Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: From a Jewish text, known to us as 2 Enoch,we learn interesting details about Adam’s creation. Both recensions of 2 Enoch 44 tell us “the Lord with his own two hands created humankind; in a likeness of his own face (в подобии лица своего), both small and great, the Lord created [them].” It is intriguing that 2 Enoch departs here from the traditional reading attested in Genesis 1:26–27, where Adam was created, not in a likeness of God’s face, but after His image (tselem). In view of this departure, the author of one of the English translations of 2 Enoch, Francis Andersen, observes that “2 Enoch’s idea is remarkable from any point of view … This is not the original meaning of tselem… The text uses podobie lica (in the likeness of the face), not obrazu or videnije, the usual terms for ‘image.’” To clarify a possible background of such a conceptual paradigm shift in 2 Enoch we need to direct our attention to the Ladder of Jacob, another Jewish text preserved in Slavonic.
Author: Orlov, Andrei
Institution: Marquette University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7164456053