The Anvil,the Ascent,and Enoch

The first time I got pounded on The Anvil, wind was the culprit.

The name of this mountain in Gaelic, the name you’ll find on a map, is An Teallach. Rising above green-brown fields and winding narrow streams in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland, An Teallach is composed mostly of Torridon sandstone that glows red when the light is right. Its name means “the anvil” or “the forge.” Our hiking book tells us that it’s because of the mountain’s shape. Add mists that rise like smoke from the pinnacles that surround it and rocks glowing like embers, and the explanation seems apt. But I make the name about me.

An Teallach is actually a group of mountains, and one of its appeals is that once you’ve achieved the first summit, Bidean a’ Ghlas Thuill (“Peak of the Gray Hollow”), you can walk along a spiny ridge and reach another, Sgùrr Fiona (maybe “White Peak”). Both are Munros, Scottish peaks more than 3,000 feet high. The Scottish Mountaineering Club maintains a list of Munros and their compleaters, people who report bagging the summits of all 197. We’re on vacation, a break from work and my graduate studies in the United States, so it’s easy to say I have no such aspirations. But I’ve made a list of those my husband and I have done so far on this holiday, and I understand the appeal of making the long steep climb and getting to add two more peaks before coming back down. I am a little nervous about walking along the ridge from the first summit to the second. The Scottish Mountaineer’s Guide to Munros describes it as “exposed,” “airy” as the Scots say. I say to myself, it rhymes with fairy—how dangerous can that be? People do it, so I am up for trying. If it feels too risky when we get there, we can always turn around.

The route to the top is not technically difficult. It’s more of a slog. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Endurance is all. Pick your way over some rocks and boulders using your hands, but nothing tricky. Pay attention to the path. Bring water and food. Dress in layers. Make an early start from the parking area and you can make it back in time for supper at the pub near the trailhead.

We head out on a fine summer morning. Mix of clouds and sun. No fog or rain in the Mountain Weather Information Service forecast. A backpack full of water, peanut butter sandwiches, granola bars, a fleece, and an extra rain jacket. Sunscreen applied and sunglasses on. Hair pulled away from my face with a bandanna. Point-and-shoot camera and trail map in my pocket. The nice light wind means midges won’t be a problem.

The path is straightforward, easy to follow, and at the beginning, a gentle angle, just a steady, up-up-up. I enjoy the feeling as my heart rate adjusts after its initial acceleration, my breathing calms, and before long, we are enjoying magnificent views of where we’ve been (“hey, it’s our car!”) and where we’re going (coveted mountain peaks). The lack of trees in this long-deforested region means I can even see the long path ahead, a narrow beige stripe winding to the shoulder of the mountain.

We stop every so often for water, snacks, and a bit of conversation before heading on. We note that the temperature is dropping, as we expect with the gain in altitude, and the wind is picking up. Joe pulls his windbreaker hood up and it slaps against his face, covering his left eye. He checks in. “Keep going?” “Great!” I say, but it’s hard to hear myself over the wind.

We’ve been walking for some hours. The distance between me and Joe has grown, as it always does on an ascent, but we can see each other easily. The wind is rising, blowing strong now. Joe reaches another good place for a rest and some refueling. I catch up to him and put down my pack. I turn my head to look back down the slope and a gust of wind rips my sunglasses from my face. We watch as they fly, rise, fall, rise again, dip, and become a dot too small to see. I want to take off my outer layer because I’m sweating a lot and want to cool down, but I’m scared to unzip my jacket. It may turn into a sail and soar away like my eyewear. I don’t want to litter and this is my favorite coat. I’m feeling unnerved by the wind.

We continue toward the summit. We’re getting close, but it’s hard for me to take in my surroundings. My vision is partially obstructed by hair that has become unmoored from its fastening and is lashing my cheeks and sticking my eyes. I pull my hood up, an attempt to sheath the daggers that are my hair, and cinch the strings until they dig in around my chin. All I can hear is howling wind on polyester. I open my mouth on an exhale, but a blast of air billows in, as if trying to change the rhythm of my breath or breathe for me.

Through watering eyes, I catch a glimpse of Joe. I can see the sharp outline of the left side of his body. He has become a mast and his right side is a blue flag, his windbreaker snapping in the wind. I wonder if the man-become-flag is visible from below and if so, what message might he be sending in semaphore? SOS? Fools on hill?

