Jewish Apocalyptic and Its History (Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 20)

Jewish Apocalyptic and its History Paolo Sacchi translated by William J. Short, OFM J o u r n a l for t h e Study of t...

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Jewish Apocalyptic and its History

Paolo Sacchi translated by William J. Short, OFM

J o u r n a l for t h e Study of t h e Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 20

JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA SUPPLEMENT SERIES

20

Editors James H. Charlesworth Lester L. Grabbe

Editorial Board Randall D. Chesnutt, Philip R. Davies, Jan Willem van Henten, Judith M. Lieu, Steven Mason, James R. Mueller, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, James C. VanderKam

Sheffield Academic Press

Copyright © 1990 Paideia Editrice, Brescia Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd Mansion House 19 Kingfield Road Sheffield SI 1 9AS England

Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd Midsomer Norton, Bath

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-85075-585-X

CONTENTS

Abbreviations Introduction Introduction to the English Edition

9 13 27

Parti T H E Q U E S T FOR T H E H I S T O R I C A L A P O C A L Y P T I C

Chapter 1 T H E BOOK OF THE WATCHERS A N D A P O C A L Y P T I C 1. General Observations 2. Problems in the Study of Apocalyptic 3. The Great Themes of Apocalyptic (according to Koch) 4. The Book of the Watchers, the Oldest Apocalypse we Have 5. Outline of the Evolution of Thought within the Book of the Watchers 6. The Problem of Dating 7. The Book of the Watchers in History

32 32 35 42 47 60 61 62

Chapter 2 COSMIC ORDER AND OTHERWORLDLY PERSPECTIVES IN T H E P O S T - E X I L I C P E R I O D : T H E P R O B L E M O F E V I L AND THE ORIGIN OF APOCALYPTIC

72

Chapter 3 TOWARDS A HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC

88

Chapter 4 T H E APOCALYPTIC OF THE FIRST CENTURY: SIN AND J U D G M E N T

109


6

Part II S O M E THEMES OF THE APOCALYPTIC CURRENT AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF JEWISH T H O U G H T

Chapter 5 T H E T w o C A L E N D A R S O F T H E BOOK

OF ASTRONOMY

128

Chapter 6 ETHIOPIC

ENOCH

91.15

AND THE PROBLEM OF M E D I A T I O N

140

Chapter 7 MESSIANTSM A N D A P O C A L Y P T I C

150

1. 2. 3. 4.

Definition of Messianism 15 0 The Origins: Royal Davidic Messianism 150 Non-Davidic Royal Messianism 152 The End of the House of David and the Eclipse of Messianism 153 5. Superhuman Figures 156 6. The 158 Chapter 8 Revival of Messianism: Superhuman Messianism KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE JEWS FROM AMOS TO THE ESSENES 168 Chapter 9 HISTORICIZING AND REVELATION AT THE ORIGINS OF JUDAISM

200

Chapter 10 THE DEVIL IN JEWISH TRADITIONS OF THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD (C. 500 BCE-100 CE) 1. The Definition of 'Devil' for the Purposes of this Study 2. The Book of Noah 3. The Religion of Apl 4. Ap 1, the Problem of Evil and the Devil 5. Ap2 and Cosmic Upheaval 6. The Book of Dreams and a More Recent Angelic Rebellion 7. The Satan Traditions 8. Satan in Sirach

211 211 212 212 217 219 220 221 223

Contents 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

The Book of Jubilees and the Fusion of the Two Traditions Essenism and the Devil Created Such by God The Devil in the Book of Wisdom The Devil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs The Devil in the Book of Parables The Devil in the Testament of Job: The Other Face of God The Devil in the New Testament

7 224 225 226 227 228 230 231

Chapter 11 BOOK OF THE SECRETS OF ENOCH (SLA VONIC ENOCH) 1. Outline of the Book 2. The Problems of the Text-Tradition in the History of Research 3. The Environment of the Oldest Text 4. Dating the Text 5. The Original Language 6. The Author's Thought

235 238 241 241 242

Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors

250 281 287

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE

233 233

ABBREVIATIONS

ABI ADAWG AfO AION AISG ANRW APOT ASE ATD Aug BA BASOR BN BJRL BK BO BSOAS BZ BZAW CBQ CBQMS CRINT EHRel EstBib ETL ExOL ExpTim FRLANT

Associazione Biblica Italiana Abhandlungen der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen Archivfiir Orientforschung Annali dell'istituto orientate di Napoli Associazione Italiana per lo Studio del Giudaismo Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt R.H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament

HR HTR HUCA IDBSup

Annali di Storia dell 'Esegesi Das Alte Testament Deutsch Augustinianum Biblical Archaeologist Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Biblische Notizen Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Bibel und Kirche Bibliotheca orientalis Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Biblische Zeitschrift Beihefte zurZAW Catholic Biblical Quarterly Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Monograph Series Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Etudes d'histoire des religions Estudios biblicos Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses Ex oriente lux Expository Times Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments History of Religions Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual IDB, Supplementary Volume

IEJ

Israel Exploration

Journal

10


hit JAAR JANESCU

Interpretation Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Jewish Studies Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam Journal for the Study of Judaism Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal of Semitic Studies Journal for Theology and the Church Journal of Theological Studies Neotestamentica Novum Testamentum New Revised Standard Version La nouvelle revue theologique New Testament Studies Oriens antiquus Orientalia Suecana Oudtestamentische Studien Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research Parole di Vita Parola Spirito e Vita Revue biblique Recherches bibliques Revue des etudes juives Religious Studies Review Revista biblica Argentina Revue de Qumran Revue des sciences religieuses Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart Revue d'histoire et de litterature religieuses Revue d 'histoire et de philosophie religieuses Revue de 1'histoire des religions Rivista biblica Ricerche storico bibliche Rivista Storica Italiana Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa Rivista degli studi orientali Revue des sciencesphilosophiques et theologiques Recherches de science religieuse Revue de theologie et de philosophie

J AOS JBL JJS JNES JSA1 JSJ JSNT JSOT JSS JTCh JTS Neot NovT NRSV NRT NTS OrAnt OrSu OTS PAAJR PdV PSV RB RechBib REJ RelSRev RevBibArg RevQ RevScRel RGG RHLR RHPR RHR RivB RSB RSI RSLR RSO RSPT RSR RTPhil

Abbreviations SBLSP ScEs SCO SEA SIDIC SJOT SJT SNTSMS StBiblTh StHRel SR ST SUNT ThWAT TLZ TRE TRev TRu TS TU VT WUNT WZKM ZAW ZNW ZRGG ZTK

SBL Seminar Papers Science et esprit Studi classici e orientali Svensk exegetisk drsbok Service International de Documentation Judeo-Chretienne Scandinavian Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Scottish Journal of Theology Studiorum novi testamenti societas Monograph Series Studia biblica et theologica Studies in the History of Religions Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses Studia theologica Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theologisches Worterbuch zum Alten Testament Theologische Literaturzeitung Theologische Realenzyklopddie Theologische Revue Theologische Rundschau Theological Studies Texte und Untersuchungen Vetus Testamentum Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschriftfiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift fiir Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche

11

INTRODUCTION

Ugo Enrico Paoli, a famous professor at the University of Florence, often used to say that it frequently happened that he had to quote Paoli. At the time I had a vague notion of what he meant by these words, but now I understand them completely. Rereading what I have written on apocalyptic in the last ten years, I discovered an author whom I had thought I knew well, one whom I believed expressed my current way of thinking. However, he now appears both questionable and quotable. New problems have arisen, and these have cast a shadow over earlier observations and positions. Some changes are due to positive develop ments in research; while some valid initial observations are taken up again only in this introduction. I owe the basic structure of my image of apocalyptic to D.S. Russell's book, The Method and Message of Apocalyptic? Russell had a very broad view of apocalyptic in fact, if not in his theoretical formulations. The greater part of the so-called intertestamental Jewish literature (plus the book of Daniel and minus the Apocalypse of John) were, for Russell, apocalyptic. Such an analysis of apocalyptic thought so broadly identified necessarily entailed broad reference to history. He refused to see apocalyptic as the opposite of 'normative Judaism', some foreign body infecting Judaism and finally expelled from it. For him, apocalyptic, in the broad sense he gave to this term, was the bridge that joined the Judaism of biblical times with normative Judaism. In this continuum the only exception that stood out was Christianity, which was, however, the vehicle by which the apocalyptic books have come down to us. This was a good enough reason, aomg many others, to include alos Christian origins in the broad and fascinating picture of Jewish history in the first century BCE. The great themes of apocalyptic thought identified by Russell can be perceived constantly in the development of my thought. For Russell it 1. D.S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic 6th edn, 1974 [1964]).

(Philadelphia,

14


was clear that the contents of apocalyptic could be deduced only from the contents of the various apocalypses. But he did not pose the problem of which works could be thus defined and for what reasons: between a work like the Psalms of Solomon and the book of Ethiopic Enoch there emerge such differences that it seems daring to think of a common denominator. His own observation, that not all the works he called apocalyptic were such in all their parts, allowed one to see that even in Russell's own outlook the problem had to be raised. I have struggled with this problem more than may be apparent from my writings and only now am I attempting a comprehensive solution to it. 2

If therefore I accepted that the contents of apocalyptic had to be deduced from that of the various apocalypses, I felt the need for a clear definition of apocalypse. I posed the problem on a literary and formal basis but, searching for a solution anchored in history, I did not find a better solution than to define as apocalypses those works whose own authors (or at least ancient tradition) had already labelled as 'revelations'. Using this formulation, one could ignore the problem of eventual resemblances among works handed down by history as apocalypses and others without labels but apparently of the same genre. This was a complex problem, perhaps an insoluble one, and I left it to one side. I wrote in 'II Libro del Vigilanti e l'apocalittica': 'The first problem to confront is whether, tracing the history of Jewish thought, one finds there, and since what time and in what way, elements which may explain the formation of those works which already in antiquity were called apocalypses' I had my gaze turned towards history, beyond the apocalypses, but I started from the formal and literary formulation of the problem. It seemed to me that the only way to try to resolve the prob lem of apocalyptic was to search in the past of the specific apocalypses, that is those called such by the ancients, seeking those ideas that would explain their way of thinking. In this way I overcame completely the problem of the relationship between form and content that had led the study of apocalyptic to a complete impasse. 3

2. Cf. Russell, Method, p. 27: apocalyptic attitudes are found to some extent in all late Jewish thought. Cf. also p. 39: 'they [the apocalypses] are usually included because they contain certain apocalyptic elements and obviously belong to the apoca lyptic line of tradition' (emphasis mine). 3. Cf. the pessimism of von Rad expressed in Old Testament Theology. I. The Theology of Israel's Prophetic Tradition (New York, 1965), p. 301: there are seri ous reasons which prevent the discovery of a satisfactory definition of the problem.

15

Introduction 4

The second work to which I owe much is that of Koch, reread against the background of the Aramaic fragments of the Ethiopic Enoch pub lished in 1976 by Milik. Koch, in order to identify the themes of apoca lyptic and to resolve the problem of what an apocalypse really was, selected six that were supposed to be such for the opinio communis, above every suspicion. Koch's reasoning was simple: the contents of the six apocalypses, which were clearly apocalypses, must indicate the indisput able content of apocalyptic. His error consisted in departing, not from a concept of apocalyptic based on document and history, but from a modern opinio communis, which concerned six words that most scholars considered apocalyptic: if these six works are certainly apocalyptic, their basic line of thought must contain the kernel of Apocalyptic. The result of Koch's research seemed important to me because of its negativity: there were no common, exclusive themes of these apoca lypses. However I noted that the entire Book of the Watchers, though among those considered by Koch, contained no theme common to the other six apocalypses. That seemed at least strange. Furthermore, even though Koch showed his awareness of the need to trace a history of apocalyptic and not to make a theology of it, he seemed off the track, since for him 'theology' meant only 'modern theology'. Behind this concern of Koch was the shadow of Bultmann, who has left such a mark on studies of Christian origins and the Judaism of the time. I think back to his manifesto on demythologizing, in which pastoral concern seems evident. This concern finds its refuge and way of salva tion in a certain interpretation of the texts on which the Christian faith is founded. These are to be presented to the faithful in a demythologized form, that is, modernized, a form that has little historical about it. Whether true or false, at the time of Christ the earth stood still and the sun moved. Perhaps this and other problems are important for the preacher; for the historian, they do not exist. It therefore seemed appropriate that Koch needed to free himself from every influence of modern religious concerns in historical research on apocalyptic. Yet there remained the question whether it was correct, on a methodological level, to try to single out the themes of apocalyptic, as 5

6

7

4. K. Koch, The Rediscovery of the Apocalyptic (London. 1972 [1970]). 5. J.T. Milik. The Books of Enoch (Oxford, 1976). 6. See below, p. 47. 7. Koch in reality had not understood the importance of the Book of the Watchers, because he considered the Ethiopic Enoch as a unified work.

16


if it must necessarily have a unity of thought that could be expressed in terms of conceptual coherence. Koch did not take account of the fact that centuries had passed between the first and last apocalypses which he considered, even supposing that these belonged to a well-defined current of thought. To construct the history of a current of thought can not mean describing its contents as if they must form a coherent system. Rather one can only describe the evolution of its contents; the gradual dissolution of bonds uniting them; and changes in the outlook of the authors. I came to this conclusion, basic for the direction in which I would later move my research, with the help of Milik's work. Nearly five centuries separate the first and the last apocalypse, probably a couple of centuries more than was earlier believed. How can one not think of an evolution over such a long span of time? But all these discussions had and have meaning only if one responds positively to a preliminary problem, one which had already emerged in the work of Russell, even if not prominently: Is apocalyptic a literary form or is it also the expression of a current of thought? On this point there are oscillations apparent in my research. Early on I was taken by enthusiasm for Carmignac's work, which I interpreted in a way that went well beyond that of the author. That is, I was more attached to the general sense of his writings (confirmed also by personal conversation) than to the argumentation actually developed. For Carmignac, who depended on Collins, apocalyptic was only a 8

9

10

8. Regarding the importance which early dating has for research on apocalyptic, see J.A. Fitzmyer, 'Implications of the New Enoch Literature from Qumran', TS 38 (1977), pp. 332-45; and K. Koch in the introduction to the book, Apokalyptik (Wege der Forschung, 365; Darmstadt, 1982), pp. 10-11. This idea is already universally accepted. 9. J. Carmignac, 'Qu'est-ce que l'apocalyptique? Son emploi a Qumran', RevQ 10 (1979), pp. 3-33. Along the same lines, besides Collins, is also H. Stegemann, 'Die Bedeutung der, Qumranfunde fiir die Erforschung der Apokalyptik', in D. Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and in the Near East (Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism, Uppsala, August 12-17, 1979; Tubingen, 1983), pp. 495-530. 10. Cf. J.J. Collins, 'Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre', Seme/a 14(1979), p. 9: 'Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an overworldly being to a human recipient, dis closing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.'

17

Introduction

literary problem. But a more attentive study of Carmignac's work, showed me that his argumentation was based on elements of content much more than he believed. This led me to doubt Carmignac's conclu sion which, in any case had the merit to propose a very neat solution to the problem." Today, however, it seems evident to me that there must exist some relationship between apocalyptic form (knowledge through vision and symbolic-mythical expression)' and the content of the thought. But the problem posed in this way is no longer literary, or is not only literary. This was my point of departure. I put aside every formal problem and sought to identify which was the most ancient work that could be con sidered as the remote source of the apocalypses of the first century. Guided by the opinio communis much more than I thought, I had no difficulty in choosing the Book of the Watchers as a beginning point. It had the characteristic of being the most ancient book that contains ideas that could be considered at the base of the certain apocalypses, but it is true that many consider this book itself an apocalypse, and I considered it such myself. And even if someone were to propose that the Book of the Watchers is not an apocalypse (and there is already this someone '), my treatment of the question would remain valid, because the Book of the Watchers is the most ancient text we know, whose theology is noticeably different from that of the contemporary canonical books. It testifies to the rise of something new in the history of Jewish thought. The direction of my research changed at the same time that it was 2

1

11. I see that the interpretation I first gave to the work of Carmignac and Collins is shared by F. Garcia Martinez in 'Encore l'apocalyptique', JSJ 17 (1986), pp. 22432. He writes on p. 226 that with Carmignac and Collins, 'l'eschatologie ou toutes autres references au contenu ont completement disparu de la scene.' But attentive rereading of the words used by Collins (see n. 9) and Carmignac to define apoca lyptic leaves no doubt that their concerns are not purely formal-literary. Certainly this type of definition does not include a precise theology, yet does include nevertheless a distinct field, the world beyond, that is, to repeat Carmignac's words. God, the angels, the destiny of souls. And this is a quite specific field of human thought. 12. On the importance of symbolic expression as a peculiarity of apocalyptic in general, and not just Jewish apocalyptic, cf. M. Delcor, 'Mitologia e apocalittica', in Studi sull'apocalittica (Brescia, 1987), pp. 161-99, taken from Apocalypses et theologie de I'esperance (Paris. 1977). 13. Cf. J.C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS, 16; Washington, DC, 1984), p. 8: 'These two booklets [that is, the Book of Astronomy and the Book of the Watchers] display some traits that are later found in apocalypses, but it seems inappropriate to assign them to the same genre.'

18


moving forward: from research on the antecedents of the apocalypses, I moved to the history of apocalyptic. While I rejected the identification of form with content, I still sought a content within the works that corres ponded to those considered apocalyptic: a content that is not coherent, a content in evolution, but still a content, to which a form started to correspond. The classic problem of defining apocalyptic thus becomes evident once again, even if considered from a different point of view: no longer is the commonality of form the basis of identification but rather the historical fact that a certain current of thought uses a certain form. Thus my research proceeded by studying the apocalypses (those of the opinio communis, of Russell and Koch) in chronological order, in order to identify and explain the lines of development that linked them to each other. I studied the apocalypses in chronological order, not so much to see if the thought of the first were found in the second, since it was already taken for granted from the studies of Koch and Carmignac that I would never have found this, but to see if the problems left unsolved in the first might have been given further development and response in the second, and so forth. It seemed clear to me that there existed an ancient current of thought that was reflected in the first apocalypses. There was at least one work, certainly written before 200 BCE, the Book of the Watchers, whose thought was clearly distinct from the rest of the Jewish literature of its time. Furthermore, beginning with ch. 12 (the start of BW2, 1 Enoch 12-36) the narrative does not develop further as the recollection of the author, but as the revelation-vision of Enoch, who narrates in the first person things he saw personally in the world beyond. Already here knowl edge is no longer founded on memory, but on revelation through vision. My conceptualization appears perfectly coherent with the method I used in the first volume of the Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento, dedi cated essentially to the history of Jewish thought. Alongside a current of thought that I imagined to be dominant, at least in Jerusalem, and which I called 'official' (perhaps it would have been better to indicate it with a more eloquent term and call it 'nomistic') there were opposing currents, some relatively mild and expressed in areas that must have been in rather close contact with 'Jerusalem', since their works were later con sidered canonical; and another, more radical current. The opposition movements were more than one. Three are rather well identified in history: 1) Samaritanism (that is, a Yahwist religion which had its center in Samaria and Shechem)...: 2) a current that has left traces

19

Introduction in works conserved in the Hebrew canon itself and which must therefore be considered a current that worked from the inside: its claims were recog nized in some way by the official tradition. The works that may be grouped under the banner of this movement are the books of Ruth. Jonah. Job and. much later (end of the third century BC), Ecclesiastes; 3) a third move ment was one of real opposition: it was the most profound in its choice of subjects for dispute, and it gave rise to the apocalyptic movement, whose most ancient phase is documented in The Book of the Watchers...' 4

Within this historical framework, the Book of the Watchers is no longer the first apocalypse, but evidence of a historical situation. Its value is truly independent of form, and the question is turned upside down: Why did the opposition current represented by the Book of the Watchers, to which we may give conventionally the name of apoca lyptic, create that literary and conceptual form that is also found in some works called apocalypses by the ancients themselves? To underscore the difficulties of this research, I would point to a certain disjunction between form and content that appears very clearly in the Book of the Watchers. One current of thought could be identified at its origins, but this did not coincide, at least not completely, with the form of the apocalypse, which has as one significant characteristic among others that of knowledge by vision and revelation. It seemed to me difficult to detach chs. 6-11 of the Book of the Watchers, which lacked the form of knowledge by vision, from the rest of the work. Therefore, apocalyptic and apocalypses did not coincide, but a current of thought linked to books normally considered apocalyptic did exist. The best proof came to me from the observation that the book of Ethiopic Enoch was a Pentateuch, assembled only in the first century BCE, the date of the latest work included in it. The conclusion was obvious: some one put together a Pentateuch choosing works in which he recognized his own tradition. From the fifth-fourth century to the first century BCE. the current l?

16

14. Apocrifi dell' Antico Testamento (Turin, 1981), I, p. 23. 15. E. Norelli spoke on the formal differences between chs. 6-11 of the Book of the Watchers and the rest of the work at the congress organized by the Augustinianum in Rome in May, 1987. His paper, unfortunately, was not published in the acts of the congress: Augustinianum 28, fasc. 1-2 (1988). 16. The Enoch Pentateuch in its original form had in second place, not the Book of Parables, as it appears today, but the Book of Giants, which the tradition excluded for reasons unknown, though certainly related to content. Fragments of this work have been found at Qumran (see Milik, Books of Enoch).

20


was anchored on a precise element, one that stood outside the form and, within certain limits, even outside content: there was someone who recognized himself in those works, even if they were not coherent ideo logically with each other. What made him put them together could only have been the awareness of belonging to a tradition, expressed in the works he had collected. Moreover, conceptual analysis of the various tomes of the Enoch Pentateuch showed definitely that certain questions endured, even though the individual answers to them might differ. Problems arose when I looked for some continuation beyond the first century BCE. If there were no doubts about the Book of Parables, certainly inserted at a late date, since the author himself presented his work as 'the second vision of Enoch', the problems still remained for the numerous other apocalypses. It seemed to me, however, that some works that I had studied and that have the form of apocalypses, since they confronted problems with the same point of view as the tradition already identified as 'apocalyptic', could be attributed to this same tradition. Books such as the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and 4 Ezra seemed to me in the same current of thought as the books collected in the Enoch Pentateuch. In any case these books represented my point of departure during the time when I was seeking the antecedents of apocalyptic and was not yet thinking of a history of apocalyptic. But there is an element that today seems to me to complicate things: in the first century CE there existed, after the five books of the Enoch Pentateuch in its original form, after the Book of Parables? a third book of Enoch, known as the Slavonic Enoch. Now this third book of Enoch has its own particular shape, which characterizes it among other contemporary apocalyptic works. It is well anchored to the Enoch tradi tion because it continues to use the figure of Enoch as revealer. Yet, while in the Book of Parables, or in its additions, the figure of Enoch is expanded to the point of identification with that of the Son of Man or the messiah, in the Slavonic Enoch the figure of Enoch is more modest. Then the addition of the long Melchizedek appendix shows how the superhuman figure of Melchizedek was gaining popularity within the environment from which these works derived. It thus shows strong traits of a priestly type which do not appear in the most ancient strata of the 1

17. The author of the Book of Parables explicitly called his work, 'The Second Vision of Enoch'. Cf. Ethiopic Enoch 37.1. This is at least according to the most common interpretation of the passage.

Introduction

21

tradition I have called apocalyptic, even though in the Book of Jubilees (which does not, however, belong to this current) the figure of Enoch already appears as revealer of cultic norms. Consequently one must admit that the presumed apocalyptic current must have been able to express theologies different from each other not only diachronically, but also synchronically, at least in the first century CE. This is not all: in this variety of outlooks only one of these works, the Slavonic Enoch, recalls Enoch as revealer, while the others recall Baruch, Zephaniah, Ezra. Is it possible that the name of the revealer was not important? Certainly the form of knowledge always remains the same: revelation through vision. This is an important element of unity, but why are the revealers different? Is this only a fracturing of the same current, or is the historical problem greater and more subtle than it appears from research on apocalyptic? Some words of Russell (p. 27) come to mind: We conclude that the apocalyptic writers were to be found not in any one party within Judaism but throughout many parties, known and unknown, and among men who owed allegiance to no party at all.

Nevertheless in this nebula of apocalyptic (and it is that because of the way the discussion has been framed by modern research), it seems that at least one current can be clearly identified by the name of a revealer: the 'Enoch tradition'. I have been and continue to be perplexed by efforts to distinguish among 'apocalypses', 'apocalyptic eschatology', and 'apocalyptic current', because they seem to me based more on abstract demands of conceptualization than on documents. For me it is fundamental that the word 'apocalyptic' does not come from ancient authors. If it were from 18

19

18. Thus, VanderKam, Enoch; L. Rosso Ubigli, 'La fortuna di Enoc nel giudaismo antico', ASE 1 (1984), pp. 153-63. 19. Along these lines see the series of works by P.D. Hanson, whose thought is condensed in Visionaries and their Apocalypses (Issues in Religion and Theology, 2: Philadelphia, 1983). However his intuition about the great antiquity of apocalyptic spirituality is quite valid. Knibb ('Prophecy and the Emergence of the Jewish Apocalypses', in Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Ackroyd [Cambridge, 1982]) reduces the division from triple to double, given the difficulty of distinguishing apocalyptic eschatology from apocalyptic current. But the basic methodological problem remains. Hanson's approach dominated the organization of the large international congress of Uppsala in 1979 regarding apocalyptic, but emerged from it largely as a minority view.

22


the ancients, we would have the certainty that it corresponded to an entity known to the ancients which the modern historian has the task of trying to understand. But since the word is modern, it can only derive from the demands of research, and its use and definition must depend on scholars and their needs. Its validity can then only depend on the support that the concept of 'apocalyptic' finds (or does not find) in the texts. On the contrary, the word 'apocalypse' ('revelation') is ancient, but it indicates a form of knowing more than indicating a literary genre. In another phase of my research I attempted to outline the history of apocalyptic. Though I am not in favour of such organization, which is always somewhat speculative, some defining of periods still seems useful to me, to explain my thinking better if for no other reason. Some have seen in my approach, rather than a history of apocalyptic, a history of the problem of evil. Interest in the problem of evil is central in apocalyptic from its very beginnings and this is quite distinct, on the conceptual level, from contemporary currents of Jewish thought, particularly in the way it posed and resolved the problem of evil. Yet the problem of evil presents an infinite number of facets, from the theme of human free will to the messianic theme, passing through the problem of mediation. Purity and sex were of course themes that were involved and debated, always within the context of a search for a solution that would permit treating the problem of evil without reducing it merely to human transgression and subsequent punishment by God. My more recent arti cles should be seen along these lines: articles on mediation, the devil, on the importance of the figure of Melchizedek, on the impure and its relationship to evil. The interpretation of the origin of evil given by the author of the Book of the Watchers created within Hebraic thought a concept and a meaning (the preterhuman origin of evil that affects all human beings), which became a mark of division for the ancients and also a distinguishing mark in history. What I wrote in the article on the Book of the Watchers still seems valid to me: 20

As can be seen from what has been said so far, there is no problem proper to apocalyptic. Within Judaism there arose around the fourth century BCE a series of new ideas, structured into a complete system only by the 20. Cf. E.J.C. Tigchelaar. 'More on Apocalyptic and Apocalypses'. JSJ 18 (1987), pp. 137-44. On the centrality of the problem of evil in apocalyptic, see Russell, Method, p. 249.

23

Introduction author of BW2. His ideas were then taken up here and there by other Jewish authors, who on the one hand must have recognized their validity and, on the other hand, must have realized how difficult it would be to accept them without the risk of compromising traditional Jewish thought. The influence of BW2 can be found to some extent in all the later works. It remains for the specialists of definition to undertake the 'serious' task of establishing which of the authors who were influenced by the author of BW2 can be called apocalyptic and which cannot.

At this point a question arises: What connection can be established between that current I have called 'apocalyptic' and the common notion of apocalyptic? We have already observed that there is no common interpretation of the concept of apocalyptic. That does not alter the fact that, despite all the debates, we understand each other. When we speak of apocalyptic sections in the Gospels, we understand perfectly well what is meant. And this is something more than just a certain way of knowing. In fact if we tie the word 'apocalyptic' to a certain way of knowing, we run the risk of expanding its contents to include whole eras. It seems to me that vision is an integral part of any 'apocalyptic' thought, but not exclusive to it. From this point of view even the book of Daniel is apocalyptic, but its differences in thought with its contemporary, the Book of Dreams, are quite evident, as I have indicated generally, and Boccaccini has explored more deeply. Daniel and the Book of Dreams are on two sides of Jewish thought that are more opposed than distinct, even though written in almost the same years. If it is evident that Daniel, the Book of Dreams and the Apocalypse of 21

22

23

21. Cf. A. Di Nola in Enciclopedia delle Religioni I, p. 519, who affirms that the two pre-Christian centuries are apocalyptic. 22. The oscillations of my thought are evident. The most valid intuition remains the first one. Cf. below, p. 68: 'Daniel absorbed the thought of apocalyptic within the limits allowed by its tradition, but overall it is strongly tied to the official tradition: it is not by chance that it is part of every canon. Moses and the Law are clearly present in its thought (9.13); all the prayer of ch. 9 fits perfectly within the Deuteronomist tradition and that of the book of Ezra and Nehemiah.' Daniel is presented as apoca lyptic in 'Per una storia dell' apocalittica', (see below p. 108). In 'L'apocalittica del I secolo', Daniel is considered at the edges of apocalyptic (see below p. 122). In the scheme of development of apocalyptic in 'Jewish Apocalyptic' (SIDIC 18, 3 [ 1985], pp. 4-9 [5]), the book of Daniel is absent. 23. G. Boccaccini, 'E Daniele un testo apocalittico? Una (ri)definizione del pensiero del Libro di Daniele in rapporto al Libro dei Sogni e aH'apocalittica', Henoch 9 (1987), pp. 267-302. The argumentation is broad and conclusive.


24

John are three works pertaining to three different currents of Judaism, it is just as evident that something also links them, something that attracts attention even before any analysis of the texts. And it is to that some thing that we probably owe the origin of the abstract concept of Apokalyptik. It is something not yet well conceptualized, perceived especially, though not solely, at the literary level: it is an atmosphere. Perhaps Maier is right, when he sees apocalyptic, in the traditional sense of the concept, as a symptom that is manifested as soon as the conviction is affirmed, based on the Deuteronomic-eschatological concept of history, that the present stands in that decisive phase of history in which, both in the human sphere and in the superhuman, there is a turning point, toward the time of definitive salvation, such that everything depends on how Israel behaves, as the elect community responsible for the progress of history...In this sense apocalyptic has existed throughout all the history of Judaism which accept the basic positions of the Deuteronomic-eschatological conception of history. 24

Maier also separates the formal problem from that of content, since he admits that the apocalypses are not the expression of any specific group, and can therefore belong to all of them. Their content then becomes something so evanescent conceptually as to be called only a 'symptom' of particular moments of the history of Israel up to our own day. What characterizes apocalyptic is the relationship between the historical moment and the author's consciousness of living in a decisive historical moment, in light of Deuteronomic-eschatological conceptions. In this sense, the Book of the Watchers is outside apocalyptic, since it belongs to a different historical period. Proceeding in this way, the traditional concept of apocalyptic also dissolves: what remains is the fact that there are some books which ancient authors called 'revelations', characterized by a certain form, though the form is not unique to these books so that it is difficult to compose an exact list of them. The historical interpretation of each of these books follows the same rules applied to any other text. Some of the 'apocalyptic' books can be traced back to a specific current of thought, others cannot. But just as the book of Sirach has its own place in the history of Jewish thought, 25

24. J. Maier, 'Apokalyptik im Judentum', in H. Althaus (ed.), Apokalyptik Eschatologie (Freiburg, 1987), pp. 43-72 (46). 25. Cf. VanderKam, Enoch.

und

25

Introduction

though not belonging to any specific, defined current of thought, so also the various books which some, or even all, scholars call apocalyptic must be studied within their historical contexts. The object of such study is the history of Jewish thought and the relationships between various authors. The historical problem of apocalyptic will be resolved only when all the 'intertestamental' works have been utilized for a history of Jewish thought. Only then will the position of each and all be apparent. This does not detract from the fact that the needs that gave life to the word 'apocalyptic' probably remain valid. There is a need to indicate that eschatological tension pervading many Jewish works of all times, but especially those of the era around the birth of Christianity. This tension, characterized in an oxymoron as hope in catastrophe, found expression in a kind of work which the ancients called 'apocalypse', and from which modern authors have extrapolated a term, 'apocalyptic', whose conceptual field is vague, since it tends to gather elements that are of diverse kinds and are therefore difficult to combine. The very concept of 'eschatology' can take on different contents according to different ages and authors. Even in the case of eschatology we are struggling with a term which we have invented and one which some would like, with good reason, to eliminate from research. Behind words like 'apocalyptic' and 'eschatology' there stands our difficulty in making the historical data, which we are continually elabo rating, coincide with our conceptualizations. These have been formed by the demands of the historical method, which in this field is unable to proceed freely, iuxta principia sua, because we of Western culture use it while immersed in a way of thinking in which, through Christianity, the Jewish component is still living and transmitting values and beliefs that were formed during the historical period of the Second Temple. Within our words there is a thread of the religious heritage which is continually re-elaborated within the structure of contemporary thought. To move in the opposite direction is all too easy and natural: we carry modern values and formulations back into ancient thought. 26

But ancient thought, if it still has value today, has to be transculturated in order to be understood and kept alive. To read an ancient text through a direct, modern conceptual elaboration only means betraying the ancients, who must be reread only in the light of, and by means of, their own categories. 27

26. J. Carmignac, Le mirage de Veschatologie (Paris, 1979). 27. Cf. P. Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976), p. 269.


26

I think we may conclude the following: a.

b.

c.

The word 'apocalyptic' is a modern invention, deriving from the wish to conceptualize the field of research on the affinities between the Apocalypse of John and other works of its time. The existence of these affinities is clearly of a literary and for mal character, but in part also one of content. This is a normal problem in the history of thought and of literature, which can be resolved only with concepts like 'influence', 'development' and 'innovation'. This eliminates the problem of apocalyptic, as a specific current of thought identified with the apocalypses.

However, the existence within the Judaism of the Second Temple period of works that express diverse ideologies, incompatible among themselves, reveals the need to identify their differences and label them. I have used the term 'apocalyptic' to indicate all the works that reflect the problematic of the Enoch tradition, the basic structure of its thought, which endures through the centuries. This does not take away the fact that within this apocalyptic there are differences; only that their explana tion is to be found on the level of the history of thought. In other words, the concept of 'apocalyptic', since it is rooted in a word we modern authors have created, can only be defined by each author, since we lack a commonly accepted use of the term. This is a fact. The term can also be exchanged for another: this is not important. It is only by convention that the current of thought expressed first in the Book of the Watchers can be defined as apocalyptic. If I retain this term it is only because most of the works considered apocalyptic by the opinio communis belong to this current. In any case, the apocalyptic atmosphere perceptible in certain periods of the history of Israel has nothing to do with the concept of apocalyptic as I have defined it (or if it does, only occasionally). The term 'apocalyptic' has already entered common speech and it can well indicate in all the modern languages that which it really does indicate without, for this reason, being elevated to the level of an historical category to interpret the Judaism of the Second Temple period.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

When I wrote the introduction to the Italian edition of this collection of essays six years ago, I realized that the concept of apocalyptic was some what nebulous. As my work went ahead I became more and more convinced that the concept had no historical consistency at all and was therefore useless for the scholar. Today I am more convinced of this than ever and believe that the term should either be completely abandoned or should be used only in the limited sense of indicating a particular style. For years I have followed non-canonical (pseudepigraphical and Qumranic) Jewish thought, where possible making comparisons with the canonical documents, in order to allow for a much broader vision of preChristian Jewish thought based on the available evidence. My ultimate goal was, and is, that of placing early Christian theology in its proper context within the complex Jewish thought of the first century CE. Of course, finding the roots of the earliest Christian theology does not mean explaining the origins of Christianity, whose only roots lie in the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Whether this event actually happened or not, early Christian theology (or perhaps it would be better to say early Christian theologies) is the fruit of reflection on the event which was held to be true. The sense of my work, then, was and is that of finding the guiding categories of early Christian thought, categories which were formed in the convulsions of first-century Palestine. Naturally, this work is incomplete. The research presented in this collection of essays proceeds in a fairly sure and unitary manner through the period represented by the most ancient Enochic tradition (Ethiopic Enoch in its original form, that is without the Book of Parables) and the Qumran texts normally held to date from the second or the first century BCE. The latter half of the first century BCE and the first century CE, however, present a mass of texts which have not yet benefited from particular studies in the light of the problems I have posed. I have surveyed many later pseudepigraphical works in order to identify which of the most ancient themes of Enochism

28


survived and in what form. Besides those of the Book of Parables, which is still part of the Enochic tradition, I have been able to individuate the same themes, discussed for centuries, present in the two great apocalypses of the late first century CE, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and 4 Ezra, even though the solutions offered to the problems vary from one book to the other. I have tried to put some order in the cloudy history of Jewish thought, but many first-century CE works did not fit my interpretative scheme based on the existence of two fundamental attitudes of the Jew before God. I have called one of these positions 'Theology of the Covenant', and the other 'Theology of the Promise', without the intention of creating labels for two precise theologies, but more simply two basic attitudes in relation to the problem of salvation; that is, whether salvation depends on humanity's observance of the Law, or rather on gratuitous divine intervention. At the two extremes we can place the Qumran tradition and its predeterminism, and the Sadducees who, according to Josephus Flavius, saw everything as depending only on human action. But as many works of this period are not directly focused on such problems, their analysis must be more sophisticated in the future. I also considered the relationship between Enochism and Qumran as the relationship between two different currents of thought, even though it was clear that Essenism (in the commonly used sense of the word) owed a great deal to the thought of the Book of the Watchers. Essenism was predeterminist while the Enochic current was not. The Enochic devil was a rebel angel who had been able to rebel precisely because of his freedom; the Qumran devil was simply an expression of God's will who had created Darkness just as he had created Light. The idea, however, that human nature has been contaminated by 'something' was common to both lines of thought. I also viewed Qumran as a sort of library containing a little of everything. I paid attention especially to the works most characteristic of Essenism, the great scrolls of Cave 1 and to a few works that were clearly similar to them. As concerns the Qumran fragmentary texts (such texts are the most numerous), they seemed, and seem, to me of limited and difficult use to the historian, due to the uncertainty regarding the meaning of the texts, given the lacunae, and even more so for the frequent lack of sufficient context. Later, the debate between Golb and Garcia Martinez has seen me lean more and more to the side of the latter. Today, this has led me to put greater emphasis on the presence or absence of pseudepigraphical texts

Introduction to the English Edition

29

in the Qumran library. The fact that at Qumran there are no later pseudepigraphical works after the Epistle of Enoch (and even its pre sence is uncertain) allows for a different evaluation of the tabula presentiae et absentiae. It cannot be considered a random fact that in the Qumran library there are no pseudepigraphical texts datable to later than 50 BCE, while all of them are present before that date. The oldest of the Enochic books, the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Astronomy and the Book of Dreams, were to be found at Qumran as were nearly all of the books of the Bible; from later there is nothing. It seems that during the first half of the first century BCE some point in discussion (the question of freedom of choice must be at the center of it, along with some real problems of interpreting the Law) caused a sort of closing of the canon in the Qumran community and, in any case, a closure towards Enochism, which continued to defend humanity's freedom of choice even in its later tradition. It is noteworthy that the so-called pseudepigra phical literature has reached us only through the Christian tradition. Around the beginning of the Christian era the discussion over many problems with infinite nuances and conclusions was wide open in the Jewish world. Some works seem to be of a Pharisaic type and to belong to the formative Rabbinism, others appear to take up opposite or difficult to collocate positions. Most texts belong to the latter category and should be carefully studied in order to understand their deepest motivations. On the one hand lies the relationship between human behavior and salvation, the latter being now for eternity, and on the other hand the search for a behavior worthy of salvation. In the meantime it became more and more clear within Judaism that whatever the righteous behavior desired by God, no one was ever able to live up to it completely and, therefore, no one was ever worthy of salvation. This all takes place against the backdrop of foreign domination which in turn brought about an ideological confrontation and a constant search for identity within the context of the complex ideological problems mentioned above. In the introduction of the Italian edition of this book, written in 1990,1 called attention to my tendency to establish later dates for Jewish events and documents than I believed before. I should add now that when I wrote the articles collected here I still agreed with Noth's thesis that the historical work of the books of Kings was linked to Deuteronomy. The use of 'Deuteronomistic' rather than 'Deuteronomic' is derived from this belief, because I approached the ideology of Deuteronomy from the point of view of its author/redactor.

30


These articles are attempts, occasionally followed up and occasionally not, aimed at establishing the necessary prerequisites for understanding the Jewish history of the Second Temple, which has been so important in the history of humanity. A history of the Second Temple, which I wrote in 1994, should also be seen in the same light: a broader, more organic look at this fascinating period, with a few glances at the origins of Christianity as well, whose origins in turn cannot be understood by moving backward in time (from the Creed to John, Paul and Mark), but rather by following the flow of ideas and events in the pre-Christian centuries up to the first reflections on the Resurrection.

NOTE

The articles of this English collection are not reproduced in their original form. Some issues and notes, because they appeared in more than one article, have been omitted and substituted by references to other articles and notes included in this collection. What I wrote remains valid for the time in which it was written. For example, today I find it difficult to accept the expression 'Northern Theology' and 'Southern Theology', in place of 'Theology of the Covenant' and 'Theology of the Promise'. The former terminology now seems to me compromised by a reconstruction of history that appears improbable. It is perhaps useful to indicate that the Apocrypha may have two differ ent meanings according to Catholic or Prostetant traditions. The Catholic tradition calls Apocrypha the books that are called Pseudepigrapha by the Protestants; for the Protestants the Apocrypha are the books that the Catholics call Deuterocanonical. This can provoke some confusion in the reading of bibliography. My Apocrypha are not the same texts as the Apocrypha of Charles. The oscillation between the use of Yahweh/Lord depends on the translator's choice.

Parti T H E Q U E S T FOR THE HISTORICAL APOCALYPTIC

Chapter 1 THE BOOK OF THE WATCHERS

A N D APOCALYPTIC*

1. General Observations 1

Late Jewish literature continues to attract more scholarly attention, and not merely among those who dedicate themselves to the study of Judaism. Even New Testament scholars are beginning to work in the area, and this interest is sure to increase. Soon it will be impossible to write presentations of the New Testament or Christologies which do not take account of all that can be gathered about Palestine at the time of Jesus. Works like Vawter's recent Christology are born already old to the eye of those who attend equally to late Judaism and Christian origins. A clear distinction between the two fields does not make sense. Christian thought, no matter what the extent of its innovative capacity, cannot be grasped except within the frame work of the institutions and ideas of its time. Materials from New Testament literature and from Late Judaism must be studied one along side the other, without preferring one source to the other. Even the work of Bultmann, who gave so much attention to the apocalyptic background of the Gospels, reveals its limitations by its using of that material according to a principle entirely at the service of a modern theology of the New Testament. To demythologize means, finally, to interpret the teaching of Jesus by stripping it of apocalyptic 'encrustations'. This procedure is arbitrary on the historical level. 2

* First published as 'II Libro del Vigilanti e 1'apocalittica', Henoch 1 (1979), pp. 42-98. 1. Here the term 'Late Jewish' indicates the Jewish world between roughly 200 BCE and 100 CE. 2. Bultmann's problem, as clearly seen in Neues Testament und Mythologie (cf. Kerygma und Mythos [Hamburg-Bergstedt, I960]), essentially consists in this: giving the New Testament message a form acceptable to the modern person. Bultmann asks if one can presume that the modern person accepts as true the mythical vision of the world that was held at the time of Jesus. The answer, evidently, is negative. But this

33

1. The Book of the Watchers and Apocalyptic

It is not that studies of late Judaism are lacking, but these are generally ends unto themselves; they seem to lack a methodology that would allow for a unified treatment illustrating the history of Judaism from 200 BCE to 100 CE in such a way as to include also the birth of Christianity. The outlook of scholars is distorted by a fundamental error. They do history not in order to know a period but rather to resolve problems, like those of Bultmann, which have little or nothing to do with history. To explain a text while eliminating a part of it because it is unclear in one's view of things, even when done by intelligent people, is a pro cedure without value in the realm of history. The historian's problem cannot be how to make the Gospel such that it has no contradictions or oddities from our point of view; the problem of the historian is simply that of understanding how a certain view of the world was produced 3

is not a historical problem. For the historian, if in an ancient text one finds that the earth is at the center of the universe, this means only that the author thought in this way. It seems to me even in the case mentioned above, which is the first example of New Testament myth indicated by Bultmann, that it is extremely dangerous, on the very level of the rationality of discourse, to speak of 'myth'. This has to do with a precise scientific understanding which today has been replaced by the cosmic relativity of Einstein. When we shall have a new cosmic theory that of Einstein would become myth with respect to that succeeding it. Though not an expert in theology, I believe in any case that one ought to distinguish clearly between scientific conceptions, varying from age to age, and conceptions like that of the world of good and bad spirits, which are difficult to trace back to the same kind of knowledge from which derive those which today we can call scientific. It seems to me, therefore, that Koch is right to hold that, according to Bultmann, demythologizing the New Testament means freeing it from its apocalyptic encrustations. In fact, even if Bultmann does not say so expressly, most of the mythological concepts to be eliminated turn out to be those typical of apocalyptic thought. On the importance of apocalyptic thought in the formation of the first Christian theology, it does not seem to me that there should be doubts even for Bultmann: cf. '1st die Apokalyptik die Mutter der christlichen Theologie?', in Apophoreta, Festschrift fiir E. Haenchen zu seinem 70. Gebuztstag am 10. Dexember 1974 (ed. W. Eltester, F.H. Kettler; BZNW, 30; Berlin, 1964), pp. 64-69, restated in R. Bultmann, Exegetica, [Tubingen: 1967], pp. 467-82). Here Bultmann says that he is substantially in agreement with Kasemann, from whom derives the expression, 'apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology', as long as apocalyptic means 'eschatology' (and present, not future eschatology). Cf. Kasemann's, 'Die Anfange der christlichen Theologie', ZTK 57 (1960), pp. 162-85 and 'Paulus und Fruhkatholizismus', ZTK 60 (1963), pp. 75-89. 3. 'Wie jeder Zurechnungsfahige uberzeugt ist', in Neues Mythologie, p. 18.

Testament

und


34

and in what form it existed. Then if some do not consider this vision of the world rationally valid, they may choose not to adhere to it; but this concerns the believer, not the historian. In the rebirth of late Jewish studies apocalyptic has special importance. There is an evident link between it and New Testament thought, and one must therefore evaluate the influence it had on the formation of the earliest Christian theology. Yet attempts at synthesis must proceed with out adequate editions of texts, although scholarship today is gradually filling this lacuna. We are also lacking a clear view, in historical terms, of what apocalyptic is. 4

5

4. Critical presentations of the Old Testament apocrypha are being published in Germany in the series, Jiidische Schriften aus hellenistisch-rdmischer Zeit, edited by W.G. Ktimmel and published by G. Mohn. Among the books to be published are Jubilees and Ethiopic Enoch. Concerning the latter, there is a critical edition of the Ethiopic text in England edited by M.A. Knibb and E. Ullendorff (The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments [Oxford, 1978]). The Aramaic fragments of Enoch from the Qumran caves have been published by J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford, 1976). Milik's work presents contrasting features. The edition of the text is very fine, while the negative evaluation of the Ethiopic text is disputable (cf. Ullendorff's review, BSOAS 4 0 [1977], pp. 601-602). Equally disputable is the dating of the section of the Book of Parables to the fourth century CE. Milik is correct to assume that originally the book of Enoch did not contain the Book of Parables, because in its place in the Qumran fragments there is a Book of the Giants. But it is arbitrary to deduce from this that the Book of Parables must be later. To attribute it to Christians of the fourth century is impossible, because: 1) the Book of Parables is an apocalypse and there are no apocalypses as late as that; 2) it is not of Christian origin because it lacks any reference to the story of Jesus. It contains neither the passion nor the resurrection of the Son of Man or the Elect: the Christian glosses in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are easily recognized precisely because of the frequent mentions of or allusions to the passion and crucifixion. The same reasons are given in the long critical presentation dedicated to Milik's work by J.A. Fitzmyer, 'Implications of the New Enoch Literature from Qumran', TS 38 (1977), pp. 332-45, of which I learned after this article was completed. 5. Besides Koch's work, to be discussed at length below, I would mention D.S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 6th edn, 1974 [1964]); and W. Schmithals, Die Apokalyptik. Einfuhrung und Deutung (Gottingen, 1973; ET, The Apocalyptic Movement [Nashville, 1976]). What charac terizes these works is the search for themes and structures of apocalyptic, without taking account, or taking insufficient account, of the fact that at least a half-millen nium passed between the first and the last apocalypse. That there should have been a profound evolution is logical and natural.


35

2. Problems in the Study of Apocalyptic Several years ago a book appeared that illuminates the difficulties of studying apocalyptic: The Rediscovery of the Apocalyptic by K. Koch. It is a critical book, written intelligently, which tries to see problems in their complexity, without losing sight of the attitudes of scholars, which in general are rightly judged as misguided. It seems appropriate to begin by quoting Koch's critique, since it will allow us to shorten our treatment considerably. 6

7

A quantity of extra-biblical material, and especially archeological dis coveries, is being gathered together for the illumination of the biblical text. Yet it is at this point that the weakness of present biblical scholarship becomes evident. The non-biblical material which is used is employed in a purely illustrative way; its exegetical application seems superficial and a matter of chance; the material is not fitted together with the biblical state ments into one overall context of life, since it is not understood as being the product of one and the same history...The commentators of today shun the imputation of producing a historical reconstruction like the plague. But to investigate history does in fact mean reconstruction; and anyone who does not like it will never arrive at a result which will stand up to inspection. Having avoided the Scylla of possible speculative reconstructions, the commentators promptly land in the Charybdis of an anachronistic equat ing of the 'situation' of each individual 'text' with the 'situation' of 'man today', the two allegedly coinciding...It is no wonder that theological exegesis is becoming more and more colourless and anaemic.

I agree with the author that progress in studies of late Jewish literature and especially that part of it defined as apocalyptic is severely hampered by the mentality he has described. History cannot be written using the material of one age in order to support ideas that pertain to another. The history of apocalyptic can only be written by looking at the apocalyptic texts, framing each in its own time (and this is not done clearly even by Koch, who seems tied by the scholarly tradition seeking a definition of apocalyptic valid for all apocalypses, precluding the possibility of following and understanding their development) and following the varia tions one can note from one apocalypse to another. 6. London, 1972. The original title: Ratios vor der Apokalyptik: Eine Streitschrift iiber ein vernachlassigtes Gebiet der Bibelwissenschaft und die schddlichen Auswirkungen auf Theologie und Philosophie (Gutersloh, 1970). 7. The author singles out the fundamental themes of apocalyptic writings (Koch, Rediscovery, pp. 124-25). The following remarks will follow his list.


36

Having indicated this method, the only one that seems valid to me, I must immediately mention two types of difficulties the scholar encounters. The first is of a technical-philological order, the scarcity of good editions and studies, mentioned earlier, that would permit approximate, but sure, dating. The second is the uncertainty about the very meaning of 'apocalyptic', because of which one risks composing the history of some thing that never existed, at least not in the exact form in which we think of it. In regard to the first point, recently there has been significant progress on some important works. Though all is not yet clear, for some works, there is already a modest level of certainty and this article is intended to offer a contribution on this specific point. Past conjectures on dating, like that proposed by De Jonge for the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, are no longer viable: one can no longer hold that this is a Christian work. But until such certainties are reached, I admit that use of some texts is generally problematic; and it is dangerous to base any thesis whatsoever on texts that have not yet been 8

9

8. See Koch, Rediscovery, p. 21. 'If there was really a community of ideas and spirit between the different books which we now call apocalypses, these books must go back to a common sociological starting point; they must have a comparable Sitz. im Leben. The majority of scholars do in fact assume this to be the case with the Old Testament apocalyptic. But as soon as it is a question of pinning down this assump tion in precise terms, the secondary literature shows unsurpassed jumble of opinions. During the period between 200 BCE and AD 100—that is to say the late Israelite period—in which the mass of apocalyptic writings came into being, Israel had an appearance of anything but unity, whether in Palestine or the Diaspora.' Besides the synchronic differences, I would call attention to the diachronic differences. Though most of the apocalypses are later than 200 BCE, this does not mean that all are: perhaps it is precisely in the earlier ones that one might find the secret, the soul of apocalyptic. 9. On the problems of dating the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, cf. M. De Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Study of their Text, Composition and Origin (Assen, 1953); 'Christian Influence in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs', NovT4 (1960), pp. 182-235; 'Once More Christian Influence in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs', NovT 5 (1962), pp. 311-19; Testamenta XII Patriarcharum. Edited according to Cambridge University Library MS Ff. 1.24, fol. 203a-261b, with Brief Apparatus Criticus (Leiden, 2nd edn, 1970); Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, (Leiden, 1975). For a contrary view, cf. J. Becker, Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchen (Leiden, 1970); Die Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchen (Gutersloh, 1974).


