title: PewDiePie

text: In September 2014, Rob Walker of "Yahoo!" called Kjellberg's popularity "insane", writing that it "strikes me as considerably more curious – I mean, you know who Rihanna is, but would you recognize this kid if he was standing in line behind you at the bank?" Walker, among other reporters, has questioned and analysed reasons for his popularity. Walker commented on Kjellberg's interaction with his audience, writing, "While he can be raucous and crude, it always comes across as genuine. He constantly addresses his audience as a bunch of peer-like friends, as opposed to distant, genuflecting fans. He's certainly more than willing to make fun of himself in the process."


title: PewDiePie

text: In the wake of the "Wall Street Journal" controversy, John Herman of "The New York Times" commented that "[Kjellberg] bemoaned [YouTube's] structure and the way it had changed; he balked at its limits and took joy in causing offense and flouting rules. Over time, he grew into an unlikely, disorienting, and insistently unserious political identity: He became YouTube's very own populist reactionary."


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg's influence has ranked highly on various lists. Subtitled as the "King of YouTube" on "The Verge"s 2014 "Verge 50" list—the outlet's "definitive list of the most interesting people building the future." On his listing's blurb, "The Verge" wrote that "Kjellberg's real talent is finding the human within games. He's just a normal person, finding the authentic in games for an audience that are desperate for a little more humanity." In 2015, Kjellberg was included on "Time"'s list of the 30 most influential people on the Internet, with the publication writing that his channel "broadcasts some of the most-watched programs in pop culture." Later in 2015, Kjellberg was featured on the cover of "Variety"s "Famechangers" issue, with the magazine ranking him as the "#1 Famechanger", or "those whose influence stands head and shoulders above the rest".


title: PewDiePie

text: The following year, "Time" included him on their "Time 100" list, with "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker writing in his entry, "I know it might seem weird, especially to those of us from an older generation, that people would spend so much time watching someone else play video games [...] But I choose to see it as the birth of a new art form. And I don't think anyone should underestimate its most powerful artist." "Forbes" wrote that "[Kjellberg's] overall brand suffered earlier this year [2017] when he included anti-Semitic content in nine of his videos," when citing their reason for not ranking him as the top gaming influence. "Forbes" still included Kjellberg in the gaming category of their June 2017 "Top Influencers" list. In September 2019, "The Sunday Times" ranked him first on their list of the UK's 100 most influential people online.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg's channel appeals strongly to younger viewers, a group Google refers to as "Generation C" for their habits of "creation, curation, connection and community". This demographic has been more commonly referred to as Generation Z by researchers and popular media. According to a 2014 survey commissioned by "Variety", Kjellberg, along with several other YouTube personalities, have been reported to be more influential and popular than mainstream celebrities, such as Jennifer Lawrence, among US teenagers aged 13 through 18. Studies of the gaming community on YouTube have shown that 95% of video game players engage in watching online videos related to gaming, which has been linked to being an important reason for Kjellberg's popularity. In 2016, Maker Studios' international chief content officer was cited in "The Guardian" as comparing "the average parent's bafflement at their teenage children's passion for stars like PewDiePie, KSI, and Zoella to past generations' inability to comprehend punk rock or gangsta rap." In a 2017 video, Kjellberg shared a screenshot of data provided by YouTube regarding his channel statistics, which suggested his largest demographic was among the 18–24 age group, followed by the 25–34 age group. He continued to be popular with this demographic by the end of the 2010s, with research by Morning Consult detailing that Kjellberg's name recognition and favorable opinions of him are of a comparable or higher level to mainstream athletes and entertainers such as LeBron James and Justin Bieber. "The New York Times" published results of an online reader poll the publication held, showing that only 17% of their digital readers correctly identified Kjellberg after seeing an image of him; the outlet wrote that the poll's results "probably reflect the fact that "Times" readers are older than a representative sample of Americans, citing that "in 2015, the median digital "Times" subscriber was 54 years old."


title: PewDiePie

text: "ESPN" noted in 2015 that Kjellberg typically performed a "Brofist" gesture at the end of his videos, and often referred to his fan base as the "Bro Army", addressing his audience as "bros". Likewise, media outlets also adopted the name when referring to Kjellberg's fan base. Later in his YouTube career, Kjellberg stopped using the term "Bro Army", and began to refer to his audience as "Squad Fam", "9 year olds", and later "19 year olds", in his videos. The fan base has been subject to criticism; in July 2018, "Wired" published an article, referring to Kjellberg's fan base as "toxic", stating that "it's not just that they've stuck with the Swedish gamer/alleged comedian as he peppered his videos with racial slurs, rape jokes, anti-Semitism, and homophobia for nearly a decade (though that's bad enough). It's also that they insist that PewDiePie somehow isn't being hateful at all."


title: PewDiePie

text: At the 2013 Social Star Awards in Singapore, Kjellberg greeted his fans personally despite security warning him against doing so. Kjellberg also mentioned this event to "Rolling Stone", stating, "I didn't even understand they were screaming for me at first." Kjellberg has commented on fans from Malaysia and Singapore; during a trip to Kuala Lumpur in 2016, fans entered his hotel to search for him, which he expressed annoyance with. In a 2019 vlog, Kjellberg expressed that fans in Malaysia and Singapore can be "very hectic and scream-ish and crazy, and they lose their minds when they see you." He later apologized to fans from the two countries, stating that seeing the effect he had "on fans back then [during his 2013 trip to Singapore] was cool" and that he would "be lying" if he claimed to hate this initial experience with fans, although added that he has grown to not enjoy being treated as more than a person. "Business Insider Singapore" reported that some fans took offense to Kjellberg's comments, but that "most netizens accepted the YouTuber's apology and admitted that fans had gone overboard in invading his privacy."


title: PewDiePie

text: Relating to his responsibility to his audience, Kjellberg has stated, "many people see me as a friend they can chill with for 15 minutes a day," adding, "The loneliness in front of the computer screens brings us together. But I never set out to be a role model; I just want to invite them to come over to my place." Correlating with this note, his audience has been reported to provide positive remarks about him; some of his viewers created and contributed to a thread expressing that he has made them happier and feel better about themselves. Conversely, during an informal Twitter poll conducted by one "Kotaku" reporter, respondents described him as "annoying" and an "obnoxious waste of time." Additionally, "Rolling Stone" has documented the existence of several Reddit threads dedicated to sharing disparaging views of Kjellberg.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg has been noted to support video games from indie developers, often having played through such titles in his videos. His commentaries have had a positive effect on sales of indie games, with "The Washington Post" writing that "gamemakers have observed a kind of Oprah effect." The developers of the indie game "McPixel" stated, "The largest force driving attention to "McPixel" at that time were 'Let's Play' videos. Mostly by Jesse Cox and PewDiePie." Kjellberg has also been confirmed to have driven the popularity of "Yandere Simulator" during that game's development, and positively influenced the sales of "" and "Goat Simulator". Although games being featured on Kjellberg's channel have reportedly contributed to their commercial success, he has stated, "I just want to play the games, not influence sales."


title: PewDiePie

text: In 2019, Kjellberg's "Minecraft" videos led a surge of interest towards the game, which saw an increase in players. It also registered the largest-trending score on YouTube since January 2017 and surpassed "Fortnite" as the most-searched game on YouTube, with the searches for "Minecraft" on Google almost doubling since previous months. Video game media outlets, such as "Polygon" and "The Verge", largely credited this newfound success to Kjellberg, with "The Verge" suggesting that the surge "proves that the 'PewDiePie Effect' is still real" (about the Oprah effect-like success enjoyed by games Kjellberg has played). Several other popular YouTubers followed suit by focusing on "Minecraft" content. "Polygon" also noted that in the wake of Kjellberg's focus on "Minecraft", YouTubers focused on "Fortnite" began to shift towards making "Minecraft" videos instead.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg, along with characters from "", were referred to by a "McPixel" level designed in his honour. Additionally, in the video game "Surgeon Simulator 2013", the Alien Surgery stage features an organ called "Pewdsball" in honour of Kjellberg. Kjellberg agreed to allow the developers of "Surgeon Simulator 2013" to use his likeness in "GOTY IDST", a showering simulation video game. Kjellberg was also included as an NPC in the indie game "Party Hard", and had a voice acting role in "Pinstripe", a puzzle adventure game.


title: PewDiePie

text: In March 2014, Kjellberg made an estimated $140,000–$1.4 million from YouTube revenue, according to Social Blade. In June 2014, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Kjellberg earned $4 million in 2013; Kjellberg confirmed on Reddit that the figures were somewhat close to what he actually earned. In July 2015, the Swedish newspaper "Expressen" reported that Kjellberg's production company, PewDie Productions AB, reported earnings of 63.7 million SEK ($7.5 million) in 2014. In 2015, outlets described Kjellberg's income as sizeable, and even "remarkable"; Kjellberg appeared at the top of "Forbes" October 2015 list of the richest YouTube stars with a reported $12 million earned in 2015.


title: PewDiePie

text: In December 2016, "Forbes" named Kjellberg as the highest-earning YouTuber with his annual income reaching $15 million. This was up 20% from 2015, largely due to his YouTube Red series "Scare PewDiePie" and his book "This Book Loves You", which sold over 112,000 copies according to Nielsen Bookscan. Kjellberg relies on external revenue sources rather than YouTube's ad model, which he has stated is common for most YouTube content creators; Kjellberg commented that YouTube's ad revenue model is inefficient, unstable, and insecure. According to "Forbes", Kjellberg's income dropped to $12 million in 2017, which made him the sixth highest-paid YouTuber during that year. "Forbes" commented that Kjellberg's income would have been higher had he avoided the pushback from advertisers resulting from the controversies surrounding his videos in 2017.


