Apocalypsis and Space The Journeys of Enoch in Light of Spatial Theories

Absztrakt

The first publishers and commentators of the text of the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch tried to identify the sites mentioned in the description of his journey Eastward with real places (firstspace at Soja). Later on, this attempt was questioned by several scholars, who thought that these sites serve only as tools for a graphic description of the visionary journey (secondspace at Soja) and no real places should be searched for behind them. In this article I apply the toolkit of “spatial turn” theories to the examination of the narrative of Enoch’s journey in 1 Enoch 20–36 in order to demonstrate that the above mentioned two categories must be understood simultaneously as real and imagined (thirdspace at Soja). Besides the possible identification of places, I will draw attention to the different layers of the spatial language of the text: the presumable geographic knowledge of the Second Temple era-author, the religious-symbolic motives of the text and the symbolism of the imaginary travel merged together in this part of the Enochic narrative.