Second Enoch and The Tale of the Blessed Zerubbabel : Two Different Examples of Old Testament Slavonic Apocrypha

Abstract

This article examines two Old Testament Slavic Apocrypha—Second Enoch, and the much less well known The Tale of the Blessed Zerubbabel—each of which has its own particular origin. While 2 Enoch has been studied for over 150 years, many questions concerning its origin are still under discussion. This article discusses the relation among the Slavic manuscripts to these writings. This article proposes that The Tale of the Blessed Zerubbabel deserves special attention because it is a rare case of direct translation from Hebrew into Slavic. This is especially interesting since the possibility of early Slavic translations from Hebrew (before the fifteenth century) is frequently denied by some scholars.