Andrei A. Orlov

The Flooded Arboretums: The Garden Traditions in the Slavonic Version of 3 Baruch and the Book of Giants

Introduction        

The apocalypse known as 3 Baruch depicts a celestial tour during which an angelic guide leads a visionary through five heavens revealing to him the wonders of the upper realm. Scholars have noted that some details of this heavenly journey resonate with the visionary accounts found in Enochic materials.[1] Despite the similarities, the author of 3 Baruch seems to avoid making direct references to the motifs and themes associated with Enochic tradition. In the regard, Richard Bauckham comments: “It is remarkable that 3 Baruch, which throughout chapters 2–5 is preoccupied with the stories of Gen 2–11, makes no reference to the Watchers.”[2] He suggests, further, that the author of this apocalypse “is perhaps engaged in a polemical rejection of the Enoch traditions, so that as well as substituting Baruch for Enoch he also substitutes the human builders for the angelic Watchers. Instead of deriving evil on earth from the fall of the Watchers, he emphasizes its origin in the Garden of Eden.”[3] In response to this observation, Martha Himmelfarb agrees that various textual features of 3 Baruch reveal a polemic against the Enochic literature.[4] These observations are intriguing and deserve further investigation. Even a brief look at the apocalypse shows that despite a conspicuous coloring of the Adamic interpretation of the origin of evil, the details of 3 Baruch’s descriptions of the garden expose the motifs and themes linked to another prominent story in which the source of evil is traced to the myth of the Watchers/Giants.

This study will investigate the account of paradise found in 3 Baruch 4 and its possible connection with Enochic and Noachic traditions.

I. The Paradise Traditions of the Slavonic Version of 3 Baruch

Third Baruch became first known in its Slavonic version[5] and only later were the Greek manuscripts of the book uncovered.[6] Despite the availability of the Greek evidence, scholars noted that in some parts of the pseudepigraphon the Slavonic text seems to preserve more original material. H. E. Gaylord’s newly assembled Slavonic sources show several areas where Slavonic appears to be closer to the original.[7] One of such areas concerns the fourth chapter of the text. Gaylord observes that the overall structure and content of chap. 4 in Slavonic seem closer to the original[8] than the extant Greek version, which in this part “has suffered the most at the hands of Christian scribes.”[9] Chapter 4 of the Slavonic version contains several important details that are missing from the Greek version, including the story of the angels planting the garden. Our investigation of chap. 4 will deal with and supplemented by the Greek version.

In 3 Baruch 4 the reader finds Baruch in the middle of his heavenly journey. The angelic guide continues to show him celestial wonders. In the beginning of the chapter, Baruch sees a serpent on a stone mountain who “eats earth like grass.” Then, in 4:6, Baruch asks his angelus interpres to show him the tree that deceived Adam. In response to this request, Baruch hears the story about the planting and destruction of the heavenly garden. In the Slavonic version, the story has the following form:

And the angel said to me “When God made the garden and commanded Michael to gather two hundred thousand[10] and three angels so that they could plant the garden, Michael planted the olive and Gabriel, the apple; Uriel,[11] the nut; Raphael, the melon; and Sataniel,[12] the vine. For at first his name in former times was Sataniel, and similarly all the angels planted the various trees.”[13] And again I Baruch said to the angel, “Lord, show me the tree through which the serpent deceived Eve and Adam.” And the angel said to me, “Listen, Baruch. In the first place, the tree was the vine, but secondly, the tree (is) sinful desire which Sataniel spread over Eve and Adam, and because of this God has cursed the vine because Sataniel had planted it, and by that he deceived the protoplast Adam and Eve.” And I Baruch said to the angel, “Lord, if God has cursed the vine and its seed, then how can it be of use now?” And the angel said to me, “Rightly you ask me. When God made the Flood upon the earth, he drowned every firstling, and he destroyed 104 thousand giants, and the water rose above the highest mountains 20 cubits above the mountains, and the water entered into the garden, (and destroyed all flower),[14] bringing out one shoot from the vine as God withdrew the waters. And there was dry land, and Noah went out from the ark and found the vine lying on the ground, and did not recognize it having only heard about it and its form. He thought to himself, saying, “This is truly the vine which Sataniel planted in the middle of the garden, by which he deceived Eve and Adam; because of this God cursed it and its seed. So if I plant it, then will God not be angry with me?” And he knelt down on (his) knees and fasted 40 days. Praying and crying, he said, “Lord, if I plant this, what will happened?” And the Lord sent the angel Sarasael; he declared to him, “Rise, Noah, and plant the vine, and alter its name, and change it for the better”  (3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7-15).[15]

The depiction conveys several rare traditions about the garden, of which two are especially important for this investigation: the angels planting the garden and the flooding of this garden by the waters of the Deluge.  Both of these traditions are preserved only in this pseudepigraphon. There are, however, some early materials that seem to allude to the same rare  traditions about the garden’s planting and flooding. One of these  sources includes the fragments of the Book of Giants.