I think it’s unlikely the wind will snatch him and carry him off the side of the mountain, but I’m not sure. I’m rethinking every image I have ever had of the rush of winds at Pentecost. It’s become the scariest Bible story ever. Those disciples were crazy not to seek shelter when the rush of a violent wind started to blow.

I continue to pick my way up the rocks and feel myself lifted by the wind, then set back down. We are close to the summit but not to the airy part yet.

Joe stops. I stop. We yell to each other that this is too much. At least, that is what I yell. I can’t hear a thing he says above the roaring wind.

As we descend, my mind turns to the strange figure of Enoch. The subject of my dissertation, he is never far from my thoughts. Also, feeling like I might get blown off a mountain puts me in an apocalyptic mood. But, unlike me, Enoch made it to the top of the mountain.

First Enoch is a collection of pseudepigraphic texts written from about 300/250 BCE until sometime in the first century CE. It’s called 1 Enoch because it is written from the point of view of Enoch, the patriarch named in Genesis 5:18-24, the father of Methuselah and great-grandfather of Noah. Although 1 Enoch is not part of the biblical canon for most Christians, it was influential amongst Jewish and Christian theologians and writers until about 400 CE, when it stopped being regarded as important or valid in most places, except the Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, where it remains part of the Bible. Ideas and concerns in 1 Enoch are addressed in the New Testament, and scholars talk about the potential for its influence on New Testament texts and ideas.

Enoch stands out in the Genesis passage, part of a genealogy from Adam to Japheth, because, unlike everyone else in the list, Enoch’s death is not recorded. Rather, Enoch “walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him” (Gen 5:24, NRSV).

What? Where did he go? What did he see? What’s it like to go on a walk with God?

First Enoch fills in the gaps, telling the reader what happened during Enoch’s peregrinations with the Holy One, which lasted 300 years of his 365 of life (Gen 5:24) before he was taken by God, as many years as we get days around the sun.

The cosmic significance of his length of days is echoed in Enoch’s travels. He is taken on a tour of the heavens and the earth, given revelations of how nonhuman creation functions and its purposes. He is shown things accessible to any human being, given the appropriate context, like trees and plants and water, and many, many mountains. He is also shown things inaccessible to humans without a supernatural guide, like “the storehouse of the hail and the winds, the storehouse of the mist and the clouds” (1 En. 41:4). ¹ He sees “the gates of heaven” from which “the winds in the north emerge. When they blow, (there is) cold and hail and hoar frost and snow and dew and rain” (1 En. 34:2). He is shown “all the secrets of the luminaries and the lightnings” (1 En. 59:3). He sees supernatural beings, the place of punishment that awaits the unrighteous, and the throne room of God.

I have to admit that when I first read all of this, I skimmed through the parts that, to me, read like out-of-date stabs at science. The picture of angels opening heavenly gates to let hail or snow or hoarfrost come out or to release gentle or violent winds seemed quaint but irrelevant. I was more interested in the narrative parts of 1 Enoch, especially the first 36 chapters, known as the Book of the Watchers, the part that describes the fall of the watchers as an explanation for evil in the world, God’s punishment of these rebel angels, the consequences of their rebellion, and the sending of Enoch to tell Noah to prepare for the flood.

But even in the Book of the Watchers, attention is given, using mythical terms, to the workings of the nonhuman natural world and the effects of humans upon it. The story is told that angels called watchers, in disobedience to God, leave the heavenly realm, come to earth, take human women as wives, and make children for themselves. These offspring are giants with insatiable appetites, who begin to devour people and “to sin against the birds and beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh” (1 En. 7:4–5). The offspring of the watchers are the ultimate consumers, literally devouring every kind of living thing. To make matters worse, the watchers reveal to humans knowledge people were never supposed to have: technology for war, metallurgy, ornamentation and cosmetics, pharmacology, sorcery, and astrological arts. Some of these forbidden secrets may seem tame to us—what’s wrong with makeup?—but they’re all ways for humans to manipulate and gain advantage over others.

Micah Kiel examines this text against the backdrop of Hellenistic warfare, ² at the time the book was written. The original readers of 1 Enoch would have recognized in the rapacious giants and challenge to God’s sovereignty the violence and devastation to creation wrought by the kings who perpetrated war. Kiel writes,

This mythic description of the sins of the watchers comports well with local populations’ experience of warfare in the Hellenistic period. Devastated crops, billeting armies, and exploiting livestock—in sum, ill treatment of flora and fauna—pulse in the background of the Book of Watchers’ mythology. ³

I would add the abuse of women, also present in the “taking of wives” by the watchers, to the reality and methods of warfare.

