enoch’s Ministry,” in Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses: Inspired Origins, Temple Contexts, and Literary Qualities, ed. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David R. Seely, John W. Welch and Scott Gordon (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Springville, UT: Book of Mormon Central; Redding, CA: FAIR; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2021), 1041–256. Further information at https://dev.interpreterfoundation.org/books/ancient-threads-in-the-book-of-moses/.]

The Latter-day Saint story of Enoch has been called the “most remarkable religious document published in the nineteenth century.”¹ This is true for at least three reasons.

1. First, the account is highly original. For example, according to a preliminary linguistic analysis by Stanford Carmack, the language of the account is by and large “independent of Genesis language,”² with an initial authorship diagnostic strongly indicating that the text is not “pseudobiblical or biblical or Joseph Smith’s own pattern.”³
2. Second, it is audacious in its claims. The account was produced early in Joseph Smith’s ministry—in fact, in the same year as the publication of the Book of Mormon—as part of a divine commission to “retranslate” the Bible.⁴ Like Doctrine and Covenants 76, it seems to contain many significant items that were removed “from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.”⁵ Note that this statement allows for three options for the Enoch account in Moses 6–7: (1) it was removed from one of the books we now have in the Bible at some point in history; (2) it was written at some point but was later lost and was never connected with any of the books of the Bible; or (3) it was never written down until it was revealed to Joseph Smith.
3. Third, it was produced at record speed. Judging by the rapidity by which similar passages were translated, the account of Enoch found today in Moses 6–7 would appear to have occupied only a few days of the Prophet’s attention.⁶ In view of the sizable revelations received on Enoch and other topics around that time, Kerry Muhlestein considers it “one of the greatest periods of revelation the Church has experienced, a true overflowing surge.”⁷

[Page 97]How Have Different Scholars Approached the Task of Explaining the Book of Moses Enoch Account?

There are a variety of different explanations for how such a novel, expansive, and coherent work purporting to be a true account of ancient historical figures could have been produced by a relatively unschooled translator in such a short amount of time. In the present study, our primary interest is in comparing Moses 6–7 with the Book of Giants (BG), an ancient source unknown in 1830, in support of arguments that the Prophet translated through a process that was dependent on divine revelation. Alternatively, some comparative studies seek to identify instances when Joseph Smith might have relied on texts known to him (whether from ancient or modern sources) as aids in the translation of Latter-day Saint scripture.⁸

Though it is not impossible that Joseph Smith drew inspiration “out of the best books” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118; 109:7, 14) in his Bible translation, I have outlined in detail elsewhere the challenges that scholars face in their efforts to argue that nineteenth-century influences, augmented by the imagination of Joseph Smith, were primarily responsible for the Enoch narrative in the Book of Moses.⁹ For example, the evidence that the narrative of Moses 6–7 is derived largely from the Bible¹⁰ or scholarly Bible commentaries¹¹ is scant and unconvincing at present. Evidence that Sidney Rigdon contributed significantly to Moses 7 is not persuasive and the first half of the acccount, Moses 6, was translated before he came on the scene.¹²

Most significantly, it would have been impossible for Joseph Smith in 1830 to have been aware of the most important resemblances to ancient Enoch literature in his translation. Other than the limited and typically loose parallels found in 1 Enoch (which was unlikely to have been available to Joseph Smith), the texts that would have been required for a modern author to derive significant parts of Moses 6–7 had neither been discovered by Western scholars nor translated into English.¹³ Additionally, even if relevant Enoch traditions from Masonry or the hermetic tradition had been available to Joseph Smith by 1830, it stretches the imagination to assume that they would have provided the Prophet with the suite of specific and sometimes peculiar details that are shared by Moses 6–7 and pseudepigrapha like 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch—and especially the Book of Giants.

[Page 98]Toward a Principled Examination of Literary Affinities in the Book of Moses

In evaluating the efforts to attribute the three large revelatory chapters of the Book of Moses to extant textual sources, Colby Townsend rightly concluded that “a systematic and detailed analysis of other literary influences on Moses 1 or the major additions in Moses 6–8 has not yet been completed.” ^{title=”14. Ben Tov (pseudonym of Colby Townsend), “Book of Enoch.””14} While not sharing Townsend’s optimism that the Book of Moses narratives of the heavenly ascent of Moses (Moses 1) and of the ministry of Enoch (Moses 6–7) can be explained primarily through direct “literary influences” on Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century, I think there is great potential in performing “a systematic and detailed analysis” of literary affinities with ancient works the Prophet could not have known. For instance, an initial approach undertaken in this spirit that provides a favorable comparison of Moses 1 with the Apocalypse of Abraham, a work of Jewish pseudepigrapha not available to Joseph Smith, appears elsewhere in this conference proceedings.¹⁵ In the present paper, I take an analogous approach to the Enoch chapters in Moses 6–7—recognizing, of course, that much additional work remains.

Naturally, our expectations with respect to finding ancient threads in the Book of Moses must be qualified. Although Joseph Smith’s revisions and additions to the Bible sometimes contain stunning echoes of ancient sources, he understood that the primary intent of modern revelation is to give divine guidance to readers in our day, not to provide precise matches to texts from other times. Thus, it is not my claim that every word of these modern productions is necessarily rooted in ancient manuscripts. However, to believers it would be no surprise if long, revealed passages such as, most conspicuously, Moses 1, 6–7, were to provide evidence of having been drawn in significant measure from a common well of ancient textual or oral traditions.¹⁶

Rationale and Outline of the Present Study

The Book of Giants (BG), a fragmentary work discovered in Qumran in 1948, is one example of several ancient texts about Enoch unknown to Joseph Smith that exhibit remarkable affinities to the Enoch figure depicted in Latter-day Saint scripture. In section 1, I provide a brief overview of Hugh Nibley’s pioneering work comparing BG to Moses 6–7. I will also summarize a few of the subsequent discoveries by Latter-day Saint scholars who have built on Nibley’s pioneering research. These new discoveries by Latter-day Saint scholars were made possible by the increasing interest of Enoch scholars worldwide who have recognized [Page 99]BG as an important, and in many ways unique, window into ancient Enoch traditions.

Section 2 describes BG in more detail, showing why it has proven to be such a significant text for Enoch scholars and probing what has been called “conspicuous Mesopotamian influence” in its origins. Section 3 will provide specific background about BG that is necessary to understanding the rest of the study, dispelling common misconceptions about BG as a whole.

In the remaining sections, I will provide preliminary results of a deeper analysis that goes beyond the long-standing discovery of a pair of similar names in BG and the Book of Moses and the tantalizing but minimally explored listings of textual resemblances between the two texts that have been published previously. With respect to the similar names, section 4 will show why the BG names Enoch and Mahaway, cognates with the only two personal names mentioned in Moses 6–7, stand out from the other names mentioned in BG in ways that make them the foremost candidates for historical plausibility in an ancient Enochic setting.

From there, I will look at other similarities and differences between the texts. In section 5, I will compare the storylines of the Book of Moses Enoch account, BG, and other Enoch texts. The primary finding is that the broad storylines of Moses 6–7 and BG are remarkably similar. In addition, however, the editor(s) of BG seem to have wanted to add dramatic color to its narrative by inserting entertaining episodes about two giant “twins” into the account. Supporting the argument that these literary incidents are BG-specific additions is the fact that these characters and their stories are not only missing from the Book of Moses but also are found nowhere else in the ancient Enoch literature. Even more significant and surprising than these additions is the discovery that BG almost entirely leaves out the stories of sacred events that are found in Moses 6–7, despite the fact that each of these sacred events are touched on in one fashion of another in other ancient Enoch texts.

Section 6, a detailed analysis of thematic resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7, was inspired in part by an analogous study by the well-known Enoch scholar Loren T. Stuckenbruck.¹⁷ This analysis revealed that the eighteen thematic elements common to BG and the Book of Moses provide support for plausible arguments for a common well of ancient traditions that significantly influenced both texts. These common thematic resemblances are not only notable in their frequency and density but sometimes also in their specificity. Of great significance [Page 100]is that the common elements in BG and the Book of Moses nearly always are ordered in corresponding sequence. In the conclusion of this chapter, I will argue that the results of this study substantiate the claim that the specific resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7—resemblances that are rare or absent elsewhere in Jewish tradition—are more numerous and significant than resemblances to any other single ancient Enoch text—or, for that matter, to all extant ancient Enoch texts combined.

1. Previous Discoveries and Subsequent Findings

Hugh Nibley’s pioneering work comparing BG to Moses 6–7

In 1976–77, Hugh Nibley dashed off one long, heavily footnoted article after another each month for a series about ancient Enoch manuscripts and Moses 6–7 that was running in the Church’s Ensign magazine. As he was finishing the last article in the series, he received—“just in time”¹⁸—an anxiously awaited volume describing fragments of Aramaic books of Enoch that were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.¹⁹ Among other texts, the book, edited by non–Latter-day Saint scholars J. T. Milik and Matthew Black, contained the first English translation of BG²⁰. So impatient was Nibley to study it that it it seems he may have borrowed a copy from the University of Utah while he waited for his own copy to arrive.²¹

Figure 1. a. Title page of the last article in the Ensign’s “A Strange Thing in the Land” series;²² b. Title page of Milik and Black’s book that included the first English translation of the Book of Giants.²³

[Page 101]As he worked quickly to meet his publication deadline, Nibley found many significant resemblances between BG and the Book of Moses. His best-known discovery is that of a remarkable match between a name in the Book of Moses and in BG. In the Book of Moses, the name appears as Mahijah or Mahujah and in English translations of BG it is usually given as Mahaway or Mahawai. Nibley found not only that the ancient form of these names were likely to have matched well but also that the roles of the corresponding characters were analogous.

Figure 2. The passage shown comes from Milik and Black’s translation of BG, 4Q530, fragment 2, column ii, lines 20–23. It tells of an incident when the wicked ʾOhyah, Hahyah, and their fellows send Mahawai to ask Enoch about their frightful dreams of pending destruction. This copy of the book is located in the Hugh Nibley Ancient Studies Room of the BYU Harold B. Lee Library. Note that Nibley circled the Aramaic version of the name Mahawai in pencil.²⁴

In 2020, Matthew L. Bowen, Ryan Dahle, and I extended Nibley’s early analysis.²⁵ Our study confirmed and added new details and evidence to Nibley’s earlier findings while also addressing issues raised by Colby Townsend.²⁶ In brief, Townsend argued that the names were not as similar as Nibley had originally concluded. He reasoned that “Nibley relied too heavily on his English transcription of both names—MHWY—and failed to recognize that the H [in the Book of Moses version of the name and the H in the BG version of the name represented] two distinct letters” in their presumed Semitic originals.²⁷ However, in our later study we adduced relevant scholarship showing that despite a significant difference in one consonant in seemingly related texts (“Ḥ” [Bible] vs. “H” [BG]), there is currently no compelling reason why the BG name Mahaway (MHWY) could not have been related at some earlier point in its history both to the King James Bible name elements in Genesis 4:18, Mehuja-/Mehija- (MḤWY-/MḤYY-), and also to the [Page 102]only other names besides Enoch found in the Book of Moses: Mahujah (the English H corresponds equally well to MHWY or MḤWY) and Mahijah (MHYY or MḤYY).

Interest in Nibley’s discovery by non–Latter-day Saint scholars

Professor Matthew Black,²⁸ a collaborator on Milik’s English translation of BG, was also impressed with the similarity of the BG and Book of Moses names. Like Nibley, he seems to have seen this finding as evidence that Joseph Smith’s Enoch text was ancient—even though he didn’t believe that Joseph Smith translated it through a process that relied on divine revelation. Instead, upon meeting Latter-day Saint graduate student Gordon C. Thomasson (who was familiar with Nibley’s Enoch research), Black initially suggested that a copy of a text that drew on the some of the same Enoch traditions as BG must have made its way to Joseph Smith sometime before the translation of the Book of Moses.²⁹ Nibley said that during Professor Black’s visit to Brigham Young University (BYU) soon afterward, Black reiterated his view that Joseph Smith must have relied on an ancient source in his translation.³⁰

Figure 3. a. Matthew Black (1908–94), date unknown³¹; b. Gordon C. Thomasson (1942–) in 1975.³²

More recently, Salvatore Cirillo, drawing on the similar conclusions of Stuckenbruck, stated that he considered the names of the gibborim, notably including Mahaway, as “the most conspicuously independent content” in BG, being “unparalleled in other Jewish literature.”³³ [Page 103]Agreeing with the significance of Nibley’s finding, Cirillo concluded that “the name Mahawai in BG and the names Mahujah and Mahijah in the Book of Moses represent the strongest similarity between the Latter-day Saint revelations on Enoch and the pseudepigraphal books of Enoch (specifically BG).”³⁴ However, in contrast to Matthew Black’s hypothesis that Joseph Smith must have been given an ancient record from an esoteric group in Europe, Cirillo did not make any attempt to explain how a manuscript that was unknown to modern scholars until the mid-twentieth century could have influenced the account of Enoch in the Book of Moses, written in 1830.

After Nibley’s initial look at BG and the Book of Moses, Nibley moved on to other subjects. Though Nibley continued to refer to his earlier Enoch findings in his later life, he did not engage to any significant extent with the burgeoning literature on Enoch that was published in the decades that followed.

Building on the foundation of Nibley’s research

Since Nibley’s passing, the growth of new scholarship on ancient Enoch texts has continued unabated. Building on the important context provided by Jared Ludlow’s survey of the full corpus of ancient Enoch texts and their implications for the Book of Moses Enoch chapters,³⁵ the present chapter will focus specifically on BG. In addition to presenting recent research that confirms and deepens our understanding of passages originally discussed by Nibley, this paper will summarize new discoveries and analyses that further demonstrate the potential of BG as a fruitful source of study for students of Latter-day Saint scripture. Elsewhere I have published more extensive discussions of how ancient texts, including but not limited to BG, seem to confirm and complement the both the basic outline and specific details of the Enoch story in the Book of Moses.³⁶

The present study, though still preliminary in some ways, aims to provide the most complete and in-depth comparative analysis of the Book of Moses to a single ancient Enoch text that has been undertaken to date:

• While Hugh Nibley’s pioneering research compared the names and roles of one character in Moses 6–7 and BG, the present study examines the names and roles of nearly all of the prominent figures in the two books.
• Whereas previous studies have touched on a few parallels in the overall storyline in the Book of Moses Enoch account that [Page 104]are found elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature, the hope here is to reach a better understanding of the similarities and differences in the story elements across the entire storyline. Of particular interest are new arguments in support of the idea that Mahijah/Mahujah in the Book of Moses, like Mahaway in BG, encountered Enoch on two separate occasions.
• At a more detailed level, while earlier work has identified instances of close thematic resemblances or, in some cases, almost identical occurrences of rare terms and phrases, the aim here is not merely to identify such instances but also to explore in further detail each currently proposed candidate.
• Finally, for each thematic resemblance, this study will attempt to determine whether: 1. the theme is widespread in Second Temple Jewish traditions and the Bible; 2. generally confined to the ancient Enoch literature, or 3. specific to Moses 6–7 and BG. This result will tell us something about the evidential strength of resemblances by characterizing the degree to which the themes are widespread or rare outside the ancient Enoch literature.

One of the most significant examples of new discoveries relating to the Book of Moses Enoch story is the collection of BG elements that relate to the report in Moses 6–7 that Zion, the righteous city of Enoch, was “received . . . up into [God’s] own bosom” (Moses 7:69). Though scholars have been aware for some time of suggestions in a Mandaean Enoch fragment³⁷ and in late midrash³⁸ that a group of Enoch’s followers were taken up to heaven with him, until recently no ancient evidence had surfaced for the idea that Enoch’s followers had been led to establish a place of gathering—an earthly Zion—beforehand. Recently, however, it was noticed that a fragment of a Manichaean version of BG describes how the righteous who had been converted by Enoch’s preaching were separated from the wicked and gathered to divinely prepared cities in westward lying mountains.³⁹ This event recalls the statement of Moses 7:17 about the gathering of Enoch’s Zion, when his people “were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.” Moreover, elements of the Manichaean Cosmology Painting (MCP), a visual representation that Enoch scholars have concluded contains depictions relevant to many events of BG, suggest that the inhabitants of those cities were ultimately taken up to dwell in in the presence of Deity.⁴⁰ This motif recalls the Book of Moses statement that the inhabitants of Zion were “received . . . up into [God’s] own bosom”(Moses 7:69). [Page 105]Further discussion of this and other ancient affinities between BG and Moses 6–7 will be discussed later, in sections 3–6 of this chapter.

Before entering into further discussion of resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7, additional discussion on the background on BG will be provided below.

Figure 4. a. Photograph of a fragment of a Qumran BG manuscript in Aramaic showing detail of 4Q530 (4QGiants^b ar), fragment 7b, column ii.⁴¹ As an example of the difficulty in transcribing the fragments, the end of line 7 is outlined, showing where Milik and Black’s original transliteration LMḤWY resulted in their failure to recognize the name Mahaway in their English translation of the phrase.⁴² By way of contrast, Émile Puech’s newer transliteration, LMHWY, allowed Cook to translate the Aramaic characters as “to Mahaway”;⁴³ b. Photograph of a Manichaean BG text fragment in Sogdian, showing detail of So20220/II/R/ and So20220/I/V/ [K20].⁴⁴ Fragments of the Manichaean BG have survived in six different languages.

2. Introduction to the Book of Giants

What is the Book of Giants?

The Book of Giants (BG) is a collection of fragments from an Enochic book discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) at Qumran in 1948, supplemented by “extant fragments of the Manichaean Book of Giants published by W. B. Henning⁴⁵ (and [later] by Werner Sundermann [and others]⁴⁶) and in a Jewish writing designated the Midrash of Shemḥazai and ‘Aza‘el.”⁴⁷ Significantly, it is not found as one of the books within the better-known Ethiopic compilation of 1 Enoch⁴⁸ and, as a whole, [Page 106]resembles little else in the Enoch tradition. Before the discovery of the more extensive set of fragments of BG at Qumran, scholars had been made aware of its existence through related material in Talmudic and medieval Jewish literature, in descriptions of the Manichaean canon,⁴⁹ in citations by hostile heresiologists, and in a small but significant collection of third- and fourth-century Manichaean fragments. For a variety of reasons, BG has proven to be of tremendous importance to Enoch scholarship.

Should BG be considered part of a “rewritten Bible”?

In brief, the answer is no. The consensus of modern Enoch scholars is that it is overly simplistic to conclude that texts such as BG were merely sectarian rewrites of Bible stories.

For one thing, it should be remembered that, as André Lemaire observes, “accepted texts” such as the books of the Bible as we think of them today simply did not exist at the time the Dead Sea Scrolls were copied.⁵⁰ For this and other reasons, current biblical scholarship is increasingly giving way to methods that require, as John Reeves and Annette Yoshiko Reed describe, “a shift away from the older scholarly obsession with ‘origins’ whereby the study of scriptures often focused on the recovery of hypothetical sources behind them.”⁵¹ Instead, those who copied the Dead Sea Scrolls drew on “a rich reservoir or revered tales, ancestral folklore, and tribal traditions about the pre-Deluge era” that was much more extensive and ancient than the later edited, abridged, and harmonized books available in the Bible and collections of pseudepigrapha that have survived to the present day.⁵² An adequate study of relationships among these texts should be focused more on “interdiscursivity” rather than mere “intertextuality”⁵³ (in the more simplistic sense that the latter term is sometimes used today).

Trying to make sense of the connections between the Aramaic BG, the Manichaean BG, and certain passages in medieval Jewish midrash, John C. Reeves argues that it is⁵⁴

plausible to assume that these stories are . . . textual expressions of an early exegetical tradition circulating in learned groups during the Second Temple era. One version appeared in Aramaic at Qumran and was presumably the version later studied and adapted by Mani. Another version of the same tradition recurs in Hebrew in the Middle Ages. Still other versions (if not one of the two aforementioned [Page 107]ones) apparently influenced Islamic exegetes of the Qur’anic passage regarding the sins of Harut and Marut.⁵⁵

Can BG be explained as a kind of “rewritten 1 Enoch”?

The skepticism of scholars such as Reeves, Reed, and Lemaire about characterizing works such as BG as part of a “rewritten Bible” further extends to doubts about the idea of BG being a “rewritten 1 Enoch,” in addition to the considerations raised above, it should be remembered that BG was “very popular at Qumran,” seemingly more popular than 1 Enoch itself.⁵⁶ Besides being the most popular Enoch book at Qumran, BG is arguably also the oldest extant Enoch manuscript found anywhere.⁵⁷ Thus, according to Enoch scholar George Nickelsburg, BG helps us to “reconstruct the literary shapes of the early stages of the Enochic tradition.”⁵⁸ For these and additional reasons, BG is a document that should “be taken seriously in its own right,”⁵⁹ rather than seen merely as an intriguingly anomalous yet on-the-whole insignificant afterclap of 1 Enoch.

In summary, caution should also be exercised in assuming any direct dependence at all of BG on 1 Enoch. Indeed, André Lemaire concludes that it is a bad idea to begin with to try and assimilate BG to 1 Enoch because “these two literary traditions are different and have had a different literary posterity.”⁶⁰ The fact that BG (discovered in 1948 and the source of many of the most significant resemblances to Moses 6–7) owes relatively little to the Bible and 1 Enoch (the sources most often cited by those who think Joseph Smith was inspired by sources and ideas available to him in the nineteenth century) also lends support to the argument that the Enoch account in the Book of Moses is not simply a rewritten or expanded version of the Bible or 1 Enoch.