37

sufficiently studied. I have the impression that Koch himself uses late Jewish texts without posing adequately questions of their structure and dating that would permit their safe use by the historian. Koch cites the book of Ethiopic Enoch (1 Enoch) as if it were a single unit. In fact it is a pentateuch, made up of books with different datings and topics. The fifth book, the Epistle of Enoch, and the first, the Book of the Watchers, are miles apart. The general tendency of today's scholars (see the works of Russell, Schmithals and Koch) is towards considering apocalyptic as a unit, whose literary characteristics, spiritual world and ideology need to be delineated. Scholars search for the environment in which apocalyptic arose, literate or illiterate. They tend to link apocalyptic with the disasters in the history of Israel beginning in the second century BCE. But they do not take into account that all these problems cannot be confronted on the basis of an immediate reading of the apocalypses, for the simple reason that one must consider it impossible that the political-social and ideological situation in which appeared the oldest work we have, the Book of the Watchers, could be the same as that of works, even though Jewish, which already belong to our era. I have noted, for example, that the theme of waiting, considered fun damental by Koch (it is the first one singled out; see below) and of first importance for Schmithals is studied on the basis of late texts without ever citing the Book of the Watchers. Given this ahistorical posing of the problem, the tendency of scholars is to identify what apocalyptic really is, that being most clearly apoca lyptic which is most frequently documented in the apocalypses. They do not consider that what appears, even consistently, in late apocalypses and is missing from earlier ones cannot be considered generically apoca lyptic material but only 'late apocalyptic'. One must therefore explain how and when a certain theme was born or entered into apocalyptic. Consequently, the concept of apocalyptic, like everything historical, can only be the concept of a whole with variable parts. There is a great difference between the laissez-faire economics of the nineteenth century and that of our own: the unity of tradition is guaran teed especially by its adherents' awareness of belonging to a precise and definite tradition. Facts like these can also help us to understand apoca lyptic. Whoever accepted the Book of the Watchers into the pentateuch of 1 Enoch recognized there the background of his own ideology. To expect differences between older and more recent works is obvious and

38


natural, even if they belong to the same current of thought. Normally, when doing research on something, one knows what one is talking about, what it is that one is investigating. In the case of apoca lyptic, however, things do not work entirely in this way. It may be sufficient to think of a phrase like this, taken from Russell: Not all [scil. the apocalyptic books] are 'apocalypses' in the thorough going sense that others can claim that name; but they are usually included because they contain certain apocalyptic elements and obviously belong to the apocalyptic line of tradition. There is no agreed list of such books. 10

From a phrase like this we learn that the literary concept of apocalyptic and the historical-ideological one do not coincide and that, given the lack of agreement, it remains difficult to establish which books are apoca lyptic. But there is also the suspicion that the problem may be even more vast, that we are actually uncertain about which ideological elements characterize apocalyptic. This uncertainty is natural, if we remember the ahistorical method of proceeding used by scholars. Koch has recently posed the problem clearly, but one must ask to what degree his solution makes sense: If we are to arrive at a historical perception of the background against which apocalyptic ideas grew up, as well as a serviceable and generally applicable concept of apocalyptic, we must start from the writings which were composed in Hebrew or Aramaic, or in which, at least, the Hebrew or Aramaic spirit is dominant. To this group belong first and foremost the book of Daniel, I Enoch, II Baruch, IV Ezra, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and the book of Revelation, with its Semitic tendencies...We can only ascertain what is apocalyptic about these writings if characteristics common to the type can be demonstrated.' 1

The logic of these propositions is 1) writings are selected in which there is a Hebraic-apocalyptic spirit, and which are redacted in a certain language; 2) from the characteristics of the genre one may deduce which are the apocalyptic peculiarities. In other words, having collected works which seem to us apocalyptic (a term I have yet to define), I list their characteristics. The author, researching what apocalyptic is, really already knows what it is and his discourse serves only to clarify the structure of a historical element already known. But the problem was to identify a field of investigation, not to characterize one already known. 10. Russell, Method, p. 37. 11. Koch, Rediscovery, p. 23.


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Schmithals comes to the point of declaring that the ideology of apoca lyptic is generally very clear, centered on ideas of resurrection and awaiting the new era. In fact, the image of apocalyptic is as clear as this only if we take into account works composed between the first century BCE and the next century. I believe the cause of this confusion is the very way in which the term 'apocalyptic' was born. It was coined by German scholars of the early 1 8 0 0 s on the basis of the word dnoKocXuvinq, 'revelation', which appears in some late Jewish works. Apocalyptic was that something that stood, or was presumed to stand, behind the apocalypses. The word 'apocalypse' was coined by the ancients and used to indicate a certain kind of work that unveiled things that human reason would be unable to reach without God's inspiration. Today we may say that even the Law of Moses was revelation, since an ancient author wrote that Moses had spoken with God face to face (Num. 1.8); but the author who used this means to show that the Law was revealed did not use the term 'revelation'. The modern problem therefore started with the word 'apocalypse' within whose semantic field an old problem was hiding, one already old for the authors of the first century, that of the guarantee of truth. However the central problem was not grasped by modern scholarship. Attention was focused on another: the works already called apocalypses by ancient authors or early tradition had in common with each other and with other Jewish works elements of content and style that were readily visible. One knows intuitively that there would be something common to the Apocalypse of John and other Jewish works, especially contemporary ones. Thus in the research on this something whose exis tence was considered certain, apparent to perception even before reason, a name was given: apocalyptic. But the problem of form and literary character was not distinguished from that of history and content. There was no posing the problem of whether in the final stage of a current of thought one may find elements that are foreign to its origins and, con versely, whether elements from its origins may not later be lost. In the case of apocalyptic the problem is this: supposing that a current of thought really is hidden behind the apocalypses, what then is new about it and what is old, and within what limits can its old ingredients charac terize an ideological current to be called 'apocalyptic'? 12

12. J.M. Schmidt, Die judische Apokalyptik, die Geschichte ihrer Erforschung von den Anfangen bis zu den Textfunden von Qumran (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1969).

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It is evident that, if we hope to reach a valid conclusion, we must first of all free ourselves from the literary problem, which must be secondary, even if very interesting. The first problem to confront is whether, tracing the history of Jewish thought, one finds there, and since when and how, elements that can explain the formation of those works which already in antiquity were called apocalypses. If one undertook such a history in the terms I have indicated, one would first of all have to be very clear about these elements whose origin one is seeking, so it would be good to start from some working hypothesis that takes account of these elements (and it could very well be the list of apocalyptic elements identified by Koch), while keeping a very attentive eye on history. History, for me, is the history of people who think. Therefore ideas, in themselves, say very little if isolated: they should rather be sought in their mutual inter relationships, within their own constellations, in which each has its place, is moved by specific needs, and illuminated by specific meanings and basic notions. We may even call this autonomous current of thought within Judaism 'apocalyptic', but remaining quite clear that the term necessarily indi cates an element that is historical and therefore variable, whose identity from generation to generation is guaranteed by the constant presence of the movement's basic demands. This only permits the use of a single term. So the fact that the Book of the Watchers was placed first in 1 Enoch constitutes a valid support for this working hypothesis: from relatively ancient times there existed a current of thought within the Jewish world characterized by its autonomy in relation to the rest of the tradition. To think that a work like the Book of the Watchers, perhaps the oldest remaining apocalypse, can be inserted into the same historicalsocial context as that of John or Baruch is absurd. The great mistake of the scholars of apocalyptic consists in holding that it is a unified whole with 'a common sociological basis', 'an analogous life context'. In his critique Koch is completely right but the problem does not consist in determining whether the origins of apocalyptic are in Babylon or Persia, whether the authors are linked to the country people or the educated class of Jerusalem. The task is, first of all, to describe the first stages and the later developments of this movement. The rest can come only later. Therefore I am against posing the question, 'What is apocalyptic?' as if it were a single reality that can be situated in one time and place. The question should rather be posed thus: 'In the history of Jewish thought, 13

13. Koch, Rediscovery,

p. 21.


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are there some significant issues later found in classical apocalyptic, that is, in those works which tradition already indicates as apocalyptic?' The task of the historian is simplified by the fact that we have a book, con sidered an apocalypse by modern scholarship, which is clearly older than the others, the Book of the Watchers. Finding its meaning could mean finding the circumstance that led apocalyptic to become a movement of thought even before it was a literary form, which originally must have been produced by a certain spiritual outlook. Only later will the literary form tend to become a 'historical fact', a recognized 'literary genre', not at the beginning. And it will only be when we have identified the basic themes of the author of the oldest apocalypse that we will be able to pose other prob lems, such as the interpretation of the apocalyptic movement: was it a successor to prophecy or should it be seen rather as a particular development of wisdom? The first solution seems to be little more than a word-game. That prophecy disappeared in Israel when apocalyptic appeared is a fact. But what does it mean to say that apocalyptic succeeded prophecy? The prophet pointed to a way of salvation; the visionary also points to one. But even before confronting individual problems it is clear that this salvation has quite different dimensions. Much more valid historically is the attempt of von Rad to link apoca lyptic to wisdom and to the desire for knowledge it presupposes. Here one can trace a continuous line from wisdom to the rise of apocalyptic, but the vastness of the themes covered in the classical apocalypses, with conclusions different from Pharisaic and traditional ones, demonstrates that the problem is wider than von Rad imagined. And this is without taking into account that the apocalyptic knowledge through illumination is a qualitative leap, notably in respect to traditional wisdom, which with Job and especially Qoheleth had arrived at methods of knowledge that are essentially rationalistic and empirical. This new type of knowledge, if it brings the apocalyptics close to anyone, brings them close to the Teacher of Righteousness. But then the problem becomes: what reasons may have induced some people of the second century BCE to hold that 14

15

16

14. Cf. Russell, Method, pp. 73-82; Schmithals, Apocalyptic, pp. 119ff. 15. Cf. the chapter, 'Daniel and Apocalyptic', in volume II, pp. 301 ff. of the English edition. An excellent synthesis is given by Schmithals, Apocalyptic, pp. 11519. 16. Cf. P. Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976), pp. 156-61.

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knowledge can or should come by way of illumination? The problem necessarily leaves the sphere of apocalyptic to become a chapter in the whole history of Jewish thought. 3. The Great Themes of Apocalyptic (according to Koch) Before confronting the theme I have proposed, here are some observa tions of a general character, acceptable to everyone. Besides historians who speak of 'apocalyptics', as if there really existed persons who distinguished themselves consciously from the other Jewish sects of the time, there are others, like Russell or Di Nola, who prefer to think of apocalyptic as the characteristic aspect of late Jewish thought: 'The first two pre-Christian centuries are apocalyptic.' In favor of the first solution there is the fact that it would be difficult for the teachers of the pre-Christian mishnah to be considered under the influence of apocalyptic; in favor of the second, there is the fact that it is very difficult to make a list of apocalyptic books upon which all can agree. The world of apocalyptic fades into and mixes itself, inexorably to our eyes, with that of the Old Testament apocrypha, which in their turn (at least many of them) have already been recognized as linked with the Essene movement. Some have actually maintained that apocalyptic is nothing other than a face of Essenism. This was the opinion main tained by A. Hilgenfeld in the middle of the last century and by Kohler at the beginning of this century, when our ideas of Essenism were certainly less clear than they are today. However the existence of a connection between Essenism and apocalyptic is upheld even by con temporaries like Ringgren, Cross, and Reicke. It is my impression that 17

18

19

20

21

17. For Di Nola, cf. Enciclopedia delle Religioni I, p. 519, where he affirms that among religions of the apocalyptic type are certainly the Judaism of the second-first century BCE and evangelical Christianity. Russell's thought is more complex and nuanced: apocalyptic attitudes are found to some extent in all aspects of (late) Judaism (Method, p. 27). Thus, apocalyptic aspects can be found even among the Pharisees, while there do exist entirely apocalyptic apocalyptics. 18. For the close link between apocalyptic and the apocrypha, cf. A. Romeo, in Enciclopedia Cattolica I. p. 1616, 19. Die judische Apokalyptik (Jena, 1857), cited by Romeo (see preceding note). 20. In the Jewish Encyclopedia V, p. 224. 21. H. Ringgren, RGG, I, p. 464: 'Die Hilgenfeldsche Theorie vom essenischen Ursprung scheint neuerdings durch die Funde von Qumran eine gewisse Stiitze bekommen zu haben'; F.M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (New York,


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all these formulations are more harmful than helpful to historical research. Certain ideas that have arisen in a certain ideological constellation can well pass into other constellations, without varying the fundamental structure of the elements exchanged. For example, angels are found in both the Pharisaic and apocalyptic traditions, but it is clear that they have very different functions, since the 'in-between world' has an importance and function in apocalyptic which it does not have in Pharisaism. And this depends on a different conception of human freedom. An Essene believes in the Law, as does a Pharisee, but the function of the Law is different for each because the Law is part of differing ideological constellations. Koch frames his work by seeking first of all to establish whether there exists a literary genre that can be defined as apocalyptic. Since he starts from a limited number of works already indicated by the tradition as such, or widely recognized as such, I think his starting point can be accepted. The works he indicates as definite apocalypses are: Daniel, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, The Apocalypse of Abraham and the Apocalypse of John. Once having established that these works have characteristics that justify speaking of an apocalyptic literary genre, Koch goes on to list the characteristics of apocalyptic thought, that is, its basic themes. Here is the list, followed by a few of my observations. 1. The first theme that strikes Koch, and I believe rightly, is that of waiting. 'In apocalyptic writings there predominates agonized waiting for a quick and total change of all human relations—"Behold, I return soon. Amen"—proclaims the heavenly Christ at the end of the Apocalypse of John. The same atmosphere can be noted in the other apocalypses. Hope for an imminent cosmic ending remains vague only where the seers, like Enoch or Abraham, belong to remote times. Elsewhere, however, such hope acquires a very clear shape...' The general idea is perfectly acceptable but it needs a more historical and less literary mode of interpreting the phenomenon, so that the awaited eschatological time may appear more or less imminent. That the 22

2nd edn, 1961), p. 62 n. 16 and especially p. 72 n. 33: 'That which places a gulf between the Essenes and the main stream of Judaism is their apocalypticism, or more precisely, their formation of apocalyptic communities'; B. Reicke, 'Official and Pietistic Elements of Jewish Apocalypticism', JBL 79 (1960), pp. 137-50. 22. Cf. P. Sacchi, 'Appunti per una storia della crisi della Legge nel giudaismo del tempo di Gesu', Bihbia e Oriente (1970), pp. 199-211.

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seer is a person more or less remote in time is a fact that has absolutely no importance. The problem eventually should be posed in this way: Why does a certain author sense the end to be nearer or further away? The choice of a pseudepigraphal name suits the meaning: it is not an autonomous fact with respect to the author. 2. 'The end is presented as a cosmic catastrophe.' So it is from Daniel (7.11) to John, to 2 Baruch (70.8), to 4 Ezra (5.4-6), to The Apocalypse of Abraham (30). 'One could cite a great many other passages if one wished. These descriptions have determined the current content of apocalyptic, and contribute to the description of the apocalyptic spirit as one of pessimism.'' It is evident that in the apocalypses, or in most of them, there wafts an air of pessimism. But it can be doubted that this pessimism is linked above all to the sense of final catastrophe. The catastrophe is awaited as liberation from Belial; it is therefore a reason for hope. The pessimism can be linked to the terrible sense of the necessity of the catastrophe in the case in which this is sensed as really imminent. But this is present everywhere to some degree, and I think it can derive from a general view of the world, felt to be under the dominion of Belial. 3. 'The end time is closely connected to the past history of humanity and the cosmos. Universal time is divided into rigid sections, whose con tent has been predetermined from the day of creation and to which the prophets allude in a coded language.' Thus it results that one speaks of determinism as a characteristic of apocalyptic. There remains the ques tion whether 'the apocalypses intend to present history—the history of the world or indeed of the cosmos—as rational development'. I am in full agreement that apocalyptic discourse involves not just this world, but the whole cosmos. But I do not know what value to give to the problem of the rationality of the apocalyptic interpretation of history. The rationality of the authors of apocalypses certainly is not that of Hegel. Probably also for them everything real is rational, but since their knowledge derives from illumination—they know what they know only because they have received a revelation—the basis of their conviction is to be sought in a dimension of reason which, at least for now, is difficult to search. Every event had a meaning for them only inasmuch as it 23

23. Russell dedicates much space to the psychological motivations of apocalyptic in the second part of his work. Schmithals also attributes a fundamental importance to this psychological dimension, tending towards a global understanding of the phenomenon of apocalyptic. He goes as far as writing that apocalyptic 'is rooted


45

was placed within a divine plan, of which it was a sign. The rationality of physical laws or the development of events (history) rested definitively within the raz, the divine mystery. 4. 'Earthly history, visible to all, is interdependent with an invisible history beyond the earthly, of which only preselected seers are aware...' In other words, our world depends upon events in another which I have called the 'in-between world', that of angelic beings, whether good or bad. Our world is dominated by the action of angelic forces, which are superior to it. The question that remains I think may be formulated in this way: For the authors of the apocalypses, do angelic beings act with a freedom of their own or not? Does determinism have to do also with angelic beings? It is not improbable to expect that on this point there would be different nuances. 'At the beginning of the new cosmic time the barriers that divided earthly history from the beyond-earthly will fall, the believers will be gathered with the good angels and will shine like the stars of the firmament.' The only doubt regarding this formulation is the term, 'believers', to indicate the saved. I have my doubts that it is valid in all cases. At any rate, Koch's choice of the term seems to me to indicate that he realizes that the one who is saved is not 'the just one according to the Law'. Giving 'believer' this more nuanced meaning, I can agree completely. 5. 'After the catastrophe, there will burst forth a new salvation, with paradisiacal characteristics. The rest of the people of God...will be saved in the beyond. The others will participate in salvation by means of the resurrection...Future salvation will be shared also with those who did not belong to Israel...Yet there is not a tendency toward universalism... Even within Israel itself a distinction is made, inasmuch as the inheri tance of eschatological salvation is no longer attributed to the people as such. Indeed, within the people of Israel the just are separated from the unbelievers...' If I have not misunderstood the author's thought, the authors of apocalypses are thinking about a universal salvation of the just (or something of the kind), but this will come about only at the time of the great catastrophe, at the eschatological time. For now their disprimarily in oneself, that is, in the apocalyptic experience of existence' (Apocalyptic, p. 136). This opens a discussion on the connection between structures and history and I must confess my difficulty in getting my bearings. Regarding Schmithals' methodology, which is more philosophical than historical, cf. the review by G. Filoramo, RSLR 2 (1975), pp. 345-46.

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course is directed only towards Israel, indeed to that part of Israel that accepts it; the others are left out. I agree with the general formulation, emphasizing that alongside belief in the resurrection there is also the belief in the immortality of the soul. 6. 'The passage from the state of perdition to that of definitive salva tion is seen as a decree that comes forth from the throne of God...From that moment begins the end of time, because the distinction between heavenly history and earthly history will be abolished...The enthrone ment is such that the reign of God becomes visible on earth (Dan. 7.14; 1 En. 41; Rev. 11.15), abolishing forever earthly realms...For this reason a form of dualism is ascribed to the apocalyptics, that is, the conviction that there is an absolute discontinuity between this bad world and that good one...One may ask however whether the description of the aeons really is trying to define the future of the world as something completely different. It is easy to pass over too lightly that the reign of God, that is, the future era, is already fully at work in the present, even though in a hidden way (Dan. 3.33; 4 Ezra4.26ff.; Rev. 1.9)...' 7. '...Very often an intermediary with royal functions is introduced as executor and guarantor of final salvation. But on this point the apoca lypses have particular characteristics...' The intermediary may have a human nature, connecting in some way to the traditional conception of the human messiah, or may have the same function, but with an angelic nature. 8. 'The term glory is used to designate the end-state cut off from the present and to presage a total fusion of celestial and terrestrial spheres... Social structures will fail...' Thus, the structure of the political state, as it is historically, must disappear. Koch concludes his summary of these eight themes observing that 'these are found, to a greater or lesser degree, in all the apocalypses. Even outside late Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic almost all are present. Nevertheless their balanced connection is characteristic of apocalyptic and of it alone. This leads one to suppose that the apoca lyptics grasped eschatological events in their following one after another and wanted to trace their common thread.' I have presented briefly the points listed by Koch as characteristic of apocalyptic, because I think they can easily be accepted. I would call 24

24. On this coexistence of diverse forms of belief in a life post mortem, cf. U. Fischer, Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen DiasporaJudentum (BZNW, 44; Berlin, 1978).


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attention to the fact that Koch does not hold that a work can be defined as apocalyptic only because it contains one or the other of the elements mentioned, since, taken individually, they can be found almost anywhere. It is their harmonious equilibrium that creates apocalyptic. 4. The Book of the Watchers, the Oldest Apocalypse we Have At this point, I must admit that this research started with the almost casual observation that Koch, in citing passages supporting his work of identifying the great themes of apocalyptic, never mentioned chs. 6-36 of 1 Enoch, that is, the Book of the Watchers. It is true that the passages cited by Koch are meant only as examples, not all the possible passages supporting his thesis. Nevertheless the fact struck me. The Book of the Watchers, after Milik's publication of the Aramaic fragments of the book of Enoch, clearly appears as the oldest part of a work that is already older in its totality than we had believed. Surely it is a text prior to 200 BCE, as it is already documented in all its basic sections in a fragment that goes back to the first half of the second century B C E . The margin of oscillation for the dating proposed could hardly bring us to decidedly different eras. Since the book also presents 2 5

25. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), p. 5: it concerns 4QEn . For the final redaction of the Book of the Watchers, Milik suggests the middle of the third century BCE, but the reasons are not very clear. The first is the fact that the Book of the Watchers already appears as a citation in a Qumran fragment (4Q227), which belongs to the Levi cycle. Milik says that he will soon publish an article to demonstrate that the Testament of Levi has a Samaritan origin, and was written in the third or fourth century BCE, but for the moment, 'he will maintain that its attestation of the Book of the Watchers...dates from towards the end of the third century' (p. 24). Furthermore, he finds links between the letters of Zeno (middle of the third century BCE) and the author of the Book of the Watchers. In regard to the oldest stratum of the work (but Milik's pro posed division of the work does not coincide with mine, since he considers chs. 6 19 a unity) it would be so ancient as to have its terminus ad quern in Gen. 6.1-4. Since this concerns a passage usually recognized as having a Jahwist origin, it follows that first of all the attribution must be reassessed, to avoid the Book of the Watchers' originating before 1000 BCE. For the attribution of Gen. 6.1-4 to the Jahwist, cf. the very extensive commentary by E. Testa, Genesi (chs. 1-12) (Turin, 1969), p. 363. Cf. also G. von Rad, Das erste Buch Moses (ATD; Gdttingen, 6th edn, 1961 [1949]), p. 92. If, however, some very recent attempts to move forward the dating of the Jahwist prevail, this whole discussion must be reopened. a

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its own internal history, which we shall see shortly, we must go back earlier, and not by just a few years. It seems fitting to verify in what measure and in what sense Koch's eight themes are present also in this ancient text. To determine the ideology of the Book of the Watchers is a first step toward grasping the origins and the meaning of apocalyptic. The first 36 chapters of the book of Enoch make up the first volume of the Enochic pentateuch. This is not to deny that even in this volume, redactionally unified, there appear diverse strata and sections. Chapters 1-5 (these also documented in the most ancient fragment) contain a general introduction. If we do not accept that the pentateuch was already completely composed in the first half of the second century BCE, which appears improbable, these chapters ought to be considered an intro duction only to the Book of the Watchers, or at most to one section, which would also include the Book of the Giants and the Astronomy. In these first five chapters the figure of Enoch appears (1.1) and it is said that the vision of Enoch, which is a blessing, is not for the genera tion in which the book was written, but is for a far-off generation to come (1.3). Cosmic order is emphasized; willed by God, all beings are called to bring it about. This part closes with a hymn, which says that all human beings are evil, but a time will come when sin will disappear (5.8-9). With ch. 6 the subject changes abruptly. Here are no longer general ideas, but the beginning of a story, that of the fall of the angels. There is another abrupt change with ch. 12, where the figure of Enoch is reintroduced, having been absent in chs. 6 - 1 1 . I will indicate the section made up of chs. 6-11 with the abbreviation BW1 (the most ancient part of the Book of the Watchers). The next section (chs. 12-36) will be indicated by the abbreviation BW2. BW1, in which there is no mention of Enoch, appears as a sort of midrash ante litteram on the story of the Flood, as it appears in Genesis beginning with ch. 6. In 6.1-4 it tells how the 'sons of God', that is, 'the angels', or 'some, a few angels' joined with the daughters of men, which made God decide, with an obscure logic, to reduce human life to a maximum of 120 years. The account fits within the general outline of 26

26. This division of the text is already given by R.H. Charles, who calls chs. 6-11 'a Noahic fragment'. See The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English (Oxford, 1913), II, pp. 168, 191. In fact it is impossible to consider chs. 6-11 as part of the 'visions of Enoch', since these begin clearly with the beginning of ch. 12.


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the Jahwist's thought, conceiving history as a continuous decline from the earthly paradise to the Flood. The short section closes with the indi cation that 'giants were on the earth in those days'. It does not say that the giants were born from the union of angelic beings with women. But it must have been very easy to interpret the passage in the sense that the giants were the children of a union against nature. The account of the Jahwist continues saying that the evil of human beings kept constantly increasing, so much so that God regretted creating humans, 'But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh' (6.8). Therefore God destroyed humanity by the Flood, but saved Noah, who offered God a sacrifice at the end of the catastrophe. God smelled the sweet fra grance and decided no longer to curse the earth because of humankind, because the human heart is inclined towards evil. It is an ancient observation that took into account a reality against which the author thought there was little that could be done. His teaching did not find an echo in the teaching of the prophets, not because the prophets did not know that people transgress the Law, but because they insisted on their responsibility, which the Jahwist's observation may not emphasize. In any case the passage did not have a development in Jewish thought, at least until our midrash. 27

The author of BW1 clearly links the birth of the giants (9.9) with the union of the angels with women (7.1-2) and considers it a grave con tamination, which directly affected the authors of the misdeed (9.8), but which also produced a disorder which had repercussions on all humanity and all living beings (9.9), since the giants did evil to all, even to the point of drinking blood (7.4-5). Evil derived from several causes: the first was contamination; but there was also the fallen angels' teaching humans secret things, that is, the arts and sciences, including astronomy (ch. 8). As humans were dying, they cried out and their cry reached all the way to heaven (8.4). Here the account seems to break off, and it resumes with a prayer that the archangels raise to God for intervention on behalf of humanity. The break is marked not so much by the introduction of the figures of the archangels as by the fact that there is no further mention, in the archangels' prayer, of humanity's cry of suffering, but rather of the cry

27. It is improbable that the author of this primitive midrash knew the Priestly version. There is no allusion whatsoever to God's covenant with Noah, which is a fundamental element of the Priestly source.


50

28

of 'the souls of those who have died' (9.3, clarified by 9.10). Clearly the author of BW1 took an even more ancient midrash on the Flood and its causes and developed it according to his own ideology: he knows that souls are immortal. So the cry that goes up to God does not come from persons, but from souls. Here a new element is inserted into the history of Jewish thought. If the human person does not end with death, the traditional inheritance of humanity could not be viewed only in its historical and earthly dimensions, but also in a new dimension, posing new problems to the human mind. That 'in-between world', of which Zechariah had spoken (or would speak), where decisions were made affecting our history, was a world in which we ourselves were participants. Even the problem of evil would be examined within this new dimension. The salvific intervention of God is narrated according to the outline of the Jahwist. The archangel Uriel is sent to Noah to reveal to him the imminent destruction of the earth and his salvation and that of his descendants. God orders Raphael to bind Azazel and to throw him into a prison of shadows, prepared for him in the desert, where he will no longer see the light until the day of the Great Judgment (10.7): 29

The earth, which the angels have contaminated, shall be healed; proclaim the salvation of the earth... so that not all men should perish, because of the secrets which the angels revealed and taught to their children [that is, to the giants]. All the earth has been corrupted by the works which have been taught by Azazel: ascribe to him [the cause of] every s i n .

30

The time of the antediluvian patriarchs was therefore free of evil. Evil and sin entered the world after the angels' transgression. This doctrine is decidedly new in Israel and is the development of a Jahwist passage (note the problem of the apple in the earthly paradise: the man is induced to sin by one who already knew sin). The archangel Gabriel receives the order to destroy the giants, pro voking strife among them. The archangel Michael receives the order to see to binding the fallen angels, after the giants have finished killing each 28. The Greek text also confirms this difference between BVW-base and BW1. Syncellus (both first and second) at 9.3 actually reads xa Tive-uuaxa KOU cd vj/uxai xcbv avOpcoJtcov and in 9.10 x a KVE\>\xaxa TWV VJ/TJ^COV TWV aTto9av6vxcov dv9pco7ta>v. 29. On the origin of the concept of the 'Great Judgment', cf. Russell,

Method,

pp. 94-96 and elsewhere. 30.

'The earth shall be healed', with the Greek. The Ethiopic has the imperative,

'save', which certainly derives by analogy from that which follows.


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other, in 'the valleys of the earth' (10.12), where they will remain for seventy generations until the Day of Judgment, the day when they will be cast into the fire, together with all the iniquitous members of every generation. He also receives the order to destroy even the souls of the giants (10.15), in such a way as to wipe away all the evil from the face of the earth so that truth and justice should flourish there. At this point the subject is no longer clear. To which times does the text of BW1 refer? Does it refer to the times of the Flood and to the fact that God promised never again to destroy humanity, or does it refer to a time which, for the author, was in the future? 'Truth and peace', BW1 concludes, 'will be joined together for all the days of the world and for all human generations.' The letter of the text refers to the time of the Flood. But is it possible that a person believed that truth and peace were really so much at home in his times, whatever they were? What is the meaning of the fallen angels' remaining closed in the valleys of the earth for seventy generations? Should the annihilation of the spirits of the giants perhaps be understood as coming after these seventy generations? The only thing to say is that the issue is not clear and must certainly have appeared unclear also to another author, later than that of BW1, one who took up the topic again right at this point, to clarify it in an allembracing vision, much more complex than the former, but strictly dependent upon it. BW2 is closely linked to BW1. The author intends to develop and clarify it, not to argue with it: BW1 can thus be considered an integral part of the thought of the author of BW2, since his treatment makes sense only if considered as a development of the former, whose premises are accepted entirely. BW1 can also be considered, with some caution, as a witness to the thought of the author of BW2. The caution regards particularly the end of BW1: the thought of the original author probably did not go beyond the traditional historical outlook proper to Israel, while the author of BW2 must have read the section in a cosmic manner. But there are also others points of disagreement, which we will see. The author of BW2 inserts an element that will remain typical of later literature, that of the vision. The author of BW1 narrates events; the author of BW2 narrates events he has seen in visions. On the level of style and form the break between BW1 and BW2 is thus quite sharp. On the ideological level the author of BW2 adds a new element, the mediator, absent in BW1.

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The mediator was Enoch (12.1), who lived hidden in a part of the cosmos, with no one knowing of him. His function is that of speaking with God, with the archangels and fallen angels; but he must also reveal to humans the secrets of the world beyond, which are much more complex than the author of BW1 thought, so much so that their revela tion is said not to have compromised definitively the possibility of salvation (16.3). He states that the contamination produced by the angels was due to their being pure spirits (15.6-7) who joined themselves with women, that is, they desired procreation, which was given to humans by God because they perish. And the giants were indeed killed, but not their souls. Their souls remained on the earth, to assault humans and produce all kinds of evils (15.11). In this way the topics of BW1 are interpreted and clarified in the sense that the evil produced by the angels certainly was uprooted by God, but not entirely: the giants disappeared, but not their souls, which are none other than the 'evil spirits', which every popular tradi tion has recognized, and which thus are inserted within a broad vision embracing in some way the biblical tradition. Then the book continues with Enoch's journey in the 'in-between world', where he sees, since they already exist, the places destined to await the souls of the just and the unjust in view of the Great Judgment. Having presented briefly the content of BW1, and its structure, let us now look at the themes of apocalyptic which are reflected there. The first theme indicated by Koch is that of waiting. In the Book of the Watchers it is completely absent. It is true that the Great Judgment is spoken of there, as a certain fact in the future, but this is, in the mind of the author, an element of reality that he does not await with personal involvement, with hope. The author of the Psalms of Solomon awaits something, which he hopes will come soon from God. The author of the Book of the Watchers knows that there will be an end, and this will mark the end of evil, but this end is not just in the future; it is already present in the 'in-between world', where the souls of the just are already separated from the unjust, awaiting the judgment. There is no waiting, because what is important to him is already accomplished. What permits this certainty is the idea that souls can live indepen dently of bodies, reuniting in some area of the 'in-between world'. The theme of waiting is therefore a secondary theme of apocalyptic, developed in a later period in contact with messianic experiences, at first extraneous to apocalyptic.


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It should also be noted that, if there is no waiting, it is not hope that moved the thought of the author of the Book of the Watchers, but rather speculation about the world, or better, the universe. He looks at how the world is. He does not look at how it will be. If it will be a certain way, this is because it already is so, though in another dimension naturally. What characterizes these two dimensions is that our world is dominated by evil while in the other world evil is (and therefore will be) bound and destroyed. The basic problem appears to be the problem of evil and our salvation from it. Israel, in winning a battle, is saved. But for our author evil has an appearance very different from that of defeat, or suffering, or death, which appear more as consequences of evil than evils themselves. They are more epiphenomena than phenomena. I will attempt to define the novelty of the conception of evil in point 4, that regarding the 'inbetween world' and in point 5, regarding the new salvation. Point 2 concerns the theme of the end. The end of the age and the destruction of evil are a certainty for our author precisely because in a certain sense they have already occurred; and because they have already occurred, they do not move the spirituality of the author to hope. The Great Judgment (for example, TO.6; 16.1; 22.4) will occur, but the author does not linger there: the author's construction is cosmic. He is not led to think about history as a development destined for a conclusion: the conclusion already is. Point 3, the meaning of the cosmos, which is and does not become, includes a certain determinism. It is not clear to what degree the author is conscious of all the consequences of his idea. Enoch (19.3) can already see the end-time. The qualitative differences of historical periods are not theorized: there is therefore no doctrine of cycles, as will appear, in the second century BCE, in the Book of Jubilees. The doctrine of cycles can well be seen as a development of the first stage of apocalyptic: it is the attempt to insert history and time into the dimension of the cosmos, which is and which becomes. There is the need to recapture the meaning of history, even if this includes a sense of lost freedom. Point 4 concerns the theme of the 'in-between world'. Undoubtedly this is present to a great degree in the Book of the Watchers. The angels with their actions influence our world in a determinative way. And it is precisely speculation on the angelic world which is the most complex part of our author's thought. The events which happen in the 'in-between world' have repercus-

54


sions, good and evil, in our world. One could liken this conception of the author of the Book of the Watchers to the vision of Joshua in the book of Zechariah: here too we have an action carried out in the 'in-between world' with repercussions on this earth. Really, aside from the 'inbetween world', the apocalyptic conception is completely original, or at least not derived from Zechariah. In Zechariah that which is pre-produced in the 'in-between world' is a single historical event: it is the model for the copy. In the apocalyptic author it is an event of the 'inbetween world' that has influenced our history: this itself is part of that history common to angels and humans. History is in a certain sense one, as it simultaneously includes the two cosmic levels. This event of the 'in-between world' which has upset human history is the so-called fall of the angels. The fallen angels contaminate all humanity and also teach humans the secret arts and sin (9.8). This is already the thinking of BW1. It is true that the giants were exterminated {BW1), but BW2 adds that their souls were not destroyed. Rather, the souls of the giants remained on the earth with the precise purpose of persecuting humans. The souls of the giants are none other than the evil spirits, who act as they do without incurring judgment (16.1). In other words, their action is permitted by God, even if certainly not willed or provoked by him. Therefore, from a development of Gen. 6.1-4 there is born in Israel an absolutely new idea: evil was not invented by humans; it is a disorder of nature, one that comes from outside it. God has already healed it and has not yet healed it. He has bound the watchers to await their destruc tion; he has destroyed the giants, but not their souls. We are in the atmosphere of the 'already and not yet'. Evil will be destroyed, because in reality it has already been destroyed; but the earth remains situated in a sort of slime of evil that has survived in some way God's work of restoration. The mystery of evil stands in this gap between the accom plishment of a fact in one sphere and its universal accomplishment. This is a fact which, though not willed, is in any case permitted by God. Therefore there exists already a world not polluted by evil; it already is, but in another sphere. The eschaton is not at the end of times, des tined for those who come last; it is a reality within the reach of all, at least all the just. It is not, however, clear what the author means by the just. Whether these are the just according to the Law or the just by some other standard is not apparent, even if the first solution is improbable, as we will see later.

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It did not escape the author of BW2 that it was rather ingenuous, and in any case contrary to the scripture, to believe in a time when there was no evil on the earth, as apparently was believed by whomever wrote chs. 6 - 1 1 . Notice that in BW2 there is the cry of Abel (22.6-7), who clearly was killed before the fall of the angels. Conversely, it does not seem that the author senses this fact to be contradictory to his theory. The author clearly uses scripture and history without attending to their chronological aspect. 'Before' and 'after' have no meaning for him. As we will see, Enoch is already predisposed to salvation when evil did not exist, that is, before the fall. So the fall of the angels is placed in a point of history, but in reality includes all history, both before and after it. Such an ahistorical way of thinking could only lead the Jews into infinite problems, in the attempt to accept some basic insights of our author which seemed valid without renouncing their entire vision of life and history. In order to have a first explanation of evil in rationally acceptable terms, we must wait for the work of the Teacher of Righteousness, who felt this problem keenly and in terms used by our apocalyptic author. The Teacher of Righteousness preferred to think that evil did derive from the angelic world, but from angels created evil by God directly. Better a God who creates bad angels who pollute all humanity rather than a God whose work of salvation remains inexplicably half-done. Point 5 regards the new salvation. This theme is also fully present in the Book of the Watchers. On this earth the just are exposed to the attacks of the giants-evil spirits, but the just spirits of the dead will be kept in a cave until the Great Judgment in a place completely secure from the attacks of the wicked: they are safe. It is clear that this point is closely linked to point 4, that is, to the conception of the 'in-between world'. There is an immortal element in the human person, which permits the connection between the two worlds. We have seen that events that occur in the 'in-between world' not only have effects upon, but in fact break into our world. Events of the 'in-between world' once brought perdition, but there were others leading to salvation. The watchers came to the women, but the arch angels rushed to humanity's cry of pain. The world of the spirits can therefore act upon our world, and this makes sense especially because 31

31. In 1QH 4.38 the Teacher of Righteousness says that it is God who 'creates the just and impious'. In 1QS 3.18 he says that God 'offers two spirits to man... that of truth and that of vanity'.

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humans also participate now in the angelic world with their immortal souls. It is not clear how the author thinks souls are born, but it is certain that for him souls do not die. This is the reason that the giants die, but not their souls. These cannot die. Even the souls of the wicked will be destroyed only in the day of the Great Judgment (ch. 22). Reflecting on the conception our author had of the soul, we notice that the world for him was a particular reality which had the property of being and not yet being. The soul of the righteous is destined for salvation: it is already saved. After death, though not yet judged worthy of life, it is saved to await the judgment that will declare it such, but this is already taken for granted. The author also had a particular conception of time, as 'before' and 'after' tend to disappear in the cosmic order willed by God. 'Before' and 'after' are aspects of historical being: in the will of God 'before' and 'after' do not have any meaning. Thus 'before' and 'after' seem to be human measures linked absolutely to the transient aspect of humanity, in exactly the same way as generation (15.5). The thought of the author attempts in some way to join the sphere of time, where generation and all the other characteristics of this life have meaning, with the sphere of the spirit where, from the point of view of time, there is already everything that is. Yet the problem of evil shows that liberty has, and must have, meaning. It must exist, even in the atemporal dimension of the 'inbetween world'. The fallen angels turn to Enoch freely and he goes from the angels to God, without having received an explicit mandate in this sense; yet God had created him and hidden him for this mission even before the angels sinned. Everything in the account has the dimen sions of a spontaneous happening. Note how, in ch. 9, the initiative of hurrying to aid contaminated humanity does not come from God, but from the archangels. There are no heavenly tablets in the Book of the Watchers. The way that the archangels have recourse to God is quite instructive. The cry of the souls of the dead rises all the way to the archangels of God. This is a God who knows things before they happen, who sees the human condition and cannot bear it, but who has not yet given any order to the archangels concerning it. If there seems to us to be a certain predetermined character to the author's conception, we must recognize that he also believed in the freedom of the individual soul. The mystery lies in the fact that not everything that happens is produced within time:


57

this complicates things terribly and makes the author's doctrine difficult to understand. It is esoteric in a certain sense; and destined to undergo developments both numerous and diverse. In this view of things evil appears as a disorder which cannot be traced back either to God or to the human person. In our terms, we would say that it cannot be seen as an aspect of nature, nor can it have purely ethical dimensions. But given this nature of evil, it is clear that the human person cannot remedy it in any way. If evil comes from a sphere above the human, salvation too (salvation from evil understood in this way) can only come from the same sphere. But even the working of salvation can only be conceived in terms that permit the reconciliation of the eternal with time, the necessary with the historical: hence the atmosphere of 'already and not yet'. Linking himself to the account of the fall of the angels given by the author of BW1, the author of BW2 says that 'before this Enoch was hidden, without anyone's knowing where. He had to do with the watchers, and lived together with the angels' (12.1-2). Thus Enoch was already part of the salvific plan when evil, seen from the dimension of time, did not yet exist. Therefore Enoch is human, but placed by God at the midpoint between eternity and time. At the beginning of ch. 14, the author says that his book contains 'the words of justice', that is, the precise rendering of his vision, which he will describe 'with fleshly tongue'. That is, he will clothe in human concepts, linked to time, that which is above the historical and temporal. Koch raises, in regard to this theme, the problem of the universalism sui generis of apocalyptic. The author's treatment of this point in the Book of the Watchers is not explicit, but some elements are striking. The problem of evil is not connected in any way to the Law, nor does salva tion come in any way through the Covenant. Evil is before the Law, and thus cannot be, or at least cannot be reduced to, its transgression; it does not concern Israel, but all humanity. The fall of the angels harmed all humanity (10.15) and the human person is at the same time the evildoer and the victim, and more victim than evildoer. This is already in the thought ofBWl. Just as the catastrophe concerns all humanity, so also the mission of Enoch is never said to be limited to Israel. In 14.3, the author says that God created Israel with the same power with which he gave humans the 32

32. This reading is supported by the Aramaic; the Greek is different.


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ability to comprehend the word of wisdom; but the author does not confront either the problem of the mission of Israel, nor that of the relationship between Israel and the other peoples. It is certain that, at least according to what they say, the authors of the Book of the Watchers seem not to take into account at all the great tradition of Israel that extends from the Elohist to the Priestly writer through the great prophets. Moses is not named; there is no mention of the Covenant; there is no reference to the prophets. If it were not for the explicit mention of the Flood according to sections from the Jahwist, and if there were not (implicit) reference to the first sin of humans (32.6), which was provoked by, there would be very little Jewish about it. It gives the impression of a conscious break with the tradition. And at this point it would be truly interesting to know if these first apocalypses derived from the speculation of a few or from a tradition already widely accepted. The picture of Israel's religious history would be completely different in the two cases. It is nevertheless certain that whichever of the two things this first apocalyptic may have been, its influence made itself felt very strongly in Jewish thought, which felt the need to return to the thought of the author of the Book of the Watchers and to insert it as much as possible within the traditional context of Jewish thought. If this happened, as it did in fact, then the ideas expressed by our author entered deeply into Jewish consciousness. Point 6 regards the theme of the throne of God. This element is also present in the Book of the Watchers (14.18) and is well known to the Jewish and Hebrew tradition. Koch refers to Isa. 24.23, but this is already in a text that may not be distant in time from our text. The idea that Yahweh is king is as ancient as Israel. If there was opposition to the 33

33. Restricted to a few initiates, or broadened to wide circles of adherents, or even something in between these two, it seems certain to me that there existed an apocalyptic circle. The existence of a tradition that develops within itself is a proof of this. Note how BW2 accepts as true that which is written in BW1. For the author of BW2 it is clear that to know the arts and sciences is not evil, but he does not argue with the source, since he senses that it is an affirmed tradition: it is truth. One can add, but not delete; innovation is possible, but not argument. This tradition, against which, as with every affirmed religious tradition, argument is impossible, is a tradi tion that, rather than innovative, seems parallel to that which we can call the official or canonical tradition. Whoever in the late Jewish era structured the Book of the Watchers along with other texts to form the Enochic pentateuch shows that this tradition was still alive.


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kingdom, it was founded on the fact that the only possible king of Israel was Yahweh. But in the Book of the Watchers we have a profound evolution, since the reign of Yahweh changes from being reign over Israel to cosmic, universal reign. In other words, even the concept of kingdom undergoes an adjust ment (and it could not be otherwise) according to our author's outlook. God really is king, but his reign is not yet complete, because in one part of the cosmos there is still evil, which is, however, destined to destruction. It is not clear whether the kingdom of Yahweh will make every human kingdom disappear, as will be clear in other, later texts. The fact is that the historical problem does not interest our author at all (unlike the authors of the later apocalypses). In 19.1-2 our author says that the spirits of the bad angels, that is, the giants, 'assume different forms, contaminating humanity, driving it to sacrifice to demons, as if they were divine beings, until they will be destroyed in the day of the Great Judgment.' His thought regards all humanity, but does not linger at all on the problem of the various states, or various powers. Historical forms do not concern him at all, neither inasmuch as they raise the problem of change, nor in their posing of social problems. Point 7 concerns the theme of the intermediary. This is also amply present in the Book of the Watchers and I have already spoken of it at point 5, in relation to the problem of salvation. It is certain that Enoch is the great intermediary of salvation, but his figure in the Book of the Watchers does not have 'royal functions'. He does not even have a name that indicates his functions: he is neither Anointed, nor Son of Man, nor Chosen One. His task is carried out within the angelic world, even though Enoch is a man, who speaks with 'fleshly tongue'. But his destiny is above that of humans: God has hidden him in a place no one knows and he lives with the angels (12.1-2). Enoch's task is set by God and it seems to be that of revealing hidden things, to speak to humans with 'fleshly tongue', to reveal to them things for their salvation. Enoch is not a savior: only God saves. Enoch's 34

34. The passage as it is does not make sense in Ethiopic, nor in Greek, and it does not exist in Aramaic. Literally the passage says: 'Here [scil. in the cave] shall stand the angels that joined themselves to the women and, their spirits, assuming different forms, contaminate...' 'Their' clearly refers, not to the angels, but to their children, that is, the giants. Taking into account the fact that the text was composed in Aramaic, 'their' could be proleptic with respect to a missing 'children' whose replacement is indispensable in any case.


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task is that of pacifying, tranquillizing the souls of the just, revealing to them that they will be (and thus, in a certain sense, already are) saved. Enoch informs humans that the secrets revealed were not as important as was believed (16.3), that is, capable of impeding salvation. Having seen them, he describes the places where the just are already safe forever. The term 'glory' (point 8) is in fact found also in the Book of the Watchers, but it appears only in relation to God, who is the 'God of Glory' (22.14; 25.3). God is 'the Great Holy One, Lord of Glory, eternal King'. This detail also shows how the attention and the interest of our author are not turned toward the future, but to the present. In the vision of ch. 25, Enoch sees the fragrant tree. For now no one may touch it, but 'after the judgment it will be given to the just and the holy'. Then evil will disappear and no calamity will further harm humans, even on the earth (25.6). Life on earth will continue even after the Great Judgment, but this will happen in an indeterminate time, one that seems far away to the author and, in any event, not destined for him. Thus he can neither hope in this day, nor await it. What he awaits is that which already is, and which will touch him: the life of his soul in the cave of the just awaiting the Great Judgment.

5. Outline of the Evolution of Thought within the Book of the Watchers There are three elements that form the basis of the thought of the author ofW2: 1.

2.

3.

The conviction that evil derives from a contamination of the natural and human sphere through the action of beings belonging to the 'in-between world'. This contamination was produced by the disorder that the rebel angels brought voluntarily into the cosmic order willed by God. This seems to be the most ancient element of the apocalyptic tradition, because it is already present at the basis of BW1. The conviction that there exists in human beings an immortal element destined (if just) to live an eternally blessed life with God. This element is present in BW1, but not its basis. The conviction deriving from that mentioned in point 1, that salvation cannot be effected by human beings, but must rather derive from an event in the 'in-between world', of a nature contrary to that which produced contamination. This salvation


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is due to the will of God, who orders the angels to purify the earth, according to BW1, while BW2 inserts the figure of the mediator, who is already predestined to reveal the secrets of salvation even before the contamination occurs. The thought of BW2 is thus decidedly cosmic. Fall and salvation are present contemporaneously, if we may speak in this way, in the mystery of the divine will. The expression, 'mystery of the divine will', does not appear in the Book of the Watchers, but the conception is so clear that the term had to arise afterwards. Since the events of the 'in-between world' inexorably have repercus sions on us, the history of the 'in-between world' is not a prefiguring of our own, but influences it. There is no line separating the two worlds: one runs over into the other. The human soul participates in this world and the other. But precisely this exposure of our world to that above is such that we no longer know to what extent humans are guilty of evil and to what extent they are victims, as the evil spirits are always attacking everything and everyone. 6. The Problem of Dating Since the Book of the Watchers is earlier than 200 BCE at least, it is clear that these elements of its thought, until new discoveries prove otherwise, should be considered as originating with the author and new to Israel. A more precise dating is desirable, but for now there is little more to be said beyond the following observations: 35

1.

2.

The work must be earlier even than Qoheleth, who would not have spoken ironically of those who believe in the immortality of the soul if certain ideas had not circulated, and with a certain frequency, in the Jerusalem of his time (Qoh. 3.18-21). BW7-base does not know the Priestly writer, and does not know about the immortality of the soul. But it already knows angelology. So it should be placed after the meeting with the Iranian world, but before the productions of the Priestly writer. Thus, if the work was written in Babylon, the terminus post quern is earlier than if it was written in Palestine. In the first case, before 485; in the second case, before 400. We could think in rather general terms of the fifth century BCE.

35. For the dating proposed by Milik, see above, n. 23.


62 3.

BW1 however knows of the immortality of the soul, but does not yet know of the problem of salvation by means of the mediator. Since the idea of the immortality of the soul does not come from Iran, to establish a terminus post quern on this basis is impossible. The fact that it uses B Wl-base means that it comes later. But it must be earlier than BW2, which is earlier than Qoheleth, and must not be just a little earlier, since its ideas are sufficiently diffused to require being combatted. In hypothetical terms we might indicate the earlier part of the fourth century BCE for BW1 and the latter part for BW2.

7. The Book of the Watchers in History The early dating of the Book of the Watchers requires us to rethink the history of Jewish thought. It is certainly not the scope of this study to undertake such a complex task; yet some general considerations are necessary. It seems helpful, however, to offer first a summary evaluation of the new perspective, in which are visible both the history of apoca lyptic and the influence of its ideas on the thought of some figures who are particularly representative of late Jewish thought. The dating I have proposed for the Book of the Watchers is such that its final author (the author of BW2) must be placed against the back ground of the Second Zadokitism of the fourth century BCE. His work should thus be seen in the society in which the Chronicler was formed and did his writing; it does not come very long after Job. On the one hand, it is absolutely clear that the work of the apocalyptic author differs very notably from that of the Chronicler; on the other hand, certain basic affinities are striking, which in some ways may be proof for the assumption that both the one and the other are offspring of the same society. These common elements are of various kinds. If some are of such a general character as to have no value, since they are in fact common to all Judaism, or at least to such a vast part of it that they cannot be used as distinguishing characteristics, some have a weight which, at first glance, seems significant. In angelology we may note that the Chronicler knows of a demon that acts against Israel (1 Chron. 21.1), to whom he gives the name of Satan, originally a common name, unknown to the Book of the Watchers. 2 Sam. 24.1, the source, instead speaks of the 'wrath of Yahweh'. So it is difficult to establish to what degree Satan is understood by the


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Chronicler as a figure independent of Yahweh (Satan as bad angel), or to what degree this is the Satan that Job also knows. The commentators are oriented toward the first understanding. More interesting is the fact that both the Chronicler and the apoca lyptic author lack any form of messianism. There is no waiting in either the one or the other. The reasons for this lack of historical expectation are different in the Chronicler and the apocalyptic author; but the atmosphere regarding this point is the same. For the one and the other the world presents itself as finished, at least in the short term. It is then interesting to note the importance that purity has, both in the apocalyptic author and in the Zadokite context. It is evident that the two conceptions of purity are very different, but it is also clear that they have great importance in that society. The apocalyptic author sees in con tamination the first origin of evil, and minimizes the tradition that empha sized the important role in diffusing evil of the revealing of heavenly secrets by fallen angels. But even Ezra, though on a different level, sees in purity the salvation of Israel. If, whatever may have been the con tingent reason, Ezra theorized the necessity of abandoning wives and children if not truly Jewish, he did so because he considered the con tamination of Israel the primary cause of its misfortune. I do not believe that Ezra could think that the Jews did not steal or harm their neighbors, but his thought was fixed above all on the problem of purity. If he referred it only to one lineage and not to all humanity, it is because of the completely different ideological constellations in Ezra and in our author. 36

37

A work that later, in the beginning of the second century B C E (according to the dating most accepted today), used the Book of the Watchers and cited it with great respect is the Book of Jubilees (cf. Jub. 4.16-22). Enoch was the first among men born on earth to learn writing and understand astronomy.

36. See, for example, S. Virgulin, Cronache (Rome, 1975), p. 190; L. Randellini, // libro delle Cronache (Turin, 1966), p. 226 (very clearly in favor of Satan as enemy of God); L. Marchal, Paralipomenes, in La Sainte Bible of Pirot and Clamer (1952), p. 55 ('il est l'ennemi de Dieu'); W. Rudolph, Chronikbucher (Tubingen, 1955), pp. 142-43. 37. Flavius Josephus narrates in Ant. 11.346-47 that the normal accusation made in Jerusalem against whomever one wished to persecute was that the person had transgressed some norm of purity.

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Jewish Apocalyptic and its History He saw the past and the future in nocturnal visions...up until the day of judgment. He saw and knew all, he wrote it down and placed it as a testi mony on earth for humanity and for its generations... he testified against the watchers, who sinned with the daughters of man, because they began to join themselves with the daughters of the earth and to be

impure...

