Scriptural Savant

2 Baruch 53

Related ancient text — scholarly reference

Extra-canonical text — not LDS scripture and not in the KJV Apocrypha. Provided as scholarly reference for parallel literature of the Second Temple period and the early Christian era. Read with discernment; the Apostle Jude quotes 1 Enoch and Paul knew this material, but inclusion here is for study, not doctrine.

1And when I had said these things I fell asleep there, and I saw a vision, and lo! a cloud was ascending from a very great sea, and I kept gazing upon it, and lo! it was full of waters white and black, and there were many colours in those self-same waters, and as it were the likeness of great lightning was seen at its summit.

2And I saw the cloud passing swiftly in quick courses, and it covered all the earth.

3And it came to pass after these things that cloud began to pour upon the earth the waters that were in it.

4And I saw that there was not one and the same likeness in the waters which descended from it.

5For in the first beginning they were black exceedingly for a time, and afterwards I saw that the waters became bright, but they were not many, and after these things again I saw black (waters), and after these things again bright, and again black and again bright.

6Now this was done twelve times, but the black were always more numerous than the bright.

7And it came to pass at the end of the cloud, that lo! it rained black waters, and they were darker than had been all those waters that were before, and fire was mingled with them, and where those waters descended, they wrought devastation and destruction.

8And I saw after these things that lightning which I had seen on the summit of the cloud, that it held it fast and made it descend to the earth.

9Now that lightning shone exceedingly, so as to illuminate the whole earth, and it healed those regions where the last waters had descended and wrought devastation.

10And it took hold of the whole earth, and had dominion over it.

11And I saw after these things, and lo! twelve rivers were ascending from the sea, and they began to surround that lightning and to become subject to it.

12And by reason of my fear I awoke.

Public-domain text (R.H. Charles 1913 and equivalents). These works are not canonical, but several were widely read in antiquity and one (1 Enoch) is quoted by name in Jude 1:14–15. Useful for understanding the doctrinal landscape from which the apostles and earliest saints taught.