BG’s reliance on independent Mesopotamian traditions

Having concluded that BG is not primarily dependent on the Bible and 1 Enoch, some scholars have argued that Daniel, 1 Enoch, and BG independently draw on some “common tradition(s)” that are older than any of the three texts.⁶¹ In at least some cases, BG seems to have preserved such traditions “in an earlier form”⁶² than the other two. Intriguingly, Joseph Angel has concluded from his review of the evidence that BG “preserves only the remains of a complex allegory, whose original referents cannot be recovered.”⁶³

Both the antiquity and unique nature of certain elements of BG traditions can be better understood by looking “for the original of BG in [Page 108]an eastern diaspora”⁶⁴—that is, ancient Mesopotamia. This conclusion is reinforced by more general observations of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars such as Ida Frölich that, “like the majority of Aramaic texts found in Qumran, the Enochic collection indicates a conspicuous Mesopotamian influence.”⁶⁵ Seth L. Sanders has written at length about how physical transmission of ideas from scribal cultures from Babylon to Judea took place historically, with the common use of Aramaic as the key modality of exchange.⁶⁶

More specifically, the Mesopotamian names in BG, not found elsewhere in the pre-Christian Enoch traditions, include Gilgamesh, the hero of the ancient epic by that name. The Gilgamesh epic is reputed by some to be the second oldest religious text currently known, rooted in Sumerian precursors that are dated to about 2100 BCE.⁶⁷ Going beyond previous analyses, Matthew Goff has provided a reconstruction of the plot of BG, arguing that the text “creatively appropriates” not only names but also narrative “motifs” from the Gilgamesh epic.⁶⁸ That the scribes were very capable of such appropriation is consistent with arguments that they belonged to a sophisticated class of individuals. For example, Daniel A. Machiela has concluded that the Aramaic texts at Qumran “represent the literary achievement of a highly learned, well-trained Jewish scribal group (loosely conceived), which wrote in an adept, literary Aramaic marked by a few notable dialectical features.”⁶⁹ Of interest is the fact that in these Aramaic texts the God of Israel “is always called by more generic titles like God, Most High, or Lord of Eternity, and is never referred to by the Tetragrammaton.”⁷⁰ “As opposed to the sectarian Hebrew texts at Qumran, the Aramaic cluster was intended for a wide Israelite audience, in diverse geographic locations.”⁷¹

In short, the seeming origins for some of the Enoch traditions in BG in ancient Mesopotamia, the antiquity and popularity of BG at Qumran, and its divergences from 1 Enoch—the only substantive ancient Enoch text published in English by 1830—make it a comparative text of singular importance for those interested in the possibility of ancient threads in the Enoch chapters of the Book of Moses.

Now, some additional context about BG that will be helpful in appreciating the detailed comparative analysis that will follow.

[Page 109]3. Some Things to Know about BG

There are no “giants” in the Book of Giants

A first thing to know is that there are no “giants” in the Book of Giants. The word translated as “giants” is gibborim, better translated as “mighty heroes” or “warriors.”⁷² As Frölich makes clear, “there is no sign that these beings had a mixed—human and animal—nature. The name gibborim [often mistakenly translated as “giants” in modern translations] refers to their state (armed, mighty men), not their stature which is described as gigantic in a single passage [in the ancient Enoch literature].⁷³ The term . . . does not involve the idea of a superhuman or gigantic stature. It was the Greek translation that introduced a term (gigantes)⁷⁴ involving the notion of superhuman stature.”⁷⁵

This is important to understand because BG, like the Book of Moses, is mainly concerned with Enoch’s dealings with wicked people, the all-too-human gibborim. Both BG and the Book of Moses differ in this respect from 1 Enoch’s Book of the Watchers, which relates Enoch’s dealings with wicked superhumans, fallen angels with a fantastical physical form.

At some point, the terms gibborim and nephilim (the latter term originally used to refer to what seems to have been a remnant of a race of “giants”) were also equated in some contexts, leading to further confusion.⁷⁶ Consistent with this distinction between two different groups, the Book of Moses Enoch account specifically differentiates “giants” (nephilim?) from Enoch’s principal adversaries (gibborim?).⁷⁷ However, unlike BG (which sees the gibborim as the offspring of fallen angels called the Watchers⁷⁸), the Book of Moses (like the writings of some prominent early Christian exegetes⁷⁹) depicts Enoch’s adversaries as mere mortals. And rather than interpreting the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis 6:4 as inhabitants of the divine realm, as is commonly done in the pseudepigraphic literature, the Book of Moses portrays them as the covenant posterity of Adam who have had that title bestowed on them by virtue of having received the fulness of the priesthood.⁸⁰

[Page 110]

Figure 5. Fragmentary lion-hunting scene from Uruk, ca. 3200 BCE, on display at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, Iraq. The scene shows “a bearded figure wearing a diadem that appears twice; one at the top killing a lion with a spear and once below killing lions with bow and arrow.”⁸¹

Stories of gibborim were critiques of Mesopotamian culture

A second thing to know is that BG contains a critique of Mesopotamian civilization, a parody of the near neighbors of the Israelites in the east. While Mesopotamian legends relate stories that tell of the mighty deeds of their great sages and cultural heroes, BG describes the gibborim as arrogant warriors obsessed with their hunting prowess and with human bloodshed.⁸² According to Ronald Hendel, the primeval history in Genesis propounds a negative view of “the human propensity toward evil and violence,” specifically conveying “a cultural critique of Mesopotamia, whose kings were the dominant powers over Israel and Judah at the time of the crystallization of the traditions and texts in Genesis 1–11”:

According to the Hebrew Bible, history comes out of Mesopotamia, but it was a dubious and shameful history. . . . The ancient past in these stories offers implicit commentary on Mesopotamian civilization and empire in the present, colored by transgression, hubris, and a desire to rebel.⁸³

If we examine what seem to be Jewish caricatures and parodies as critiques of Mesopotamian culture in BG within a broader context than [Page 111]those specifically provided by the Gilgamesh epic, possibilities for a bigger picture begin to come into better focus.⁸⁴ For example, previous in-depth studies of recurring appearances and echoes of various peoples that were called gibborim in the biblical era allow us to understand the general social and geographic settings of Enoch’s prediluvial mission in BG and the Book of Moses in more specificity.⁸⁵ For the present, abbreviated discussion and analysis of the Hebrew word gibbor itself provides a starting point to prime our intuitions. “Etymologically, with its doubled middle consonant,” writes Gregory Mobley, “gibbor is an intensive form of geber, ‘man.’ In this regard, as masculinity squared, gibbor roughly compares to the English compound ‘he-man.’”⁸⁶ And in what manly qualities was a gibbor expected to excel? Brian R. Doak summarizes a relevant aspect of his sociolinguistic analysis of the culture of the gibborim in biblical times as follows:

As human-like embodiments of that which is wild and untamed, the biblical [gibbor] takes on the role of “wild man,” “freak,” and “elite adversary” for heroic displays of fighting prowess.⁸⁷

The biblical reference to Nimrod as the first gibbor⁸⁸ immediately brings to mind the earlier evocation of the “gibborim of old” in Genesis 6:4, and it is noteworthy that the Bible provides here a prototype of all gibborim in the figure of Nimrod. Though the text does not make it obvious that Nimrod is a “giant,” some lines of interpretation suggest that Nimrod was thought to be something greater than an ordinary human.⁸⁹ In his biblical role, Nimrod is presented to us as a proud archetype of Mesopotamian civilization that is later described and satirized in capsule fashion within the Genesis 11 story of the Tower of Babel.⁹⁰ From a geographic perspective, it does not seem to be a coincidence that the “land of righteousness” (Moses 6:41) of Adam, Seth, and Enoch is meant to be situated in the west, while both the land of Nimrod (which roughly equates to the land of Shinar, where the Tower of Babel was built) and the land of the wicked gibborim are said to be located eastward.⁹¹ This picture is consistent with the symbolic geography of BG and Moses 6–7 that is discussed later in the chapter.

The echoes of Nimrod’s hubris in Jewish traditions about the gibborim extend to the gibborim’s similar refusal to accept God as their master. Nimrod, like the opponents of Enoch and Noah, is presented as the spiritual progenitor of those who sought to make a name for themselves⁹² by building the Tower of Babel. In the gibborim culture [Page 112]portrayed in Genesis, as in the culture of “heroes” throughout much of secular history,

flesh is elevated above spirit, and the “name” of humanity is elevated above the “name” of God. In contrast to these heroes [stand Noah and Enoch], who [are] unique because [they have] found favor in the eyes of God.⁹³ [They do] not achieve a “name” through strength and power, but through [their] relationship with God.⁹⁴

While these broad, tentative conclusions about the possible shared Mesopotamian background, geography, and attitudes about the gibborim culture of BG, Genesis 6 and 11, and Moses 6–7 are necessarily conjectural, we will soon see that they are not inconsistent with the descriptions of the cast of selected characters in BG and the Book of Moses that we will now describe in more detail below.

4. Comparison of Selected Names and Characters in BG and the Book of Moses

One of the unique features of BG is that, “in contrast to other known contemporary Jewish apocalyptic literature, [it] actually provides names for some of the [gibborim].”⁹⁵ Table 1 presents some of the most prominent members of the cast of characters in BG, grouped into rough categories that highlight their co-occurrences in other ancient pre-Christian texts/traditions and in the Book of Moses. Grouping the names in this fashion helps us gain insight into the rationale for why they may have been included in BG. In brief, I will argue that the redactor(s) of BG employed a strategy resembling the Victorian bridal custom of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”⁹⁶ as they selected or invented named characters to enrich the version of the story they inherited. The result is a broad panoply of names—some more and some less historically plausible—that served to advance their literary aims. By process of elimination, a closer examination of these names will throw light on the question of which of them provide the most promising evidence of historically plausible elements within BG and Moses 6–7. I discuss these names and characters by category below. A more extensive discussion of a few of the prominent names in BG and the Book of Moses has been published elsewhere.⁹⁷

[Page 113]Table 1. Prominent names in Book of Giants
and co-occurrences in other texts

’Ohyah and Hahyah

Meaning of the names. Enoch scholars have suggested that ʾOhyah (ʾWHYH) and Hahyah (HHYH) were intended as plays on the Hebrew verb “to be” (HYH) or, perhaps, on the Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew name of the Lord (YHWH).⁹⁹ The specific proposal that the names ʾOhyah and Hahyah were inserted in BG as wordplay is consistent with a long history of analogous patterns across many different cultures and traditions.¹⁰⁰ In these traditions, the two names relevant to the ones used in BG have always been presented as a pair¹⁰¹—indeed, very often as a pair of twins with rhyming names. When described as a single unit, as they so often are, they are variously labeled as “demonic twins,” “angels twain,” “two youths,” and so forth.¹⁰²

Roles of the characters in BG. In BG, we are given a more complete portrait of ʾOhyah and Hahyah than for most of the other named characters in the text. Besides the probable origin of their names, their similar roles are distinctive within the account. For example, ʾOhyah and Hahyah are depicted as deceitful,¹⁰³ ineffectual quarrelers,¹⁰⁴ dreamers,¹⁰⁵ and worriers¹⁰⁶—doppelgängers afflicted with nagging doppelträumes. Despite being a member of the group that commissioned Mahaway to inquire of Enoch, ʾOhyah rejects the answer Mahaway brings back out of hand.¹⁰⁷ In their appointed role, ʾOhyah and Hahyah seem almost to be sketched with the pen of a skilled caricaturist who has introduced a measure of comic relief that both pervades the larger narrative and persists in the very details of their Tweedledum- and Tweedledee-like [Page 114]names. Like Hergé’s Dupond and Dupont, part of the silliness of the two brothers is in the paradoxical fact that their “most singular quality is what is common to them,”¹⁰⁸ a feature that is most obvious in the tellings of their two complementary dreams.

Figure 6. Painting of the Uygur Manichaean-Buddhist mural of the three-trunked “Jewel Tree” from Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, Cave no. 25 (no. 38 in the modern Chinese numbering system), Flaming Mountains, China, ninth–tenth century.¹⁰⁹ For many years, scholars mistakenly interpreted the tree as portraying an element of the dream of the gibborim in the Book of Giants, where the flourishing tree with three trunks was seen as representing the idea that only Noah and his three sons would escape the Flood.¹¹⁰

Co-occurrences in other texts. In contrast to other BG characters, no mention is made of ʾOhyah and Hahyah in other ancient literature of the pre-Christian era, suggesting the likelihood that they are ad hoc inventions of the BG author(s). Moreover, while story characters equivalent to ʾOhyah and Hahyah appear in derivative medieval Jewish¹¹¹ and Islamic¹¹² accounts of the two dreamers, characters with names relating to Mahaway, Gilgamesh, or Ḥumbaba go conspicuously unmentioned in these late accounts. This fact highlights the virtual inseparability of ʾOhyah and Hahyah, as well as their literary independence from Mahaway, Gilgamesh, and Ḥumbaba.

Summary conjecture. These two late-appearing names do not appear to stem from ancient Enoch traditions, but rather seem to have been invented and inserted in the story for literary purposes.

[Page 115]Shemiḥazah and Baraq’el

Meaning of the names. Michael Langlois suggests that Shemiḥazah’s name was associated with a name of God (perhaps adding support for Stuckenbruck’s proposal of a theophoric –yāh termination in the names of Shemiḥazah’s sons ʾOhyah and Hahyah¹¹³). Langlois interprets the name as “Shem sees” (i.e., “the Name sees),”¹¹⁴ in which “the Name” refers to God. According to George Nickelsburg, the name “may be an ironic anticipation of the motif of God’s seeing the sins committed on earth. . . . In the very name that the angelic chieftain bears is the recognition that his sin will be found out.”¹¹⁵ Thus Shemiḥazah’s name, like that of his two sons, appears to be an object of wordplay.¹¹⁶

Baraq’el means “lightning of God,”¹¹⁷ referring to his role in 1 Enoch in teaching the mysteries of the signs of lightning flashes.¹¹⁸

Roles of the characters in BG. Both characters play minor roles in extant fragments of BG, and very little is said about them. Shemiḥazah is portrayed as a leader of Enoch’s adversaries: Enoch’s missive to the gibborim is addressed specifically to “Shemiḥazah and all [his] co[mpanions].”¹¹⁹ As mentioned above, he is the father of ʾOhyah and Hahyah.¹²⁰ Baraq’el, on the other hand, is described as the father of Mahaway.¹²¹

Co-occurrences in other texts. In contrast to the small role given them in BG, these two characters are well represented in 1 Enoch.

Figure 7. Daniel Chester (1850–1931): The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, ca. 1923.¹²²

There Baraq’el is said to be one of the twenty fallen Watchers, who are there listed by name.¹²³ Specifically, Baraq’el is said to be the ninth chief,¹²⁴ serving under the leader of the fallen Watchers, Shemiḥazah. Shemiḥazah and Baraq’el are said to have descended on Mount Hermon, [Page 116]where they “swore together and bound one another with a curse”¹²⁵ after they determined that they would “choose . . . wives from the daughters of men.”¹²⁶ Elsewhere in 1 Enoch, we learn the secrets that each of the heads of the Watchers revealed to humankind,¹²⁷ and we read of their responsibilities in the governing of the seven heavens.¹²⁸

Summary conjecture. In contrast to the singular appearance of ʾOhyah and Hahyah, Shemiḥazah and Baraq’el are prominent in other early Enoch literature. Though these and other fallen Watchers play a relatively minor role in BG, their presence seems to give a tip of the hat to older, common Enoch traditions that seem to lie behind both BG and 1 Enoch. They seem best conceived as representative literary types rather than unique historical characters.

Gilgamesh and Ḥobabish

Meaning of the names. Gilgamesh was the name of a legendary king of Uruk in the land of Sumer. He “appears in the list of Sumerian kings” and would have “flourished about 2750 BC.”¹²⁹ The Epic of Gilgamesh has been aptly characterized as “fictional royal biography.”¹³⁰ In the epic, Gilgamesh is described a gigantic figure who is two-thirds divine and one-third human.¹³¹

Figure 8. a. Indus Valley civilization “Gilgamesh” seal showing a “Master of Animals” motif—a figure between two tigers (2500–1500 BCE);¹³² b. Head of Ḥumbaba, second millennium BCE.¹³³

Scholars have concluded that the name Ḥobabish is not of Hebrew origin. Rather, its first two syllables (Ḥobab) are related to the name of a second character from the Gilgamesh epic, Ḥumbaba. In the epic, Ḥumbaba is a gigantic monster with the face of a lion, a foe of humankind who guards the Cedar Forest. Wordplay on the name of Ḥobabish in BG [Page 117]suggests that he roared or howled with a “sound that is fitting for an animal.”¹³⁴

Roles of the characters in BG. Scholarly consensus about a difficult passage in BG suggests that it is Gilgamesh who complains about his ignominious defeat at the hands of “all flesh,”¹³⁵ which suggests (for readers of the Book of Moses, at least) the victory of Enoch and his people against their adversaries.¹³⁶ Gilgamesh also responds to ʾOhyah’s mention of the latter’s frightening dream.¹³⁷ Later ʾOhyah mentions Gilgamesh when he recounts to others what the latter had said.¹³⁸

Only one or possibly two fragments of BG refer to Ḥobabish. In the first, the context suggests a negative reaction from Ḥobabish when he hears what ʾOhyah said about his conversation with Gilgamesh.¹³⁹ If the second mention of Ḥobabish is properly restored from the fragment in which it seems to appear, it seems he was also involved in a plan to murder some of his fellows.¹⁴⁰

Co-occurrences in other texts. As mentioned above, both figures are prominent in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Significantly, BG is the only early Enoch text to refer to them. Although both names have Mesopotamian roots and narrative motifs from the famous story are apparent in BG,¹⁴¹ “it is less evident whether on this basis one can maintain that the Book of Giants is familiar with the Gilgamesh Epic itself.”¹⁴²

Summary conjecture. Stuckenbruck, following Reeves, suggests that “the author(s) of the Book of Giants have . . . integrated the names of such ‘pagan actors’ from the Epic [of Gilgamesh] into the storyline in order to communicate ‘a bold polemical thrust against the revered traditions of a rival culture.’”¹⁴³ Matthew Goff differs from Stuckenbruck and Reeves, arguing that “the core goal of the composition is to portray the ante-diluvian giants as evil and recount their exploits and punishment, not to polemicize against the Gilgamesh epic, or [anyone or anything else]. The text creatively appropriates motifs from the epic and makes Gilgamesh a character in his own right.”¹⁴⁴ In either case, the inclusion of the names Gilgamesh and Ḥobabish would seem to advance the redactor(s)’ interests by reinforcing the reader’s association of the tale with the perceived hubris of the Mesopotamian hero culture.

Enoch and Mahaway

Meaning of the names. Our discussion of Enoch (Enmeduranki?) and Mahaway (maḫḫû? Mehujael? Mahijah?) will necessarily be more extensive than that of the previous sets of names. For an in-depth discussion of the BG name Mahaway and possible relationships to [Page 118]Mehujael in Genesis 6:4 and Mahijah/Mahujah in the Book of Moses, the reader is referred to a previously published article by the author, Matthew L. Bowen, and Ryan Dahle.¹⁴⁵ If, as argued eloquently by David Calabro, the names Mahijah and Mahujah were translated from a Greek source text for the Book of Moses written by early Christians, they “could have been rendered from their original Semitic forms, . . . just as the translators of the King James Bible used the forms “Abraham” and “Bethlehem” in the New Testament instead of the Greek forms “Abraam” and “Bethleem.”¹⁴⁶

Elsewhere Bowen has written about the meaning of the name Enoch:

Significantly, Enoch (Henoch or Hanoch, Heb. ḥănôk) sounds identical to the Hebrew passive participle of the verbal root ḥnk, “train up” [or] “dedicate.”¹⁴⁷ Thus, for a Hebrew speaker, the name ḥănôk/Enoch would evoke “trained up” or “initiated”—bringing to mind not only the general role of a teacher, but also the idea of someone who was familiar with the temple and could train and initiate others as a hierophant. Before it became the name of the post-Mosaic Feast of Dedication, the Hebrew noun ḥănukkâ had reference to the “consecration” or “dedication” of the temple altar (Numbers 7:10–11, 84, 88), including the sacred dedication of the altar for Solomon’s temple.¹⁴⁸ Strengthening the connection of Enoch’s name to the temple, we note that in Egyptian, the ḥnk verbal root denotes to “present s[ome]one” with something, to “offer s[ome]thing” or, without a direct object, to “make an offering.”¹⁴⁹ The Egyptian nouns ḥnk and ḥnkt denote “offerings.”¹⁵⁰ In other words, it is a cultic term with reference to cultic offerings.¹⁵¹

It should also be mentioned that an Enoch-like figure is described in a tablet found at Nineveh, which can be dated before 1100 BCE.¹⁵² It tells of how Enmeduranki of Sippar, the seventh king of Sumer (before ca. 2900 BCE) was received by the gods Šamaš and Adad. According to Andrei Orlov, Enoch

is depicted in several roles that reveal striking similarities to Enmeduranki. Just like his Mesopotamian counterpart, the patriarch is skilled in the art of divination, being able to receive and interpret mantic dreams. He is depicted as an elevated figure who is initiated into the heavenly secrets by celestial beings, including the angels and God himself.¹⁵³ He then brings this celestial knowledge back to earth and, similar [Page 119]to the king Enmeduranki, shares it with the people and with his son.¹⁵⁴

Figure 9. Enoch ascends to heaven. British Library, MS Cotton Claudius B fol. 11v.¹⁵⁵

The conjecture of a linkage between Enoch and traditions about Enmeduranki suggests the possibility of considerably more ancient roots for Enoch accounts than currently found in Jewish texts or hinted at in in the Gilgamesh epic.

