Ascension of Isaiah 5

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[1b, 2] And he sawed him asunder with a wood-saw. And when Isaiah was being sawn in sunder Balchlra stood up, accusing him, and all the false prophets stood up, laughing and rejoicing because

3of Isaiah. And Balchlra, with the aid of Mechembechus, stood up before Isaiah, [laughing]

4deriding; And Belchlra said to Isaiah: 'Say: "I have lied in all that I have spoken, and likewise

5the ways of Manasseh are good and right. And the ways also of Balchlra and of his associates are

6[6, 7] good."' And this he said to him when he began to be sawn in sunder. But Isaiah was (absorbed)

8in a vision of the Lord, and though his eyes were open, he saw them . And Balchlra spake thus to Isaiah: 'Say what I say unto thee and I will turn their heart, and I will compel Manasseh

9and the princes of Judah and the people and all Jerusalem to reverence thee.' And Isaiah answered and said: 'So far as I have utterance (I say): Damned and accursed be thou and all thy powers and

10[10, 11] all thy house. For thou canst not take (from me) aught save the skin of my body.' And they

12seized and sawed in sunder Isaiah, the son of Amoz, with a wood-saw. And Manasseh and

13Balchlra and the false prophets and the princes and the people [and] all stood looking on. And to the prophets who were with him he said before he had been sawn in sunder: 'Go ye to the region

14of Tyre and Sidon; for for me only hath God mingled the cup.' And when Isaiah was being sawn in sunder, he neither cried aloud nor wept, but his lips spake with the Holy Spirit until he was sawn in twain.

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.