II. The Garden Traditions in the Book of Giants

The composition known as the Book of Giants  exists only in a very fragmentary form preserved in Jewish and Manichean sources, including the Aramaic fragments of the Book of Giants found at Qumran,[16] the fragments of the Manichean Book of Giants,[17] and the later Jewish text known as the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael.[18]

In these materials associated with the Book of Giants, we find the themes of the planting and the destroying of a garden. The  Aramaic fragment of the Book of Giants from Qumran (4Q530)  and the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael  depict a dream in which the giant Hahyah, the son of the watcher Shemihazah, sees a certain garden planted and then destroyed.

4Q530 lines 3-12 read:

 ... Then two of them dreamed dreams, and the sleep of their eyes and come to [...] their dreams. And he said in the assembly of [his frien]ds, the Nephilin, [...in] my dream; I have seen in this night [...] gardeners and they were watering [...] numerous roo[ts] issued from their trunk [...] I watched until tongues of fire from [...] all the water and the fire burned in all [...] Here is the end of the dream.[19]

The fragment seems to depict certain gardeners planting or sustaining a garden by watering its numerous “roots.” It also portrays the destruction of the same garden by water and fire. The description of both events is very fragmentary and many features of the story appear to be missing from 4Q530. Both motifs seem better preserved in the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, which provides additional important details. It refers directly to the planting of the garden by using the Hebrew verb (+n:

... One night the sons of Shemhazai, Hiwwa and Hiyya,[20] saw (visions) in dream, and both of them saw dreams. One saw the great stone spread over the earth...The other (son) saw a garden, planted ((w+n)[21] whole with (many) kinds of trees and (many) kinds of precious stones. And an angel (was seen by him) descending from the firmament with an axe in his hand, and he was cutting down all the trees, so that there remained only one tree containing three branches. When they awoke from their sleep they arose in confusion, and, going to their father, they related to him the dreams. He said to them: “The Holy One is about to bring a flood upon the world, and to destroy it, so that there will remain but one man and his three sons.”[22]

Besides 4Q530 and the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, the Hahyah/Hiyya dream is mentioned also in the Middle Persian Kawân fragment j of the Manichean Book of Giants published by W. B. Henning. The evidence, however, is very terse and ambiguous,[23] containing only one line: “Nariman[24] saw a gar[den full of] trees in rows. Two hundred ... came out, the trees ….”[25]

Henning suggests that this fragment should be interpreted in the light of another Middle Persian fragment D (M 625c) which links the Watchers with the trees:

... outside ... and ... left ... read the dream we have seen. Thereupon Enoch thus ... and the trees that come out, those are the Egregoroi, and the giants that came out of the women. And ..... over ... pulled out ... over ….[26]

Several important details in these descriptions from Jewish and Manichean sources should be clarified. The first concerns the subjects planting the garden. 4Q530 refers to the gardeners watering numerous roots issued from their trunk. Who are these gardeners? J. Milik was first to identify the “gardeners” as angelic beings. He argued that the gardeners are “guardian angels” or “bailiffs of the world-garden” and are matched by the shepherds in the Book of Dreams in 1 Enoch 89:59 and 90:1.[27] L. Stuckenbruck agrees that the “gardeners” might be angelic beings but notes that there is reason to question whether the “gardeners” are meant to represent good angelic beings. He suggests that in light of 4Q530 line 8 the ultimate outcome of the “gardeners'” work seems to be the production of “great shoots” from the root source, which, in Stuckenbruck’s opinion, signifies “the birth of the giants from the women.” He further argues that “watering” activity is a metaphor for impregnation and the “gardeners,” in fact, represent fallen angelic beings, the Watchers.[28] J. Reeves had earlier suggested that the “gardeners” might represent the Watchers prior to their apostasy. He notes that the image of the gardeners “watering” the garden may allude to the initial educational mission of the Watchers, who, according to Jub. 4:15, were originally sent by God on earth to instruct humans in moral conduct.[29]

The second detail of the description concerns the imagery of the trees. It seems that the trees symbolize not the vegetation, but the inhabitants of the garden: angelic, human, or composite creatures. Arboreal metaphors are often used in Enochic tradition to describe the Watchers and the Giants (cf. CD 2.17-19).