In summary, whatever else one believes, it seems certain that Enoch was not invented out of whole cloth at Qumran.

With respect to the name Mahaway, I begin by observing that the vowels in the English transliteration of the Book of Giants name MHWY are largely a matter of conjecture at present, since no vowels appear in the Aramaic text. Compounding the difficulty for nonspecialists in recognizing similarities and differences in the spellings of ancient names is the fact that translators differ in their English transliteration. For example, the English letters j, y, and i are variously used to represent the Semitic letter yod. Thus, in English translations of the Book of Giants, we see several variants of the same name: Mahaway¹⁵⁶ (the most commonly used), Mahawai,¹⁵⁷ Mahway,¹⁵⁸ and Mahuy¹⁵⁹—or Mahuj, with the y transliterated with a j, as is frequently done with other names containing a yod in the King James Bible.

[Page 120]In discussing Mahaway, we should also consider the seemingly related names Mahijah/Mahujah from the Book of Moses and Mehujael in Genesis 6:4. Regarding Mahijah and Mahujah, we have English versions of the names containing vowels, but it is impossible to tell from the English text alone whether the second consonant in the names would have been written anciently as the equivalent of an H (as in the Book of Giants) or an Ḥ (as in Genesis 4:18). In other words, if we assume an ancient equivalent of the English name Mahijah, it could have been written either as MHYY or MḤYY. Likewise, Mahujah could have been written as MHWY or MḤWY.

Figure 10. Fragment of the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q203) that was understood by Milik and Black to contain the first part of the personal name Mahaway (outlined by a rectangle in the upper left of the photograph).¹⁶⁰ BYU professor Hugh Nibley was the first to argue that Mahaway (MHWY) is related to Mahijah (MHYY or MḤYY)¹⁶¹ and Mahujah (MHWY or MḤWY)¹⁶² in the Book of Moses.¹⁶³

With respect to the similar name Mehujael, twice mentioned in Genesis 4:18, the Hebrew text spells the archaic name differently in each instance. In other words, though the name is spelled the same way both times in English (Mehujael), in Hebrew it is spelled once as Mehujael (MḤWY-EL) and once as Mehijael (MḤYY-EL).¹⁶⁴ Notably, on one hand, the Book of Moses names resemble the two Hebrew versions of the name in Genesis 4:18 in that both a “u” and an “i” variant of the name exist. However, on the other hand, the Book of Moses names are both similar to the Book of Giants name in that they omit the “-EL” ending found in Genesis 4:18.

[Page 121]With regard to the meaning of Mahaway, Stuckenbruck has simply repeated the previous suggestion of Milik and Nickelsburg about ʾOhyah and Hahyah with a slight variation, concluding that, in the case of Mahaway (MHWY), “perhaps some derivation from the Aramaic verb ‘to be’ (HWY) in conjunction with a mem prefix is not impossible.”¹⁶⁵ The laconic nature of his conclusion, including both a “perhaps” and a “not impossible,” is noteworthy. Differing from his predecessors, Stuckenbruck cited the possibility of wordplay on the Tetragrammaton only in connection with ʾOhyah and Hahyah, not Mahujah.¹⁶⁶ The lack of evidence for wordplay leaves the reader bereft of a rationale for why the author of the Book of Giants would have invented the name Mahaway from scratch rather than adopting an already-known name from earlier traditions, as he did in the case of other characters such as Gilgamesh.

Why else might Stuckenbruck have been reluctant to commit himself to a derivation? Overwhelmingly, names in the ancient Near East and in ancient Israel follow rules of name formation. Though it is true that the name MHWY might putatively match a participial Aphel form of the Aramaic HWY (meaning “to create or cause to be”), there is a paucity of attested Aphel forms in the relevant literature. Thus, Stuckenbruck is even more diffident than Milik and Nickelsburg, suggesting that “the meaning of the name Mahaway . . . is impossible to decipher with any confidence,” speculatively offering only that “perhaps . . . the name includes a derivation from the Aramaic verb ‘to be’ [HWY] in conjunction with a mem prefix.”¹⁶⁷ Evidently, Stuckenbruck is not willing on the basis of available evidence to commit to a nominal or a (participial) verbal form.

As with the BG name Mahaway, the etymology of the biblical name Mehujael remains uncertain. As Richard Hess observes, “It is generally agreed that Mehujael is composed of two elements, the second of which is ʾl,’ ‘god;’ [sic] but the first element is generally disputed.”¹⁶⁸

In attempting to shed further light on the meaning of Mehujael, it can be said with certainty that the name Mehujael is older, perhaps much older, than the biblical text of Genesis as we have it today. If one limits an investigation of Mehujael to possible West Semitic etymologies, “West Semitic mḥʾ, ‘to smite,’ and a participial form of ḥyh, ‘to live’” are the most viable options for the disputed first element.¹⁶⁹ However, limiting our search to West Semitic etymologies is an unreasonable requirement, since the ultimate origin of Mehujael and Mahaway seems at least as likely to be East Semitic as West Semitic. For example, although Ronald [Page 122]Hendel narrowly considers only Hebrew onomastics for the name Mehujael,¹⁷⁰ Nahum Sarna¹⁷¹ and Richard Hess,¹⁷² following Umberto Cassuto,¹⁷³ suggest that the name might be explained on the basis of the Akkadian maḫḫû, denoting “a certain class of priests and seers.”¹⁷⁴

Further strengthening Cassuto’s argument for the derivation of the name is the agreement he finds in the word behind Mehujael (maḫḫû), the name of Mehujael’s son Methusael (a name that is “analogous not only in form but also in meaning”¹⁷⁵), and the name of Mehujael’s grandson Lamech, which Cassuto sees as likely to have come from the Mesopotamian word lumakku, also signifying a certain class of priests.¹⁷⁶ Significantly, Hess reports that while the root lmk is unknown in West Semitic, it is found both in third millennium BCE personal names and in names from Mari in Old Babylon in the early second millennium BCE.¹⁷⁷

That the name Mahijah is the only name preserved in Moses 6–7 besides Enoch the prophet is evidence of Mahijah’s importance to the story. Similarly, Loren Stuckenbruck underlines the importance of Mahaway to both the Qumran and Manichaean versions of the Book of Giants. He observes a notable pattern of preservation in Chinese Manichaean fragments of the Book of Giants, which includes names of other individuals besides Mahawai that are, for one reason or another, significantly altered. Especially given the potential for “instances in which onomastic changes [i.e., changes in characters’ names] may have been due to the change of the language media,” Stuckenbruck is impressed with the “straightforward correspondence between the name(s) Mahawai in the Manichaean texts and Mahaway in the Aramaic [Book of Giants], in which the character, acting in a mediary role, encounters Enoch ‘the scribe.’”¹⁷⁸

In summary, Enoch and Mahaway seem to differ from the other names that have been considered previously not only because there is no known literary motivation for their appearance in BG but also because both names have a plausible ancient Mesopotamian prehistory.

Roles of the characters in BG. Regarding the figure of Enoch in BG, scholars have observed that in the Aramaic BG, as in 1 Enoch, the prophet is portrayed exclusively as a remote figure “dwelling . . . with the angels”¹⁷⁹ at “the ends of the earth, on which the heaven rests, and the gates of heaven open.”¹⁸⁰ He seems to communicate exclusively through Mahaway, the messenger of the gibborim. And, once Enoch’s presence has been “veiled” after his heavenly ascent,¹⁸¹ even Mahaway is not in a position to see him in his transfigured state; they communicate only by [Page 123]voice.¹⁸² Enoch, as befits one whose traditional role in heaven is scribal, writes missives of revelation and judgment that Mahaway brings back to the gibborim. But, asks Wilkens,¹⁸³ if it were true that Enoch could never communicate directly with the gibborim, what do we make of BG fragments that indicate he taught at least some of the gibborim directly?¹⁸⁴ This seeming inconsistency poses no problem for the Book of Moses, which includes an account of Enoch’s preaching mission to the gibborim before his heavenly ascent, as I will discuss in more detail below. For the present, I will simply suggest that Enoch’s role in both BG and the Book of Moses in reproving and preaching to the gibborim is undertaken at first from earth and then from heaven.

As to the role of Mahaway, note that his primary role seems to be that of a serious-minded, message-bringing mediator.¹⁸⁵ He seems to enjoy a unique relationship with Enoch, which seems to be one of the reasons why he is chosen by his peers as an envoy. More will be said about this below.

Co-occurrences in other texts. As seen in table 1, Enoch figures prominently not only in 1 Enoch, Genesis, and the Book of Moses but also in Mesopotamian texts, if one takes Enmeduranki traditions as being relevant.

With respect to the BG name Mahaway, there is currently no compelling reason why the Book of Giants name Mahaway (MHWY) could not have been related at some point in its history to the King James Bible name elements Mehuja- and Mehija- (MḤWY- and MḤYY-) and to the Book of Moses names Mahujah (MHWY/MḤWY) and Mahijah (MHYY/MḤYY). The rationale for this conclusion is more fully explained elsewhere.¹⁸⁶

Provisional conclusion. As a literary figure, Mahaway is unique among all the characters of BG discussed above. Unlike ʾOhyah and Hahyah, there has been no strong argument to date for his name having been introduced into BG for the purpose of wordplay. In contrast to Shemiḥazah and Baraq’el, the appearance of Mahaway in the story could not have been motivated by a desire to link BG with currently known early Enoch traditions. Differing from Gilgamesh and Ḥobabish, the name is absent from the Gilgamesh epic and thus could not have been intended to provide Mesopotamian flavor to BG through well-pedigreed associations with that literature. All this helps us understand why the only two names mentioned both in the Book of Moses Enoch account (Enoch and Mahijah/Mahujah) and in BG (Enoch and Mahaway) stand out so distinctly from the other names.

[Page 124]Does the lack of a literary motive for the inclusion of Mahaway in BG make the alternative that the name was introduced, like Enoch, as part of a more ancient Enoch tradition more likely? When such a conjecture is added to the fact of Enoch’s possible connection to Enmeduranki and plausible origins of Mahaway as a name with ancient East Semitic roots, it becomes easier to lend credence to the suggestion that, of all the names mentioned in BG, Enoch and Mahaway may be the two most likely to share some basis in historical—rather than merely literary—traditions about Enoch. Of course, the ultimate basis for the acceptance of scripture lies in faith and divinely provided testimony, and the argument for the historicity of the scriptural characters can never be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt by an appeal to textual or archaeological evidence. However, evidential support for the antiquity of relevant names for Enoch and Mahaway/Mahijah/Mahujah in a milieu that is compatible with the scriptural setting and is otherwise consistent with ancient narrative motifs that parallel the scripture account creates additional space for rational belief in the material existence of ancient individuals that once stood behind both names.

In short, of all the prominent names in BG, Enoch and Mahijah/Mahaway, the only two names that appear in the Enoch story of the Book of Moses, also seem to be the most historically plausible.

Continuing with this line of argument, I will now show how storyline similarities and thematic resemblances to Moses 6–7 in BG draw on allusions to Mesopotamian culture and the distinctive name and role of Mahaway that I have already described to provide a somewhat faint but surprisingly coherent picture of shared narrative elements that seems to lie behind both Moses 6–7 and BG.

5. Comparing the Storyline of Moses 6–7 to BG and Other Enoch Texts

Table 2. Similarities and differences in major storyline elements
among BG, Moses 6–7, and other ancient Enoch literature

The table above summarizes the results of an investigation to understand which of the major storyline elements of the Book of Moses are included in BG and other ancient Enoch literature. Of course, elements absent in surviving Qumran and Manichaean fragments of BG may be present in nonextant fragments. For example, most scholars have concluded that BG originally contained an account of a first visit of Mahaway to Enoch, which would seem to correspond to the first visit of Mahijah to Enoch in the Book of Moses, even though a BG account of Mahaway’s first visit does not occur explicitly in the text. More on that subject in a later section below.

[Page 126]In the table, three types of storyline elements are distinguished: (1) those that are part of what we are calling the “narrative core,” shown in normal typeface; (2) those that contain material relating to sacred teachings, heavenly encounters, or rituals, the kinds of events that David Calabro has highlighted in his paper in this volume,¹⁸⁷ shown in bold; and (3) those that are unique to BG, appearing neither in Moses 6–7 nor anywhere else in the ancient Enoch literature, shown in italics.

Unexpected patterns in the table

The table exhibits some unexpected patterns:

• At least one fragment of every narrative storyline element of the Book of Moses is also present within BG (normal typeface). Notwithstanding significant differences in specifics, the basic storylines of both texts can be seen as sharing a similar focus and outcome. The BG account seems to begin with a brief reference to the Watchers that corresponds structurally to the genealogy of the righteous descendants of Adam who are called “sons of God” at the beginning of the Book of Moses Enoch account. But following this short introductory intrusion of the Watchers mythology into the BG story, there quickly follows—in sharp contrast to the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch—what Stuckenbruck calls a “most significant . . . shift of the spotlight from the disobedient angels”¹⁸⁸ to the gibborim, who remain the focus in the remainder of the BG account.¹⁸⁹ And as to the most significant outcome of the texts, the common concern of both BG and the Book of Moses Enoch account is ultimately the fate of the gibborim—proud self-styled human heroes—who either, on one hand, choose to reject Enoch’s message and are subsequently humbled by an ignominious defeat in battle or, on the other hand, choose to repent and eventually gather to a divinely prepared place from which they ultimately ascend to the divine presence.
• The sacred storyline elements in the Book of Moses are left out of BG, even though they are always present in some form elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature (shown in boldface). The surviving fragments of BG, while preserving the same basic narrative core found in the Book of Moses, omit the most sacred and esoteric details of the account, including Enoch’s call; messianic prophecies in the preaching of Enoch; Enoch’s being clothed in glory; and the sweeping contents of his grand [Page 127]apocalyptic vision. The fact that variations on all these themes are prominent elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature makes their virtual absence in BG a surprise, though there are precedents for the preparation and selective distribution of two versions of some Jewish and early Christian texts—one version for initiates that contains hierophantic teachings and the other for novices that leaves out such information.¹⁹⁰ A brief discussion of each of these sacred story elements is given below and are discussed in greater length elsewhere.¹⁹¹
• Enoch’s call. In reading the account of Enoch’s call, its Johannine imagery in Moses 6:26–27 comes to mind. However, we are told by Samuel Zinner, that this seemingly New Testament imagery originally “arose in an Enochic matrix,”¹⁹² in other words, within literary traditions concerning the prophet Enoch. No less surprising in its relevance to the ancient Enoch literature is the unexpected co-occurrence of references to Enoch as a “lad” when he receives his prophetic commission in Moses 6:31 when seen in light of the prominence of “lad” as a title for the prophet in 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, and the Mandaean Ginza.¹⁹³ Additionally, the opening of Enoch’s eyes so he could see things “not visible to the natural eye” (Moses 6:36) is mentioned in 1 Enoch¹⁹⁴ and 2 Enoch.¹⁹⁵ Perhaps most remarkably, the fulfillment of the promise made to Enoch at his call that he would be able to “turn [waters] out of their course” (Moses 6:30), although appearing nowhere else in scripture, is described in the Ginza Enoch account.¹⁹⁶
• Messianic titles and prophecies in the preaching of Enoch. The striking equivalents of each of the titles mentioned in Moses 6:57—”Only Begotten,” “Son of Man,” “Jesus Christ,” and “Righteous Judge”—are described in the pre-Christian Book of Similitudes in 1 Enoch¹⁹⁷ and related Jewish traditions. Elsewhere in S. Kent Brown and I describe these and other relevant affinities in the Second Temple Tradition to Moses 6–7.¹⁹⁸ In this context, it may be noteworthy that some aspects of the knowledge about the last days and the “Righteous One” revealed to Enoch in the Similitudes are explicitly mentioned as being among the “hidden things” not to be shared publicly or, in some cases, not be to be committed to writing at all.¹⁹⁹ (Were any of the other sacred storyline elements “missing” in BG also similarly considered?)
• [Page 128]Enoch’s being clothed in glory. The pseudepigraphic books of 2 and 3 Enoch purport to describe the process by which Enoch was “clothed upon with glory” (Moses 7:3) in more detail. As a prelude to Enoch’s introduction to the secrets of creation, both accounts describe a “two-step initiatory procedure” whereby “the patriarch was first initiated by angel(s) and after this by the Lord” Himself.²⁰⁰ In 2 Enoch, God commanded his angels to “extract Enoch from (his) earthly clothing. And anoint him with my delightful oil, and put him into the clothes of my glory.”²⁰¹ Third Enoch tells us that after Enoch was changed, he resembled God so exactly that he was mistaken for Him.²⁰² As this process culminates, Enoch, both in ancient sources and modern scripture, receives “a right to [God’s] throne.”²⁰³ As in other instances of sacred episodes, BG does not explicitly detail these events.
• Enoch’s grand apocalyptic vision. Compare Enoch’s grand vision in Moses 7 with the tour of heaven and vision of the future that are among the principal themes of 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch.²⁰⁴ In contrast to BG, which seems to conflate Enoch’s temporary heavenly ascent during the visit of Mahaway with the event of his definitive translation to heaven, accounts in other Enoch texts make it clear that these were two separate events. In other words, while BG seems to end Enoch’s direct earthly ministry at the time of his initial ascent, other Enoch texts, consistent with the Book of Moses, have him continuing his earthly ministry afterward until the moment that he and his people rise together to the divine presence.
• The BG-unique themes notably include the dreams, antics, and quarreling of ’Ohyah and Hahyah (shown in italics). Earlier I argued that, of all the prominent names in BG, these two names are the ones that most look like they were invented out of whole cloth in BG.

Describing these patterns differently, one could summarize by saying that if you look at the vertical column for BG across all the storyline elements, you will notice that every entry is either in regular typeface or italics—none are in bold. In other words, BG contains something relating to every narrative core story element found in the Book of Moses while containing none of its sacred storyline elements, even though hints of each of the “missing” sacred elements are found in one form or anther elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature. Indeed, [Page 129]the resemblances between Moses 6–7 and BG in the narrative core story elements are so striking that one is tempted to speculate that BG and the Book of Moses were rooted in some of the same ancient Enoch traditions but that somewhere along the line, the sacred stories now found only in the Book of Moses were either removed from the tradition inherited by the BG redactor(s) or, alternatively, were left out when BG was composed.

Other items of note

The synoptic outline makes obvious the primary bipartite division of the story of Enoch in the Book of Moses into an earth-focused mission followed by a heaven-focused commission. More specifically, while Moses 6 is primarily concerned with Enoch’s initial divine call to preach repentance and salvation to the wicked on earth, the major preoccupation of Moses 7 is Enoch’s subsequent heavenly commission as a new member of the divine council²⁰⁵ and the preparation of his people to meet God face-to-face (see Moses 7:69). Analogous doubling of other themes in BG has been highlighted previously by Stuckenbruck.²⁰⁶

Finally, it should be observed that the overall tone of the BG account differs from that of Moses 6–7. Moses 6–7, though at times exploiting elements of humor and irony in its account, is generally sober in tone, is firmly rooted in the material world of humankind, and is illuminated by the apocalyptic visions of the prophet Enoch. BG, on the other hand, seems to be much more of a polemical parody on Mesopotamian gibborim culture, is occasionally tainted with the mythical elements of the Watchers, and, while missing the detail of the sacred accounts of Enoch’s call, teachings, and visions, adds the harrowing dreams of the inept, anxiety-ridden, and ultimately tragicomical characters ’Ohyah and Hahyah.

6. Detailed Analysis of Thematic Resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7

Elsewhere in the present volume, an extended discussion of approaches to address the potential pitfalls in comparative analysis has been provided.²⁰⁷ The detailed analysis in the present chapter draws inspiration from Enoch scholar Loren Stuckenbruck’s study of possible influences of 1 Enoch on the New Testament book of Revelation.²⁰⁸ In that study, he concluded from a discussion of a set of resemblances in both works “that the writer of [the later text] was either directly acquainted (through literary or oral transmission) with several of the major sections of [the earlier text] or at least had access to traditions that were influenced by these writings.”²⁰⁹ [Page 130]Significantly, he argued for the likelihood of his conclusion, even when realizing that “at no point [could] it be demonstrated that the [later text] quotes from any passage in [the earlier text].”²¹⁰

The primary question that motivated Stuckenbruck’s study is reasonably similar to our own, except that in our case we know that Joseph Smith could not have been acquainted with BG (since it was lost to modern scholarship until 1948), so any persuasive evidence of a literary association between the two texts would have to be interpreted as a demonstration that BG and the Book of Moses were independently influenced by similar ancient Enoch traditions that informed and antedated both of them.

In Stuckenbruck’s comparison and analysis, he provided a table for each potential resemblance. In each table there were three columns: one column describing the topic of interest common to the resemblance and the other two columns containing the seeming parallels as found in each of the two texts. Since the parallel texts were in different languages, their rendering was given in English. The table for each resemblance was followed by a brief discussion describing and analyzing the similarities and differences in the selected texts.²¹¹

In this section, I will do something similar for eighteen thematic resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7. By the term “thematic resemblances,” I mean instances in which reasonably similar topics of discussion occur in both texts, even when some elements and perspectives differ. The criterion of thematic similarity rather than identical vocabulary is appropriate because, like Stuckenbruck, I will be comparing two English translations. All but two of the seventeen thematic resemblances are supported by multiple sources within BG textual and visual depictions.