title: PewDiePie

text: Extensive media coverage on his earnings has been met with frustration by Kjellberg, who has stated that he is "tired of talking about how much [he makes]", and suggested that media outlets should rather report on the money he raised for charity. "The Guardian" commented that the reason the media was so captivated by Kjellberg's earnings is that the topic "offers a rare insight into the money being made at the top end of YouTube stardom," adding "it's very rare for any YouTube creator to talk about their earnings publicly, not least because YouTube itself does not encourage it."


title: PewDiePie

text: On 24 September 2015, Kjellberg released his own video game, "", on iOS and Android. The game was developed by Canadian game developer Outerminds in collaboration with Kjellberg. On 29 September 2016, he released another game developed by Outerminds, "PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator". It was released as a free app on iOS and Android devices and reached the number one spot on the App Store within a few days of its release. On 31 October 2017, former "Goat Simulator" developer and lead designer Armin Ibrisagic announced his partnership with Kjellberg for his video game "Animal Super Squad". Kjellberg helped Ibrisagic with the core concept of the game and provided him with feedback and creative direction. In 2019, Kjellberg released two more video games: "PewDiePie's Pixelings" on 15 November and "Poopdie" on 12 December. The latter game was rejected from the App Store due to its "crude imagery and sound effects which may disgust users", but is available on Android.


title: PewDiePie

text: Penguin Group's Razorbill imprint released Kjellberg's "This Book Loves You", a parody of self-help books, on 20 October 2015. The book is a collection of anti-proverbs paired with visuals. It was number-one on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for two weeks in the Young Adult Paperback category. Kjellberg and his wife Marzia launched Tsuki, a unisex clothing brand which they announced in a YouTube video.


title: PewDiePie

text: Beginning in April 2014 and spanning into August, Kjellberg, along with his then-girlfriend Marzia, began a marketing campaign for the Legendary Pictures film "As Above, So Below". Kjellberg's videos for the marketing campaign included a miniseries featuring him participating in the "Catacombs Challenge". The challenge involved Kjellberg searching for three keys in the catacombs to open a container holding "the Philosopher's stone". The couple's videos were able to earn nearly 20 million views. Maker Studios, which both Kjellberg and Marzia were represented by, brokered the ad deal between the two and Legendary Pictures. In January 2015, Mountain Dew partnered with Kjellberg to launch a fan fiction contest, in which winning fan fiction will be animated into video formats and then uploaded onto his channel.


title: PewDiePie

text: While he entered partnerships early in his YouTube career, Kjellberg maintained that he worked with few brands and conducted few promotions. He stated he felt he made enough money from YouTube and found endorsing too many brands to be disrespectful to his fans. On this topic, Kjellberg has expressed disappointment when a sizable portion of people misinterpret his intentions; he stated, "if I mention on Twitter that I find this or that Kickstarter project cool, people immediately start to ask what economical interests I might have in it." Eventually, Kjellberg began to work with more brands, stating that he wanted to have a genuine relationship with brands and added he was lucky to not be dependent on working with them to support his career. In January 2019, Kjellberg announced a partnership with energy drink company G Fuel.


title: PewDiePie

text: Aside from his own YouTube channel, Kjellberg has made appearances in the videos of other YouTube creators. In April 2013, he made a cameo in an episode of "Epic Rap Battles of History", portraying Mikhail Baryshnikov. In July 2013, he starred alongside Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox of Smosh, as well as Jenna Marbles, as guest judges on the second season of "Internet Icon". Kjellberg also appeared in YouTube's annual year-end "Rewind" series each year from 2013 to 2016; he once again appeared in .


title: PewDiePie

text: On 3 June 2014, Sveriges Radio announced that Kjellberg was chosen to host his own episode of the Swedish radio show "Sommar i P1". Due to his international popularity, the episode was recorded in both Swedish and English. The Swedish version was broadcast on 9 August 2014 on Sveriges Radio P1, and when the broadcast started the English version was published online. The link to the Swedish version of the broadcast was shared over 3,500 times, and the link to the English version was shared about 49,000 times.


title: PewDiePie

text: In December 2014, Kjellberg guest-starred in two episodes of the 18th season of "South Park." The two episodes served as a two-part season finale. The first part, titled "#REHASH" aired on 3 December, while the second part, titled "#HappyHolograms", aired on 10 December. In the episodes, he parodied himself and other Let's Play commentators, providing commentary over "Call of Duty" gameplay in an overly expressive way.


title: PewDiePie

text: In July 2015, Kjellberg was announced as a voice actor in the Vimeo fantasy series, "Oscar's Hotel for Fantastical Creatures". In October of the same year, he appeared as a guest on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," where Colbert referred to him as "Emperor of the Internet". In February 2016, he appeared on "Conan", playing "Far Cry Primal" as part of the show's Clueless Gamer segment. In 2019, he was a guest on the "Cold Ones" YouTube podcast.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg's popularity has allowed him to stir support for fundraising drives. In February 2012, Kjellberg ran for King of the Web, an online contest. He lost the overall title, but still became the "Gaming King of the Web" for the 1–15 February 2012 voting period. During the following voting period, Kjellberg won and donated his cash winnings to the World Wildlife Fund. He has raised money for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and began a "Water Campaign" charity, where his fans could donate money to , in celebration of reaching ten million subscribers. Kjellberg contributed one dollar to the charity for every 500 views the video announcing the campaign accumulated, up to a maximum of $10,000. Kjellberg had the stated goal of raising US$, but at the end of the drive, the amount raised was $. Kjellberg organized another charity drive for Charity: Water in February 2016. The drive raised $, surpassing a $100,000 goal.


title: PewDiePie

text: In celebration of reaching 25 million subscribers in June 2014, Kjellberg announced another charity drive for Save the Children. It raised over $630,000, surpassing a $250,000 goal. In an interview with the Swedish magazine "Icon", he has expressed a desire to continue these drives as time goes on, and also credited John and Hank Green as two individuals who gave him the idea of making unique videos for charity. These videos are purchased by game manufacturers and advertisers, for prices ranging up to $50,000.


title: PewDiePie

text: In December 2016, he hosted "Cringemas", a livestream held across two days (9 and 10 December, both at around 6 pm–10 pm GMT), with other Revelmode creators. During the livestream, they helped raise money for RED, a charity committed to helping eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. After the first day, the fundraiser raised over $200,000, after YouTube doubled their goal of $100,000, and at the end of the livestream, they had raised a total of over $1.3 million with help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


title: PewDiePie

text: On 3 December 2018, Kjellberg announced that he had started a fundraiser on GoFundMe for Child Rights and You (CRY) to help Indian children, partially in response to racist comments left on his videos directed toward Indians. Kjellberg also hosted a livestream on 4 December, donating all of its proceeds to CRY. He raised over $200,000.


title: PewDiePie

text: On 21 July 2019, Kjellberg started a fundraiser on GoFundMe with American actor Jack Black for National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), in the wake of the suicide of the internet personality Etika in June 2019. Kjellberg and Jack Black streamed themselves playing "Minecraft" together to raise money for their fundraiser. Kjellberg donated $10,000 to his fundraiser and managed to raise over $30,000 for NAMI. Kjellberg has previously spoken on the topic of mental health, including his struggles with his own, and as part of the UK's Mental Health Awareness Week in 2017, he highlighted various resources to help one's mental health in a video.


title: PewDiePie

text: In celebration of receiving his 100 million subscribers Play Button in September 2019, Kjellberg announced in a video that he was donating $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international Jewish non-governmental organisation. Part of Kjellberg's fanbase criticized his decision, citing controversial actions and stances of the ADL. "Kotaku" and "Vice" praised Kjellberg's donation and were critical of the portion of Kjellberg's fanbase who opposed the donation. Two days after his initial announcement, Kjellberg announced in another video that he had decided to withdraw his donation. He expressed that he was advised to donate to the ADL, and did not hand-pick an organization that he was passionate about, as he had done with previous donations. Additionally, he confirmed that he would still make a $50,000 donation to an organization at some point in the future, but after undergoing his usual process to select a suitable one.


title: PewDiePie

text: On 31 October 2019, Kjellberg donated $69,420 to Team Trees, a fundraising drive taking action against deforestation by pledging to plant one tree for every dollar donated. The donation number is a comedic in-joke combining numbers from internet culture: 69 and 420.


title: PewDiePie

text: In early June 2020, Kjellberg raised more than $116,000 for the Sentencing Project, victims of police brutality, and for small businesses affected by Black Lives Matter demonstrators looting and rioting after the murder of George Floyd.


title: PewDiePie

text: In January 2021, Kjellberg raised nearly $1 million for Red Nose Day, Movember, Papyrus, Blue Ocean Foundation, Save the Children Lebanon, and Winston's Wish.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg married his long-time Italian girlfriend Marzia Bisognin on 19 August 2019. The two were introduced to each other through a friend of Bisognin's in 2011, and after establishing an online relationship, Kjellberg flew to Italy to meet her. The pair shuffled between Sweden and Italy, before settling in Brighton, England. Kjellberg explained that they moved to the UK in July 2013 for preference to live close to the sea and for better Internet connectivity. He said he enjoyed the general anonymity that living in Brighton granted him.


title: PewDiePie

text: A 2018 trip to Japan inspired Kjellberg to move to the country. Announcing their intention to permanently move there, Kjellberg and his wife subsequently bought a home in Japan the following year. The home was robbed in late 2019, and the couple's move was delayed due to Japan restricting relocation regulations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2022, Kjellberg and his wife moved to their home in Japan with a 5-year business visa. After moving to Japan, Kjellberg expressed enjoying a lack of recognition while in public.


title: PewDiePie

text: Regarding his political beliefs, Kjellberg stated in October 2019 that he is "more apolitical than anything", and that he was "somewhere in between" left-wing and right-wing. In June 2014, Kjellberg stated that he is an agnostic atheist.


