Scriptural Savant

2 Baruch 66

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.

1"And the bright tenth waters which thou hast seen: this is the purity of the generations of Josiah king of Judah, who was the only one at the time who submitted himself to the Mighty One with all his heart and with all his soul.

2And he cleansed the land from idols, and hallowed all the vessels which had been polluted, and restored the offerings to the altar, and raised the horn of the holy, and exalted the righteous, and honoured all that were wise in understanding, and brought back the priests to their ministry, and destroyed and removed the magicians and enchanters and fortune-tellers from the land.

3And not only did he slay the impious that were living, but they also took from the sepulchres the bones of the dead and burned them with fire.

4[And the festivals and the sabbaths he established in their sanctity], and their polluted ones he burnt in the fire, and the lying prophets which deceived the people, these also he burnt in the fire, and the people who listened to them when they were living, he cast them into the brook Cedron, and heaped stones upon them.

5And he was zealous with zeal of the Mighty One with all his soul, and he alone was firm in the law at that time, so that he left none that was uncircumcised, or that wrought impiety in all the land, all the days of his life.

6This, moreover, is he that shall receive an eternal reward, and he shall be glorified with the Mighty One beyond many at a later time.

7For on his account and on account of those who are like him were the inestimable glories, of which thou wast told before, created and prepared.

8These are the bright waters which thou hast seen.

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.