In the results section of the study that follows the presentation and analysis of each resemblance, we will not only consider the number of resemblances, their density, the degree of correlation in their order of appearance within the presumed BG storyline sequence (according to the current storyline sequencing conjectures of Stuckenbruck), and the range of their extent through nearly the entire storyline, but also, like Stuckenbruck, their specificity as another proxy measure of the strength of association between BG and the Latter-day Saint Enoch account. Thematic resemblances to Moses 6–7 that are exclusive to BG and the Book of Moses will be deemed stronger than ones that appear in other ancient Enoch literature, and resemblances for themes that are rare or absent outside the ancient Enoch literature will be seen as stronger than ones that also occur elsewhere within Second Temple texts and the Bible.

[Page 131]Description of the table of thematic resemblances

Eigtheen thematic resemblances are summarized in the table below. The resemblances have been sequenced with reference to the chapter-and-verse order in the Book of Moses in which they appear.²¹² Specific citations of passages in Moses 6–7 and BG follow in the second and third columns.

Understanding the fourth and last column in the table requires additional explanation. By way of background, remember that a full grasp of the BG narrative is made difficult by the fact that the extant manuscripts are short and fragmentary. As a service to BG scholars, Stuckenbruck investigated the question of sequencing for the Qumran BG fragments in 1997.²¹³ In 2016, he updated his findings.²¹⁴ In the 2016 version of Stuckenbruck’s helpful, though necessarily tentative and speculative outline of the BG account, he assigned letters of the alphabet A–V to indicate his current conjectures about the relative sequencing of extant BG fragments. For BG themes with resemblances to passages in Moses 6–7, I have added letters in the fourth column of the table corresponding to his sequencing attempt. Because some events in BG have no correspondence with the Book of Moses, some of the letters are missing. And, likewise, because Stuckenbruck did not attempt to classify every theme and fragment from Qumran and Manichaean sources for BG within his sequencing scheme, not every entry in the last column has a corresponding letter associated with it.

The arrangement of the table below allows us to compare the relative sequencing of BG themes, according to Stuckenbruck’s tentative investigations, to the fully known sequencing of themes in the corresponding Book of Moses account. I will compare Moses 6–7 to Stuckenbruck’s themes and sequencing proposal in greater detail below.

Additional context for evaluating the thematic resemblances

Before discussing the table below in more detail, some additional for the comparisons should be taken into consideration:

• Fragmentary nature of BG. As previously mentioned, the extant text of BG is literally in tatters. We have no idea what significant elements of the story may have been omitted due to damage or loss of ancient manuscript witnesses.
• Double phenomena. According to Stuckenbruck, several indications in the text “allow us to infer that BG was structured around a series of double phenomena (dream visions, tablets, [Page 132]journeys) linked to the [gibborim], among whom are brothers ’Ohyah and Hahyah, and Mahaway, who travels to Enoch the second time in order to secure an interpretation for these dreams.”²¹⁵ This interesting feature of the narrative sometimes makes it difficult to be certain, when doubled events are mentioned, whether the manuscripts are referring to the first or second instance of similar happenings. For example, Jens Wilkens argues that some of the BG material that Stuckenbruck assigned to the second journey of Mahaway better fits with his first journey.²¹⁶ However, we will see later how the added witness of the Book of Moses may contribute to the resolution of this ambiguity.

Table 3. Thematic resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7

• Deliberate or accidental changes and omissions in various versions and recensions of BG. As Stuckenbruck writes, readers should hold in mind “a two-fold awareness that the relationship between the Qumran fragments and the Manichaean Book of Giants, on the one hand, and the relationship among the Qumran materials themselves, on the other, may very well have been . . . complicated. . . . Not only does one have to reckon with the likelihood that over time parts of the Book of Giants were abbreviated, expanded, or conflated, but also that in places the order of the Vorlage was affected. Furthermore, it ought not to be assumed that each manuscript belonging to Qumran BG must have represented an identical recension.”²¹⁷ Moreover, it is natural that the Qumran and Manichaean recensions would have differed in at least some respects, perhaps in some cases with the Manichaean texts having been altered or paraphrased “in order to gloss over dissonances with the Manichaean doctrine.”²¹⁸ Surprisingly, however, in at least one instance it seems that an important, dissonant BG [Page 135]element was left standing by the Manichaeans, even though it contradicted core Manichaean doctrine.²¹⁹
• Significant differences in provenance and pedigree. If indeed there is early, shared content that sits behind both BG and Moses 6–7, we must assume that the process of transmission was very different in each case. While BG went through many hands over centuries, likely in oral as well as in written forms, Latter-day Saints who see the Book of Moses Enoch account as containing traditions from antiquity are likely either to posit a much shorter and direct line of transmission between the Joseph Smith and ancient tradents of a Moses 6–7 Vorlage or, alternatively, to see the account as directly revealed to the Prophet with no prior written texts as sources.

Overall comparison of Moses 6–7 to Stuckenbruck’s proposal for principal themes and narrative outline sequencing

With these considerations as a backdrop, we are prepared to consider the contents of column 4 of the summary table. A first finding of great interest is the fact that—despite significant differences of pedigree and provenance between Moses 6–7 and BG, as well as the latter’s fragmentary nature and the likelihood of changes, abbreviations, expansions, and conflation discussed above—when we look specifically at the structure and text of portions of BG that are similar to the Book of Moses, we find a generous quantity of plausible resemblances, many of them unique in the ancient Enoch literature. The eighteen resemblances are spread across a large swath of the narrative of both accounts, touching to a greater or lesser degree on ten of the twenty-two letters identifying the individual elements in Stuckenbruck’s narrative sequence, while adding three additional points of resemblance to elements of BG that were not included in Stuckenbruck’s selective outline.

Consistent with my previous arguments that ’Ohyah and Hahyah are the characters in BG most likely to have been invented ad hoc for literary purposes, it is not surprising that the portions of Stuckenbruck’s narrative outline having to do with their activities are largely missing in the Book of Moses (F, G). Others are missing because Stuckenbruck’s schema mistakenly assumes that Enoch was already permanently situated in heaven at the beginning of the story (C, D, E), having not fully taken into account the relevant Manichaean fragments that witness his initial direct preaching mission on earth. In addition, it is not surprising that J, L, M, U, and V are missing from the Book of Moses, since they [Page 136]have to do with further entertaining intrigues among ’Ohyah, Hahyah, and the gibborim as well as the second set of dreams and the subsequent report of Mahaway. Significantly, it should be observed that none of the just-mentioned elements from BG that are lacking in the Book of Moses appear in any significant detail elsewhere within the ancient Enoch literature, lending credence that they have all been specially invented by the redactor(s) of BG or of the tradents of older traditions from which BG inherited.

While the number and quality of the resemblances between the Book of Moses Enoch account and BG will not be unexpected for those who are already familiar with previously published results of earlier comparisons, it was new and surprising to me to learn that the list of apparent affinities between Moses 6–7, ordered by chapter and verse, more often than not follow the same relative sequence posited by Stuckenbruck for BG. If our admittedly preliminary and tentative analysis holds up under continuing scrutiny, the similarity in sequence of shared narrative elements in the two texts of interest can be taken as further evidence of a common ancient tradition behind both.

The seeming exceptions in column 4 to Stuckenbruck’s alphabetic ordering of events (O [twice], S, E, K) can be accounted for by a different interpretation of the ordering of events. In some cases, this reordering can be supported by evidence from the Book of Moses, on basis of my personal assumption that it is the more reliable of the two witnesses. The two “O” exceptions can be accounted for under the assumption that they are a mistaken interpretation by Stuckenbruck when he takes certain events from Mahaway’s first journey as being from his second journey. Correcting his presumably faulty assignment of BG material to “O” (having to do with the reading of Enoch’s message and reactions to his call to repentance), the table moves these events to an earlier part of the narrative. Another difference (S) has to do with Stuckenbruck’s placement of the second journey of Mahaway earlier in the overall account than the Book of Moses. Apparently, BG conflates Enoch’s ascent in the presence of Mahaway in Moses 7:2–4 (S) with the account of Enoch’s grand vision in a later part of the same chapter, which included the story of the great flood (T). The motif of the earth crying out against the wicked (E) also occurs as part of Enoch’s grand vision in the Book of Moses account.

The fourth exception (K) occurs because the reference to a “wild man” occurs early in the Book of Moses account but appears in a later part of the BG story. Because the BG account is so incomplete, this is not necessarily an inconsistency between the two accounts. Rather, it [Page 137]seems possible, considering the frequent doubling of phenomena in BG discussed previously,²²⁰ that the reference to a “wild man” later in the story may correspond to an earlier reference to the same rare term corresponding to the early position of the Book of Moses use of it. Such a doubling of the application of the term “wild man”—used the first time, sarcastically, to describe Enoch and applied the second time, pathetically, to describe Gilgamesh—becomes another instance of the literary irony that pervades the two texts.

Specific sources cited in the table of thematic resemblances

Full citations for the short references to BG works listed in column three of the table are listed below. These are the primary sources:

• Gulácsi 2015 [Manichaean Cosmology Painting]: Zsuzsanna Gulácsi. Mani’s Pictures: The Didactic Images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 90. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
• Henning 1943 [Manichaean BG fragments]: W. B. Henning. “The Book of the Giants.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 11, no. 1 (1943): 52–74. http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/giants/giants.htm.
• Kósa 2016 [Manichaean Cosmology Painting]: Gábor Kósa. “The Book of Giants Tradition in the Chinese Manichaica,” in Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano, 145–86. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, edited by Jörg Frey. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.
• Parry 2013 [Qumran BG fragments]: Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, vol. 1, Texts Concerned with Religious Law, Exegetical Texts and Parabiblical Texts. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
• Sundermann 1973 [Manichaean BG fragments]: Werner Sundermann. Mittelpersische und parthische kosmogonische und Parabeltexte der Manichäer. Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des Alten Orients 8. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973. https://www.scribd.com/document/396552610/Werner-Sundermann-Mittelpersische-und-parthische-kosmogonische-und-Parabeltexte-der-Manichaer-1973.

[Page 138]Other important sources, analyses, and commentaries listed in the summary table and the detailed tables for each thematic resemblance include the following:

• Angel 2016: Joseph L. Angel. “The Humbling of the Arrogant and the ‘Wild Man’ and ‘Tree Stump’ Traditions in the Book of Giants and Daniel 4,” in Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano, 61–80. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, edited by Jörg Frey. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.
• Gardner 1995: Iain Gardner, ed. The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 37, edited by James M. Robinson and H. J. Klimkeit. Leiden: Brill, 1995.
• Martínez 1996: Florentino García Martínez, ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Translated by Wilfred G. E. Watson. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996.
• Milik 1976: J. T. Milik and Matthew Black, eds. The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from Qumran Cave 4. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. https://archive.org/details/MILIKEnochInAramaicQumranCave4.
• Reeves 1992: John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 14. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992.
• Stuckenbruck 1997: Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran: Texts, Translation, and Commentary. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.
• Stuckenbruck 2017: Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017.
• Sundermann 1984: Werner Sundermann. “Ein weiteres Fragment aus Manis Gigantenbuch,” in Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin emerito oblata. Acta Iranica 23, 491–505. Leiden: Brill, 1984.
• Wilkens 2016: Jens Wilkens. “Remarks on the Manichaean Book of Giants: Once Again on Mahaway’s Mission to Enoch,” in Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan: Contexts, Traditions, and Influences, edited by Matthew Goff, Loren T. [Page 139]Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano, 213–29. Wissenschlaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 360, edited by Jörg Frey. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

Figure 11. a. Manichaean Cosmology Painting (MCP) containing motifs from BG; b. Visual syntax of the painting.²²¹

In addition to these written sources, we will draw on details from the fourteenth–fifteenth century Manichaean Cosmology Painting (MCP), depicted on a hanging scroll as shown above. In the Manichaean tradition, such paintings were often created for didactic purposes. It was only recently discovered that from this painting significant portions of the BG account of Enoch can be illustrated, filling in gaps in our overall understanding of the story and defining the events and characters more concretely.²²²

With one exception (i.e., illustration of the imprisonment of “demons”), the details from MCP in figures later in the study are taken from the depiction of the eighth and fifth layers in the section named “eight layers of the earth.”²²³ These layers, shown within the bottom third of the painting shown above, feature a symbolic representation of the four continents of the earth below a large treelike mountain—in [Page 140]Indian culture, this feature is identified as Mount Sumēru, the sacred center place. The name “Sumēru,” which literally means “good Mēru,” refers not only to a place in the symbolic geography of the story but also to an actual mountain located in the Himalayas.²²⁴

Figure 12. Detail of MCP, depicting the “eighth and fifth layers of the earth.”²²⁵ Mount Sumēru, the treelike sacred center place, is surrounded by four continents and the great ocean.²²⁶ Thirty-two palaces at the top of Sumēru surround a larger palace of Deity, pictured with an acolyte on either side. The four supplicants surrounding the throne may correspond to four figures who bring the judicial complaint of the earth or a plea for clemency of the repentant wicked before the heavenly judge.²²⁷ The four archangels mentioned in BG, who (in the Manichaean conception) led the battles against the wicked²²⁸ and gathered the repentant, are clothed in armor in front of a seated deity—likely Enoch²²⁹—among the smaller green mountains at the foot of Mount Sumēru.²³⁰ In other parts of the painting (not shown) wicked “demons” are imprisoned.²³¹ In the upper right, two repentant figures kneel. In addition, a solitary figure—perhaps Mahujah/Mahaway—kneels while perched on a high mountaintop, seemingly evoking themes from Mahujah/Mahaway’s second journey to meet Enoch.

Each of the thematic resemblances will be examined in more detail, one by one, below.

[Page 141]A. The begetting of the sons of God / Watchers, the giants, and the gibborim

Table 4. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme A

The Bible, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Giants share a common concerns with the offspring of the sons of God (equated with the Watchers in BG), the gibborim (literally “mighty men,” often erroneously translated as “giants”), and the nephilim (literally “fallen ones,” usually translated as giants/monsters). All three accounts describe the parentage [Page 142]of one or more of these classes of individuals as mismatched couples of partly divine (or, at least, divinely commissioned) parentage whose progeny (in some of the ancient Enoch literature) becomes literally monstrous in their appearance and—in the Bible, the Book of Moses, and the ancient Enoch literature—figuratively monstrous in their evil deeds. These evil deeds lead to the inevitable consequences of a great flood in the days of Noah.

While most scholars agree on these general points, the interpretation of their specifics is mired in controversy. The description in Genesis 6:4 is tantalizingly brief and allusive, seemingly hinting at an larger, untold story.²³² The Book of Moses is closer to the ancient Enoch literature than to the Bible in its more expansive descriptions of the wickedness of these groups and of Enoch’s early interventions well prior to Noah’s ministry.

Importantly, the BG and Moses 6–7 accounts are more alike in other respects. While both the Book of Giants and the Book of Moses describe the nephilim and the gibborim as distinct groups, English Bible translations often equate them.²³³ Also, as mentioned previously, both BG and Moses 6–7 are similar to each other and different from the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch in that their stories spotlight the human gibborim rather than a group of rebellious divine Watchers.

The Book of Moses motif of mismatched couples begins in earnest within the later story of Noah. The Enoch account in Moses 6–7 opens its description of the three groups by emphasizing the orderly and righteous posterity of Adam through Seth and down to Enoch (Moses 6:22). They are “sons of God,” and, like Adam, are not fallen angels but rather mortals who have received a fulness of the Melchizedek Priesthood (Moses 6:67–68) and the charge to serve as “preachers of righteousness” (Moses 6:23). In these respects, the Book of Moses account is closer to Syriac Christian and Islamic traditions. In a fashion that is analogous to but not identical with the Book of Moses, these two traditions saw the “sons of God” as Sethites and the “daughters of men” as Cainites. For example, Ephrem the Syrian understood the events relatinig to the mismatched marriages as meaning that “those who lived on higher ground, who were called ‘the children [=sons] of God,’ left their own region and came down to take wives from the daughters of Cain down below.”²³⁴ This subject is treated in greater detail elsewhere.²³⁵

In brief, BG and Moses 6–7 generally are more similar to each other than they are to the Bible and 1 Enoch. They differ in some ways, most importantly in that BG sees the “sons of God” as divine beings, whereas [Page 143]the Book of Moses, analogous to Syriac Christian and Islamic traditions, sees them as divinely commissioned individuals.

B. Murders

Table 5. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme B

The theme of widespread murder, introduced on an individual scale in the earlier biblical stories of Cain and Lamech, is given full sway in Moses 6–7 and BG. Although the love of bloodshed as a proof of manliness seems more than sufficient to motivate the wicked at the time of Enoch to great slaughter, Moses 6:15 makes additional incentives explicit—namely, an all-consuming quest for “power” and riches. This is [Page 144]the essence of the Mahan principle, what Hugh Nibley called “the great secret of converting life into property”²³⁶—“your life for my property.”²³⁷ Why should a well-respected gibbor settle for the pleasure of murder alone if a financial bonus can be added to the deal? Hence, BG’s report of one of the gibborim repeating, “What will you give me for killing?”²³⁸—a close echo of Satan’s famous golden question, “Have you any money?”²³⁹

In short, both BG and the Book of Moses chronicle the perennial appeal and virtually inseparable relationship of power, ill-gotten riches, and murder.

C. Oath-inspired violence

The bloodshed described previously was accompanied by other forms of violence. The Book of Moses speaks of how “Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts”(Moses 6:15), and Stuckenbruck sees the truncated phrases of 1Q23 17, 1–3 (“and they entered,” “through their hands,” “and they began to”) as indicating a list describing the variety of their wicked acts.²⁴⁰ The Henning fragment gives us to understand that this included subjecting various peoples to servitude.²⁴¹

Of greatest significance in these descriptions from the Book of Moses and BG is their emphasis on the secret oaths behind the violence, a prominent theme in both texts that is absent from the Bible. Moses 6:28–29 refers with vivid imagery to the people having “sought their own counsels in the dark” and having also “foresworn themselves . . . by their oaths.” The mention of “secret works” and “administering death” in close proximity within Moses 6:15 parallels the description in BG: “They knew the se[crets²⁴² . . .] and they killed ma[ny . . .].”²⁴³ Gestures associated with these oaths may be conjectured in the mention that one of the gibborim “[made an oath?] before the sun, one hand in the air, [while with] the other [performed deeds of wickedness?].”²⁴⁴

Elsewhere the Qumran manuscripts clarify these brief references by describing the spread of the “mystery of wickedness.”²⁴⁵ Later Islamic tradition taught that the most important of these mysteria, wickedly taught by the Watchers to a woman who was their accomplice in sin,²⁴⁶ was knowledge of the “Name of God,” by means of which the fallen angels were able to “ascend to Heaven.”²⁴⁷

[Page 145]Table 6. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme C

This interpretation is consistent with Nibley’s conclusion that traditions about these illicitly revealed “secrets” have their roots in the wicked practice of “divulging the pure ordinances of heaven to people unworthy to receive them, who then proceed . . . to exercise them in unrighteousness while proclaiming their own righteousness on the grounds of possessing them.”²⁴⁸

[Page 146]As discussed earlier, a tentative case can be made for the identification of the BG Mahujah with the biblical Mehuja-el, who was a descendant of Cain and the grandfather of the wicked Lamech,²⁴⁹ by virtue of the similarity of their names. This case is only made stronger when we consider the additional material about Mehuja-el’s family line included in the Joseph Smith account. Note that in the Book of Moses, Mehuja-el’s grandson, like the other “sons of men” (Moses 5:52, 55), “entered into a covenant with Satan after the manner of Cain” (Moses 5:49). Similarly, drawing on the additional background provided in 1 Enoch,²⁵⁰ we come to understand that a group of conspirators, here depicted as fallen sons of God, “all swore together and bound one another with a curse.” Elsewhere in 1 Enoch we learn additional details about that oath:

This is the number of Kasbe’el, the chief of the oath, which he showed to the holy ones when he was dwelling on high in glory, and its (or “his”) name (is) Beqa. This one told Michael that he should show him the secret name, so that they might mention it in the oath, so that those who showed the sons of men everything that was in secret might quake at the name and the oath.²⁵¹

The passages in 1 Enoch are similar to a section of the Book of Moses that describes a “secret combination” that had been in operation “from the days of Cain” (Moses 5:51). As to the deadly nature of the oath, we read in the Book of Moses, “Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die,”²⁵² just as in 1 Enoch, when the conspirators “bound one another with a curse”²⁵³ that would take effect if they broke their oath.

In 1 Enoch, the conspirators agreed on their course of action by saying, “Come, let us choose for ourselves wives from the daughters of men.”²⁵⁴ Likewise, in the Book of Moses, Mehuja-el’s grandson became infamous because he “took unto himself . . . wives”²⁵⁵ to whom he revealed the secrets of their wicked league (to the chagrin of his fellows).²⁵⁶ In 1 Enoch, as in the Book of Moses,²⁵⁷ we also read specifically of how “they all began to reveal mysteries to their wives and children.”²⁵⁸

In summary, BG, 1 Enoch, and the Book of Moses are in agreement in their emphasis on the secret oaths that stood behind the increasing violence, a prominent theme in the Enoch texts that, significantly, is absent from the Bible.