title: PewDiePie

text: Kjellberg has frequently mentioned in videos that he adheres to a pescetarian diet for various reasons. In a "Cold Ones" podcast interview in July 2019, Kjellberg talked about how he stopped drinking after being inspired by a book on Buddhism, and expressed surprise at how difficult breaking his drinking habit had been.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan IV Vasilyevich (; 25 August 1530 – ), commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible, was the grand prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Tsar of all Russia from 1547 to 1584.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was the son of Vasili III, the Rurikid ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. He was appointed grand prince after his father's death, when he was three years old. A group of reformers known as the "Chosen Council" united around the young Ivan, declaring him tsar (emperor) of all Rus' in 1547 at the age of 16 and establishing the Tsardom of Russia with Moscow as the predominant state. Ivan's reign was characterised by Russia's transformation from a medieval state to an empire under the tsar but at an immense cost to its people and its broader, long-term economy.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: During his youth, there was a conquest of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. After he had consolidated his power, Ivan rid himself of the advisers from the "Chosen Council" and triggered the Livonian War, which ravaged Russia and resulted in the loss of Livonia and Ingria but allowed him to establish greater autocratic control over Russia's nobility, which he violently purged with the . The later years of Ivan's reign were marked by the Massacre of Novgorod and the burning of Moscow by Tatars.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Contemporary sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality. He was described as intelligent and devout but also prone to paranoia, rage, and episodic outbreaks of mental instability that increased with age. In one fit of anger, he murdered his eldest son and heir, Ivan Ivanovich, and he might also have caused the miscarriage of the latter's unborn child. This left his younger son, the politically ineffectual Feodor Ivanovich, to inherit the throne, a man whose rule and subsequent childless death led directly to the end of the Rurikid dynasty and the beginning of the Time of Troubles.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The English word "terrible" is usually used to translate the Russian word in Ivan's nickname, but this is a somewhat archaic translation. The Russian word reflects the older English usage of "terrible" as in "inspiring fear or terror; dangerous; powerful; formidable" (i.e., similar to modern English "terrifying"). It does not convey the more modern connotations of English "terrible" such as "defective" or "evil". Vladimir Dal defines specifically in archaic usage and as an epithet for tsars: "courageous, magnificent, magisterial and keeping enemies in fear, but people in obedience". Other translations have also been suggested by modern scholars, including "formidable".


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was the first son of Vasili III and his second wife, Elena Glinskaya. Vasili's mother was an Eastern Roman princess and member of the Byzantine Palaiologos family. She was a daughter of Thomas Palaiologos, the younger brother of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (). Elena's mother was a Serbian princess and her father's family, the Glinski clan (nobles based in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), claimed descent both from Orthodox Hungarian nobles and the Mongol ruler Mamai (1335–1380.) Born on August 25, he received the name Ivan in honor of St. John the Baptist, the day of the Beheading of which falls on August 29. In some texts of that era, it is also occasionally mentioned with the names Titus and Smaragd, in accordance with the tradition of polyonyms among the Rurikovich. Baptized in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery by Abbot Joasaph (Skripitsyn), two elders of the Joseph-Volotsk monastery were elected as recipients—the monk Cassian Bossoy and the hegumen Daniel. Tradition says that in honor of the birth of Ivan, the Church of the Ascension was built in Kolomenskoye.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: When Ivan was three years old, his father died from an abscess and inflammation on his leg that developed into blood poisoning. The closest contenders to the throne, except for the young Ivan, were the younger brothers of Vasily. Of the six sons of Ivan III, only two remained: Prince Andrey Staritsky and Prince Dmitrovsky Yuri. Ivan was proclaimed the Grand Prince of Moscow at the request of his father. His mother Elena Glinskaya initially acted as regent, but she died in 1538 when Ivan was only eight years old; many believe that she was poisoned. The regency then alternated between several feuding boyar families that fought for control. According to his own letters, Ivan, along with his younger brother Yuri, often felt neglected and offended by the mighty boyars from the Shuisky and Belsky families. In a letter to Prince Kurbski Ivan remembered, "My brother Iurii, of blessed memory, and me they brought up like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have I suffered for want of garments and food!" That account has been challenged by the historian Edward Keenan, who doubts the authenticity of the source in which the quotations are found.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: On 16 January 1547, at 16, Ivan was crowned at the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Moscow Kremlin. The Metropolitan placed on Ivan the signs of royal dignity: the Cross of the Life-Giving Tree, barmas, and the cap of Monomakh; Ivan Vasilievich was anointed with myrrh, and then the metropolitan blessed the tsar. He was the first to be crowned as "Tsar of All the Russias", partly imitating his grandfather, Ivan III the Great, who had claimed the title of Grand Prince of all Rus'. Until then, rulers of Muscovy were crowned as Grand Princes, but Ivan III the Great had styled himself "tsar" in his correspondence. Two weeks after his coronation, Ivan married his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, a member of the Romanov family, who became the first Russian tsaritsa.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: By being crowned tsar, Ivan was sending a message to the world and to Russia that he was now the only supreme ruler of the country, and his will was not to be questioned. "The new title symbolized an assumption of powers equivalent and parallel to those held by former Byzantine Emperor and the Tatar Khan, both known in Russian sources as Tsar. The political effect was to elevate Ivan's position". The new title not only secured the throne but also granted Ivan a new dimension of power that was intimately tied to religion. He was now a "divine" leader appointed to enact God's will, as "church texts described Old Testament kings as 'Tsars' and Christ as the Heavenly Tsar". The newly appointed title was then passed on from generation to generation, and "succeeding Muscovite rulers... benefited from the divine nature of the power of the Russian monarch... crystallized during Ivan's reign".


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Despite calamities triggered by the Great Fire of 1547, the early part of Ivan's reign was one of peaceful reforms and modernization. Ivan revised the law code, creating the Sudebnik of 1550, founded a standing army (the ), established the (the first Russian parliament of feudal estates) and the council of the nobles (known as the Chosen Council) and confirmed the position of the Church with the Council of the Hundred Chapters (Stoglavy Synod), which unified the rituals and ecclesiastical regulations of the whole country. He introduced local self-government to rural regions, mainly in northeastern Russia, populated by the state peasantry.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1553, Ivan suffered a near-fatal illness and was thought not able to recover. While on his presumed deathbed, Ivan had asked the boyars to swear an oath of allegiance to his eldest son, an infant at the time. Many boyars refused since they deemed the tsar's health too hopeless for him to survive. This angered Ivan and added to his distrust of the boyars. There followed brutal reprisals and assassinations, including those of Metropolitan Philip and Prince Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan ordered in 1553 the establishment of the Moscow Print Yard, and the first printing press was introduced to Russia. Several religious books in Russian were printed during the 1550s and 1560s. The new technology provoked discontent among traditional scribes, which led to the Print Yard being burned in an arson attack. The first Russian printers, Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets, were forced to flee from Moscow to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Nevertheless, the printing of books resumed from 1568 onwards, with Andronik Timofeevich Nevezha and his son Ivan now heading the Print Yard.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan had St. Basil's Cathedral constructed in Moscow to commemorate the seizure of Kazan. There is a legend that he was so impressed with the structure that he had the architect, Postnik Yakovlev, blinded so that he could never design anything as beautiful again. However, in reality Postnik Yakovlev went on to design more churches for Ivan and the walls of the Kazan Kremlin in the early 1560s as well as the chapel over St. Basil's grave, which was added to St. Basil's Cathedral in 1588, several years after Ivan's death. Although more than one architect was associated with that name, it is believed that the principal architect is the same person.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Other events of the period include the introduction of the first laws restricting the mobility of the peasants, which would eventually lead to serfdom and were instituted during the rule of the future Tsar Boris Godunov in 1597. (See also Serfdom in Russia.)


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The combination of bad harvests, devastation brought by the oprichnina and Tatar raids, the prolonged war and overpopulation caused a severe social and economic crisis in the second half of Ivan's reign.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The 1560s brought to Russia hardships that led to a dramatic change of Ivan's policies. Russia was devastated by a combination of drought, famine, unsuccessful wars against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tatar invasions, and the sea-trading blockade carried out by the Swedes, the Poles, and the Hanseatic League. His first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, died in 1560, which was suspected to be a poisoning. The personal tragedy deeply hurt Ivan and is thought to have affected his personality, if not his mental health. At the same time, one of Ivan's advisors, Prince Andrei Kurbsky, defected to the Lithuanians, took command of the Lithuanian troops and devastated the Russian region of Velikiye Luki. This series of treasons made Ivan paranoically suspicious of nobility.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: On 3 December 1564, Ivan departed Moscow for Aleksandrova Sloboda, where he sent two letters in which he announced his abdication because of the alleged embezzlement and treason of the aristocracy and the clergy. The boyar court was unable to rule in Ivan's absence and feared the wrath of the Muscovite citizens. A boyar envoy departed for Aleksandrova Sloboda to beg Ivan to return to the throne. Ivan agreed to return on condition of being granted absolute power. He demanded the right to condemn and execute traitors and confiscate their estates without interference from the boyar council or church. Ivan decreed the creation of the .


