3 Enoch (Hebrew Apocalypse / Sefer Hekhalot)

3 Enoch is the most narratively striking of the three Enoch books. In it, the patriarch Enoch ascends and is transformed into Metatron — the highest of the angels, called in the text "the lesser YHWH" (יְהוָה הַקָּטָן). His body is enlarged "until it matches the world in length and breadth." He is given seventy-two names. He is seated on a throne next to God's throne. He becomes the angel through whom God relates to creation.

This is the angelological move that the rest of Jewish (and Christian) mystical literature is haunted by. The "Two Powers in Heaven" controversy that the Babylonian Talmud records in BT Hagigah 15a runs directly out of this text. The rabbinic anxiety that an exalted figure seated near God's throne might be mistaken for God himself, the kabbalistic figure of Metatron, the doctrine of the divine Name as cosmic foundation — all of these have their textual root here.

What's in the book

3 Enoch is structured as a dialogue. The Tannaitic sage Rabbi Ishmael ascends to heaven in a Merkavah vision and is greeted by Metatron, who explains who he is, how he came to be, and what he sees from his throne. The text covers, in 48 short chapters:

The fact that Metatron is, in his original life, the patriarch Enoch (chs 3–6).
The transformation that elevated Enoch into Metatron (chs 7–16) — including the seventy-two names and the cosmic enlargement.
The hierarchy of the angelic court: princes of the seven heavens, the four classes of angels, the names and functions of the great angelic princes (chs 17–22).
The river of fire, the throne of glory, the curtain of God on which the destinies of all things are written (chs 23–40).
The vision of human history past, present, and future shown to Rabbi Ishmael through the cosmic curtain (chs 41–48).

What "Metatron" means and where the name comes from

The etymology of Metatron has been debated for over a century. Three main proposals:

Greek μετά + θρόνος — "behind/beside the throne," referring to the angel's position next to God's throne.
Latin metator — "the one who measures out" or "the guide," referring to Metatron's role as the angel who leads the heavenly host.
Hebrew letter-mysticism — the name encodes seventy-two letters and is itself a divine cipher.

Gershom Scholem favored the Greek derivation; later scholars (Orlov, Idel) treat the question as unsettled. What is clear is that the name appears nowhere in earlier Jewish literature — it emerges first in the Hekhalot corpus.

Dating and historical context

3 Enoch is the latest of the three Enoch books and the hardest to date precisely. The text as we have it is in Hebrew, and the final form probably dates from the 5th to 6th century CE in Sasanian-period Babylonia. The traditions it preserves are older — many elements appear in the early Hekhalot literature (Hekhalot Rabbati, Maaseh Merkavah, Sefer Hekhalot proper) and in the Talmudic discussions of Metatron, both of which trace back at least to the Talmudic period (3rd–6th century).

Some streams of the tradition are clearly older — the basic identification of Enoch with an exalted angel near God's throne shows up in 2 Enoch already, in a 1st-century Jewish text. So the Metatron-tradition proper is medieval, but the underlying Enoch-exaltation tradition is Second Temple in origin.

Why 3 Enoch matters even outside its own tradition

For Christology: Daniel Boyarin's The Jewish Gospels (2012) argues that early Christian Christology and rabbinic Metatron-theology are two responses to the same older Jewish speculation about a hidden human-figured intermediary. The two traditions diverge after the 1st century, but both have their roots in pre-Christian Jewish exaltation literature, of which 3 Enoch is the climactic surviving text.
For Kabbalah: 3 Enoch is foundational for the medieval Jewish mystical tradition. The Zohar, the Bahir, and the broader Kabbalistic angelology all build on its picture of Metatron.
For Islamic mysticism: Echoes of the Metatron-tradition reach Sufi literature, especially in the figure of the cosmic intermediary in Ibn Arabi.

Read the source text

The first English translation was by Hugo Odeberg in 1928 — now in the public domain (with the usual caveat that you should verify edition-specific copyright in your jurisdiction):

Odeberg 1928 on archive.org — search for "Hebrew Book of Enoch".

The standard modern English translation is by Philip Alexander in Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (1983), pp. 223–315. Under copyright.

Cross-references on this site

Enoch (entity) — the patriarch across 1, 2, and 3 Enoch, with the Metatron transformation discussed at length
Merkavah / Kabbalah overview — 3 Enoch's home tradition
Rabbinic Jewish overview

Scholarship pointers

P. Alexander, "3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch," in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (Doubleday, 1983), pp. 223–315. The standard English translation with substantial introduction.
H. Odeberg, 3 Enoch, or the Hebrew Book of Enoch (Cambridge, 1928). The pioneering critical edition; still consulted.
G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken, 1941), ch. 2 — the foundational modern treatment of the Hekhalot tradition.
A. A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Mohr Siebeck, 2005). The standard book on the Enoch-Metatron developmental arc.
M. Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (Continuum, 2007). For Metatron's "Son of God" associations.
D. Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels (New Press, 2012). For Christological / Two-Powers continuities.
P. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Mohr Siebeck, 2009).

Methodology note. The historical details on this page draw on Alexander 1983, Scholem 1941, and Orlov 2005. Where dating is debated (the gap between the Metatron-tradition proper and the underlying Enoch-exaltation), the page reports the spread. None of the source text is reproduced — Odeberg 1928 is at archive.org; Alexander 1983 is under copyright at Doubleday.