Another important detail is found in the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, in which the destruction of the garden is associated with the flood and Noah’s escape from it. 4Q530 line 10 also seems to allude to the flood, since Hahyah’s dream mentions the destruction of the garden by fire and water. A short Qumran fragment, 6Q8, also provides evidence for the connection of Hahyah’s dream with Noah’s escape.  F. García Martínez observes that the reference to Noah and his sons in the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael has its equivalent in 6Q8 line 2,[30] which speaks of three shoots preserved from the flood so as to signify the escape of Noah and his three sons.[31]

J. Reeves offers the following reconstruction of the dream based on the two fragments: ^[32]

Hahyah beholds in his vision a grove of trees carefully attended by gardeners. This tranquil scene is interrupted by the sudden appearance (or transformation?) of two hundred figures within this garden. The result of this invasion was the production of “great” shoots sprouting up from the roots of the trees. While Hahyah viewed this scene, emissaries from Heaven arrived and ravaged the garden with water and fire, leaving only one tree bearing three branches as the sole survivor of the destruction.[33]

A comparison of this description from the Book of Giants with the story found in the Slavonic version of 3 Baruch 4 shows that both accounts seem to have three similar events that follow one another in the same sequence: the planting of the garden, the destruction of the garden, and the escape of one tree from the destruction. These intriguing similarities call for a more thorough investigation of the parallels between the garden traditions found in the 3 Baruch 4 and the Book of Giants.

III. The Angelic Planting of the Garden (3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7-8)

The motif of angels planting the garden is uniquely preserved in the Slavonic version of 3 Baruch.[34] In the text, the tale about the planting comes from the mouth of Baruch’s angelic guide. From him the visionary learns that God commanded Michael to gather two hundred thousand and three angels in order to plant the garden. The story further tells that Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael and Sataniel planted five trees. Other angels also planted “various trees.”

Several features in the story of the planting found in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7-8 seem to resonate with the account found in the Book of Giants. These details include the following significant points:

1. 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7 mentions two hundred thousand and three angels planting the garden;

2. the fallen angel Sataniel also takes part in planting the “trees”;

3. according to the story, Sataniel plants the bad tree — the tree of deception;

4. the tree is described as a sinful desire that the fallen angel had for humans;

5. 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7 mentions the planting of five types of trees in the garden.

1. The first feature of 3 Baruch 4 that recalls the Book of Giants is the number of angelic hosts involved in planting the garden. 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7 tells that God commanded Michael[35] to gather two hundred thousand and three angels in order to plant the garden. The numeral two hundred thousand and three,  reserved here for the number of angelic hosts, gives a clue to the reader that the angelic “gardeners” described in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7 are somehow related to the fallen Watchers, who in the Book of Giants “planted” gigantic “trees” on the earth through their iniquities.[36] In early Enochic accounts, the numeral “two hundred” often refers to the number of the Watchers descending on Mount Hermon.[37] Some later Enochic accounts, however, tend to exaggerate the number of the fallen Watchers, depicting them as two hundred thousand or two hundred myriads. For example, in the longer recension 2 Enoch 18:3, the angelic guides give Enoch the following information about the Watchers: “These are the Gregori (Watchers), who turned aside from the Lord, 200 myriads, together with their prince Satanail.”[38] It is noteworthy that in 3 Baruch 4, similar to 2 Enoch 18, the tradition about the two hundred myriads of angelic beings is creatively conflated with the name of Sataniel.[39]

2. In 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7-8, one of the angelic creatures planting the garden along with the four principal angels (Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael) is the fallen angel Sataniel. The description of Sataniel as the gardener is puzzling. The pseudepigraphic texts usually follow the biblical account[40]  that claims that the garden was planted by God (Gen 2:8).[41] This motif of the fallen “planter” might, therefore, parallel the Book of Giants, where the fallen angels are also depicted as gardeners.