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Alexsandrova Sloboda was a separate territory within the borders of Russia, mostly in the territory of the former Novgorod Republic in the north. Ivan held exclusive power over the territory. The Boyar Council ruled the ('land'), the second division of the state. Ivan also recruited a personal guard known as the . Originally, it numbered 1000. The were headed by Malyuta Skuratov. One known was the German adventurer Heinrich von Staden. The enjoyed social and economic privileges under the . They owed their allegiance and status to Ivan, not heredity or local bonds.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The first wave of persecutions targeted primarily the princely clans of Russia, notably the influential families of Suzdal. Ivan executed, exiled or forcibly tonsured prominent members of the boyar clans on questionable accusations of conspiracy. Among those who were executed were the Metropolitan Philip and the prominent warlord Alexander Gorbaty-Shuisky. In 1566, Ivan extended the to eight central districts. Of the 12,000 nobles, 570 became and the rest were expelled.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Under the new political system, the were given large estates but, unlike the previous landlords, could not be held accountable for their actions. The men "took virtually all the peasants possessed, forcing them to pay 'in one year as much as [they] used to pay in ten. This degree of oppression resulted in increasing cases of peasants fleeing, which, in turn, reduced the overall production. The price of grain increased ten-fold.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Conditions under the were worsened by the 1570 epidemic, a plague that killed 10,000 people in Novgorod and 600 to 1,000 daily in Moscow. During the grim conditions of the epidemic, a famine and the ongoing Livonian War, Ivan grew suspicious that noblemen of the wealthy city of Novgorod were planning to defect and to place the city itself into the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. A Novgorod citizen Petr Volynets warned the tsar about the alleged conspiracy, which modern historians believe to be false. In 1570, Ivan ordered the to raid the city. The burned and pillaged Novgorod and the surrounding villages, and the city has never regained its former prominence.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Casualty figures vary greatly from different sources. The First Pskov Chronicle estimates the number of victims at 60,000. According to the Third Novgorod Chronicle, the massacre lasted for five weeks. The massacre of Novgorod consisted of men, women and children who were tied to sleighs and run into the freezing waters of the Volkhov River, which Ivan ordered on the basis of unproved accusations of treason. He then tortured its inhabitants and killed thousands in a pogrom. The archbishop was also hunted to death. Almost every day, 500 or 600 people were killed or drowned, but the official death toll named 1,500 of Novgorod's "big" people (nobility) and mentioned only about the same number of "smaller" people. Many modern researchers estimate the number of victims to range from 2,000 to 3,000 since after the famine and epidemics of the 1560s, the population of Novgorod most likely did not exceed 10,000–20,000. Many survivors were deported elsewhere.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The did not live long after the sack of Novgorod. During the 1571–72 Russo-Crimean War, the failed to prove themselves worthy against a regular army. In 1572, Ivan abolished the and disbanded his .


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1575, Ivan once again pretended to resign from his title and proclaimed Simeon Bekbulatovich, his statesman of Tatar origin, the new "Grand Prince of All Rus"'. Simeon reigned as a figurehead leader for about a year. According to the English envoy Giles Fletcher, the Elder, Simeon acted under Ivan's instructions to confiscate all of the lands that belonged to monasteries, and Ivan pretended to disagree with the decision. When the throne was returned to Ivan in 1576, he returned some of the confiscated land and kept the rest.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1547, Hans Schlitte, the agent of Ivan, recruited craftsmen in Germany for work in Russia. However, all of the craftsmen were arrested in Lübeck at the request of Poland and Livonia. The German merchant companies ignored the new port built by Ivan on the River Narva in 1550 and continued to deliver goods in the Baltic ports owned by Livonia. Russia remained isolated from sea trade.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan established close ties with the Kingdom of England. Russian-English relations can be traced to 1551, when the Muscovy Company was formed by Richard Chancellor, Sebastian Cabot, Sir Hugh Willoughby and several London merchants. In 1553, Chancellor sailed to the White Sea and continued overland to Moscow, where he visited Ivan's court. Ivan opened up the White Sea and the port of Arkhangelsk to the company and granted it privilege of trading throughout his reign without paying the standard customs fees.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: With the use of English merchants, Ivan engaged in a long correspondence with Elizabeth I of England. While the queen focused on commerce, Ivan was more interested in a military alliance. During his troubled relations with the boyars, Ivan even asked her for a guarantee to be granted asylum in England if his rule was jeopardised. Elizabeth agreed if he provided for himself during his stay.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan corresponded with overseas Orthodox leaders. In response to a letter of Patriarch Joachim of Alexandria asking him for financial assistance for the Saint Catherine's Monastery, in the Sinai Peninsula, which had suffered by the Turks, Ivan sent in 1558 a delegation to Egypt Eyalet by Archdeacon Gennady, who, however, died in Constantinople before he could reach Egypt. From then on, the embassy was headed by Smolensk merchant Vasily Poznyakov, whose delegation visited Alexandria, Cairo and Sinai; brought the patriarch a fur coat and an icon sent by Ivan and left an interesting account of his two-and-a-half years of travels.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was the first ruler to begin cooperating with the free cossacks on a large scale. Relations were handled through the Posolsky Prikaz diplomatic department; Moscow sent them money and weapons, while tolerating their freedoms, to draw them into an alliance against the Tatars. The first evidence of cooperation surfaces in 1549 when Ivan ordered the Don Cossacks to attack Crimea.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: While Ivan was a child, armies of the Kazan Khanate repeatedly raided northeastern Russia. In the 1530s, the Crimean khan formed an offensive alliance with Safa Giray of Kazan, his relative. When Safa Giray invaded Muscovy in December 1540, the Russians used Qasim Tatars to contain him. After his advance was stalled near Murom, Safa Giray was forced to withdraw to his own borders.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The reverses undermined Safa Giray's authority in Kazan. A pro-Russian party, represented by Shahgali, gained enough popular support to make several attempts to take over the Kazan throne. In 1545, Ivan mounted an expedition to the River Volga to show his support for the pro-Russians.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1551, the tsar sent his envoy to the Nogai Horde, and they promised to maintain neutrality during the impending war. The Ar begs and Udmurts submitted to Russian authority as well. In 1551, the wooden fort of Sviyazhsk was transported down the Volga from Uglich all the way to Kazan. It was used as the Russian "place d'armes" during the decisive campaign of 1552.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: On 16 June 1552, Ivan led a strong Russian army towards Kazan. The last siege of the Tatar capital commenced on 30 August. Under the supervision of Prince Alexander Gorbaty-Shuisky, the Russians used battering rams and a siege tower, undermining and 150 cannons. The Russians also had the advantage of efficient military engineers. The city's water supply was blocked and the walls were breached. Kazan finally fell on 2 October, its fortifications were razed and much of the population massacred. Many Russian prisoners and slaves were released. Ivan celebrated his victory over Kazan by building several churches with oriental features, most famously Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow. The fall of Kazan was only the beginning of a series of so-called "Cheremis wars". The attempts of the Moscow government to gain a foothold on the Middle Volga kept provoking uprisings of local peoples, which was suppressed only with great difficulty. In 1557, the First Cheremis War ended, and the Bashkirs accepted Ivan's authority.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In campaigns in 1554 and 1556, Russian troops conquered the Astrakhan Khanate at the mouths of the Volga River, and the new Astrakhan fortress was built in 1558 by Ivan Vyrodkov to replace the old Tatar capital. The annexation of the Tatar khanates meant the conquest of vast territories, access to large markets and control of the entire length of the Volga River. Subjugating Muslim khanates turned Muscovy into an empire.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: After his conquest of Kazan, Ivan is said to have ordered the crescent, a symbol of Islam, to be placed underneath the Christian cross on the domes of Orthodox Christian churches.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1568, Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Paşa, who was the real power in the administration of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim, initiated the first encounter between the Ottoman Empire and its future northern rival. The results presaged the many disasters to come. A plan to unite the Volga and Don by a canal was detailed in Constantinople. In the summer of 1569, a large force under Kasim Paşa of 1,500 Janissaries, 2,000 Spakhs and a few thousand Azaps and Akıncıs were sent to lay siege to Astrakhan and to begin the canal works while an Ottoman fleet besieged Azov.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In early 1570, Ivan's ambassadors concluded a treaty at Constantinople that restored friendly relations between the Sultan and the Tsar.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1558, Ivan launched the Livonian War in an attempt to gain access to the Baltic Sea and its major trade routes. The war ultimately proved unsuccessful and stretched on for 24 years and engaging the Kingdom of Sweden, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Teutonic Knights of Livonia. The prolonged war had nearly destroyed the economy, and the "Oprichnina" had thoroughly disrupted the government. Meanwhile, the Union of Lublin had united the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth acquired an energetic leader, Stephen Báthory, who was supported by Russia's southern enemy, the Ottoman Empire. Ivan's realm was being squeezed by two of the time's great powers.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: After rejecting peace proposals from his enemies, Ivan had found himself in a difficult position by 1579. The displaced refugees fleeing the war compounded the effects of the simultaneous drought, and the exacerbated war engendered epidemics causing much loss of life.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Báthory then launched a series of offensives against Muscovy in the campaign seasons of 1579–81 to try to cut the Kingdom of Livonia from Muscovy. During his first offensive in 1579, he retook Polotsk with 22,000 men. During the second, in 1580, he took Velikie Luki with a 29,000-strong force. Finally, he began the Siege of Pskov in 1581 with a 100,000-strong army. Narva, in Estonia, was reconquered by Sweden in 1581.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Unlike Sweden and Poland, Frederick II of Denmark had trouble continuing the fight against Muscovy. He came to an agreement with John III of Sweden in 1580 to transfer the Danish titles of Livonia to John III. Muscovy recognised Polish–Lithuanian control of Livonia only in 1582. After Magnus von Lyffland, the brother of Fredrick II and a former ally of Ivan, died in 1583, Poland invaded his territories in the Duchy of Courland, and Frederick II decided to sell his rights of inheritance. Except for the island of Saaremaa, Denmark had left Livonia by 1585.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In the later years of Ivan's reign, the southern borders of Muscovy were disturbed by Crimean Tatars, mainly to capture slaves. (See also Slavery in the Ottoman Empire.) Khan Devlet I Giray of Crimea repeatedly raided the Moscow region. In 1571, the 40,000-strong Crimean and Turkish army launched a large-scale raid. The ongoing Livonian War made Moscow's garrison to number only 6,000 and could not even delay the Tatar approach. Unresisted, Devlet devastated unprotected towns and villages around Moscow and caused the Fire of Moscow (1571). Historians have estimated the number of casualties of the fire to be 10,000 to 80,000.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: To buy peace from Devlet Giray, Ivan was forced to relinquish his claims on Astrakhan for the Crimean Khanate, but the proposed transfer was only a diplomatic maneuver and was never actually completed. The defeat angered Ivan. Between 1571 and 1572, preparations were made upon his orders. In addition to Zasechnaya cherta, innovative fortifications were set beyond the Oka River, which defined the border.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The following year, Devlet launched another raid on Moscow, now with a numerous horde, reinforced by Turkish janissaries equipped with firearms and cannons. The Russian army, led by Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky, was half the size but was experienced and supported by streltsy, equipped with modern firearms and gulyay-gorods. In addition, it was no longer artificially divided into two parts (the "oprichnina" and "zemsky"), unlike during the 1571 defeat. On 27 July, the horde broke through the defensive line along the Oka River and moved towards Moscow. The Russian troops did not have time to intercept it, but the regiment of Prince Khvorostinin vigorously attacked the Tatars from the rear. The Khan stopped only 30 km from Moscow and brought down his entire army back on the Russians, who managed to take up defense near the village of Molodi. After several days of heavy fighting, Mikhail Vorotynsky with the main part of the army flanked the Tatars and dealt a sudden blow on 2 August, and Khvorostinin made a sortie from the fortifications. The Tatars were completely defeated and fled. The next year, Ivan, who had sat out in distant Novgorod during the battle, killed Mikhail Vorotynsky.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: During Ivan's reign, Russia started a large-scale exploration and colonization of Siberia. In 1555, shortly after the conquest of Kazan, the Siberian khan Yadegar and the Nogai Horde, under Khan Ismail, pledged their allegiance to Ivan in the hope that he would help them against their opponents. However, Yadegar failed to gather the full sum of tribute that he proposed to the tsar and so Ivan did nothing to save his inefficient vassal. In 1563, Yadegar was overthrown and killed by Khan Kuchum, who denied any tribute to Moscow.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1558, Ivan gave the Stroganov merchant family the patent for colonising "the abundant region along the Kama River", and, in 1574, lands over the Ural Mountains along the rivers Tura and Tobol. The family also received permission to build forts along the Ob River and the Irtysh River. Around 1577, the Stroganovs engaged the Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich to protect their lands from attacks of the Siberian Khan Kuchum.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1580, Yermak started his conquest of Siberia. With some 540 Cossacks, he started to penetrate territories that were tributary to Kuchum. Yermak pressured and persuaded the various family-based tribes to change their loyalties and to become tributaries of Russia. Some agreed voluntarily because they were offered better terms than with Kuchum, but others were forced. He also established distant forts in the newly conquered lands. The campaign was successful, and the Cossacks managed to defeat the Siberian army in the Battle of Chuvash Cape, but Yermak still needed reinforcements. He sent an envoy to Ivan the Terrible with a message that proclaimed Yermak-conquered Siberia to be part of Russia to the dismay of the Stroganovs, who had planned to keep Siberia for themselves. Ivan agreed to reinforce the Cossacks with his streltsy, but the detachment sent to Siberia died of starvation without any benefit. The Cossacks were defeated by the local peoples, Yermak died and the survivors immediately left Siberia. Only in 1586, two years after the death of Ivan, would the Russians manage to gain a foothold in Siberia by founding the city of Tyumen.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan the Terrible had at least six (possibly eight) wives, although only four of them were recognised by the Church. Three of them were allegedly poisoned by his enemies or by rivaling aristocratic families who wanted to promote their daughters to be his brides. He also had 9 children.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1581, Ivan beat his pregnant daughter-in-law, Yelena Sheremeteva, for wearing immodest clothing, which may have caused her to suffer a miscarriage. Upon learning of the altercation, his second son, also named Ivan, engaged in a heated argument with his father. The argument ended with the elder Ivan fatally striking his son in the head with his pointed staff. The event is depicted in the famous painting by Ilya Repin, "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan on Friday, 16 November 1581", better known as "Ivan the Terrible killing his son".


