HistoricalChristian.Faith

1 Enoch on the Intermediate State

Dates: c. 300 BC · Wikipedia
Summary: 1 Enoch 22 is the earliest detailed map of the structured intermediate state: the dead are gathered into hollow chambers within a great mountain in the west, where the spirits are separated into distinct divisions — the righteous beside a bright spring of water, sinners apart — to await the day of judgement. It is the literary ancestor of the later Abraham's-bosom / place-of-torment geography.

Claims & evidence

The dead are gathered into hollow places made to receive every human spirit

These hollow places have been created for this very purpose, that the spirits of the souls of the dead should assemble therein, yea that all the souls of the children of men should assemble here.

— The Book of Enoch (R.H. Charles tr.), 1 Enoch 22, ccel.org. In the vision Enoch is shown four "hollow places," deep and smooth, hewn in a great mountain in the west, where the spirits of all the dead are gathered after death.

These chambers hold the dead until the day of judgement

And these places have been made to receive them till the day of their judgement and till their appointed period till the great judgement (comes) upon them.

— The Book of Enoch (R.H. Charles tr.), 1 Enoch 22, ccel.org. The intermediate state is explicitly provisional — a holding place "till the day of their judgement," not the final reward or punishment.

The spirits of the dead are separated into distinct divisions

These three have been made that the spirits of the dead might be separated.

— The Book of Enoch (R.H. Charles tr.), 1 Enoch 22, ccel.org. The chambers are not undifferentiated: the dead are sorted by their moral standing, an early version of the two-destinies structure later read into Luke 16.

The righteous are placed apart, by a bright spring of water

And such a division has been made (for) the spirits of the righteous, in which there is the bright spring of water.

— The Book of Enoch (R.H. Charles tr.), 1 Enoch 22, ccel.org. The righteous have a place of light and refreshment (the "bright spring of water"), while the sinners are held in a separate division apart from them — a foreshadowing of the comfort/torment contrast and the fixed gulf between them.

Notes

• This is the earliest detailed structured-intermediate-state text in the timeline, and the direct precursor to the later Abraham's-bosom / place-of-torment geography — the righteous in a place of light apart from sinners, both awaiting a future judgement.
• The separation of righteous from sinners into divisions anticipates the New Testament's two destinies divided by an impassable gulf (Luke 16:22–26) — see The New Testament.