God uses the flood to cleanse the earth and through Noah’s obedience, gives humans another opportunity to live in right relationship with the rest of creation. However, even with this second chance, the way forward remains difficult. The spirits of the giants still live on the earth, doing violence, and causing illnesses (1 En. 15:11). Humans still use the forbidden arts taught by the watchers. Enoch must warn humans and instruct them in how to live now so that someday “all the earth will be tilled in righteousness . . . and all of it will be planted with trees and filled with blessing; and all the trees of joy will be planted on it” (1 En. 10:18).

Someday. Like other apocalyptic texts, 1 Enoch is resistance literature, written to comfort the faithful in the meantime, to urge them to rely “not on human ingenuity and technology, but on God’s providence and continued role as creator.” ⁴

It’s in this context, a world in which human decisions lead to decimation of nonhuman creation as well as injustice and cruelty to humans, that Enoch is taken on his tour of the cosmos. Much as I might desire it, 1 Enoch doesn’t provide a 10-point program for becoming a better steward or a gentler user of natural resources. The book’s approach to the relationship between humans and nonhuman creation seems to step away completely from the issue of use, responsible or otherwise. The first step in the rehabilitation of the relationship between humans and beyond-human creation is simply for humans to observe and see properly the natural world. Unlike the watchers with their distorted gaze that turned creatures into commodities to be used by the powerful, Enoch is to see correctly and exhort his readers to do the same.

Near the beginning of his oracle (1 En. 2:1–5:3), Enoch urges the unrighteous to have their vision corrected. Their eye exam is the observation and contemplation of nonhuman phenomena: the works of heaven, luminaries, the earth, signs of summer and winter, trees that lose their leaves and those that do not, the seas and rivers. All of these faithfully play their divinely appointed roles. Repeated throughout the passage is the claim that God made these things and gave them orders from which they do not stray. The only mentions of humans in this passage are ones in which they are passive (“all the works of God are manifest to you” 1 En. 2:2) and frail (“you seek shelter and shade from [the sun’s] presence, and the earth burns with scorching heat, and you are unable to tread on the dust or the rock because of the burning” 1 En. 4:1). Even the fruit of the trees is not “for food” for humans, as in Genesis 1:29. Rather, it is “for glorious honor” (1 En. 5:1). God made these things and they “all carry out their works for [God]” (1 En. 5:2). God is creator and referent of their obedience. These things exist, not for human use, but for God. Nonhuman creation is shown to have its own purpose for God and its own relationship to God, without any reference to humans. In contrast to any human pretense to be in charge, we see humans scampering to seek shade, lest they burn their delicate feet.

Where humans do come into focus is at the end of the section. Unlike nonhuman creation that carries out God’s “word,” sinful humans do not act according to “[God’s] commandments,” and more, have haughtily spoken “proud and hard words with your unclean mouth against [God’s] majesty” (1 En. 5:4). To gaze upon nature is to see how humans should be but are not. The verdict for the unrighteous who fail to see and learn is, “Hard of heart! There will be no peace for you!” (1 En. 5:4).

Except for references to human unrighteousness, Enoch’s tour is basically human-free, including in what may be the most astounding passage of all, in terms of giving access to the inaccessible—his ascent to the throne room of God (1 En. 14:8–23).

The way to the divine throne room, the room, and the throne of the Holy One are replete with vibrant, bountiful, exuberant, abundant non-human phenomena, with, save Enoch, no humans in sight, and few references to humans, except what will help Enoch communicate with his readers. Enoch’s ascent is made without any use of his own effort. No pack. No plan. No snacks or dressing in layers or weather forecast. But lots of companions. He is summoned by clouds and mists. Shooting stars and lightning flashes hasten him on. Winds lift him up and bring him to heaven (1 En. 14:8).

Once there, he sees structures that are all comprised of natural phenomena. Enoch describes them using words shared with human experience: “house,” “walls,” “ceiling,” “doors,” “floor,” and “throne,” (1 En. 14:9–13, 15, 17–19, 21). But the constitution of these objects defies human experience, turning the words into references for our benefit, indicating position and giving orientation, not referring in any way to us. For example, Enoch draws near to “a wall made of hailstones” encircled by “tongues of fire” (1 En. 14:9). He sees “a great house built of hailstones,” with walls and floor “of snow” (1 En. 14:10), a “ceiling like shooting stars and lightning flashes,” walls encircled by “flaming fire” and doors that “blazed with fire” (1 En. 14:11–12). This is no human abode redecorated for heaven. This is something not constructed for humans at all. Enoch is understandably terrified (1 En. 14:13). The dwelling place of God is not hospitable to humans. But the absence of humans in the space does not make it devoid of creation, and it is made of things we can see on earth.