3. In 3 Baruch and in the Book of Giants, the “planting of trees/tree” is part of the angelic plot to corrupt the human race. In the Book of Giants, the “gardeners,” represented by fallen angelic beings, “plant” bad “trees”—the wicked offspring that, through their enormous appetites, brought many disasters to the antedeluvian generation. In 3 Baruch 4, the “gardener,” the fallen angel Sataniel, also plants a tree designed to cause the fall and degradation of the human race. In 3 Baruch, the vine tree eventually becomes the tool through which Adam and Eve were deceived and corrupted.

4. The account in 3 Baruch connects the tree planted by Sataniel with the “sinful desire” spread by this fallen angel over the first humans. In 4:8, the angelus interpres tells Baruch that “in the first place, the tree was the vine, but secondly, the tree (is) sinful desire[42] which Sataniel spread over Adam and Eve.”[43] This reference to the “sinful desire” of the fallen angel over humans is intriguing since it alludes to the terminology found in Enochic tradition. Thus 1 Enoch 6 says that the Watchers had sinful desire for human creatures.[44] The Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael also uses the term “evil desire” or “evil inclination” (Heb. (rh rcy ) in reference to the relationships between the descended Watchers and the “daughters of man”:

Forthwith the Holy One allowed the evil inclination ((rh rcy) to rule over them, as soon as they descended. When they beheld the daughters of man that they were beautiful, they began to corrupt themselves with them, as it is said, “When the sons of God saw the daughters of man,” they could not restrain their inclination.[45]

In the story from the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, the evil desire of the Watchers over humans seems to come as consequence of the Watchers’ disrespect for humanity in general and the first human creature in particular.[46] It is intriguing that some Russian manuscripts of 3 Baruch contain the passage about Sataniel’s refusal[47] to venerate Adam,[48] which recalls the account found in Midrash 1–4.[49] Gaylord, however, does not include this account in his English translation of the Slavonic version of 3 Baruch in OTP, considering it to be a later interpolation.

5. Finally, 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7 refers to five kinds of trees. The text says that the olive tree was planted by Michael, the apple by Gabriel, the nut by Uriel, the melon by Raphael, and the vine by Sataniel. Although the number of the principal angels seems unusual, the reference to the “five trees” excites interest in light of a passage found among the fragments of the Manichean Book of Giants published by W. B. Henning. This fragment, similar to 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:7, also operated with the notion of the “five trees”: “...evil-intentioned…from where...he came. The Misguided fail to recognize the five elements, [the five kinds of] trees, the five (kinds of) animals” (frag. h).[50]

In both Enochic and Adamic accounts, the flooded garden is depicted as a place where the drama of the primordial evil unfolds. Enochic and Adamic traditions often compete with each other, offering different explanations of the origin of evil in the world.[51] The Enochic tradition bases its understanding of the origin of evil on the story of the Watchers, in which the descended Watchers corrupt human beings by passing on to them various celestial secrets. By contrast, the Adamic story traces the source of evil to the fall of Adam and Eve in Eden. These two accounts share many common details that reveal a persistent and strenuous polemic between the two traditions. The description in 3 Baruch 4 of the flooded garden as the arena of the primordial heavenly rebellion involving angelic beings of the highest status brings the two traditions closer together.

IV. The Flood in the Garden (3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10-11)

In 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:8, the angel tells the visionary about the evil role the vine tree played in Sataniel’s deception of Adam and Eve. According to the story, God, as a result of this deception, cursed the vine and its seed. Upon hearing this story, Baruch asked the angel why, despite God’s curse, the vine can still exist. The angel told Baruch about the flood in the heavenly garden.

The story recounts that God first caused the flood upon the earth, which led to the drowning of “every firstling,” including 104,000 giants. Then the water rose above the highest mountains and flooded the heavenly garden. As God withdrew the water, “all flower” was destroyed except for one shoot from the vine. When the land appeared from the water, Noah went out from his ark and discovered the vine lying on the ground.

Several points of this flood story resemble the account found in the Book of Giants, including the following details:

1. In 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10 and in the Book of Giants, the flooding of the garden is parallel to the flood on the earth.

2. In both traditions the destruction of all vegetation (in 3 Baruch “all flower”[52]) in the garden “mirrors” the destruction of all flesh and the giants on earth.