[Page 147]

Figure 13. Giorgio Schiavone (1436/7–1504), Samson Smiting a Philistine with the Jawbone of an Ass.²⁵⁹ In the background lies a beast he has already slain.

D. A “wild man”

Table 7. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme D

The term “wild man” is uncommon and in both texts fairly pops out at the attentive reader. It is used only once elsewhere in scripture, as part of Jacob’s prophecy about how Ishmael would live to become everyone’s [Page 148]favorite enemy.²⁶⁰ It is a translation of the literal Hebrew “wild-ass man,” calling to mind

the sturdy, fearless, and fleet-footed Syrian onager (Hebrew pere’), who inhabits the wilderness and is almost impossible to domesticate. Jeremiah describes the wild ass of the desert: “snuffing the wind in her eagerness, whose passions none can restrain.”²⁶¹ Hagar[, the mother of Ishmael,] . . . will produce a people free and undisciplined.²⁶²

Intriguingly, in light of the presumed Mesopotamian background of both Moses 6–7 and BG, the description of Ishmael as an “onager man” matches that of Enkidu as akkanu (“onager”) in the Gilgamesh epic. Enkidu is portrayed as an indomitable warrior whose prowess was proved in bloody battle: a “wild ass on the run, donkey of the uplands, panther of the wild”²⁶³ who “slaughtered the Bull of Heaven” and “killed Humbaba.”²⁶⁴

How can the application of the term “wild man” to Enoch in the Book of Moses be explained? For reasons that are discussed at length elsewhere,²⁶⁵ I am persuaded that Enoch did not fit the mold of a “wild man” in any sense that would have been intelligible to the gibborim, but rather was simply called one in mockery. A parallel to such rude humor can be found in Moses 8, in which a reversal of labels was used to please the partygoers in Noah’s day. As the drunken crowd of “sons of men”²⁶⁶ who had spurned Noah’s preaching²⁶⁷ and married his granddaughters²⁶⁸ filled and refilled their wine cups, they laughingly called themselves the “sons of God.”²⁶⁹ At the same time, after playfully exalting their own status, they sarcastically called their wives “daughters of men,”²⁷⁰ deliberately deprecating the lineage of their wives as daughters of the sons of Noah. Significantly, these sons of Noah, the fathers of these wives, had been specifically characterized as “the sons of God.”²⁷¹ Though the labels vary, this tasteless and worn-out brand of humor persists in every generation.

However, by the time we approach the end of the story, we realize that Enoch’s initial self-characterization as being “but a lad” who is “slow in speech” has prepared us for the ironic turning of the tables that plays out on a larger stage in his final military victory (Moses 6:31). This may constitute one of the primary lessons of the account—namely, that Enoch conquered his foes through the “virtue of the word of God,”²⁷² in contrast to the gibborim, aspiring wild men who, like Korihor, “conquered according to [their] strength” (Alma 30:17).

[Page 149]Consistent with the moral of such a lesson, later biblical authors pointedly taught that “Israel’s future did not lie along”²⁷³ the “way [of] all [their] warriors [gibborim],”²⁷⁴ but rather in “turn[ing] back to the Lord with all [one’s] heart.”²⁷⁵ Proverbs 24:25 averred that “a wise man is mightier than a strong one.”²⁷⁶ Paraphrasing, we might understand this to mean that the “wise man” is more of a geber²⁷⁷ than the gibbor—in other words, the “wise man” is more of a “man” than the “he man.” Similarly, the preacher of Ecclesiastes 9:16 concluded that “wisdom (ḥokmâ) is superior to [“manly”] heroism (gĕbûrâ).”²⁷⁸ Perhaps the redactor{s) of BG intended to make a similar point.

In line with this conjecture, as the end of the BG account approaches, one of the wicked leaders of the gibborim, in all likelihoood Gilgamesh,²⁷⁹ called himself “the wild man” as part of his admission of his humiliating defeat and resulting personal debasement by Enoch and his people.²⁸⁰ Joseph Angel ably compares the humbling of the arrogant leader of the gibborim, muttering to himself in dismay after his defeat, to the principal theme of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, a prominent type of the “wild man” in the Old Testament. Angel perceptively recognizes that the characterization of both Nebuchadnezzar and Gilgamesh as “wild men both appear to be related to the Epic of Gilgamesh.”²⁸¹ In this dramatic turn of events, the would-be mighty wild man (in the proud tradition of the gibborim) is literally or figuratively transformed into a beastly wild man of Mesopotamian and biblical tragedy.²⁸²

The Book of Moses and the Book of Giants are two different works, published millennia apart, each with a unique past and its own story to tell. That said, whatever the exact meaning of the term “wild man” in these two accounts may be, the fact that this rare and peculiar description shows up in these already closely related stories about Enoch hints that they may each contain shards of a common, preexisting literary tradition. So far as can be determined at present, the single occurrence of the term “wild man” in the extant ancient Enoch literature is in the BG, and the only instance of it in the scripture translations of Joseph Smith is in the Enoch account in the Book of Moses. And, from a literary perspective, the conjecture of a paired usage of the term in BG that would contrast a mocking reference of “wild man” to a meek and mild adversary at the beginning of the story with a painful application of the term to the proud, defeated leader of the gibborim at the end of the story would constitute a poignant instance of poetic justice. From a literary perspective, the twofold occurrence of “wild man” might be explained [Page 150]as yet another instance of the pattern of “doublings” that Stuckenbruck has noticed in BG.²⁸³

In short, the fitting references to the term “wild man” in BG and in the Book of Moses, absent elsewhere in the Enoch literature and in modern Latter-day Saint scripture, constitute remarkable evidence of a shared ancient tradition.

E. Name and role of Mahijah/Mahaway revealed in his first, earthly journey to meet Enoch

Table 8. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme E

Previously, I described the remarkable nature of the resemblance that Nibley and other scholars saw between the Book of Moses name [Page 151]“Mahijah” and the BG name “Mahaway,” in addition, I discussed the possibility of a narrative affinity of Mahijah with the biblical name Mehujael that one of the descendants of the latter is mentioned in the Book of Moses in connection with the kinds of oaths described in BG. Going further, we will now see how the similarly named characters in BG and the Book of Moses resemble each other in their respective roles in each text.

We have already seen that the name Mahijah/Mahujah/Mahaway might be explained on the basis of the Akkadian maḫḫû, denoting “a certain class of priests and seers.”²⁸⁴ And what was the role of these seers? Among other things, the royal archives of the Old Babylonian kingdom of Mari recount the comings and goings of maḫḫû as intermediaries and messengers, bearing words of warning from the gods for the king,²⁸⁵ a role that evokes the role of Mahaway—“the messenger par excellence of the [gibborim] both in the [BG] Enochic tradition from Qumran and in Manichaeism.”²⁸⁶ Hugh Nibley presciently observed that “this is exactly the role, and the only role,” that Mahijah plays in the Book of Moses.²⁸⁷

Incidentally, Enoch, like Mahijah/Mahaway, is also portrayed as a messenger. In BG, he is called “the apostle,”²⁸⁸ a word of Greek derivation signifying one sent forth as a “delegate,” “envoy,” or “messenger.”²⁸⁹ Thus the roles of Mahijah/Mahaway and Enoch are both complementary and contrastive—one is the messenger of the chiefs of the wicked, the other is the messenger of the Lord.

In the Book of Moses, Mahijah raises a direct question to Enoch during his earthly preaching mission to the gibborim: “Tell us plainly who thou art, and from whence thou comest?” (Moses 6:40). Complicating the existence of the Book of Moses account of a direct preaching mission by Enoch is the fact that an earthly mission by Enoch is not mentioned explicitly in the surviving fragments of BG from Qumran. Thus, Stuckenbruck concludes that Enoch was already permanently ensconced in heaven at the beginning of the BG story and for this reason could never have interacted with the gibborim at large.²⁹⁰ However, contradicting Stuckenbruck’s view, incidents relating to Enoch’s direct preaching to a group of gibborim, presumably in connection with Mahijah/Mahaway’s first visit to Enoch, is accepted by at least one translator of the Qumran BG and is likewise explicitly described in the Manichaean BG fragments.²⁹¹ I will return to this subject below.

In the Book of Moses, the name of Enoch’s questioner, Mahijah, comes out of nowhere. Likewise, the BG gives us no direct information about Mahaway’s first journey to meet Enoch. However, BG does give [Page 152]us hints about why Mahaway was the one chosen to make a journey to Enoch the second time:

• Previous familiarity. One of the gibborim states that Mahaway already knew Enoch, for he had “heard his voice” previously, “the first time” he went there, and that because of his earlier visit the “road” would be “similar” to him when he went there again the next time.²⁹²
• Moral fitness. Wilkens concludes, based on a Manichaean BG fragment, that Mahaway “is not as corrupted as his fellows.”²⁹³ This would provide a reasonable rationale for Mahaway as a mediator who is morally fit to speak with the prophet Enoch.
• Physical makeup. Another reason for the choosing of Mahaway as the envoy of the gibborim to Enoch may be that Mahaway differed in his physical makeup from those who selected him. Specifically, among Mahaway’s additional qualifications for making the long voyage to the eastern end of the earth²⁹⁴ to question Enoch, is that he seems to be “the only giant with wings.”²⁹⁵ In this respect and others, Mahaway resembles the winged angel Yahoel in the pseudepigraphic Apocalypse of Abraham²⁹⁶, who played a similar mediating role for Abraham.
• Courage. Nibley gives his opinion that, in contrast to Mahaway, the gibborim were afraid of a meeting with Enoch. Nibley’s observation is consistent with the evidence mentioned earlier about the depiction of ʾOhyah and Hahyah as ineffectual worriers.²⁹⁷ Nibley notes: “[The gibborim] are scared; they don’t know who Enoch is so they force Mahijah [= BG Mahaway] to go.”²⁹⁸

In conclusion, the posing of direct questions by Mahijah in the Book of Moses in a first visit that occurred during Enoch’s personal preaching mission is consistent both with the BG role of Mahaway as a messenger and with BG fragments describing how Enoch taught the gibborim face to face on earth before he ascended to heaven.

[Page 153]F. Enoch/Mahaway reads record of deeds

Table 9. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme F

In Moses 6, we read of Enoch’s preaching to the people out of a “book of remembrance,”³⁰⁰ in which both the words of God and the deeds of the people were recorded. The specific type of heavenly book referred to in [Page 154]the Book of Moses³⁰¹ is similar to one that appears frequently in related Old Testament passages and Jewish pseudepigrapha.³⁰² It resembles most closely what is sometimes called a Book of Deeds, a “heavenly accounting of people’s works, good or evil,” which “regulates entrance into eternal happiness.”³⁰³ In correspondence to this depiction in the Book of Moses, BG describes a heavenly book in the form of “two stone tablets”³⁰⁴ that is given by Enoch to Mahujah to stand as a witness of “their fallen state and betrayal of their ancient covenants.”³⁰⁵ Both Stuckenbruck and Reeves plausibly suggest that in BG the speaker introducing the book in this case is apparently Mahawai, having returned from his second visit to Enoch with it,³⁰⁶ though it is significant that in 1 Enoch, as in the Book of Moses, the corresponding speaker is Enoch himself.

Figure 14. Enoch as a preacher. Elijah and Enoch (detail), 17th century.³⁰⁷

In the Book of Moses, Enoch says that the book from which Enoch was reading was written “according to the pattern given by the finger of God” (Moses 6:46). This may allude to the idea that a similar record of the wickedness of the people was being kept in heaven.Note that the Book of Giants refers to the second tablet given to Mahujah by Enoch as being a “copy” (4Q203 frg. 8, l. 2).

In short, the idea of Enoch as a scribe and witness of the heavenly book of remembrance, as described in the Book of Moses, fits squarely into ancient Jewish teachings about Enoch, including those in BG and 1 Enoch.

[Page 155]G. Trembling and weeping after record is read

Table 10. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme G

In the Book of Moses, Enoch’s reading of the book of remembrance caused the people to greatly fear: “And as Enoch spake forth the words of God, the people trembled, and could not stand in his presence” (Moses 6:47). The BG fragments shown in the table at right likewise attest to the state of worry and fear that followed Enoch’s message.

As mentioned previously, the idea that the gibborim ever met up with Enoch face-to-face is problematic to Stuckenbruck.³⁰⁹ Thus, he refrains from making any conjectural reference to Enoch in his translation of 4Q203 frg. 4, l. 6, as shown in the table above.³¹⁰ However, Martínez, disagreeing with Stuckenbruck on that point, reads that BG passage in a way that is consistent with the Book of Moses, suggesting in his translation that the leaders of the mighty warriors “bowed down and wept in front of [Enoch].”³¹¹ Milik³¹² views the passage similarly. In additional support of his interpretation, he cites a Manichaean fragment of BG that says that “[when] they saw the apostle [i.e., Enoch³¹³] … those that were tyrants and criminals . . . were [worried] and much afraid.”³¹⁴

In further support of the idea that the context of fear, trembling, and prostration of the wicked (who were, in this instance, the Watchers rather than the gibborim) occurred in the context of Enoch’s personal rehearsal of their sins, see this parallel passage from 1 Enoch. It describes [Page 156]a reaction similar to both the Book of Moses and BG after Enoch finished his preaching:

Then I [i.e., Enoch] went and spoke to all of them together. And they were all afraid and trembling and fear seized them. And they asked that I write a memorandum of petition³¹⁵ for them, that they might have forgiveness, and that I recite the memorandum of petition for them in the presence of the Lord of heaven. For they were no longer able to speak or to lift their eyes to heaven out of shame for the deeds through which they had sinned and for which they had been condemned. . . . and they were sitting and weeping at Abel-Main,³¹⁶ . . . covering their faces.³¹⁷

In summary, supporting evidence favors the similarity of the reaction of the gibborim in BG to Enoch’s preaching about their wicked deeds to the response of Enoch’s hearers in the Book of Moses.

H. Call to repentance

After describing the rampant wickedness among the gibborim, both the Qumran and the Book of Moses sermons of Enoch “end on a note of hope”³¹⁸—a feature unique in the Enoch literature to these two accounts. In the Book of Moses account, Enoch draws attention to God’s invitation of repentance that had been given previously to Adam:

If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, . . . ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost . . . and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you. (Moses 6:52)

In BG, we are given to understand more specifically that the possibility of forgiveness through repentance is only available for the gibborim, not the Watchers.³¹⁹ Such a distinction would be consistent with 1 Enoch 12:5, when the Watchers are told that they are beyond the possibility of forgiveness—even if they should “lament and make petition forever, . . . they will have no mercy or peace.”³²⁰ On the other hand, in BG and the Book of Moses, hope is provided to the wicked gibborim through repentance. BG relates the command of Enoch as follows: “Set loose what you hold captive . . . and pray” (4Q203, frg. 8, l. 14–15).³²¹ It seems that at least part of the group of hearers subsequently “[prostrat]ed” themselves (4Q530, frg. 13, l. 1).³²² While this repentant group was “very, very glad at seeing the apostle [i.e., Enoch³²³]” and “assembled before him,” we have already seen that Enoch’s message was not received uniformly [Page 157]by all: “those that were tyrants and criminals [i.e., the unrepentant faction] . . . were [worried] and much afraid” (Henning, text E).³²⁴

Table 11. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme H.

Reeves conjectures that an additional difficult-to-reconstruct phrase in BG³²⁶ might also be understood as an “allusion to a probationary period for the repentance of the [gibborim].”³²⁷ The description of a period of repentance seems to echo a specific Jewish tradition that continues to modern times. In this regard, I note Geo Widengren’s description of the Jewish tradition that “on New Year’s Day, . . . the judgment is carried out when three kinds of tablets are presented, one for the righteous, one for sinners, and one for those occupying an intermediate position.”³²⁸ Widengren explains that “people of an intermediate position are granted ten days of repentance between New Year’s Day and Yom Kippurim.”³²⁹

[Page 158]

Figure 15. Detail of Manichaean Cosmology Painting (MCP), showing “demons” (in this case likely representing a faction of repentant gibborim) kneeling on pitch-dark clouds with their hands clutched.

Thus, it appears that in both the Book of Moses and BG a “space [is] granted unto man in which he might repent” (Alma 12:24).

I. Sexual defilement

Table 12. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme I

[Page 159]Among the declarations that the Book of Moses Enoch makes to his hearers from the book of remembrance is that their children “are conceived in sin” (Moses 6:55). Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes explain the appearance of this surprising phrase, seemingly inconsistent with the preceding verse, as follows:

This statement appears to be troublesome in light of an earlier passage declaring that “children are whole from the foundation of the world” (Moses 6:54). The act of conceiving between married parents is not itself sinful. Rather, it seems that because of the Fall, children come into a world saturated with sin. There is no escape. Therefore, “when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts.”³³⁰

When verses 54 and 55 are put together, it becomes apparent that the tragic state of the children of Enoch’s hearers is not due simply to their fallen nature, but rather to the depth of their parents’ willfully chosen corruption. As Nibley expressed it, “The wicked people of Enoch’s day . . . did indeed conceive their children in sin, since they were illegitimate offspring of a totally amoral society”³³¹—in other words, they were conceived in a sinful world. The relevant passage in BG reads with a similar import:³³² “Let it be known to you th[at ] . . . your activity and (that) of [your] wive[s ] those (giants) [and their] son[s and] the [w]ives o[f ] through your fornication on the earth.”³³³

Figure 16. Angel of Revelation 14:6, carrying a scroll.³³⁴ In similar fashion, Mahaway, bearing questions from the gibborim, “mounted up in the air like strong winds and flew with his hands like an eagle to the east of the earth and he passed above in the direction of the Paradise of Justice.”³³⁵

[Page 160]J. Mahujah/Mahaway’s second, heavenly journey to meet Enoch

In order to explore the career of Mahijah/Mahaway more extensively, it must be understood that in BG, Mahaway’s role as a messenger and go-between for the gibborim results in his taking two separate journeys, one earthly and one heavenly, to meet with the Enoch. But in the Book of Moses, it is typically assumed that Mahijah had only one encounter with Enoch, as recorded in Moses 6:40. Are there hints elsewhere in Moses 6–7 of a second journey of Mahijah corresponding to Mahaway’s second, heavenly journey in BG? The answer is yes—but before saying more, let’s look more at the BG account of the second journey of Mahaway in more detail (4Q530, frg. 7, col. ii, l. 3–5).

Table 13. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme J

From BG we learn that Mahaway had to mount up “in the air like strong winds” and “fly like an eagle” to the “east of the earth . . . in the direction of . . . Paradise”³⁴¹ in order to meet Enoch. Though in the symbolic geography of the ancient world a central, cosmic mountain typically represents the most sacred place on earth, its “east edge,”³⁴² the dawn horizon,³⁴³ the location of the boundary where the round dome of heaven meets the square plane of earth³⁴⁴ is not only where visions of God are often situated but also the “launching point” from which actual heavenly ascents sometimes occurred.³⁴⁵

Consistent with this view, in 1 Enoch, the prophet described his journey as taking him to “the ends of the earth, on which the heaven rests, and the gates of heaven open,”³⁴⁶ and gave a brief account of its great beasts³⁴⁷ and [Page 162]birds with beautiful voices.³⁴⁸ Likewise, the description of Methuselah’s journey to the end of the earth in the Genesis Apocryphon,³⁴⁹ where Enoch’s “dwelling is with the angels,”³⁵⁰ “can be plausibly understood as [an allusion] to the [Garden of] Eden.”³⁵¹

Couched within this symbolic geography, Mahaway’s second journey to visit Enoch in BG³⁵² “is clearly from the west to the east and back again.”³⁵³ Among his other qualifications to make this voyage to the eastern end of the earth,³⁵⁴ he seems to be “the only giant with wings.”³⁵⁵ Just as Enoch, who flew east with the angels, used “this mode of transportation . . . to visit areas that normally humans cannot reach,”³⁵⁶ so also

Figure 17. Camille Flammarion (1842–1925): Engraving, 1888. “The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption . . . translates to ‘A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and earth meet.’”³⁵⁷ In line with the idea that the Garden of Eden is at the eastern edge of the earth, note the prominent tree just behind the man.³⁵⁸

the flight of Mahaway should be understood in a similar way. [He] is able to reach Eden because he can fly over a desolate [Page 163]desert that would be, following this logic, impossible to cross on foot. This underscores the extraordinary and difficult nature of [his] voyage. Asking Mahaway to undertake such an arduous journey highlights how seriously [the gibborim] wanted an interpretation to the two visions of ’Ohyah and Hahyah.³⁵⁹

Salvatore Cirillo finds the parallel accounts of Mahaway’s journeys in BG and the Book of Moses impressive: “The emphasis that [Joseph] Smith places on Mahijah’s travel to Enoch is eerily similar to the account of Mahaway to Enoch in [BG].”³⁶⁰

In the Manichaean Cosmology Painting, a lone figure kneels repentantly on the top of the only other mountain shown in the scene. So far as I am aware, no BG scholar has attempted to identify this uniquely prominent figure, however it is hard to imagine a better candidate than Mahijah/Mahujah/Mahaway. But why would a repentant Mahijah/Mahujah/Mahaway be perched alone on a mountain top?