The treatment of BW2 was taken up again, but has been changed. The watchers became impure and this was a great evil, but it does not seem to have the importance attributed to it by the author of BW2. In ch. 5, following the outline of Genesis, Jubilees narrates that the giants were born. Thus evil grew on the earth, because all things, including the beasts, 'corrupted their way of living' (5.2). Then God destroyed the giants and (5.2) 'made, with each of his works, a new and good creation, such that these should not sin eternally [= always]...and would always be good. And the condemnation of all was written on the heavenly tablets...' Thus, for the author of Jubilees there is no longer the idea that the souls of the giants have survived to ruin humanity. The new creation is a good creation. Humans can, however, sin. Therefore God wrote the condem nation that each fault merited: he wrote it forever on the heavenly tablets. As can be seen, the problem of evil is rendered less dramatic. The vision of the world held by the author of BW2 is recovered to some extent, and inserted into a more traditional view of things. That which is written in the book constitutes the 'norm' (Jub. l . l ) , valid for all generations, but the author's conception of things derives from the most authentic Hebrew tradition. Moses is clearly in first position: it is to Moses that God himself dictates the text of the book. Thus the author of 38

38. This interpretation is based on three elements. 1) The existence of a variant with this meaning within the Ethiopic tradition. The MSS A and C, though having reciprocal minor variants, are still in agreement on interpreting the subject in the sense that the account should serve la-heg wa la-sema' that is, as law and testimony. The other two MSS now known, B and D, agree on one text, which Charles prefers and translates: 'This is the history of the division of the days of the law and of the testimony, of the events of the year, of their (year) weeks, e t c ' (APOT II, p. 11). 2) The reading of AC is preferable, because it presents the idea expressed elsewhere by the author of Jubilees (see ch. 1 in general). 3) In Greek we have a rather generic summary in George Cedrenus (cf. A.M. Denis, Fragmenta pseudepigraphorum quae supersunt Graeca... [Leiden, 1970], p. 71) from which it still appears that in the original there must have been the word for 'law' in a non-constructed state: the purpose of the book was to indicate first the law, which God would then have given to the Jews: K a i xwv jtepi xr\q vouoGeaiaq xfjc, \ieWovGT\c, T t a p ' a m o v xa> 'IouSaicp e9v£i. (I am indebted to Dr Fulvio Franco for the explanation of the internal situation of the Ethiopic text.)


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Jubilees, when reproducing BW2, speaks of the contamination that affected all humanity; yet when he is on his own, he insists on the pre eminent position of Israel in history and on the fundamental role of the Law in the history of Israel (Jub. 5.17). In ch. 5 the evil spirits are spoken of; certainly they exist, though they are fewer than the author of BW2 thought. Mastema (10.8) asks that at least some remain and not be bound in the depths of the earth, to do all they will be told. 'And the Lord said:—A tenth part will remain before him and nine parts will descend into the place of damnation' (10.9). But even from this tenth part it is easy to defend oneself, at least for the Jew: it is enough to be circumcised. God owns all the people of the earth and has given to the (evil) spirits the power to make them err, but he has not given any angel to Israel. He alone is their prince, He protects them and avenges them, by Himself, from the hands of His angels...that they may respect His command ments... But if the children of Israel do not live up to this covenant and... are not circumcised, they will be children of Satan (Belehor) and the wrath of God will be unleashed against them' (15.32; based on translation by Fusella).

Thus circumcision is an insurmountable barrier for all the spirits of evil. The conception of history presented in Jubilees is decidedly more elaborated, more global, than that in the Book of the Watchers. The problem of the relationship between God and history tends to resolve itself in a cosmic vision, but history remains history. All time is divided into periods, called precisely jubilees: each jubilee has its own charac teristics, and everything fits perfectly within God's design: within time there is the sense of ab aeterno. History thus certainly moves toward its end, guided by God himself. Nothing is more certain than this, that within the cosmos history will accomplish the divine plan, God's raz. While in the view of things expressed by the author of BW2 the freedom of angels and humans was felt to exist, even if on a level that went beyond time, for the author of Jubilees things are different. In the same moment in which he recovers the independent value of history, he can only conceive it as a manifestation of the divine will: and it is from this moment that one can speak of predeterminism. Everything, definitively, happens according to the raz, the mystery of the will of God. But can one have any idea, however vague, of the content of the divine raz? The author of the Book of Jubilees has a relatively precise idea on this subject, one susceptible to broad midrashic development. At

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the end of the last jubilee God will come to live on the earth among human beings (1.26). At that point evil will be uprooted from the earth and this must entail some exceptional event in order to be possible. Perhaps the author had been influenced by prophecies like that of Third Isaiah which speak of new heavens and a new earth: it is unlikely that a Jew would express a completely new idea without basing it in some way on elements of the tradition. But what is certain is that for the author of Jubilees history is moving towards an end and this end is comprised of such a change that God will come and live among humans. Another book that was certainly influenced by the author of the Book of the Watchers is Daniel. Here some typical elements of the apocalyptic author are manifestly present, both in form and substance. The author of Daniel also expresses his conviction through the narration of visions. He also gives great importance to the 'in-between world'. One thinks of the figure of the Son of Man, who will govern the kingdom of God on earth. The very bold formulation of Jubilees, 'God will come to earth' to govern it, is thus nuanced by the introduction of the mediator, who permits a better understanding of divine transcendence. There are even found in Daniel two names of archangels: Gabriel and Michael, who is charged to protect Israel (12.1) (different from what is said in Jubilees, where only God protects Israel: cf. 15.31-32). This does not deny that there are vigorous differences: for example, Daniel never speaks of demons. Their importance was already diminished in Jubilees, but here they seem to disappear. And this is not by chance, because the problem of evil in Daniel does not have the features it had in the apocalyptic author: there is no mention of evil before human beings, nor is there any reference to fallen angels. The beasts of Daniel's visions are symbols of kingdoms (7.17). The problem of evil is seen in almost political terms. 'He who drains the strength of the holy people' (12.7) is not a demon, but only Menelaus or perhaps a Syrian king. Even the dimension of salvation becomes purely or principally histori cal, within times that seem brief. Hence the sense of waiting, which will later become characteristic of successive apocalypses, or at least many of them. History is divided into periods, but between the great aeons of Jubilees and the theory of the succession of kingdoms there is an enor mous difference, one marked precisely by the expectation of something that has already been decided in the 'in-between world' (7.13; 9.24; 12.12), but which will be important for us only when it occurs in this world.


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The atmosphere then is not that of 'already and not yet', but more simply of 'already decided and not yet occurred'. The Son of Man has already been invested by God with royal power, but he does not yet exercise it. The certainty of living in union with the just and the ability to continue living with them also after death becomes the expectation of the resurrection, at least for the just. Until that moment all, including the just, sleep. The present salvation of the author of BW2 has no meaning for one who does not believe in the soul's continuing its immortal life, even after death. Between death and the moment of resurrection there is a void, which Daniel fills with hope and expectation. 'Before' and 'after' have their traditional value in Daniel. In this light even certain Gnosticizing expressions take on a relative value, far from an apocalyptic tone: 'None of the impious will under stand these things, but the just understand them' (12.10) does not mean that only the one who accepts this revelation can be saved, but more simply, that only the just (in the traditional sense of the term) will be able to conceive this hope. Daniel absorbed the thought of apocalyptic within the limits allowed by its tradition, but overall it is strongly tied to the official tradition: it is not by chance that it is part of every canon. Moses and the Law are clearly present in its thought (9.13); all the prayer of ch. 9 fits perfectly within the Deuteronomist tradition and that of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. With Daniel apocalyptic becomes historical, or at least alongside a decidedly cosmic apocalyptic a historical apocalyptic is born. In this sense Schmithals is right to note that the interest of the (classical) apoca lypses is focused essentially on history. But the author who more than any other clarified rationally many of the fundamental demands of the tradition of thought deriving from the Book of the Watchers and the Book of Jubilees is the Teacher of Righteousness, whose work (the book of the Rule of the Community 39

39. Only by adding the modifier 'classical' can one accept Schmithals' judgment, which in any case seems too definite to me. On p. 18 of Apocalyptic he writes: 'the interest of the apocalyptist is directed to history not to the cosmos'. Yet on p. 130 even Schmithals seems to be of another opinion since he writes: 'It is true that a salvation-history [Heilsgeschichte] as such—that is, the history of God's salvation in this world—plays no more of a role in Wisdom than in apocalyptic; but the maxims and admonitions that are characteristic of Wisdom are crammed with a sense of history, loyalty to the community, a will to live, while none of this is to be found in apocalyptic, which instead turns away from history.'

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and Hodayot) is, correctly, not mentioned by Koch among those which could be in some way apocalyptic. The Teacher of Righteousness is a priest and from his caste comes the conviction that the legitimate priesthood is already, still, and forever, the keeper of the great promises. In this sense he could be considered a man of the past, as he is a man of the past in his refusal of any innova tion in the conception of the human person. He does not believe (at least this seems the most probable opinion) either in the resurrection or in the immortality of the soul. This is not to deny that he has made his own the deepest concerns of apocalyptic: the conviction that evil is a problem that goes beyond human beings; that this history is destined to end when God will make it end, but in any case in a time he has already established. The Teacher of Righteousness organizes the problem of evil into a system, rationally solid, and thus different from that found in the Book of the Watchers or Jubilees. If one can find fault with his construct, it is because he is completely consistent in his application of the principle that evil can only come from a cause which, at a certain point, must become the first cause. In this way evil ends up in some way originating from God. But even here he can be considered a man of the past: he accepts that there are good and bad spirits in the 'in-between world', but these must depend directly on God. He is closer to the books of Samuel than to the Chronicler. If evil derived from the Prince of Darkness, the Teacher of Righteousness was perfectly aware that this was only moving the prob lem back towards its source: it was not a solution. Up to this point he did not go beyond his predecessors. Up to this point, with respect to the solution he derived from the Book of the Watchers tradition, his solution had only the advantage of saying clearly that evil existed before the appearance of humans, besides being beyond the human sphere, some thing which had already been said. But he still had a problem: Why did that Prince of Darkness sin, or better, why was he wicked? Being wicked, for the Teacher of Righteousness, is the cause of evil and not the consequence. And he resolved the problem by thinking that God himself 40

41

40. Cf. J. Carmignac, 'Les rapports entre Ecclesiastique et Qumran', RevQ 3 (1961), pp. 209-18; and A. Caquot, 'Ben Sira et le messianisme', Semitica 16 (1969), pp. 43-68. 41. Cf. J. van der Ploeg, 'The Belief in Immortality in the Writings of Qumran', BO 18 (1961), pp. 118-24.


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42

created the Prince of Darkness to be that way. In this case evil ultimately can be traced back to God, as demanded by the cosmic predeterminism of which he was profoundly convinced. History, along with the cosmos, was none other than the revelation of God. He thus overcame the great difficulty of Qoheleth. Qoheleth had found in the world two types of laws, without a common denominator: on the one hand, physical laws, which the human person could grasp in some way (1.4-7); on the other, the laws of life's moments, which escaped any possible human comprehension (3.1-8). With the Teacher of Righteousness the one type and the other came to be the expression of a single divine design, both understandable to those to whom God reveals them. That hatred that Qoheleth (9.1) claimed to be unable to understand, now becomes clear as an instrument of God's governance. The task of humans is that of loving and hating all beings with the same love and the same hate God has for them (1QS 1.4, 9, 10). Real understanding is illumination, granted by God to those he chooses (1QS 11.3-4). The Teacher of Righteousness then carries to extreme conclusions the apocalyptic idea that nature in general was contaminated by evil with a contamination that endures even now. The human person is bad by nature, as an impure being, of an impurity that cannot be purified even by all the water of the sea (1QS 3.4-5). There is no water deep enough nor fresh enough to be able to purify the human of the fault of being human: humans are guilty right from the womb (1QH 4.29-30). Until now the thought of the Teacher of Righteousness is perfectly in line with that of the Book of the Watchers. What separates it is the lack of the Book of the Watchers' conclusion: those who have already accepted this teaching and await salvation from God, not from humans,

42. See 1QS 3.18ff. The text says that God 'placed (DEH) two spirits in man.' Aside from the value of the verb sym, which can have values very much like 'to do' (cf. Job 34.13: ? n~>0 b'DH C2J "C, translated in Greek: xic, 8e E O T I V 6 noicov xr|v •OTt'o-upavov m i xa e v o v t a jidevxa; see also Exod. 10.2: "lot* TiTi'iK C 3 "PC!D, 'the miracles which I did in their midst'), the meaning 'to create' turns out well from putting together the value of sym with the overall ideology of the Teacher of Righteousness, with its predeterminism. It is God who created people good or bad (1QH 4.38), who predisposes everything and brings it to completion both in the individual person and in history (cf. 1QS 3.15-16). In the Book of the Watchers there is freedom, even if it is seen in a particular dimension which goes beyond time; in the Teacher of Righteousness there is nothing of this kind.

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one day will be part of the kingdom of God, even if they die before it is established. The Teacher of Righteousness does not know of the great cave where the souls of the just are kept according to the Book of the Watchers. Neither does he know of the expectation of resurrection of Daniel or of 2 Maccabees. Thus it seems that the ultimate conclusion, the profound meaning of the thought of the Teacher of Righteousness, must be sought in a certain Gnostic attitude. Unlike Daniel, who did not feel saved in the world in which he lived, the Teacher of Righteousness feels himself already saved (and here he is close to the Book of the Watchers), inasmuch as he enjoys a knowledge which, finally, is the very knowl edge of God. His salvation coincides with the knowledge of his position in the economy of the divine plan. He is not eternal, but his knowledge is (1QH 3.19-23). In this sense he inaugurates a new tradition of thought, which was received neither by Pharisaism nor by the Essenes them selves in successive generations. If something of the thought of the Teacher of Righteousness in this area survived the man, it was in the various forms of gnosis. But there is another aspect of the thought of the Teacher of Righteousness which places him clearly in the line of apocalyptic thought, and it is his condemnation of power. In this his thought is very effective, even if he did not achieve that level of logical structuring here that he reached, for example, in regard to the problem of evil. He condemns vigorously all those who seek power. Yet, precisely because of the non violence of his movement, he prays that God give him strength to endure the despicable people who seek power and money (1QS 10.26-11.2). This is not the place to recall all the innovations which the thought of the Teacher of Righteousness carried into the heart of Judaism, but it would be helpful to mention one that went beyond the limits of his sect to be accepted probably by all Judaism, certainly also by the Pharisees. The Teacher of Righteousness discovered that the just did not exist (something which had been said before, but from which no conse quences had been drawn), but only the justified. The person who adheres to the teaching of the Teacher of Righteousness is pardoned first of all of the fault of being human and can then obtain the pardon of successive sins, at least those within certain limits of seriousness. As can be seen from what has been said so far, there is no problem 43

43. The idea that the person is by nature guilty-impure has a certain apocalyptic root. The evil of humans is also a sign that they are victims: they are contaminated, they are guilty. The two elements are interdependent.


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proper to apocalyptic. Within Judaism there arose around the fourth century BCE a series of new ideas, structured into a complete system only by the author of BW2. His ideas were then taken up here and there by other Jewish authors, who on the one hand must have sensed their validity, but on the other hand must have realized how difficult it would be to accept them without the risk of compromising traditional Jewish thought. The influence of BW2 can be found to some extent in all the subsequent literature. It will remain for specialists of definition to under take the 'serious' task of establishing which of the authors who were influenced by the author of BW2 can be called apocalyptic and which cannot. It is clear that other works which contain all the same elements as the author of Book of the Watchers and only those, do not exist. So it is necessary to begin a series of distinctions and definitions. By rigorous standards of definition, if by apocalyptic we mean texts that present in some measure the fundamental themes indicated by Schmithals, that of expectation and of resurrection, it would be necessary to conclude that the Book of the Watchers does not belong to apocalyptic, since it has neither the one nor the other of these themes. Yet the term apocalyptic is already so rooted in tradition that it is impossible to eliminate it, if for no other reason than that some works belonging to this tradition were called apocalypses by the ancients them selves. And the literary genre of apocalypse, as Koch has shown, has something that distinguishes it: this is perceived even before it can be demonstrated. The fact that the demonstration is strained and difficult shows that the apocalyptic atmosphere is more perceptible than definable. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a guideline like this could be adopted: consider as fundamental elements of every apocalyptic 1) the belief in immortality (whether by resurrection or immortality of the soul) 2) the conviction that evil has its origin in a sphere above the human. Furthermore, there must be a distinction made between historical apocalyptic and cosmic apocalyptic.

Chapter 2 COSMIC ORDER A N D OTHERWORLDLY PERSPECTIVES IN THE POST-EXILIC PERIOD: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL A N D THE ORIGIN OF APOCALYPTIC*

This presentation confronts the specific problem of the nature and origin of evil within the history of Jewish thought, in the framework of the wider problem of cosmic order and disorder. While the topic may seem narrow, it seems to me that its implications are such as to involve to some degree all the great problems that arise from the contemplation of the cosmos. It may or ought to be constituted by an order, yet contains infinite elements which refuse to be circumscribed within this order, more desired than assured. Along these lines there arose within Hebraic thought a vast prob lematic, which found its most characteristic expression in the most ancient apocalyptic, but which reverberated through all Jewish thought up to Christianity and beyond. When people deny the existence of evil within nature, in the sense of 'by nature', that is, pain, whether physical or spiritual, transgression of the ethical Law as sensed by all peoples, in some cases even death itself, then people can only imagine evil as some thing which must necessarily have its origin in a sphere distinct from God and nature, whatever the relationships thought to exist between these two entities. Now, if we consider the oldest ideas of the Hebraic world relative to the problem of evil, at least those we know with some assurance and which go back to the prophets of the eighth century BCE, we can see that the ancient Hebrews did not pose the problem of death, but accepted it as a fact of nature, at least when it came, as in the case of Abraham, in 'a good old age' (besebah tobah [Gen. 25.8]). The death of * First published as 'Ordine cosmico e prospettiva ultraterrena nel postesilio', RB 30 (1982), pp. 6-25. Paper delivered at the 1981 meeting at Susa of the Associazione Biblica Italiana.

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the young could present a problem, and in general the presence of suffering during life posed a problem. This was explained as punishment from God either for faults committed by the person suffering or, more frequently, because of the faults of ancestors. The common conviction was that the faults of parents fell upon their children for many genera tions. As it is written in Exodus (20.5): T, Yahweh, am your God, a jealous God, who punishes the faults of parents on their children to the third and the fourth generation.' It is true that Yahweh was also a god who could repay the children of the good for a thousand generations, but the observation of evil's spreading, typical of the prophets, tended to put the accent necessarily more on the first than the second aspect of God's action among people. We may sketch the oldest Hebraic thought thus: 1.

2.

Death of itself, that is, if it came in 'good old age', was not an evil; it was just a necessary part of nature. In no way did it create a problem. Misfortune was willed and sent directly by God to punish evil committed, by means of an appropriate punishment. Misfortune was the work of God; thus evil came within God's sphere. This is the meaning of the work of Amos (end of the eighth century BCE). God will punish not only the Jews, but all people for the misdeeds they do, and the chastisement will be sure and terri fying, because God is almighty. 'The one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name, who makes destruction flash out against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress' (Amos 5.8-9).

There is no human force that can resist the one who controls all of nature. No one should be mistaken: God is stronger than humans, and will punish every evil committed, both in the past and the future, because God is a jealous God who punishes the parents' faults in their children to the third and fourth generation. Thus says the Lord: 'For three transgressions of Judah, and four [that is, many], I will not revoke the punishment; because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his statutes, but they have been led astray by the same idols after which their ancestors walked. So I will send a fire on Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem (Amos 2.4-5).

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Therefore if there is evil in the world, and death is not an evil, this is willed exclusively by human beings, provoking the punishment-reaction from God. Sketching this understanding in modern terms, we might say that for the ancient Hebrew a) metaphysical evil did not present a problem, b) moral evil depended on human beings, and c) physical evil depended on God inasmuch as God intervened to punish moral evil. This understanding had a presupposition, of which the eighth-century person was not aware, but which will later come to the surface of under standing and create a problem. This presupposition was that human beings are entirely free, therefore entirely responsible and consequently punishable. In a certain sense, people believed that the human person was entirely master of his destiny, since he freely chose good fortune and misfortune, life or death, in the very moment when he chose whether or not to observe the Law of God. 'See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity' (Deut. 30.15). The Jew must choose which of the two ways he wants. If he chooses the way of obedience to the Law, he will have life and good; otherwise he will have death and evil. The ideas expressed up to this point belong to the northern currents of thought, to Israel in a strict sense. In the south there were different ideas. Isaiah (end of the eighth century), like Amos, certainly preached justice, but within his ideological constellation there was an element completely lacking in the north: 'the anointed king'. Parallel to this, even though not present in Isaiah, was the notion of the eternity of the temple. The temple and the anointed had, in the south, a saving function independent of human behavior. When the author of the book of Kings, someone who lived, or at least was formed, during the reign of Josiah, said that one city of Judah was saved, he said that this was due to the fact that God remembered having chosen David (2 Kgs 19.34; 20.6; 1 Kgs 11.13, 32). A pre-exilic psalm sings: God is our refuge and our strength... thus we do not fear, though earth be shaken and mountains quake to the depths of the sea, though its waters rage and foam and mountains totter at its surging. Streams of the river gladden the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High. God is in its midst; it shall not be shaken (Ps. 46.4-6).

The salvation of the people of Israel, according to this ideology, does not depend on the justice of the people themselves, but on a future,

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gratuitous intervention of God. Nevertheless this gratuitous, even arbitrary, intervention of God is already sure, because it is guaranteed by the presence in Jerusalem of an anointed king, to whom God has promised salvation forever for his descendants and thus for his people. Now injustice spreads through the land, but the day will come in which a great descendant of David will appear, one gifted with such justice, such ability in judgment, as to make the wicked disappear from the earth. A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins (Isa. 1 l.lff.).

The passage continues describing this future world in which there will reign only justice and peace as a completely different world, like a new creation. But this section was added later. For Isaiah the one thing sure was that the justice he hoped for, and which other prophets before him had preached, would arrive on earth only when Jerusalem should have a king with particular abilities. His coming was certain, guaranteed by the promise made to David and reconfirmed by the prophet, but this state of justice would not come from humans, who seemingly would always be more or less as they were in his time, but from a particular man, gifted by God with exceptional abilities. Thus in Israel there are two different theologies: the first, characteristic of the north, has at the center of its thought the covenant that God once made with his people at Sinai. The covenant was given for the salvation of the people, and was the means of salvation, but in no way a guarantee of salvation. There are obvious presuppositions to this theology, even if not expressed: the human person is able to observe all the command ments of God; and if anyone does not observe them he will end in ruin. In the south, to the contrary, there was a theology founded on the Promise. There was the promise of blessing made to Abram: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you (Gen. 12.2-3).

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Here there is no condition to salvation. A covenant is not given to Abram which will bring him to salvation if he keeps it, rather there is simply promised a salvation that will depend on a blessing, one which God has already promised to give. The promise is repeated to David (2 Sam. 7): 'Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.' There is no condition to this promise: it is absolute. Clearly, these two ideologies are very different one from another and, at first glance, irreconcilable. As long as the two theologies developed in two independent states, states often at war with each other, such a prob lem would hardly arise: there was no comparing of views, nor was there a need for it. This need arose unexpectedly at the end of the seventh century BCE, in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Israel, the northern kingdom, had been conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BCE: it carried on living in separation from Judah, since Judah was independent from, though in a state of vassalage to Assyria, while Israel was actually an Assyrian colony. But with the abrupt collapse of Assyrian power about 620 BCE, Josiah had the obvious temptation of uniting under himself the Israel of the north also. The task was easy on the military level, since the Assyrians left of their own accord; but it was more difficult on the level of cult: all the sanctuaries of the north had to be destroyed, and the single cult of Jerusalem imposed. For this purpose it was necessary to disperse or deport to Jerusalem all the priests of the destroyed northern sanctuaries, something which must have created all sorts of problems. These would have included jealousies and rivalries between the old priesthood and the new; with clear violations of material and moral interests (deportation is always a very serious matter). A northern sacred text, Deuteronomy, that preached unity of cult, even if it did not actually say that it had to be practiced in Jerusalem, favored this policy of force. But the place where the force of the king was absolutely insufficient was in fusing the two theologies into one unified system. Rather the now close contact between learned men of the north and those of the south, within the close circle of the walls of Jerusalem, necessarily demanded some revising and comparison of positions, leading sometimes to more extreme positions, at other times to more moderate ones. We can follow these events, or at least some of them, in the work of Jeremiah, contemporary with Josiah's work of reunification. Though


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born a few kilometers from Jerusalem, his homeland, Anathoth, belonged to the northern sphere of influence and the main outlines of his thought show him as a man of the north, that is, one ready to preach to the people to practice justice if they did not wish a bad end. And this is because God can threaten evil, and then retract the threat, if the people repent ('It is the Lord who sent me to prophesy against this house and this city all the words you have heard. Now therefore amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God, and the Lord will change his mind about the disaster that he has pronounced against you', Jer. 26.12-13). But unlike earlier prophets, Jeremiah is not satisfied with his mission, that is, his preaching, and protests to God. In a celebrated passage (20.7ff.), he says that if he acts as a prophet, it is only because he is forced to, because he feels a force within him that he cannot resist; but, for himself, he would gladly do without it. 'For when ever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, "Violence and destruction!'" In fact, Jeremiah, in his long, constant, daily confrontation with the southern traditions, gradually became convinced that his preaching, of the style 'If you improve your conduct, you will not be punished', was a kind of joke, because he was increasingly convinced over the years that the behavior of the Jews would never change, because it could not change: 'Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots? Then also you cannot do good who are accustomed to do evil. I will scatter you like chaff...' (13.23). This is no longer the threat of a punishment; this is the prophecy of a punishment and ruin linked to a situation that does not depend on human beings. In the traditions of the south there was a passage, now in Gen. 8.21, that had observed that human nature was bad. The observation is put into God's own mouth, as he repents of sending the Flood with the hope of remedying evil. This would always reappear, because this is human nature, but God would never again on this account send the frightful punishment of the Flood. In the south the observation that in the human person there is a bad nature, turned towards evil, must have been, so to speak, a consoling observation. God does not send salvation to Israel because Israel is just, but will send it because he loves them, he promised it and is committed to it: for this reason he granted the temple and the anointed king, the consecrated king. But to Jeremiah this observation, tied to the other about the sins of the parents falling on their children, must have made human nature seem so wicked, so irredeemably wicked, as to prevent hope in any salvation, except for some very special future

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intervention of God that would renew human nature itself. A historical fact must have struck him and caused him to reflect. Jeremiah had seen Josiah's work of religious restoration, that of a king who seemed to him good (22.15). But Josiah, the just king, died unexpectedly on the battlefield. It seemed clear to the prophet that justice was a means of salvation neither for the individual nor for the people. In any case the sins of the ancestors weighed down the just; and whoever is used to evil will never do good. The story of the next few years proved him entirely right. Jerusalem was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The educated members of the population, those who counted ideologically, were deported to Mesopotamia. Among those who went into exile were notably the priests, royal functionaries, and the principal artisans of Jerusalem. All those priests whom Josiah must have deported from the north to Jerusalem now had to depart for another and more bitter exile. In Judah, in southern Palestine, there remained the inhabitants of the villages, all certainly from the south, all certainly with a southern forma tion, since the northern priesthood was able to remain in Jerusalem too short a time to have influenced the whole south in any significant way. Those who remained in Judah were certainly from Judah, southerners. They remained to meditate on their ruin using southern beliefs, which seemed to be completely wrong, at least on some points, when con fronted by events. The promise of the eternal kingdom made to David no longer had meaning, because there was no more kingdom and the eternal temple had been destroyed. While we are well informed of the struggles of Jewish thought in exile— Second Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the work of the Priestly author are all docu ments illustrating the way in which exilic Judaism went about resolving the problems which dying Israelite religion had left it as a legacy—we know nothing about what people were thinking in the homeland. This lacuna can make us think that Jews in the homeland had sunk into the most barbarous conditions, having no more culture, forgetting their religious tradition. Noth cautions against thinking that the lack of docu ments proves that no documents were written. Palestine was still the center of Judaism, and it would be incredible if the Jews remaining in the homeland, even if the greater part of their educated class was taken into exile, had really lost everything, no longer having even scribes. One explanation of our lack of southern documents could be the following. The Jews who returned home from exile returned there with


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imperial authorization, with their authority recognized by the empire: Joshua and Zerubbabel, who led the first and greatest return, held their offices by Persian concession. They commanded in the homeland. Perhaps in the early days of repatriation there was some effort at rapprochement between those returning and the people of Palestine. I interpret in this way passages which invite putting on the same level the Jew and the foreigner 'who honors Yahweh' (Isa. 56.3, 6), or those which affirm that even the foreigner's offering can be pure (Mai. 1.11). If one is open even to foreigners, one must certainly accept the Jews who remained in the homeland. The situation changes with Nehemiah. The foreigner is rejected, and the Jew who remained in the homeland is equated with the foreigner in this rejection. To accede to public office, people must prove themselves repatriated exiles. Nehemiah, when he came to Jerusalem from Persia, also with an imperial mandate, convened in assembly only the repatriated (Neh. 7.4-5). Why not the others? The only answer to the question seems to me this: the Jews of the exile developed their own theology, one which was not accepted by those who remained in the homeland. In its basic outline the theology of the exile is northern theology, based on the Law and anti-messianic. It certainly allowed some southern ideas, for example the king, descendant of David, calling him, however, 'the prince'. Zerubbabel, descended from David, was able to lead the re-entry and place the first stone of the temple, but he did not succeed in consecrating it. And at his death, even though it happened in the most natural manner, his son could not succeed him: the Davidic dynasty was finished, not by the violence of enemies, but by the will of the repatriated Jews, who brought about that which their prophets, especially Hosea, had always hoped for: a society without a king, governed only by the Law. Perhaps Hosea did not even want the priesthood, but in the fifth century the ancient ideal of the north took form in a society governed only by the Law, and this Law was preserved by priests. Even though the theocratic regime of Jerusalem, at least from 450 BCE, was controlled by the Zadokite priesthood, loyal to the theology of the Diaspora, there was opposition, though lacking political force. A few bits of evidence, well known forever because they belong to the canon, reveal the existence of some internal protest within the system. These are the books of Ruth, Jonah, and Job. Recent discoveries at the Dead Sea have revealed that works known to us only in Greek and Ethiopic

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translations, whose dating was uncertain and, with rare exceptions, usually given as about the second century BCE, were in fact older, even if it is difficult to say how much older. I expect that dating to the fifthfourth century seems more than probable. This means that we now have texts that did not belong to the official, canonical tradition, and which illuminate for us a current of thought which we thought had disappeared. We will see that the ideology of these books (Watchers, Giants, and Astronomy) links up perfectly with the basic ideals of the southern cultural tradition. A few words are in order about these works that protest against the system from within. They were written by authors who must have accepted the situation as it was, even though criticizing it and showing its incongruities. In this way we also begin to recognize the points for discussion. One of the basic ideas of the theology of exile is that the foreigner is impure. The preceding Deuteronomic legislation even had rules on marriage with a female prisoner of war. Now, in the exile, with the danger of being absorbed by the Babylonians, any contact with a foreigner is considered impure. There was no precise law to this effect, but at least the practice was this: since foreigners are impure, Jews cannot marry foreigners. Ezra, in the name of this principle, at the beginning of the fourth century ordered even the driving away of foreign wives. Marrying foreign women seems to be the only really serious sin one could commit in that society (Ezra 9. Iff.) Look now at the book of Ruth which pulls out an ancient genealogy of David, the king of the everlasting promises, and recalls that his grandmother was a Moabite, the race most abhorred by the Jews. Since, for the Jews, it was the mother and not the father who counted, it follows that for the author of Ruth, genealogies in hand, David was a Moabite. What did it mean to God that the foreigner was impure? Another point which was obviously not accepted lying down is the following: Ezekiel, following northern teaching, established the principle that only one who observed the Law can be saved. 'The person lives by the Law he keeps.' It followed automatically that wherever one saw good fortune one inferred the existence of preceding justice; and wherever one saw misfortune, one inferred the existence of faults, and not those of parents, but of the individual concerned. Job protested against such thinking. He was tried by misfortune and by God, but he was innocent. God persecutes humans, taking advantage of divine power. 'To whom can I turn', says Job, 'to call God to


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Judgment, so that He keeps the Covenant?' (Job 9.32-33). God is a party to the Covenant and also judge. His action is completely free, arbitrary. And though the book admits that speaking of the justice of God is perhaps beyond human ability, yet the text confirms (42.7) that what Job said about God is, at least in human terms, the pure and simple truth: 'You', God says to Job's friends who had defended God's justice, 'you have not told the truth: Job told the truth.' It is not difficult to glimpse in this defence of the freedom and omni potence of God, who neither rewards nor punishes except for reasons which humans cannot judge, the typical position of southern theology. Salvation cannot come to humans except through God's blessing and choosing them. Though this critique is relatively bland, it still shows that certain positions had not disappeared. In 1976 Milik published some large Aramaic fragments of the book of Enoch, called the Ethiopic Enoch, because known to us in its entirety only in this translation and in manuscripts, the most ancient of which date to the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the book of Enoch is canonical in the Coptic Church and this has assured its uninterrupted transmission down to our own day. The work is made up of five books (Watchers, Parables, Astronomy, Dreams, Epistle of Enoch), which were dated from the second and first century BCE. The dating for some of the books was definite (Parables, Dreams, Epistle). The others, even if not clearly dated, followed more or less the dating of the former, according to common opinion. Milik published a fragment that dates to the first half of the second century BCE which includes parts from the Introduction up to ch. 12. That means that at the beginning of the second century BCE the work had already assumed more or less its present form, since it had already been redacted, as is demonstrated by the fact that the Introduction, which I believe to have been written later, and chs. 11 and 12 are joined, while they clearly belong to two originally separate works. Thus it must be admitted that the work was not redacted close to the time of Jesus with a prehistory going back perhaps as far as 200 BCE. Rather, one should date it beginning already in the second century BCE and working backwards. These fragments have made us see something else: the second work in the Enochic pentateuch was not, originally, the Book of Parables, but a Book of the Giants, which was completely lost and which we know today only from some remaining fragments. So the Book of Parables


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could keep the late date held before: the works that must go back in time are the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Giants and the Book of Astronomy. While reading a book by Koch, I began to wonder if the Book of the Watchers were not a work unto itself within the Enochic pentateuch. Koch, in attempting to draw up a list of themes characteristic of apoca lyptic, chose some apocalypses and had attentively analyzed them. One of these was our Ethiopic Enoch. What struck me was that Koch's listing showed no apocalyptic motifs in the first 36 chapters of the book. In other words, I had recognized that the Book of the Watchers had a peculiar place within apocalyptic, and specifically within the Ethiopic Enoch. The most characteristic themes of apocalyptic never appear in its pages. At this point it seemed clear to me that, since the Book of Giants had not been known to Koch, and since the Book of Astronomy, which we may call a scientific work, required a special kind of evaluation, the conclusion was that the Book of the Watchers was a work unto itself within the apocalyptic corpus, and should be studied separately. This I proceeded to do. What emerged was a way of thinking completely different from that of the later apocalypses, and from the texts of the canonical tradition. In the last part of this chapter I will explain this more fully. In the book of Genesis there is a brief pericope with a southern origin, which has always puzzled exegetes because its content is Sibylline and strange, both in its logic and in its structure (6.1-4). 1

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God [usually interpreted 'angels', and interpreted thus by the Book of the Watchers] saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose [break in discourse]. Then the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years' [break in discourse]...giants were on the earth in those days—and afterward...

The text continues, speaking of children born from the union of the women with the angels, and it says that these are the famous heroes of antiquity, the gibborim. The passage comes immediately before that in which God, seeing human malice, decides to send the Flood on the earth. Our passage seems to be a meager summary of a longer story that must have explained not only that humans had multiplied, but that they had become evil. It then 1.

K. Koch, The Rediscovery of the Apocalyptic

(London, 1972).


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alludes to a shortening of human life, decided by God, and then there is mention of the giants. About them one can only say that their function in the story had to be that of explaining the increase of evil on earth and God's consequent decision to destroy humanity. The complete story of what Genesis summarizes is found in the first part of the Book of the Watchers which is nothing else than a fragment of an ancient Book of Noah, taken over by the author of the Watchers, as a basis for his metaphysics, his philosophy of evil. The Bible redacted definitively by a man of northern background (technically, P) reduced the Book of Noah story so much that it is incomprehensible. He reduced it to the minimum and demythologized it, interpreting the 'giants' as 'heroes'. In the Book of the Watchers (7 En. 6. Iff.) we read: In those days, when the children of man had multiplied, it happened that there were born unto them handsome and beautiful daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw them and desired them; and they said to one another, 'Come, let us choose wives for ourselves from among the daughters of men and beget us children'... And the women became preg nant and gave birth to great giants whose heights were three thousand cubits (7.2).

The watchers went to the daughters of men, lay with them, and 'defiled themselves...As for the women, they gave birth to giants, so that the whole earth was filled with blood and oppression' (9.8-9). God com mands that the angel Asael be bound in the desert of Dudael (10.4) and says: 'The whole earth has been corrupted by Asael's teaching...ascribe to him all sin' (10.8). In the second part we read (it is God, speaking to the watchers): Indeed you, formerly you were spiritual, having eternal life, and immortal in all the generations of the world...But now the giants who are born from the (union of) the spirits and the flesh shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, because their dwelling shall be upon the earth...Evil spirits have come out of their bodies (15.6-9).

The thought of the author of the Book of the Watchers is this, more or less: the angels, who transgressed God's order, have also broken the order of nature. They have contaminated themselves and all of nature. They have ruined it, and for this reason either evil began or at least spread. The first cause of evil is thus to be sought outside the human sphere. But the Book of the Watchers also has a couple of concepts that are absolutely new in Israel, supporting the idea that evil derives from a contamination entering nature from outside, through the action of angelic

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beings. The two new concepts are those of the immortal soul and that of a mediator who is both human and heavenly, one who is in a position, by the grace and choice of God, to reveal to humans the realities of the world of the spirit, where evil was born, and where appropriate means of salvation have already been prepared. The world of the spirit has its own dimensions, thus posing the prob lem of the possible relationship between our world and that above humans. It is at least clear that the two worlds are in contact in some way, since the angels came down from heaven to the earth. They were able to cross the shadowy wall separating the two spheres. And Enoch can climb through the experience of the void up into the fullness of all fullness (7 En. 14.8ff.). God has arranged a place in the other world (or in this one, at some halfway point?) where there are valleys in which the souls of the just are kept safe from the attacks of the demons, close to a spring of water of light, awaiting the Great Judgment. In the same way evildoers are kept in torment, even though still waiting to be judged (7 En. 22). The Judgment has not yet happened, but the just are already safe. The opposite is true for evildoers. God has already ordered the binding of Asael and sees to giving orders so that the giants may be annihilated, though their souls remain on the earth (16.1) without being judged: 'They will bring destruction, until there comes the day of the great con demnation.' God has already ordered the destruction of the evil spirits, but his command has not yet been carried out. Human history is thus in a particular position: it is dominated by the angelic figures that have corrupted it, who attack humans in every way, yet that history does not lose its autonomy. So this is not predeter minism. The world of angels is free, as is that of humans. What particu larly hurts humans is that they must fight forces superior to them, and for this reason salvation can only come when they are safe in the valley of the just. The destiny of this historical world is to end in the other world, but not in the sense that it will maintain its historical dimensions: it will be the souls of individuals that will totally and definitively enter into the dimension most properly theirs. There appears here a particular concept of the human being, who lives in history where he fights his battles, but with two distinct outcomes. The just one is already saved, and is not yet saved, depending on the point of view we assume. The teaching of the Book of the Watchers is unique in the tradition of


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Israel. It is clearly different from that of later apocalyptic. If these older works had not been collected in later centuries to form a corpus like that of the Ethiopic Enoch, it would be difficult for us to recognize in them the same current of thinking. Around the beginning of the second century BCE Israel saw a flowering of works that certainly came under the influence of the thought of Watchers, but developed in such a way that it is difficult to find there the concerns, the basic motifs of the older work. I will mention just two ways in which the problem was addressed: 1) in other apocalyptic works; 2) in a work that is not apocalyptic, that of the so-called Teacher of Righteousness, an Essene thinker who lived probably in the second half of the second century BCE. There are two apocalyptic works at the beginning of the second century BCE, the book of Daniel and the Book of Dreams. We will quickly note that in neither of them is there preserved the idea of an immortal soul in the human person. Consequently, the good world of the spirit is not to be found above the person, and already present in some way; rather the contrary: it is placed at the end of this history and it will be reached by the particular action and intervention of God. Those who die before the coming of the new world, the new age, will rise so as to participate in it. The idea of the immortality of the soul disappears in consequence of the disappearance of the world of the spirit. Regarding the disappearance of the world of the spirit, another great intuition of the author of the Book of the Watchers also disappears: the idea that evil derives from a contamination of nature provoked by angelic forces. Well, then, one might ask, if we call the thought of the Book of the Watchers apocalyptic, how is it possible to call apocalyptic also a form of thought so different from it? There is a tradition which has recog nized a certain unity between the more ancient and the more recent works, and it therefore inserts the Book of the Watchers in the same collection as the Book of Dreams. So there is a common element that distinguishes these works: the fact that one passes from this world to the future age by means of a divine intervention, which means that for all these works it is certain that humans cannot save themselves with their own efforts; salvation will come with God's inauguration of a new age. The perspective of the Teacher of Righteousness is quite different, even though clearly influenced by the problems raised by the Book of the Watchers. He does not think of new ages, and is therefore not included among the apocalyptic authors. He does not even believe in the

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resurrection (he does not need it because there is no world to which it needs to provide entrance). There are no sure indications that he even believes in the immortality of the soul, but this would be within the classic tradition of Israel. His problem is centered completely on the origin of evil. He is convinced that evil is nothing other than the con tamination of nature and he pushes his notion to the point of thinking of the person as 'a structure of sin' (Hodayot 1.23) by nature, and thus a sinner right from the womb (Hodayot 4.29-30). But he is unable to reconcile this fact with the freedom of angels and humans, one which can oppose the wishes of God. In other, and clearer terms, if there are bad angels it is because God created them that way. God created the angel of light in order to love him and the angel of darkness to hate him (Rule of the Community 4.1). Humans are thus assigned by God to one or the other angel, so as to form two opposing parties, willed to be such by God. Here is a kind of dualism, but not of an apocalyptic type, because lacking the great apocalyptic hope, the coming of the good time. This is the kernel of every religious meditation: in purely rational terms, to accept the liberty of God and his omnipotence means attri buting evil to him, a repugnant position. So there arise various attempts to demonstrate that evil is not evil; rather it is some lack of being, but not exactly 'evil'. Or one must accept that the good and omnipotent God gave humans a certain ability to choose, as if to test them. But are human beings really so free as to be able truly to choose? I suppose that every person who believes in a god cannot avoid resolving these prob lems in some way: these are human problems, not reserved only for philosophers. In conclusion, I wish to offer a few words on the origins of Jewish apocalyptic. Was it born in Palestine, or in Israel anyway, or was it imported material? At the outset, I must say that to my way of thinking the problem is of little interest, because every historical event always has its peculiar features, making it difficult to borrow from the outside sic et simpliciter. But the problem still exists. In the Iranian world already in the sixth century BCE there was a form of apocalyptic dualism similar to that of later Jewish apocalyptic. This creates a problem. Why should the Book of Dreams or Daniel be under the influence of eastern works, and not the Book of the Watchers'? If there was this influence, which in fact was rather generic, we must admit that it was borrowed by a late type of apocalyptic thought that had already existed for some time. And that is improbable.


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There is also a great difference between Iranian dualism and Jewish: in the Iranian, the sovereign and power in general belonged to the sphere of the good; in the Jewish, the opposite is true. Historical evil is ever more apparent as the basis of power; and the Teacher of Righteousness fully agrees with that. In Daniel, the empires that follow one on another become ever worse, beasts ever more frightening, or metals degrading from gold, at the beginning, to hard iron, mixed with clay and destined to crumble. The Teacher of Righteousness prays to God with these words: I will do...righteousness and lovingkindness toward the oppressed [nikna'im], I will encourage the irresolute, I will teach understanding to the erring spirit, I will instruct those who murmur against the teaching; I will answer humbly the arrogant and with a spirit of complete meekness the men of the scepter, who point the finger, whose word is iniquity, and whose (sole) longing is wealth {Rule of the Community, 10.26-11.2).

And for the Book of the Watchers! Persian origin is excluded. In some cases there is a glance toward another direction: in Egypt there is actually some parallel at the literary level, such as the kingdom of the dead placed in the west, the idea of the immortality of the soul, and some parallels in individual expressions. Pushing a bit further one could say that the very notion of a gathering place of the just is of an Egyptian kind. Pushing even further one could say that in Egyptian thought every thing is destined to be reabsorbed into primeval chaos, outside which remain only Osiris and (though I am not sure) that which is assimilated to him (the souls of the dead are called Osirises), resembles the general framework of the first apocalyptic thinking. If we accept this, then we could imagine the fairly direct influence of Egyptian culture on the origins of Jewish apocalyptic. But, in any case there is still no sign in the Egyptian world of the idea of contaminated nature or a sin of angelic beings.

Chapter 3 TOWARDS A HISTORY OF APOCALYPTIC*

When my history of the Jewish world was published in 1976 none of the rather numerous reviews corrected me for failing to speak of a current of thinking which, within Judaism, has been and continues to be of interest: apocalyptic. Perhaps this was because my work was organized around ideological themes and not literary genres, which today are frankly confused with currents of thinking or even with specific topics. I remember frequently posing to myself the problem of how to treat apocalyptic, how to characterize it. I ended up doing nothing about it for the two following reasons. 1

2

* First published as 'Per una storia dell'apocalittica', in Atti del III Convegno dell'AISG in San Miniato, November, 1984 (Rome, 1985), pp. 9-34. 1. Storia del mondo guidaico (Turin, 1976). In fact I mentioned apocalyptic three times in my book. On p. 31 I say that apocalyptic will take Zechariah's position to extreme consequences in relation to the 'in-between world'. There is another men tion on p. 150, where I show my inability to understand apocalyptic and seem to anticipate the extremist positions of Carmignac and Collins, thus justifying my not talking about it. On p. 1601 mention it for the third time in regard to knowledge, and on this point I still hold fully to my position. 2. The concept of 'literary genre' is somewhat confused, and I think it has pro vided few advantages and many empty words. One speaks of 'literary genre' following Gunkel, but the method has been pushed to the point of exasperation, and has almost lost its meaning. 'Literary genre' should serve to clarify the function of the passage under examination, the occasion when it was written and that for which it was written. Today, however, the tendency is, on one side, to underline the purely formal value of the concept (cf. J. Carmignac, 'Qu'est-ce que l'apocalyptique?', RevQ 10 [1979]), pp. 3-33 (20); on the other side, it is instinctively loaded with the values of some content (p. 21). E. Testa, in his otherwise valid commentary on Genesis (Genesi, I [Turin, Rome, 1969]), speaks of literary genre to indicate in fact the subject of a pericope. See Chapter 11, where he says that the episode of the Tower of Babel belongs to a genre of ziggurat building. But I do not think this helps one to understand the thinking of the text's author.

3. Towards a History of Apocalyptic 1.

My understanding of apocalyptic derived at that time (19701973) from the approach given by Russell in a work that still remains basic. Koch struck me with the problems he pointed to, though I was not in a position to resolve them. Rather, he convinced me that the terrain of apocalyptic was very insecure, a real minefield. In my work, which was based on analysis and description of themes, wherever they could be found, it was quite natural not to talk about apocalyptic, except glancingly and vaguely. My focal point was the individual theme, and not currents of thinking. If I looked at the group of texts normally defined as apoca lyptic, they gave the impression (which I never explored further) of affinities with Essenism. I was probably under the influence of Testuz who showed the strong affinity between the Book of Jubilees and Qumran texts. Then the presence of clear literary contact between Jubilees and the Book of Enoch should have done the rest. The texts of apocalyptic were to me Jewish texts that I used only for what they had in common with other texts of the period. I was missing their specificity. 3

2.

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4

5

6

Looking back now at my book I see that I happened more than once to quote the Book of the Watchers, all of whose principal themes I had identified, though I had not recognized what characterized it. I noted that it spoke of the world beyond in a way different from the classical biblical world. Even the type of knowledge it proposed was no longer the classic one (p. 156 [chs. 2-5]). I remarked that in ch. 8 the author attributed the origin of evil to a demon, but I remained tied to this chapter where evil is substantially identified with the revelation of skills or sciences (p. 167). I had also noticed that the Book of the Watchers believed in the immortality of the soul, which does not descend to Sheol

3. D.S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 6th edn, 1974 [1964]). 4. K. Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic (London, 1972). On the confusion deriving from this way of working that aims at listing themes, cf. P.D. Hanson, 'Jewish Apocalyptic against its Near Eastern Environment', RB 78 (1964), pp. 3158 (33). Now by Hanson there is also The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 1975), and articles on specific passages of apocalypses. 5. M. Testuz, Les idees religieuses du Livre des Jubilees (Geneva-Paris, 1967). 6. For example, in Jub. 4.22 there is mention of the fall of the angels, but the topic is not developed.

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(p. 227). But since at that time I believed that Jubilees was an older text (Jub. 23.30-31), the importance of the statement escaped me. I con sidered it a half-way point between two key points which attracted more of my attention: Jubilees, as a point of departure; and the Wisdom of Solomon, as the point of maximum development. I had also noted the importance of the parallel humble = just (25.4) on p. 215. The fact is I was convinced that the Book of the Watchers was com posed in the last two pre-Christian centuries so I could only look on it as one piece of evidence in the midst of others of the time. However, if I had studied it by itself, at least one thing should have struck me: its ideology, with all the variety deriving from the unquestioned plurality of authors, is characteristic in relation to all the other works of its kind in giving maximum development to the problem of the contamination of human nature and the cosmos. In reality, there is another singular charac teristic: the problem of the relationship between the eternal (or better, the world of the spirit) and time (or better, the physical, historical world). Thus it was that I slid over the biggest and most interesting problems. But the problem of the Book of the Watchers was raised when Milik discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran a large Enochic fragment which contained, though with lacunae, the text of the Book of Enoch from ch. 1 up to the beginning of ch. 12. The fragment was dated, by paleo graphy, to the first half of the second century BCE, a dating never ques tioned and which was reaffirmed by Delcor in an extemporaneous comment to my paper delivered at the meeting of the European Association for the Study of Judaism at Oxford in 1982. The first twelve chapters of Enoch contain the general introduction to the entire Book of the Watchers; the oldest parts of the Book of Noah; and the beginning of the later sections (beginning precisely with ch. 12): it therefore seemed clear that the Book of the Watchers had its more or less definitive redactional form already in the second century BCE. In other words, all the redactional work supposed to have taken place between 200 BCE 7

8

9

7. Until Milik's publication of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch it was com monly held that there were no apocalypses earlier than 200 BCE (apart from Old Testament passages). Cf. W. Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement (Nashville, 1975), p. 63; Russell inserts the dating limits even in his title: The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic. 200 BC-100 AD. 8. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran (Oxford. 1976). 9. Published in italics as 'Riflessioni sull'essenza dell'apocalittica: d'origine e liberta deH'uomo', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 31-58.

Cave 4 peccato

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3. Towards a History of Apocalyptic

and the first century CE needed to be pushed back, as Milik himself had already been proposing. All that was needed was careful study of the text, but no longer considered as simply one example among many of apocalyptic after 200 BCE. The Book of Astronomy should also be dated earlier than 200 BCE because of the same Qumran discoveries published by Milik. It is also of interest that numerous fragments of the Book of Giants were also discovered, a work that previously was entirely unknown." I must correct what I wrote in Henoch 1, where I advanced the hypothesis that the Book of Giants was also to be dated earlier than 200 BCE. It seemed to me rather that, since it must be placed between the Book of the Watchers and the Book of Astronomy in place of the Book of Parables, it must be part of a trilogy that I dated as a block to the early period. Thus I explained the fact that the introduction of the Ethiopic Enoch (chs. 1-5) was clearly later that the whole of the Book of the Watchers, while necessarily earlier than (if it is already documented in a manuscript composed in the second century BCE) at least the later parts of the Ethiopic Enoch. In fact, the introduction of the Ethiopic Enoch is only a summary introduction to all the layers which make up the Book of the Watchers itself. 10

12

10. With the discovery of the original text it is clear that in the case of the Book of Astronomy the Ethiopic translation is essentially a summary. 11. Milik had already mentioned this Book of the Giants previously: 'Turfan et Qumran, Livre des Geants juif et manicheen', in Tradition und Glauhe (Festschrift K.G. Kuhn) (Gdttingen, 1971), pp. 117-27. 12. It is now indefensible to assert that the introduction was written after the last of the volumes that make up the book of Enoch. Even if one overlooks the Book of Parables, which had an independent origin and was inserted as a replacement in the Enochic corpus when the Book of Giants was taken out, it is practically impossible that the Epistle of Enoch is earlier than the first century BCE, at which time the gene ral introduction had already been written, as is apparent from the fragment mentioned above. It seems certain to me that whoever wrote this introduction was someone other than the authors of the Enochic pentateuch. Sinai as the place of the Great Judgment is mentioned only in the introduction. Certainly it tried to recuperate apoca lyptic elements in order to draw them closer to the official tradition. It gives great importance to the theme of election, yet it never mentions the fall of the angels, nor any other myth with a similar meaning. Rather it declares explicitly that disorder in nature is to be imputed to humans ('You, however, [unlike the things of nature] have not obeyed and do not submit to the command of the Lord, but have transgressed it', 5.4). The impious will be destroyed and, after their condemnation, the just will inherit the earth. Then there will be no more sin, because wisdom will then be given


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The disappearance of the Book of the Giants and its substitution with the Book of Parables can be well explained by the later apocalyptic ideology which was certainly exposed to Essenic influences. Giants speaks of a future or at least possible conversion of the demons. In the predeterministic vision of the Teacher of Righteousness and of all later Essenism, that must have appeared absolutely impossible. Let us return to the Book of the Watchers which remains the only source before 200 BCE useful for understanding apocalyptic thought. The Book of Astronomy has essentially technical-scientific aspects and is difficult to use in our type of discussion. Regarding Koch, a strange fact struck me. Koch was searching for motifs characteristic of apocalyptic and, to find them, he tried to make a list of them and indicate the places they appeared. It struck me that 1 Enoch 6-36, that is, the Book of the Watchers, never appeared in this list. The only time it was mentioned was in regard to a reading of the text which was, in the best of hypotheses, 13

to the just. However, even in this regenerated world, death will still exist. One can see that this ideology is similar to that of BW2c, though further developed and with component parts better organized. The author of the introduction should therefore be located before the conceptions of second apocalyptic which emphasize historical determinism with the concept of aeons predetermined by God. Seemingly the author of the introduction is only the editor of the Book of the Watchers as a whole. He is the immediate heir of the thinking of its last layer and, thus, the one who has given it as a frame the later form, the one closer to official Jewish thought. 13. This is the thesis of J. Murphy O'Connor, 'La genese de la Regie de la Communaute', RB 76 (1969), pp. 528-49, taken up with few changes and in greater depth by J. Pouilly, La Regie de la Communaute de Qumran: Son evolution litteraire (Paris, 1976), and by P. Arata with more substantial changes ('La stratificazione letteraria della Regola della Comunita: A proposito di uno studio recente', Henoch 5 [1983], pp. 69-91). The theory demonstrates that the most typical forms of Essenism, such as the doctrine of the two spirits, belong to the most recent layer of the work. In the doctrine of the two spirits there is a clear affirmation that the devil was created evil by God. This leads one to think that the exclusion of the Book of Giants and its substitution with the Book of Parables happened in the course of the first century CE. Later dates for this substitution are impossible, because the New Testament knows a book of Enoch that includes the Book of Parables but not the Book of Giants. It should also be noted that the book of Slavonic Enoch, heavily dependent on Ethiopic Enoch, does not know the Book of Parables although it must have known the Book of Giants, since it speaks of the watchers who repented of their actions and returned to give glory to God (ch. 18). Contrary to Slavonic Enoch, the later Hebrew Enoch knows Ethiopic Enoch as we have it, with the Book of Parables and without the Book of Giants. Traces of a myth of the repentance of the watchers can be found also in the Book of the Watchers itself (cf. 1 En. 18.16 and 21.6).


