Enoch

From SgWiki

[edit] Enoch the biblical city of antiquity..

• Uruk (`rk) or Erech (ē`rĕk), ancient Sumerian city of Mesopotamia Mesopotamia (mĕs'əpətā`mēə) [Gr.,=between rivers], ancient region of Asia, the territory about the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, included in modern Iraq.

..... Click the link for more information. , on the Euphrates and NW of Ur (in present-day S Iraq). It is the modern Tall al Warka [[1]]. Uruk, dating from the 5th millennium B.C., was the largest city in S Mesopotamia and an important religious center. The sanctuaries of the goddess Inanna (who corresponds to the Babylonian Ishtar and is also called Nana or Eanna) and Anu, the sky god, date from the early 4th millennium B.C. The temple of Anu, known as the white temple, stood on a terrace and seems to have been a primitive form of ziggurat. Uruk was the home of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh (gĭl`gəmĕsh), in Babylonian legend, king of Uruk. He is the hero of the Gilgamesh epic, a work of some 3,000 lines, written on 12 tablets c. ..... Click the link for more information. and is mentioned in the Bible (Gen. 10.10). There have been excavations at the site since 1912.[[2]]

In the Bible the first mention of the word was associated with a city, a first prototype of a city viz,

"And he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." --Genesis 4:17.

Commenting on this verse, Dr. Arthur C. Custance relates a number of facts which we here quote almost in full."The subsequent history of this city we do not know: but of the name of the city we know a very great deal.

Without entering into too much detail regarding changes in pronunciation which occur in the course of the development of a language, it seems necessary to point out here that the sound represented by the letter N is often reproduced (strange as it may seem) as an R. The CH sound which terminates the name Enoch may be replaced by a K or G, or a GH.These changes are very common. When cuneiform was being deciphered for the first time, it soon became apparent that some of the cities mentioned in Biblical antiquity were still in existence as mounds and very often the natives in the area had preserved the original name in a modified form.

A very important city in antiquity appeared under the name Uruk and a study of cuneiform soon revealed that this could equally well be pronounced Unuk, which was recognized at once by Sayce, and many others, as identical with the Biblical word, Enoch

One of the features of cuneiform writing was the use of what are called determinatives, signs which are placed before or after certain words to enable the reader to distinguish between names of cities and names of people, or names of deities and names of mortals, and so forth.

Thus if a city happened to have a name which was also the name of a famous man, it was customary to use a determinative to let the reader know whether one was referring to the man or to the place.

In the case of a man's name, the determinative was put in front of the word; in the case of a ... The interesting thing about the city Unuk, or Uruk, was that the determinative was omitted. It is the only instance in which this is so. The reason for this sole exception to the rule was not apparent at first until it was realized after considerable study of cuneiform texts that the word had come to mean the City par excellence, a special city, special for historical reasons.

And as such, it was not considered to stand in need of any distinguishing~ determinative. The 'specialness' lay in the fact that it was the name of the first City ever to have been built, and as such it was the prototype of all others and came to be referred to, to all intents and purposes, as The City - in somewhat the same way that people tend in England to refer to London as 'The city'.

Now obviously the city which Cain builded and named after his son Enoch must have been destroyed by the Flood so that the physical entity itself probably disappeared, though it was subsequently re-founded. If the re-builders had followed our pattern, they might thenceforth have called it 'New Uruk'. But though the original city was lost for a season, the name and the special significance were never lost sight of, for in time the name Uruk ceased to be a name at all and became merely a word meaning City.

In later cuneiform this city was known as Ereck, and at the present time the site is known by the local people as Warka. (Quoted by permission from Doorway Paper No.8, "The Confusion of Tongues," 1961, pp.20-2)One wonders, after reading the above, if Orientalists would have ever discovered the reason Uruk was written without the determinative sign apart from the help of the Bible.

It is the Bible which tells us Enoch or Uruk was the first city. Now Dr. Custance in the enlightening quotation given above seems to discount the idea that the postdiluvial city Uruk is the actual city founded by Cain.

Even thought the first city was destroyed by the flood it seems to us that the re-bui1ders could have re-built on either exactly or very close to the original site.A consideration which leads toward that conclusion, (if our readers can bear my once more referring to this principle,) is that Moses, or whoever it was who wrote the Eden story, used throughout names in current usage in his day.

In fact, as far as chapter 2 of Genesis is concerned there is not one specific, geographica1 name used which was not in current use around 1400 B.C. It is to be doubted if the same principle will not hold for Genesis 4. If the name Enoch (Uruk) did not denote the same locality in 1400 B.C. as it did in the Antediluvian Age, then the author of Genesis 4 would be badly misleading his readers by saying Cain founded the City. He would feel impelled to insert some word of explanation that the city Enoch (Uruk) was not the same city so well known to him and his readers. Since there is absolutely no hint of such a distinction in the mind of the writer of Genesis 4, we feel it impossible to think he know of TWO places called Enoch or Uruk.

[edit] The name of the Person Enoch who walked with God..

From the Bible Key Text: "And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Genesis 5:22,24.

Ge 5:22-24 And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

According to Genesis 5:23-24, Enoch was a just man, walked with God, lived 365 years, and then was taken by God without dying.

[edit] The two names shared

In the Book of Genesis, Enoch or Hanoch (חֲנוֹךְ "Initiated; dedicated; disciplined", Standard Hebrew Ḥanoḫ, Tiberian Hebrew Ḥănôḵ) is a name shared by two individuals named in the Genealogies of Genesis and subsequent Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writers.

The first was the son of Cain and father of Irad. Cain later founded a city which he named Enoch (Genesis 4:17-18).

The second was the son of Jared, father of Methuselah, grandfather of Lamech and the great-grandfather of Noah.

see the first Garden of Eden