Figure 18. Detail of MCP depicting a solitary, repentant individual, possibly representing Mahaway kneeling atop a high mountain. The imagery recalls the OT1 text of Moses 7:2 where Mahujah and Enoch “cried unto the Lord” and heard the divine command: “Turn ye, and get ye upon the mount Simeon.”³⁶¹

A clue to that possibility lies in Old Testament Manuscript 1 (OT1), the manuscript of the Book of Moses that was directly recorded from Joseph Smith’s dictation. In the OT1 version of Moses 7:2, the second and only other mention of Mahijah is found, though with a slightly different spelling: Mahujah. Importantly, while the canonized version of Moses 7:2 reads Mahujah as a place name, OT1 renders Mahujah as a personal [Page 164]name.³⁶² In other words, the original dictation seems to indicate that Enoch is “standing with” the figure Mahujah, “not standing on” the place Mahujah.³⁶³

With respect to the mention of “the place,” Kent Brown has elsewhere observed that in a biblical context, references to “the place” (Hebrew maqōm; Greek topos) may describe a special or sacred location. For example, in the New Testament the Garden of Gethsemane metaphorically becomes “the holy place” where Jesus enters to pray and to shed His blood.³⁶⁴ Here, “the [holy] place” also became a place of prayer for Mahujah and Enoch when they “cried unto the Lord.” As Draper et al. emphasize,³⁶⁵ it is the cry of the righteous that mobilizes the Lord to take action—whether it be in providing further knowledge and understanding, as we see here and again later throughout the grand vision of Enoch,³⁶⁶ in taking action to correct injustices,³⁶⁷ or in delivering His people from distress.³⁶⁸ The initial words of God’s command “Turn ye” express something more than physical movement. Though the Hebrew term teshuvah literally denotes “return,” it can be understood by modern English speakers as signifying “repentance” or “conversion” in scriptural contexts. God turns to the petitioner when the petitioner turns to Him.³⁶⁹

Figure 19. Moses 7:2–3, Old Testament 1 Manuscript, Joseph Smith Translation.³⁷⁰

All this seems consistent with the idea that Mahaway may be the individual depicted in the MCP scene shown in figure 18. Significantly, the mountain on which the figure kneels is nearer to Mount Sumēru, in other words closer to the sacred center of the scene, than the other gibborim who kneel in the distant land across the river.

[Page 165]As to the similarly spelled name that appears at this point in the story—“Mahujah” instead of “Mahijah”—the question arises as to whether this is a scribal error or a deliberate change.³⁷¹ If taken as a deliberate and meaningful change, the sacred setting of the change, in close association with the mention of Enoch’s being “clothed upon with glory” (Moses 7:2) recalls the bestowal of new names upon Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah.³⁷² Simultaneously seeming both to highlight Enoch’s personal investment in the spiritual progress of Mahujah/Mahaway and the sacred symbolism of names in initiatory rites, BG obliquely relates the brief remembrance of Mahaway that Enoch “very affectionately . . . called out my name.”³⁷³ BG scholar Jens Wilkens comments, “One is tempted to postulate an emotional relationship between [Mahaway] and Enoch.”³⁷⁴

Then, as Mahaway departed, Enoch spoke to him a last time: “I call you, o son of Virogdad, I know [th]is: you are like some of them.”³⁷⁵ The sense of the warning seems to be “you are too much like some of them,” in other words, it seems that Mahujah/Mahaway, like the wicked faction of the gibborim,³⁷⁶ ultimately would reject the invitation to repent and be exalted with Enoch.

If additional speculation can be tolerated, the ending of the BG story of Mahujah/Mahaway might be seen as a sort of parable that evokes the themes of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler.³⁷⁷ Like the rich young ruler, we might say in modern terms that Mahujah/Mahaway was offered the gift of eternal life if he would follow the path he had begun as a disciple of Enoch to its glorious end through complete obedience to the law of consecration, as was later strictly observed by Enoch’s people in Zion. Sadly—after Mahujah/Mahaway’s promising but brief encounter with Enoch in a sacred place where together they “cried unto the Lord,” a place where Mahujah/Mahaway had been called by name “very affectionately” and in sorrow warned at his departure—the account implies Mahujah/Mahaway not only lost his life but also, more tragically, perished spiritually.

We are not told directly whether Mahujah/Mahaway remained repentant or became recalcitrant when he died, but the BG description of his slaughter suggests that he remained too long in the “tents of [the] wicked” (Numbers 16:26) and for that reason, if for no other, he ultimately shared in their tragic demise. BG records these words as a lament for Mahaway’s violent death: “Slain, slain was that angel who was great, [that messenger whom they had³⁷⁸]. Dead were those who were joined with flesh.”³⁷⁹

[Page 166]K. Enoch clothed with glory

Table 14. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme K

Though both Enoch and Mahujah were commanded to ascend (“Turn ye,” using a plural pronoun), it seems that only Enoch made an immediate response (“I turned and went up on the mount”). Moses 7:3 relates that as Enoch stood on the mount, the heavens opened and he was “clothed upon with glory.” 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch purport to describe the process by which Enoch was “clothed upon with glory” in more detail, as discussed previously.

In an uncanonized revelation on Enoch found in Joseph Smith’s Revelation Book 2,³⁸⁰ Mount Simeon, where Enoch and Mahujah are called to go, is called the “Mountain of God,”³⁸¹ appearing to correspond symbolically to a sacred center like Mount Sumēru in the BG account. The name Simeon (Hebrew Shim’on) is generally taken to derive from the Hebrew shama’ (= “to hear”), as indicated in Genesis 29:33.³⁸² Remembering that Enoch preached “upon the hills and the high places,”³⁸³ Nibley associates the term with the concepts of “an audition, a hearing, both attention, a place of preaching” or “conversation,” hence an “exchange of ideas.”³⁸⁴ Thus, Simeon is a fitting name for a meeting place between Enoch and the Lord. Incidentally, there is a Mount Simeon (Jabal Sem’an) in Syria—also known as Mount Nebo. There Moses received a vision of the promised land.

[Page 167]

Figure 20. Franz Johansen (1938–), Resurrection. BYU sculpture garden.³⁸⁵ In a vision of his own resurrection, President Lorenzo Snow, then an Apostle, experienced something similar to what is described in 2 Enoch and3 Enoch. He recounted: “I heard a voice calling me by name, saying: ‘He is worthy, he is worthy, take away his filthy garments.’ My clothes were then taken off piece by piece and a voice said: ‘Let him be clothed, let him be clothed.’”³⁸⁶

The brief summary of the prelude to Enoch’s transfiguration is augmented by the account in Revelation Book 2. As Enoch

gazed upon nature and the corruption of man, and mourned their sad fate, and wept and cried with a loud voice, and heaved forth his sighs, “Omnipotence, Omnipotence! O may I see thee!”

And with his finger he [i.e., God] touched his [i.e., Enoch’s] eyes and he saw heaven, he gazed on eternity and sang an angelic song and mingled his voice with the heavenly throng, “Hosanna! Hosanna!” The sound of the trump around the throne of God echoed and echoed again, and rang and reechoed until eternity was filled with his voice.

He saw, yea, he saw and he glorified God.³⁸⁷

[Page 168]Thus, among other things, we learn that Enoch “was not simply given the privilege of seeing God. Rather the glorious opportunity to see God came to Enoch because he asked to see God.”³⁸⁸

Figure 21. Gerard Hoet (1648–1733), God Took Enoch.³⁸⁹ In a separate event that took place long before the long-term translation of Enoch and his people to the “bosom of God,” the Book of Moses recounts that Enoch was “clothed upon with glory” (Moses 7:3).

By taking the liberty to combine insights from both the BG and Book of Moses accounts, we seem to be able to see a glimpse of Enoch’s glory in heaven from Mahujah/Mahaway’s secondhand perspective: “A thousand thousands [were serving ] him. . . . Great fear] seized me and I fell on my face.”

After Enoch’s presence is “veiled” following his glorification,³⁹⁰ Wilkens observes that “only Enoch’s voice is mentioned.”³⁹¹ In explanation of this state of affairs, Wilkens mentions a Uyghur fragment of BG in which a speaker says (likely Mahaway, referring to Enoch), “But I did not see him in person.”³⁹² From the combined textual evidence, it seems that we are meant to understand that [Page 169]the final scene of Mahaway’s second visit with Enoch “takes place in the sky”³⁹³ in voice-to-voice rather than face-to-face fashion. In other words, it seems that at this point Mahaway can still speak with Enoch through the “veil” but is no longer permitted to see Enoch in his transfigured state in the divine realm. Thus, we read in 4Q531 14, 1–4, after Enoch passed out of view into the celestial world, Mahujah/Mahaway’s concluding report: “I hea[rd] his voice.”

BG scholars differ in their interpretation about what happened to Enoch after his glorification. While the English translation in Parry and Tov adds a conjectural “not” to be able to state that Enoch “dwelt [not] among human beings,”³⁹⁴ Stuckenbruck accepts the literal reading that Enoch “dwelt among human beings.”³⁹⁵ The “not” is assumed by scholars who are looking for consistency in this passage with their view that, in BG, Enoch did not minister directly to humankind. However, omitting the conjectural “not” leaves us with a reading that agrees with the Book of Moses account, in which Enoch continued to lead and teach his disciples personally after his initial glorification. The Book of Moses separately describes the eventual, more permanent translation of Enoch and his people at that time when “Zion fled” (Moses 7:69).

L. Gibborim defeated in battle

The Book of Moses briefly summarizes how the “enemies” of the “people of God” “came to battle against them,” crediting the victory of Enoch not to their superior numbers or weaponry but to the power of the “word of the Lord” that he spoke (Moses 7:13–15). Notably, Moses 7:15 contains the single mention in the Book of Moses Enoch account of a group of “giants” who “stood afar off.” The BG picture of the conflict agrees with the ignominious defeat of Enoch’s opponents. The profound disappointment of the speaker of 4Q531 frg. 22, l. 3–7, probably one of the gibborim,³⁹⁶ is magnified by his overweening ambition to dominate and humiliate his foes. Reeves writes:

[Page 170]Table 15. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme L

The confident, even boasting character of the [statement] accords well with several testimonia contained in Jewish sources that stigmatize the “pride” or “arrogance” of the [gibborim]. 3 Maccabees 2:4 states: “Those who formerly practiced lawlessness, among whom were [gibborim] confident of (their) might and boldness.” . . . Note also Wisdom of Solomon 14:6: “For also in the beginning, while arrogant [gibborim] were dying.” . . . Josephus is also familiar with this motif: “. . . sons who were arrogant and contemptuous of all that was good, placing confidence in their strength.”⁴⁰¹

[Page 172]Significantly, BG and the Book of Moses emphasize not only war but “bloodshed,” which a speaker in BG compares to horrible “great rivers on the earth.”⁴⁰²

Some of the BG fragments shown in the table above describe three specific motifs relating to the battle:⁴⁰³

• The idea that battles were waged (at least in part) against heavenly forces. In at least one place, “four angels”⁴⁰⁴ are specifically mentioned—a reference to Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Istrael (also known as Sariel, Uriel, or Fanuel).⁴⁰⁵ Kósa’s interpretation suggests that, “in contrast to the non-armored, other heavenly figures in the firmaments [of the MCP depiction], the four armored angels depicted in action constitute a special squad, charged with very difficult tasks.”⁴⁰⁶

Figure 22. Detail from the MCP.⁴⁰⁷ The four archangels mentioned in BG, who (in the Manichaean conception) were in the forefront of the battles against the wicked⁴⁰⁸ and helped gather the repentant gibborim, are standing, clothed in armor, in front of a seated deity that one scholar suggests may be Enoch.⁴⁰⁹

• The use of “fire, naphtha, and brimstone”⁴¹⁰ by these heavenly forces.
• The fact that although “the Righteous who were burnt in the fire, they endured”⁴¹¹ and that Enoch was “veiled” or “moved out of sight” for his protection.⁴¹² While neither the participation of heavenly forces in battles nor the use of fire, naphtha, and brimstone are mentioned in the Book of Moses, the general [Page 173]idea that Enoch and the righteous were protected is consistent with Moses 7:16.

Figure 23. Bas-relief showing Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, stabbing a wounded lion. North Palace, Nineveh, Mesopotamia, Iraq, ca. 645–635 BCE.

M. The “roar of lions/wild beasts” following battle

Table 16. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme M

[Page 174]The puzzling phrase “[ ] of the wild beast has come” immediately follows the description of the battle. The first portion of the phrase, indicated by brackets in Cook’s translation above, has proven difficult for other translators to reconstruct as well. Thus, for example, Loren Stuckenbruck renders it simply as two untranslated letters: “rh” (i.e., “rh of the beasts of the field is coming”⁴¹³). However, Martínez and Milik, confident enough to make a conjecture, respectively understand the phrase as “the roar of the wild beasts has come”⁴¹⁴ and “the roaring of the wild beasts came.”⁴¹⁵ Lending credence to their reading, the Enoch account in the Book of Moses has a remarkably similar phrase: “The roar of the lions was heard.”⁴¹⁶ This phrase, placed in analogous post-battle settings in both texts, is one of the most striking and unexpected affinities between Joseph Smith’s Enoch story and the ancient Book of Giants.

Table 17. Comparison of English translations on “the roar of the wild beasts/lions”

Brian R. Doak’s sociolinguistic analysis reveals a convincing rationale for the author of the Book of Giants having placed these references together. Among other evidence, he cites an Old Testament example in which victory against an elite adversary (in this case, a giant) and a prestige animal (lion) were also deliberately juxtaposed.⁴¹⁷ Yet, while there was indeed a close connection in ancient times between a military victory and “the roar of wild beasts,” that association would likely have been just as unfamiliar to Joseph Smith as it is to general readers today.

In addition to the ironic reversal of the roles of Enoch and his wicked opponent as “wild men” (as discussed earlier), this example provides a similar turning of the tables in the subjugation of the wild beasts/lions to the God of the righteous Enoch, rather than to his wicked adversaries. The same God who “shut the lions’ mouths”⁴¹⁸ to save Daniel from harm opened the mouth of Enoch to destroy his enemies through the “power of [his] language.”⁴¹⁹

[Page 175]N. Repentant are gathered to divinely prepared cities

Table 18. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme N

Earlier we described how the wicked gibborim sorrowed and trembled after Enoch read the record of their deeds out of the book of remembrance and tendered to them the possibility of repentance. Drawing jointly on the Manichaean and Qumran accounts, Matthew Goff conjectures that the Book of Giants follows a set of Jewish traditions where at least some of the nephilim and gibborim “are not killed in a flood but rather have long lives.”⁴²⁰ However, we have already seen that there were both supporters and detractors of Enoch among the gibborim. [Page 176]For example, a Sogdian fragment of BG tells us that a righteous faction “‘are glad at seeing the apostle, who is obviously Enoch, and ‘assembled before him.’”⁴²¹ But those who are called “tyrants and criminals” are “afraid.”⁴²² In one of the most significant thematic resemblances of BG to the Book of Moses, we are told in both texts that the righteous were gathered to a place of safety. To fully understand the account of the gathering of Enoch’s people in BG, we first need to appreciate how it fits within the conception of a universe that is conceived as “hierocentric.”

Figure 24. Adapted from Michael P. Lyon (1952–), Sacred Topography of Eden and the Temple, 1994.⁴²³ The outbound, downward journey of the Creation and the Fall at left is mirrored in the inbound, upward journey of the temple at right.

Hugh Nibley, following Eric Burrows, defined “the term ‘hierocentric’ as that which best describes those cults, states, and philosophies that were oriented about a point believed to be the exact center and pivot of the universe.”⁴²⁴ Like the story of Enoch in BG and the Book of Moses, ancient visualizations and descriptions in scattered sources are sometimes constructed around a sacred center, though, of course, representations of this symbolic, pre-scientific approach to geography vary in significant details.⁴²⁵

Such sacred centers often coincide with the location of a “mountain or artificial mound and a lake or spring from which four streams flowed out to bring the life-giving waters to the four regions of the earth. The place was a green paradise, a carefully kept garden, a refuge from drought and heat.”⁴²⁶ A version of this perspective is reflected biblically in the layout of the Garden of Eden and the temple,⁴²⁷ as well as in the geography of later stories and prophecies of divinely directed scatterings and gatherings of Israel and other peoples.

[Page 177]Scholars have argued convincingly that the outbound, downward journey of the Creation and the Fall in Genesis is mirrored in the inbound, upward journey of the temple (figure 24).⁴²⁸ The Garden of Eden can be seen as a natural “temple,” where Adam and Eve lived at first in God’s presence. Significantly, each major feature of Eden (e.g., the river, the cherubim, the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Life) corresponds to a similar symbol in the Israelite temple (e.g., the bronze laver, the cherubim, the veil,⁴²⁹ the menorah⁴³⁰).

The corresponding course taken by the Israelite high priest through the temple can be seen as symbolizing the journey of the Fall of Adam and Eve in reverse. In other words, just as the route of Adam and Eve’s departure from Eden led them eastward past the cherubim with the flaming swords and out of the sacred garden into the mortal world, so in ancient times the high priest would return westward from the mortal world, past the consuming fire, the cleansing water, the woven images of cherubim on the temple veils, and, finally, back into the presence of God.⁴³¹ “Thus,” according to Parry, the high priest has returned “to the original point of creation, where he pours out the atoning blood of the sacrifice, reestablishing the covenant relationship with God.”⁴³²

An analogous conception is depicted in the frontispiece of an Armenian adaptation of the Treatise on the Work of the Six Days of Creation by Bartholomew of Bologna (d. 1333. See figure 25).⁴³³ It shows Adam and Eve, seemingly within a cave-like structure, at the top and in the center of the paradisiacal creation. In that unique setting, they have direct access to the divine Presence above, while also being surrounded by a perimeter of angels beneath.

Figure 25. Adam and Eve at the top of the newly created paradise. Frontispiece, Treatise on the Work of the Six Days of Creation.⁴³⁴

[Page 178]A 12^th-century Christian illustration also shows Adam and Eve at the top of a mountain (figure 26a).⁴³⁵ However, the fig leaf aprons they wear witness that the scene represents their fallen state after their transgression but before they were clothed by God.⁴³⁶ In contrast to the previous figure, they are now “lamenting their Fall on a brown, bare hill,”⁴³⁷ having lost their access to the luxuriant trees of the Garden and the continual, protective presence of heavenly beings, including the Lord Himself. The diagram shown in figure 26b, annotated with relevant terminology for the benefit of Latter-day Saint readers, summarizes the symbology of the same three zones of sacredness depicted in figure 26a. In a central place at the top of the mountain, Adam and Eve sit within the most sacred of the three zones pictured. Tongues of flame adorn the upper part of the hill and the entrance to the cave,⁴³⁸ suggesting both the glory of God within each of the two most sacred zones and the potential danger for those who approach the portals of entry unprepared. On the following page of the manuscript is “an image of the Garden of Eden, now empty, its door barred by three angels.”⁴³⁹

In the heart of the mountain, the middle zone of sacredness, an aged Adam and Eve, having been cast out of the Garden and clad in robes of animal skins made by God for their protection, confer within a “Cave of Treasures,” in some sources, the cave is symbolically equated to the Holy Place of the temple, where heaven and earth meet.⁴⁴⁰ The “Cave of Treasures” was so named in Jewish and Christian tradition because it was conceived as a safeguard for gold, frankincense, and myrrh, retrieved by angels from the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve’s departure.⁴⁴¹ These three items, later withdrawn from the earth but thought by some Christians to have been returned to humankind when the Magi visited the Christ child, respectively symbolized kingship, priesthood, and the anointing oil that transformed kings and priests into “sons of God.”⁴⁴² The significance of the treasures becomes more clear with the understanding that the cave where Adam and Eve were made to dwell was a understood to be a proto-temple, a temporary replacement and consolation for their loss of Eden.⁴⁴³

Cain and Abel offer their respective grain and animal sacrifices on the other hills portrayed on either side of the principal peak at the center. At right, God is shown consuming the sacrifice of Abel while, at left, He rejects that of Cain. At the bottom of the mountain, the mortal world that corresponds symbolically to the “outer courtyard” of the temple, Cain has words with Abel, leads him out to the field, and, finally, murders him. Because of Cain’s grievous killing, we are told in scripture [Page 179]that he and his posterity were “shut out from the presence of the Lord” and cast further downward and outward to dwell “in the land of Nod [i.e., wandering], on the east of Eden.”⁴⁴⁴ Following what became the standard tradition in the Syriac Church that saw the “sons of God” as Sethites and the “daughters of men” as Cainites,⁴⁴⁵ Ephrem the Syrian wrote that, tragically, some of “those who lived on higher ground,⁴⁴⁶ who were called ‘the children of God,’ left their own region and came down to take wives from the daughters of Cain down below.”⁴⁴⁷

Figure 26. a. Adam and Eve Outside Paradise, Cain and Abel, 12th century;⁴⁴⁸ b. Top down view of three zones of sacredness in the Garden of Eden and the temple.

Moses 6:23 speaks of how “preachers of righteousness” who also symbolically descended from higher ground, initiated a missionary program aimed at wanderers who had deliberately forsaken God and dwelt below. Among these preachers was Jared, the father of Enoch,⁴⁴⁹ the root of whose name probably means “to descend.”⁴⁵⁰ And among those to whom they preached were the “giants” or nephilim,⁴⁵¹ a name that fittingly means “fallen ones.”