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was a poet and a composer of considerable talent. His Orthodox liturgical hymn, "Stichiron No. 1 in Honor of St. Peter", and fragments of his letters were put into music by the Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin. The recording, the first Soviet-produced CD, was released in 1988 to mark the millennium of Christianity in Russia.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: D. S. Mirsky called Ivan "a pamphleteer of genius". The letters are often the only existing source on Ivan's personality and provide crucial information on his reign, but Harvard professor Edward L. Keenan has argued that the letters are 17th-century forgeries. That contention, however, has not been widely accepted, and most other scholars, such as John Fennell and Ruslan Skrynnikov, have continued to argue for their authenticity. Recent archival discoveries of 16th-century copies of the letters strengthen the argument for their authenticity.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was a devoted follower of Christian Orthodoxy but in his own specific manner. He placed the most emphasis on defending the divine right of the ruler to unlimited power under God. Some scholars explain the sadistic and brutal deeds of Ivan the Terrible with the religious concepts of the 16th century, which included drowning and roasting people alive or torturing victims with boiling or freezing water, corresponding to the torments of hell. That was consistent with Ivan's view of being God's representative on Earth with a sacred right and duty to punish. He may also have been inspired by the model of Archangel Michael with the idea of divine punishment.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Despite the absolute prohibition of the Church for even the fourth marriage, Ivan had seven wives, and even while his seventh wife was alive, he was negotiating to marry Mary Hastings, a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth of England. Of course, polygamy was also prohibited by the Church, but Ivan planned to "put his wife away". Ivan freely interfered in church affairs by ousting Metropolitan Philip and ordering him to be killed and accusing of treason and deposing the second-oldest hierarch, Novgorod Archbishop Pimen. Many monks were tortured to death during the Massacre of Novgorod.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan was somewhat tolerant of Islam, which was widespread in the territories of the conquered Tatar khanates, since he was afraid of the wrath of the Ottoman sultan. However, his anti-Semitism was so fierce that no pragmatic considerations could hold him back. For example, after the capture of Polotsk, all unconverted Jews were drowned, despite their role in the city's economy.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan died from a stroke while he was playing chess with Bogdan Belsky on . Upon Ivan's death, the Russian throne was left to his middle son, Feodor, a weak-minded figure. Feodor died childless in 1598, which ushered in the Time of Troubles.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Little is known about Ivan's appearance, as virtually all existing portraits were made after his death and contain uncertain amounts of artist's impression. In 1567, the ambassador Daniel Prinz von Buchau described Ivan as follows: "He is tall, stout and full of energy. His eyes are big, observing and restless. His beard is reddish-black, long and thick, but most other hairs on his head are shaved off according to the Russian habits of the time".


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: According to , the son-in-law of Michael I of Russia, Ivan had an unpleasant face with a long and crooked nose. He was tall and athletically built, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In 1963, the graves of Ivan and his sons were excavated and examined by Soviet scientists. Chemical and structural analysis of his remains disproved earlier suggestions that Ivan suffered from syphilis or that he was poisoned by arsenic or strangled. At the time of his death, he was 178 cm tall (5 ft. 10 in.) and weighed 85–90 kg (187–198 lb.). His body was rather asymmetrical, had a large amount of osteophytes uncharacteristic of his age and contained excessive concentration of mercury. Researchers concluded that Ivan was athletically built in his youth but, in his last years, had developed various bone diseases and could barely move. They attributed the high mercury content in his body to his use of ointments to heal his joints.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan completely altered Russia's governmental structure, establishing the character of modern Russian political organisation. Ivan's creation of the Oprichnina, answerable only to him, afforded him personal protection but also curtailed the traditional powers and rights of the boyars. Henceforth, Tsarist autocracy and despotism would lie at the heart of the Russian state. Ivan bypassed the Mestnichestvo system and offered positions of power to his supporters among the minor gentry. The empire's local administration combined both locally and centrally appointed officials; the system proved durable and practical and sufficiently flexible to tolerate later modification.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan's expedition against Poland failed at a military level, but it helped extend Russia's trade, political and cultural links with other European states. Peter the Great built on those connections in his bid to make Russia a major European power. At Ivan's death, the empire encompassed the Caspian to the southwest and Western Siberia to the east. His southern conquests ignited several conflicts with the expansionist Turkey, whose territories were thus confined to the Balkans and the Black Sea regions.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan's management of Russia's economy proved disastrous, both in his lifetime and afterward. He had inherited a government in debt, and in an effort to raise more revenue for his expansionist wars, he instituted a series of increasingly-unpopular and burdensome taxes. Successive wars drained Russia of manpower and resources and brought it "to the brink of ruin". After Ivan's death, his empire's nearly-ruined economy contributed to the decline of his own Rurik dynasty, leading to the "Time of Troubles".


