A Vision of the Otherworld was a favourite subject with the writers of the apocryphal books of the Jews. In the oldest of these, the so-called Book of Enoch, which is also the oldest non-pagan book of this class that has come down to us, the subject is treated at greater length and with more elaborate detail than in any other contribution to the Vision legend prior to the _Commedia_. The last quarter of the second century B.C. has been assigned as the most probable date of the greater part of it, though in its present form it evidently contains post-Christian additions. Quoted in the Epistle of St. Jude (vv. 14-15), and known to the early Christians, it was long believed to have disappeared at a subsequent date, and was only recovered in recent times in an Ethiopian version, from which it has been repeatedly translated with commentaries.[80] It relates, with copious detail, how the seer was caught up by a vehement wind and upraised to Heaven, where he was taken in charge by the Archangel Michael, who revealed to him Hell and Paradise, the mysteries of nature and of revelation, and the life to come. In the general scope of his work the author anticipates Dante in several particulars which are not common to the Vision writers in general. He pays much attention to topographical detail in his descriptions of Hell, for which he takes the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, as his model; but although the accuracy of his description has been attested by several travellers who have surveyed the valley, he is far from manifesting the precision and visualising power of the Florentine. Like Dante, moreover, he discusses various points of theology, and delivers long dissertations upon natural philosophy and the physical scheme of the universe. Here, too, he is vague and indistinct, as also in his description of the future state of the lost, wherein he displays none of Dante’s symmetry and orderly arrangement. We may note several points of detail wherein the _Vision of Enoch_ resembles the _Fis Adamnáin_ or other of the Christian Visions. The Archangel Michael already appears as the guide to the other world (c. 71); the infernal regions are swept by whirlwinds and traversed by rivers of fire, in one of which the fallen spirits are immersed until the carnal lusts of all such as are capable of redemption are burnt away (c. 67), though there is also a place wherein the wicked are bound and punished eternally (c. 22). Heaven is described as a city of crystal surrounded by a crystal wall, a river of vibrating fire flowing round about it (c. 13).