Circular maps with top-down perspectives on a hierocentric cosmos are common in some cultures. Though they vary widely in their details, many share general characteristics. Nakamura Hiroshi used the term mappaemundi to refer to such maps, that, in contrast to modern maps, were “used to convey a certain idea of space, and not preoccupied with topographical accuracy.”⁴⁵² A late Korean example of such a map is shown in figure 27, but maps that are at least superficially similar to this one go back thousands of years. However, despite some similarities, it should be mentioned that influence on circular Korean maps from Babylonian or medieval sources seems unlikely, since the earlier maps “had long been [Page 180]out of circulation when the circular world maps became so popular in Korea.”⁴⁵³

Figure 27. ‘Cheonhado’ map of the square earth and the round cosmos, Seoul, Korea, ca. 1800.⁴⁵⁴ In the central area is an internal continent surrounded by an internal sea, which is in turn surrounded by an external continent and an external sea. The names of real places are shown exclusively within the internal continent, while the names that appear elsewhere describe mythological locations⁴⁵⁵ “where immortals live.”⁴⁵⁶

In figure 27, an internal continent, corresponding to known earthly geography, is surrounded by an external continent where immortals (both good and evil) live, separated from earth by an internal sea. In such maps, movement away from the center of the internal continent is represented as being in an eastward direction that reflects increasing distance from access to the divine. For example, with respect to the structure of maps like this one, Mark E. Lewis notes “there is a progressive decline as one moves away from the center.”⁴⁵⁷ Note the large medallion bearing the name of China that is shown near the middle of the map—just east of Mount K’un-lun, reflecting the idea of China as perhaps the most sacred place on earth outside of the sacred mountain itself. Mount K’un-lun, it was anciently revered as the sacred center of [Page 181]the universe where heaven and earth meet and from which four great rivers emanate⁴⁵⁸—recalling the four rivers of Eden.⁴⁵⁹

Though I am not suggesting that Cheonhado maps such as the one above and the Sogdian fragments of the Book of Giants have any necessary relationship, at least one scholar has argued for evidence of “weak and distant influence”⁴⁶⁰ in the resemblance of the symbolic geography of Mount K’un-lun to that of Mount Sumēru. Of relevance for the present chapter is that Mount Sumēru—the sacred mountain of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—is mentioned in Manichaean fragments of the Book of Giants—and visually depicted in the Manichaean Cosmology Painting—as the place of resort for the gathered righteous, as we will discuss in more detail below.

When seen in the light of hierocentric maps of the world, certain details relating to the layout of sacred, symbolic geography in both ancient Enoch accounts and the Book of Moses take on greater meaning. Though the symbolic geography tells us little— or, more likely, nothing—about the physical geography of the story, knowing something about it helps unravel the significance of BG’s narrative of Enoch’s missionary journeys and the subsequent gathering and scattering of various peoples.

As mentioned previously, Jewish sources usually detail a decrease in sacredness as one moves eastward away from the center and an increase as one travels (or returns) toward it, often in a westward direction.⁴⁶¹ This direction of movement is analogous to the westward movement toward increasingly sacred compartments within Israelite temples. An understanding of the map helps us understand the nature of Enoch’s eastward missionary journey. For example, in answer to Mahijah’s question in Moses 6:41, Enoch replied:

I came out from the land of Cainan, the land of my fathers, a land of righteousness unto this day.

Thus, in line with the presumed hierocentric, symbolic geography of Enoch’s world, we are not surprised to read the significant detail in the Book of Moses account that his missionary journey took him away from the “sacred center”—in other words, he went out “from the land of Cainan,”⁴⁶² “a land of righteousness”⁴⁶³ in the west, to the land of the wicked in the east, presumably not far from the western edge of “the sea east,”⁴⁶⁴ where he is said to have received a vision. Significantly, 1 Enoch also records a vision that Enoch received “by the waters of Dan,”⁴⁶⁵ arguably corresponding to the “sea east” mentioned in the Book of Moses.⁴⁶⁶

[Page 182] However, 1 Enoch also contains the account of an elaborate “journey round the world”⁴⁶⁷ undertaken by Enoch that is lacking in the Book of Moses and BG. In BG we are only given the account of Mahaway’s long and apparently direct flight eastward to the end of the earth to meet Enoch at the mountain of the “Paradise of Justice,” distinct from the “mountain of God” which, in 1 Enoch, is located in the north and prominently features the Tree of Life.⁴⁶⁸

Figure 28. Representation of the world based on 1 Enoch. “In the conception of the universe in the book of [1 Enoch], the sun emerges from the six eastern gates, moves in the six months between the winter and summer solstices, and sets in the western gates. The seven great mountains are based on the ancient Babylonian conception of the universe.”⁴⁶⁹ Although not shown here, the author of 1 Enoch 26 described Jerusalem and “Judaea, the center of the earth” as containing “a sacred mountain, the hill of the Temple,”⁴⁷⁰ as would be expected. Milik observed that the map shows tension between competing concerns between the requirements of cartography and fidelity to the (sometimes conflicting) Enoch texts.⁴⁷¹

With this general understanding of roughly analogous hierocentric circular maps with a mountain at the sacred center made at other times and places, we are ready to return to the account of the gathering of Enoch’s people in BG and the Book of Moses. In the general fashion of Indian cartography, produced under the influence of Manichaean disciples familiar with BG, the universe is depicted as “countless [Page 183]spherical separate worlds,” with “our earth [as] one of the concentric rings in a disc detached from a globe.”⁴⁷² At the center is Mount Sumēru, “from which flow all rivers.”

Figure 29. Detail of MCP.⁴⁷³ Movement of the wicked and the righteous with respect to the high, treelike cliff at the center of the world, corresponding to the sacred Mount Sumēru. The cities that were established by the repentant gibborim were said to have been situated in earthly mountains that were westward of their point of origin. Note the mountains at the foot of Sumēru.

Book of Moses readers will recall that the righteous followers of Enoch were brought to a place of safety where “the Lord came and dwelt with his people. … And Enoch … built a city that was called the City of Holiness, even Zion.”⁴⁷⁴ One interesting feature of the Manichaean BG fragments is that they tell us the direction that Enoch’s people traveled. Specifically, according to BG, four angels ultimately led the wicked to their eventual destruction in the east—away from the “sacred center”—while the righteous went westward to inhabit cities near the foot of the holy mountain, as shown by the annotations in the figure above.

Although the Manichaean version of these events highlights only the prominent role of the angels in leading the battles and gathering the righteous, we can safely presume that the role of Enoch was closely intertwined with that of the angels. For example, note that the protection of Enoch by these angels is mentioned elsewhere in the Manichaean BG text⁴⁷⁵ and the angels and Enoch seem to be shown together visually within MCP as previously mentioned:⁴⁷⁶

And the angels themselves descended from the heaven to the earth. … And they led one half of them eastwards, and the [Page 184]other half westwards, on the skirts of four huge mountains, towards the foot of the Sumēru mountain, into thirty-two⁴⁷⁷ towns which the Living Spirit had prepared for them in the beginning.

While there are indications in some Manichaean traditions suggesting that both the eastward and westward bound groups were wicked,⁴⁷⁸ Matthew Goff sees it as more reasonable to view the westward bound group in BG as consisting of repentant gibborim, reminding readers that the area near Mount Sumēru is the sacred omphalos mundi⁴⁷⁹ of Indian tradition”:⁴⁸⁰

No reason is given as to why the [gibborim] are placed in cities. The division of the [gibborim] along an east-west axis suggests two opposed fates for them—one half was killed and the other survived. This could be explained by positing that some of the [gibborim] repented and changed their ways while others did not.

In a further detail that parallels the Book of Moses, observe that BG describes the righteous dwelling “on the skirts of four huge mountains.”⁴⁸¹ Significantly, this imagery recalls Moses 7:17, which relates that the righteous “were blessed upon the mountains, and upon the high places, and did flourish.”

O. Imprisonment of the wicked

Table 19. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme O.

The conclusion of the story of the rebellion of the Watchers in 1 Enoch tells of their terrible binding and eternal imprisonment:

Go, Michael, bind Shemihazah and the others with him, . . . bind them . . . in the valleys of the earth, until the day of their judgment. . . . Then they will be led away to the fiery abyss, and to the torture, and to the prison where they will be confined forever.⁴⁸²

[Page 186]

Figure 30. William Blake (1757–1827), The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil 1824–1827.⁴⁸³

Blake’s drawing in figure 30 illustrates canto 31 of Dante’s Divine Comedy. After seeing what he mistakenly thinks is a ring of towers surrounding a central deep, Dante is told by Virgil about the Giants who are sunk to their waists in a well whose massive drop leads to Cocytus, a great frozen lake of the lowest region of hell. Their defiant rebellion, born of the same envy and pride that ruled the fallen angels who “rained down from heaven” in the beginning⁴⁸⁴, was all the more terrible and destructive because of the coupling of their evil will with the brute force of their mighty stature. Now reduced to pale, mountainous shapes amid the chaos, they stand eternally unmoved by the sharp fires of lightning above and the rude blasts of icy storm winds swirling upward from below.

Both the Book of Moses and the Book of Giants contain a “prediction of utter destruction and the confining in prison that is to follow”⁴⁸⁵ for the unrepentant wicked, a scenario that is similar in some ways to 1 Enoch. From the Book of Moses we read, “But behold, these . . . shall perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them” (Moses 7:38). Likewise, in BG we read the lament of a speaker who complains, “He has imprisoned us and overpowered yo[u.”⁴⁸⁶

[Page 187]

Figure 31. Detail of MCP, showing imprisoned “demons;”⁴⁸⁷ here most likely depicting “Watchers” who are adjudged to have committed unpardonable sins.

That said, although the three texts are similar in a general way, there is an important difference between the outlook of 1 Enoch and that found in the Book of Moses and BG—namely, the possibility of repentance and salvation for those who have sinned.⁴⁸⁸ Jed Woodworth summarizes:

What is the fate of those who perish in the flood? In [1 Enoch], there is one fate only: everlasting punishment. Those who are destroyed in the flood are beyond redemption. For God to be reconciled, sinners must suffer forever. Enoch has nothing to say because God has no merciful side to appeal to. In [the Book of Moses account], however, punishment has an end. The merciful side of God allows Enoch to speak and be heard. God and Enoch speak a common language: mercy. “Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look,” God says to Enoch after the flood.⁴⁸⁹ There is hope for the wicked yet:⁴⁹⁰

I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them. And that which I have chosen hath pled before my face. Wherefore, he suffereth for their sins; inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my Chosen shall return unto me, and until that day they shall be in torment.

The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch 45–47] and in [the Book of Moses] function in different ways. In [the Book of Moses], the Chosen One will come to earth at the meridian of time to rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. After the Messiah’s death and resurrection, “as many of the spirits as were in prison [Page 188]came forth, and stood on the right hand of God.”⁴⁹¹ The Messiah figure in [1 Enoch] does not come down to earth and is peripheral to the text; he presides over the “elect” around God’s throne⁴⁹² but does not rescue the sinners of Enoch’s day. “In the day of trouble evil shall [still] be heaped upon sinners,”⁴⁹³ he tells Enoch [in that account].⁴⁹⁴

The use of the term “demons” in BG can be confusing because it applies to different groups at different times. For example, while the term “demons” denotes the gibborim in some places in BG,⁴⁹⁵ within the passages on the right-hand side of table 19 above it clearly refers to the Watchers. In addition, though BG, like 1 Enoch, does not hold out the possibility of forgiveness for the Watchers (who apparently are adjudged to have committed unpardonable sins), we have already seen that BG elsewhere records Enoch’s hope that the gibborim will reform and escape the severe judgments that otherwise await them.⁴⁹⁶ Similarly, in Moses 6:52, Enoch preaches that it is not too late for the gibborim to change their ways—his message is “that all men, everywhere, must repent.”⁴⁹⁷ In brief, the outlooks of the Book of Moses and the Book of Giants toward the gibborim are similar to each other but different from 1 Enoch.

Unfortunately, as later events make clear, the initial sorrowing of what seems to have been many of the gibborim brought about only short-lived repentance for some of them. However, drawing on both the Qumran and Manichaean versions of the Book of Giants, Matthew Goff concludes that a faction of the gibborim may have repented more sincerely and permanently. He asks:

Why would God give the [gibborim] a vision about the Flood in the first place? Why give them the opportunity to know about the Flood before it happens? If God’s plan is to kill them, why bother? The dreams disclosed to Ohyah and Hahyah may signify that God, by making clear to the [gibborim] what the punishment for their crimes would be, gives them the opportunity to repent. This may be a variation of the tradition often associated with the 120 years of Genesis 6:3. And, even though there is no explicit evidence for this proposal in the Qumran BG, the Manichaean BG suggests that this narrative element could have been present in the Qumran text and that the prayers of the [gibborim], in striking contrast to those of the angels in [the 1 Enoch Book of] Watchers, could have been successful.⁴⁹⁸

[Page 189]Of course, Latter-day Saints know that repentance continues after this life. And those who accept the possibility of the preaching of the gospel to those beyond the grave—a group that includes not only Latter-day Saints⁴⁹⁹ but also early Christians⁵⁰⁰ and selected scholars from outside the Church⁵⁰¹—frequently cite 1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:5–6.

These verses are well known among Latter-day Saints. But it is not common knowledge among them that Peter is alluding to the unrepentant wicked who heard Enoch’s preaching when he refers to the “spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient.” Of course, the verses in Peter allude to a very long time frame, stretching from the time of Enoch’s preaching into Noah’s day (i.e., when “the ark was a preparing”), but what evidence we have points to a continuity of culture among the wicked throughout that entire period. Thus, Peter’s illustration is equally apt for the hearers of Enoch and the hearers of Noah.

The eminent Enoch scholar George Nickelsburg⁵⁰² does not doubt that Peter is “alluding to the tradition about the Watchers of 1 Enoch” and that in 1 Peter 3:19–20 Peter “attributes to Jesus a journey to the underworld that parallels Enoch’s interaction with the rebel Watchers,” while comparing “baptism with the purifying effects of the Flood.”⁵⁰³ If Nickelsburg is correct, then Peter’s writings, like the Book of Moses, imply the hope that God’s mercy will be extended even to the wicked Watchers who rejected Enoch while they lived on earth, such that, through eventual repentance and the power of the Atonement, they might eventually “live according to God in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6). Arguing on the basis of 1 Peter and Moses 7:37–38, Hugh Nibley gives hope of eventual deliverance for even the most depraved sinners of Enoch’s day:

Those in prison, chains, and darkness are only being kept there until the Judgment, which will liberate many, not only because of their repentance, but through the power of the Atonement. . . . It was specifically the spirits who were disobedient in Enoch’s day who were to enjoy the preaching of the Lord and the promise of deliverance in the meridian of times.⁵⁰⁴

In summary, while the mention of imprisonment is frequent throughout the ancient Enoch literature, the real hope of repentance preached by Enoch to the gibborim in the Book of Moses⁵⁰⁵ and in BG is both a significant resemblance between these two texts and also another important difference with 1 Enoch.

[Page 190]P. Flood of Noah anticipated in vision/dream

Table 20. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme P

In the Book of Moses, Enoch is shown the great flood in Noah’s day as part of his grand vision in chapter 7. The parallel with BG is clear enough, but it should also be noted that the corresponding dream in BG seems almost a parody of Enoch’s experience because Hahyah, one of the hapless twins in BG, receives his knowledge about the Flood in a nightmare rather than as part of a heavenly vision. In BG, this nightmare becomes the impetus for sending Mahaway on a second journey to ask Enoch to interpret the frightening dream.

[Page 191]

Figure 32. Boleslaw Parasion (1950–), Noah’s Ark.⁵⁰⁶ 1 Enoch 67:2: “I will put my hand upon [the Ark] and protect it.”⁵⁰⁷ Moses 7:43: “The Lord . . . held [the Ark] in his own hand.”

Q. The earth cries out against the wicked

Table 21. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme Q

[Page 192]Although the motif of a complaining earth is not found anywhere in the Bible, it does turn up in both 1 Enoch and BG⁵⁰⁸. In 1 Enoch we find the following:

• 1 Enoch 7:4–6; 8:4:⁵⁰⁹ “And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought accusation against the lawless ones. . . . (And) as men were perishing, the cry went up to heaven.”
• 1 Enoch 9:2, 10:⁵¹⁰ “And entering in, they said to one another, ‘The earth, devoid (of inhabitants), raises⁵¹¹ the voice of their cries to the gates of heaven. . . . And now behold, the spirits of the souls of the men who have died make suit; and their groan has come up to the gates of heaven; and it does not cease to come forth from before the iniquities that have come upon the earth.”
• 1 Enoch 87:1:⁵¹² “And again I saw them, and they began to gore one another and devour one another, and the earth began to cry out.”

In BG 4Q203, frg. 8, l. 9–11 we read:⁵¹³

6. ‘Let it be known to you th[at ] [

7. your activity and (that) of [your] wive[s ]

8. those (giants) [and their] son[s and] the [w]ives o[f ]

9. through your fornication on the earth, and it (the earth) has [risen up ag]ainst y[ou

and is crying out]

10. and raising accusation against you [and ag]ainst the activity of your sons[

11. the corruption which you have committed on it (the earth) . . .

12. has reached Raphael. . . .

Consistent with other comparisons that have been made between the accounts of Enoch in the Book of Moses, BG, and 1 Enoch, Andrew Skinner finds that resemblances to BG are more compelling than those found in 1 Enoch. First, he notes that the nature of the wickedness in BG is described as “fornication,”⁵¹⁴ which corresponds semantically to the term “filthiness” used in the Book of Moses.⁵¹⁵ By way of contrast, the [Page 193]crimes of wickedness being complained of in 1 Enoch are murder and violence.

Second, Skinner notes that in both BG and “Moses 7 the earth itself complains of and decries the wickedness of the people, while the [first two] 1 Enoch texts emphasize the cries of men ascending to heaven”⁵¹⁶ by means of the earth.⁵¹⁷

Skinner also notes that in BG and the Book of Moses, “the ultimate motivation behind the earth’s cry for redress against the intense wickedness on her surface” is a plea “for a cleansing of and sanctification from the pervasive wickedness by means of a heavenly personage and heavenly powers. In the Book of Moses the earth importunes,⁵¹⁸ ‘When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which has gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?’”⁵¹⁹ Likewise, in BG, the earth complains about how the wicked have corrupted it through licentiousness and anticipates a destruction that will cleanse it from wickedness.⁵²⁰

Once again, we find that BG and the Book of Moses are more similar to each other in their expression of this rare motif than either of them is to 1 Enoch.

Figure 33. Detail of MCP.⁵²¹ Ascent and transformation of BG’s thirty-two divinely prepared cities of earthly Zion to thirty-two palaces of heavenly Zion atop Mount Sumēru. The palaces surround a deity with two attendants in a thirty-third palace.

[Page 194]R. Ascent of Enoch’s people to the bosom of God

Table 22. Examples of resemblances for narrative theme R

BG scholar Gåbor Kósa sees the thirty-two palaces, shown “on the ‘foliage’ [at the top] of the tree-like Mount Sumēru,”⁵²² as implying “a divine association; this is reinforced by the presence of three divine figures in front of the [much bigger] thirty-third palace, with the central figure seated on a lotus throne and the two acolytes standing on either side. All in all, this seems to indicate the purely divine nature of this Manichaean Mount Sumēru.”⁵²³ In addition, Kósa sees the description of the mountain with its tree-like iconography as resonating with the description of the mountain of God and the Tree of Life in 1 Enoch 25:2–4:⁵²⁴

Then I answered him—I, Enoch—and said, “concerning all things I wish to know, but especially concerning this tree.”

And he answered me and said, “this high mountain that you saw, whose peak is like the throne of God, is the seat where the Great Holy One, the Lord of glory, the King of eternity, will sit, when he descends to visit the earth in goodness. And (as for) this fragrant tree, no flesh has the right to touch it until the great judgment, in which there will be vengeance on all and a consummation forever.

The scene also evokes the imagery of Nephi’s vision:

I was caught away … into an exceedingly high mountain …

And I said: I desire to behold the things which my father saw.

[Page 195]And the Spirit said unto me: Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken? …

And I looked and beheld a tree; … and the beauty thereof was far beyond, yea, exceeding of all beauty. …

And I … beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God.

Going further, though Kósa recognizes an obvious correspondence of some kind between the visual depiction of thirty-two palaces at the top of Mount Sumēru and the report in the BG text of “thirty-two towns” for the repentant gibborim at the base of Mount Sumēru he finds it difficult to reconcile the fact that the palaces shown at the top within MCP “are definitely not towns; [neither are they] at the foot of the mountains”⁵²⁵ as is described in the text of BG.

In trying to unravel these anomalies, we should recall that the Book of Moses chronicles a transformation of the earthly Zion, symbolically located in the foothills of the “mountain of the Lord,” into a heavenly Zion, as shown in the annotated figure above. In this way, the redemptive descensus initiated by Jared and his brethren culminated in the glorious ascensus led by Enoch:⁵²⁶

And Enoch and all the people walked with God, and he dwelt in the midst of Zion; and it came to pass that Zion was not, for God received it up into his own bosom; and from thence went forth the saying, Zion is Fled.

[Page 196]

Figure 34. Original City of Zion Plat Drawing (detail), with twenty-four numbered temple sites located in the center, June 1833.⁵²⁷

Whether or not by sheer coincidence, the symbolic geography shared by the Manichaean BG fragments and MCP are mirrored in a general way in the itinerary of the gathering and the layout for Joseph Smith’s City of Zion in Missouri. This latter-day city is described in modern scripture in close connection with descriptions of Enoch’s ancient city.⁵²⁸ As the righteous of Enoch’s day were remembered by BG as having been divinely led westward, so the early Saints were told by the Lord: “gather ye out from the eastern lands” and “go ye forth into the western countries” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:64, 66).