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: Ivan's notorious outbursts and autocratic whims helped characterise the position of tsar as one accountable to no earthly authority but only to God. Tsarist absolutism faced few serious challenges until the 19th century. The earliest and most influential account of his reign prior to 1917 was by the historian N.M. Karamzin, who described Ivan as a 'tormentor' of his people, particularly from 1560, though even after that date Karamzin believed there was a mix of 'good' and 'evil' in his character. In 1922, the historian Robert Wipper - who later returned to his native Latvia to avoid living under communist rule - wrote a biography that reassessed Ivan as a monarch "who loved the ordinary people" and praised his agrarian reforms.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: In the 1920s, Mikhail Pokrovsky, who dominated the study of history in the Soviet Union, attributed the success of the "Oprichnina" to their being on the side of the small state owners and townsfolk in a decades-long class struggle against the large landowners, and downgraded Ivan's role to that of the instrument of the emerging Russian bourgeoisie. But in February 1941, the poet Boris Pasternak observantly remarked in a letter to his cousin that "the new cult, openly proselytized, is Ivan the Terrible, the "Oprichnina", the brutality." Joseph Stalin, who had read Wipper's biography had decided that Soviet historians should praise the role of strong leaders, such as Ivan, Alexander Nevsky and Peter the Great, who had strengthened and expanded Russia. In post-Soviet Russia, a campaign has been run to seek the granting of sainthood to Ivan IV. but the Russian Orthodox Church opposed the idea.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: A consequence was that the writer Alexei Tolstoy began work on a stage version of Ivan's life, and Sergei Eisenstein began what was to be a three part film tribute to Ivan. Both projects were personally supervised by Stalin, at a time when the Soviet Union was engaged in a war with Nazi Germany. He read the scripts of Tolstoy's play and the first of Eisenstein's films in tandem after the Battle of Kursk in 1943, praised Eisenstein's version but rejected Tolstoy's. It took Tolstoy until 1944 to write a version that satisfied the dictator. Eisenstein's success with "Ivan the Terrible Part 1" was not repeated with the follow-up, "The Boyar's Revolt", which angered Stalin because it portrayed a man suffering pangs of conscience. Stalin told Eisenstein: "Ivan the Terrible was very cruel. You can show that he was cruel, but you have to show why it was essential to be cruel. One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was that he didn't finish off the five major families." The film was suppressed until 1958.


title: Ivan the Terrible

text: The first statue of Ivan the Terrible was officially open in Oryol, Russia in 2016. Formally, the statue was unveiled in honor of the 450th anniversary of the founding of Oryol, a Russian city of about 310,000 that was established as a fortress to defend Moscow's southern borders. Informally, there was a big political subtext. The opposition thinks that Ivan the Terrible's rehabilitation echoes of Stalin's era. The erection of the statue was vastly covered in international media like "The Guardian", "The Washington Post", "Politico", and others.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Book of Enoch (also 1 Enoch; Hebrew: סֵפֶר חֲנוֹךְ, "Sēfer Ḥănōḵ"; , ) is an ancient Hebrew apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Enoch contains unique material on the origins of demons and Nephilim, why some angels fell from heaven, an explanation of why the Genesis flood was morally necessary, and prophetic exposition of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah. Three books are traditionally attributed to Enoch, including the distinct works 2 Enoch and 3 Enoch, although none of the three books are considered canonical scripture by the majority of Jewish or Christian bodies.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The older sections I Enoch (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) of the text are estimated to date from about 300–200 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably to 100 BC.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Various Aramaic fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as Koine Greek and Latin fragments, are proof that the Book of Enoch was known by Jews and early Near Eastern Christians. This book was also quoted by some 1st and 2nd century authors as in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Authors of the New Testament were also familiar with some content of the story. A short section of 1 Enoch (1:9) is cited in the New Testament Epistle of Jude, , and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 Enoch 60:8), although this section of 1 Enoch is a midrash on . Several copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls.


title: Book of Enoch

text: It is not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). While the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church consider the Book of Enoch as canonical, other Christian groups regard it as non-canonical or non-inspired, but may accept it as having some historical or theological interest.


title: Book of Enoch

text: It is today wholly extant only in the Ethiopian Ge'ez language. For this and other reasons, the traditional Ethiopian belief is that the original language of the work was Ge'ez, whereas modern scholars argue that it was first written in either Aramaic or Hebrew, the languages first used for Jewish texts; Ephraim Isaac suggests that the Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was composed partially in Aramaic and partially in Hebrew. No Hebrew version is known to have survived.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Although evidently widely known during the development of the Hebrew Bible canon, 1 Enoch was excluded from both the formal canon of the Tanakh and the typical canon of the Septuagint and therefore, also from the writings known today as the Deuterocanon. One possible reason for Jewish rejection of the book might be the textual nature of several early sections of the book that make use of material from the Torah; for example, 1 En 1 is a midrash of Deuteronomy 33. The content, particularly detailed descriptions of fallen angels, would also be a reason for rejection from the Hebrew canon at this period – as illustrated by the comments of Trypho the Jew when debating with Justin Martyr on this subject: "The utterances of God are holy, but your expositions are mere contrivances, as is plain from what has been explained by you; nay, even blasphemies, for you assert that angels sinned and revolted from God." Today, the Ethiopic Beta Israel community of Haymanot Jews is the only Jewish group that accepts the Book of Enoch as canonical and still preserves it in its liturgical language of Ge'ez where it plays a central role in worship and the liturgy.


title: Book of Enoch

text: By the 4th century, the Book of Enoch was mostly excluded from Christian biblical canons, and it is now regarded as scripture only by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Compare this with Enoch 1:9, translated from the Ethiopic (found also in Qumran scroll 4Q204=4QEnoch ar, col I 16–18):


title: Book of Enoch

text: Compare this also with what may be the original source of 1 Enoch 1:9 in Deuteronomy 33:2: In "He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones" the text reproduces the Masoretic of Deuteronomy 33 in reading = ερκεται, whereas the three Targums, the Syriac and Vulgate read , = μετ αυτου. Here the Septuagint diverges wholly. The reading is recognized as original. The writer of 1–5 therefore used the Hebrew text and presumably wrote in Hebrew.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Under the heading of canonicity, it is not enough to merely demonstrate that something is quoted. Instead, it is necessary to demonstrate the nature of the quotation. In the case of the Jude 1:14 quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9, it would be difficult to argue that Jude does not quote Enoch as a historical prophet since he cites Enoch by name. However, there remains a question as to whether the author of Jude attributed the quotation believing the source to be the historical Enoch before the flood or a midrash of Deut 33:2–3. The Greek text might seem unusual in stating that "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" prophesied "to" (dative case) not "of" (genitive case) the men, however, this might indicate the Greek meaning "against them" – the dative τούτοις as a dativus incommodi (dative of disadvantage).


title: Book of Enoch

text: Peter H. Davids points to Dead Sea Scrolls evidence but leaves it open as to whether Jude viewed 1 Enoch as canon, deuterocanon, or otherwise: "Did Jude, then, consider this scripture to be like Genesis or Isaiah? Certainly he did consider it authoritative, a true word from God. We cannot tell whether he ranked it alongside other prophetic books such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. What we do know is, first, that other Jewish groups, most notably those living in Qumran near the Dead Sea, also used and valued 1 Enoch, but we do not find it grouped with the scriptural scrolls."


title: Book of Enoch

text: The attribution "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" is apparently itself a section heading taken from 1 Enoch (1 En 60:8, Jude 1:14a) and not from Genesis.


title: Book of Enoch

text: It has also been alleged that the First Epistle of Peter () and the Second Epistle of Peter () make reference to some Enochian material.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In the Epistle to the Hebrews () Enoch is referred to directly, and that he received testimony is mentioned, which may allude to his book.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Book of Enoch was considered as scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (4:3) and by many of the early Church Fathers, such as Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who wrote c. 200 that the Book of Enoch had been rejected by the Jews because it contained prophecies pertaining to Christ.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the largest denomination within the Latter Day Saint movement, does not consider 1 Enoch to be part of its standard canon, although it believes that a purported "original" Book of Enoch was an inspired book. The Book of Moses, first published in the 1830s, is part of the scriptural canon of the LDS Church and has a section which claims to contain extracts from the "original" Book of Enoch. This section has many similarities to 1 Enoch and other Enoch texts, including 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, and "The Book of Giants". The Enoch section of the Book of Moses is believed by the Church to contain extracts from "the ministry, teachings, and visions of Enoch", though it does not contain the entire Book of Enoch itself. The LDS Church considers the portions of the other texts which match its Enoch excerpts to be inspired, while not rejecting but withholding judgment on the remainder.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The most extensive surviving early manuscripts of the Book of Enoch exist in the Ge'ez language. Robert Henry Charles's critical edition of 1906 subdivides the Ethiopic manuscripts into two families:


title: Book of Enoch

text: Family : thought to be more ancient and more similar to the earlier Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek versions:


title: Book of Enoch

text: Additionally, there are the manuscripts used by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church for preparation of the deuterocanonicals from Ge'ez into the targumic Amharic in the bilingual Haile Selassie Amharic Bible ("Mashaf qeddus bage'ezenna ba'amaregna yatasafe" 4 vols. ).


title: Book of Enoch

text: Eleven Aramaic-language fragments of the Book of Enoch were found in cave 4 of Qumran in 1948 and are in the care of the Israel Antiquities Authority. They were translated for and discussed by Józef Milik and Matthew Black in "The Books of Enoch". Another translation has been released by Vermes and Garcia-Martinez. Milik described the documents as being white or cream in color, blackened in areas, and made of leather that was smooth, thick and stiff. It was also partly damaged, with the ink blurred and faint.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The 8th-century work "Chronographia Universalis" by the Byzantine historian George Syncellus preserved some passages of the Book of Enoch in Greek (6:1–9:4, 15:8–16:1). Other Greek fragments known are:


title: Book of Enoch

text: It has been claimed that several small additional fragments in Greek have been found at Qumran (7QEnoch: 7Q4, 7Q8, 7Q10-13), dating about 100 BC, ranging from 98:11? to 103:15 and written on papyrus with grid lines, but this identification is highly contested.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Portions of "1 Enoch" were incorporated into the chronicle of Panodoros () and thence borrowed by his contemporary Annianos.