However, the familiar natural phenomena are combined in ways incomprehensible to us. Enoch can describe the sight of them and the fear they evoke in him, but they are, like doors made of fire and ceilings like shooting stars, things we can only imagine. And when we do imagine these combinations—a house “hot as fire and cold as snow” (1 En. 14:13), a throne “like ice, and its wheels like the shining sun” with “rivers of flaming fire” streaming from beneath it (1 En. 14:18–19)—there is nowhere in our experience that they fit. They can only signal to us a glimpse into the realm of the Holy Other. Add in the “voice of the cherubim” at the throne (1 En. 14:18), and the effect is even further from human experience. Humans have nothing to do with this. We cannot create it, harness it, use it, fathom it. We can only find our place next to Enoch, lying prostrate (1 En. 14:14), and after taking in the sight, unable to see (1 En. 14:19).

Despite the absence of humans or human-made things or human-centric reality, God does not appear to be lonely. Rather God is surrounded by phenomena from every season and climate on earth and the “holy ones of the watchers” who did not leave God. The absence of humans is not a problem for God. God doesn’t seem to miss us.

The results of this vision are a decentering of human perception of our place in the cosmos, and a realization of the holiness of nonhuman creation. The revelation to Enoch exposes human pretense to being the center of the universe. The nonhuman world gets to be represented before the throne of God, but, with the exception of the visitor Enoch, we do not.

This sense of the purpose of beyond-human creation, separate from and not dependent on or directed by humans is expanded as Enoch is taken on further tours of the world and still encounters no humans. He sees and smells fragrant trees (1 En. 24:3–5; 29:2; 31:3). He sees mountains, valleys, water, fire, precious stones, and elements. But no people. God has purposes for all of these natural phenomena, but they are never presented as resources for human use. Many of them wouldn’t be visible to humans, if not for God’s revelation of them to Enoch.

The effect of these revelations is an awareness of what can only be described as grace. As readers, we are put in the position of receiving what we would not otherwise receive, see what we otherwise could not see, have access to a realm—even the throne room of God—only because the experience is given. We have not qualified for it. But will we learn from it? Be changed by it?

When we read Enoch’s visions, we see things familiar from the natural environment, but we see them anew, located beyond our ability to amass them, use them, idolize them. Our new vision enables new possibilities, because, via Enoch’s vision, our imaginations are enriched. Through our experience of these natural phenomena, we are, imaginatively, transported to the place where God is enthroned and worshipped (1 En. 14:22). When we see trees and mountains and other nonhuman creation, we can remember that they have a purpose assigned by God. In the context of God’s throne room and through the visions of Enoch the worshiper, we are reminded that nonhuman creation does not exist as something merely or solely at our disposal, for our use. Our whole lives, and not just our worship, can become more liturgical.

The eschatological fulfillment of God’s providence is an act of worship that will take place when the earth is purified and people become righteous (1 En. 10:20–21). But that worship is participated in now by Enoch whose revelations are punctuated by doxology. At the conclusion of each of his journeys, he erupts in praise. “Then I blessed the Lord of glory and said, ‘Blessed is the judgment of righteousness and blessed are you, O Lord of majesty and righteousness, who are Lord of eternity’” (1 En. 22:14). “Then I blessed the God of glory, the King of eternity . . .” (1 En. 25:7). “Then I blessed the Lord of glory . . .” (1 En. 27:5). The Book of the Watchers concludes with the longest doxology, which expresses praise of God for God’s showing of God’s deeds to Enoch and to angels and humans “so that they might see the work of his might and glorify the deeds of his hands and bless him forever” (1 En. 36:4). Enoch has seen what God has shown to him and to angels, and through him to others, so that all might join in worship forever. Worship alongside the other creatures at the throne of God will mark the fulfillment of God’s actions and should punctuate the journey all the way there.

