Enoch the Explorer: 1 Enoch 17–36 in Its Hellenistic Context

Abstract

The journeys undertaken by the antediluvian patriarch Enoch, in 1 Enoch 17–36, engage closely with a well-known contemporary practice of Hellenistic courts: the dispatching of expeditions of exploration. Such reframing can situate this early Jewish apocalypse more fully within its third-century BCE intellectual, cultural, and political ecosystem and also make space for Judean thought in the history of ancient geography.