3. In both traditions the surviving “plant” from the flooded garden is parallel to the escape of Noah from the flood.

1. Later rabbinic materials sometimes operate with the notion of two gardens: the celestial garden of Eden and the terrestrial garden. In 3 Enoch 5:5-6  we learn that before the generation of Enosh had sinned, God’s Shekinah freely traveled from one garden to the other:

When the Holy One, blessed be he, went out and in from the garden to Eden, and from Eden to the garden, from the garden to heaven, and from heaven to the garden of Eden, all gazed at the bright image of Shekinah and were unharmed—until the coming of the generation of Enosh, who was the chief of all the idolaters in the world. ^[53]

The story of the garden in 3 Baruch 4 might represent an early  tradition about the two gardens, since in this apocalypse the garden becomes the locus of celestial and terrestrial events at the same time. In the story of the flood in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10-11, the events taking place in heaven and on earth are depicted as if they were to mirror each other: the destruction of “all flesh,” including the giants on earth, “mirrors” the destruction of “all flower” in the heavenly garden. Both accounts also mention survivors, the patriarch Noah from the flooded earth and one plant from the flooded heavenly garden. This parallelism resembles the one in the Book of Giants, where the dream(s) about the destroyed “vegetation” of the garden and the single preserved shoot symbolized the drowned giants and Noah’s miraculous escape.

2. As we mentioned above, in the Enochic traditions the fallen angels and their offspring are often depicted through arboreal imagery. CD 2.17-19 refers to the giants as tall cedars.[54] The Book of Giants supports this tendency: in the Manichean fragments of this composition, the Watchers are unambiguously associated with the trees.[55] The Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael also seems to take the vegetation of the gardenas a symbol of the Watchers/Giants group. This correspondence is made not directly but through parallelism. In the Midrash, Shemhazai’s statement about the flood on earth follows immediately after Hiyya’s dream about the destruction of the trees. The two events seem to “mirror” each other in such a way that the first depicts the second symbolically.

3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10 follows the same pattern, portraying the destruction of “all flesh” and the giants on earth and the destruction of “all flower” in the heavenly garden as two “mirroring” processes taking place in the celestial and terrestrial realms. The similarities between the descriptions in 3 Baruch 4 and the Book of Giants seem not to be coincidental. In addition, the description of “all flesh” in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10 includes a direct reference to the drowned giants.[56]

3. The next is the identification of Noah with the "escaped plant." In the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, the giant Hiyya beholds in his dream one tree with three branches that survived the destruction of the garden. The text tells that “an angel (was seen by him) descending from the firmament with an axe in his hand, and he was cutting down all trees, so that there remained only one tree containing three branches.”[57] A verse later, the story switches to Noah and his three sons:[58] “He [Shemhazai] said to them [Hiwwa and Hiyya]: ‘The Holy One is about to bring a flood upon the world, and to destroy it, so that there will remain but one man and his three sons.’”[59]  In Midrash 10b-11a, the reference to Noah and his three sons enduring the flood follows immediately after the symbolic depiction of the tree with three branches surviving the destruction. Although the Midrash does not directly identify the tree with Noah, it makes the indentification obvious by correlating these two descriptions.

The same correlation is seen in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:10b-11, where the reference to Noah and his escape follows immediately after the statement about the preserved shoot: “and the water entered into the garden and destroyed every flower, bringing out one shoot from the vine as God withdrew the waters. And there was dry land, and Noah went out from the ark.”[60]  It is important, however, that the escaped “tree,” which in the Book of Giants was associated with the righteous remnant, becomes associated in 3 Baruch with the evil deception. This difference might point to the polemical character of 3 Baruch’s appropriation of Enochic imagery.

V. The Noachic Narrative (3 Apoc. Bar. 4:11-15)

3 Apoc. Bar. 4:11-15 deals with Noah’s story. It depicts the patriarch after his debarkation seeing the shoot of vine lying on the ground. Noah hesitates to plant the vine, knowing the fatal role this plant had in deceiving Adam and Eve. Puzzled, Noah decides to ask the Lord in prayer if he can plant the vine. The Lord sends the angel Sarasael, who delivers to Noah the  following command: “Rise, Noah, and plant the vine, and alter its name and change it for the better.”[61] Sarasael’s address to Noah is important for establishing the connection between 3 Baruch 4 and the broader Enochic/Noahic traditions. It reveals that the author of 3 Baruch was familiar not only with the details of Noah’s escape from the flood that are found in the extant materials of the Book of Giants but also with the peculiar details of Noah’s story in the Book of the Watchers and in the traditions associated with the Book of Noah.