title: Book of Enoch

text: A sixth- or seventh-century fragmentary manuscript contains a Coptic version of the Apocalypse of Weeks. How extensive the Coptic text originally was cannot be known. It agrees with the Aramaic text against the Ethiopic, but was probably derived from Greek.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Of the Latin translation, only 1:9 and 106:1–18 are known. The first passage occurs in the Pseudo-Cyprianic "Ad Novatianum" and the Pseudo-Vigilian "Contra Varimadum"; the second was discovered in 1893 by M. R. James in an 8th-century manuscript in the British Museum and published in the same year.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The only surviving example of "1 Enoch" in Syriac is found in the 12th-century "Chronicle" of Michael the Great. It is a passage from Book VI and is also known from Syncellus and papyrus. Michael's source appears to have been a Syriac translation of (part of) the chronicle of Annianos.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Ephraim Isaac, the editor and translator of 1 Enoch in "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha", writes that "1 Enoch is clearly composite representing numerous periods and writers". And that the dating of the various sections spans from early pre-Maccabean (i.e. ) to AD 160. George W. E. Nickelsburg writes that "1 Enoch is a collection of Jewish apocalyptic traditions that date from the last three centuries before the common era".


title: Book of Enoch

text: The 1976 publication by Milik of the results of the paleographic dating of the Enochic fragments found in Qumran made a breakthrough. According to this scholar, who studied the original scrolls for many years, the oldest fragments of the Book of the Watchers are dated to 200–150 BC. Since the Book of the Watchers shows evidence of multiple stages of composition, it is probable that this work was extant already in the 3rd century BC. The same can be said about the Astronomical Book.


title: Book of Enoch

text: It was no longer possible to claim that the core of the Book of Enoch was composed in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt as a reaction to Hellenization. Scholars thus had to look for the origins of the Qumranic sections of 1 Enoch in the previous historical period, and the comparison with traditional material of such a time showed that these sections do not draw exclusively on categories and ideas prominent in the Hebrew Bible. Some scholars speak even of an "Enochic Judaism" from which the writers of Qumran scrolls were descended. Margaret Barker argues, "Enoch is the writing of a very conservative group whose roots go right back to the time of the First Temple". The main peculiar aspects of the Enochic Judaism are the following:


title: Book of Enoch

text: Most Qumran fragments are relatively early, with none written from the last period of the Qumranic experience. Thus, it is probable that the Qumran community gradually lost interest in the Book of Enoch.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The relation between 1 Enoch and the Essenes was noted even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While there is consensus to consider the sections of the Book of Enoch found in Qumran as texts used by the Essenes, the same is not so clear for the Enochic texts not found in Qumran (mainly the Book of Parables): it was proposed to consider these parts as expression of the mainstream, but not-Qumranic, essenic movement. The main peculiar aspects of the not-Qumranic units of 1 Enoch are the following:


title: Book of Enoch

text: Classical rabbinic literature is characterized by near silence concerning Enoch. It seems plausible that rabbinic polemics against Enochic texts and traditions might have led to the loss of these books to Rabbinic Judaism.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Book of Enoch plays an important role in the history of Jewish mysticism: the scholar Gershom Scholem wrote, "The main subjects of the later Merkabah mysticism already occupy a central position in the older esoteric literature, best represented by the "Book of Enoch"." Particular attention is paid to the detailed description of the throne of God included in chapter 14 of 1 Enoch.


title: Book of Enoch

text: 14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints


title: Book of Enoch

text: 15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all who are ungodly among them of all their godless deeds which they have godlessly committed, and of all the harsh speeches which godless sinners have spoken against Him."


title: Book of Enoch

text: There is little doubt that 1 Enoch was influential in molding New Testament doctrines about the Messiah, the Son of Man, the messianic kingdom, demonology, the resurrection, and eschatology. The limits of the influence of 1 Enoch are discussed at length by R.H. Charles, Ephraim Isaac, and G.W. Nickelsburg in their respective translations and commentaries. It is possible that the earlier sections of 1 Enoch had direct textual and content influence on many Biblical apocrypha, such as Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 2 Esdras, Apocalypse of Abraham and 2 Enoch, though even in these cases, the connection is typically more branches of a common trunk than direct development.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Greek text was known to, and quoted, both positively and negatively, by many Church Fathers: references can be found in Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Origen, Cyprian, Hippolytus, Commodianus, Lactantius and Cassian. After Cassian and before the modern "rediscovery", some excerpts are given in the Byzantine Empire by the 8th-century monk George Syncellus in his chronography, and in the 9th century, it is listed as an apocryphon of the New Testament by Patriarch Nicephorus.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Sir Walter Raleigh, in his "History of the World" (written in 1616 while imprisoned in the Tower of London), makes the curious assertion that part of the Book of Enoch "which contained the course of the stars, their names and motions" had been discovered in Saba (Sheba) in the first century and was thus available to Origen and Tertullian. He attributes this information to Origen, although no such statement is found anywhere in extant versions of Origen.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Outside of Ethiopia, the text of the Book of Enoch was considered lost until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was confidently asserted that the book was found in an Ethiopic (Ge'ez) language translation there, and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc bought a book that was claimed to be identical to the one quoted by the Epistle of Jude and the Church Fathers. Hiob Ludolf, the great Ethiopic scholar of the 17th and 18th centuries, soon claimed it to be a forgery produced by Abba Bahaila Michael.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Better success was achieved by the famous Scottish traveller James Bruce, who, in 1773, returned to Europe from six years in Abyssinia with three copies of a Ge'ez version. One is preserved in the Bodleian Library, another was presented to the royal library of France, while the third was kept by Bruce. The copies remained unused until the 19th century; Silvestre de Sacy, in "Notices sur le livre d'Enoch", included extracts of the books with Latin translations (Enoch chapters 1, 2, 5–16, 22, and 32). From this a German translation was made by Rink in 1801.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The first English translation of the Bodleian/Ethiopic manuscript was published in 1821 by Richard Laurence, titled "The Book of Enoch, the prophet: an apocryphal production, supposed to have been lost for ages; but discovered at the close of the last century in Abyssinia; now first translated from an Ethiopic manuscript in the Bodleian Library. Oxford, 1821". Revised editions appeared in 1833, 1838, and 1842.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In 1838, Laurence also released the first Ethiopic text of 1 Enoch published in the West, under the title: "Libri Enoch Prophetae Versio Aethiopica". The text, divided into 105 chapters, was soon considered unreliable as it was the transcription of a single Ethiopic manuscript.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In 1833, Professor Andreas Gottlieb Hoffmann of the University of Jena released a German translation, based on Laurence's work, called "Das Buch Henoch in vollständiger Uebersetzung, mit fortlaufendem Kommentar, ausführlicher Einleitung und erläuternden Excursen". Two other translations came out around the same time: one in 1836 called "Enoch Restitutus, or an Attempt" (Rev. Edward Murray) and one in 1840 called "Prophetae veteres Pseudepigraphi, partim ex Abyssinico vel Hebraico sermonibus Latine bersi" (A. F. Gfrörer). However, both are considered to be poor—the 1836 translation most of all—and is discussed in Hoffmann.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The first critical edition, based on five manuscripts, appeared in 1851 as "Liber Henoch, Aethiopice, ad quinque codicum fidem editus, cum variis lectionibus", by August Dillmann. It was followed in 1853 by a German translation of the book by the same author with commentary titled "Das Buch Henoch, übersetzt und erklärt". It was considered the standard edition of 1 Enoch until the work of Charles.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The generation of Enoch scholarship from 1890 to World War I was dominated by Robert Henry Charles. His 1893 translation and commentary of the Ethiopic text already represented an important advancement, as it was based on ten additional manuscripts. In 1906 R.H. Charles published a new critical edition of the Ethiopic text, using 23 Ethiopic manuscripts and all available sources at his time. The English translation of the reconstructed text appeared in 1912, and the same year in his collection of "The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament".


title: Book of Enoch

text: The publication, in the early 1950s, of the first Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch among the Dead Sea Scrolls profoundly changed the study of the document, as it provided evidence of its antiquity and original text. The official edition of all Enoch fragments appeared in 1976, by Jozef Milik.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The renewed interest in 1 Enoch spawned a number of other translations: in Hebrew (A. Kahana, 1956), Danish (Hammershaimb, 1956), Italian (Fusella, 1981), Spanish (1982), French (Caquot, 1984) and other modern languages. In 1978 a new edition of the Ethiopic text was edited by Michael Knibb, with an English translation, while a new commentary appeared in 1985 by Matthew Black.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In 2001 George W.E. Nickelsburg published the first volume of a comprehensive commentary on 1 Enoch in the Hermeneia series. Since the year 2000, the Enoch seminar has devoted several meetings to the Enoch literature and has become the center of a lively debate concerning the hypothesis that the Enoch literature attests the presence of an autonomous non-Mosaic tradition of dissent in Second Temple Judaism.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The first part of the Book of Enoch describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the angel-human hybrids called Nephilim. The remainder of the book describes Enoch's revelations and his visits to heaven in the form of travels, visions, and dreams.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Most scholars believe that these five sections were originally independent works (with different dates of composition), themselves a product of much editorial arrangement, and were only later redacted into what is now called 1 Enoch.


title: Book of Enoch

text: This first section of the Book of Enoch describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim (cf. the "bene Elohim", ) and narrates the travels of Enoch in the heavens. This section is said to have been composed in the 4th or 3rd century BC according to Western scholars.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The introduction to the book of Enoch tells us that Enoch is "a just man, whose eyes were opened by God so that he saw a vision of the Holy One in the heavens, which the sons of God showed to me, and from them I heard everything, and I knew what I saw, but [these things that I saw will] not [come to pass] for this generation, but for a generation that has yet to come."


title: Book of Enoch

text: It discusses God coming to Earth on Mount Sinai with His hosts to pass judgment on mankind. It also tells us about the luminaries rising and setting in the order and in their own time and never change:


title: Book of Enoch

text: "Observe and see how (in the winter) all the trees seem as though they had withered and shed all their leaves, except fourteen trees, which do not lose their foliage but retain the old foliage from two to three years till the new comes."


title: Book of Enoch

text: The book also discusses how all things are ordained by God and take place in his own time. The sinners shall perish and the great and the good shall live on in light, joy and peace.