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dubious. The passage in which, according to Koch, the resurrection was spoken of is really talking about something quite different. How could it be that there was an apocalyptic work, so rich in thought, yet lacking one of the most common themes of apocalyptic? I studied the work on several occasions: a first publication came out in 1979; a second in 1983." But in the meantime the whole problem of apocalyptic presented itself to me in a new light. All recent scholars, with the possible exception of Schmithals, speak of apocalyptic as if it were a single thing, surely characterized by differences between one work and another, but without tracing these differences back to diversity not only of author but also of era. Between a Book of the Watchers which goes back to the first part of the Second Temple period and 4 Ezra or 2 Baruch, composed at the end of the first century CE, there should be differences: this seems obvious to me as a necessary working hypothesis. This does not mean looking for the common themes of apocalyptic, but rather a) considering the ideology of the Book of the Watchers as foun dational; and b) seeing how this influenced those later works usually 14

16

17

14. The text in question: 'Their souls [that is, of the evil spirits enclosed in a cave or valley of the west] will not be killed on the day of judgment but will not rise from there.' It is clear that in this case the verb 'rise' has no technical meaning, and signifies simply that the souls of the wicked will never leave the valleys (or caves?) where they are enclosed in the midst of torment. Cf. Koch, Rediscovery, p. 30, n. 29. The verse I cite is 22.13. Koch, however, indicates only the chapter, without the verse. But it is the only one in which there is something like an allusion to resurrection. 15. See above Chapter 1, and 'Riflessioni sull'essenza deH'apocalittica' (see above note 10). 16. Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement. 17. On the dating of the Book of the Watchers cf. J.T. Milik, 'Problemes de la litterature henochique a la lumiere des fragments de QumrSn', HTR 64 (1971), pp. 333-78. Cf. also The Books of Enoch, p. 5. Milik proposes as a date for the final redaction the middle of the third century BCE. But the oldest layer of the work would be so ancient as to have its terminus ad quern in Gen. 6.1-4, a passage from the Yahwist tradition. I also believe that the passage in Genesis mentioned above can be considered the terminus ad quern, but not in its present form, which derives from the censures of the final redactor of the Bible, close to Priestly circles. The passage in the Yahwist source must have been more extensive. As I have tried to show elsewhere, the passage as it is makes almost no sense. To understand it, one must know the myth in its entirety: so, one needs the version of the Book of the Watchers. Cf. Chapter 2 above. For the Book of the Watchers I have proposed a date between the fifth century and Qoheleth. Between these two extremes I am inclined towards the earlier time. Cf. Chapter 1 above.

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considered apocalyptic and all the works of the Jewish tradition, including the canonical tradition. It seems to me a sound working hypothesis that there could have been reciprocal influences between the various currents, and this could explain the fact that we have not been able to find themes common to apocalyptic, but only themes common to all Judaism, even though present in various works in different degrees, c) From this diachronic comparison there should emerge that part of the earliest apocalyptic that remained in later ones at the level of their root-ideas. When Carmignac published his 'Qu'est-ce que l'apocalyptique?' I was favorably impressed, at least in the sense that he posed the central prob lem to me. Carmignac tends to reduce the concept of apocalyptic entirely to a literary and formal concept. For him there is no current of thinking with such unity that it can be defined 'apocalyptic'. There is only a certain literary genre, in which one can find a little bit of everything. To verify this hypothesis that really fascinated me, I had to start all over and, in this case, starting all over could only mean referring back to the Book of the Watchers and seeing what it had contributed to the later tradition. It meant seeing if the elements which passed into the canonical ideology had been restructured in its own ideology, and if elements that had taken the same journey in reverse had been taken into the ideology which entered history with the Book of the Watchers. In order for an apocalyptic current to exist, it would be enough that certain basic requirements of the Book of the Watchers remain in other works: these would be the root-ideas constituting the essence of apocalyptic. But enthusiasm for the work of Carmignac also passed. After having given a definition of apocalyptic (p. 20) of a purely formal kind, he con cludes, in a comment on the definition, by reintroducing into the concept of form elements of substance. His definition sounds like this: 'Apocalyptic is a literary genre that presents through typical symbols revelations of God, angels, demons or their partisans, or the instruments of their action.' But the comment goes beyond the definition. The liter ary genre of apocalyptic is distinguished from prophecy (which can also be revelation) because it does not consider the human person and history for themselves, but considers them in relation to the invisible world. In other words, apocalyptic reveals the secrets of the action of God (including history), while prophecy tends to insert the divine action within the human reality, whether present or future. Though the expres sion is not completely clear, I think I understand that in prophecy the person maintains an autonomy that is not to be found in apocalyptic.


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But this is no longer a formal problem. This is an authentically ideological problem. Let us turn back to our Book of the Watchers. This appears today as the result of a complex layering process that can be well delineated partly on the basis of form and partly on ideology. The various parts are held together by a basic idea that is found throughout: the fall of the angels. Closely tied to this is the development of the anthropological theme, with different accents depending on whether the author shows acceptance of the central idea of the soul destined to live not in Sheol but with God, or rather sees the reign of God to be located on the earth at the end of times. But even in this second case the relation between God and the world, God and history, is seen in a certain perspective: the awareness that the world and history suffer the consequences of angelic sin. Evil becomes a force that acts in the world, and has a power beyond that of humans: the cosmos and humans themselves are contaminated. The most ancient layer of the Book of the Watchers is represented, in common opinion, by the Book of Noah, an opinion certainly shared by Charles, and by others even before him. The Book of Noah represents the first section of the Book of the Watchers, which I have labelled BW1, distinguished clearly from the second (BW2) on the basis of form. The revealing vision, considered by all as a key element of apocalyptic, is found only in BW2. In formal terms BW1 is not apocalyptic. Yet it con tains all the germs of apocalyptic in understandable form. In BWlaa (chs. 6-7) there is the story of angels who descended to earth because they were enamored of the daughters of humans. The story, as already mentioned, follows the style of historical narration, not of revelation. These angels generated monstrous children, the giants, and they did such evil to humans and to all living beings as to fill the whole earth with it. The 'fall' is therefore the cause of evil only in an indirect sense. Chapter 8 (BWla/3) develops the theme in the sense that the angels brought evil into the world by teaching humans arts and skills that should have remained secret. Even astrology, which will be of such great interest to the rest of the Ethiopic Enoch is here presented as an evil science (8.3). In chs. 9-11 the remedy against this type of evil is considered (BWlb), but the treatment of the remedies is not by the hand of whoever spoke of the evils in BWla, at least in the form in which the text has reached us. Chapter 7, that is BWlaa (/3 is only a parenthesis) closes with the earth's accusing the evildoers, that is the giants, of the evil they do. But

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in ch. 9 we no longer find the accusation made by the earth, that is, in some way by humans who have somehow survived the violence of the giants, but by the disincarnate souls of the dead, which are evidently able to make their cry reach God, because they are no longer in Sheol, where the spirits of humans lived in the past completely separated from God (Ps. 115.17; Isa. 38.18). The text, certainly as given by the redactor, speaks explicitly of 'the souls of the dead' but he inserts in the story of the ancient Book of Noah an element destined to provoke vast trans formations in the ideological constellation of those who meditated on the text, believing it sacred, or, in more secular terms, believing it to express a truth. Even the content of the lament is interesting, and it must belong to the original, since it seems to derive from a context in which those living on the earth and not the dead seem to be the subject: 'these cannot save themselves from the evil done on the earth.' Humans by themselves cannot save themselves from this kind of evil. The passage, reread in the redactional form where the lament is placed in the mouths of the souls of the dead, assumes a cosmic dimension, which we will find clearly in the later parts of the Book of the Watchers, those indicated by the number 2. On the invitation and at the signal of the four archangels, Michael, Suriel, Gabriel and Uriel (in BW2 the archangels will become seven [ch. 20]), God intervenes and condemns the chief demon Asael to be enclosed in the underworld darkness until the end of time, when he will be sent to eternal fire (10.6). The other sinful angels will remain bound for seventy generations before being condemned to eternal fire. The giants, however, will annihilate each other in mutual hatred: they will be 18

18. All the ancient and modern translations have Azazel, not Asael. The name of Asael is given to us from the Aramaic and is certainly original, because Azazel is an obvious corruption of Asael, because it is the name of a demon known in the Bible. On the other hand if the name of Azazel is not original, the hypothesis of two origi nal cycles combined at a later period cannot stand, referring to a cycle of Semeyaza and one of Azazel. Asael exists as an angel of the troop of Semeyaza already in ch. 6. In this passage the name has been passed on also in the translations. Asael was thus a particularly important demon of Semeyaza, who was taken to develop the theme of evil deriving from the sciences. This is not an autonomous cycle but shows the internal development of the Enochic tradition. These observations derive from a pre sentation given by G.F. Miletto in a seminar on apocalyptic held at the Faculty of Letters of Turin during the academic year 1981-82. The understanding of the nature of ch. 8 and the consequent identifying symbols a and /? within BWla are also derived from him.


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victims of their own wickedness. And when will all this happen? It seems that it should happen rather soon, because it is said of the giants, 'they do not have a long time' (10.9). Humans live in that span of time between the divine order to destroy evil and its complete realization. And the cause of evil is to be imputed totally to the sin of the angels: this appears clearly at the conclusion of ch. 10, where it is said that the earth will have peace only when all these evil forces are finally destroyed. God will not send the flood again (10.22) because the earth will then be free from every sin. One must admit that this conclusion leaves some perplexity and it is an indication of redactional rearrangements. If the flood has not come back over the earth, it would seem that one should understand that evil has disappeared from it. But clearly this is not the case. These contradictions, or difficulties, derive from the overlapping of the original story of the Book of Noah with the corrections of the redactor, the same redactor who inserted the idea of the immortality of the soul in the text of the Book of Noah, changing it into BW1. Certainly these corrections permitted me to interpret the passage of the BW1 in the way I did: humans live in the span of time between the giving of the order and its total execution. The problem is taken up in the following section (BW2a) and its clarification becomes the principal goal of the author. In BW2a appears the characteristic element of apocalyptic on the level of form: the vision. Between BW1 and BW2 there is a considerable leap. As can be seen, the history of apocalyptic thought understood as an evolution begins already within its first work. BW2a develops the problem of evil and its origin clearly and consistently. The cause of evil is no longer the revealing of heavenly mysteries, nor the fact that the giants are wicked and do evil to humans; evil derives from the contamination that the sin of the angels has brought to nature. All of nature is tarnished. Consider the passages 12.4 and especially 15.4, where the discussion opens out to cosmic dimen sions. In 12.4 the contamination of nature is strictly linked to the sexual relations between the angels and the women, but in ch. 15 the contami nation is the consequence of a transgression of the natural order willed 19

19. Even if this idea is typical of BW2a, it may perhaps derive from a further exploration of some phrases in BWlb, where there already appears the evil character of impurity (10.20, 22).

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Jewish Apocalyptic and its History 20

by God. Sin has created disorder and produced contamination. Here is the reason for evil's remaining on the earth: it has two con comitant causes, but of different kinds. On one side nature is tarnished, including that of humans; on the other, while it is true that the giants are dead, according to the order given by God, their disincarnate souls live on because they are immortal like all souls, and they act without 'being judged' (16.1). Now the problem is clear: against a human nature disempowered by contamination there are unleashed demonic forces which seek to do evil and to make humans commit evil. The human person is weakened and cannot resist. The uncertainties of BWlb are resolved. God's order has been carried out. The bad angels are reduced to powerlessness. The giants too, according to the letter of the order, are dead, but not their souls. The atmosphere of 'already and not yet' typical of BWlb now becomes more rationally lucid, its outlines more distinct. God has given certain orders to eliminate the wicked and the order obviously has been carried out. What remains of evil, at the level of the world of the spirit, are the demonic souls, while at the human level there is contamination. The human person is a victim of both of these hostile forces. In BW2b the thought is further clarified, following the same lines: an ever more consistent explanation of the idea that evil in the world comes from a sin located in a sphere superior to that of humans. It is as if successive authors had become increasingly aware of the importance of their ideology and, in consequence, increasingly understood both possible objections to it and its own intrinsic difficulties. In BWlb (10.8) there is a phrase typical of apocalyptic thought: 'Ascribe to Asael every sin.' I do not know what the phrase means in its context, where it may refer only to misfortunes produced by the angels' descent to earth, but in a contin gent manner. However, read outside its context, it assumes an absolute and clear value, of which all BW2a and b are a continuing development. If sin came to earth because of the fall of the angels (and this was 20. I mean that sin produces both contamination and disorder, not that the two are interchangeable. The idea that contamination is nothing but disorder has been upheld by the noted American anthropologist M. Douglas on the basis of Lev. 11. There is an exposition of the problem in Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico, pp. 22959. A presentation of Douglas's thought can be found in P. Sacchi, 'II puro e l'impuro nella Bibbia. Antropologia e storia', Henoch 6 (1984), pp. 65-80. The ancient idea is that sin produces impurity (an idea clearly expressed in Isa. 6). That cosmic disorder is also sin is, however, a novelty of apocalyptic. Later, impurity and evil will coincide more and more.


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already established), and if this fall happened at the time of Jared (and this was also written in the tradition), how does one explain the sin of Cain, a sin mentioned in ch. 22? In 18.5 we read that the 'fall' was not the first angelic sin. Following BW2a, BW2b knows that the sin of the angels was not sexual; it was transgression of the cosmic order as God had intended it. It was thus a sin that could have happened even before the creation of humans and the appearance of women. The author of BW2b places another angelic sin before that of the fall: it is the sin of the angels of the seven stars, who from the moment of their creation did not respect the times God had willed (18.15 and 21.6). The human being, when created, was already placed in the midst of a contaminated nature. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the existence of a world of the spirit parallel to that of history is a characteristic doctrine of the ideological constellation of early apocalyptic. It creates a category of thought that remains active even in those apocalyptic authors who seem not to admit the immortality of the soul. The existence of the world of the spirit poses dramatically the problem of the relationship between itself and time, between the historical destiny of humans and their abso lute destiny. It should not surprise us that the prophecy of Isaiah about the shoot of Jesse was broadened in the early days after the exile, according to an opinion widely held by critics, in the vision of a total regeneration of the world: 'The wolf shall live with the lamb.' This world is face to face with the eternal, or this historical generation is facing that of the future, regenerated and perfect. But this generation or this world are in any case prey to contamination: there can be no salvation here. This is impossible except in the world of the spirit or the future world. Here is the source of that interest in eschatology charac teristic of apocalyptic, even though the content of this eschatology can be diverse: it is placed at the end of this time; already present now but in the world beyond; or even present in both dimensions, an approach found only in the latest apocalyptic (first century CE). Let us return to the author of BW2b. His attention turns to the destiny of the souls of the dead and the theme is treated at length in ch. 22. Already in ch. 17 he had placed the water of life in the far west (17.4). Now in ch. 22 he leads us again to the far west, where there are valleys in which dwell the souls of the good and the wicked, already judged and therefore clearly separated. They are now called 'spirits of the children of the dead people' (v. 5), a long and vaguely contorted expression that shows that there is still no technical expression to indicate these

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disincarnate souls. The souls of the wicked are obviously in torment and those of the good are near 'a spring of the water of light' (22.9). This should be identified with the spring of the water of life in ch. 17. But the expression 'water of light' attests to our author's immaterial and abso lutely spiritual conception of the life of the soul. The water that gives life to the souls is no longer the cosmic water of Egyptian theology or (though I have my doubts) that of Mesopotamia: the life of the spirit can be none other than light. And light in the post-exilic period begins to be a fundamental attribute of the good and of God. The author of this section did not think, in my opinion, that after what we may call the phase of the valleys there would follow a new age; at least he does not say so. In the day of the Great Judgment the souls of the wicked will not be killed but will remain in those places forever: 'they will never leave there' (22.13). He does not speak of the final destiny of the good, but it seems natural to think of it as parallel to that of the impious. The good are already in the place of the 'water of light'; they could not ask for better. For BW2b the final destiny of humans will be fulfilled in the valleys of the west, that is, in the beyond, and that final destiny will be in a life free of contamination and assaults of the evil spirits for the good, and full of torment for the wicked. Our author does not seem concerned about destiny, the goal of history. History, dominated as it is by evil, was for him autonomous in relation even to the will of God. He thinks, nevertheless, of a final inter vention by God, whose logic will not depend on the history happening on earth, but, if we may speak in this way, on the history happening in heaven. The intervention will take place when the angels of the seven stars have finally expiated their fault, in a year which, according to different passages, is indicated as ending a cycle of ten thousand years or centuries, or (18.16) as the year of mystery. This reading may, perhaps, derive from a mistake in reading the Greek, in which the words 'ten thousand' and 'mystery' resemble each other. This idea that the first sinners one day will complete their expiation moves the dimensions of universal contamination to a role of contin gency, and should be seen as standing behind the Book of the Giants, which considered redemption even for the souls of the giants, and which late apocalyptic must have erased precisely for this reason. The attention of the author of BW2b is turned completely to the human person who is living today and wants his share of hope, salvation for himself: what will happen at the end of time does not interest him.


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Instead BW2c turns its gaze towards the earth. The author thinks of the Great Judgment, but he brings it down deliberately into time and history. He certainly knows BW2b but he relies directly on BWlb. His Great Judgment is different from that of his predecessor and he is fully aware of that fact, so much so that he locates it in a different place, with different life-giving means. We are no longer in the west, but in the north and—note well—this too may derive from Egyptian thought. On earth somewhere the tree of life already exists, but 'no flesh' can touch it until the day of the Great Judgment (25.4). In this author too there is the idea that there must be something that gives life, but he avoids identifying this something with his predecessor's water of light, because the life he is thinking about is different. The Great Judgment will concern the earth, that is those who are living in that moment. In the north there is already a mountain from which God will descend to 'visit the earth with good purpose', that is, to save it. The earth is now con taminated and prey to evil and human beings cannot be saved by their own efforts alone. The work of salvation has to be God's work. This idea is common in the book and is characteristic of apocalyptic in general, even if the human participation in God's work of salvation presented different problems and received varied solutions. This problem is strictly linked to that of human liberty, of which I will speak later. 21

In BW2c two concepts appear that were destined to have great importance in later apocalyptic: that of 'the elect' ('From its [that is, the tree of life's] fruit life will be given to the elect'); and that of 'the just' = 'the humble'. Thus we have a notable development of the concept of the just one destined for salvation: the just one is a chosen one, and is identified with the humble. But what kind of life will that marvelous tree planted in the north give to these elect? It will not be a life without death; it will be as long as that of the first patriarchs (perhaps a thousand years) and, according to the Greek version, it will be even longer. In this life there will be neither sin, nor misfortune, because evil will have been definitively defeated by God. As for the wicked, their destiny is treated in ch. 27, but it is not clear a

21. In the most ancient funeral texts the soul {'ak = ru hT) of the dead person does not go to the west, but to the north. This Egyptian north should be placed in heaven, unlike that of apocalyptic. The fact is that Jewish apocalyptic, even when it accepts the existence of the spirit world, places it somewhere in this world. Cf. H. Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (London, 1946), p. 57.


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to me to what degree their destiny may be considered parallel to that of the just. Their judgment will not take place in the north, but at the center of the earth, and their condemnation will be eternal. How this eternal condemnation of the impious can parallel the long life of the good is not altogether clear to me, but probably 'eternal' signifies in the context only 'forever, without appeal'. Perhaps the impious hurled into the ravine at the center of the earth were thought to perish. The thought of BW2c could then be summarized in this way: at the end of the world God will come to save the earth, destroying all the evildoers and evil itself; the good will then be able to live a long, untroubled life. From what I have said thus far it seems clear that the new piece within Jewish thought is that represented by the authors I have marked 2a and 2b, who are both also linked to a redaction of the Book of Noah. The basic ideas are: 1.

2. 3.

The origin and nature of evil, in the first case angelic, and in the second related to the effects of contamination. People can do nothing against this state of things. Only God can save them. Salvation lies in the beyond. The judgment of God appears as twofold. 22

The demon is already condemned and neutralized, whether placed in the shades of Dudael (10.4 [BWlb]), or placed as a sinful star in the sea of cosmic fire (18.12-14, taken up in 21.6 [BW2b]); but the evil pro duced by the demon and become part of the earth remains there. The first cause of sin having been taken away by God, the human person still remains with its consequences, which are also destined to be destroyed, but have not yet been. There is evidently a discrepancy between some thing absolute already accomplished and something historical, not yet accomplished but on the way to being so. This creates a particular spiri tuality, which I have named with a modern term, that of the 'already and not yet'. Evil will be destroyed, because in reality it has already been destroyed. The earth and history remain in something like a slime of evil left over from God's already completed work of judgment and restoration. Evil on the earth is to be found in this gap between an accomplished fact which is complete in one sphere, that of the spirit, but which has not yet reached those layers furthest from the spirit in this world. The world without evil exists already but in another sphere, not in history. Within 22. See Chapter 1 and 'Riflessioni sull'essenzadeirapocalittica'.


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this view of things, the eschaton, the absolute and final point towards which the person tends, is not at the end of time, destined for the last humans; it is already a reality existing and available to all the just. This atmosphere of 'already and not yet' is not predeterminism. In the Book of the Watchers the account, especially in its most ancient parts, always has a sense of spontaneity, both human and angelic, a sense of free initiative. For that matter, only in this atmosphere of liberty, which I would be so bold as to call absolute, does the sin of the angels have any meaning. At this point one could perhaps raise the problem whether apocalyptic definitively considers the person as free or not. If I have understood the original framework of apocalyptic thought properly, this problem, which might appear basic, is in fact secondary, and was actually an open question. Of course expressions like that of BWlb, 'Ascribe to Asael every sin', seem to exclude human responsibility and in any case, if a person sins, it is because human nature has been ruined by the sin of the angels. But we should not be surprised at all if other works later try to restore the full sense of human liberty and responsibility. The Epistle of Enoch will be explicit in regard to sin (98.4: 'it is the people who have themselves invented it'). Another consequence of the basic approach of BW2a and b which I have already mentioned is that humans cannot save themselves, because evil is greater than they are. In modern terms we might say that the Book of the Watchers is more Christian than Jewish. And at this point I would like to make a comparison with John's Apocalypse, as if to trace an ideal line from the first apocalypse to one of the last. The lamb of John not only exists even before the world, but exists as already slain (Rev. 5.4). In this type of apocalyptic, which accepts the existence of the world of the spirit, the relationship between that world and time is never resolved in a 'before' and an 'after'. What is of the spirit is. For John the world of the spirit is clearly that of the eternal where everything is or has already happened. How then should we interpret BW2c which seems to renounce the world of the spirit, which we have seen as a characteristic feature of the Book of the Watchers' thought up to this point? I believe that its inter pretation offers the key for understanding the development of all later apocalyptic. In BW2c the world of the spirit disappears, deliberately so, in that the author, who is the last, attached his work to that which precedes it. It

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therefore seems that he on the one hand knew he belonged to a precise current of thought different from one we might call official, and on the other hand he knew he was also different from the earlier apocalyptic tradition. That means he evidently did not consider the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and of the existence of the world of the spirit as either necessary or characteristic. What was characteristic for him was that this world was contaminated and that salvation could come only from God, in the mysterious moment in which God should decide to destroy evil and evildoers. His Great Judgment has a function identical to that in BW2b; the tension is still entirely directed towards the eschaton. The affinities between 2 c and the other layers of the Book of the Watchers are much greater than may appear at first glance. To conclude this general overview of the history of apocalyptic, I will consider three more problems. 1) I will check to see if works tradi tionally considered apocalyptic can be understood in light of the dynamic governing the evolution from one layer to another in the Book of the Watchers, particularly from 2b to 2c; I will also search in nonapocalyptic works for some trace of ideas apparently deriving from apocalyptic texts. 2) I will attempt to define which antecedents to the key concepts of the Book of the Watchers can be found in the pre-exilic Hebraic world. 3) I will look for the catalysts, presumably foreign, which provoked the flowering of historical apocalyptic. If we return to the dynamic linking BW2c to its predecessors, we will see that this author seems dominated by the intention of drawing apoca lyptic closer to more traditional Judaism. In other words, with 2c there begins that osmosis between Jewish currents that will continue uninter rupted as long as there is apocalyptic. The book of Daniel is certainly under the influence of the Book of the Watchers even at the literary level (see Dan. 7.8, 10 and 1 En. 14.22-23). With regard to the resurrection, in the book of Daniel this in effect substitutes for the immortality of the soul, allowing the final, regenerated world of BW2c to coincide entirely with the beyond of BW2b. Actually the great problem of the thought of BW2c compared with its predecessor was that it reserved the world of the eschaton to only the last generation. The resurrection allows a perfect fusion of the two demands, that of 23

24

23. The literary comparison refers back in time: in certain cases the text of Daniel can seem more ancient than that of the Watchers: this is evidently at the level of tradition, not of redaction. 24. I am holding to the traditional interpretation of Dan. 12.2. Recent studies


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history and that of reserving to all the just, not just those of the last generation, the joys of life with God. The Book of Dreams follows the same line as Daniel and was probably written only a year or two after it. This later apocalyptic of the second century BCE is distinguished from its earlier counterpart by a concept that at first was extraneous: deter minism. History appears already predisposed by God to its ultimate end, and this final day will come unexpectedly, when God wills, as in the earlier apocalyptic, but will come by predetermined steps, for which reason it makes sense to read the signs of the times. History is divided into ages. Thus we move from the atmosphere characterized by the 'already and not yet' which preserved individual liberty, to that of the 'already decided and not yet implemented', in which individual liberty is ever more problematic. History, according to earlier apocalyptic, was definitively the history of the world dominated by evil. Later apocalyptic emphasizes that evil is already in the power of God who has foreseen and controls it until its final dissolution. From this moment the conception of history becomes fundamental for an understanding of the new apocalyptic. Moving closer to us in time, we may ask if the neat division between the good and the bad in the Teacher of Righteousness, along with the idea that human nature is a structure of sin, contamination, which is really impurity, may itself be considered apocalyptic. Indeed, the thinking of the Teacher of Righteousness is under the influence of apocalyptic ideas, but lacks that sense of the freedom of angelic and human beings in earlier apocalyptic. His Satan was created as such by God in order to be hated. He lacks the sense of history proper of later apocalyptic. It is my impression that some Essenism, such as that of the Rule of the Community or the Hodayot, is certainly under the influence of the Book of the Watchers, but what is derived from it belongs to a different cultural horizon. It is also interesting to note that in the last works traditionally con sidered apocalypses, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, the fall of the angels disappears 25

which raise doubts that it really speaks of what we commonly understand by 'resurrection' do not seem to me based on valid grounds. 25. Daniel does not know of the end of Antiochus IV, while the Book of Dreams (90.14) knows of it, or at least knows about the victory of Beth Zur, to which it attributes greater importance than it really had. It mistakes the retreat of Lysias for the 'beginning of the end', because it does not clearly understand the internal political situation of Syria. Since the battle of Beth Zur was in 164, the Book of Dreams must have been written immediately after this date. For the identification of the battle of Beth Zur in 90.14, cf. Milik, Books of Enoch, p. 44.

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or, if it is recalled in 2 Baruch, it has no conceptual importance (56.10). In these late works the sin of the angels is replaced to all effects by the sin of Adam, a sin that happened before history. The fallen angels spoken of in 2 Baruch are themselves victims of the sin of Adam. Even while affirming the existence of the sin of the beginning, which makes humans susceptible to sinning, these last two apocalypses still reaffirm human liberty and responsibility. At first glance, the expression of 2 Bar. 54.19, 'Each of us has become his own Adam', seems to underline human responsibility, while 4 Ezra 3.21 seems to affirm the opposite: 'Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who are descended from him.' The sin of the beginning is clearly affirmed, but human liberty and responsibility are also reaffirmed, though within certain limits. In 4 Ezra 7.104 we read that on the day of Judgment 'everyone shall bear his own righteousness or unrighteousness'; and again in 7.127-28: 'This is the meaning of the contest which every man who is born on earth shall wage, that if he is defeated he shall suffer what you have said, but if he is victorious he shall receive what I have said.' Determinism exists on the historical level, because history cannot fail to move towards the point where God is leading it, but this does not apply to the individual. Clearly apocalyptic has a deep appreciation of the problem of the meaning of history, but this does not seem to me its heart; and there is, in any case, considerable development on this point within apocalyptic itself. Its heart is rather in the idea that this nature is contaminated and that salvation must depend on a gratuitous act of God. The development of messianism as the unique instrument of total, not just political, salva tion is tied to apocalyptic. The Book of Parables is apocalyptic, the Psalms of Solomon is not. Furthermore, even on the level of the author's awareness, the first refers to the Enochic tradition, the second does not. The second point I have proposed to examine regards the Hebraic antecedents of apocalyptic. The ideas of the Book of the Watchers stand out clearly in the panorama of currents of thought in post-exilic Judaism. In general I usually distinguish four. The first is the official, clearly the most robust, in Jerusalem, which I usually indicate by the adjective 'Zadokite' and within which may be distinguished two tendencies relative to two successive periods, that of earlier and later Zadokitism or the Ezrian movement. Its greatest point of interest is the Law, and the distinction between Ezrianism and earlier Zadokitism is especially that earlier Zadokitism shows openness towards foreigners not found in what


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26

we might call classic Ezrianism. A second current is represented by a sort of internal protest within the system, which criticizes, though it does not deny, the bases of official Judaism. This current is reflected especially in Ruth, Jonah, Job and then Qoheleth. The third current is represented by Samaritanism. The fourth current is represented by apocalyptic. The current I have called official depends on the great tradition of the Priestly author and Ezekiel, which preserves the greater part of the preexilic tradition. The current which I have called that of internal protest seems to have grown from two foci of official thought which created problems: the exclusion of foreigners and unlimited confidence in the principle of divine retribution, such as can be derived from ch. 18 of Ezekiel. Samaritanism appears originally strongly influenced by political motives reflected in all of its ideology. If these things are true about the other three currents, then in the case of apocalyptic our first temptation is to consider it a singular growth within Judaism, one whose roots can eventually be sought only outside the confines of Hebraism. It seems to me that apocalyptic, at its origins, was closely linked to the southern theology of pre-exilic Israel, and in particular to the Yahwist, First Isaiah and, in a very special way, to Jeremiah's concerns. I have always insisted strongly on the fact that in Israel there were two theo logies, one with northern roots and one with southern roots. To the first I have given the name, 'theology of Covenant', and to the second, 'theology of Promise'. I believe the roots of apocalyptic thought are here, in the awareness that sin is an autonomous reality with respect to humans and at the same time is linked to them in such a way that they must endure it, as in the dark image of Gen. 4.7 (J), where sin is represented as something lurking, 27

28

29

26. On earlier Zadokitism and its openness towards foreigners, cf. my Storia del mondo giudaico, pp. 27-39. Later Zadokitism or Ezrianism is that which sees, from the end of the fifth century BCE, the ever more decisive affirmation of Judaism in the form received from the Priestly author, from Ezekiel and finally from Ezra. 27. Ruth and Jonah particularly defend the universal openness of earlier Zadokitism. Job criticizes especially the concept of divine retribution based on observance of the Law. Qoheleth is the most radical and his thought already shows signs of that predeterminism that will assert itself in the apocalyptic of the second century BCE and in Essenism. 28. On the Samaritans see P. Sacchi, 'Studi samaritani', RSLR 5 (1969), pp. 413-40. 29. Cf. above pp. 76-81. Now: Storia del Secondo tempio: israele tra VI secolo a.c. e I secolo d.c. (Turin, 1994), pp. 8-12.

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evidently a living being, whose instinct drives it to unite with humans ('lyk tswqtw). If one wished to define the origins of apocalyptic on the historical level, I think one could say that this is a cultural movement which developed in the currents of southern Israel's thought, when these currents, at the Babylonian exile, remained isolated in their homeland. Furthermore, that the theological development of the Jews remaining in the homeland must have proceeded along lines very different from those of the exiles can be grasped rather well from the events concerning those who remained and those who were repatriated in the first century following the exile. Now I give just a glance at the last problem, that of the presence of eventual external catalysts that may have produced the flowering of apocalyptic. I know that people have always looked to Iran for this, but I have some doubts, at least for the earliest phase of apocalyptic. I confess that I am not much interested in this sort of problem. But at least one observation seems easy for me to make. In general one sees the clear influence of Persia in the presence, within apocalyptic, of the idea of resurrection. Now this idea appears only in the second phase of apocalyptic, that of Daniel (first half of the second century BCE). In the Book of the Watchers or Book of Astronomy there is no trace of it. Eventually there is the idea of the immortality of the soul, documented in three of the five layers into which the Book of the Watchers can be divided ideologically. Now this concept does not seem to point towards Iran, but towards Egypt. Furthermore, even the position of the under world at the extreme west is of an Egyptian type and lesser Egyptian elements can be identified, as another author has already indicated. If there was Iranian influence it must not concern the beginnings of the movements but its later development. 30

31

30. Cf. M. Noth, The History of Israel (New York, 1958), p. 359, where he states that the tribes of Israel remaining in Palestine continued to be important for the history of Israel. On p. 362 Noth affirms in fact that the vision of history in the Chronicler is false, because he considers as the true history of Israel only that of the exiles and repatriates. I agree with Noth that the Jews remaining in the homeland must also have had some role in the history of Palestine, but regarding the Chronicler's vision of history, this was the only one he could have. For him the Jews remaining in the homeland were no longer Jews. See on this point the extensive reflections of J. Maier, Grundziige des Judentums im Altertum (Darmstadt, 1981), opening pages, esp. p. 4. 31. Cf. A. Loprieno, 'II pensiero egizio e l'apocalittica giudaica', Henoch (1981), pp. 289-320 and, above, n. 24.

3

Chapter 4 T H E APOCALYPTIC OF THE FIRST CENTURY: SIN AND JUDGMENT*

My purpose in these pages is to attempt to demonstrate that one can write a history of first-century Jewish thought using New Testament texts. Beginning with the observation that Christianity appeared in Palestine within Jewish culture, and with the hypothesis that this functioned as any other cultural force operative in that area,' I have used, besides Jewish texts, also some New Testament texts to illustrate the development of a problem deeply felt by the society of the late Second Temple period. At the beginning of our era Judaism was full of political and ideologi cal tensions, and it was among these that Christianity was born as one solution to certain problems. It seems logical to me therefore to do the Jewish history of this epoch considering also the texts of the nascent church, avoiding the twofold error of excluding Christianity from this history or, what amounts to the same thing, considering it as the privi leged field of inquiry, as if its solutions were the only ones possible, solutions which necessarily lead to considering Judaism as a framework which had exhausted its historical task. It is from a perspective of this kind that the expression 'late Judaism' was born, indicating what I pre fer to call Judaism of the iate Second Temple Period'. I also avoid the expression in vogue today as a reaction to the earlier one, of 'Early Judaism', Friihjudentum, because it is too vast and ends up coinciding with the entire period of the Second Temple. To clarify the perspective in which I place myself, I will briefly sum marize my ideas about what apocalyptic had been up to the year 100 CE. I believe that apocalyptic had been a current of thinking more or less as * First published as 'L'apocalittica del I secolo: Peccato e Giudizio', in Atti del VCongresso Internazionale dell' AISG, SanMiniato, 12-15November, 1984 (Rome, 1987), pp. 59-78. 1. Cf. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's (London, 1973).

Reading

of the

Gospels

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old as official Judaism, and fully Jewish itself, which played a large part in the history of human thought. If in our historical outlines and periodizations we consider that Jewish apocalyptic ended at the beginning of the second century of our era, let me be quite clear that I do not think that apocalyptic ended at that time. It has continued and developed in gnosis and in many medieval movements. According to historians of religion, it is not even dead today, a sign that it represents conceptually a way of looking at life, one whose deepest, and perhaps still unexplored, motivations cannot be studied by historical method. In Jewish apocalyptic we can distinguish four periods, which can be outlined as follows: first-phase apocalyptic: from the beginnings to 200 BCE second-phase apocalyptic: from 200 BCE to 100 BCE third-phase apocalyptic: from 100 BCE to 50 CE fourth-phase apocalyptic: from 50 CE to ca. 120 CE.

The notable works of the period of first-phase apocalyptic are the Book of Noah, the Book of the Watchers (the Watchers are angels), and the Book of Astronomy. Since the Book of Noah has been lost, even though it has been possible to reconstruct its content, and since the Book of Astronomy serves better to understand the cosmic mentality of apocalyptic in a broad sense than to illustrate specific problems, our understanding of the period derives essentially from the Book of the Watchers. This text, however, turns out to be made up of at least five different layers which in their mutual development and critique already show the richness of this thought at its first historical appearance. Here are the fundamental positions of the teaching of the Book of the Watchers, considered as a single book, as it certainly was by the third century BCE. The human person possesses a soul not destined to descend unjudged into Sheol, where the good and the bad together will live a squalid life similar to that of the Homeric heroes and those of Mesopotamian culture. Rather the soul is destined to reach, after death, valleys located in the extreme west, where the good and the wicked are already separated and where the good are definitively protected from the attacks of evil while awaiting the Great Judgment. This will confirm and repeat a verdict that has already been given: a verdict of salvation or condemnation for eternity. The true reality of the human person is the 2

2. Cf. F. Garcia Martinez, '4Q Mess Aram y el libro de Noe', Salmanticensis (1981), pp. 195-323.

28

4. The Apocalyptic of the First Century

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spirit, the soul. This world is ruined by an angelic sin committed even before the creation of humans (the sin of the stars, 1 En. 18.15; 21.3). This sin has disturbed all of nature, both in moving the planets out of their normal orbit (an idea that will not be found later), and in bringing impurity and contamination into the world through the sexual act that joined angels to women. In this case impurity is seen as a real force of evil, at the root of human sin. 1 En. 10.8 reads: 'Ascribe all sin to Asael.' It seems therefore that freedom of moral choice and human responsibility are either negated or, more probably, disputed. In the last century of the Second Temple this first apocalyptic approach will make itself felt strongly, in a process of gathering pieces from the entire past in the attempt to create a system that would be the broadest (in the sense of losing the least possible amount of earlier thought) and the most consistent possible. This complex ideology varies in its particulars from layer to layer in the Book of the Watchers. The part destined to last and thus to charac terize apocalyptic as a truly consistent stream of thought despite the differences characteristic of individual authors is the idea that nature is ruined by an angelic sin, one committed in a sphere above the human. An idea like this, extraneous to official Jewish thought, was clearly des tined to provoke numerous reflections, either developed on their own or in connection with ideas from the rest of Judaism. Second-phase apocalyptic extends across the second century BCE: the two principal works of this period are the Book of Dreams and Daniel. But similar ideas can be found also in other books, like that of Jubilees, usually attributed to an Essene environment. Let me say immediately that Daniel, in my view of things, is an apocalyptic work more on the formal and stylistic level than on that of ideology, even if some of its conceptual elements can be considered apocalyptic. The apocalyptic character of the Book of Dreams is attested by two essential elements. The first is the tradition of apocalyptic itself, which

3

3. Though the phrase, taken out of context, seems perfectly clear, within the context there may arise the doubt that this refers only to the deeds of the fallen angels and could therefore simply mean that among the angels the only guilty one is Asael. Besides the oddity of there being no sin of the watchers, who are always indicated as the cause of all evil, there remains the fact that later the phrase could only be read for what it says. Furthermore, the fact that the Epistle of Enoch later takes a position against those who wished to reduce or annul human responsibility shows that this interpretation of the angelic sin must in any case have existed.

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placed this book within a broader collection (a pentateuch), whose first volume is the Book of the Watchers, whose ideology I consider the basis of apocalyptic. The second element is internal: the Book of Dreams also recognizes the sin of the angels; moreover, it imagines the sin of a first angel, to whom no name is given, but which certainly resembles the figure of the devil, by whatever name that figure is called later: Satan, Mastema, Belial, Beliar or other names. The fall of the angels occurring at the time of Enoch contaminates nature in such a way that, despite the Flood, wicked generations are produced even by Noah. History's development is characterized by the continuous increase of the force of evil which reaches its first climax when God condemns the Jews to exile in Babylon. After the exile the situation grows still worse, as even the seventy angels God entrusted with the overseeing of Israel disobey the divine command, leading Israel to an ever greater ruin, culminating in the destruction of the temple and its reconstruction by God's own hand. After this time will come the messiah, who will be superior to humans, but inferior to angels: he will govern all the earth and make all people similar to himself. From this very brief sketch we can see that with the Book of Dreams apocalyptic moves from a metahistorical to a historical structure. The Book of the Watchers looked at the course of history as contemporary and parallel to the world of the spirit, the good world without sin, the eschaton. The destiny of the human person was in the beyond, even if this did not exclude that, once God removed the consequences of angelic sin (18.16; layer 2b), evil would disappear from the earth (25.6). But the drama of evil was played out entirely in the beyond: this world only suffered the consequences. With second-phase apocalyptic, the world of the spirit disappears and, consequently, also the soul; and this world appears regulated by God in such a way as necessarily to lead history to the eschaton by an internal logic constituted by the continuous increase of evil up to the point at which this in some sense destroys itself, or in any event is eliminated by God. The certainty that the eschaton exists was, for the Book of the Watchers, founded on the presence in the human person of the immortal soul. For the Book of Dreams this certainty is provided by the very logic of history. The Book of Dreams is thus profoundly different from the Book of the Watchers. If the tradition has considered it as belonging to the same current as the first, it can only be for the consciousness in both of the existence of an angelic sin that ruined God's creation.


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For this reason I am convinced that the center of apocalyptic thought should be sought in the conception of sin and not in eschatology or messianism. The considerable weight of eschatology and, to a lesser degree, messianism in successive constructions of apocalyptic thought can be attributed directly to this basic idea. Daniel is on the margins of apocalyptic because, even though it knows of the degenerative concept of history (see the doctrine of the four empires that coincides with the four periods into which the Book of Dreams divides Jewish history from the exile to its own day), it does not know of any angelic sin that contaminates nature. There are also other differences between the Book of Dreams and Daniel, but this is the fundamental one. Third-phase apocalyptic extends from c. 100 BCE to 50 CE. This is the richest period for creative novelty, original developments of premises and, contrariwise, for reflections filled with caution. In this period apoca lyptic ideas on the one hand tend to diffuse themselves to some extent throughout all of Judaism while, on the other, it seems that apocalyptic authors become aware of some difficulties in introducing their thought into Jewish tradition. Thus they seek compromises or, better, insert within their works ideas that fit badly with the principles of apocalyptic in general, at least from our point of view. To illustrate this period, I will examine three works: the Epistle of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Book of Parables. All come from the 1st century BCE and probably in the order in which I have mentioned them, from the most ancient to the most recent. There are no problems in regarding the Epistle of Enoch and the Book of Parables as belonging to apocalyptic. This is attested first of all by their insertion in the same collection, through which they have come down to us. On the conceptual level one finds ideas more from secondthan first-phase apocalyptic, but there are, especially in the Book of Parables, some ideas that fit better with the first than the second. I am, however, sure that few would agree with me in considering the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs as an apocalyptic work. I should say immediately that they are correct. However, the way of conceiving evil, at least in the Testament of Reuben, depends so completely on the presuppositions of first apocalyptic that it is worth examining independently of the label that can be given to the work as a whole. The Epistle of Enoch is made up of two quite distinct parts: a history

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of the Jews which follows that of the Book of Dreams and a parenesis, characteristic of other works of the time, particularly the genre of Testaments. The historical section is called the 'apocalypse of the ten weeks' because history is divided into ten weeks. History appears as already written completely by God at the beginning of time, since Enoch in fact reads it in the books of God and then expounds on it. Periodization is the clearest means for expressing determinism: each epoch has its characteristic, willed by God. Yet history proceeds always in the same direction: whatever form it may assume, evil is destined always to increase on earth. This is the degenerative concept of history that the Epistle of Enoch derives from the Book of Dreams and from Daniel. The author follows the Book of Dreams in that he recounts human history right from the beginning, but it is striking that there is no mention of angelic sin: Satan has disappeared. Rather, in the parenesis (98.4) the author writes: 'In the same manner that a mountain has never turned into a servant,...neither has sin been exported into the world. It is the people who have themselves invented it. And those who commit it shall come under a great curse.' If the author so clearly denies that sin has been sent to the earth and eliminates the figure of Satan from the story, this means that 1) he knew some people thought in that way, and 2) he sought to oppose a new vision of reality which, while accepting certain principles of apocalyptic, like the degeneration of history, still did not reach its ultimate conclusions. It is interesting to note that the affirmation of full human responsibility is accompanied by the omission of Satan. The author clearly sees that the existence of Satan would diminish in some way the force of his affirmation about human responsibility. But the discourse of the Epistle of Enoch is less linear than it might seem 4. This history is the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks. This is usually dated to the second century BCE, while the Epistle of Enoch itself would be from the first century BCE. In fact the ideology of the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks shows such differences with respect to the Book of Dreams and Daniel as to suggest a different historical context and one decidedly later. The future world is no longer considered imminent; the concept of the degeneration of history does not see it flowing directly into the eschaton, even though the intervening period of restored goodness will be brief. Besides this, there is no angelic sin, and the Great Judgment is not the work of God, but of the angels. This is therefore close to the ideology of the Book of Parables and is the main undergirding of the Epistle of Enoch properly so-called. I would thus consider the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks as an integral part of the same book and the work of the same author, to be placed in the first century BCE.


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from my presentation of it. Evil is certainly no longer considered the fruit of angelic contamination, but in any case it is a real thing: it is a plant. Perhaps this is only a metaphorical expression; but in metaphors we can often better capture the essence than we can simply in a statement. It is not just that with the Flood this plant is not uprooted and thus remains, but for the first time the righteous are called 'elect' (93.2), a term which in some way is in conflict with the affirmation of the total responsibility of the human person. The just one is no longer one who does not live under diabolical influence and contamination; the just one is, to the contrary, the one God has chosen. Really the just/elect do not have sufficient justice of themselves in order to reach salvation. God will have to give to the just 'eternal justice', which evidently is not human justice. This is a way of thinking that recalls that of the Essenic Teacher of Righteousness, where the righteous one is such only through divine justification {The Rule of the Community 3.3-6; PeSer Hab. 8.1-3). According to the author of the Epistle of Enoch the age contem porary to him corresponds to the middle of the seventh week. The time of the end is therefore far away. When evil shall have reached its apex, and this seems rather near, a contrary movement will begin: we are still in the seventh week. The roots of the plant that is evil will be cut off (91.11). Then wisdom will be given to the just. So the just of this era do not possess it; they are always just within certain limits. The elimination of the impious will continue during the eighth week. In the ninth week (91.14) the world will finally be destroyed 'and all people shall direct their sight to the path of uprightness'. 'After this, in the tenth week which is divided into seven parts, there will be the eternal judgment and this will be executed by the watchers.' Many correct the 'by' to 'upon', yet the reading 'by' seems the best. Our author evidently knew the story of the fallen angels, but demonstrates that he does not believe it. The watchers are not at all angelic sinners, but are those who will carry 5

6

5. The word 'elect' appears also in the first chapter of Enoch, where it consti tutes a problem by reason of its isolated character. Very probably in this text the word has the meaning it has in the texts of fifth-sixth century BCE (Trito-Isaiah) and the fourth (Chronicles) where it refers to the Jews. The expression 'righteous elect' is thus to be understood as 'righteous Jews' or something similar. 6. Given the particular importance of this verse and the notable number of vari ants it presents, it is necessary to study its text in order to establish the original reading. Cf. Chapter 6.

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out the eternal judgment. The interest of this idea consists in the fact that, while it demythologizes one myth, it creates another, which says the Great Judgment will not be the direct work of God, a theme that will be fully developed in the Book of Parables, where the Great Judgment will be the work of the Son of Man. The Book of Parables is the last of the Enochic pentateuch, at least in its present form, because the Book of Parables was inserted there only at a later period, substituting for another work that must have been considered to some degree 'heretical'. Therefore what guarantees its belonging to the same tradition is in this case what the author himself says. Already knowing the Enochic pentateuch, he called his book the 'Second Vision of Enoch' (37.1). In any case, analysis of the work shows abundant influences on him from almost all the preceding apoca lyptic tradition. It is interesting to note that the author is closer to firstthan second-phase apocalyptic; his vision of the world returns to being cosmic rather than historical. In the book there is no schema of the history of Israel or of the world; but predeterminism does not disappear, created as it was precisely in order to provide a sure link between this world and the future world. Predeterminism actually moves away from the general level of history, which allowed a certain amount of freedom to the individual person, towards the individual himself. 'As God created one half darkness and one half light, so He divided the spirits of the people' (41.8). The Essene influence seems evident to me in this view of things (1QS 3.15-19). 7

The author's attention is turned towards the heavenly world, where there is paradise, the dwelling-place, if not of God, at least of the angels and the souls of the good. Evil is produced by the sin of the angels, and following the Book of Dreams the author distinguishes the first angelsinner from the angels of the fall (chs. 54, 55, 69); but the judgment seems to regard only these angels and not the first one. Despite the presence of so many traditional elements of apocalyptic, the conception that the Book of Parables has of evil, taken as a whole, is new. Evil was not in fact provoked by the angels by means of contamination, as the Book of the Watchers thought, but by the revealing of heavenly secrets. 7. Originally the Enochic pentateuch was composed of five volumes, the second of which was the Book of the Giants. It was probably removed only within the Christian era, because of the mention of a conversion of Satan, and it was substi tuted with the book of the 'Second Vision of Enoch', that is, the Book of Parables. Cf. Sacchi, Apocrifi, I, p. 433.

4. The Apocalyptic of the First Century-

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The author reconnects with ch. 8 of the Book of the Watchers where it is said the angels revealed to humans the heavenly secrets of various skills, in first place the secret of the construction of weapons (64.1-2). The author's gaze is turned only to the present and he identifies the evildoers as all those who have any kind of power on earth. Skills, and first of all the art of constructing arms, have given people a taste for power and domination of their own kind. Sinners are only the powerful of the earth and their sin, as is frequently said, is first of all that of pride (Book of Parables 48.8-10). The just one is the opposite of the sinner: the sinner is the powerful one who has the power to oppress; the just is the one who does not have the power to defend himself. The fact of finding oneself on one side or the other does not seem to depend on anything except the choice of God, of which I have already spoken. It is for good reason that the just one is normally called elect. But precisely because the just one can only be the oppressed, his salvation cannot depend on human strength, but only on forces ordained by God for this purpose. The peak and most characteristic element of the thought of the Book of Parables is the figure of an eschatological savior called 'Son of Man'. He will have the task of revealing what constitutes the true justice of God, which evidently does not coincide with that which has already been revealed, that is the Law (cf. 48.1, 3). He will finally cast down kings from their thrones, slapping the faces of the powerful, filling them with shame; darkness will be their dwelling. The Son of Man was created before the stars (48.3), and will be the light of the peoples and the hope of all those who suffer. This Son of Man is called also messiah (48.10) and thus the messianic function is joined to that of the Son of Man. One day he will be the implacable and definitive judge of the wicked and will establish the future world, in which 'the Lord of the spirits will abide over them and they shall dwell, eat, sleep and get up [the translation 'rise' is a mistaken translation of an original yaqumu] with this Son of the Mother of the Living' (62.14). This figure of the Son of Man expresses needs already existing in apocalyptic and organizes them in a fairly consistent system. Already the Book of Jubilees (1.26) had foreseen that one day God would dwell on the earth together with humans. Now, with the Book of Parables, God remains in heaven but this representative of his will come to earth to live together with humans forever. On the other hand, the judgment of destruction will not be given by God directly but, as the Epistle of

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Enoch already suggested (91.15), only by this his representative. Mercy is a fundamental attribute of God (50.4); the accomplishment of justice is the task of his messiah. Another text that shows in an even clearer way the demonic origin of evil and its ability to mix itself with human nature is T. Reub. 2.1-3.15. This is a passage deriving from an original nucleus going back to the second century BCE and from a very lengthy interpolation that modifies the concept of the first author. A comparison of the two phases of the text fully clarifies the thought of the second author. The more ancient text explained that human nature is dominated (or perhaps it might be better to say 'constituted') by seven evil spirits, called spirits of deceit, which were placed in the human person by God. It was God who created the human person thus, that is, wicked. 'And thus every young man,' says the text in its most ancient form, 'is destroyed, darkening his mind from the truth, neither acting in accordance with the Law of God, nor heeding the advice of his fathers—just this was my plight [Reuben is speaking] in my youth' (T. Reub. 3.8). The human person becomes lost at youth because the spirit of immodesty (Greek rcopveia, Hebrew zenut) overpowers him. This is the first sin and the root of all the others: the last and most serious of all is injustice, that is the systematic transgression of the whole Law, but this comes last, when the first sin has already destroyed the human possi bility of knowing truth. God has placed in the person a darkening principle that leads him towards ruin and this principle coincides de facto with the sexual instinct. The second author modifies the thought of the first on one point, while agreeing with another: he agrees that sex is the first cause of darkening and of sin, but he does not agree that this goes back to God, who would thus seem to be the cause of evil. He resolves this problem by substituting Satan for God: it was Satan who placed in the human person the seven spirits of deception. God placed in the person seven neutral spirits, the first of which is the spirit of life and the seventh that of 'seed and coitus': it is onto this seventh neutral spirit that the first of the seven evil spirits sent by Satan attaches itself by means of the prin ciple of pleasure. Pleasure is the first and most immediate revelation of Satan. Evidently apocalyptic here becomes the expression of an existen8

8. On the texts of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs the study of J. Becker is fundamental: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchal (Leiden, 1970). Cf. also Sacchi, Apocrifi, I, pp. 727ff.