When we reach the pub, I’m tempted to tell Joe about the connections I see between Enoch’s decentering vision and our failed attempt to climb An Teallach. The Anvil didn’t care that this was the end of our holiday and that we can’t try again anytime soon. Isn’t that so Enochian! But something in Joe’s windblown red face suggests now might not be the time to share my new insight into Enoch. After five hours of slogging up and down a mountain with no chance to enjoy the views from the top, it probably would be unwise to talk about my dissertation. Rather, I crack wise about passing a sheep ten miles along the road wearing my sunglasses. I eat mussels, fishcakes, mashed potatoes, and mixed veg, with sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

A few years later, we return to An Teallach for another attempt to reach the summit. This time we are joined by Joe’s brother Rich. He lives close to An Teallach and a visit with him and his family is the reason for our trip. Rich is a skilled hiker and familiar with the area. He has friends who have successfully done the climb and the ridge walk who have given him tips on the best route. It will be his first attempt and we think it’s great that we will all share the experience of reaching the summit together.

We watch the weather forecast during our week of vacation, looking for the best day for the hike. We choose a day with little wind, but like most days, there are clouds covering the peaks of the mountains in the region. However, for this day, the Mountain Weather Information Service forecast predicts that by afternoon, the cloud level will rise and leave the peaks clear, including the peak of An Teallach. We time our attempt carefully, planning to arrive just as the cloud will lift, leaving us enough time to take in the vistas and make our way down safely.

We walk up and up and up, toward the thick white shroud that hides our goal. We get closer and closer, but see no sign of cloud lift. We pause right beneath the cloud line, check our watches, and decide to enter the cloud, hoping it will lift as we ascend. We will be cautious. We will watch for the cairns people have constructed to herald the next waypoint on the path. We will keep a keen eye out to discern which stones are the texture of the path and which are out of bounds. We will stick together.

We climb into the cloud and are enveloped in thick, cool, moist, white. Our visibility is limited to twenty feet in front of us. All sense of our altitude vanishes as we can see only the reddish rock beneath our feet. It is quiet. No wind, no birds, just our boots scraping the scree, and small bits of gravel crunching as we walk. Visibility decreases to about ten feet. We reach a plateau, perhaps the first summit, but we can’t see a marker, and we have no certainty about which way to go to end up firmly on the narrow spiny ridge. Rich checks his compass, but we know the path, now impossible to pick out, meanders up here, and there are steep drop-offs on all sides. We take turns walking just a few steps forward in all directions to see whether we can discern any clues, careful to stay within sight and earshot of the others. Nothing. We put our packs down and lean against an outcropping of rocks. We wait for the cloud to rise, but it does not move.

It’s about twenty degrees cooler in the cloud, a damp cold. Rich pours us each a cup of hot tea from the thermos he brought and breaks off some squares of dark chocolate. We get out the sandwiches we carried. Rich tells the story of a friend who took the wrong way off the summit in a fog, eventually got down the mountain safely, but had to walk seventeen miles to get back to a road, in the rain, in the night. It’s like listening to ghost stories while wrapped in a thick, white, wet blanket, and without a fire.

Rich takes a picture of Joe and me. We are sitting together in our bright-colored hiking clothes against a white background. There is no evidence of our efforts. It’s like someone cut out all the scenery or like we’re in passport photos that will be rejected because there are two of us, and despite how scary this is, we’re smiling.

Once I start to shiver, we decide to give up, descend, and live to tell about it.

Amongst the many sights revealed to Enoch is another place where God has a majestic seat. Enoch is shown a “high mountain . . . whose peak is like the throne of God” (1 En. 25:3). It’s set in the middle of six other mountains, all of them “precious and glorious and beautiful in appearance” (1 En. 24:2). Around the highest peak grow fragrant trees, including a tree with “a fragrance sweeter smelling than all spices, and its leaves and its blossom and the tree never wither . . . its leaves are lovely and its blossoms are lovely to look at” (1 En. 24:4–5) but no one “has the right to touch it until the great judgment.” The mountain peak is the seat upon which God will descend to sit at the great judgment. The tree with the unsurpassed sweet fragrance will be reward for the righteous and the pious. Finally there is a tree for food—the fruit of this tree will be “food for the chosen.” The righteous “will rejoice greatly and be glad, and they will enter into the sanctuary,” and the fragrance of that marvelous tree will be “in their bones” (1 En. 25:3–6).

Pounded twice on The Anvil, I no longer care about bagging Monros. I won’t be on any compleaters list. But I do hope to be shaped into someone who can ascend the mountain Enoch did. I want to be listed amongst the righteous, those whose vision has been corrected. I want to see all the peaks, the forest of fragrant trees, to smell the air scented by the fragrance sweeter than all spices, to have it billowed deep into my bones. I want to take my small place in the chorus of creation that shall bless, “and shall always bless the Lord of glory, who has wrought great and glorious wonders.”