Liudmila Navtanovich

2 Enoch is a very peculiar Old Testament Pseudepigraphon. One of its special features is the presence of hapax legomena and the usage of well-known words in Slavonic tradition with different meanings. The paper deals with the “astronomical chapter” of 2Enoch, especially with the contexts where mythological birds (or angels? or winds?), phoenix, and chalkydri are mentioned. The particularities of the meanings of these creatures and several possible interpretations of them in 2 Enoch are considered against the background of the history of these images in different ancient traditions, taking into account different usages of the characters in question in the two main recensions of 2 Enoch.

2 Enoch used to be called “Slavonic Enoch” for about 150 years until 4 fragments of the pseudepigraphon were found in Coptic. This Old Testament Pseudepigraphon has been often considered “an enigma”, starting from the fact that the scholars cannot decide whether it was of Jewish or Christian origin. The article provides the scholarly community with state-of-the-art on the most important and “everlasting” problems concerning the text in question, making a special emphasis on the consensus about the provenance of the Slavonic text among Slavists which is based on the comprehensive analysis of the textual history of 2 Enoch.