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tial anguish growing constantly stronger. Satan is already actually within the human person and the person senses Satan within himself precisely in that which ought to make life beautiful: the ability to experience pleasure. We now move to follow our theme in some New Testament texts, to which we can pose the same questions. In the presentation of the texts, I will follow the most widely accepted chronology, even if I have several doubts about its validity: this is the chronology that places Paul before the Synoptics. Furthermore I will not enter into the problem of the dis tinction between what is redactional material and what is authentically from Jesus: here we are following some problems of Judaism which remain Jewish, no matter the person to whom they are attributed. At the minimum level of psychological participation the problem of evil is evident in James. For him the devil exists, whom one must resist (Jas 4.7). The devil is the tempter, as he appears in 1 Peter: 'Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for some one to devour' (5.8). He also appears in a similar way frequently in the Pauline corpus (Eph. 4.27; 6.11: 2 Tim. 2.26, etc.). The devil tempts in order to lead one to death and destruction, but to understand in what temptation consists, what is concretely that force against which humans must battle, one must seek passages closer to human psychology. According to James, in the human person there is epithymia, 'desire', which generates sin and sin generates death. In James the problem is resisting this epithymia: 'Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life...No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God."...But one is tempted by one's own epithymia, being lured and enticed by it' (1.12-14). There is, therefore, in human nature itself something that leads the person towards death, against which one must fight as against Satan. The origin of this epithymia is not mentioned by James, but given its 9

9. The date of the (definitive?) redaction of the Gospels has been established as more ancient by J.A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London, 1976); but it does not appear to me that the work gained wide acceptance. With different argu ments the problem was taken up by J. Carmignac, La naissance des Evangiles synoptiques (Paris, 2nd edn, 1984). I do not believe that this work will have much success either, judging from contrary statements of position, even if directed against a work of slight scholarly value, that upheld the same ideas, like C. Tresmontant, Le Christ hebreux: La langue etl'age des Evangiles (Paris, 1983). The internal argu ments of Robinson and the essentially external ones of Carmignac (the original language was Hebrew) should at least be discussed with greater equanimity than P. Grelot used in his Evangiles et tradition apostolique (Paris, 1984).

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perverse functions identifiable with Satan, it would be hard to consider it created by God or willed to be this way by God. Epithymia is not created by God or, if it is, someone must have distorted and ruined it. At least in human nature there is something evil: we are in the line of thought coming from the Book of the Watchers. In Paul the thought is more complex, but also clearer in its structure. He turns James's logic upside down and by so doing explains why epithymia is evil. It is sin that engenders epithymia and this in turn engenders death. But the sin of which Paul speaks is not the trans gression of an individual, but a transgression lost in the distant past, going back to Adam, in whom we are all sinners (Rom. 5.14). Paul does not speak, therefore, of being exposed to epithymia, as James does, but of being 'sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions...it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me' (Rom. 7.14-20). Thus sin is a reality mixed into the flesh and pre-existing the individual; a reality because of which the body is seen and felt as the place where its Satanic force works: 'Who will rescue me from this body of death?' (Rom. 7.24). Here 'of death' does not mean, banally, 'mortal', but rather 'which leads to death, to destruction'. Sin in Paul has the same function as epithymia in James. 10

It may seem that in Paul there is lacking one fundamental element of the Book of the Watchers: the angelic sin that has corrupted nature. In reality, if the angelic sin is missing in Paul, it is replaced by an equivalent: the sin of Adam (Rom. 5.12). The consequences of the sin of Adam are more or less the same as those of the angelic sin, as it appears in the Book of Dreams and especially in the Book of the Watchers, if all creation is 'groaning in labor pains until now' (Rom. 8.22). We find a form of angelic sin in John. In 1 Jn 3.8 we read: 'Everyone who commits sin is from the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.' Thus there exists a sin of Satan to be placed at the beginning just as there also exists afterwards his negative action in the world. And the human person's sin reveals humanity's belonging to Satan; it derives, therefore, from this belonging, it does not provoke it. And the world seems to belong to the Satanic sphere, because 'it does not know God nor God's chosen ones' (1 Jn 3.1); it is darkness (Jn 1.5); it does not accept the light; therefore it does not recognize Jesus (Jn 1.10). In Paul there also appear expressions that contrast light and darkness, 10. On the relationship between James and Paul see R. Penna, 'La giustificazione in Paolo e in Giacomo', RivB 30 (1982), pp. 337-62.


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but it seems to me that he uses them figuratively. See, for example, Eph. 5.8: 'For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light', or Rom. 13.12: 'Let us...put on the armor of light', and many others. I wish to conclude this glance at New Testament authors with the parable of the weeds (Mt. 13.24ff.), but particularly its explanation in 13.36ff. There is a field which is the world, a neutral reality. There is a good sower, to whose nature we will return shortly. There is the good seed, the 'children of the kingdom'. Then there are the weeds, which are 'the children of the evil one', and finally there is the bad sower who is the devil. Even though the parable, given its nature, suggests concepts rather than expressing them clearly, it still seems certain to me that in this parable there appear the 'children of Satan' clearly distinguished from the 'children of the kingdom'. The former and the latter move against a background of a neutral nature, which does not seem different from the way God willed it, so not in birth pangs awaiting its redemption. God and Satan seem to vie for the world, each sowing there his own seed, which gives birth to its own specific plant. God's intervention and the victory of good will take place only at the end of the world. A fundamental passage for understanding a certain conception of evil, found both in Matthew and Mark, is that regarding clean foods (Mt. 15.10; Mk 7.14ff.). In reality Jesus does not so much wish to abolish part of the Law (even if that actually happens), as to clarify what a person's attitude should be towards this problem, in light of a concept of uncleanness that was very widespread in Israel at that time. 'It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of it.' Jesus does not eliminate the notion of uncleanness or contamina tion; he only says that uncleanness is too great an evil to be produced by food or other things in nature. It is produced only by a wicked purpose (murder, adultery, theft, etc.). Thus one can posit a strong interrelation ship between uncleanness and sin. Both are in such a relationship that neither can exist without the other. That in the New Testament, and not just here, 'unclean' is synonymous with 'evil' may be deduced from the simple observation that the demons are called indifferently evil spirits or unclean spirits." This conception which we might call a 'pessimistic' conception of uncleanness is not unique to Jesus or nascent Christianity, but rather belongs to one whole type of Judaism. What we have from Jesus (or the redactor, but this question is not of interest to me here) is 11. The expression jtveijuma aKaOapxa is documented in Mark, Luke and John. It is also documented in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: T. Benj. 5.2.


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simply the consequence deduced from the principle that it is evil. To understand fourth-phase apocalyptic, with its principal witnesses, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, it is necessary to say something about a figure who is not apocalyptic, but takes a position against it: Yohanan ben Zakkai. Repeating an attitude that the Pharisees must already have developed over some time, as appears from the Gospels themselves, he reaffirms the centrality of the Law in the life of Israel, putting to one side all the speculations that do not begin from it. To the Jews shaken by the disaster of 70 CE he does not say something like 'Take comfort, because in a little while suffering will cease', but rather 'Happy are you, O Israel! When you obey the will of God, then no nation or race can rule over you'. By referring back to the Law he is able to overcome the difficulties of the unclean as an evil force and, in any case, he rejects the idea that sin exists as a force independent from the human will. From some texts it appears that he also was aware of the problem of uncleanness, as it was posed at that time: if it was not something evil one did not understand what it might be. These words are the kernel of his thought about the problem of the nature of uncleanness: 'It is neither the corpse which renders a man unclean, nor the waters which purify, but the Holy One said: A statute have I enacted...and you are not permitted to transgress my commandment, as it is said (with reference to the heifer)...' 12

13

14

The complexity of thought of the last two apocalypses is enormous, since they attempt to build a unified structure out of ideas coming from different mental frameworks. In 2 Baruch we find again the periodization of history and the concept of its degeneration, though mitigated. There is the teaching on the four empires (ch. 39) and there is also a true periodization in twelve ages. This is the vision of the twelve light and dark waters, where the dark element is always stronger than the light 12. Two recent editions of 4 Ezra tend to move up the dating of the book, con sidering the year 100 rather a terminus post quern; cf. J. Schreiner, Das 4. Buch Esra (Jiidische Schriften aus hellenistisch-romischer Zeit; Gutersloh, 1981); and B.M. Metzger, 'The Fourth Book of Ezra', in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, NY, 1983), pp. 517ff. In the subtitle the author gives the traditional dating of the work ('Late First Century A D ' ) but on p. 250, in the paragraph where he discusses the date, he writes, 'The date of the completion of the Hebrew original cannot be placed much after AD 120.' 13. Mekhilta de R. Ishmael (trans. J.Z. Lauterbach; Philadelphia, 1949), II, pp. 193-94; cf. J. Neusner, From Politics to Piety (New York, 1979), p. 151. 14. Cf. J. Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 1973), p. 105.


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one, and with the passing of time becomes predominant. If, on the theo retical level, the innovation is minimal with respect to preceding forms of periodization, on the psychological level it is notable that the author tries to emphasize the good that does exist in history. In this book there also appears the figure of the savior, called messiah, with traits of the Book of Parables' Son of Man and the Son of the Man of the New Testament. This messiah appears both at the beginning and the end of history, but does not participate either in the creation or in the Great Judgment. He limits himself to judging the last king of the earth and condemning him to death on Mount Zion. After this the messiah will return (but the text is not clear [ch. 30]) and there will be the resurrection and the Great Judgment, which will be the work of God alone (19.3). In regard to sin, the author knows of the sin of the angels with women (56.10-13), but does not consider it foundational, and consequently ignores its implications. He knows of the sin of Adam, but emphasizes that Adam was only a bad model for those who followed him (18.2) and sinned. Taking up a problem that we also found in Paul, he asks how those who had not yet received the law could sin. He resolves this by saying that among these ancient people there was an unwritten law in effect (57.2), an expression by which he is certainly not referring to the oral tradition, but rather to that which Paul called the law of nature (Rom. 2.14), which all humans must observe. Even the myth of the fallen angels is seen in this perspective: the angels were free and thus some of them followed the bad example of Adam (56.10-11); but they do not exist any more, because they were annihilated by the Flood. Note the expression, 'since the angels were free' (56.11): here one begins to sense the results of Pharisee reactions. Yes, death, illness and sorrow in general entered the world as a con sequence of Adam's sin, but any communion between us and the sin of Adam is openly denied, a sign that the problem was felt at that time: 'Every man is Adam to himself (54.19). Determinism is thus clearly limited to the unfolding of history, and does not touch the incidents of an individual's life. Regarding 4 Ezra, its understanding is made particularly difficult by the peculiar perspective of the author. The book is dominated by a strong pathos that detracts from clarity of discourse. The author com plains to God, like Job, about his injustice towards people in general and the Jews in particular. He does not understand why the disaster of

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Jerusalem happened, nor does he understand why all humanity is involved in the catastrophe of sin. The work appears as a kind of medi tation on human unhappiness, but the unhappiness the author has in mind is not made up of sorrow and death, but of the destiny of humanity which he sees, to use the words of Augustine, as a massa damnata: eternal damnation of the great majority of the living is the obsessive theme of the book. The author complains to God about this reality which, even if the author does not say it explicitly, seems to come from God. Angelic sin also disappears from his horizon; the fall of the angels is not even recalled: there is only the sin of humans. And first of all there is the sin of Adam, which in the reflection of 4 Ezra is not as autonomous with regard to the sin of humans as it was in 2 Baruch. At the center of 4 Ezra's construction there is the Law. God, in justice, offered it to all humans, but only the Jews accepted it (3.19-20; 9.31-32). This is the meaning of the election of Israel. This implies the condemnation of all the pagans in that they do not have the Law which they refused. But the situation is not much better for the Jews, because they have the Law, but they break it. There is no person without sin (and this idea returns frequently) and therefore no one is saved, because another idea repeated frequently by the author is that the person is fully responsible (3.8; 7.72, 104, 127; 8.56-58). Side by side with this constant repetition that the person is entirely free and thus responsible there is also the idea that Adam, besides free dom of choice, also had something else, and stronger than the former: he also had the cor malignum: 'Cor enim rnalignum baiulans Adam transgressus' (3.21ff.). The concept of cor malignum seems to corres pond to that in Rabbinism of yeser hara', but the author's concept of it differs, because he considers it a real evil force (even though not Satanic) and stronger that the human ability to choose. 'Adam was defeated by it and thus also all who are born of him. It produced a sickness that cannot be extinguished: in the human heart there was the law together with the root of evil. That which was good disappeared, that which was evil remained.' And this evil root remained in the human person together with complete responsibility. The sin of Adam can only repeat itself. The evil heart remains in the world even after the Flood. The concession of the Law on Sinai thus could bear no fruit (3.20, 27). The author of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah had thought (ch. 11) that the prayer of the just could benefit the damned souls awaiting the Great Judgment: until then they would have time to repent. The hope of Ezra


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would be that the prayers of the few just ones could intercede for the mass of the damned, but the angel takes away from him even this hope. There is nothing left but to curse Adam and, in some way, the one responsible for this situation: 15

It would have been better that the earth [the earth or G o d ? ] had not pro duced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, had restrained him from sinning...O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descen dants. For what good is it to us, if an eternal age has been promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring death?

And God responds to this doubt of Ezra: 'This is the meaning of the contest which every man who is born on earth shall wage, that if he is defeated he shall suffer these things, but if he is victorious he shall receive what I have promised' (7.116-28).

15. The author says 'earth', but protests against God.

Part II S O M E THEMES OF THE APOCALYPTIC CURRENT AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF JEWISH T H O U G H T

Chapter 5 T H E T w o C A L E N D A R S O F T H E BOOK

OF

ASTRONOMY*

I The Book of Astronomy as it is known to us from the Ethiopic tradition is an incomplete summary piece. This affirmation is well supported both by examining what remains of the Ethiopic text, and by comparing this with the Aramaic fragments recently published by Milik. The work, which includes chs. 72-82 of the book of Ethiopic Enoch, is certainly incomplete, because ch. 82 promises to speak of the four parts of the year (v. 13), but then speaks only of two. That the work as we have it in Ethiopic is in part a summary is demonstrated by comparison with the Aramaic, where there are entire passages that treat the same topic as ch. 72, but which are difficult to trace back to the text we possess because they are longer. This is the description of the movements of the moon during the year. Other Aramaic fragments which do not have corres pondences with the Ethiopic should be placed, according to Milik, after the end of the Ethiopic text (4QEnastr ). d

It is commonly held, and well-founded on the text, that the Book of Astronomy proposes a solar calendar. What seems to me necessary to emphasize is that in reality there are two solar calendars in the text: one of 360 days and one of 364. What merits discussion is whether the work in its current appearance, that is, according to the redactional form, represents a polemic against the lunar calendar or whether it has other purposes. We must begin by analyzing its themes, as a first step for identifying eventual layers in the work. I have spoken more than once against the method of form criticism as it is normally used, in that it tends to identify an original nucleus in regard to each theme. In reality an author may * First published as 'Testi palestinesi anteriori al 200 a.C. con particolare riguardo al problema dei due calendari solari del Libro deH'Astronomia', RivB 34 (1986), pp. 183-204. Paper delivered at the AB 1985 Congress in Bocca di Magra.

5. The Two Calendars of the Book of Astronomy

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speak of many themes without for this reason having to have in front of him as many different sources as there are themes. It is clear that a work has passed through different hands when the themes that make it up are contradictory among themselves. So I would not say that the parts of the work that speak of the moon must have a history different from those that speak of the sun, but I am absolutely certain that the parts in which the solar calendar has 360 days cannot be traced back to the same hand that wrote the parts in which the solar year has 364 days. Once we agree that the passages in which the year has 360 days cannot belong to the same hand that wrote those in which the year has 364, the problem arises: which of the two types of calendar appears more ancient? It seems obvious that the 364-day calendar, in that it is more precise, is later than the other, but the literary proof is offered by 74.10, where the relationship between the base-text (B) and the redacted text (R) is perfectly apparent: 'In those days (time) increases in 5 years and the sun gains 30 days...and, in all, there are 364 days.' The first part of the discourse makes a calculation for which the year is pre supposed to have 360 days. In fact, five years are needed to put the sun 30 days ahead of the moon. Thus the moon lags behind the sun only six days in a year, and since the normal lunar year has 354 days, it follows that with six additional days one reaches a solar year of 360 days. Thus the affirmation that, 'in all, there are 364 days' should be considered the work of a redactor who respected the preceding text, but wished it to reach the figure he wanted, 364. Another proof that it is R and not B who wants the year to have 364 days is the fact that the general notion of the text that comes to the reader is that the year in fact has 364 days. The passages in which a solar year of 360 days appears directly in the text are only in ch. 74. Other than the passage just cited, the year appears to have 360 days also in v. 17, where it is said that the year is made up of months, each having 30 days, and 30 times 12 makes 360. But the existence of a 360-day calendar can be evinced even better from the polemic of the last author, R, against those who do not compute in the number of days of the year the four special days that must be posi tioned as a kind of link between each of the four seasons (see ch. 75). So we must admit that the solar calendar has had its own history and evolution. There is not only the problem of the relationship between solar and lunar calendars, but also that of the evolution of the solar calendar itself.

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II Let us now look at the structure of the Book of Astronomy. Chapter 72, the first in the book, gives a full articulation of a 364-day year. The method is based on the description of the movements of the sun taken against the background of the stars (v. 1). The discourse is consistent and continuous, without breaks. The method of exposition is based on the description of all the movements of the sun during the year. The year is composed of 12 months, divided into four groups, in which the first and second months always have 30 days, while the third always has 31. The months do not have names yet, except for the first (72.6), neither are they indicated by ordinal numbers. The sun's law is explained by the archangel Uriel, according to that form of thought typical of apocalyptic, in which all understanding is revealed. The prob lem of relationship between sun and moon does not exist: the sun is studied against the background of the sky. Chapters 73 and 74 are both dedicated to the moon and its move ments. One cannot escape the impression that ch. 74 is a duplicate of 73, whatever the origin of this phenomenon. At the beginning of both chapters there is the transitional formula which introduces the discourse on the moon: the author speaks of 'having seen another law, that of the moon'. In ch. 73 the visionary speaks of seeing the laws which govern the moon. He sees them directly, without the guidance of Uriel. In the first three verses of the chapter the author affirms that the orbit of the moon is equal to that of the sun (a variant, 'sky', is a lectio facilior); the lumi nosity of the moon is seven times less than that of the sun; its movement in the sky is provoked by winds, and the light of the moon is autono mous with respect to that of the sun ('the wind blew and light was given to it in measure'). At v. 4 the author indicates the relationship between the movement of the sun and that of the moon with this formula: 'its head rises the morning of the 30th'. It is the moon that is inserted into the discourse already given about the sun; and the bases of that discourse are the sun and the sky. The author knows a solar calendar and explains that the 1

1. In apocalyptic, considered as a current of thought rather than a literary genre, it should be noted that the vision, one of its more characteristic elements, does not appear in its most ancient phase. In the Book of the Watchers it appears only begin ning with layer 2a. It is missing before that.


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first day of the second moon coincides with the last day of the month. This is a purely abstract reckoning, starting from the hypothesis of a year in which the first day of the solar year coincides with the new moon. Then the author describes the phases of the moon by indicating the varying luminosity of the moon. The alternation of 29 and 30 days in the moon's phases is not mentioned. If the chapter is not much reduced in the form in which it has come down to us, we must infer that the author's method of exposition is different from that of the preceding chapter (72) because it is not analytic, but exemplificatory. The statement that the moon rises on the thirtieth day of the month is an exemplification, not the general law valid in the whole year. In ch. 74 Uriel appears once again. The text is unclear. Corrections and additions to the base text are noticeable. It begins with the descrip tion of the phases of the moon as usual with the description of its varying luminosity. There follows a description, unclear to me, of the moon's orbit, which does not seem to coincide with that of the sun (vv. 4-8). Beginning with v. 9, the author speaks of the relationship between the movements of the moon and those of the sun, indicating how much the moon remains behind the sun in one year: five years are needed (v. 10) for the moon and the sun to become equal for an entire month, 30 days. At the end of the verse we read, as already noted, that 'in all there are 364 days', but this has to be an addition by R. There follow a series of calculations to explain how much the moon remains behind in relation to the sun and this time (vv. 13-16) the calculations are actually based on the year of 364 days. The author does not give a general rule (as in v. 10 of the same chapter), but makes a whole series of calculations which all give the same result, with a method similar to that of ch. 72. The calculation is repeated for three, five and eight years. Then there appears a fourth calculation, an unclear one, which has been interpreted as executed on a round number of 1,000 days. Chapter 75 is clearly dedicated to the calendar which is based on a 364-day year. While ch. 72 was purely expository, this one is polemical. The author can only be R, that is, the one who made the addition to ch. 74 to turn a text written for a 360-day calendar into a text illustrating a 364-day calendar. The problem is knowing against whom the author directs his polemic. The first idea that comes to mind is that he wishes to propose a solar calendar to the followers of a lunar calendar, but the idea is not supported in any way by the text.

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There is a polemic tone: 'people err' (v. 2). He says 'people' and thus it is presumed that those who are mistaken are the majority. In other words, the 364-day calendar is innovative. Regarding their mistake, it does not at all consist in using a lunar calendar, but in considering the solar year to have 360 days; and this is said in clear terms. So R's inno vation does not regard the lunar calendar, but a previous solar calendar. There are four angels who oversee all creation and these are the angels of four fixed points of the cosmos, here called 'stars that do not leave from their fixed stations'. In relation to these four cosmic points there are four special days in the year, which the author's predecessors wrongly considered as outside the computation of the days of the year. It is in reference to these four cosmic points, which are also days, that people are mistaken. Including these four in the calculation, the year comes to 364 days, 'the perfect harmony of the world'. The proof that the others are wrong is given by the fact that the author has seen all these things under the guidance of the archangel Uriel, who is placed over all stars and celestial motion, even above the four angels of the four cosmic points. When the author says in 75.1 that these four days 'are to be added' he has in mind those who favor the 360-day calendar. When he is not concerned about this (see ch. 72), it seems clear that in fact this is not about days 'added', but days that are normally included in com puting the days of the year. In this section the author wishes to show why others are mistaken: yes, the month has 30 days, but one must also calculate the days related 'to the stars that do not leave their place'. The discourse is repeated in the final part, in 82.5. In the next two chapters, 76 and 77, the author speaks of the gates of the sky and the terrestrial winds. These are not the winds that push the moon and the sun in their courses but those which blow over the earth. This discourse brings him to speak of the structure of the earth: the seven mountains, the seven rivers, and the seven islands. Chapters 78 and 79 return to speaking of the phases of the moon and the relation between the movements of the moon and those of the sun, but the sun/moon relation is now more developed than in chs. 73 and 74. Once again he describes the phases of the moon by means of its varying luminosity, but clarifies that the cycle occurs alternately in 29and 30-day periods. Then the figure of the great teacher Uriel appears (v. 10), a sign that the author is about to say something new. He declares in fact that the light of the moon is not autonomous, but reflected: 'the light is let into the moon from the sun'. Perhaps the author does not


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want to say that the moon's light is completely reflected, but only that the light of the sun is added to some luminosity which is the moon's own. That this is the author's thought may be demonstrated by com paring vv. 10-11 and 17, where he speaks of a light which is the moon's own; and when there is only this light, the moon's luminosity is diminished. Thus the sun's light seems to be added to that of the moon at night, while during the day the moon has only its own light, and for this reason the moon by day is less luminous than it is by night. Furthermore, a characteristic of this chapter is that the phases of the moon are followed over a period of 177 days, equal to six lunar revolutions. From this element too one gains the impression that the author is not really concerned to find a connection between two calendars, the solar and the lunar, but only to explain lunar movements. In the final chapters (80-82) the theme of the discourse changes but it would be dangerous to deduce from this that we are dealing with a different document. Certainly it is not the work of B, because here the year definitely has 364 days. The author shows that the structure of the heavens is neither a matter of chance nor extraneous to the destinies of humans. At the beginning of ch. 81 appear the heavenly tablets, mys terious tablets on which God himself or an angel wrote once and for all the events of world history. Sin was foreseen and God, in the face of this, is patient. The way in which the cause of humans' ability to sin is indicated is interesting: people are sinners because they are creatures (81.5), a theme found also in Job 4.17: 'Can mortals be righteous before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker?' The turn of phrase, for what it is worth in a third- or fourth-hand translation, seems identical to that of Job: 'People are not innocent before the Lord.' On the other hand, the author seems very clear about a distinction between the just and sinners yet, as frequently happens in a work of this type, it is not clear what the author means by 'just'. Certainly these were not those who observed the Law of Moses or, at least, not those who only observed only the Law of Moses. The text does not lack previews of disasters, according to common apocalyptic rhythms. 'In the years of the sinners the years will grow shorter...the sowing of humans on the earth will be late...and [scil. the stars] will not appear at the proper time...The moon will change its law and will not appear at the proper time' (80.2-4). A polemic of this type, once again, does not regard a lunar calendar, but only a different solar calendar. In order to wish that the moon appear on the right day, it is

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necessary for the author to be thinking about a calendar with fixed days, not just from his point of view but also from that of his opponents. With the lunar calendar the moon can appear only on its proper days: there can never be a mistake. The possibility of error exists only if the moon is seen to move against the background of a solar calendar. And that the moon appears on the thirtieth day of the month was already said by B. Another type of polemic is anti-Babylonian. In 80.7 he says that some mistake the stars for gods, no longer understanding the true law of the stars. For these sins, naturally, there will be punishment: 'And evil things shall be multiplied upon them; and plagues shall come upon them, so as to destroy all' (80.8). The treatment of these chapters is cosmic. Evil consists in not understanding the law of the stars. This treatment could well be attributed to R. There is a wisdom that saves, and this wisdom consists in knowing and recognizing the 364-day year. In 82.4 we read: Blessed are all the righteous ones, blessed are those who walk in the way of righteousness and have no sin, as (however) sinners have, in the number of all their days. In regard to the sun that goes through the sky, that goes in and out through the doors of the sky—this is the law of the stars—with the four days which are added and which their guides...divide among the four parts of the year; in their regard people err and do not calculate them in computing all of time, because people mistake them and do not know them accurately. These (days) truly are in the computation of the year...

Sinners are not those who follow a lunar calendar, but those who do not calculate the four days of the 'heads of thousands' in the computa tion of the year. 'These are true additions to time.' True additions: there fore, the true month (this is a concession to the tradition) has 30 days, but one must calculate also these four days, which in a certain sense are not part of the month, but are a part of the year's time. To err about these four days is serious, not only because it changes the understanding of the great cosmic rhythms, but also because it makes the liturgical feasts fall out of place. The calendar therefore has a most important liturgical function: it guarantees the validity of the cult, as long as the feasts occur at the right times, naturally. There exists, therefore, a wisdom that saves. This is the best proof that the apocalyptic current that saw the origin of evil in the knowledge of all the sciences without exception, and with the clear mention of astronomy, 2

2. Cf. 1 En. 69.8: 'Penemu...showed men all the secrets of the science (of the angels).' Nevertheless the author of the Book of Parables seems more inclined to


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soon began to lose ground, even if it will emerge again in the late Book of Parables. We should note the insistence with which the visionary affirms, especi ally in R, that his understanding derives from Uriel. This concern is well explained if we consider that there must have been also the idea that understanding was derived from the fallen angels. This is another proof, supposing that it was needed, that apocalyptic should not be presented as a homogeneous unity from which one could compile a list of ideas. An apocalyptic theology does not exist. It is possible to identify a basic tendency, but to go beyond that is impossible. It is not the same thing to say that evil derives from the contamination of the world and that it derives from the revealing of heavenly secrets, even if it is clear that the problem underlying both solutions is the same and it is clear that both solutions have in common the need to explain the phenomenon of evil as a product of facts that are beyond the human realm. The sin of Adam, typical of the last phase of apocalyptic, has the same function that angelic sin had in the oldest apocalyptic, but that does not mean that it is the same thing and that one is always dealing with the same theology. And different again is a theology that takes up both myths, that of angelic sin and that of the sin of Adam. The Book of Astronomy does not know either the sin of Adam nor that of the angels, but all the same it poses the problem of the origin of evil, which it resolves, however, by turning to the concept of creaturehood, a nuanced concept that lends itself to diverse interpretations. In this reading of the Book of Astronomy I have identified on the basis of content two different layers: a more ancient one that presented a 360day calendar, and a more recent one, in polemic with the first, that defends a 364-day calendar. There is no polemic with a calendar of the lunar type. The moon remains behind, in respect to the sun, by 30 days in five years, according to B, and in three, according to R, but whether it remains behind by six or ten days per year, the common problem of B and R is not the validity of the lunar calendar: the calendars they speak of are only solar. If the hand of the redactor can be considered as substantially one, B 3

condemn the bad use of the sciences rather than the sciences as such. It is curious that he also condemns writing because faith should not be confirmed by what is written (69.9-11). 3. Cf. 1 En. 81.5: '...show to all your children that no one of the flesh is innocent before the Lord, for He created them.'


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shows at least one duplicate (B and B') in that ch. 74 is certainly a dupli cate of ch. 73. That means that the tradition of the work must be complex. The recent publication of the Qumran fragments shows that there were probably further different versions in circulation. It may be that these were only longer or shorter versions, but in any case there must have been in circulation several texts related to the same subject. Yet, in these cases of rewriting, perhaps originating with small discoveries inserted in earlier texts which were necessarily re-elaborated, there arose a multi plicity of writings that representing truly different works, which it is wrong to try to harmonize.

Ill Let us move now to problems of dating. At present information has been given only about four fragments. But of these Milik has given the text only of three, because he considers their publication still provisional. The dates proposed for the four fragments are as follows, (a) dates to end of the third or beginning of the second century BCE. It is therefore one of the most ancient of the Qumran fragments. Because it is more extensive it contains a treatment of phases of the moon that is not covered well by any part of the Ethiopic text we have. However it corresponds to section 73.1-74.9, according to Milik. (b) contains both parts that correspond to those preserved, and also parts that were not known. The known parts refer to chs. 76-79 and 82. The writing is Herodian. (c) contains passages of chs. 76-78; it belongs to the middle of the first century BCE. (d) contains a few verses already known in the Ethiopic text (82.15-20) and belongs to the second half of the first century BCE. 4

From paleographic data combined with the observations already made the following can be concluded: 1.

The Book of Astronomy is ancient; it has undergone many reelaborations, more often summarizing than amplifying; in its long tradition there have been innovations of a scientific type and differences of philosophy can also be noticed. The dis covery of the light of the moon as reflected and the 364-day year took place during this work's tradition. B sees directly the

4. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 273-74.


2.

3.

4.

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things he describes; B' emphasizes rather the revelation that comes from Uriel. The first seems to fit parallel with the most ancient layers of the Book of the Watchers that do not know of the revelation-vision, while the second seems to fit parallel with those parts of the Book of the Watchers that know the vision as instrument of revelation. Regarding the date of the polemic about the calendar the following observations can be made: in the Aramaic fragments there remains only one verse that regards the calendar polemic (82.9). The verse is present only in b), which is from the Herodian era. On the other hand, fragment a) contains, as we have already seen, a text similar to that of the Ethiopic ch. 72, which I have attributed to R. If Milik's interpretation is correct, the key to interpreting the fragment is found in col. Ill, 11.1-2. In this passage there is a coincidence between solar and lunar movements that are possible only in a 364-day calendar. The 360-day calendar must be earlier than 200 BCE, because fragment a) dates from this time. Since R's polemic is against a type of solar calendar of 360 days and since in this polemic liturgical concerns are also inserted, it is possible to conclude that our text did not know of any lunar calendar in use at its time. As a direct consequence of point 3 the lunar calendar in use at the time of Jesus and which remained the calendar of Israel must have had an origin much later than was thought until now.

We should therefore look in the tradition of Israel to see if there exists any trace whatsoever of some text that indicates that there was a change of calendar in Palestine. We should expect that, in any case, this change happened before the break between Hasmoneans and Pharisees, because if the lunar calendar is the Pharisaic and then Rabbinic calendar, it means that whoever imposed it was not in conflict with the Pharisees. In other words the innovation must have been accomplished before John Hyrcanus. A profound change in the social structures certainly took place with Jason and Menelaus. In 2 Mace. 4.9 we read that Jason inscribed the citizens of Jerusalem in the lists of those of Antioch. This certainly meant using a law different from the Torah and apparently also a different calendar. But the confirmation that in that era there was a change of calendar in Jerusalem comes from the book of Daniel which, in 7.25,

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accuses Antiochus IV of having changed times and law, zmnyn wdt. Thus, during the reign of Antiochus IV, a change of law and calendar occurred in Jerusalem. In 164 a compromise was reached between traditionalists and Hellenists. Menelaus was able to maintain the high priesthood, even though he was not of Zadokite stock; the Jews, who were disposed to submit within a certain time, were allowed to live according to their own traditional laws. This was the religious liberty that the Hasidim wished, which did not require the return to the Torah for all. It was certainly a compromise, attested by Menelaus's remaining in the office of high priest, one of many compromises that made up post-exilic history. But the freedom to live according to one's own law could not have meant also the freedom to use the calendar one wished. The calendar, for practical reasons if no other, remained that introduced by Jason. Thus Jerusalem adapted itself to the surrounding world. However, those who abandoned Jerusalem (Essenes) continued to use their solar calendar. A further confirmation of the recent character of the lunar calendar comes from the Book of Jubilees (6.35), which attributes the lunar calendar to pagan influence. The phrase clearly alludes to a situation because of which the pagans are in Palestine, not in Babylon: '...they forget the feasts of my Covenant and walk in the various feasts of the pagans after their errors and after their ignorance.' So the calendar that was abandoned by the Jews who followed the error of the pagans is explicitly that of 364 days. The author knows no calendar of 360 days. The author of Jubilees considers the change of calendar as having occurred shortly before the time he was writing. One problem remains: if the lunar Jewish calendar depended on contact with the Hellenistic world, why did the months have non-Greek names? The Greek calendar was the ssame as that used in the Syro-Babylonian area, where the months already had their Semitic names; the Jews naturally preferred to take on these names than the Greek ones. Besides, these names were certainly already known. The possibility of translating

5. Cf. J.C. VanderKam, 'The Origin, Character and Early History of the 364Day Calendar: A Reassessment of Jaubert's Hypothesis', CBQ 41 (1979), pp. 390411; idem, '2 Maccabees 6, 7a and Calendrical Change in Jerusalem', JSS 12 (1981), pp. 52-74; idem, 'The 364-Day Calendar in the Enochic Literature', in SBLSP 22 (1983), pp. 157-65. The new calendar was introduced, according to VanderKam, in 167 BCE and definitely confirmed by Jonathan. This would have been the cause of the Essene schism.


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the names is evident for example in Flavius Josephus, who uses the names of the Greek months even to indicate events that occurred in Palestine. The temple fell the 9th (or 10th) of the month of Loos, not of the month of Ab. It was sufficient to translate the name of the month, it was not necessary to make other calculations. Other problems still remain. For example, in Neh. 1.1, the month of Chislev is mentioned. Was the nomenclature of months using also the Babylonian names already in use among the Jews? Is it possible that the old pre-exilic calendar (the one in which the first month was called Abib), which was certainly lunar, again returned to use and perhaps gave a reason in favor of maintaining Jason's innovation inasmuch as it was interpreted as restoration? These are problems to which it is impossible to respond. But one element seems to me sure. The Jerusalem of the third century BCE. certainly had a single calendar, and this was solar, with 364 days. Earlier it had still another, also solar, but of 360 days. I hope that further studies can clarify these problems at least in part. 6

7

6. For another approach to this issue, see p. 217 n. 29. 7. After giving this report, I received notice of the book by M. Black, The Book of Enoch or I Enoch: A New English Edition (SVTP; Leiden. 1985). In an appendix by O. Neugebauer there is a new translation and interpretation of the Book of Astronomy. The author insists on the classic opposition of solar year/lunar year. To lead the text to his interpretation the author must correct it many times. Sometimes, more than corrected, it seems to me summarized with the addition of calculations that may be exact, but not known by the tradition; see 74.10, 14-16. At other times the author interprets the dissonances of the text as it has come to us as a contradiction between theory and practice (p. 402). The author insists more than once that the calendar belonged only to one religious sect (for example, p. 387). With regard to chs. 82ff., these would certainly belong to another source, because their subject is different to that of the previous chapters. With regard to the four outstanding days, these could be a Jewish innovation unknown elsewhere, but this would be purely theoretical.

Chapter 6 ETHIOPIC

ENOCH

91.15

A N D THE PROBLEM OF MEDIATION*

The text of / En. 91.15 belongs to the book entitled the Epistle of Enoch, and has never attracted the interest of scholars of Jewish thought of the late Second Temple period. This lack of interest derives from the fact that the passage, which has a most complex tradition, is never studied in depth within its tradition and therefore never understood with precision. The text is found, within the Epistle of Enoch, in a passage belonging to the so-called Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks which is clearly out of place. Charles has reconstructed in this way the sequence of the first chapters of the Epistle of Enoch: 92; 91.1-11; 91.18-19; 93.1-10; 91.1217; 93.11-14, etc. Our verse is speaking about events of the tenth week of the history of the world, but the text preceding our verse reaches only the eighth week (91.12). To find the first week, one must go to ch. 93.' But this is not what has impeded a grasp of the full importance of the text of this verse. The difficulty lies rather in the novelty of the concepts it expresses. This novelty is accompanied by a particularly complex textual tradition, attributable to the novelty of its ideas (in its most ancient, preEthiopic form), and to an easily identifiable scribal error within the Ethiopic, which, however, has produced within the tradition itself numer ous diverse attempts to correct a text that had become incomprehensible. Charles translated it in this way: 'And after this, in the tenth week, in the seventh part, there shall be the eternal great judgement in which He will execute vengeance amongst the angels.' The meaning of the pass2

* First published as 'Enoc Etiopico 91,15 e il problema della mediazione', Henoch 1 (1985), pp. 257-67. 1. P. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento (Turin, 1981), I, p. 631. 2. R.H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1892); idem. The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1906); idem, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913), II, pp. 163-281.

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141 3

age seems rather banal and does not invite further exploration. Beer translated it in the same way, but was clearly aware of the text's diffi culty, and considered his own translation basically conjectural. Looking at the Ethiopic text, we will see that he was completely right. It is also clear that he found no other translation nor interpretation of the passage that seemed to him possible and maintained Charles's banal interpretation: 'Danach wird in der zehnten Woche, im siebenten Teile, das grosse, ewige Gericht stattfinden, " " 'bei dem Er "die Strafe" unter den Engeln "vollzieht".' Thus the text is conjectural and we must admit that it is not entirely clear: what does it mean, 'to exercise vengeance', that is, 'vengeance among the angels?' This text has become canonical, so to speak, even if it presents difficulties, as we can see by comparing the translation of it by Martin with his commentary. He translated as his predecessors have: 'Et apres cela, dans la dixieme semaine, dans (sa) septieme partie, aura lieu le grand jugement eternel, dans lequel il exercera la vengeance au milieu des anges.' But in the commentary we read: 'Le jugement definitif des Veilleurs a lieu ici apres l'etablissement des temps messianiques' (p. 247). The watchers emerge in the comment, evidently through the reading of variants. Martin's thought is further clarified by his reference to 90.2 as a text suited to illuminate our passage. This concerns the condemnation of the sinning angels. There is only the problem that 90.2 belongs to another book of the Enochic pentateuch, the Book of Dreams, and it is poor method to illustrate one passage that is difficult to interpret through the thought of the work of a different author, even if obviously belonging to the same current of thought. The fact is that the sin and condemnation of the watchers is spoken of in the Book of the Watchers and in the Book of Dreams, that is, in 4

5

6

3. In E. Kautzsch, Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alien Testaments (Tubingen, 2nd edn, 1921 [1900]), pp. 217-310. 4. F. Martin, Le livre d'Henoch traduit sur le texte ethiopien (Paris, 1906). 5. The Book of the Watchers speaks of a sin of the angels which occurred in the time of Jared (= the fall of the angels) in chs. 6 - 1 0 and takes up the theme again several times: cf. 12.4; 13.1-2; 14.3; 15; 16. The Book of the Watchers speaks of a first angelic sin prior to the creation of humans in 18.14 and 21.7 (= the sin of the angels of the seven stars). 6. In the Book of Dreams the sin of the watchers (the name does not appear because they are indicated metaphorically) is treated in 86.3. Furthermore, 86.1 speaks of a first angelic sin, due to a single angel (= the devil).


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books which are both earlier than ours. If the Book of Astronomy does not speak of this, it is because the book, given its astronomical not historical theme, never addresses the problem. In other words, if our verse does not speak of the condemnation of the watchers it would be an innovation within apocalyptic. Even Riessler depends completely on the interpretative tradition begun by Charles. In the structure of the sentence he follows Beer, even if he modernizes the language and differs on one point, though of secondary importance. 'Danach findet in der zehnten Woche, im siebten Teil, das grosse, ewige Gericht statt, wobei Er die Strafe an den Engeln vollzieht.' Unter is replaced by an: an attempt to insert in the translation a word which, while remaining related to 'among', still allows one to sense in some way an 'against'. Knibb clearly translates it 'against', but the text he offers is different from that of Charles: 'And after this in the tenth week, in the seventh part, there will be the eternal judgement which will be executed on the watchers and the eternal great heaven which will spring from the midst of the angels.' A clear change is apparent in the two translations of Fusella and Isaac, independent one from the other. Fusella writes: 'E dopo di cio, nella decima settimana—in essa vi sono sette parti—(vi sara) il giudizio eterno ed esso saia fatto dagli angeli vigilanti e (vi saia) il cielo eterno, grande, che spuntera in mezzo agli angeli.' Fusella then explains in a note that the text 'si dovrebbe intendere [evidently following the tradi tion begun by Charles] sugli angeli Vigilanti.' So the text reads 'by' but the meaning demands 'upon'. I am not at all opposed to the conjecture; I am convinced that every editor has the duty to indicate the defective pieces of the text and attempt to repair them: the only problem is whether the conjecture is good or bad. Fusella bases his conjecture on chs. 8-11 of Ethiopic Enoch, which, however, belong to the Book of the Watchers. Thus we return to the problem that we saw with Martin: Is it right or not to correct one text on the basis of another belonging to another work and another author? 7

8

9

10

7. In P. Riessler (ed.), Altjiidisches Schriftum ausserhalb der Bibel (Augsburg, 1966 [1928], pp. 355-451 and 1291-97. 8. M.A. Knibb, The Ethiopic Text of Enoch (2 vols.; Oxford, 1978). 9. In Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi, pp. 413-723. 10. In J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, NY, 1983), I, pp. 5-89.


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Isaac translates: 'Then, after this matter, on the tenth week, in the seventh part, there shall be the eternal judgment and it shall be executed by the angels of the eternal heaven—the great (judgment) which emanates from all the angels.' In a note the author explains that the first angels is an interpretative liberty he takes with 'watchers'. In addition, he considers the whole passage corrupt: some variants follow. The recent edition by F. Corriente and A. Pinero' accepts the shorter text (see below), but contaminates it with the longer one: 'Luego, en la decima semana, en la septima parte, sera el gran juicio eterno, en el que tomara (Dios) venganza de todos los vigilantes.' The note explains that the translation derives from a correction of the text: 'entre' is corrected to 'todos'. But the word that follows 'entre' is not 'vigilantes', but 'angeles'. In other words, the text is recast without any justification: the point is simply to reach the condemnation of the watchers. Furthermore, the reading 'all' is documented in MS F. Because I do not know Ethiopic, I decided at this point to ask the assistance of my colleague, Fabrizio Pennacchietti, to help resolve the problem. The idea that the eternal and great judgment is carried out by angelic beings seems very important in the development of Jewish thought in the last part of the history of the Second Temple period, and it would be the first appearance of a marked need for mediation between God and humans. It would be, then, the most ancient docu mentation of a phenomenon that will grow in the Book of Parables and even more in the New Testament texts. Knibbhas recently produced an edition of Ethiopic Enoch which, even if it is not critical, limiting itself to reproduce the text of a manuscript, still serves our purpose, because it furnishes a list of variants. The tradition of Ethiopic Enoch is divided into two large families that, with Charles and Loprieno, we will call a and p\ Of the 33 manuscripts of Ethopic Enoch known today, 6 are attributed to a and 27 to p. The a family seems closer to the Greek original from which it must have been translated, even if the Greek text's 366 known verses do not furnish a full picture of the situation. It presents more ancient verbal forms and its text seems less touched by the interpretation of the Ethiopian Church. 1

12

13

11. In A. Dfez Macho (ed.), Apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento (Madrid, 1984), IV, pp. 13-143. 12. On the problem of angelic mediation, which also influenced Christian theology, see A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition (New York, 1975). 13. In Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi, pp. 456-61.


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The (3 family provides more regular and normalized syntax and grammar, and a generally longer text. Yet some readings found in the Aramaic fragments have been confirmed in the text of the P family. Nevertheless it seems impossible to hypothesize the existence of two archetypes, one deriving from the Greek and one from the Aramaic. What is sure is that from its very beginnings the tradition of Ethiopic Enoch was complex and tortuous. All the editions, beginning with that of Dillmann in 1851, are always based on manuscripts of the p family. Knibb reproduces in his edition the text of the G manuscript which belongs to this family. At this point we need only give a glance at Knibb's apparatus, which presents ten variants. Regarding the p family we have a situation which, though plagued by small variants, is substantially unified: the basic difference is between those manuscripts which read 'from the watchers of the eternal heaven' and those reading 'from the watchers and the eternal heaven' (see the two different versions by Fusella and Isaac). 14

G:

'there will be the eternal (= that [fern.] of eternity) judg ment (fern.) and it will be done by the watchers and (there will be) the eternal (= that [masc] of eternity), great (masc.) heaven (masc.) that will sprout in the midst of the angels'. Q and M: these present a similar text, though with small variants; but they make the two phrases into one, linking 'heaven' to 'watchers'. Q (M) text: 'there will be the eternal judgment and it will be done by the watchers of the eternal great heaven that will sprout in the midst of the angels'. N: it presents again the text of G, except that at the end, in place of 'will sprout' (yebaqq el), it reads 'will be useful' (yebaqqu'). w

Other p manuscripts are not mentioned and it is likely that they either present the reading of G or they were not consulted because, rightly or wrongly, they were presumed to have a similar reading. From the apparatus there is nothing more to be learned about the P family. 14. Cf. Loprieno in Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi, pp. 460-61: 'In ogni caso noi riteniamo che la sostanziale unita del testo escluda che a and fj costituiscano due tradizioni indipendenti'. On the relationship between the Ethiopic tradition and the Aramaic text, cf. E. Ullendorff, 'An Aramaic Vorlage of the Ethiopic Text of Enoch?', in Atti del Convegno intmaxionale di studi etiopici Ethiopia and the Bible (London, 1968).


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Regarding the a family, the situation is as follows: D and F:

A:

B:

C and E:

these present the same reading as (M)Q: 'there will be the eternal judgment and it will be done by the watchers of the eternal, great heaven that will sprout in the midst of the angels'. 'there will be the judgment, eternal (fern.), great (masc), that will sprout (masc.) in the midst of the angels'. This is pre cisely the text of D-F but jumping between two words that are the same. In fact, 'eternal' is rendered with 'that (masc.)/ that (fem.) of eternity.' The eye of the scribe went from the first 'eternity' to the second ('that [fem.] of eternity...great [masc.]'). That the briefer reading in A is an omission is confirmed by the fact that 'eternal' and 'great' are in two different genders, something improbable if the text were original, even taking into account that Ethiopic does not clearly distinguish the genders. But two adjectives in a row, referring to the same substantive, cannot be in two different genders. Even the verb 'will sprout' remains masculine. it certainly derives from A, but tries to correct it: 'there will be a judgment, eternal (fem.), great (masc.) that (masc.) will punish (masc.) the angels'. they offer more or less the same text as the preceding one, but with different variants for yetbeqal ('will punish'), whose sense must not have satisfied any copyist. In effect the punishment should not be against the watchers, who for a certain tradition are evil, but against the angels in general. And it seems to me unacceptable in this case to understand 'watchers' as 'angels', as Corriente and Pinero do.

To summarize: we have a reading found within both a and p and this should therefore be considered original: this is the reading of D, F, Q(M). About the reading, 'there will be the eternal judgment and it will be done by the watchers and there will be the eternal, great heaven that will sprout in the midst of the angels': it is documented both in F (a family) and in G and N (p family). So this is a variant common to both the families and earlier than A's omission. Between the two longer readings, I think the more ancient one is that which speaks of the 'watchers of the eternal heaven', rather than the other one. If the author of our text was polemicizing against the current

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interpretation of the watchers, it is obvious that, knowing full well their function in the theology of his time, he made of them angels without a function in our world, because they are angels of the future world. In this way he distanced himself more clearly from the tradition and, above all, explained why they would be the ones to carry out the eternal judgment: they were the angels destined to govern the future world. There now remains the task of examining the Ethiopic text I consider original to see whether or not it adapts itself well to the ideology of the author of the Epistle of Enoch as this appears in the rest of the work. The Epistle of Enoch, in its history of humanity divided into ten weeks, knows nothing at all of the sin of the angelic watchers. The fact that the watchers are called to judge humans at the end of world is not therefore to be considered an element contradictory to the ideology of the author. Rather, we could observe further that the ideology of the Epistle of Enoch separates itself from one aspect that characterizes pre ceding apocalyptic: it not only does not know of the watchers' sin, but openly excludes the possibility of sin having been introduced to earth, that is, from the outside, from the angelic world (98.4): 'As a mountain did not nor will not become a servant...so sin was not sent onto the earth, but it was humans that created it themselves and those who did this are destined to the great curse.' We could thus affirm that the author of the Epistle of Enoch knew the myth of the angelic sin, but consciously opposed this doctrine. The angels have never sinned. There is nothing strange in his reaction, making the watchers the final judges and rulers of the future heaven, that which will never pass away. Knibb declares, in his notes, that he is favorable to a brief reading like that documented in A, even if it needs some small corrections. To sup port this thesis, he gives the Aramaic fragment 4QEn 11. 22-23, legible in the first half of the line. 91.15 begins in the middle of 1. 22 with a mn after which begins the lacuna of 1. 22. There ought to be a phrase corresponding to the 'after (mn) this, e t c ' with which our verse begins. At the beginning of the next line we read: dyn 'lm' wqs dyn' rb', and there follows the lacuna of the second half of the line, where Milik thinks there is space for 19-20 letters, which, however, does not allow the insertion of the long Ethiopic phrase. From this comes the idea that the Aramaic text confirms the brief reading. In reality it is not possible to insert even the brief one, because the legible part indicates a completely g

15

15. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic (Oxford, 1976), p. 266.

Fragments

of Qumran Cave 4


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different Aramaic text, for which reason it is impossible to base our selves on the Ethiopic to reconstruct the Aramaic. The Aramaic presents a double subject, 'eternal judgment and time of the great judgment', that does not correspond to any Ethiopic reading. It is thus impossible to identify the sense of the phrase in the lacuna on the basis of the docu mentation we have. It remains certain that the Aramaic had a reading different from the Ethiopic, a completely different one. The problem arises whether the fact that the Aramaic has a reading different from the Ethiopic is sufficient grounds for invalidating the Ethiopic's original reading, independently of the fact that it cannot offer another. I will address the problem by studying the Ethiopic variant I have considered as belonging to the Ethiopic archetype, to see whether it can stand as belonging to the original or should be considered an interpolation occurring at one moment in the text's long history. In favor of the Ethiopic reading I have considered as belonging to the Ethiopic archetype may be offered the following considerations: the mention of the watchers as good angels cannot be an invention of a scribe who read the text of Ethiopic Enoch as a unified text, because he would certainly be guided by the idea documented in the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Parables, and the Book of Dreams, namely that the sin of the angels existed and that these were or will be punished. The tendency of the worst manuscripts (and of modern critics) is precisely that of wanting a text in which the watchers are condemned. The refer ences to Book of the Watchers or the Book of Dreams, made by one or the other commentator, clearly show the type of reasoning underlying the text they have produced. The variant must be earlier than the time in which Ethiopic Enoch was compiled as a unit. Because the Epistle of Enoch can be attributed to the first century BCE our reading can only be that of the author, or one developed at a time quite close to him. Furthermore, the idea of angel judges can derive neither from Christian circles, nor from Greek or Ethiopic ones. Therefore the reading of the Ethiopic archetype is either that of the author or comes from a period very close to him. For the lacuna of 1. 22 Milik conjectures wmn [btrh Sbw' 'Sry dMby] 'h: 'and after, in the tenth week, in the seventh part', which is certain, taking account of the usus scribendi, which in this case is the way in 16

16. For the Ethiopic scribe the Book of Parables represented one part of the unified work which he considered Ethiopic Enoch to be, and a part preceding our passage.

