The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (733 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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En-no-gy
ja
(founder of mountain Buddhism)
:
E’n
.
Jap. for
Hui-neng
.
Enoch
.
Descendant of
Adam
(7th generation), in the Hebrew
Bible
. According to Genesis 5. 24, he was one who ‘walked with God and he was not; for God took him’. From this, he became central in apocalyptic speculation. Many legends became attached to him and several pseudepigraphical books bear his name.
1
 
Enoch
, or
Ethiopic Enoch
, contains a series of revelations to Enoch. The book is composite, and chs. 37–71, the ‘Similitudes’ or ‘Parables’, have attracted special attention because of their use of the term ‘
Son of Man
’.
2
 
Enoch
,
Slavonic Enoch
, or
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch
, recounts a tour by Enoch of the seven heavens.
3
 
Enoch
is a Hebrew
Merkabah
text to be dated perhaps to the 5th–6th cents. CE.
In Islam, the figure in the
Qur’
n
(19. 57 f., 21. 85) of Idr
s is usually identified by Muslims with Enoch.

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