title: Book of Enoch

text: And all His works go on thus from year to year for ever, and all the tasks which they accomplish for Him, and their tasks change not, but according as God hath ordained so is it done.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The first section of the book depicts the interaction of the fallen angels with mankind; Sêmîazâz compels the other 199 fallen angels to take human wives to "beget us children".


title: Book of Enoch

text: And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: "I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin." And they all answered him and said: "Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing." Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The names of the leaders are given as "Samyaza (Shemyazaz), their leader, Araqiel, Râmêêl, Kokabiel, Tamiel, Ramiel, Dânêl, Chazaqiel, Baraqiel, Asael, Armaros, Batariel, Bezaliel, Ananiel, Zaqiel, Shamsiel, Satariel, Turiel, Yomiel, Sariel."


title: Book of Enoch

text: This results in the creation of the Nephilim (Genesis) or Anakim/Anak (Giants) as they are described in the book:


title: Book of Enoch

text: And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three hundred ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood.


title: Book of Enoch

text: And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, taught astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel appeal to God to judge the inhabitants of the world and the fallen angels. Uriel is then sent by God to tell Noah of the coming cataclysm and what he needs to do.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Then said the Most High, the Holy and Great One spoke, and sent Uriel to the son of Lamech, and said to him: Go to Noah and tell him in my name "Hide thyself!" and reveal to him the end that is approaching: that the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come upon the whole earth, and will destroy all that is on it. And now instruct him that he may escape and his seed may be preserved for all the generations of the world.


title: Book of Enoch

text: [T]he Lord said to Raphael: "Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dûdâêl (God's Kettle/Crucible/Cauldron), and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light. And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire. And heal the earth which the angels have corrupted, and proclaim the healing of the earth, that they may heal the plague, and that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things that the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons. And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin."


title: Book of Enoch

text: And to Gabriel said the Lord: "Proceed against the biters and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy [the children of fornication and] the children of the Watchers from amongst men [and cause them to go forth]: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle ..."


title: Book of Enoch

text: Some, including R.H. Charles, suggest that "biters" should read "bastards", but the name is so unusual that some believe that the implication that is made by the reading of "biters" is more or less correct.


title: Book of Enoch

text: And the Lord said unto Michael: "Go, bind Semjâzâ and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves with them in all their uncleanness. 12. And when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated. 13. In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire: (and) to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever. And whosoever shall be condemned and destroyed will from thenceforth be bound together with them to the end of all generations. ..."


title: Book of Enoch

text: Chapters 37–71 of the Book of Enoch are referred to as the Book of Parables. The scholarly debate centers on these chapters. The Book of Parables appears to be based on the Book of the Watchers, but presents a later development of the idea of final judgment and of eschatology, concerned not only with the destiny of the fallen angels but also that of the evil kings of the earth. The Book of Parables uses the expression "Son of Man" for the eschatological protagonist, who is also called "Righteous One", "Chosen One", and "Messiah", and sits on the throne of glory in the final judgment. The first known use of "The Son of Man" as a definite title in Jewish writings is in 1 Enoch, and its use may have played a role in the early Christian understanding and use of the title.


title: Book of Enoch

text: It has been suggested that the Book of Parables, in its entirety, is a later addition. Pointing to similarities with the Sibylline Oracles and other earlier works, in 1976, J.T. Milik dated the Book of Parables to the third century. He believed that the events in the parables were linked to historic events dating from 260 to 270 AD. This theory is in line with the beliefs of many scholars of the 19th century, including Lucke (1832), Hofman (1852), Wiesse (1856), and Phillippe (1868). According to this theory, these chapters were written in later Christian times by a Jewish Christian to enhance Christian beliefs with Enoch's authoritative name. In a 1979 article, Michael Knibb followed Milik's reasoning and suggested that because no fragments of chapters 37–71 were found at Qumran, a later date was likely. Knibb would continue this line of reasoning in later works. In addition to being missing from Qumran, Chapters 37–71 are also missing from the Greek translation. Currently no firm consensus has been reached among scholars as to the date of the writing of the Book of Parables. Milik's date of as late as 270 AD, however, has been rejected by most scholars. David W. Suter suggests that there is a tendency to date the Book of Parables to between 50 BC and 117 AD.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In 1893, Robert Charles judged Chapter 71 to be a later addition. He would later change his opinion and give an early date for the work between 94 and 64 BC. The 1906 article by Emil G. Hirsch in the "Jewish Encyclopedia" states that "Son of Man" is found in the Book of Enoch, but never in the original material. It occurs in the "Noachian interpolations" (lx. 10, lxxi. 14), in which it has clearly no other meaning than 'man'. The author of the work misuses or corrupts the titles of the angels. Charles views the title "Son of Man", as found in the Book of Parables, as referring to a supernatural person, a Messiah who is not of human descent. In that part of the Book of Enoch known as the Similitudes, it has the technical sense of a supernatural Messiah and judge of the world (xlvi. 2, xlviii. 2, lxx. 27); universal dominion and preexistence are predicated of him (xlviii. 2, lxvii. 6). He sits on God's throne (xlv. 3, li. 3), which is his own throne. Though Charles does not admit it, according to Emil G. Hirsch these passages betray Christian redaction and emendation. Many scholars have suggested that passages in the Book of Parables are Noachian interpolations. These passages seem to interrupt the flow of the narrative. Darrell D. Hannah suggests that these passages are not, in total, novel interpolations, but rather derived from an earlier Noah apocryphon. He believes that some interpolations refer to Herod the Great and should be dated to around 4 BC.


title: Book of Enoch

text: In addition to the theory of Noachian interpolations, which perhaps a majority of scholars support, most scholars currently believe that Chapters 70–71 are a later addition in part or in whole. Chapter 69 ends with, "This is the third parable of Enoch." Like Elijah, Enoch is generally thought to have been brought up to Heaven by God while still alive, but some have suggested that the text refers to Enoch as having died a natural death and ascending to Heaven. The Son of Man is identified with Enoch. The text implies that Enoch had previously been enthroned in heaven. Chapters 70–71 seem to contradict passages earlier in the parable where the Son of Man is a separate entity. The parable also switches from third person singular to first person singular. James H. Charlesworth rejects the theory that chapters 70–71 are later additions. He believes that no additions were made to the Book of Parables. In his earlier work, the implication is that a majority of scholars agreed with him.


title: Book of Enoch

text: Four fragmentary editions of the Astronomical Book were found at Qumran, 4Q208-211. 4Q208 and 4Q209 have been dated to the beginning of the 2nd century BC, providing a "terminus ante quem" for the Astronomical Book of the 3rd century BC. The fragments found in Qumran also include material not contained in the later versions of the Book of Enoch.


title: Book of Enoch

text: This book contains descriptions of the movement of heavenly bodies and of the firmament, as a knowledge revealed to Enoch in his trips to Heaven guided by Uriel, and it describes a Solar calendar that was later described also in the Book of Jubilees which was used by the Dead Sea sect. The use of this calendar made it impossible to celebrate the festivals simultaneously with the Temple of Jerusalem.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The year was composed from 364 days, divided in four equal seasons of ninety-one days each. Each season was composed of three equal months of thirty days, plus an extra day at the end of the third month. The whole year was thus composed of exactly fifty-two weeks, and every calendar day occurred always on the same day of the week. Each year and each season started always on Wednesday, which was the fourth day of the creation narrated in Genesis, the day when the lights in the sky, the seasons, the days and the years were created. It is not known how they used to reconcile this calendar with the tropical year of 365.24 days (at least seven suggestions have been made), and it is not even sure if they felt the need to adjust it.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The Book of Dream Visions, containing a vision of a history of Israel all the way down to what the majority have interpreted as the Maccabean Revolt, is dated by most to Maccabean times (about 163–142 BC). According to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church it was written before the Genesis flood.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The second dream vision in this section of the Book of Enoch is an allegorical account of the history of Israel, that uses animals to represent human beings and human beings to represent angels.


title: Book of Enoch

text: One of several hypothetical reconstructions of the meanings in the dream is as follows based on the works of R. H. Charles and G. H. Schodde:


title: Book of Enoch

text: There are a great many links between the first book and this one, including the outline of the story and the imprisonment of the leaders and destruction of the Nephilim. The dream includes sections relating to the Book of the Watchers:


title: Book of Enoch

text: And those seventy shepherds were judged and found guilty, and they were cast into that fiery abyss. And I saw at that time how a like abyss was opened in the midst of the earth, full of fire, and they brought those blinded sheep. (The fall of the evil ones)


title: Book of Enoch

text: And all the oxen feared them and were affrighted at them, and began to bite with their teeth and to devour, and to gore with their horns. And they began, moreover, to devour those oxen; and behold all the children of the earth began to tremble and quake before them and to flee from them. (The creation of the Nephilim et al.)


title: Book of Enoch

text: 86:4, 87:3, 88:2, and 89:6 all describe the types of Nephilim that are created during the times described in The Book of the Watchers, though this doesn't mean that the authors of both books are the same. Similar references exist in Jubilees 7:21–22.


title: Book of Enoch

text: The book describes their release from the Ark along with three bulls – white, red, and black, which are Shem, Ham, and Japheth – in 90:9. It also covers the death of Noah, described as the white bull, and the creation of many nations:


title: Book of Enoch

text: And they began to bring forth beasts of the field and birds, so that there arose different genera: lions, tigers, wolves, dogs, hyenas, wild boars, foxes, squirrels, swine, falcons, vultures, kites, eagles, and ravens (90:10)


title: Book of Enoch

text: It then describes the story of Moses and Aaron (90:13–15), including the miracle of the river splitting in two for them to pass, and the creation of the stone commandments. Eventually they arrived at a "pleasant and glorious land" (90:40) where they were attacked by dogs (Philistines), foxes (Ammonites, Moabites), and wild boars (Esau).