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which the author indicates the passage from one week to the other, and of the Ethiopic translation. We must then admit that in the lacuna there is only the determination of time. Consequently at the beginning of the next line dyn' 'lm' ('eternal judgment') represents the subject of the phrase which would be at the origin of the Ethiopic '...in the seventh part (there will be) the eternal Judgment'. But qs dyn' ('time of judgment') bears no relation to the Ethiopic and consequently the Ethiopic cannot be used to reconstruct the sense of the Aramaic. In addition, the phrase proposed by Milik does not furnish a plausible meaning (p. 167): 'An eternal Judgement and the (fixed) time of the Great Judgement (shall be executed in vengeance, in the midst of the Holy Ones).' He has constructed his translation as if the subject were 'Judgment', as in Ethiopic, and not 'time'. It is clear nevertheless that in the lacuna, whatever was there, there was not a text comparable with any Ethiopic form, and the Ethiopic archetype has the qualifications necessary to be considered ancient and consistent with the ideology of the author and, therefore, authentic. But we cannot dismiss the idea that in the lacuna there could have been a text that presented the angelic watchers as evil and therefore punishable. The problem of the fall of the watchers is connected with and in part based on a complex ideology that explained the origin of evil in a certain way and, as a consequence consistent with its position, denied the total responsibility of humans in moral choice. This problem was one deeply felt in the two centuries straddling the beginning of our era. However the presence of the problem led to mishandling the texts to bend them towards the preferred ideology. That this problem was basic for the people of that era is demonstrated by Flavius Josephus, who used as a means of characterizing the sects of his time precisely their attitude towards this problem. The case of a deliberate variant provoked by precisely our problem is attested in Sir. 15.14. The Greek text reads: 'God created man from the beginning and gave him over into the hands of his ability to decide' (StapVuXtov). The Hebrew text reads instead: 'God created man from the beginning; he gave him over into the hands of his hotef ['enemy' or something similar]; he placed him in the hands of his nature.' The Hebrew text, which tends to deny full human freedom of choice, is certainly a correction of the Greek, as indicated by style (the rhythm in this passage is always two beats and here brusquely becomes three) and by content (the passage ends by recalling Deuteronomy: 'Before each


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person are life and death; and whichever one chooses will be given'). In any case, even in our era there are texts that speak of the fall of the angels: see fragments 180 and 181 of 4 Q . While Essenism seems to slide into rather strong forms of a determinism which influenced both the general unfolding of history and particularly the individual (as in the so-called 'Doctrine of the Two Spirits' ), the apocalyptic of the first century CE insists to the contrary on human freedom of choice, while maintaining the idea that the course of history as a whole is preordained by God.' Returning to our problem, it seems clear that in the first century BCE there was an idea gaining strength: God's coming upon the earth, pre ceded by the Great Judgment, would not take place by a direct inter vention of God, but only by the work of mediators. This God who dwells among humans offends the thinking of apocalyptic, which had a strong sense of divine transcendence. The work of mediation, which in the Epistle of Enoch is barely mentioned, will develop in the Book of Parables, where it will be entrusted to the Son of Man, to whom excep tional powers will be attributed, being himself an exceptional creature because created before all creatures and living in some hidden place of the cosmos. This idea of mediation will develop even further in the New Testament, but this is a problem that does not concern the limited field of the present study. 17

18

9

20

17. Cf. Milik, Books of Enoch, pp. 248ff.; J.M. Allegro, DJD V, pp. 77-80, pis. xvii-xviii. 18. On the dating of the passage containing the doctrine of the two spirits, cf. J. Murphy O'Connor, 'La genese de la regie de la Communaute', RB 76 (1969), pp. 528-49; J. Pouilly, La Regie de la Communaute de Qumran: Son evolution litteraire (Carriers de la Revue Biblique, 17; Paris, 1976); and P.M. Arata, 'La stratificazione letteraria della Regola della Comunita: A proposito di uno studio recente', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 69-92. 19. Late apocalyptic affirms vigorously full human responsibility, but at the same time believes in historical determinism. See above, Chapter 4. 20. 'Until I will descend and dwell with them for the ages of ages' (Jub. 1.26). The idea that God will come one day to dwell in the midst of humans is rather common in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Cf. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi. I, pp. 743-44.

Chapter 7 MESSIANISM A N D APOCALYPTIC*

1. Definition of Messianism Before beginning this brief history of messianism, it is necessary to give its definition, because it is a concept with limits that are not clearly marked. I will use a definition that is sufficiently elastic to allow its adap tation to diverse historical and ideological situations. Messianism is a category of Jewish thought comprised of two basic elements. The first is the certainty of the coming of a blessed world in some indefinable future moment. The second element, closely linked with the first, is the conviction that this blessed future world will not be the work of human force alone, but also of a mediator, endowed by God with particular charisms. We will call the figure of any mediator of salvation, whatever its nature, messiah. 2. The Origins: Royal Davidic Messianism One frequently reads that the passage founding Jewish messianism is the prophecy of Nathan,' as narrated in 2 Samuel 7: 'Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me: your throne shall be established forever.' However, it seems to me that this text has an essen tially political value, in that the prophecy founds a dynasty. Moreover this is a text which, at least in the form in which we have received it, is certainly much later than the fact narrated and it reflects essentially the 2

* First published as 'Messianismo e apocalittica', Quaderni di Vita Monastica 46 (1987), pp. 14-38. A paper given at Camaldoli on the occasion of the JewishChristian colloquium, December 1985. 1. See also the authoritative EncJud (Jerusalem: 1972) s.v. 'Messiah', XL cols. 1407-408. 2. 'Before me': a reading from some Hebrew manuscripts and from the Greek. The greater part of Hebrew manuscripts, the Vulgate and the Syriac read 'before you'.

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ideology of salvation of the author of the historical books, whom I have called R l , who was a convinced monarchist. The text of Isaiah 11 has instead a prevalently religious character (but in an archaic society it is much more difficult than in today's society to distinguish the religious from the political). The text also has the advantage that we can date it in a sufficiently precise manner to around 700 BCE or, in any event, in the seventh century. If we want to find a point of departure for Jewish messianism, this seems to me the one. In this passage Isaiah affirms that there will come a 'good time', and that this good time will be linked to the figure of a descendant of David endowed with particular charisms. We therefore have the two basic elements of any messianism: the good world of the future and the human instrument, in this case a descendant of the house of David. Thus we speak of Davidic messianism. At its origins messianism was royal and Davidic. This future king's function will be that of judging with justice the 3

4

3. I think that the person who composed that gigantic history of Israel, which finishes by narrating how King Jehoiakin gained the favor of the king of Babylon, which happened with Awil-Marduk's assuming the throne, was a person who lived in this same era, since he is unaware of later events. This personage coincides more or less with the Deuteronomist of the majority of critics. But I think his work was more extensive than is commonly believed, though without Deuteronomy: I do not know how many passages were inserted later, but in its basic contours his work must have begun with the creation of the world (or humans). On this see P. Sacchi, 'II piu antico storico di Israele: un'ipotesi di lavoro', in Convegno sul tema: Le Origini di Israele (Roma 10-11 febbraio 1986), Accademia Nazionale del LinceiFondazione Leone Caetani (Rome, 1987), pp. 65-86. Cf. my later review article on J. van Seters, Der Yahwist als Historiker, Henoch 10 (1989), pp. 247-50. For my most recent thoughts on this problem, see 'Le Pentateuque, le Deuteronomiste et Spinoza', in VT61 (1995), pp. 275-88. 4. Chapter 11 of Isaiah has given rise to a vast debate. While there are some who consider the whole chapter post-exilic, the majority of scholars today consider the first five verses authentic, the following verses are clearly later. The basic argu ment upholding the later dating of the section is the interpretation of v. 1 to refer to a monarchy that has already disappeared (a trunk like that of a fallen tree, but this interpretation of the rare word geza' is not valid; cf. Isa. 40.24). The author used the expression 'root of Jesse' probably to emphasize that the great king of the future would be equal to David, with 'brother' as the metaphor. Cf. A. Penna, Isaia (Rome, 1964); H. Wildberger, Jesaja 1-12 (Keukirchen-Vluyn, 1972); O. Kaiser. Der Prophet Jesaja, Kapitel 1-12 (Gottingen, 1963) (Kaiser has changed his opinion in the most recent edition of his work).

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dallim, the 'unfortunate', or today we might say, the 'marginalized'. He will establish a kingdom where there will be justice, to be understood in human terms, still far from the good world of apocalyptic, which will have the characteristics of perfection and the absolute absence of evil. Later, towards the end of the seventh century BCE, we find messianic affirmations in Jeremiah and this messianism is still Davidic. In Jer. 23.5 we read: 'Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, where I will raise up a just shoot for David. He will rule as king (wemalak melek, fiaoiXevoei fiaaiXEvq) and he will exercise judgment and justice on the earth. In his days Judah will be safe and Israel will dwell in security.' In this passage too we find the two basic elements of the messianic category: the bright future and the personage who will inaugurate it on earth.

3. Non-Davidic Royal Messianism With Ezekiel (first half of the sixth century BCE) there begin reinterpretations, re-readings of the messianic prophecies. Messianism remains royal, but it is no longer Davidic. Ezekiel believed, and certainly wished, that the Davidic monarchy was ended. For the future he, or his school, thought of an Israel governed by two leaders, the Prince (nasi') and the Priest. He says nothing of the dynasty of this prince. Perhaps this solu tion was tied to contingent political factors, such as the loss of political independence, but in any event his taking an ideological position is clearly discernible, one also found in the condemnation of all the kings of the past without exception (see 45.9). The historical David thus becomes purely a figure of the ideal king who one day will come to save Israel: this will be the real David. In 34.23-24 we read: T will raise up for them a shepherd, who will pasture them, my servant David: he will pasture them and will be a shepherd for them.' Thus David, the real one, is yet to come and he will be the shepherd of Israel. The earlier David had been the ancestor of the messiah-king: now he has become a figure of him. Again in 37.24-26: 'My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes...and my servant David shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant...' There is no more mention of a Davidic dynasty: Ezekiel awaits a new David who will make a reality out of those hopes once focused on a historical descendant of the house of David. Messianic


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hope is starting to change. This first step goes from the descendant of David to an ideal David not necessarily descended from the historical one. Later the steps will become even more daring. 4. The End of the House of David and the Eclipse of Messianism Around the second decade of the sixth century Israel had the impression that its messianic hopes were being fulfilled. In 521 a large caravan of exiles reached Jerusalem with two leaders at its head, a layman and a priest, Zerubbabel and Joshua. The Jews were clearly trying to fulfill Ezekiel's arrangement, which wanted the Jewish people under the leadership of two heads: the prince and the priest. The prince, moreover, belonged to the house of David. The prophet Zechariah, who lived in that period, could declare to the people: 'These are the sons of oil who stand in the presence of the Lord of the whole earth' (4.12, 14). The two heads have clearly entered the sacred sphere of royalty: they are both 'anointed'. But it is difficult to govern as a pair. In an early period Zerubbabel was predominant, as can be inferred from Zech. 3.8: 'Behold, I send my servant, the Shoot', undoubtedly referring to the lay leader. This is the same title Jeremiah used to indicate the great king of the future who would establish justice in Israel. The hope of the prophet and some of the people must have centered on Zerubbabel precisely within this perspective. From Haggai, another contemporary, we know that the refounding of the temple was effectively begun by both, but Zerubbabel is always named first. Chapter 3 of Zechariah shows us a penitent Joshua, who only after an act of penitence is confirmed as high priest. It seems there was an early dispute between the prince and the priest, which was resolved in favor of the former. But at the moment of dedicating the new temple (515 BCE) only Joshua is present (cf. Flavius Josephus, Ant. 11.79). Not only has Zerubbabel disappeared, but we do not find in his place any of his sons, though there were some. Not just one person but an institution was eliminated. The text of Zechariah 6, which originally speaks of two 5

6

5. 'Shoot': in Hebrew semah, a term used by Jer. 23.5 and 33.15. Isa. 11, already cited, uses the terms hoter and neser. The term semah was also used by Isaiah, but in a context that is not necessarily messianic (4.2). 6. On the importance of the revolution that occurred between 520 and 515 BCE, cf. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament


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crowns prepared by the people for placing on the heads of Zerubbabel and Joshua, was reworked to be read in regard to a single head, that of Joshua. One of Israel's greatest revolutions on the political level had taken place (the abolition of the dynasty) and the first messianic delusion was its product: instead of salvation, the Jews had civil war (cf. Zechariah 12, which, according to a valid hypothesis, could date from this period). Yet from this great delusion there remained in the thought of Israel something destined to great vitality. Messianism had lost the single savior figure: the messiahs had become two. Awaiting the messiah could change to awaiting more than one messiah. And even the concept of 'messiah' was no longer linked to the figure of a king: at least it was possible that the priest too could be messiah. The messianic function, that of salvation, having become autonomous with respect to kingship, was now better adapted to take on religious meaning. Another passage of the book of Zechariah merits recalling (9.9): 7

8

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you. Just and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth (MT).

The most serious problem in interpreting this passage, belonging to the second section of the book of Zechariah, the so-called Deutero-Zechariah, is the fact that its dating is uncertain and varies by several centuries, from the age of Jeremiah to the era of the Maccabees. Most commenta tors today favor a dating towards the end of the fourth century, but (London, 1987), pp. 75-95. Though Smith's reconstruction of the details goes too far beyond the texts to be accepted, his basic approach is valid. I have treated the topic in 'L'esilio e la fine della monarchia davidica', Henoch 11 (1989), pp. 131-48. 7. On the history of the text of Zech. 6, cf. P. Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976), pp. 32-33 and now Storia del secondo tempio: Israele tra VI secolo a.C. e I secolo d.C. (Turin, 1994), p. 43. 8. Chapter 12 of the book of Zechariah belongs to that section of the book called Deutero-Zechariah. We are dealing with a work that is certainly not from the hand of the author of the first part, but one which is difficult to date, and nothing forbids its also being by a contemporary of the First Zechariah. This thesis has been supported by P. Lamarche, Zacharie IX-XIV, Structure litteraire et messianisme (Paris, 1961). Though the text has been modified greatly by the tradition, allusions to a civil war are still evident.

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others place it in more ancient times, in those of Zechariah himself. For me, the identification of the humble and victorious king with Zerubbabel in the early years of his rule seems the most natural, at least choosing among the limited number of personages known from the post-exilic period. Even if the passage arose in a precise historical situation, with very specific political contours, once Zerubbabel was a thing of the past the passage must have been re-read on purely religious grounds. It became a messianic prophecy, which repeated and re-expressed that of Isaiah, with the added details of the victory of the king and his humility. The Greek translation of this book (ca. second century BCE) empha sizes the messianic interpretation of the passage, substituting for T will cut off the same verb, but in the third person, thus with 'the king' as subject and substituting for 'victorious' (no$a') the active participle 0ri)£mv. In the second century BCE the prophecy was certainly read within messianic categories. Whatever the uncertainty about this text's chronology, after Zerubbabel's time messianic ideology was no longer productive. This does not mean we can say that it disappeared, if only because messianic texts continued to be read, but it was no longer active for almost three centuries, at least within the culture of the dominant class in Jerusalem. A work characteristic of the Jerusalem of the Persian period is the book of Chronicles. The author does not have messianic hopes because for him these in some way have already been fulfilled. Under the rule of Persia, rendered legitimate after all by the word of the prophets, and certainly not opposed by the great legislator Ezra, Israel enjoyed some tranquillity. This peace was interpreted as a sign of divine favor which had to depend on the righteousness of Israel. There is an interesting interpretation of the 'privileges of D a v i d ' accepted by the chronicler, who takes it from Second Isaiah. These are no longer understood as referring strictly to David, but to the whole people. However, this extension of the 'privileges of David' to the whole people can, in turn, be read in two ways: one anti-messianic and the other messianic, but in a new sense. On the one hand, if the privileges of 9

10

11

12

9. Cf. Isa. 45.1, where the prophet attributes to Cyrus the title of 'anointed/ messiah'. This section belongs to Deutero-Isaiah. 10. 11. 12. Revue

Cf. Ezra 7.26: the Law of God is guaranteed by the king of Persia. Cf. J. Coppens, Le messianisme royal (Paris, 1968), p. 109. Cf. E. Lipiriski, Le poeme royal du Ps. LXXXIX, 1-5, 20-38 (Cahiers de la Biblique, 6; Paris, 1967).

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David have passed to the whole people, they have no further need of an intermediary, a messiah. On the other, since the whole people inherit the Davidic promise, the people itself can become in some way messiah. This interpretation is guaranteed by a very ancient gloss on one of the songs of the 'Servant of Yahweh' (Isa. 49.3), which identifies the servant with Israel. 5. Superhuman Figures In complete contrast to the attitude of the dominant culture in Jerusalem, there began to appear in Jewish thought in the Persian period figures with superhuman traits. These were not messiahs in the sense the word had before that time but, since they played roles that had been typical of the messiah, they represented clearly some development of the messianic notion. These figures too helped to fulfill God's plans on earth, revealed instruments of grace earlier unknown, and certainly had salvific functions. Today four of these superhuman figures are known: two come from the Persian period, two are later. In the last part of the book of Malachi, normally considered a later addition, though it is unclear how much later, the figure of the prophet Elijah appears as destined to return to earth some day in the future. 'Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and smite the land with destruction (heremY (3.23-24 [4.5-6]). Elijah, therefore, is a man with decidedly unusual characteristics, because he did not die and still lives in some part of heaven. One day he will return from heaven to earth to heal the internal discord of Israel, so that God, in his wrath, will not have to destroy it. He will not establish the good future kingdom, but will collaborate in some way in Israel's salvation, though he is neither king nor priest. Perhaps he is something more. Another personage with superhuman characteristics is Enoch. The biblical canon barely notes the fact that he did not die (Gen. 5.24: 'then he was no more [scil. on earth] because God took him'), and then says nothing more about it. He is, however, the central figure of a vast 13

13. On the disputes in Rabbinic circles about Enoch's being dead or not, cf. L. Rosso Ubigli, 'La fortuna di Enoc nel giudaismo antico: valenze e problemi', ASE 1 (1984), pp. 153-64.


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literature, which can be defined with his name as Enochic, and which belongs to that group of texts which, never having been accepted in any canon, are called apocryphal. In the Book of the Watchers Enoch is found in a position actually superior to that of the angels, with functions that could be defined as mediation and revelation (rather than salvation, strictly speaking). He carries messages from the sinful angels to God, from whom they implore pardon, and relays to the angels God's negative response. Enoch knows all the structure of the heavens (1 Enoch 72-82), the movements of the stars and the nature of the winds. He knows the true calendar. According to the biblical canon he lived 365 years. Therefore he was recognized by all, including those who belonged to that part of Judaism from which derive the texts of today's canon, as the founder of astronomy. Enoch was also the first Hebrew to make a trip to the underworld (1 Enoch 22), where he visited the place in the far west where the souls of the dead were, already individually judged and awaiting the collective and final Great Judgment, the good separate from the evil. A third superhuman personage is Melchizedek. Until quite recently we did not know of the existence of this superhuman Melchizedek or, if we did know of him, we believed that this was a very late phenomenon related to the origins of Christianity. We knew of his existence from only two texts. One is Heb. 7.3: 'He is without father, without mother, with out genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, made similar to the son of God, and he remains priest forever.' The other text is apoc ryphal, contemporary with the Letter to the Hebrews, and known as Slavonic Enoch, where it is said that he was the son of Nir, a person age otherwise unknown to Jewish tradition, son of Methuselah, son of Enoch. This is a antediluvian personage born, according to this text, virginally, of Sophonim, wife of Nir, after he had been proclaimed high priest by the people. The child was born already bearing the priestly 14

15

16

14. An exception is Ethiopic Enoch, preserved in its entirety only by the Coptic Church, in which it is canonical. 15. The representation of the world beyond the grave in this passage from the Book of the Watchers marks a profound innovation in Jewish thought: the classic Sheol did not have this distinction between the good and the evil. 16. Slavonic Enoch is an apocryphal text belonging to the second half of the first century CE (recension B). Of this text there exists also a lengthier version, probably from the fifth century (recension A). It has come down to us only in an Old Slavonic version.

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insignia and able to speak as an adult. He is 'Priest of priests forever' (2 En. 71.29). When the time of the Flood drew near, Michael came down from heaven, took the child and carried him to safety in Eden, where he still lives now and will live forever. Recently a Qumran fragment was discovered, HQMelch, written towards the middle of the first century BCE, which attests that the myth of Melchizedek was already alive much earlier than we had thought. We can trace it back only by a negative criterion, though a rather strong one, to the second century BCE: the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, from the second century BCE, which is a midrash of Genesis, even with its habit of amplifying the text with numerous details, completely omits the Melchizedek episode, as narrated in Gen. 14.17-20. Evidently Melchizedek was a figure about whom the author preferred to remain silent, or actually wished to imply had never existed. Jubilees in fact belongs more to the Essenic tradition than to that of apocalyptic. 17

A fourth, and even later superhuman figure, but the greatest of all, is that of the 'Son of Man' of the Book of Parables. All these personages act on God's direct order and their work has a salvific function for Israel. So in some way they have the same functions that the anointed king once had: we can speak of these as messianic functions. 18

6. The Revival of Messianism: Superhuman

Messianism

With the second century BCE we witness a clear revival of messianism. This is linked to the sadness of the historical period Israel passed through, having to live in the midst of tensions between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria, divided itself between partisans of the one and the other on the political level, and on the ideological level frag mented into numerous rival sects. It was a period of hardships and wars, lasting with brief interruptions until the destruction of the temple and beyond. In this period Utopias and messianism found easy nourishment. The further away 'salvation' seemed, the more the people were led to 17. Cf. M. Testuz, Les idees religieuses du livre des Jubiles (Geneva, 1960). Enoch in the Book of Jubilees carries out notable priestly functions; cf. Rosso Ubigli, 'La fortuna di Enoc'. 18. The Book of Parables is the second volume of Ethiopic Enoch and includes chs. 37-71. The most probable date for the book (the latest of the Enochic pentateuch) is at the end of the first century BCE. Attempts to interpret it as a Christian work have no basis. Cf. P. Sacchi, (ed.), Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento (Turin, 1981), I, pp. 435-38.


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expect it through some intervention of God. When the expectation of God's intervention united with the idea that God will have a historical instrument to bring it about, we have a form of messianism. I will leave aside discussion of ch. 7 of the book of Daniel, since I do not believe it has a messianic character. The figure of the Son of Man that appears there is only a figure of the chosen people, as the author himself clearly states. But there is a contemporary book, the Book of Dreams, to be dated with certainty in the years immediately following 164, because the last event it knows of is the death of Antiochus IV. It contains a history of Israel which the author imagines as narrated by Enoch to his son Methuselah, deriving from the heavenly tablets and therefore regarding the future. This is a future which the author naturally knows quite well up to his own time; afterwards he no longer knows anything. This does not prevent his presentation from going on even beyond 164; only that up to that time it concerns known events, while for subsequent events it becomes truly a prophecy, because the author expects something, and believes in its coming with utmost certainty. He expects God, once come upon earth, to render judgment to (1) the sinful angels; (2) the blind sheep (the 'bad' Jews, those who believe differently from him); and (3) all peoples. After this judgment, God will make the temple disappear, will con struct a new one, and this new temple (7 En. 90.29) will mark the beginning of a new world, where an ox with great horns will appear. In our author's metaphorical language the Jews are always called sheep, the angels are represented as humans, foreign peoples are presented as wild or unclean animals. In the middle, between angels and humans (in his language, between humans and sheep) there are the oxen, that is, figures from the biblical tradition especially blessed by God, like Adam and Noah. Noah is unique among the living beings for he has become a human or, without the metaphors, an angel (7 En. 89.1, 9). Shem, Abraham and Isaac are also oxen, but Jacob is already symbolized by a sheep, as are the twelve heads of the tribes of Israel. Moses and Aaron are also sheep and not oxen (7 En. 89.17, 18). 19

20

21

19. The Book of Dreams is the fourth volume of Ethiopic Enoch, including chs. 83-90. 20. Cf. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments from Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), p. 44. 21. As can be seen also in this passage, the figure of Noah had tremendous

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The awaited ox is evidently a man who will have the same blessing that Adam had, and the patriarchs up to Isaac. He will rule all the peoples, who will fear him and pray to him (1 En. 90.37). It is best not to pay attention to the verb 'pray', that comes down to us in an Ethiopic translation of a Greek text translated from Aramaic. I prefer only to observe the structure of the mental framework here: history is destined to get constantly worse, until God intervenes and punishes all the impious, whether Jews or non-Jews. After the Great Judgment God will make a new temple and Israel will finally have a kingdom of justice governed by this exceptional being who is messiah, in the sense of 'king', but without being linked to the house of David. The messiah will come after the judgment and will have the task of administering on earth the order and justice willed by God. The Book of Jubilees, an apocryphal text of an Essene type, which can be dated towards the end of the second century, has, as we saw, a strong antipathy for the figure of Melchizedek, which it deletes from an account usually abounding in additions. Earlier one could have believed that this antipathy was due to the fact that the figure of Melchizedek might serve to justify the conduct of the Hasmoneans, who were both kings and priests, contrary to Jewish tradition. But the discovery of the Qumran fragment HQMelch shows that the author of Jubilees could have had more specific and serious reasons for making the figure of Melchizedek disappear from his story. He was an opponent of Enoch with clear savior characteristics. 1 lQMelch is quite fragmentary and its meaning does not always seem clear. But some phrases, whatever their context, leave us disconcerted and are in any event of great interest. We read in 11. 5-6: 'Melchizedek who will make them return in himself and will proclaim an amnesty for them, freeing them from [the debt of] all their iniquities...' and in 1. 8: 'when there will be accomplished expiation for all the sons [of the light (?)] and for the m[en] of the party of Mel[chi]zedek.' Ps. 82.1 is referred to him, where we read: 'Elohim has taken a place in the [assembly of El]' (1. 10). In 1. 13: 'Melchizedek will execute the venge[ance] of the judgments of El.' Isa. 52.7 is referred to him: 'Your elohim [reigns].' His kingdom extends over those who belong to his group: '[Z]ion is importance in the Enochic tradition, even though not active. It seems to have been an active figure in the sect's past, but centuries earlier. The Book of the Watchers developed as a rewriting of a more ancient Book of Noah, of which there remains an explicit mention in Jub. 21.10.


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[the assembly...of those] who keep his Covenant' (1. 24). It seems he is also called '[anoin]ted of the spir[it]' (1. 18). And at the end he will have the task of freeing all the Jews from the hand of Belial (1. 25). In another text from Qumran (4QAmram ), the great antagonist of God is called MlkyrS': it is difficult not to read beneath this name, other wise unknown, a backward form of Melchizedek, to indicate the devil. From this text we can deduce several things. (1) Melchizedek is a superhuman being, an 'elohim. (2) He has the task of bringing the Jews back to the right way, to make them convert. (3) It is he who will pro claim the remission of past faults. (4) He has the task, if not of executing the judgment (the text is unclear), certainly of executing the vengeance of God. These functions are typically messianic because they are salvific. But it should be noted that the importance of these functions has grown enormously with respect to more ancient messianism. Along with the growth in importance of the functions there is, so to speak, a growth in the nature of the messianic personage, gradually assuming qualities ever more superior to the human. If the future messiah of the Book of Dreams will have the nature of the patriarchs, Elijah, Enoch and now Melchizedek are decidedly more than human, since they were born but did not die. Between the second and first centuries BCE, in Essene circles, a new type of messianism was developing, which derived from that double type of Zechariah, if only by way of literature and not history. This is what we could call 'double', or, perhaps better, 'priestly' messianism, for reasons we will see. The anointed are two, one of Aaron and one of Israel. There is mention neither of David nor Zadok, rather a wider denominator is sought. What is fundamental is the clear distinction between two functions, civil and religious, two salvific functions pro jected into the future. The two messiahs are still to come and, when they come, they will arrange themselves hierarchically in such a way that the higher position will be for the messiah of Aaron. This is a double messianism, that can thus be defined also as priestly, given the primacy of the priest over the layman. See 1QS 9.10-11, T. Reub. 6.8, and b

22

23

22. Cf. C. Gianotto, Melchizedek e la sua tipologia: Tradizioni cristiane e gnostiche (sec. II a.C.-sec. Hld.C.) (Brescia, 1984), pp. 64ff.

24

giudaiche,

23. The text of 1QS says: 'These [that is, the Essenes] will be ruled according to the first rules, in which the members of the Community began their instruction, and this will continue until the coming of the prophet and the anointed ones of Aaron and Israel.' The community admits that the norms of life given to it may not be perfect; it

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especially T. Jud. 21.4: 'As the heaven is higher than the earth, so is the priesthood of God higher than the earthly kingdom.' The priestly messiah will have the task of giving the definitive inter pretation of the Law in all cases of uncertainty about the halakah; he will have the task of binding Satan ('Beliar will be bound by him', T. Levi 18.12). Here Satan has an importance he does not have in the texts of the canon. We are in an Essenic milieu. The world is divided into two great parties, two goralim, that of the light and that of the darkness; one under the leadership of the angel of light, generally interpreted as Michael, and one under the leadership of the angel of darkness, who can be indicated with the most diverse names, but is always the devil (cf. 1QS 3.15-21). The high priest will have the highest and salvific function, 25

therefore awaits someone who will indicate the perfect halakah. The personages expected for this function, in this case, are not just two: a prophet is also expected, whose coming will precede that of the two messiahs. This is the same outline that Christianity will apply to the Baptist with regard to Jesus. But on this point there must have been differences within Essenism itself and perhaps there was some development. A fragment containing the passage mentioned above, noted by Milik (RB 67 [1960], p. 413), has a much briefer form, but the lacunae prevent a sure reading of the text. Cf. also J. Starcky, 'Les quatre etapes du messianisme a Qumran', RB 70 (1963), pp. 481-504 (482). Nevertheless the expectation that a prophet will resolve problems of a juridi cal and political nature is also documented in the First Book of Maccabees (14.41). When Simon found himself in a rather confused juridical situation, having already taken into his own hands civil and religious power and having assumed the position of high priest without being of Zadokite lineage, he believed that an excellent way to gain time was to refer the whole problem to a 'prophet worthy of faith'. The solution was acceptable to the whole people; therefore the possibility of a mediator who would refer the will of God to humans and guide them must have been a widely accepted possibility. 24. The Testament of Reuben is the first chapter of a work entitled Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This is an apocryphal text of the first century BCE, at least in its definitive form. The oldest layers belong to the previous century. In this exposi tion we are considering only the final revision of the first century BCE, which is also the only one whose content is sure. On the problem, cf. J. Becker, Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchen (Leiden, 1970). Becker does not attribute the work to Essenism; however, some ideas, like those about a priestly messiah, are similar to those of the Essenes. 25. Thus I interpret T. Levi 18.2: 'To whom [that is, to Levi] all the words of the Lord will be revealed.' On the need for a particular revelation in order to know the true halakah, cf. also 1QS 9.10-11, cited in n. 23.


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culminating in the liberation of the world from Satan, that is, from evil (see T. Levi, passage cited above). But this priest of the future has nothing to do with the historical priesthood of Israel, even with that which is most authentic. This will be a priesthood of an exceptional kind. We read in T. Levi 18.1-7: When vengeance will have come upon them from the Lord, then the Lord will raise up a new priest to whom all the words of the Lord will be revealed. He shall effect the judgment of truth over the earth for many days. This one will shine forth like the sun in the earth; he shall take away all darkness from under heaven, and there shall be peace in all the earth. The heavens shall greatly rejoice in his days and the clouds will be filled with joy... The glory of the Most High shall be pronounced upon him, and the spirit of understanding and holiness shall rest upon him... He shall give the majesty of the Lord to his sons, in truth and forever. He will not have successors, from generation to generation and forever... Under his priesthood sin will disappear... He will give the saints to eat of the tree of life... Beliar shall be bound by him...

Overall, one has the impression that the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs expects a different world that will be instituted by the anointed ones of Levi and Judah. It is interesting that the name of David disappears, to be replaced by the wider name of Judah. The author no longer expects the Davidic kingdom, but on the basis of the prophecies of ancient Davidic messianism he still believes in the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. T. Jud. 22.2-3 reads: My rule shall be terminated by work of foreigners, until the salvation of Israel comes, until the parousia of the God of righteousness, so that Jacob and all the nations will live in peace. He [the descendant of Judah] shall preserve the power of my kingdom forever, because with an oath the Lord swore not to take away the kingdom from my posterity, forever.

There is however a text of the first century BCE in which Davidic messianism reappears. This is the Psalms of Solomon, a work composed toward the middle of the first century BCE, since it knows both the

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Roman conquest of Jerusalem (63 BCE) and, seemingly, the death of Pompey, the profaner of the temple. The author violently opposes the Hasmoneans, because he considers them usurpers: the throne of Jerusalem can only belong, by divine will, to the descendants of David. Lord, you chose David to be king over Israel, and swore to him about his descendants forever, that his royal power should never fail... ...they drove us out [the writer is evidently a refugee], those to whom you did not promise... They have destroyed the throne of David with arrogant change. But you, O God, overthrow them and take away their offspring from the earth, making rise up against them a man alien to our race... See, Lord, and raise up for them [scil., the Jews] their king, the son of David, for the occasion you have chosen, O God, so that your servant may rule over Israel (Pss. Sol. 17, passim).

On the one hand, in this text we note faith in the eternity of the Davidic kingship. On the other, one has the impression that eschato logical tension has diminished. The author of the Book of Dreams seemed to expect the Great Judgment which would inaugurate the kingdom of the messiah in a time that was already near; perhaps he hoped to see it. The author of the Psalms of Solomon lives his hope with a certain detachment. He knows that he does not know the time and uses a formula that leaves much room to God's patience: 'For the occasion you have chosen.' But, whatever the time, the goal of history can only be this. The func tion of the descendant of David, when he comes, will be to carry out justice on earth, justice understood in the sense of social equality, according to a type of thought also documented not much later in the Book of Parables: 'You will lead them in equality' we read in the same psalm (17.46). This is the second element of the messianic category: the making of a kingdom of justice. Parallel to this messianic theme is that of mediation. Or rather, more than parallel, it is just another aspect of it. We have seen that Enoch also had functions as mediator in that, standing between God and the sinful angels, he carried messages in both directions. Yet the discussion of mediation is indispensable to introducing the last great figure of salva tion, that of the Son of Man, as he appears in the Book of Parables. We will leave aside the New Testament problem, even though it seems clear to me that, when the Gospels speak of the Son of Man, the people


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understand well who is being spoken of and what functions he exercises (see Mk 2.10). In the Epistle of Enoch (1 En. 91.15) we find that the Great Judgment will not be carried out by God directly, but by the angelic watchers: this is a novelty within Jewish thought. The angels who will carry out the judgment will be the watchers, the very angels who in the apocalyptic, or at least the Enochic tradition, had sinned and made others sin. It is clear that within the apocalyptic tradition there was someone who protested against certain ideas of his own tradition. It was repugnant to him that there should be sinful angels and that sin should have been in some way brought upon earth from outside. 'As a moun tain has never become, nor will ever become a servant...so sin was not sent upon earth, but humans are those who created it by themselves and those who did so are destined to the great curse' (1 En. 98.4). This is an anti-apocalyptic position, but only to a certain point, as proven by the book's having been transmitted by the apocalyptic tradi tion: the concept of mediation is fully apocalyptic. The angels carry out in God's name a work that pertains to God, and this is quite close to the concept of messianism, because the messiah also executes by God's order a mandate that can be carried out only with his help and by his will. These functions of mediator and messiah are found together in the figure of the Son of Man of the Book of Parables. Here appears a strange figure of the Son of Man which certainly derives from Daniel 7. In the book of Daniel the Son of Man was a symbol of the people, the saints of God; in the Book of Parables he becomes a truly autonomous figure, who comes to be identified with Enoch (1 En. 71.14) and declared messiah (1 En. 52.4). So the Son of Man seems to be a title 26

27

28

26. The Epistle of Enoch is an apocryphal text of the second half of the first century BCE. It was inserted as the fifth volume of Ethiopic Enoch and includes chs. 9 1 - 1 0 5 . 27. On the interpretation of / En. 91.15 and the problem of mediation in the Great Judgment, which represents an important innovation in Jewish thought, cf. Chapter 6 above. 28. Vermes maintains that the expression 'Son of Man', at least in the Gospels, does not represent a true title; and in a certain sense he is correct, because, as we have seen, the expression 'Son of Man' only indicated a personage. Concretely, however, it is difficult to distinguish the name of the personage from his functions, also because this was indicated by means of a common name. To distance in time the figure of the Son of Man from that of Jesus, Vermes must postdate the Book of Parables, which would become a Christian work. But the identification of the 'Son of Man' with

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pertaining to a superhuman figure with messianic functions and which the Book of Parables identifies with Enoch. The Son of Man is created before time (1 En. 48.2-3). This personage assumes three different titles in the book: first the 'just one', then the 'elect', and finally the 'Son of Man'. God will reveal him at the oppor tune moment and he will have the task of sweeping away all evildoers, who are for the author essentially politicians and those who in some way hold power, while the good are by definition the poor, the humble, the marginalized in general. He will cast down the kings from their thrones, will break the teeth of sinners. It is he who will carry out the Great Judgment and will condemn the evildoers. His judgment shall be severe. He alone shall carry out the task that the Epistle of Enoch had attri buted to all the angel watchers. Thus he will inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. In the text the coming of the kingdom of God coincides with that of the messianic figure, a difference from the text of the Book of Dreams, where the judgment preceded the coming of the messiah. With the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (end of the first century CE) we witness the diminishing importance of the messiah, who, however, seems to remain a superhuman figure. The messiah's task is to prepare the world for the Great Judgment: thus the relation Great Judgment/ messiah as posited by more ancient apocalyptic is turned upside down. The messiah will have the task of preparing the coming of the kingdom of God, not governing it. This messiah is a man, but one of whom it is said that he is revealed (2 Bar. 29.3; 39.7) by God and that at the completion of his task he will return (30.1), it seems, to heaven. The text is uncertain. He will condemn the pagans, will give stability to Israel: his last act will be to judge and execute on Mount Zion the last king of the peoples (40.2). After this his task will be finished and his kingdom will endure until the end of the world, until the moment when 'the world of corruptibility will be ended' (40.3). Then we will have the kingdom of incorruptibility. In the Fourth Book of Ezra the function of the messiah is similar to this, with even stronger human traits, though traits of a humanity superior to that of common mortals. The messiah of 4 Ezra is once again of Davidic lineage (12.32). He will preside over the Great Judgment and will condemn the pagans. His life will extend some 400 years. But at the Enoch makes this interpretation most improbable. Cf. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (London, 1973), pp. 160-191; and P. Sacchi, 'Gesu l'ebreo', Henoch 6 (1984), pp. 347-68.


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end of these 400 years he will die and with his death the world of history will end. From that moment the world will return to primordial silence: for seven days, as many as those of the first creation, there will be absolute silence. Then we will have the new creation, the new world, one finally without evil. We may conclude this subject by saying that in the first century CE the idea that the messiah had to be beyond the human was affirmed to such a degree that, despite a tendency in the opposite direction developed towards the end of the century, superhuman traits are always attributed to the messiah. I have not touched the Christian problem. I will limit myself to a few remarks. I believe that the best key to understanding Christian messianism is superhuman messianism and especially the figure of the Son of Man, not royal messianic ideology. The New Testament texts themselves seem to me to refuse to interpret Jesus as royal and Davidic messiah (cf. Jn 6.15 and the problem of the messianic secret). At the time of Jesus the expectation of an eschatological judge, of a savior, of the Son of Man had been diffused throughout Judaism for some time. The Gospel of Mark places among the first episodes it recounts the healing of the paralytic, to whom Jesus remits sins before healing him. 'But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'—he said to the paralytic—T say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home' (Mk 2.10-11). Note the passage from the third to the first person. The sense to be made of this can be synthe sized in this way: 'So that you may understand that the Great Judge (the people must understand in this way) has the power not only to con demn, but also to pardon, I, to demonstrate that I have this power on earth, order you...'

Chapter 8 KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE JEWS FROM A M O S TO THE ESSENES*

This article is the result of my reflection on Hebrew texts, biblical and non-biblical, in an attempt to grasp the way in which various authors from the eighth century BCE to the first century CE construct their discourse. In human thought, and therefore also in ancient Hebraic thought, there are two areas: a first, which speaks of things which are obvious both to the author and, most probably, to those who are listening. This includes, besides everything perceived by the senses (e.g., 'water makes things wet'), all those interpretations of reality which, whether right or wrong, are shared by all, or the majority, of a society (e.g., 'if it rains, I take an umbrella', a decision which presupposes that water is bothersome; or, more typical of an ancient society, 'god intervenes in human affairs'). A second area includes what is problematic and unknown: by definition therefore the second area covers an infinite area. Any society takes an interest only in a part of this second area; this is deter mined by the society's own interests. A problem, even if sensed by a whole society, even if considered resolvable only in a certain way, always comes to the surface only in someone's words and the historian can only grasp it in this final phase. When the thought of the speaker is moving within the first sphere, this is discernible as the speaker is only presenting certain things, showing them as obvious: this is the point of departure for one who has noticed something that has not appeared to people. With this the speaker moves into the second area. It could be that he narrates things that he has seen in another world or things that he has known because of specific abilities (the traveller returning from a journey in Amazonia or the scientist who has seen something through the microscope). In this case the speaker must elabo* First published as 'La conoscenza presso gli ebrei da Amos aU'essenismo', RSB 1 (1989), pp. 123-49. Paper given at the September 1987 meeting of the ABI in Bressanone.

8. Knowledge among the Jews

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rate with details in order to explain to people things that are unfamiliar to them. Perhaps he also wants to provide new interpretations of reality or religion. In this case too the speaker cannot appeal to common under standing and cannot proceed by simple indication. In this last case, a modern author presents a case starting from what is known to be shared by listeners, and will recall it briefly to them. Thus the Greeks did also, whose heirs we are in this field. But the ancient Hebrews, how did they do this? It may be useful to remember that the expansion of understanding and the accumulation of data to be structured in consequence of contact with the more evolved societies surrounding the Hebrews must have led necessarily to ever more complex problems that required ever more refined methods of inquiry and exposition (more than just being linked to each other, these two actually coincide). As we will see, argumenta tion will be used in the Hebraic world only at a late date and seemingly under the influence of Greek thought, but this does not mean that there was not a profound evolution in the forms of understanding of Hebraic thought. I will take a first example from the book of Amos (1.2). 'Yahweh roars (yiS'ag) from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem; the pas tures of the shepherds wither, and the top of Carmel dries up.' This text says that there is a drought and that this is caused by Yahweh's wrath. The author calls the listeners' attention to a fact they all see, drought, and to the interpretation of the cause of the phenomenon, the wrath of Yahweh. Just as the author does not have to explain, because all see there is a drought, so he does not have to explain that this derives from the wrath of Yahweh. In other words, there must have existed a cate gory of thought that functioned more or less in this way: natural pheno mena are regulated by the divinity and, when these are harmful, the phenomenon can be explained only by the wrath of the same divinity. 1

1. It would seem that to the first sphere would belong only the understanding of that which is immediately perceived by the senses; in reality there belong to this sphere also all those axiomatic, or at least interpretative, elements that a society has accepted. Cf., on the level of ancient Near Eastern history, H.H. Schmid, Wesen und Geschichte der Weisheit (BZAW, 101; Berlin, 1966), p. 137: wisdom tends to become a system; it creates a mental framework that becomes an interpretation of reality and thus a means of understanding reality itself. When the framework is accepted by an entire society, this becomes part of reality for that society.


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But what eluded human understanding was the cause of the divine wrath and vengeance and, closely linked to this, the problem of how to placate the offended divinity. The god of Amos is one who 'forms (yoser) the mountains and creates (bore') the winds' (4.13). The God of Amos and the people of Palestine of that time was not so much the creator in our sense of the term (the one who in the beginning made things from nothing or from chaos, giving them certain laws, because of which his continuing inter vention is not necessary), but is above all the one who rules natural phenomena and gradually forms nature itself. If the wind comes from the north and then from the south, this is a sign of a change in the god's guiding hand, but this is not something that Amos needs to explain. He is convinced of it as much as those who listen to him. 'God is the one who makes ('oseh) the Pleiades and Orion' (5.8). 'Make' may be 'create', but I am not sure; it is certainly 'govern': in 9.6 God calls, that is, can call, the waters of the sea to pour out upon the earth. This governing action has its own regularity, so that the sun never sets at midday. But precisely because God is the one who rules natural phenomena, he can also announce that he will indeed make the sun set at midday (8.9). The revelation does not consist in God's declaring that he is able to make the sun set at midday: the revelation consists in declaring the time and type of the punishment. Understanding of the cause of the wrath of the god and the way in which he will avenge himself or punish is not an object of direct knowl edge; but all this can be understood by means of the god's own revela tion through a prophet, one who knows the will of the god through his word. In other words, one must understand that the oracle of God that 2

3

4

2. In the case of Amos 4.13 the two participles yoser and bore', inasmuch as they do not indicate time, can correspond to both our 'he who creates' and our 'he who has created'. For Amos the first interpretation is to be preferred: see 5.8, where the meaning of the phrase necessarily tends to the present. Yahweh is not only he who makes ('oseh: on purely grammatical grounds it is also possible to understand 'who has made') the Pleiades and Orion, but also he who makes darkness turn (hofek) into morning and the day into darkness (hehSik, poetic perfect evidently with out time-value). 3. qore' in parallel with wySpk, pointed with waw conversive. See hehSik in preceding note. 4. We must clearly distinguish a certain type of ecstasy of the earlier prophets, characterized by the fact that they act in a group and excite themselves with physical movement, from the ecstasy of the classical prophets. Perhaps more than ecstasy we


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the prophet communicates to people has first been communicated to him. That the phenomenon occurs in this way is clear in Hos. 1.2, 'The beginning of God's speaking in (or, by means of) Hosea.' From the passages of Amos we have read there appears with some clarity the basic outline of concerns and mode of reasoning of the people of that time: 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

For them nature was the whole of atmospheric phenomena: the rising and setting of the sun, rain, storms, the movements of the heavenly bodies. All of this was governed directly by God. The people also knew and accepted as fact, almost as empirical knowledge, things regarding the functioning of nature and in these things God's action was also involved. The only thing which, even though eluding the immediate knowledge of people of that time, still interested them was all that concerned the attitude of the god in regard to them. The teaching of Amos, which explains the wrath of God as caused by actions which we today would call immoral, is situ ated within and develops within a mentality which accepts as fact that the god seeks to avenge himself for what offends him. This innovative piece of Amos's thought is always presented as the word of God which he has heard.

In the book of Hosea we see that God orders the prophet, from the very first chapter, to carry out a symbolic action representing Israel's should speak in this case of ecstatic intuition or something of the kind. What the prophet knows by intuition seems absolutely certain to him, and it is not difficult for him to conform himself in conscience to this intuition, even though it may lead him to actions that 'normal' people can receive only with surprise and scorn. The only one who seems to note the discrepancy between his own T and the deeper voice is Jeremiah, who feels his 'intuitions' as something foreign to him, and against which he tries to rebel (20.7ff). Note moreover that in the classic prophetic type the prophet normally does not respond to questioning and does not depend therefore on imme diate interests: his gaze always goes beyond the contingent situation, even if placed within it. For consultations on affairs of state, kings had to turn to seers (this is clear on the stele of Zakir, contemporary of Elisha: the king invokes his god, who helps him by means of seers); or they turn to urim and thummim, as in the case of Saul (1 Sam. 14.41, Greek text). Moreover, I do not think it opportune to mix together vision and word into a single entity, as is normally done (cf. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement VIII [1972], pp. 944-45; H. Gunkel, / profeti [Florence, 1967 (1917)], p. 133. See below.)

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behavior in regard to God. This is a rather transparent symbolic action, sufficient for establishing another principle: the understanding of things that are not perceptible to the senses is possible for people through a sign which, by means of the prophet, must naturally come from God. Even the sign is, therefore, for Israel an instrument of knowledge: through the sign God communicates truths to Israel. These truths fall within the sphere of interests we have identified in analyzing knowledge through hearing of the word. From the Hosea text there emerges a socio-mental analogue to that of the book of Amos. As in Amos, there must be a famine or something of the kind ('the land mourns' [4.3]) and the cause is certainly to be traced back to the divinity: what does not appear and must be revealed is what has offended the divinity. The prophet declares that this concerns the fact that there is Tying, murder, and stealing'. I do not believe the reve lation should be understood in the sense that God says stealing is evil, but in the sense that the fault that has offended him should not be sought in a specific, important and notable fact, as in Amos's oracles against the people, but rather in all the cases in which the Jews do not behave well. God demands that the Jews be 'moral'. What Hosea is trying to inculcate (as is Amos for that matter), his new idea, is that doing what people call evil, evil understood in the archetypal sense of the word, always offends Yahweh: injustice offends God. In this fault priests and prophets are involved (4.4-5). To placate this wrath, sacrifices are useless (6.6): this derives from the fact that the Jews do not practice mutual hesed; only the practice of hesed can save Israel, not sacrifices: T desire love, not sacrifice, knowledge of God is more valuable than holocausts.' This is no longer a concept shared by all, and in this regard Hosea makes God's own word intervene. 5

A particular problem arises with the three verses 12.13-15 [NRSV 1214]. These are found in the middle of a long discourse which must be imagined as coming from the mouth of God: 'Jacob fled from the region of Aram, Israel gave service for a woman...by means of a prophet Yahweh made Israel leave Egypt...Ephraim has provoked God bitterly...Yahweh will make the spilt blood fall on him.' The context is in the first person, these verses in the third. In this case, if the passage to the third person is not purely accidental, there emerges a type of knowl edge regarding the past shared by all, and thus needing no support from a revelation. There exists a knowledge through memory; today we 5.

For documentation, s.v. 'wt in ThWAT.


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might say 'historical' understanding, which does not need any revelation. Another type of knowledge that permits one to penetrate within the sphere of those things that are not perceptible to the senses is that derived from a vision. Besides hearing, the prophet can also see. In the most ancient prophets the phenomenon is rare: see Amos 7.1-9. God reveals his will to the prophet through images. Different from the oracle, whose elements are usually clear, the vision has individual elements whose interpretation can present difficulties. But this is not the case in Amos 7. Here the vision has a very clear meaning and is therefore equivalent to the Word. More interesting is the case of Isaiah 6, where word and vision are fused in a single structure. In this passage God not only speaks, but grants to the prophet a vision which has the function of reinforcing the prophet's faith in the word of God, which lies at the center of the account. Isaiah sees angelic beings, sees the mantle of God, but does not see God; however, he hears God's voice (v. 8). The angel who purifies the prophet's lips removes from Isaiah the fear of encountering the sacred in a state of impurity (a widespread idea, and therefore one not 6

6. The problem of dreams and their relation to visions has been studied especi ally by classicists. These studies have taken on new vigor following the development of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, the problem was already felt in antiquity. Cf. E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), pp. 116ff. Macrobius distin guished three types of dreams, the third of which is called the oracle, xpnuaTtauoc,, which is recognizable 'when in sleep the dreamer's parent, or some other respected or impressive figure, perhaps a priest, or even a god, reveals without symbolism what will or will not happen or should or should not be done'. This type of dream seems to correspond, in its structure, to the Word. The other two kinds both con verge in the Hebraic notion of vision: the dream 'which dresses up in metaphors, like a sort of riddle, a meaning which is incomprehensible without an interpretation', and that which is an explicit representation of a future event (Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis 1.3.2 in Dodds, Greeks, p. 124). In the Judaism of the Hellenistic period Sirach was diffident about dreams (34. Iff.): dreams are false (v. 4); one should not allow the mind to become involved with them, at least if they do not come from God; but Sirach does not indicate any criterion of verification (v. 6); dreams have lead many into error (v. 7). See also Qoh. 5.6; but the interpretation of this verse may also be broader, including not only dreams in a literal sense, but also apocalyptic vision. Cf. L. Rosso Ubigli, 'Qohelet di fronte all'apocalittica', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 209-34. For a study of dreams in the Fathers of the Church, cf. D. Devoti, 'Sogno e conversione nei padri', Aug 27 (1987), pp. 101-36, with comments on various aspects of the problem, including that of the relation between visions and dreams.

