The Slavonic edition and translation of 2 Enoch is of Christian origin in the 8th century but is based on an earlier work.
The cosmology of 2 Enoch corresponds closely with beliefs of the Early Middle Ages about the metaphysical structure of the universe.
Typically, Jewish pseudepigraphic texts in Slavic milieux were transmitted as part of larger historiographical, moral, and liturgical codexes and compendiums, where ideologically marginal and mainstream materials were mixed.
The best family of manuscripts[13] are copies of the compilation of rearranged materials from Chapters 40–65 found in a 14th-century judicial codex titled The Just Balance (Merilo Pravednoe).
The date of the text can be deduced solely on the basis of the internal evidence, since the book has survived only in the medieval manuscripts (even if a reference to 2 Enoch could be found in Origen's On the First Principles i, 3:3).
The crucial arguments for the early dating of the text have very largely been linked to the themes of the Temple in Jerusalem and its ongoing practices and customs.
Scholarly efforts have been, in this respect, mostly directed toward finding hints that the Sanctuary was still standing when the original text was composed.
Critical readers of pseudepigraphic texts would have difficulty finding any explicit expression of feelings of sadness or mourning about the loss of the sanctuary.
Scholars have also previously noted in the text some indications of the ongoing practice of pilgrimage to the central place of worship.
In his instructions to the children, Enoch repeatedly encourages them to bring the gifts before the face of God for the remission of sins, a practice which appears to recall well-known sacrificial customs widespread in the Second Temple period.
Further, the Old Bulgarian apocalypse also contains a direct command to visit the Temple three times a day, an inconsistency if the sanctuary had been already destroyed.
[22] A growing number of scholars recognize the antiquity of 2 Enoch, including also 2EM, and support a pre-70 CE dating for its original composition.
Yet along with appropriations of ancient traditions about the seventh antediluvian hero, the text attempts to reshape them by adding a new mystical dimension to the familiar apocalyptic imagery.