[1537] Charles, p. 32 and cap. LXXX.
[1538] Singer, 25-26.
[1539] Pp. 187-219.
[1540] Secrets of Enoch, I and XXX.
[1541] See Morfill-Charles, pp. xxxiv-xxxv, for mention of three and seven heavens in the apocryphal Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, “written about or before the beginning of the Christian era,” and for “the probability of an Old Testament belief in the plurality of the heavens.” For the seven heavens in the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah see Charles’ edition of that work (1900), xlix.
[1542] Secrets of Enoch, XXVII. Charles prefaces this passage by the remark, “I do not pretend to understand what follows”: but it seems clear that the waters above the firmament are referred to from what the author goes on to say, “And thus I made firm the circles of the heavens, and caused the waters below which are under the heavens to be gathered into one place.” It would also seem that each of the seven planets is represented as moving in a sphere of crystal. In the Ethiopic version, LIV, 8, we are told that the water above the heavens is masculine, and that the water beneath the earth is feminine; also LX, 7-8, that Leviathan is female and Behemoth male.
[1543] Secrets of Enoch, XXX.
[1544] Ibid., 45-46, see also the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, XCIII, for “seven weeks.”
[1545] Book of Enoch, XVIII, XXIV.
[1546] Ibid., XXXII.