Moreover, in both cases the destination of the western movement of each group is identified as a unique hierocentric location: for Enoch’s people that location was Mount Sumēru in the middle of the world map, while for the early Saints that location was “Mount Zion, which shall be the city of New Jerusalem,”⁵²⁹ a relatively central location on the North American continent. Significantly, the city of New Jerusalem envisioned [Page 197]by the Saints is expressly called in revelation, “the center place,”⁵³⁰ or “center stake.”⁵³¹

Finally, while the cosmology painting depicts Mount Sumēru with thirty-two or thirty-six palaces at its summit, the plat for the city of Zion prominently featured twenty-four numbered temple sites at its center. Thus, in the MCP depiction of BG, in the Book of Moses, and in the envisioned latter-day City of Zion, “God . . . dwelt in the midst,”⁵³² literally and symbolically central in the eyes of His people.

Where in all the ancient Enoch tradition do we find anything close to the story of the gathering of Enoch’s repentant converts to cities in the mountains to prepare as a people for an eventual ascension to the bosom of God? Only in BG and the Book of Moses.

Summary of Results

I began this essay with a review of Nibley’s pioneering research on resemblances of BG to the Book of Moses. In section 2, I argued that BG, apparently more popular than 1 Enoch among those who collected the Dead Sea Scrolls and arguably the oldest extant Enoch manuscript found anywhere, is particularly helpful to scholars seeking to “reconstruct the literary shapes of the early stages of the Enochic tradition.”⁵³³ I cited scholarship concluding that BG, discovered in 1948, owes relatively little directly to the Bible and 1 Enoch, the sources most often cited by those who havbe argued that Moses 6–7 was primarily inspired by sources and ideas available to Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century.

I concur with scholars who have found that the antiquity and unique nature of certain elements of BG traditions can be better understood by looking “for the original of BG in an eastern diaspora”⁵³⁴—that is, ancient Mesopotamia. In section 3, I summarized in-depth studies of recurring appearances and echoes of various peoples that were called gibborim in the biblical era that may help us understand the general social setting and symbolic geography of Enoch’s prediluvian mission in BG and the Book of Moses.

In section 4, I described some of the most prominent members of the cast of characters in BG, grouped into rough categories that highlight co-occurrences of their names in other early texts and in the Book of Moses. A closer examination led to the conclusion that of all these names, the only two names mentioned both in the Book of Moses Enoch account (Enoch and Mahijah/Mahujah) and in BG (Enoch and Mahaway) are also the most plausible from a historical perspective.

[Page 198]Following the analysis of the names and roles of individuals mentioned in the two Enoch accounts, a simplified storyline of Moses 6–7 was compared with shared storyline elements in BG and other ancient Enoch texts. It was found that BG contains hints of every core narrative storyline element found in the Book of Moses while containing none of its sacred storyline elements, despite the fact that hints of each of the “missing” sacred stories can be found in one form or another elsewhere in the ancient Enoch literature. These striking and unexpected patterns of inclusion and omission prompted the suggestion that BG and the Book of Moses may have been rooted in some of the same ancient Enoch traditions but that somewhere along the line, the sacred stories now found only in the Book of Moses were either removed from the tradition inherited by the BG redactor(s) or, alternatively, were left out when BG was composed.

Our discussion of the eighteen thematic resemblances highlighted not only the interesting ways in which BG descriptions converged and diverged with the related Book of Moses account, but also the surprising degree to which they matched the presumed BG storyline sequence. Significantly, the set of resemblances of BG was not confined to a small fraction of the Moses 6–7 account, but instead range throughout the main storyline.

Now let’s continue to a summary of our comparative analysis to look for an answer to the following question: Is it reasonable to believe that the thematic resemblances of BG to the Book of Moses may not have come merely by chance? In the summary, we will not only consider the number and relative density of resemblances but also, like Stuckenbruck, their specificity as an additional indication of the strength of association between the two texts. Thematic resemblances to Moses 6–7 that are exclusive to BG and the Book of Moses will be deemed stronger than ones that co-occur in other ancient Enoch literature. Resemblances for themes that occur rarely or are absent outside the ancient Enoch literature will be seen as stronger than ones that appear elsewhere within passages of Second Temple texts or the Bible not specifically related to Enoch.

The two tables below provide a detailed summary of thematic resemblances of Enoch texts to Moses 6–7, classified by the type of resemblance. Table 23 displays resemblances found in the major ancient Enoch texts sampled, excluding BG, whereas table 24 shows resemblances found within BG.

[Page 199]Table 23. Thematic resemblances of Enoch texts to Moses 6–7, excluding BG, classified by type

Table 24. Thematic resemblances of BG to Moses 6–7, classified by type

The first question addressed is: “How many of the proposed thematic resemblances in the sampled Enoch literature to the Book of Moses Enoch chapters are found in BG?” (see table 23: 1–12; table 24: 1–18; figure 35). Of course, results of this kind will always remain tentative because new resemblances can, in principle, always be found, and previously identified resemblances can always be disputed or reclassified.

However, considering the relative brevity of BG, the number of currently identified thematic resemblances to Moses 6–7 is remarkable. Although the combined fragments of the Qumran BG scarcely fill three pages in the English translation of Florentino García Martínez, the results [Page 201]indicate that this single text contains eighteen, fully three-fifths, of the thirty proposed thematic resemblances of the combined ancient Enoch literature to the Book of Moses Enoch account. These resemblances range from general themes in the storyline to specific occurrences of rare terms or phrases in appropriate contexts.⁵⁴⁰

Figure 35. Proportion of thematic resemblances of Moses 6–7 to ancient Enoch texts in BG vs. other Enoch sources.

To get a better handle on the density of thematic resemblances to Moses 6–7 within the brief, extant fragments of BG, a comparison to the size of 1 Enoch may be useful. Because 1 Enoch is so much longer than BG, any claim that 1 Enoch is more related to Moses 6–7 than BG would need to demonstrate, according to our best current estimate,⁵⁴¹ roughly eight to fifty times the number of thematic resemblances in 1 Enoch than can be found in BG. However, in actuality, the parallels in 1 Enoch not only fall far short of that magnitude⁵⁴² but also, as we have described in several of the detailed analyses of thematic resemblances discussed previously, are also generally looser and less relevant than those in BG. This difference is even more evident if one excludes the 1 Enoch Book of Parables, where some of the most important and singular resemblances to Messianic titles and prophecies occur.⁵⁴³ Note also that a good proportion of the resemblances between BG and the Book of Moses [Page 202]are also unique, while many of the resemblances in 1 Enoch are also found in BG.

Of course, these rough calculations to estimate relative density are overly conservative, since they do not include other sizable works such as 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, and the Mandaean Enoch literature, which also were, along with 1 Enoch, among the other Enoch texts that contributed a significant proportion of the twelve resemblances to the Book of Moses not found in BG.

Besides the fact that the BG resemblances are high in relative density, the sequence of their occurrence is remarkably similar to the Book of Moses, especially when explanations for the exceptions are considered.

Of course, some of the thematic resemblances of Moses 6–7 to ancient Enoch texts are stronger and more specific than others. Using Stuckenbruck’s study as a model for our approach, I have separated selected motifs in Moses 6–7 that are not unknown elsewhere in the Bible or other Second Temple texts from those that are found exclusively or nearly exclusively in the sampled ancient literature on Enoch. Again, the results were impressive. Of the thirty resemblances identified, twenty (fully two-thirds) were to themes or terms/phrases that are rare or absent outside of the Enoch literature (see table 23: 6–10; table 24: 6–18; figure 36). Thus it seems that the Book of Moses is not merely hitting on themes in the Enoch literature that are just as likely to be found elsewhere in biblical and Second Temple texts. Instead, Moses 6–7 seems to be well tuned to many specifically Enoch-related motifs.

These items are especially notable because they are not isolated instances, but rather occur in most cases as part of a “uniquely shared combination of ideas or motifs.”⁵⁴⁴ Like Stuckenbruck, I separated items that exhibit a more general, “conceptual level of commonly held motifs”⁵⁴⁵ (see table 22: 6–10; table 23: 6–15) from those that stood out because they shared significant but relatively rare or specific “terms or closely comparable phrases”⁵⁴⁶ (table 23: 11–12; table 24: 16–18). Importantly, five of the twenty resemblances that are rare or absent outside of the ancient Enoch literature share significant, rare or specific terms or closely comparable phrases with Moses 6–7.

[Page 203]

Figure 36. Number of resemblances to Moses 6–7 that are found in the Bible or other ancient texts of Jewish origin vs. exclusively or nearly exclusively in Enoch texts alone.

We have already seen that Moses 6–7 contains more thematic resemblances to BG than to all the other ancient Enoch literature combined (table 24: 1–18 vs. table 23: 1–12; figure 35). Not surprisingly in light of this previous finding, we see here that, compared to other Enoch texts, BG also contains most of the resemblances (thirteen out of twenty) that are rare or absent outside the Enoch literature (table 24: 6–18 vs. table 23: 6–12; figure 37). Going further, we wonder how many of these resemblances are unique to BG? The answer is that fully seven of BG’s eighteen resemblances, more than one-third, are found only in BG, and nowhere else (table 24: 12–18; figure 37).

In summary, these results allow us to say that although the Book of Moses seems to be related in a uniquely close fashion to the themes of BG, it is also broad enough in scope that it also matches several important singularly Enochic themes in every other major ancient Enoch text. Saying it differently, the fact that not only BG but also nearly all the major Enoch texts from antiquity contain resemblances to Moses 6–7 helps make the case that the Book of Moses Enoch account contains themes rooted in a broad, common inheritance from ancient Enochic traditions stronger than if the account were only related to BG alone.

[Page 204]

Figure 37. Number of resemblances to Moses 6–7 that are found only in BG.

We note that Stuckenbruck’s analysis, like this one, relied largely on English comparanda and in a situation where “at no point [could] it be demonstrated that the [later text] quotes from any passage in [the earlier text].”⁵⁴⁷ If Stuckenbruck’s study was sufficient to demonstrate “that the writer of Revelation was either directly acquainted (through literary or oral transmission) with several of the major sections of 1 Enoch or at least had access to traditions that were influenced by these writings,”⁵⁴⁸ it does not seem unreasonable to conclude from the results presented here that an Enoch book that was buried in the rubble until 1948 and an Enoch book that was independently translated in 1830 may be related in some way, despite admittedly important differences in provenance, perspective, and contents.

One additional observation: Though in this paper I have focused on the possibility of ancient Mesopotamian precedents for Moses 6–7, David Calabro has provided well-reasoned arguments that the direct connection between antiquity and the Book of Moses need go no further back than the late first or early second century CE, perhaps serving at that time as part of an early Christian baptismal liturgy, with hints of influence from earlier traditions appearing only indirectly as part of Joseph Smith’s translation. As Calabro writes,

[Page 205]Just as Joseph Smith restored the text in modern times, [an] early Christian text may also have been a restoration of a much earlier text, although reformulated in language appropriate to the times.⁵⁴⁹ This earlier text may also have been used in a ritual context, possibly in the consecration of priests and/or the coronation of kings.⁵⁵⁰

In line wth Calabro’s conjecture about the uses of an earlier text within a ritual context, I have argued for the possibility that the Book of Moses, in an earlier form, could be conceived as a temple text for ritual use in royal investiture, analogous to temple rites restored by the Prophet Joseph Smith and containing a specific sequence of stories illustrating the keeping and breaking of associated covenants.⁵⁵¹

It is my hope that all scholars interested in the nature and origins of the Book of Moses will include such evidence of literary affinities of Moses 6–7 to the ancient Enoch literature in tandem with any complementary arguments they make for nineteenth-century literary influences on the production of this work of modern scripture.

Concluding Thoughts

Hugh Nibley introduced the term “the expanding gospel”⁵⁵² to refer not only to the phenomenon of an open-ended canon due to continuing revelation but also to the astonishing recovery of fragments of inspired religious teachings from ancient times. Even if many conclude that these tattered fragments of admittedly mixed, uncertain, and checkered provenance may contain little of enduring religious value, Nibley argued that they could sometimes serve, despite their imperfections, as valuable witnesses of truths known anciently. By way of analogy, he wrote:

If one makes a sketch of a mountain, what is it? A few lines on a piece of paper. But there is a solid reality behind this poor composition; even if the tattered scrip is picked up later in a street in Tokyo or a gutter in Madrid, it still attests to the artist’s experience of the mountain as a reality. If the sketch should be copied by others who have never seen the original mountain, it still bears witness to its reality. So it is with the apocryphal writings: most of them are pretty poor stuff, and all of them are copies of copies. But when we compare them we cannot escape the impression that they have some real model behind them, more faithfully represented in some than in others. All we ever get on this earth, Paul reminds us, [Page 206]is a distorted reflection of things as they really are.⁵⁵³ Since we are dealing with derivative evidence only, we are not only justified but required to listen to all the witnesses, no matter how shoddy some of them may be.⁵⁵⁴

In closing, I confess my love for the Book of Moses. It is a joy and a privilege to live in a day when it is widely available, putting us in a position where we can sound the depths of its inspiring stories and eternal verities to our heart’s content. Just as prophets have spoken of God’s hand in the advances of new technology we see in our day,⁵⁵⁵ I believe that He is equally willing to help us in the discovery and elucidation of ancient documents that strengthen our witness and increase our understanding of Restoration scripture. I believe that many new discoveries relating to ancient scripture are yet to be made and that the Lord expects us to actively seek them out, since Latter-day Saints hold as core beliefs many of the essential keys to understanding and applying them vigorously in their fulness. Hugh Nibley wrote that discoveries in ancient digs and ancient texts, tangible artifacts that sometimes provide striking witnesses of the fact that truths restored in our day were also known in former times, are a “reminder to the Saints that they are still expected to do their homework and may claim no special revelation or convenient handout as long as they ignore the vast treasure-house of materials that God has placed within their reach.”⁵⁵⁶ May we all resolve to search and understand with greater diligence “the vast treasure-house of materials that God has placed within [our] reach.”

Acknowledgments

Appreciation to Matthew L. Bowen, David Calabro, Ryan Dahle, Jared Ludlow, Kerry Muhlestein, David R. Seely, John W. Welch, and Stephen T. Whitlock for their contributions to this paper. I am also grateful to Colby Townsend and Thomas Wayment for cordial conversations relating to this article. Responsibility for the arguments and conclusions of this paper remain my own.

Discussion

Jo Ann H. Seely:

Thank you so much for a thorough and comprehensive view of your topic, including some fascinating and beautiful images. If we have time, I’ll ask you a little bit about that, too. But my first question is: There is such a vast and growing corpus of scholarly publication and information [Page 207]on the ancient books of Enoch and the Pearl of Great Price. Where might a Latter-day Saint, who is not familiar with the scholarly literature but is interested in learning more go for some beginning resources?

Jeffrey M. Bradshaw:

Well, I’d recommend starting in the same place where I started when I first began doing serious research on the Book of Moses; that is with the wonderful commentary on the Pearl of Great Price written by Richard Draper, Kent Brown, and Michael Rhodes.⁵⁵⁷ I found all kinds of interesting things there, including some things I used in today’s presentation. I think that’s the place to start. After that, there’s plenty of things that will take you deeper into the text. We’ve now put all the research resources we could find on the Book of Moses into a online bibliography, so that might be another good starting point.⁵⁵⁸

Jo Ann:

That’s great. Okay. This is just a general question. Why is the study of all of this context and background to the scripture so important? Isn’t it more important just to read the scriptures themselves and figure out what their personal application is for our lives? Why do we need all this background?

Jeff:

That’s a great question. Obviously if scripture study isn’t helping us in our quest to become Saints, we are on the wrong track. We might compare, in a very broad fashion, the blessings of scripture study to those we receive in doing temple work. We go to the temple to receive our certain blessings there—essential ordinances we can receive in no other way—and also to help others on the other side of the veil to receive the same blessings. Those blessings are conditional, based on our being faithful in the covenants we make until the end of our mortal lives and beyond. But if our only thought in participating in the temple ordinances was to go through the motions, as it were, if part of the reason we need to go there was not the fact that we also need specialized instruction and learning that we can get only by performing and reflecting on the ordinances we receive there, all the words accompanying the ordinances could simply be omitted and we could perform each ordinance much more quickly. In a roughly analogous way, if everything we needed to learn from the scriptures could be contained in a list of commandments accompanied by the admonition to love God and our neighbor, the Lord could have [Page 208]easily condensed our four volumes of canonized scripture into a short pamphlet-sized tract.

But I think the Lord gave us a treasure house of lifelong learning in our scriptures. And I think that He expects us to spend serious time digging those treasures out. Not just the essential behioral foundation of Christian ethics and the basic doctrines we can read in five minutes within the Articles of Faith, but also “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:19) that won’t be accessible to us through casual glances at the words in isolation. Of course, many of these “hidden treasures” are given to us through revelation, spurred as part of our prayerful study when accompanied by doing our best to apply what we have already learned. But, as President Nelson often teaches us in words (and by example): “The Lord loves effort, and effort brings rewards.”⁵⁵⁹ When we start to get a feel for the background and context of scripture, when we know something about the ancient languages, when we know something about why things are expressed in the way that we are, a whole world of understanding opens up to us. I think helps us not only to better understand the scriptures, but also to better understand how God works in the world. None of us has the right to excuse ourselves by saying: “I’m just not a gospel scholar.” Each of us can start where we’re at and go from there. And the Lord will love and reward our small efforts with unimaginable joy.

Jo Ann:

That’s certainly true. When our perspective is widened, we learn so much. We’re often surprised at what we learn.

What do you make of the fact that the Joseph Smith Translation consists mostly of additions to the text and rarely deletions or subtractions?

Jeff:

Well, I think we can find the answer in the Book of Mormon for that. Nephi was told that in our day the Lord would make known “other books” that would “make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away” (1 Nephi 13:39–40). In most cases the most precious things that we learn from the Book of Moses are, as you said, part of additions that have been made to the Bible. Of course, we don’t know enough to say whether these additions were ever part of some kind of proto-Genesis, whether they were recorded elsewhere, or whether they were written down for the first time when Joseph Smith translated [Page 209]them. But, in any case, we’re very blessed to have so much wonderful truth available to us, once lost to the world but now restored in our day.

Jo Ann:

Okay. Here’s another question about all of your work. You’ve done so much detailed work in your study of the Pearl of Great Price. What do you think are the three most important things that the members of the church might not realize or be aware of about the Book of Moses or the Pearl Great Price in general?

Jeff:

Well, first of all, in my opinion, the Book of Moses is absolutely foundational to our understanding of Latter-day Saint doctrine and teachings about the plan of salvation and the doctrine of Christ. I think that’s underappreciated. Secondly, I’d say in connection with that that the Book of Moses is absolutely foundational, to our understanding of the priesthood and the ordinances of the temple, not just the initial stories about the Creation and the Fall of Adam and Eve, but also the continuous thread of temple teachings that runs through the rest Book of Moses to Enoch and the law of consecration that was observed by his people in Zion. I also wish that these teachings were better appreciated. To learn more about that, listen to Elder and Sister Hafen’s talk from the September 2020 “Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses” conference.⁵⁶⁰ It was wonderful!

Jo Ann:

Yes, it was outstanding.

Jeff

The third thing, how should I say it? The Book of Moses is just so incredibly beautiful. We heard Brother Bushman quote some non-Latter-day Saint scholars on that very thing last night. I feel so edified when I read it. I’m sure not everybody feels the same way I do about the Book of Moses—different people are touched by different books of scripture—but each time I read the Book of Moses I walk away filled with light and joy. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve experienced deep feeling of beauty and uplift from the reading it.

[Page 210]Jo Ann:

That’s wonderful. Well, we’re just about out of time, but I’m going to sneak in this one little quick question. In so many of your scholarly publications, you have astonishing images that accompany your texts. I just want to know if there’s a secret that you have to finding these. How do you go about that?

Jeff:

No particular secret I can think of. I used to find a lot of these wonderful drawings in old books but now the old books are getting harder to find. Sadly, when I do find them I open them up and learn that they are discards from universities and theological schools. Sadly, few people are reading old books anymore, which is something C. S. Lewis found so distressing and frightening even many decades ago when he wrote about it.⁵⁶¹

So I rely increasingly on Google, like everybody else, because I have no other choice. And, fortunately, many wonderful images are out there and so easily accessible now, even though so many more may never be put online and are now almost impossible to find in print.

But the most powerful form of advanced search is what comes to you through the Spirit. Sometimes you really feel the gift of inspiration, things pop into your mind, you’re led to things, you run into things and something tells you “this is important”—even before you’ve had a chance to look at it. When I first ran across the Manichaean Cosmology Painting, I didn’t fully understand its importance to the Book of Moses account of Enoch. But then by chance I ran into a second publication about it, and when I realized what we had in front of us now, my eyes fairly popped out of my head. As I studied the painting and the related texts, more and more ideas started flowing into my mind—and they didn’t come from me. Who would have believed that somewhere out there we had an image of Enoch with what seems to be a depiction of Zion having ascended to the presence of God just a few inches away from where he was standing? And to think that at last we have what seems to be a portrait of Mahujah/Mahaway himself kneeling on a mountain top! These are characters I’ve been aching to know more about for many years. I don’t attribute those things to advanced search technology, nor to mere chance.

[Page 211]Bibliography