The Greek and Ethiopic versions of 1 Enoch 10:1-3 attest that God commissioned Sariel to inform Noah about the approaching flood.[62] This story might possibly parallel Sarasael’s[63] revelation to Noah in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:15, but Sariel’s revelation in 1 Enoch 10:1-3 does not contain any information about the plant. It may be, however, that the “original” reading of 1 Enoch 10:3 survived in its entirety not in the Ethiopic text of 1 Enoch but in the text preserved by Syncellus,[64]  which corresponds closely to the Aramaic evidence.[65] In the passage found in Syncellus, God commissioned Sariel to tell Noah not only about his escape from the flood but also about a plant: “And now instruct the righteous one what to do, and the son of Lamech, that he may save his life and escape for all time; and from him a plant shall be planted and established for all generations for ever.”[66]

Although “a plant” in this revelation can be taken as a symbolic reference to the restored humanity[67] or to Noah himself, who is described in 1 Enoch 10:16 as the “plant of righteousness and truth,” some texts associated with Enochic traditions reveal that, besides “planting” justice and righteousness, Noah was involved literally in the planting of the vine.  Thus, Jub. 7:1, for example, says that “during the seventh week, in its first year, in this jubilee Noah planted a vine at the mountain (whose name was Lubar, one of the mountains of Ararat) on which the ark had come to rest. It produced fruit in the fourth year.”[68] Here, just as in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:13-15, the planting of the vine is associated with Noah’s debarkation.

Noah’s story as found in 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:11-16 gives additional support to the hypothesis about the existence of the materials associated with the Book of Noah. F. García Martínez’s pioneering research demonstrates that the materials of the Book of Noah are closely associated with the Enochic/Noachic traditions found in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Qumran materials, and Syncellus.[69] In 3 Baruch 4 several traditions associated with the Book of Noah appear to be intimately interconnected, which may point to their common origin in the Book of Noah. For example, In 3 Apoc. Bar. 4:15-17, Sarasael tells Noah about the dangers of the vine. The angel tells him that the plant still retains its evil. This revelation about the plant and the evil it possesses recalls another passage possibly associated with the Book of Noah, namely, the tradition about the angelic revelation to  Noah recorded in Jub. 10:1-14, which  has it that Noah was taught by angels about the plants and evil spirits.[70]

VI. Conclusion

1. The foregoing analysis has demonstrated a number of intriguing parallels between the theme of the garden in 3 Baruch 4 and similar traditions associated with the materials of the Book of Giants.[71] In both accounts, the garden is depicted as the place of the primordial heavenly rebellion involving angelic being(s). Although 3 Baruch 4 is written from the Adamic perspective,[72] this account demonstrates several details that are absent from “traditional” Adamic accounts but can be found in the Enochic tradition. This suggests that the author of 3 Baruch might be involved in anti-Enochic polemics, borrowing and rewriting Enochic motifs and themes from the Adamic perspective. Therefore, the story of the planting and the destruction of the garden in 3 Baruch seems to represent the locus of intense debates involving substantial rewriting of the “original” Enochic/Noahic motifs and themes. The details of the Enochic Watchers/Giants story appear to be rearranged[73] and transferred to new characters of the Adamic story, including Samael/Sataniel and the serpent.[74]

2. The author of 3 Baruch seems to be engaged in anti-Enochic polemics not only with the traditions associated with the Book of Giants but also with the Enochic motifs and themes found in the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Jubilees, and Syncellus. It appears that even the theme of the flooding of the heavenly garden represents an anti-Enochic motif. Jubilees 4 depicts Enoch as the one who was translated to the garden of Eden. Jubilees 4:23 further tells that because of Enoch “the flood water did not come on any of the land of Eden because he was placed there as a sign and to testify against all people in order to tell all the deeds of history until the day of judgment.”[75]

3. A substantial part of 3 Baruch 4 is occupied by the Noachic account, and the Noachic tradition found in 3 Baruch 4 is closely connected with the fragments of the Book of Noah found in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scroll fragments, and Syncellus. It appears, however, that the Noachic materials found in 3 Baruch 4 have also undergone the “Adamic” revisions. H. E. Gaylord observes that “a strong typological relation is set up between Adam and Noah, who discovers a piece of the vine through which Adam and Eve sinned washed out of the garden by the receding floodwaters.”[76]