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needing explanation). Another idea is joined to this: that with that ritual the sin of Isaiah is expiated (kpr). And this is new. If nothing else, the way in which sin is purified is exceptional, since Isaiah, like Hosea, must not have believed in the existence of rituals capable of expiating sin. From this text it also appears that Isaiah, differing from Hosea, takes into consideration the hypothesis that sin constitutes an impurity. But here the idea in itself is not of interest, but rather the way in which the prophet introduces this new idea. The vision's function as knowledge goes beyond the elements I have mentioned up to this point. Though the most important part of the revelation is entrusted to the Word also in Isaiah 6, we must recognize that within the vision there is a whole series of details which, if not having a purely ornamental value, must indicate something which is not central in the structure of the text, but no less interesting for this. For example, the fact that Isaiah sees the mantle of God, or rather just its lower part, can easily be read as an affirmation regarding the problem of the relationship between what God is and what we are able to know of him. It is not without reason that the angels sing that on earth is found 'the glory of God'; therefore, God is elsewhere. God is not even in the temple, into which falls only the hem of his mantle. Moreover, in Isaiah (cf. for example 7.16) there is the sign, serving to guarantee the authenticity of the word: 'Before the child learns...' We can affirm that the vision could have had knowledge functions different from those of the Word. It could have expressed concerns that today we would call metaphysical, saying things about the reality of the world above, independent of practical value or with a practical value that is not immediate. With Jeremiah there is still much of the old along with something of the new. He commonly introduces his oracles with the expression, 'God says', or the like. Another formula is frequently used: 'This is the word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh.' In this sense ch. 7 is a classic. In v. 1 we read: 'This is the word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh.' He executes the order and goes to the door of the temple, where he repeats to the people the words he has heard, saying from whom they come. In Jeremiah vision also appears, but without the peculiarities of that in Isaiah 6. In Isaiah this was the frame, the background against which God moved. It was rich in elements which are autonomous with respect to the basic meaning of the divine message. In Jeremiah the vision makes


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up part of the words of God: it is as if God. speaking, intersperses images to reinforce concepts in the prophet's mind. I am thinking of 1.11-13, the vision of the almond tree and the boiling pot. The vision, in this case, does not have a function different from the Word and in fact is part of the Word. The theology of Jeremiah, even in its newest parts, as in the doctrine of the New Covenant (31.29ff.), is always based on the Word. It is not without reason that Jeremiah's interest never turns to the structures of the cosmos, nor to the essence of God. Up to this point in Jeremiah we have found nothing new in the way discourse is articulated. But in Jeremiah there really is something new. The prophet notes the existence of a discontinuity between his own way of thinking and the Word. He can even try to set himself against the Word presented to him. Moreover, he has the sense of the real difficulty people must have had because others prophesied things different from those he prophesied (22.33). In some way his problem is that of a crite rion of truth, and to resolve the problem he used the concept of a sign, a guarantee that God will fulfill the words he makes the prophet speak. This is the same subject we read of in Deuteronomy in regard to the false prophet (Deut. 18.22): 'If a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that Yahweh has not spoken.' Thus, when someone asked Jeremiah about the weight (massa') of the word of God, he could respond: 'You are the weight of Yahweh.' The word massa' in the mouth of the questioner becomes the sign that one day what Jeremiah has said will come about. His word is the true one, not that of the other prophets. After Jeremiah came R l , certainly around the middle of the sixth century or not much later. At the beginning of his work there was an in principio, which today is easily understood in a cosmic sense as, for example, in the prologue of John's Gospel, where in principio clearly means before time. For Rl in principio means, to the contrary, 'at the beginning of time'. I do not know the purposes of the author who described the creation of the world in seven days, but Rl has only 'historical' purposes and the validity of the historical account for Rl does not need the guarantee of any revelation. It rests on memory, which is able by itself to guarantee the truth about what happened. The accounts of the patriarchs have the same position in the memory that the lists of 7

7.

For my idea of R l , cf. Chapter 7 n. 3.

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kings might have. The lists of kings help memory, but they are not documentary in our sense of the term. What is told about the patriarchs or the prophets is true, because it is remembered thus. Different from the prophet, who declares 'God has said', Rl never declares that what he is writing has been dictated to him by God. He only knows that he is writing down a memory, whose validity rests on the memory itself. The laws he collected (I do not know precisely which were already known in his day and which were added later; certainly a good part of what is called DC, P and P are later) were not put together because they made up a corpus iuris, but because they were a memory of bodies of law that had existed in Israel. Every law is attributed to Yahweh, but Yahweh's giving it is guaranteed only by memory. We are in a situation different from that of the prophets. And only because at a certain moment (around the fifth century) knowledge through memory was no longer considered valid, the idea arose that the Pentateuch was written directly by Moses: and Moses had spoken with God. As I have already written elsewhere, R l did not have juridical interests; otherwise he would have avoided laws that were clearly contradictory. The existence of contradictory laws is the best evidence that the compiler did not have juridical purposes, but purely historical ones. Like Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah, R l did not even have cosmic interests; he did not question himself about the meaning of the heavens and the stars: in other words, he never thought of himself being placed within a structure having its own laws. Exod. 20.10-11 (the Sabbath as memory of the seventh day of creation) is later than him and belongs to another current of thought. If the work of Rl was not followed by other similar works, it was because Israel's concerns changed, and especially because there was a change in the criterion of truth. If around the fifth century BCE, after Nehemiah, part of R l ' s work was taken out of its context, becoming the Law, this was possible because the text was already traditional and held to be in some way a divine work, in that the author of the Law was that Moses who had spoken with God. Read in this new perspective, the already existing material of what is today the Pentateuch, no longer considered as a collection of memories, became the word of God like that of the prophets. The expression, 'God said to Moses', was considered as s

s s

8

8. Nehemiah must not yet have known the Torah as an autonomous corpus if he was concerned about preparing the books 'about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David and letters of kings about votive offerings' (2 Mace. 2.13).


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guaranteed by Moses himself and the text could assume a normative character, becoming the Law, though this text contained many things that had nothing to do with the Law and many of the laws were in clear contrast with each other. Traces of this operation have remained in Num. 12.6-8, establishing the superiority of Moses over all the prophets, in that he is the only person who has truly spoken with God: the others have had only dreams and visions. In the other prophets, between vision, which is the work of God, and what is written, there is human interpre tation. It seems to me that the awareness of the interpretative problem appears clear: the interpretation of the vision and the word is still human. It is necessary to reach the direct word of God. While Jewish culture was developing with these concerns, around it the two great civilizations of that time, Babylon and Egypt, had been developing for some time a scientific culture and handing on myths whose cosmic interest was evident. The Babylonians and Egyptians were not interested only in history and nature, but sought to explain both from within, or at least against the background of, a cosmic structure. The person of these civilizations is not only interested in 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow', but is interested also in what was before all things. This world of becoming is compared with that of being, using a nondiscursive method, though no less effective for this. I recall the stele of Shabaka, on which in the seventh century was copied a text more than a millennium old, whose subject evidently con tinued to arouse interest: it was a complex speculation on the essence and origin of the world, including within its view humans, animals and things, in a unity pervaded by the soul of the god. Chaos and order are contemporary, two aspects of the god and of eternity. Becoming is destined, with all its distinctions, according to Egyptian thought, to be 9

10

9. 'Hear my words: If there shall be among you a prophet... I will make myself known in vision (bemar'ah, Greek ev o p d p r m ) ; in a dream I will speak to him (bo); but my servant Moses is not thus. In my house he is the most worthy of trust. I speak to him face to face, allowing myself to be seen (bemar'eh, Greek ev ei'8ei, which could also be understood, given the opposition with 'symbols', 'through con cepts, in clear terms') and not through symbols.' Moses can see the aspect of Yahweh (temunat Yahweh). The Seventy were afraid to translate literally these last words and rendered them with 86^av K-opicu. The words contradicted common Hebraic thought which was however reaffirmed in the contemporary Book of the Watchers (cf. 1 En. 14: the seer cannot come to the vision of God). 10. Cf. E. Bresciani, Letteratura e poesia dell'antico Egitto (Turin, 1969), pp. 14-17; S. Donadoni, La letteratura egizia (Florence, 1967), pp. 40-41.

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reabsorbed at the end into the indistinct unity of being that is chaos. In Babylon texts were transmitted that face the same problems as those of the Egyptians, though with a perspective in which becoming and history had a greater importance than in the Egyptian texts. Yet the gaze of humans in Mesopotamia also had for some time been turned not just towards the earth, but also towards the heavens." Something similar was also happening in Greece: that problem of arche was posed, criticizing the theory, likely of Egyptian origin, that the origin of things was to be sought in water. The osmosis between east and west had begun on the level of philosophical speculation also. There was meanwhile in Greece a profound revolution underway in the field of anthropological concepts. Through influences generally thought to derive, not from Egypt, but from the barbarian north, there began to be affirmed an image of the soul which is no longer that of Homer, which was the same as that of the Babylonian and Hebraic world. Pythagoreanism and then the first mystery religions opened the Greek world to belief in a disincarnate soul able to live an immortal and happy life in a place which no longer has anything in common with the underworld of Homer. This soul had to have greater capacities than that in the archaic concept. Alongside the Apollonian soul dear to Greek scholars, there appears in the Greek world the Dionysian soul; alongside rationality are affirmed values linked to the irrational, sentiment and feelings in general. Meanwhile at the western edge of the civilized world, a great philo sopher, known particularly for his extreme rationalism, proffers his 12

13

11. On ancient Egyptian thought, cf. H. Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (London, 1946). On Egypt, see also A. Loprieno, 'II modelloegiziano nei testi della letteratura intertestamentaria', RB 34 (1986), pp. 205-32. 12. Cf. Dodds, Greeks, pp. 154ff; and Chapter 2 above. 13. Cf. fragment 1 of Diels, from which I quote the following words of the goddess Aletheia: 'Oh, youth, who as travelling companion of immortal leaders have arrived with the cart and pair which brings you to our dwelling, I greet you: it was not a ill wind [Moira] that brought you by this path, which in truth is far from the path of humans, but Themis and Dike brought you. Therefore you will learn every thing: both the indestructible heart of round truth, and the opinion of mortals who are not to be trusted.' H. Diels and W. Kranx, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1960 [1907]). There comes to mind the proemium of Hesiod's Theogony, con sidered the model of that of Parmenides: truth is known by its being revealed. It speaks in visions.


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philosophy as the result of a vision of things given directly by Aletheia, into whose presence he came on a fiery chariot guided by the Eliads, after which Dike made him cross the threshold beyond which day and night no longer run separate courses. There is no need for great inter pretative fantasy to understand the meaning of this story. A life of justice has brought the author to the contemplation of the truth which is above, beyond this world, in the heavens, beyond the place where the ways of day and night are separate (conceptually: are distinguished); in other words, beyond the visible heavens, in the place where there is the indis tinct root of distinct things. In Greece too at the basis of a philosophy there could be a vision with religious content. We are in the second half of the sixth century, not far from Ezekiel and the first post-exilic prophets. With Ezekiel the evolution becomes more rapid. Certainly it is easy to find also in Ezekiel some traditional elements: there remain the word and the symbolic action, but the vision assumes an importance for knowledge that it did not have earlier (chs. 4-5). The relation of heaven and earth assumes new dimensions with Ezekiel. Until this time visions always took place on earth. Even that of Isaiah 6, which says so much about the divine, still takes place in the temple, that is, on earth. God spoke to the prophet's ear or showed something to his eyes, but always in earthly dimensions: even that which slipped beyond the human was expressed by means of earthly images. The book of Ezekiel, already in 1.1, speaks of mar'ot 'elohim, 'divine visions'. I do not believe that Ezekiel wished to oppose the tradition and declare that earlier visions did not come from God. He only wanted to say that his had a wider dimension: 'the heavens opened'. The gaze goes beyond this world. The vault of heaven no longer has, or no longer only has, the function of separating the waters above from those below, but also that of separating the world of God from that of humans. This corresponds to a greater understanding of divine transcendence, but it also corresponds to an expansion of people's knowledge concerns. For the pre-exilic Hebrews God stood on the clouds and rode the cherubim (cf., for example, Judg. 5.4; Ps. 80.2; Isa. 37.16). After the exile God is beyond: the vision of the world and the circle of human concerns have become wider. Ezekiel continues to show interest in events surrounding him, but his interest has characteristics different from that of his predecessors. He is aware of living after a period of Israel's history has ended. Note his drastic condemnation of the period of the monarchy, destined never to

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return, at least in the forms of the past (45.9). David is no longer at the head of the messiah's lineage, according to the traditional concept that looked on the development of the dynasty from father to son according to a rhythm that should never cease ('Prophecy of Nathan', 2 Sam. 7: text probably of the seventh century). David is, for Ezekiel, the type of the messiah (34.23 and 37.24-25), not the head of the lineage. But this signifies a profound novelty in conceptual structures: we have, even if not verbalized, the concept of 'type' with all that this entails. The ideal center of Israel is no longer the king, but itself. Rl was certainly monarchist, but in his work he considered Israel as a historical reality independent of the land and the king himself: Israel existed before the monarchy and before occupying the land; thus, it existed indepen dently of these. Israel, Ezekiel says, is as if dead (ch. 37), but will rise again for a future that will be different from the past. History is destined to have a clean break; in this vision of things the past does not derive its value from the fact that it precedes the future, but from the fact that it is what we would today call the type of the future. In other words, its value transcends history: past and future are no longer two independent realities, but two realities linked to each other by a middle term which, though dependent on the will of God, still has its own autonomous value. This means looking at reality with new eyes. This new type of con sciousness is fully expressed in the vision of the chariot. The vision of the chariot has a structure different from those in earlier prophets: it is dis tinguished not only by its breadth and richly significant details, but also by its very position with respect to the voice, from which it becomes autonomous. The elements of this vision furnish a complex theology, even though its details may escape us. In Isaiah (ch. 6) the vision acts as a background to the Word and 14

15

16

14. On the messianism of Israel, cf. Chapter 7 above, which should be comple mented by the contribution of W. Horbury, 'Messianism among Jews and Christians in the Second Century', Aug 28 (1988), pp. 71-88. Cf. also by Sacchi the abbreviated text in 'Esquisse du developpement du messianisme juif a la lumiere du texte qumranien 11 QMelch', ZAW 100 (1988), pp. 202-14. 15. Cf. Ezek. 34.27: T will raise up for them a single shepherd... my servant David'; and 37.24-25: 'My servant David will be king (melek) over them...My servant David will be their prince {nasi') forever.' 16. For the reinterpretation of the 'privileges of David' (Isa. 55.3), cf. E. Lipihski, Le poeme royal du Ps. LXXXIX, 1-5, 20-38 (Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, 6; Paris, 1967); and P. Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976), pp. 66-67.


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furnishes some elements of the divine-human relationship; in Jeremiah (ch. 1) the vision is within the Word and serves to illustrate it. In Ezekiel (ch. 1) the vision has a value which is to great degree autonomous, and has meanings that normally go beyond history. The four wheels of the chariot may have been suggested to the prophet by the observation of a very mundane chariot. But the fact that they have the ability to move in all directions makes it clear that the wheels of this heavenly chariot are different from those of earthly chariots. The number four recurs too often to be, even in the case of the wheels, merely a transposition of the four wheels of earthly chariots: the beings have four faces and four wings each. The number four is above all a cosmic symbol. In 1.14 we learn that the beings of the vision move like lightning, that is, with instantaneous speed. This also emphasizes that the chariot of the vision belongs to a world where the laws of this one do not apply. The world of the divine is different from ours, ruled by laws different from those of this world, even if all are, of course, willed by God; but in any case it exists and acts upon our world. In other words, there appears in Ezekiel an interest in the world above, the world of God, where not only God dwells, but also other beings. Even the existence of a heavenly court is not a novelty. What is new is the complexity with which it is conceived, and especially novel is its relation to God and to the world. See, for example, in 1.21 ki ruah hahayyah ha 'ofannim; this means more or less that in the wheels of the chariot there is the same spirit as in the angelic beings. This detail indicates a search for unity in the upper world, even if I would not know how to explain it in rational terms. For interpreting this new type of knowledge, there is also some importance to the fact that the visions and hearings of the Word of Ezekiel include indications of the days on which they happened. These 17

18

17. The authenticity of this verse is placed in doubt in the Biblia Hebraica of Kittel because of its omission in the Vatican Codex. In the BHS it is placed in doubt on a more solid basis attributed to the Greek original. See Rahlfs and Ziegler. It is certain that the verse should be expunged from the Greek. It is less certain that it did not belong to the Hebrew original. We are dealing with a difficult passage with rare words, perhaps errors, creating difficulties even when it was inserted, on the basis of the Hebrew, in the Greek tradition. This is one of those characteristic passages that gives the translator headaches. Origen expunged it. 18. The translation of ruah as 'wind' is impossible in this case. 'The wind of the living being was in the wheels' is a meaningless phrase and demands accommoda tion of the words in the translation.

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usually happen on Sunday, the first day of the week, when time emerges from the sacredness of the sabbath to return to the human. The week is not just a period of seven days; it is the earthly projection of a cosmic structure, that of creation. For Ezekiel the sabbath is no longer the recalling of leaving Egypt, as in Deuteronomy (5.15), but the actualization and repetition of the seventh day of creation, as in Exodus (20.11). The liturgy is no longer a simple act of homage to the god; it links the world above with that of earth. The exact date becomes a basic element of the liturgy, because behind every date there are positions of the stars. The heavens, much less a physical concept for the ancients than for us, are in close relation to the earth. The term 'heavens' is not related only to God; 'heavens' are a whole cosmos of powers which make their influence felt also on this world below. It is not surprising that Ezekiel dedicated great atten tion to the problem of the sacred in the liturgy: the sacred is a cosmic force. Within this framework the problem of the validity of knowledge, already posed by Jeremiah, is also resolved in a different way. Ezekiel, like all his predecessors, knows the voice; but at the very beginning of his book there is described symbolically a new way of conceiving knowledge of that which is not available to the senses. A written scroll is presented to Ezekiel and he is invited to eat it (2.8): he absorbs the content of the scroll. With this he 'knows' by having assimilated, so to speak, the Word, which becomes at the same time his and God's. With the Word of the earlier prophets it was possible to think of their having forgotten or changed something. With the word of Ezekiel this is impossible, because it is within him, it is part of him. In this view of things certain phenomena fit which today we would call paranormal (cf. 3.12-15). Our word 'paranormal' derives from our declared incapacity to explain these phenomena in terms of our science. Ezekiel fits them into his view of things: he could be carried elsewhere by a ruah, a superior force, regarding which he can only say that this 19

19. For the matter of the 364-day calendar and its liturgical importance, besides the classic work of A. Jaubert, La date de la cene (Paris, 1957), cf. also her article, 'Le calendrier des Jubiles et les jours liturgiques de la semaine', VT7 (1957), pp. 3561. The bibliography on the problem is becoming ever longer; cf. in particular J.C. VanderKam, 'The Origin, Character and Early History of the 364-Day Calendar: A Reassessment of Jaubert's Hypothesis', CBQ 41 (1979), pp. 390-411. The outline of this calendar is found in a table in Jaubert's work cited above. Cf. also below, n. 29.

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was accompanied by a great noise, which left him 'sad and dismayed' (3.14: rwh ns'tny wtqhny w'lk mr bhmt rwhy wyd yhwh 'ly hzqh). The expression mar behamat ruhi, which I have translated 'sad and dis mayed', could only with difficulty derive from a literary fiction. This is a strange experience which the prophet lived through. The similar account in 11.1 has a purely literary aspect, with no presence of any psychologi cal element: 'A spirit lifted me up and brought me to the eastern gate of the temple.' In Second and Third Isaiah, which are not chronologically distant from Ezekiel, one no longer finds the latter's anxiety for knowledge. The interest turns once again on the historical axis. If one speaks of God who is 'creator (bore') of the heavens and former (yoser) of the earth' (45.18), it is only to reaffirm his omnipotence, which is the guarantee of the promises: God acts directly in history and can control it (Isa. 44.2428). We may note in these prophets the same absence of angelic beings typical of the Deuteronomist and the earliest prophets. The problem of Second Isaiah always seems to be protection from idolatry: faced with ideas from Iran that spoke of a god as origin of evil, he affirms that God is the origin of light as well as darkness, of good as well as evil. God is ywsr 'wr wbwr' Mk, 'wsh Slwm wbwr' r'. 'ny yhwh 'wsh kl 'lh (45.7). But in Second Isaiah there may also be a polemic against not only the new ideas coming from Iran, but also certain inter pretations of his countrymen. It is true that God is in heaven and is seated upon the hug ha'ares (40.22), but this God is also the one who speaks in clear terms to the offspring of Jacob (45.19): /' bstr dbrty, bmqwm 'rs Mk, V 'mrty Izr' y'qb:—btwhw bqSwny—'Not in secret have I spoken, in the place of the land of darkness: I have not said to the 20

21

22

20. The angels are usually ignored by the prophets, until Ezekiel, and by the Deuteronomist. In the Bible there are passages regarding divine beings other than Yahweh that are tolerated: others in which this type of passage has been reworked. In still other passages there appears an anti-angelic polemic; the angels are identified with the prophets. After the exile, however, there is a real revival of angelology. In this era the angels are already clearly identified with the heavenly court and well positioned within monotheism. Cf. A. Rofe, Israelite Belief in Angels in the PreExilic Period as Evidenced by Biblical Traditions (Jerusalem, 1969), Hebrew origi nal with extensive English summary. See also W. Heidt, Angelology of the Old Testament (Washington, DC, 1949); M. Lana, 'Deuteronomio e angelologia alia luce di una variante qumranica (4QDt32,8)\ Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 179-208. 21. This affirmation is presented as the word of God; cf. 45.1. 22. b is widely accepted conjecture.

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offspring of Jacob, "Seek me in chaos".' God does not speak either in chaos nor from chaos, an element that is beyond the heavens and which a philosophy of Egyptian origin saw as the root and home of a principle which has never disappeared, nor will ever disappear. The fulfillment of the promises depends exclusively on the omnipotent will of God. There are no cosmic structures that support and guarantee it. God is on high, but his Word has been spoken in this world. The heavens have never opened before the prophet; the word of God was spoken here, in this world. The only echo of the new spirituality may be the conception, at least in one case, of the Word as an entity distinct from God. It is able to des cend to earth, like the rain or snow, destined not to return to God until it has accomplished the purpose for which he sent it on earth (55.10-11). With Zechariah, towards the end of the sixth century BCE, we are once again within the atmosphere inaugurated by Ezekiel with his famous vision of the chariot. But there are notable differences. First of all what is striking is the lack of breadth in Zechariah's texts compared with those of Ezekiel. The instrument of knowledge is the vision which is independent of the Word, but the prophet's concerns are turned exclu sively towards the earth, towards the particular and immediate event. The Israel Ezekiel is concerned about is the perfect Israel of the future, where temple and prince will find their right balance. Zechariah, however, is involved, perhaps with noble, though vain, purposes of mediation, in a struggle to the death between Davidites and Zadokites, from which the Davidic lineage will emerge the loser after various developments. An example of this way of doing politics is the vision of ch. 3. Joshua, who in that moment was losing and should have cut his losses by submitting to his stronger opponent, is tried in a vision by God himself. The satan had much to say against Joshua, but the angel of Yahweh does not allow him to speak, rather giving orders to the servants, that is, the serving angels, to clothe Joshua in fine clothing and to put on his head the pure tiara. I emphasize the words I used above, 'doing polities', not history. Zechariah is immersed in the affairs of his time and his text, 23

23. On the events leading to the end of Zerubbabel, cf. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (London, 1987), p. 87. Even if Smith's reconstruction cannot be followed in some details (for example, the assassi nation of Zerubbabel by the Davidites themselves), it does interpret very clearly the situation at the end of the sixth century BCE.

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8. Knowledge among the Jews 4

ably reworked, mirrors nearly a decade of them. Here I am not concerned with the political events; I am interested in the way he presents that which other prophets, earlier, had simply called an oracle of Yahweh. The prophet saw Joshua being absolved by God, in that his sin did not come to the judgment. Between God and history there is an 'in-between world', where decisions are made which later can only be verified in history. The angels and their functions have multiplied with respect to the past. It thus seems that the vision as an autonomous instrument of knowl edge goes back at least to the end of the sixth century. It should be noted that from this moment on historiography disappears from Israel. The book of Chronicles was not really written with historical concerns, but was rather just an ideological reworking of a pre-existent historical work. The so-called memoirs of Nehemiah and Ezra, to whatever era they are dated, are in no way historical works, since they lack breadth: they are fragmentary and chronicle-like. If they are authentic, the docu ments are authentic; otherwise the documents are forgeries, and thus capable of explaining, according to Chabod's theory, the time in which they were fabricated. To find another historical work one must reach the deutero-canonical books of the Maccabees in a Hellenistic environment. In other words, that knowledge which had its roots and justification in memory disappeared; evidently it was no longer important, because it was no longer knowledge. This is due to a change in concerns, which, in its turn, is linked to a change of mentality or, we might say, of philosophy. The gaze of the person, while turned towards the cosmos, renounced history. The prevailing concern was for the world surrounding the person, not for the past. In Greece, too, philosophers were decidedly more numerous than historians. The problem of knowledge during Hellenism (I accept the thesis that sees Hellenism in Palestine even before 333 BCE) has been studied by Hengel. He insists on explaining that apocalyptic, which brought visions to full development, is posterior to 200 BCE. Today the new dating of the Book of the Watchers, the Book of Astronomy and the certain dating of the Book of Dreams to around 160 BCE allows us to see a greater 25

24. On the very ancient events in some sections of Zechariah, see Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico, pp. 32-33; and J.A. Soggin, Storia d'Israele (Brescia, 1984), p. 402. 25. F. Chabod, Lezioni di metodo storico (Bari, 2nd edn, 1973).


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continuity among the visions of Ezekiel, Zechariah and Daniel and takes better account of their parallelism with the Greek world. Hengel explains the apocalyptic type of knowledge, based on the vision, as 'das iibliche Mass der Erfahrung transzendierende Mitteilung', which the authors presented as a 'direkte gottliche Offenbarung', but this explanation leaves me puzzled. Should one deduce from these words of Hengel that the ne'um yhwh was a knowledge that did not surpass the normal human capacity for knowledge? What distinguishes the Word from the vision is not the sphere of knowledge, because both concern the same area, that which escapes immediate experience, but the area of human concerns. That the vision is more obscure than the oracle is clear, at least in general. The fact is that the oracle moves within the horizon of history and the salvation of the individual or Israel, while the vision, even with the exceptions we have seen, spreads out towards the cosmos, conceived as an ordered system, in which are inserted the events of all peoples and Israel in particular. That this order could then reveal itself as problematic, even as disorder, is another problem, not unknown to post-exilic Jews, and was certainly one of the reasons leading to speculation on angelic sins. It is interesting to note in this regard the fortunes of the Book of Noah. Rewritten by the author of the Book of the Watchers, it still retains, despite corrections and additions that are usually easy to see, its original character as a 'historical' work. From ch. 6 up to ch. 11 the text we have derives from an immediate adaptation of the Book of Noah. Its original content has been identified by Garcia Martinez. What interests us here is that we are dealing with a long account, a 'history', in which no vision intervenes. Thus it seems, for this reason, that this is an ancient text. 26

27

28

29

26. M. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (WUNT, 10; Tubingen, 2nd edn, 1973), p. 369. Hengel's approach seems conditioned by that of von Rad (Theologie des Alten Testament [Munich, 1960], II, p. 319), which explains apocalyptic as a particular development of wisdom, and thus is led to interpret apocalyptic knowledge only against the background of wisdom. 27. Cf. G.L. Prato, 'L'universo come ordine e come disordine', RivB 30 (1982), pp. 51-77. 28. F. Garcia Martinez, '4 QMesAram y el libro de Noe', Salmanticensis 28 (1981), pp. 195-232. 29. Cf. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976), p. 31.


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Now the observation that the Book of Noah does not know visions, but has a type of narration that can be defined, though within quotation marks, as 'historical' seems to take the terminus ante quern to a definite date: the end of the sixth century or not much later. Starting with ch. 12 the vision begins. Whoever organized the story of the Book of Noah in the Book of the Watchers certainly wrote after 500 BCE, when the vision had become a common means for expressing one's own thought: how much later than this, I do not know. But I would like to explore the problem of visions, not that of chronology. Beginning with ch. 12 the whole discourse is conceived as an exposition of things seen in visions; that is, we have the greatest pos sible development of the vision as a means of knowledge. It is curious to note that within the vision, which I consider as a frame surrounding the whole text, there are spread a whole series of individual visions. Every so often the expression 'I saw' recurs, alluding either to new visions or to a sort of vision within the vision. This is clear in ch. 14: the ascent of Enoch to heaven, to the very contemplation of God, or more precisely, to the contemplation of what can be contemplated of God. Angelology appears there, organized first around the four archangels, who in an addition will become seven (ch. 20). It goes without saying that corresponding to the change in the number of archangels there is an increase in the number of things known. It would seem that the number of angels has been adapted to that of the heavens. God is perceived as transcendent and unknowable, but closely linked to the heavens, so Enoch also undertakes a number of heavenly journeys, which are nothing else than a new form of the vision. The heavens, which must have been growing ever more well known through astronomical information coming from Mesopotamia or Egypt, or perhaps from both, seem, as the place of the divine, an object of knowledge to be had only though vision, which is a gift of God. In other words, some data elaborated by Mesopotamian and Egyptian science were received by the Hebraic world, but these are placed over against the demands of Hebraic tradition. When the Greek world, through Thales, received for the first time the idea that the world had water as its origin, it subjected this idea to a rather ingenuous critique, but a critique nonetheless. The Greek civilization absorbed the basic data regarding the cosmos and began to organize the data according to its own way of thinking.

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Something similar also happened in the Hebraic world, whose own spirituality did not require a critical spirit, but certainty, and which was accustomed to considering the heavens as the dwelling place of the divine, not part of nature. For Israelites the heavenly world could only be known through revelation, and the principal means of revelation, from 500 BCE on, was the vision. So we begin to see heavenly journeys. While this derives seemingly from Egyptian or Babylonian influence, there was also something that arose in the Hebraic world of this era which seems to us today of Greek origin. This something, as we will see, was similar to the Greek critical spirit. Even the Book of Astronomy is nothing but the recounting of what the archangel Uriel showed to Enoch. In the Book of Astronomy we have the documentation of the ascendancy in Jerusalem of the Priestly codex's liturgy and its cosmic foundations. The author, even knowing that the solar year has 365 days, still proposes a liturgical calendar of 364 days, the adaptation of a 360-day calendar, originally Babylonian. The adoption of a 364-day calendar not only allowed a liturgy with fixed dates, but even more importantly, guaranteed absolute respect for the sabbath, without any profanation, because no feast ever fell on the 30

30. A 360-day calendar was known in Babylon and derived from the division of the celestial horizon into 360 degrees, adapted to become a civil calendar (cf. F.H. Cryer, 'The 360-Day Calendar and Early Judaean Sectarianism', SJOT 1 [1987], pp. 116-22). The Jewish calendar of 364 days is the only known attempt to base a religious calendar on a system of reference other than the moon. The calendar thus constructed permitted inserting the liturgy within the cosmos (the calendar's referent is not the sun, but essentially the stars taken as a whole), preserving the sabbath marvellously from any possibility of profanation as the feasts always fell on a Wednesday or a Sunday. It was abolished for the first time in the days of Menelaus (cf. VanderKam, 'Origin, Character and Early History of the 364-Day Calendar'), but it is difficult to understand why it was not re-established under the Maccabean restoration (cf. P.R. Davies, 'Calendrical Change and Qumran Origins: An Assessment of VanderKam's Theory', CBQ 45 [1983], pp. 80-89). The solution to the problem is found in a Rabbinic text, according to which at the time of Hillel someone asked him if the Passover sacrifice were more powerful than the sabbath, and thus if it could be offered (cf. y. Pes. 6.1.33a). The text explains that the question was posed because the relevant norm had been forgotten. Now it is impossible that in Jerusalem there would be no one who remembered the rules that regulated the Passover, when it fell in the sabbath or, rather, the question must have been posed when a Passover fell for the first time on the sabbath, something possible in a liturgy based on a lunar-solar calendar, but impossible with the solar calendar (cf. F. Manns, Pour lire la Mishna [Jerusalem, 1984], pp. 50-51).

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day of the sabbath. The defence of the sabbath is characteristic of the work of Nehemiah, and this is a good point of reference for purposes of dating. It is interesting to note how history tends to disappear within the cosmic structures. The author of the Book of Dreams (1 En. 85. Iff.) rediscovers, but no longer through memory: human events are a cosmic manifestation, like everything else that exists, and consequently can be known at their deepest level only through revelation, through visions. An individual event becomes an expression of something transcendent and the symbol indicating the fact veils it with materiality while inter preting it at its deepest level. A characteristic feature of the book of Job signals the intrusion, if not the supremacy, of a new type of knowledge, one which shows the existence of a certain critical and rationalistic spirit even within Israelite society. Job, in discussing with his friends, comes to affirm that he also has a brain (Job 12.3: gm ly Ibb kmwkm, I' nwfl 'nwky mkm): 'I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you.' Thus he is able to counter the arguments of the three friends who base themselves on tradition: 'inquire now of bygone generations...' (8.8ff.). Clearest of all is 13.1, read in its context: 'Look, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood,' that is, T have reached these conclusions from my personal experience.' It is interesting that, like Job, Elihu, the fourth friend, rejects the passive acceptance of tradition and seeks to save its values by presenting them in a rational way: traditional wisdom seems to have substance only inasmuch as it corresponds to rational principles. While one of the friends can have recourse to a nocturnal apparition (4.13) to support his own ideas, Elihu never has recourse to such means of knowledge. This 31

32

31. Cf. Neh. 10.32 and 13.15-22. On this basis it seems that the theology of the Priestly author was already known (only P and P ?). For a different view, see H. Cazelles, 'La mission d'Esdras', VT 4 (1954), pp. 113-37, repeated frequently also by this writer. Cf. Storia del mondo giudaico, pp. 2 5 , 3 8 , 4 5 . Cazelles considers 13.15-22 as an interpolation, but this means some problems in the face of the care for the sabbath attested also in 10.32. Here there is the expression baSSabbat ubeyom qodeS which has a typically Priestly character. Cf. Exod. 12.16 (P«); 31.14-15 (P ); Lev. 23.7-8 (Holiness Code). See E. Cortese, Levitico (Casale, 1982). g

s

s

32. Elihu takes up themes and words of Zophar, but treats the themes differently, and the use of Zophar's expressions should be seen within the literary technique of 'allusion' (cf. G. Pasquali, 'Arte allusiva', in Stravaganze quarte e supreme [2 vols.; Venice, 1968 (1951)], II, pp. 275-82). Elihu does not deny that God can speak to

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motif of rationality, as a value of knowledge, rationality that must be based on experience, will be typical of Qoheleth. In other words, the teaching of the ancients, which was stored in memory, is no longer sensed as infallible, even by the traditionalists, who search for support in opposing directions, but always other than memory; either in apparitions, a close relative of the vision, or in human reason. Summarizing, the Persian period is marked by concerns wider than those of the periods of the monarchy or the exile, concerns which find expression either in visions or, in isolated cases, in a certain critical exposition of problems, transcending the particular and the practical. In this sense we can also see the difference between the first and second parts of the book of Proverbs. But that concern with penetrating the mystery of the cosmos, which among the Greeks took the form of what we call metaphysics, among the Jews continued to produce 'higher knowledge' by means of the vision. And as Greek metaphysics became the beginning of science, the 'higher knowledge' became the basis of all knowledge, even of an empirical sort. It is written in the later book of Wisdom that God himself gave the author the true knowledge of things: from the order of nature with particular reference to time and astronomy, which were still sciences 33

humans and does so in various ways (33.14); these are admonitions to turn humans from evil (33.17) and not revelations of truths, as for Zophar (4.13ff.). In 34.3-4 Elihu affirms that, 'as the ear distinguishes words and the palate tastes foods, thus we know how to explore what is right and identify among us that which is good'. G. Ravasi, who has translated the text (Rome, 1979), comments: 'E un'invito all' "esplorazione", alia ricerca, all'investigazionetecnica...utilizzandogli strumentidi cui l'intelletto e dotato...' (p. 685). Note the rationalism with which Elihu demonstrates that God is just: 'Can an enemy of justice ever reign?' See also the beginning of ch. 36, where Elihu's method, so to speak, is presented. 33. Qoh. 1.13: 'It is mine to search and to reflect by means of wisdom [that is, intelligence; cf. 2.9 hokmati] on all that happens under the heavens. This is a hard undertaking that God has given to humans.' Cf. also 1.16; 2.1; 2.3, etc. Faced with the vast horizons that apocalyptic knowledge opened to humans, Qoheleth took a decidedly contrary position (cf. Rosso Ubigli, 'Qohelet di fronte all'apocalittica'). He admits that the human person feels within themself the need to know everything, but this need is destined to remain simply that, so that the person always remembers that only God is in heaven (3.11) and the person is on earth (5.1). Qoheleth does not deny the existence of heavenly 'secrets', things that escape human awareness, but he affirms that, precisely because these are things that escape us, it is useless to speak of them (7.24).

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that could be known only through visions, to botany and pharmacopoeia (Wis. 7.17-21). In this way the unity of the knowable is reached: all that is considered science is revelation. Even more, science is 'true', to use the same adjective used by the author, only inasmuch as it is revealed. In this absolute unity of knowing that has its basis in revelation there is also included in some way uprightness in daily life, inasmuch as it is regulated by the Law. The KaX&q ^fiv, which is indispensable for right knowing depends on the o-uvxepeiv xa vouiua. In other words, the observance of the Law is the source of wisdom. This is according to the Letter of Aristeas (§127), which also poses explicitly the problem of good things and bad; how it is possible, given the unity of creation (utou; Kaxa|3o?i'fjc; o-uarig) that there are pure and impure things (§129). Moreover, the Letter of Aristeas insists on the fact that God also knows the future (§132): history therefore has a plan in the divine mind, it is part of the unity of the cosmos, a unity that should be accepted even with its differences and contradictions (clearly only apparent). Other texts, instead of the Law, prefer to put forward the motif of asceticism, as does the author of the Book of Dreams: 'I saw two [visions] before I took a wife' (/ En. 83.2). The fact that asceticism and enkrateia are means that help visions does not, in my opinion, derive only from moralistic concerns. In reality asceticism must have helped meditation, that complex phenomenon which, by means of concentra tion, leads to particular intuitions. It would be hard to consider a passage like this a literary topos. The oldest text of this genre must at least reflect some authentic experience. There is the sense of perceiving the world of the spirit as a reality which the senses can cloud. Knowledge and ethics are seeking their unity. Still in the second century BCE the vision has a dominant function also in the book of Daniel, where, however, the visions remain quite distinct within the story, which is not presented in its entirety as a vision. Beginning with the first century BCE the types of knowledge multiply. On one hand there remains the 'vision' type. This is still documented in the Epistle of Enoch; in the Book of Parables, which is introduced by the formula, 'Second Vision of Enoch', indicating the whole work taken as a unit; in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch; in the Slavonic Enoch; and in the Fourth Book of Ezra, in which the visions are isolated one from another. Consider also the Testament genre, where sometimes 34

35

34. The author does not say how this revelation occurred. 35. Cf. G.L. Prato, //problema della teodicea in Ben Sira (Rome, 1975).

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visions appear when speaking of God, of the heavens and of history (cf. T.Levi 2.5-12 and 3.1-10). Alongside the type of knowing through vision, we must also note the presence of a real astrological knowledge. Astrology has survived to our own day, and its legitimacy has always been suspect, both in our society and in Jewish society of that time. It even seems likely that in some sectors of Israelite society at the end of the first millennium it was pro hibited on the basis of the Torah, but the fact remains that some magicalastrological texts have come down to us. In a horoscope of Qumran, for example, there is speculation on the features of the future messiah (4QMessAram). The so-called Treatise of Shem also merits special attention. With Essenism we have a profound evolution in the type of knowl edge and the exposition of thought. A first consideration regards the range of concerns. Essenism, on the one hand, applies itself, like apoca lyptic, to the structures of the heavens, the angelic world, the mystery of God's will. Like the apocalyptic of the first century BCE, it does not give much importance to the problem of the immortality of the soul, so much so that it would be uncertain what the Essenes thought about this, had we not the later evidence of Flavius Josephus. Essenism also has some interest, if not in history, at least in individual human events, and particularly their understanding in the context of the mystery of God, what theologians today would call 'salvation history'. Furthermore, if we take the Damascus Document, we will see that the author traces the history of the sect and carries out this operation on the basis of memory. The oldest peSer Habakkuk speaks of events, con sidering them as well known to all. It avoids any type of narration through vision, which the apocalyptics used even for events contempo rary to themselves. So we must not exclude a certain interest in history 36

37

38

36. Garcia Martinez, '4 QMesAram y el libro de Noe'. 37. Cf. J.H. Charlesworth, 'Treatise of Shem', in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, I (Garden City, NY, 1983), pp. 474-80. The scholarly edition of the text, by the same author, is in 'Die "Schrift von Sem": Einfuhrung, Text und Ubersetzung', in ANRW20 (Berlin, 1987), pp. 951-87. The text was first presented by Charlesworth in BJRL 60 (1978), pp. 376-403. 38. A positive response to the problem can be found in J. van der Ploeg, 'L'immortalite de l'homme d'apres les textes de la Mer Morte', VT 2 (1952), pp. 171-75; also in 'The Belief in Immortality in the Writings of Qumran', BO 18 (1961), pp. 118-24; L. Rosso Ubigli, 'La concezione della vita futura a Qumran', /?ivfi30(1982), pp. 5-49.


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within Essenism, an interest expressed through a type of knowledge which does not pretend to be revealed. The speculation of the author of the peSer begins where events need interpretation, that is, need to be placed in comparison with the whole of the sect's ideas. The instrument of interpretation is the Bible, which is already considered the word of God and therefore truthful. In this truth of the Bible history was also included. According to lQpHab 7.1-8, the prophets already knew future history, but they lacked the revelation of specific times. The Teacher of Righteousness however possessed even this. It is clear that, according to the author of the peSer, the Teacher of Righteousness had a revelation greater even than that of the prophets, but he does not say how (7.4-5). Moreover the author of the peSer con siders the Teacher of Righteousness inspired, but does not seem to consider himself inspired in the same way. In reality the peSer's way of proceeding is rationalistic, because religi ous truth is all in the written text of the Bible, where it is complete and crystallized, not in a process of formation. The text of the Bible is no longer the mirror of religious experience, which, for the sect, is reflected in its own writings, but is the basis of all truths. The Bible has already become a book, whatever may have been the exact, and seemingly undefined, extent of the canon. It is up to the human person to know how to read reality by means of biblical revelation. But in order to do this is reason enough, or is something else still needed? The existence within Essenism of a rational process of exposition is confirmed by analyzing the later Damascus Document. The author says that he 'reveals something to the ears of those who listen', for example in 2.2, the ways of the impious; but he says nothing to explain how he came to know what he is revealing to others. Yet he knows the problem of revelation, because he says (2.12) that God instructed 'men who are qeri'e Sem ['chosen' or something similar] by means of the anointed of his spirit of holiness'. The prophets spoke the truth in God's name, not because God spoke to them, but only because they were 'anointed with the spirit of the holiness of God'. In our terms, 'because they were inspired by the holy spirit', or something of the sort. The author of the Damascus Document does not even say who revealed to him that the prophets were inspired by the spirit. If he does not say, it means that this must have been a commonplace that, at least to members of the sect, presented no difficulty. It was a common notion,

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deriving from the very way in which the Bible was already being read. All of it was God's truth, even when it was a purely historical account based on memory. What counted was that, whatever the type of exposi tion and thus whatever the underlying knowledge, this is always and in every case the word of God. But the fact that the author of the Damascus Document speaks only to members of the sect, because only they can understand (l.lff.), and expresses ideas that he knows are shared with his listeners, shows the intrusion of a new concept: that of 'tradition', and that tradition as surety. At the beginning of his work he declares explicitly that he is addressing exclusively 'those who know and practice (righteousness yod'e sedeqY, or, without the metaphor, only members of the sect. He can make his revelations only to those who already know righteousness, and these are thus revelations that must concern only a certain develop ment of the sect's ideology, not its bases. Furthermore, only those who have already accepted the basic truths of the sect can follow these new revelations, which as revelations then amount to nothing. The author knows that the Law does not foresee all possible cases and that there are obscure commandments (nistarot, already in the Rule of the Community 5.11). The Law is like a well that must be constantly dug, and so it will continue until the coming of the Teacher of Righteousness (Damascus Document 6.3-11). The author's discourse, after the prologue, continues by giving two types of revelations. One regards the fate of the impious: a few words fashioned around the obvious, at least for the majority of Jews at the time, if not for absolutely all (2.5-6): 'Force, power and great fury with flames of fire...against all those who have strayed from the way...for them there will be neither remnant nor escape.' This is not revelatory: it is obvious. The author dedicates much more space and attention to the other type of revelation, but we should ask whether the author is revealing or demonstrating. In 2.14 he introduces this series of revelations with the phrase, T shall open ('agalleh) your eyes that you may see and under stand the works of God.' In other words the author seems to be intro ducing a revelation discourse, which ought to serve as an interpretative framework to present cases of correct halakah. But in reality there is no such discourse: once taken for granted that the listener considers the Bible as the word of God and considers as his words also the basic elements of the sect's ideology, the innovative part, which should be comprised of


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the revelation itself, is always presented by means of reasoning. 'Those who marry two women in their lives' (4.21) are mistaken, 'because the principle of creation is "male and female God created them".' Also in the second part of the work, that containing the laws, it is worth noting that, though some are apodictic in form, others explain why a certain penalty is inflicted (see 9.1 for the first type and 9.6 for the second). The judgment of David's conduct is also interesting. In the author's mind he was a saint. How could it be that this holy man did not observe the scripture that forbids the prince to possess many women? The answer is found in history, obviously as this was known to the author (5.2-6): 'David had not read in the book of the Law, because it had been sealed...and it was not opened again until the coming of Zadok.' Thus David's deeds were acceptable to God even if not in conformity with the Law, except for the blood of Uriah. So even one who does not know the Law is held to observe a certain morality; whether explicit about it or not, the author is clear about that concept which we call natural law and to which Paul also refers: 'All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law' (Rom. 2.12). It is interesting that, according to this example, only the area of sexual behavior is within the scope of revealed norms. Yet the author knows he cannot pretend to convince the wicked: he is addressing only those who know righteousness. In fact he follows a teaching of the Rule of the Community which forbids talking to men of unrighteousness (9.16-17). It is useless to speak to the men of unright eousness, because in their lives there is a fundamental error, which is incurable: they have not followed the instruction of the Teacher of Righteousness. Only those who have faith in him can be freed from judgment (lQpHab 8.2-3). A different treatment must be given to the pages of the Rule and the Hymns, which one tradition of interpretation sees, at least in their general outline, as works written by a single individual. In the Rule there is neither vision, nor hearing, nor argumentation. We can gather that the work contained the truth for those who believed in the tradition to which the Teacher of Righteousness also belonged. What is difficult to understand is on what basis the Teacher of Righteousness considered himself inspired. I am thinking of the way in which the doctrine of the two spirits is introduced (1QS 3.13) and the way in which the disposi tions regarding the sect, its laws, are given.

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On the doctrine of the two spirits, the author says that this is a doctrine which the maskil must know in order to teach it 'to all the sons of the light'. The author of the Rule is addressing only the 'sons of the light', that is, those who already belong to a faith, a tradition. The maskil can therefore teach the faithful with authority. But it cannot be denied that this type of discourse, so apodictic in form, is different from that of the following works, the peSarim and Damascus Document. From the God of knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before men exist He has established their thoughts; and when they come into existence as it has been established, they accomplish their tasks in accord with the thought of His glory without change... he has appointed for man {xvayyasem lo) two spirits, with which he goes forward until the time of His intervention (in history). These are the spirits of truth ('emei) and of evil {'awel) (1QS 3.15-19).

Regarding the study of the Law, the author of the Rule says that this should be done in order to fulfill what scripture says: 'Prepare in the wilderness the way, e t c ' (1QS 8.13-15). In this case we have the peSer backwards and, it would seem, even the reason for the peSer. The rightly interpreted scriptures, while being the key for understanding history, are also a gude for acting, for creating history. The Essenes' aim is not only a rational one: understanding history also means to be able to act rightly in it (i.e. according to the will of God). Could the author speak in this way because he based himself on a tradition that was already saying more or less the same thing? Or was he aware of having received a great individual revelation, as those who followed his ideas and actually had faith in him seemed to believe? Could there have been someone in Israel at about the beginning of our era who dared to declare that he knew a truth which was neither deduced from the tradition, nor learned from God? John's Jesus (8.40) justifies his own teaching saying he heard it directly from God. In favor of the second hypothesis there are some expressions of the author which introduce the concept of illumination. In 1QS 11.3-4, in speaking of God, the author says: 'From the spring of His knowledge He has made my light spring forth (patah), so that my eye was able to contemplate His marvels and the light of my heart the future mystery and the eternal being (?) (howye' 'olam).' The text says that from the mind of God comes a light (a spiritual element) that enlightens the author, who can consequently retrace, with his own mind, the path which the light of God took downward, thus


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coming to contemplate the marvels of God, the future mystery and perhaps the absolute being, or something of the sort. The enlightened one reaches, by grace, the very knowledge of God. It should be noted that the term illumination is not ours, but was coined by the author himself, at least as a verb, and this has its own importance. It means that this type of knowledge was consciously opposed to some other type of knowledge, in which evidently there was no Tight'. The phenomenon of illumination derived from that of vision. The terminology used by the author to describe it proves this: 'My eye sees, contemplates (hibbitah)...' (1QS 11.3). But it is distinguished by the vastness of its object which is even greater than that of vision, so vast as to be impossible to describe. This is not description, when one speaks of having seen 'the marvels of God, the future mystery and, (perhaps) the absolute being'. This does not prevent the knowledge of an object which cannot be described in human words from having its effect on a person. From this strange knowledge, without an object that can be conceptualized, the author derives the certainty of being justified by God. The possibility of a justification by means of works is unknown to the author, obviously because this theory had not yet been formulated. The meaning of illumination is reached through reading the statement about illumination in its context, which does not concern knowledge but spiritual meditation (1QS 11.2-21 passim): As for me, my judgment is entrusted to God; in His hand is the perfection of my way and the uprightness of my heart. With His righteousness He wipes out my sins, for from the spring of His knowledge He has made my light spring forth so that my eye was able to contemplate His marvels and the light of my heart the future mystery and in the howye' 'olam my eye has seen a salvation concealed from men, a knowledge and a mezimmat 'ormah [i.e., an ability to act greater than that of humans]. As for me, if I err, the mercy of God is always my salvation and if I stumble because of the evil of the flesh, my judgment is always victorious through the righteousness of God...

In this passage there is no description of the revelation about justification. There is rather the perception of justification as the essence of the relationship God establishes with the person when he sends to the person his light. This is a lived experience, not something that can be taught. In other words, the new truth is proclaimed because it is experience. Knowing what is true is mixed with vital elements of the individual. The two spheres of knowledge tend to coincide in the howe'

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'olam, which cannot be reached through mere speculation, nor is it communicable through the word or vision. Praxis and theory tend to coincide. Obviously this knowledge that cannot be taught can be asked of God, and the priest wished for this in the Essene blessing for the faithful follower 'who walks fully in all the ways of God' (1QS 2.2). The Essene blessing, a recasting of the ancient blessing in Num. 6.24ff., reads: '(God) enlighten your heart with the wisdom of life, be merciful to you, granting you knowledge of the 'olam(im)': this has meaning only for one who already does the works of righteousness (see the beginning of the Damascus Document). The author has discovered that to reach the ineffable God there are simpler ways than those indicated by the author of Ethiopic Enoch 14, which consisted in the experience of all opposing extremes. The path of the author of the Rule is very simple, and very difficult at the same time, that of complete abandon, as described for example in 1QH 4.34-37. Stricken by misfortune, he says to his God: 'Remembering the power of Your hand and the wealth of Your love (rahamim) I made an effort and got up. My spirit is firm in its place in the face of misfor[tune]. I have entrusted myself to Your mercy and the wealth of Your love...' From this confident abandon, which culminates in the grace of the light and is accompanied by such a sense of divine omnipotence as to border on predeterminism, the Teacher of Righteousness derives the certainty of his ability to announce words of truth. God has determined everything, even what people think (1QS 3.15). How could what he says be false, if he has been clothed (this is his experience) with the justifying light of God? He does not need to explain in any way his affirmations: they derive neither from hearing, nor from vision, not from argumentation, nor from memory. He thinks in the light of God. This fully explains the difference in tone between the early works of the sect and later ones. At this point, to conclude, it may be well to pose the problem of the position which the Temple Scroll has in this framework. Whoever put 39

39. On the Temple Scroll see the following works: F. Garcia Martinez, 'El rollo del templo (11 QTemple). Bibliograffa sistematica', VT 12 (1986), pp. 425-40; idem, 'Essenisme qumranien; origines caracteristiques, heritage', in Atti del V Congresso dell' AISG, S. Miniato 12-15 novembre 1984 (ed. B. Chiesa; Rome, 1987), pp. 3758 (important for the communication of a letter from Strugnell on an unpublished fragment); cf. later, E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, 'An Unpublished Halakhic Letter


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together that codex did so directly in the name of God. The mediation of Moses disappears: in the Scroll (but remember that the incipit is missing) it is never said that the laws it contains were entrusted to Moses by God, though many of the laws were taken from the Torah. God always speaks in the first person. We are thus in a mental framework that presents itself as an evolution of that of the Torah detached from the work of R1. There the word of God was true because spoken to Moses who spoke to God face to face, not because it was remembered. The author of the Temple Scroll immediately introduces God and tries to eliminate the contradictions existing in the Torah. In other words, he is doing a juridical work, completing the first operation performed on the work of R l . Moreover he introduces a new conception of revelation, which is conceived either as direct writing by God (according to the canonical Bible the tables of the Law written by God were broken and the copies lost), or perhaps as dictation. The fact that the Scroll is concerned with the behavior of the king in a context that does not have an eschatological character is astonishing because it seems to indicate a very late date (first century BCE). But this dating is excluded by the paleography of one fragment, which shows the work existed already in the second century. It would thus seem that we are dealing with an ideal king. Unlike Chronicles, the author of the Scroll continues to conceive of Israel as a monarchy. In regard to types of knowledge, the work has decidedly ancient features, since it parallels early Essenism. The terminus post quern is pro vided by the need to have legislation, something that leads us towards the time of Nehemiah. The terminus ad quern is provided by the first Essene legislation as we have it in the most ancient layers of the Rule of the Community. This type of knowledge, exalted by the power of illumination itself, creates a new tradition which, in principle, is open to every possible innovation, because God can still reveal something new. This certainty that God can still reveal something new is clearly operative in the century of Christian origins. 40

from Qumran', Israel Museum Journal 4 (1985), pp. 9-11; J. Maier, The Temple Scroll: An Introduction, Translation, Commentary (JSOTSup, 34; Sheffield, 1986). 40. At the same congress where this presentation was given, A. Tosato main tained in another paper that Israel, for the chronicler, was constitutionally a monarchy. Cf. A. Tosato, 'Israele nell'ideologia politicadel Cronista', RSB 1 (1989), pp. 257-69.

