The Enûma Eliš is the Babylonian creation myth. It was recovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (Mosul, Iraq).  This version of the Enuma Elish presented here is primarily the translation of E. A. Speiser in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, edited by James Pritchard (Princeton, 1969), with modifications based on various other translations such as L. W. King’s, The Seven Tablets of Creation, London 1902. The...

2 Enoch is a Jewish text preserved solely in the Slavonic language. The central theme of the text is the celestial ascent of the seventh antediluvian patriarch Enoch through the heavens, his luminous metamorphosis near the Throne of Glory, and his initiation into the heavenly mysteries. The book, which combines the features of an apocalypse and a testament, can be divided into three parts. The first part (chapters 1–38) describes Enoch’s heavenly journey that culminates in his encounter with...