Enoch as the heavenly scribe (1)

Text
The notions of a heavenly scribe and the tablet of destinies came from the Mesopotamia to the apocalyptic texts and the Christian art of the Late Antiquity. Enoch fulfilled the function of celestial scribe who records the actions of men (Jub. 4.23). The name of ‘Enoch the scribe of justice’ occurs several times in the fragments of a Coptic Sa’idic manuscript discovered in 1909 at Aswān - Enoch grammateus dikaiosynē. On a fresco in the monastery of the Abba Jeremiah we find Enoch, flanked by two saints, carrying a scroll inscribed with the title ‘the book of life’. On another fresco, Enoch, the bearer of an inscribed scroll, and the Abba Jeremiah flank the Virgin with Child and with the archangels Michael and Gabriel. A wooden tablet with the legend of Christ and the vine (7th to 8th centuries) contains the following invocation: ‘Sun, do not set; Moon do not rise; Enoch the scribe (Enōch pegrammateus) do not throw your pen into your [pen-case]; do not throw … ink, until Michael comes forth from the heaven and destroys (?) my eye.’ Enoch as the heavenly scribe recurs in a Coptic liturgical text, composed on the fourth or fifth century CE. There the archangel Michael brings the souls of men, one after another, before the presence of the Saviour. Enoch, the scribe of righteousness, intervenes in the judgement as the reader of the book of life.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Book of Jubilees 4.23

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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