Chapter 9 HISTORICIZING A N D REVELATION AT THE ORIGINS OF JUDAISM*

Kappler's book, Apocalypses et voyages dans I'au-deld, is a work with a new approach, probably inspired by the congress on apocalyptic which took place in Uppsala in 1979, whose proceedings are entitled Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and in the Near East (Tubingen, 1983). This is a work destined to arouse interest and, one hopes, further study. The volume consists of a number of essays by different authors who present 'apocalyptic' texts generously framed within their historical contexts, with commentary. The texts are often presented in translation only for the most significant passages, while the intermediate parts are summarized. There are two characteristics of this work. The first derives from the widening of the study of apocalyptic to include the whole Mediterranean basin, certainly in the wake of directions evident at the Uppsala Congress. The second is new, and could have important repercussions on the study and interpretation of apocalyptic. Texts more ancient than classic apoca lyptic were taken into account, something which is bound to provoke arguments and which will certainly require clarification, since these texts do not contain 'revelations'. Thus they are not and cannot be, in one sense, 'apocalypses'. However, some aspects of these can be considered apocalyptic in nature and, in any case, are found in the classical apocalypses (p. 49). The texts presented range from ancient Mesopotamia to the medieval world, passing through Phoenicia, Palestine, Nag-Hammadi, and the Mazdeans. The book concludes with an essay with an unequivocal title ('L'apocalypse et le nucleaire') which may seem out of place in a historical work, but which rather is an integral part of the publication * First published as 'Storicizzazione e rivelazione alle origini del giudaismo', RSLR 24 (1988), pp. 68-77, a review of C. Kappler (ed.), Apocalypses et voyages dans Vaa-dela (Paris, 1987).

9. Historicizing and Revelation

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project. The individual articles are held together by an omnipresent con necting thread, the role played by Claude Kappler's own thoughts, which value history but aim at a deeper kind of understanding. There is in the book, says Kappler, an idea and a purpose beyond issues of content (p. 37). To give a first notion of this work, whose structure is anything but ordinary, I will present its contents: J. Bottero, 'Le Pays-sans-retour'; P. Xella, 'Baal et la mort'; S. Ribichini, 'Traditions pheniciennes chez Philon de Byblos: une vie eternelle pour des dieux mortels'; C. Berard, 'Apocalypses eleusiniennes'; A. Pinero Saenz, 'Les conceptions de l'inspiration dans l'apocalyptique juive et chretienne (Vie s. av. J.-C.— Hie s. ap. J.-C.)'; F. Garcia Martinez, 'Les traditions apocalyptiques a Qumran'; C. Kappler, 'L'Apocalypse latine de Paul'; E. Renaud, 'Le recit du mi'raj: une version arabe de l'ascension du prophete, dans le Tafsir de Tabari'; A.M. Piemontese, 'Le voyage de Mahomet au paradis et en enfer: une version persiane du mi'raj'; M. Scopello, 'Conies apoca lyptiques et apocalypses philosophiques dans la bibliotheque de Nag Hammadi'; P. Gignoux, 'Apocalypses et voyages extra-terrestres dans l'lran mazdeen'; J. Teixidor, 'L'apotre marchand d'ames dans la pre miere litterature syriaque. Voies commerciales et voies de l'Evangile au Proche-Orient'; H. Braet, 'Les vision de l'invisible (VIe-XIIIe siecle)'; F. Carolini, 'Note sur la tradition apocalyptique dans l'ltalie medievale (Xlle-XVe siecle)'; J. Vernant, 'L'Apocalypse et le nucleaire'. All the articles are of high quality, even though coming from different schools and methodologies. Particularly notable are the articles by Xella and Ribichini. The first attempts to put together social aspects of the issues; the second considers philological aspects. Yet this difference of methods is not disturbing, because the discussion is always kept unified by Kappler's introductions. It is precisely to this unifying thread that runs throughout the work that I will dedicate most of my remarks, without wishing by this to detract at all from the value of the individual contributions: what constitutes the primary interest of this work is its basic idea, which, according to the introduction, can be traced back to Scopello, but which was developed and completed by Kappler. Garcia Martinez's article is notable, distinguished by its balanced approach, the author's knowledge of the subject and for the fact that it presents a text from Qumran translated for the first time into a modern language. It seems to me that Pinero Saenz's contribution adheres less to the

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spirit of the work. His article on inspiration tries especially to describe the phenomenon without attempting to understand the deeper motiva tions that may have conditioned it. I do not know if it is enough to say that the inspiration of apocalyptic has a mechanical character (p. 186). The author is following a concept of inspiration which is more similar to that of modern theology than that of ancient texts. The problem lies not just in describing the visionary's experience (p. 163), and characterizing this type of revelation in comparison with other types, but above all in seeking to understand what is at the root of this phenomenon. In the Introduction Kappler confronts the problem of what apocalyptic is and tries to respond to some objections presented to her by the very people who prepared the articles on the Mesopotamian and Phoenician world. By definition, deriving from the name itself, an apocalypse is a revelation. Now neither 'The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld', nor 'The Myth of Baal and Death' can in any way be called revelations, and the same holds true also for the Phoenician texts presented by Ribichini. Yet Kappler notes that in the heavenly events narrated in these myths there is something that can also be found in the classic apocalypses, both Jewish and Christian. The comparison is therefore legitimate. If we consider apocalyptic in its formal aspect, it follows that its content goes beyond its form; and since Kappler's attention is turned entirely towards content, putting aside all problems of literary genres, it is difficult for me not to be in complete agreement, even if I must recog nize, on the basis of critiques directed towards me, that the form itself can be read not in a literary way, but as an instrument for a better understanding of the content. In this sense form, too, must be recovered, but only after identifying the theme. The form of 'revelation' also has its importance in apoca lyptic thought, as an integral part of it. Perhaps this can help to explain a point which otherwise would remain unclear in Kappler's presentation, as it remained unclear in my articles on apocalyptic. But this book with its organization, its daring way of joining texts, both clearly presents the problem and helps to resolve it. 1

2

3

1. On knowledge in the Jewish world, cf. Chapter 8 above. 2. E. Norelli, 'L'apocalittica dal giudaismo al cristianesimo: problemi di metodo', paper presented at the 16th Meeting of Scholars of Christian Antiquity, held at the Institute of Patristics 'Augustinianum', 7-9 May, 1987. Cf. n. 15, p. 17. 3. As well as the articles collected in this volume, see also 'Riflessioni sull'essenza dell'apocalittica. Peccato d'origine e liberta dell'uomo', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 31-62.


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The problem is this: why were things, which up to a certain epoch (concretely, fifth-fourth century B C E ) were known without need of revelation, after that time known through revelation? But the intrusion of revelation, that is of the apocalypse as a literary form, is not a phenomenon that can be interpreted and fully understood within the limits of literary categories. The concept of 'revelation' is not a part of literature, but an attitude of human knowing. It could have produced literary forms, but its justification can only be found in the need of the human spirit for contact with a new interior reality. Revelation was a phenomenon existing for some time in Israel, and not only in Israel, as the prophetic word. Think of the ne 'um yhwh. But in the past revelation was a phenomenon usually limited to divine oracles, which regarded the future and the behavior Israel ought to observe in order to be saved; in this sense these could also base themselves on an interpretation of the present. The leap from pre-exilic vision and oracle to post-exilic vision is clear in Ezekiel, whose vision of the chariot moves beyond the problem of the future and the behavior of Israel. It is attempting to penetrate the mystery of God. The object of knowledge by vision, that is, revealed knowledge, is changing. Apocalyptic revelation follows in the wake of Ezekiel. It allows knowledge of things that are not perceptible to the senses. And it is at this point that knowledge of things known only through ancient memory (what we would call history), or known through mythological accounts, begins to constitute a problem: first for myth and then, in apocalyptic circles, for history itself. Consider the Book of Dreams (ca. 160 BCE), where history itself is revealed, or the more ancient concept of 'heavenly tables' already known to the Book of Astronomy (third century BCE). The break between 'myth' and 'revealed myth' constitutes a grave problem, linked to ways of knowing. In the society of myth one does not distinguish between the experience and reflection on the experience, something which could be said in a number of ways: for example, that the subject does not consciously place himself in front of the object; or that the subject is not aware of the autonomy of the knowing function. Thus in the myth the account derives from the immediate perception of things, where 'things' indicates any object whatsoever, exterior or interior to the person, as an object of perception and subsequent elaboration. Once a myth is formulated, it communicates its contents, repeating in those who listen to it and make it their own the original experience that


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produced it. In this way myth makes itself a transmitter of broad knowl edge with significantly fewer signs than we need today. 'The imagery of myth is...by no means allegory...The imagery is inseparable from the thought. It represents the form in which the experi ence has become conscious.' We could say that myth receives its guarantee of truthfulness from people themselves, even people who do not analyze their capacity for reflection. In other words, in myth there is no distinguishing the two propositions, 'things are' and 'things are thought to be'. But one point remains fixed: myth expresses the fruit of an experience and thus a truth in our sense of the term. Towards the middle of the sixth century a learned Jew of Babylon, R l , wrote a completely demythologized history of Israel from the beginning to his own day. What we would today call today saga becomes history for him, just as the cosmogonic myth of creation became history. But many accounts of angels disappear, which existed in the tradition but evidently did not make sense to him. What creates difficulties is that R l did not eliminate entirely the myth of the fall of the angels, as he, or someone after him, allowed part of it to endure: see Gen. 6.1-4. If R l , or someone after him, demythologized the myth of creation by historicizing it, in the case of the myth of the fall of the angels he demythologized in a completely different way. He applied a type of euhemeristic thought, emptying it of content. The nefilim became heroes of antiquity. The account remains, but its values had changed: this is the opposite of historicizing, where the grid changes (time and space are added), but the conceptual values remain. In the case of the myth of the nefilim the myth is explicitly declared legend. In any case we are dealing with quite advanced interpretative techniques. The cultural attitude of Rl is clear. He re-reads the myth in new terms, as he is led to consider the myth merely a recounting of events. This account can be only true or false, according to a category of judg ment that is already quite modern. In other words, Rl no longer under4

5

6

4. H. Frankfort et al.. Before Philosophy: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (London, 1946), p. 15. 5. For the symbol R l , see Chapter 7, n. 3. 6. By the word 'saga' I mean an account without chronological connotations which has some value in grounding the present for the people who transmit it. It corresponds in history to myth, and it is logical that in one epoch myth and saga should be developed with the same criteria. By the word 'legend' I indicate an account interpreted as the pure fruit of fantasy.


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stands myth. The Greeks, at about the same time, applied to myth the logos precisely to save some of its values. R l applies to myth his own rationality, different from that of the Greeks, but still rationality. If he notes values in the myth that are worth saving, he interprets the myth as history, otherwise as legend. He narrates the histories of the kings, pro phets and patriarchs without needing to refer to any individual revelation. History is true because this is how it is remembered. R l does not preclude that God may have spoken to someone, but not him, and what he narrates is true only in that it is historical. There remains the problem of why R l , or someone after him, wished to eliminate the ideas or some ideas borne by the myth of the fall of the angels. Does this mean he did not want angels, or at least did not want them so independent of God? Or did he not share a belief in demons? Or did he see still other consequences to accepting the content of this myth which today escape us? Not long after the work of Rl another anonymous Jew, probably living in Palestine rather than Babylon, confronted the same myth derived from the same Book of Noah. Indeed the Book of Noah, with its huge, structured story, well fixed in time, represents a phenomenon parallel and probably contemporary to that of the history written by R l . And the anonymous initiator of apocalyptic has something to do with the myth already structured in the form of the Book of Noah. This is the author of BW2a, who for the sake of brevity and clearness we will call Apl. 7

8

9

7. As is well known, Deuteronomy does not know of angels. In one case (32.8) it can be demonstrated that a text accepted by the author was manipulated in such a way that a mention of angels disappeared. Cf. M. Lana, 'Deuteronomio e angelologia alia luce di una variante qumranica (4QDt 32:8)', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 209-234. On angelology, cf. A. Rofe, Israelite Belief in Angels in the Pre-exilic Period as Evidenced by Biblical Traditions (English extract from doctoral dissertation in Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1969). 8. The fall of the angels occurred a few generations before the Flood, at the time of Jared (cf. 1 En. 6). Though the text is rather corrupt, tradition has maintained both the name of the patriarch, to link the story to a precise time, and that of the place. 9. BW2a is the redactor—author of chs. 12-16—of the Book of the Watchers: The abbreviation Apl underscores that he is the first apocalyptic author, one who began to use vision in order to express his thought. As Norelli insists (see n. 2), there can be no apocalyptic without revelation. And revelation in the book of Ethiopic Enoch begins only with ch. 12, belonging to the Book of the Watchers. On the complex history of the formation of this work, cf. Chapters 1 and 3 above.


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But between the historicizing done by Rl and that of Apl there is an enormous difference. The first historicizes data he knows and knows to be true, because they are remembered in this way. His work is thus parallel to that of the author of the Book of Noah. The second intro duces the 'guaranteeing revelation', which is usually produced by means of a vision. His work is thus parallel to that of the author who intro duced into the tradition the passage of Num. 12.6-8. Apl in fact does not see in the angels a danger either for monotheism or anything else. In particular the myth of the fall of the angels explained many things about the problem of evil in the world, about the presence of what is 'twisted' for humans, to speak with the words of Qoheleth." But Apl also had a mentality that no longer grasped the myth as such. Space and time are basic categories for him, as for R1 and the author of the Book of Noah. The story of the fall of the angels, consequently, from being a 'myth of the beginning', became an exposition of the historical cause of the beginning. The treatment of the angels became a historical treatment, which still did not need to lose its value as a myth of begin ning, perhaps already in the intentions of the author of the Book of Noah, and then certainly in those of Ap 1. At this point there arises the problem of revelation in relation to apocalyptic. The first apocalypses for the most part did not invent new myths, but limited themselves to 'revealing' the contents of pre-existing myths. Thus the novelty of the apocalypse consists in the very fact of being an apocalypse, that is, in presenting as revealed things which earlier no one felt the need to present as such. Why this novelty? First of all we must note that the phenomenon of revelation as guarantee of some aspects of the past was not unique to apocalyptic, but probably synchronically also occurred within the canonical Bible. Something must have happened, which posed the question, 'And who says this is true?': the answer was, 'God himself, that is, revelation. Only in this way can we explain the passages, interpolated here and there, that say Moses was greater in inspiration than the prophets: evidently the wish was to guarantee the divine inspiration of the Law. 10

12

10. See n. 9, p. 206. 11. Cf. Qoh. 1.15: 'What is twisted cannot be straightened.' 12. Besides the passage cited in n. 9, p. 206, see also Exod. 33.11 and 20 where it is denied that Moses ever had been able to see the face of God. This passage inten tionally contrasts with the first, and is to be considered later. In current terms the first belongs to P and the second to P . s

ss


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The first part of the Bible thus became the Torah and was attributed entirely to Moses himself as author. He spoke to God and wrote what he heard: in this way everything was guaranteed. It is interesting to note that the Greek philosopher Parmenides, famous for extreme rationalism, who lived in an era not much earlier than that of the problems con sidered here, introduced his philosophy as a revelation received from the goddess Aletheia. We must still explain what was characteristic of apocalyptic thought, if the 'guaranteeing revelation' was not exclusively apocalyptic. Let us go back to our myth of the fall of the angels and the problems that gave rise to it. The variations on the theme multiply within the work, with positions that are more or less rationalistic, more or less absolute. This is the sign of the great difficulty of understanding the meaning of myth within the new historical dimension: but the wish is to save the meaning of the myth. Chapter 8 knows of a doctrine of the origin of evil, as derived from the revealing of the sciences that had been and should have remained heavenly secrets. This solution was rational and perhaps derived from immediate observation: the great evil that could be done with technology. This is the thesis that will be taken up in the Book of Parables (1 En. 69.6ff.). The fact is that the myth of the fall of the angels, once it was historicized, actually became incomprehensible, or, rather, unable to explain the totality of the phenomenon of 'twisted' things. An event in the time of Jared, as in any other possible time, no matter how ancient, would never have been able to explain the origin of evil in the world, which was the problem of Apl. It was necessary, to remain within history and within a demythologized form of discourse, to move angelic sin forward to the very moment of creation. The solution was radical and conceptually perfected by a successor of Apl whom I will call Ap2. He was the author of section 2b of the Book of the Watchers. Ap2 doubled the angelic sin. Seven angels sinned on the fourth day of the creation of the world, that is, when the stars were created and time began. The choice of such an early date, prior to the creation of humans, makes perfect sense. Only in this way could the sin of angels have intruded with its consequences into all human nature and the cosmos itself, and also explain the disobedience of Adam and evil's entry into the world. But even more interesting is the type of sin which the author attri-

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butes to the seven angels. Here we are evidently dealing with the angels who guide the seven planets. They disobeyed God, each one leading its own planet out of the proper orbit. In other words, the stars, which were supposed to send good influences upon the earth, if they had stayed in the placed assigned them by God, instead sent upon the earth bad influences, because they were out of place. Astrological science thus mixes with the demythified tradition, and one result emerges very clearly for us, because it is substantially outside mythological expression. Dante still follows this line of thought. The consequence of the work of demythologization accomplished by Rl was the belief that the world had been created in seven days, that it was more or less three thousand years old, and that the Jews were all descendants of Abraham. The result of the demythologization of the authors of the Book of the Watchers was a concretization of the angelic myths, which had a vast influence on the development of belief in the existence of angels and, even more, of demons. But beyond this, Apl promoted a type of thought that took seriously the problem of evil, avoiding an explanation of it as a phenomenon of the world's order (myth of Baal and death), and sought to go beyond this reality, which he rejected, by projecting the world of order and good into another sphere, where evil could not reach. The myths of Ishtar and Baal attempted to explain something about the real order of the world, which certainly is not the best that people could imagine. But they did not grasp with the same force as the classi cal apocalypses the break that exists in the world between good and evil, life and death. In the pre-apocalypses the world appears as the recon ciliation of contrasting forces, one that is 'twisted' for humans, but already made into an order and interpreted as such. Life and death both have their place, without denying that death, the most 'twisted' thing for humans, remains death. Behind the most ancient myths there is hidden the desire to explain the disorder of the world, interpreting it as order. In our terms, we could say that this is a type of thought similar to those philosophies of being which want to eliminate the problem of evil by explaining it as one phase in the evolution of being or even as non-being. Whoever com posed the myth of 'Baal and death' wanted death to belong to an order, and therefore, in some way, to the good. Death was accepted as being in its right place, that is, in our terms, good. 13

13. Cf. 1 En. 18.15.


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In the classical apocalypses there is evidently an effort to overcome this dichotomy in favor of life. Death becomes an accident of life and this is clearly traced to the fact that there was a superhuman action that ruined the world, which otherwise would have been good. In this way apocalyptic takes on precise ideological connotations: it rejects any form of thought that tries to explain what is evil to humans as being part of order. The problem of apocalyptic is not the coherence of the world, but the contrary. The world is really a disorder. It is simply that the world is not as God made it; consequently, that which we call evil is not a necessary part of the world's existence but an accident. God could not have wished the world to be as it is. Naturally this poses many problems, even to those who accepted this way of looking at things. But one cannot deny that apocalyptic has a very strong individuality of thought which, even though centered, in a wide sense, on the problem of evil, addresses almost all the problems of life from a precise angle, characterized by acceptance of the existence of evil in the world as evil. This does not mean that apocalyptic renounces the belief that good order must exist, but that this is possible only in another dimension. If this interpretation of apocalyptic makes sense, the divergence put forward by Kappler between Mesopotamian and Phoenician myths and apocalyptic is enormous. Perhaps we can understand why later apoca lyptic met with so much opposition and was so difficult to understand. Apocalyptic is a basic attitude of thought which will later always be that 14

14. Kappler (p. 36) expresses it this way: 'C'est l'ordre du monde qui est en cause: la grande preoccupation des apocalypses est de trouver la "coherence" du monde, coherence qui reside dans une certain relation: la relation, foncierement dynamique, qui existe, de par le plan divin, entre les origines, le present et l'avenir de la dyade univers/humanite.' I do not understand very well what 'dynamic' means, if this word is hiding the idea that evil is some function of good, that is, of being. If it is hiding the idea that evil is only a phase of the relation God/human, in this case I am not in agreement with the author, since, according to apocalyptic, disorder is that which was never willed by God. Kappler's interpretation, if I have understood it correctly, adapts itself rather to Essene thought, whose close links to apocalyptic are today recognized. (Cf. Chapter 3 and with great clarity, F. Garcia Martinez, 'Essenisme qumranien: origines, caracteristiques, heritage', in Atti del V Congresso Internationale dell'AISG, S. Miniato, 12-15 novembre 1984 [Rome, 1987], pp. 3758 [48]). For Essenism the angel of darkness was created such by God. In this case evil is evil, but is part of a form of order beyond human comprehension. It is part of the mystery of the will of God who wished the world to be like this.

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of a minority, since the majority of our philosophers have insisted more on thinking of evil as entangled with being, rather than conceiving it as an autonomous reality. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of Kappler's work, because she has intuited the thread that holds apocalyptic linked to its past. We owe a great debt indeed to this work.

Chapter 10 T H E D E V I L IN J E W I S H T R A D I T I O N S O F T H E S E C O N D T E M P L E P E R I O D ( C . 500 B C E - 1 0 0 CE)*

1. The Definition of 'Devil' for the Purposes of this Study It is appropriate at the very beginning to give a definition of the topic I intend to address. By devil I mean a being created as a spirit, gifted with intelligence, will and awareness, which at a certain time rebels against the order of things willed by God and against God himself. I will begin by saying that the figure of the devil appears within Judaism when, around the Persian era, it was organizing the data of earlier tradition into a theology with the intuition of the existence of one god. Before the exile, the Israelites were either polytheists or monolatrists. This means that they had no difficulty admitting struggles and contradictions in the world of the divine. I anticipate that the figure of the devil is presented in Second Temple Judaism with two basic aspects. 1) The devil can be the principle of evil and explains its origin, its arche, but is no longer active. 2) The devil can be understood, on the contrary, as a will continuously active in history, rebelling against God and harmful to humans. We will then see how these two radical understandings can actually be integrated or, in some authors, be nuanced to the point of establishing a certain relationship, I might even say collaboration, between God and the devil. The formation of this way of understanding the devil was favored by the existence, attested only in canonical texts, of an angel of God called 'satan' because of its function. 1

* First published as 'II diavolo nelle tradizione giudaiche del Secondo Tempio'. in L'Autunno del diavolo (2 vols.; Milan, 1990), I, pp. 107-28. Paper presented at the International Congress organized by the Association 'Diabolos, dialogos. daimon'. Convegno di Torino, 17-21 Ottobre, 1988. 1. The non-canonical Book of Parables is an exception, one which mentions in 40.7 a whole host of satan-angels, which have the task of referring to God the faults of humans.

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2. The Book of Noah We find for the first time in Jewish literature a being corresponding to this definition in the Book of Noah, a work written certainly in an ancient, though undefinable, era probably around 500 B C E , which committed to writing a myth whose antiquity is, in turn, absolutely unknown. This text narrated in Hebrew how some angels, some gene rations before the Flood, in the time of Jared, fell in love with women and descended to earth to marry them, with disastrous consequences for humanity, this event being the cause of the Flood. The group of angels which leaves heaven for earth has at its head one sometimes called Asa'el and sometimes Semeyaza, later confused in the Greek and Ethiopic translations with Azazel. But here the name is not important. What is important is that in this account there is a head of the rebel angels, whose rebellion caused great ruin for humanity, because it was the cause of the Flood. This head of the rebels is the first, dim image of the devil. Perhaps it is not even correct at this point to call him by this name. 2

3

4

3. The Religion of Apl This is the outline of the story given by the Book of Noah. We are, however, uncertain about the ideology of the author of Book of Noah, because the text has come down to us in the Aramaic form in which it was rewritten by a later author, anonymous, as is always the case in this type of literature. I will call him Apl, because he was the founder of apocalyptic. Apl was writing at an uncertain date in the Persian period (roughly from 500 to 333 BCE). A p l ' s work consists in rewriting that

2. The Book of Noah is cited a couple of times in the Book of Jubilees (end of the second century BCE) in vv. 10.13 and 21.10. Its original content has been recon structed by F. Garcia Martinez, '4QMesAran y el libro de Noe', Salmanticensis 28 (1981), pp. 195-232. The Book of Noah had a great influence on all the Enochic literature and also on other apocryphal works. 3. Cf. J.T. Milik, DJD, I (Oxford, 1955), pp. 84-86. 4. The name of Azazel had already replaced the original Asa'el in the Book of Parables; thus, the substitution had already taken place within pre-Christian Jewish circles. After finishing this lecture, I read the article by G. Deiana, 'Azazel in Lv. 16', Lateranum 54 (1988), pp. 16-33, in which good arguments are presented for the original name's being Azazel and the others successive substitutions.

10. The Devil in Jewish Traditions

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part of the Book of Noah that recounted the fall of the angels, and adding some chapters. The rewriting of the Book of Noah is found in chs. 6-11 of Ethiopic Enoch. The added chapters, written by the author, are chs. 12-16. Apl had an enormous importance within Judaism, because he founded a new type of religion. He introduced to Judaism belief in a soul that could be disincarnate, destined to be judged by God after death, with different destinies accorded to those considered just or unjust. Previously Hebraism and Judaism knew only one type of immortality in the underworld, the Hebrew Sheol, to which all descended unjudged; thus without different destinies for the good and the bad. The other great novelty in the thought of Apl regards the origin of evil and initial speculation on the devil and demons. 5

a. The Problems Apl Inherited from Tradition We will now see the problems faced by our Apl, those inherited from tradition and resolved differently by other currents in Judaism. Jewish thought, for the most part principally concerned with investigating the problem of salvation, always remained aware of the problem of evil, though this is not the place to trace that history. The Jews knew, before the exile, that evil beings existed. Of uncertain nature, they were never said to be created by God, but could do evil to humans. They were arranged on two levels: there was the cosmic level, on which can be placed monsters like Yam and Leviathan (the sea and a sea-monster); and the more earthly and less imposing level, that of the shedim, of the se 'irim, of Lilith, the demon of the night that will gain great importance in Rabbinic Judaism. These are what we would call today 'evil spirits'. Misfortune could come upon the Jews from these, but could also come from the punishment which their god could send upon them for their transgressions. Already in the eighth century Amos insisted that only God could send salvation and misfortune; an anti-polytheistic polemic, but also contrary to the conception of demons as having real power. The Jews offered worship to some of these demons. Amos, declaring that misfortune can come only from God, must have meant that either 6

7

5.

Cf. Chapter 3 above.

6. Cf. J. Maier, 'Alles Unheil kann man als damonisch gelten (cfr. Deut. 32,24)', in Realencyclopadie fiir Altertum und Christentum IX, p. 582. 7. Cf. Amos 3.6b: 'There is no evil in the city that is not the work of Yahweh.' Cf. also 5.9, text uncertain.

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the demons did not exist or that they had no power. However, it would be difficult for the first solution to be accepted in a society in which this belief was very widely diffused. In any event neither Amos nor other prophets ever said that the demons did not exist; on the contrary, there are glimpses here and there of their belief in them. The name of Lilith, for example, comes to us from Isaiah (34.14). So, for A p l , there were demons: they were a given of the tradition, which experience must have continually confirmed. If the exorcists accomplished something, this was the daily reaffirmation of the existence and the power of the demons. Another source of evil for humans was impurity: a mysterious force, almost a fluid, since it could be transmitted by touch, which was diffused among many animals and in nature, and could in certain circumstances also enter humans themselves. Those who found themselves in a state of impurity knew they had lost power. In daily life the traveller and the soldier had to be in a state of purity: this was not a legal obligation, it was above all a matter of good common sense. 8

9

b. Ezekiel and the Priestly Author in Relation to the Problem of Evil The ideas of Amos about the origin of misfortune were taken up and radicalized in the course of the sixth century by Ezekiel. The observance of the Law is a means of life (ch. 18). Whoever does not obey the Law is punished by God; misfortune is thus only punishment. In regard to demons, Ezekiel's circle, that of the so-called Priestly Author, resolved the problem by prohibiting any relation with them. The existence of demons was thus confirmed; the wizard was punishable; there is no mention of exorcisms as a defense against the demons, even though they were known to exist. With regard to impurity, Ezekiel, with the Priestly Author, interprets it as a created reality, of itself neither good nor bad. The relations humans could have with this force, one without will and intelligence but still a 10

8. For the Jewish world the phenomenon of exorcism is attested, besides numerous passages of the New Testament, in Tobias 6.8, 17; 8.3; lQGenAp 20.2829; HQPsAp; 4QShir (510 and 511); LAB 60; Flavius Josephus, War 7.185. L. Rosso Ubigli spoke on exorcism at Qumran at this same congress. 9. On instinctive fear of impurity, see the behavior of Laban towards Rachel in Gen. 31, especially v. 35. The obligation of the soldier in a state of impurity to leave the field was sanctioned by Deuteronomic law; cf. Deut. 23.10-15. 10. Cf. Lev. 19.26b: 'Do not use divination, do not practice magic'; 19.31: 'Do not turn to those who call forth the spirits of the dead, nor to fortune-tellers, in order not to contract impurity on account of them.' Cf. also 20.6.


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force, were established by law. There were cases in which impurity must be avoided, under penalty of transgressing the Law. An emblematic case is that of eating meat with blood (cf., for example, Lev. 3.17). But there were other cases in which it was legal to contract impurity, the emblem atic case being the sexual act (Lev. 15.18). The Law prescribed only the necessary purifications. Evil began with transgression of the Law. Impurity in itself was not evil. In fact, according to a text from the Priestly circle, God created the serpent, the impure animal par excellence, and having created it 'saw that it was g o o d ' " (Gen. 1.24-25). It was sufficient to know when faced with impurity how to behave in the way required by the Law. In this way for Ezekiel historical evil was reduced entirely to punish ment deriving from transgression. As to death, it did not present a problem if it came in 'good old age'. Yet with Ezekiel's solution one problem remained open to speculation: if impurity came to make up part of creation, darkness, an indefinable negative element of the beginning, remained outside, being presented in Genesis as actually uncreated. The same could be said of evil spirits. This was a great problem for a way of thinking that wanted to be monotheistic and sought to interpret reality accordingly, while having in its past a monolatric, if not polytheistic, tradition. 12

13

c. Second Isaiah and Created Darkness Second Isaiah, who lived towards the end of the sixth century BCE, was aware of the danger to monotheism lurking in the Priestly Author's solution. He declared energetically that the darkness, like the light, had been created by God (Isa. 45.7). Monotheism was safeguarded, but this 14

11. The Yahwist tradition instead interpreted the serpent, crawling, and therefore impure, in a different manner. God had created the serpent with legs, apparently four, like all the other animals. God deprived it of legs and made it crawl as a punishment for having induced Eve to disobedience. Cf. Gen. 3, in particular vv. 14ff.: 'Because you have done this, you are cursed...you will crawl on your belly and will eat dust...' 12. Ezekiel expresses well his concept of history in ch. 20. But to understand his understanding of evil as punishment ch. 18 is fundamental. 13. The first creating word of Genesis, that of the first day, regards only light: darkness exists before it. Creation declared expressly as ex nihilo is later: the first documentation is in 2 Mace. 7.28 (second century BCE). 14. Yoser 'or ubore' hoiek, 'oseh Salom uboreh ra', which could be translated, '(God is) he who forms the Light and creates the Darkness, who makes well-being


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opened up the problem of a God who is creator of the darkness. This was no small problem, because it presented a direct relation between God and that negative though hard to define element that was the darkness, which could in no way be interpreted as evil/punishment. Moreover, Second Isaiah broke the rigid relation proposed by Ezekiel between misfortune and guilt, following an intuition already visible in Jeremiah (12.Iff.), but now developed more fully. Second Isaiah did not even accept that historical evil could be interpreted only as divine punishment. God did not send misfortune only as punishment for trans gressions, and in any case there was not always proportion between faults and their punishment. Two examples: Israel was punished by God with the exile, but the punishment, in relation to the fault, had been too great (Isa. 40.2). Why this disproportion? Even more disproportionate had been the fate of the Servant of Yahweh: he, the just one, has been stricken by God for the salvation of the whole people (Isa. 53.4-8). In the case of the Servant's fate, one could actually say that what was evil for him was a good for the majority of the people. Clearly God's behavior did not correspond to Ezekiel's principles. The problem of evil remained unresolved. And there is more: if pre-exilic Israel could look to its ancestors and therefore to itself as guilty and punished, the words of Second Isaiah took away the certainty of the guilt, showing an Israel that could also be just, chosen by God for incomprehensible suffering. An ancient gloss, identifying the Servant with Israel (Isa. 49.3), shows how the idea could rapidly take root. Then if Israel is just, the unjust are its enemies, because they are also enemies of God. The possibility of thinking of 'powers' that are rebels against God and enemies to Israel appears clearly in Jewish thought of the earliest Persian period. 15

16

17

and creates evil.' The first kolon indicates metaphysical realities; the second, concrete and historical ones. 15. 'Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and say to her that her service is at an end, her fault has been pardoned, because she has received double from the hand of Yahweh for all her sins.' 16. 'It was our infirmities he bore, ours were the sufferings he bore...He was stricken for our sins, afflicted for our transgressions. By his wounds we are healed. We like sheep have gone astray, each one on his own path. Yahweh has made the sins of us all fall on him.. .Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter... He was cut off from the land of the living...' 17. If the Jewish tradition up to Second Isaiah is in agreement in considering Israel guilty and the exile a punishment (see Ezek. 20 and the whole historiographical


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4. Apl, the Problem of Evil and the Devil A p l , who certainly lived after Ezekiel and after Second Isaiah, in a society that was organizing itself in Jerusalem on the basis of Ezekiel's mental constructs and not those of Second Isaiah, found that he had to take up again the problem of evil and confront it in a universal way, that is, without neglecting any element that might be presented to him by tradition and experience. He wanted to guarantee two things: 1) that God was the only creator; 2) that evil could be neither traced back to God nor reduced to a consequence of human transgressions. Job, who was more or less contemporary with A p l , and who knew the myth of the rebel angels (4.18), will repeat the latter notion in every possible way, even though not arriving at definite conclusions. 18

The myth of the rebel angels, linked to belief in the immortality of the soul in the sense explained above, was the keystone of A p l ' s system, as he interpreted the myth in this way: the angels, under a leader, and divided into units of a military type, descended to earth, taken by love for women, with whom they joined themselves, but by doing so they contaminated and ruined nature. The myth no longer explained only the catastrophe of the Flood, but became the instrument for understanding the causes of all evil in the world. The negative connotation of impurity,

conception of the Deuteronomist), the later tradition tends to see Israel as unjustly persecuted (cf. Joel 4.19, where Judah is indicated as 'innocent blood', that is, unjustly made a victim of violence; cf. G. Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico [Brescia, 1986], p. 158). This persecution can be traced back to the mystery of the divine will, with Israel's being made to coincide with the Suffering Servant (see the ancient gloss of the Hebrew text that adds 'Israel' to 'Servant' in 49.3). See also Ps. 44, certainly post-exilic and probably late. 4 Ezra, after the destruction of the temple and the ruin of 70 CE, does not abandon this approach: Israel is more just than Babylon; yet God has tolerated those who sin, has safeguarded the evildoers and has destroyed his people (3.28ff.). On the problem, still to be studied in depth, of the evolution of Jewish thought as it moves from feeling itself guilty to feeling the opposite, cf. P. Sacchi, Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976), pp. 78-79. 18. I cite the verse according to the translation of G. Ravasi, Job (Rome, 1979): 'Behold, He does not trust His own servants, even in the angels he finds faults.' The final part of the verse is unclear (yasim toholah); the meaning derives essentially from the context. In the preceding verse the problem was posed: 'Can a mortal be just before God?' The response therefore, given the certain presence of the name of angels, can only be: 'Even the angels sin.' Cf. also 15.15, where it is repeated that God does not trust, that is, does not have a reason to trust, even the angels.

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as attested in earlier tradition, is thus explained in such a way as to conserve its evil aspect, but without tracing it back to God. There remained the problem of evil spirits, not identified with the fallen angels. According to Apl, from the angels and the women were born monstrous beings, called nefilim in Hebrew, a term translated in Greek as gigantes, 'giants', which, according to the account of the Book of Noah, had done every kind of evil to humans, including feeding on their flesh. At the supplication of the angels who remained faithful, and of the souls of the dead, God had imprisoned the fallen angels and, in the first place, their leader, in the underground darkness. Thus the darkness is interpreted by the author as a place of punishment for the rebel angels (1 En. 10.4). The darkness of our author, in that it is placed under ground, becomes total obscurity. This probably derives from his having reproduced the Book of Noah account as it was, but in this way he could make it traceable to God, without its being a negative principle. But very soon the prison of the angels will be located at the edge of the cosmos and will become the symbol of Hell, where there will be emptiness, darkness and fire. 19

Regarding the giants, God made them quarrel and kill each other in fratricidal battles. Unfortunately this measure could be only a palliative: their souls, immortal like all souls, remained on the earth to do evil to humans and turn them against God. In this way the evil spirits of tradi tion also fit within a framework acceptable to reason, in that their origin was explained without tracing it to God and to creation, yet without considering them independent of the creation. The thought of Apl is turned towards the search for the arche, the principle in the past able to explain the reality of the present. Even the devil is involved in this general framework of his thought. In a certain sense, his devil is a reality far from the people of his time, I might even say a metaphysical reality, somewhat like the water of Thales. In reality, the devil no longer acts in history, because he is enclosed in the infernal prison, punished and bound by God forever. What remains in history are the consequences of his action: impurity and the evil spirits.

19. Cf. the Book of the Watchers (1 En. 21.1-2): 'I went as far as the place in which nothing was made. I saw there a fearful thing, neither heaven above nor earth at the bases, but a desert place' (following the translation of L. Fusella, in P. Sacchi [ed.], Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento, I [Turin, 1981]). Cf. also Mt. 8.12: 'The sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'


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The devil's fault was very grave. Contaminating nature, he at least aggravated the possibility of human transgression. Apl was, in fact, drastic: 'Ascribe all sin to Asael' says God (1 En. 10.8). The human person in this context appears more as victim than transgressor. Later, apocalyptic will no longer accept this radical solution; indeed, apocalyptic pessimism, typical of the later era, will derive precisely from the con temporaneous acceptance of both the concept of sin as 'incurable malady', and complete human responsibility. The central nucleus of A p l ' s thought is not the devil, but the fall of the angels. The fact that he assigned to them a leader came to him from the old account of the Book of Noah. This does not prevent this leader figure from assuming, some centuries later, a role of central importance, as he became the actual antagonist of God. 20

5. Apl and Cosmic Upheaval We must admit that, if the reasoning effort of Apl, focused on organizing in a unified manner all the data of his tradition, was great, nevertheless he had a great limitation which his same school of thought could not avoid. Apl relied too much on the account of the Book of Noah. Perhaps within his mentality, turned more towards cosmic than historical problems, he did not realize the problem. Perhaps he simply did not want to radicalize its solution. It is a fact that a second apocalyptic author, whom we will call Ap2, and who wrote not long after A p l , posed the problem of the sin of Cain, which happened before, not after, the fall of the angels (7 En. 22.7). If the central idea of Apl was valid (and for Ap2 it was), it was neces sary to admit another angelic sin to be placed before that of the fall of the angels, which occurred at the time of Jared, a few generations before the Flood. Ap2 was radical and admitted a transgression before that in the time of Jared, a transgression which he moved back all the way to the fourth day of creation, when God created the stars. This trans gression was thus even prior to Adam. The seven angels charged with the guidance of the seven planets disobeyed God's order and moved their planets out of the orbits designated for them by God. In this way the figure of the devil disappeared, because the first angel sinners were seven and not one, but this solution presented the advan20. See 4 Ezra 3.21-22: Cor enim malignum baiulansprimus Adam transgressus et victus est, sed et ex eo omnes qui nati sunt. Et facta est permanens infirmilas.

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tage of linking the notion of evil to the science of that time, using astro logical notions (1 En. 18.15, to be read together with 21.3). The thought of Ap2 presents itself as a more rational system than that of A p l , but does not depart from his basic outline: the first sinful will is lost in the beginnings; what remains of that transgression is nature, ruined in some way and different from the way God willed it to be. 6. The Book of Dreams and a More Recent Angelic

Rebellion

The idea that those responsible for evil in the world are the angels of the seven planets will not reappear in Israel, at least not in such a clear form. With the Book of Dreams, composed a little after 164 BCE, we return to the theme of the fallen angels and their leader. Indeed, to emphasize the leader's importance, he is said to have come to earth before the other angels, those who fell at the time of Jared. But when did he come? The treatment given by the Book of Dreams' author of the origins of the human race is so different from that which we know from the Genesis tradition that it is difficult for us to understand it. Our author uses a metaphorical language, which is clear only when it alludes to things which we know from other sources. The author expresses his thought by projecting it into visions, where everything is signified through symbols. In a first vision (1 En. 85), the author presents Adam and Eve who emerge from the earth, followed immediately by two sons, Cain and Abel. Adam is presented as a just man. Thus there is no place in this exposition for Eden. The devil appears only in a second vision (1 En. 86), or in a second phase of the first one: the incipit is quite clear. The devil mixes with Adam's now numerous children, lives among them, even if we are not told under what appearance. He was, therefore, on the earth together with Cain and Abel. We may think that the work of the devil is involved in Abel's tragedy, but this is not said explicitly in the text. 21

22

21. In the symbolic representation of the author of the Book of Dreams people in their present state are figured as sheep. But primordial humanity was different. Adam is represented as a white ox, Cain as a black calf. Behind the symbolism of passing from ox to sheep there is the notion of humanity's degradation. The color white expresses the idea of justice and innocence. 22. Since the Eden myth is missing in the Book of Dreams, the devil can in no way be identified with the serpent. He descends to earth and mixes with humans. But Cain, having been born as a black calf, that is, violent and evil in this context, seems to be such by his nature from the time of his birth. The relation between the sin of Cain and the devil is thus unclear.


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The author then repeats substantially the myth of the Fall as we know it from A p l , including the fact that the devil was put into the cosmic prison together with the fallen angels. His teaching does not seem much different from that of Apl, even though it is difficult to give a definitive opinion on this, since he depends on myths of the beginning that do not coincide with those we know. In any case his devil remains an inactive one. The author of the Book of Dreams does, however, know of another angelic transgression almost contemporary to himself, one concerning seventy angels, called 'shepherd angels', who guided Israel after the exile in a way different from that willed by God. Hence the catastrophes of the author's own time. The work of these angels still remains active in history. This element of the new angelic rebellion is very important for under standing various basic needs of Hellenistic-era Jewish thought. We note dissatisfaction about a principle of evil, which is no longer active. Evil conceived as res, or as the product of the individual will through little evil spirits who could be exorcised, did not suffice as an explanation of Israel's suffering. Even the idea of evil as divine punishment was not useful, because the Israel of the second century considered itself just and persecuted, not evil and punished as at the time of the exile. Behind the misfortune afflicting the God's just ones it was possible to glimpse the presence of a powerful, evil will and intelligence. In this evolution of Jewish thought some contact with Iran may also have played a role, but I am unable to determine either the time or manner in which such influence occurred.

7. The Satan Traditions While the apocalyptic current developed its reflections on the origin of evil and on the devil, in other circles a tradition of thought was developing around these problems, one which renounced speculation on rebel angels, even while knowing of it, seeking to explain misfortune within the God-human dialectic. I think of the book of Job, which will later become canonical. Evil certainly was not punishment, but rather a mystery linked to human weakness and made to coincide, so to speak, with a certain ontic impurity (Job 14.4). The problem of evil was 23

23. Cf. Job 14.1-4: 'The man born of woman: brief are his days, full of care; he blooms like a flower and fades away, vanishing like a shadow and does not stop.

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explained as a mystery, presuming that this is an explanation. But in the God-human dialectic a third element is inserted, func tioning as a catalyst: this is an angel of God, called the 'satan' because of his function, who will finally give his name as a legacy to the devil. The name 'satan' is not a proper name, but a common one, signifying 'enemy', a name with a very strong value, but not used to indicate an enemy in war. As a technical term we may think of it as indicating the accuser in a trial. Hence this angel's name: his function was that of accusing humans before God of their misdeeds. This angel first appears in Zech. 3.2, thus towards the end of the sixth century BCE, at the beginning of the Persian period. This is the angel who accuses before God the high priest Joshua. From the story it appears that the satan has a specific task, but one he carries out with a spirit of personal initiative: within the limits of his charge he is free. This operative autonomy appears even more clearly in the book of Job. The satan discusses the problem of justice with God. It is he who proposes putting Job to the test, to see if he or God is right. Within the limits of the authorization he receives, he is the one who decides how to test Job. Though he is an angel of God, we see him act with a certain liberty of initiative, of a kind always unfavorable to humans. Towards the end of the Persian period his figure appears again in the first book of Chronicles (21.1), where his name has already become a proper name. It has lost the article, and from 'the satan' has turned into 'Satan', with a capital ' S ' . Comparing the text of Chronicles with its source, which survives in the books of Samuel (2 Sam. 24.1), we can understand the problems that prompted some Jews to use this figure. In the more ancient text, that of the source, we read: 'the anger of God was kindled against Israel' in a context where the reason for this does not appear. Evidently the idea of a God who grows angry without a specific reason and puts sinful ideas into someone's heart (in this case, David's) must have been repugnant to the religious sensibility of the fourth century, therefore the text as it came from the pen of the Chronicler became: 'Satan stood up against Israel...' Without this comparison with its source, the Chronicles text would seem to speak precisely about the devil, and there are those who interAnd yet You keep Your eye upon this being! This is the being You bring to judg ment with You! No one can make the impure pure.' Ravasi [Job, p. 446) comments on the verse: 'Giobbe, rilevandol'impurita dell'uomoe la sua debolezza ontologica... (Job, observing the impurity of humans and their ontological weakness).'


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pret the passage in this way. But if we place the Chronicles text along side that of its source, we see that, more probably, we are dealing only with a way of expressing an embarrassing idea, that of a God who can will someone's evil, as in the older tradition. In any event the figure of Satan is an ambiguous figure, because we do not fully understand what freedom of action he has within the heavenly court, and to what point he can harm humans and why. In this way Satan and the devil (whether Asa'el or Semeyaza) are drawing closer to each other. Within a short time their figures will converge completely, in the sense that Satan will become the name, or at least one of the names, of the devil. But is it the fallen head angel who took the name of Satan, or is it the angel of God who took over the function of the fallen head angel? It is impossible to respond to the problem: the texts do not speak of the origin of Satan in the sense of 'the devil', and perhaps the question is not that important. 8. Satan in Sirach At the beginning of the second century BCE, when the Boole of Dreams was developing its ideas about the devil, it must have been a common place to attribute evil inclinations either to Satan or to the devil, but I do not know whether these were still two distinct figures or if Satan already was the name of the devil. Sirach (ca. 180 BCE) provides the evidence: 'When the impious curses the satan, he only curses himself (21.27). For Sirach, therefore, the devil does not exist: Satan is only a metaphor to indicate our worst instincts. Naturally, in this way another problem was raised, that of the reason for the existence in humans of this evil instinct. But this would require us to examine a problem that goes beyond our present topic, even though one of great interest for the Jewish world and, in any event, it was a problem Sirach did not address. But Sirach did address the problem of death, explaining it as a conse quence of the sin of Eve (25.24). Human sin, which will be called the sin of Adam and which has such great importance in Paul's thought, thus comes into the history of Jewish thought. But it is precisely this introduction of the sin of Adam that reduces, for those who accept it, the importance of the devil as tempter. 24

24. 'From the woman sin had its beginning: because of whose fault we all die.' It is not clear in the original if 'whose' refers to 'sin' or 'woman', but the meaning of the phrase is the same in either case.

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9. The Book of Jubilees and the Fusion of the Two Traditions A clear evolution in thought regarding the devil appears in the Book of Jubilees (end of the second century BCE). The author repeats the myth of the fall of the angels occurring at the time of Jared, but does not mention the existence of a leader. The inactive devil of Apl is not satis factory. The author of the Book of Jubilees emphasizes the contamina tion of nature provoked by the angels' sin. He recounts how the fallen angels were imprisoned (5.6), how the giants were killed 'and bound in the depths of the earth'. Nature was renewed (5.11). This new creation was entrusted to the new humanity that came out of the Flood (5.14). But also after the Flood the souls of the giants remained at work, as evil spirits, disturbing humans. To this point there is little new in comparison with the thought of Apl. Here is the new element: an intervention of God intended to enclose underground also the souls of the giants, the evil spirits. But at this point Mastema arrives at the heavenly court as a legatus of the evil spirits. I use this Latin word because it maintains the ambiguity of the Ethiopic: mal'ak is the 'messenger', as one translator has it, but is also the 'general or head', as other translators render it. In either case mal'ak seems to be a leader of secondary rank and here the text offers confirmation, because he speaks not in his own name, but in that of someone else, whose words he reports. And this 'someone else' is Satan, as we soon learn from the discourse. Mastema asks God, in Satan's name, that at least some of the souls of the giants remain at his command because, he explains, 'if none of their number remains to me, I cannot apply the power of my will in people' (Jub. 7.7-10). The devil has therefore changed from being the metaphysical principle of evil to the head of a kind of kingdom, parallel to that of God, to whom God actually assigns as subjects the souls of the giants, that is, the 25

25. In Jub. 10.7-11 we read: 'Our God [the angels are speaking] told us to bind them all. And Mastema, the spirits' messenger, came and said: "Lord, creator, leave some of them before me that they may listen to my word and do all that I tell them. For if none of their number remains to me I cannot apply the power of my will in the children of men..." A n d the Lord said, "A tenth part will remain before him and the other nine parts will descend to the place of damnation."... " A n d we acted according to his command. We bound all the wicked in the place of damnation... and a tenth part of these we left free, to be in Satan's power on earth' (following Fusella [see above, n. 19]). 8

9


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evil spirits. The kingdom of evil is unified and made contemporary to humans. And this devil can have the name of Satan, the accusing angel, besides that of Belial or Beliar. Nothing is said of his origin. We do not know if he is the fallen angel or the accusing angel who has made him self independent from God. Historically there might be other possibilities, as we will soon see. The human person is no longer surrounded by bands of evil spirits, each autonomous, but is surrounded by something organized: a kingdom, opposed to God, but in some way also dependent on God, if the devil is reduced to asking that not all the demons be enclosed beneath the earth. It seems that God also wants the devil to have a certain power. In reality this myth seems to pose the problem of the relation between God and evil, a relation that was thought in some way to exist, as in the most ancient Hebraic tradition, when there was no hesitation about saying that certain evils came from God. In the Book of Jubilees Mastema is employed by God against humans, for example, against the Egyptians: he is like some rabid dog. Mastema, after having stricken the Egyptians cruelly, would also have attacked the Hebrews escaping the slavery of Egypt, if the angels of the heavenly court had not rushed to bind him, to avoid a massacre. Here we have entered the realm of the grotesque, but the underlying problem is quite clear: the relation between God and evil, which earlier apocalyptic had resolved by clearly separating the two terms, terms which now tend to be confounded. It is a fact that any attempt to free God from evil carries the risk of limiting God's power.

10. Essenism and the Devil Created Such by God That the problem around the year 100 and then in the first century BCE had to be this is demonstrated by the solution that Essenism gave to the figure of the devil. If God is omnipotent, such that in that omnipotence he foresaw and predetermined even the words that come out of the mouths of humans, he must also have determined angelic affairs. 26

26. Cf. 1QS 3.15-17: 'From the God of knowledge comes all that is and that will be. Before men existed He fixed their thoughts, and when they come into existence they act according to the thought of His glory [that is, of God], without being able to change anything.' Creation is not an event that happened at the beginning, but some thing constantly repeated. All things and events are always God's work. Human knowledge itself is possible only within the limits of the divine will; cf. 1QH 1.8-29


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Essenism, at least that of the sect's great texts, does not use the myth of the fall of the angels. God from the beginning created two spirits, two angelic beings, and placed one as head of the light and the other as head of the darkness, one to love and the other to hate. This prince of darkness is yet another new interpretation of the devil; in this case, how ever, created as such by God with powers over all those, spirits and human beings, who have been assigned by God to his faction. We can see here that the teaching of Second Isaiah, who wanted a God who is also creator of the darkness, is taken up again and rendered more radical. 27

28

11. The Devil in the Book of Wisdom With the book of Wisdom (written after 30 BCE, but now its date has been brought forward to the middle of the following century) the devil returns to being only the arche of evil, and of death in particular. But this devil is different from that of Apl. His figure does not coincide with that of the head of the fallen angels, but with that of the Genesis serpent. There is no mention of the fall of the angels, as there is no mention in the slightly earlier Epistle of Enoch. Even if in the book of Wisdom the serpent is never named, the affirmation that God did not create death 29

passim: 'Before You created men, You already knew all their works, which they would carry out for all the ages [of the ages. For only by Your will] is anything done and nothing can be known without Your will...In the wisdom of Your knowledge You fixed men's roles, before they existed. Everything happens according to Your mouth (that is, Your will) [and Your word]. Without You nothing can be done... You have created the breath of the word on the tongue. You know the words it speaks. You have fixed the fruit of the lips before the words are spoken.' 27. Cf. 1QS 3.17-23 passim: 'God put two spirits in man with which to proceed until the time of His intervention. They are the spirits of truth ('emet, here clearly in the sense of 'good') and of evil. In a spring of Light are the human generations of the truth and from a spring of Darkness come the generations of evil. The Prince of Light (head of the good angels, usually Michael, but never named in this text) has the governance of all the children of righteousness, who walk in the ways of the Light. The angel of Darkness has the governance of the children of evil, who walk in the ways of Darkness. Because of the angel of Darkness even the children of righteous ness err and all their sins...are in his power, according to the mysterious plan of God, until the time He has chosen.' 28. Cf. 1QS 3.26-4.1: 'God loves one of these spirits forever and is always pleased with his actions. He despises the thought of the other and forever hates all his ways (that is, his deeds).' 29. Cf. G. Scarpat, Libro della Sapienza (Brescia, 1989), I, pp. 14-21.

10. The Devil in Jewish Traditions (1.14) and that this entered the world only by the work of the (2.24) can only be explained by thinking of a reference to the story and the disobedience of Adam. In the book of Wisdom the remains only as the cause of death, which is the evil par excellence. on the other side, derives from 'distorted thoughts' of the human leading the person far from God (1.3).

227 devil Eden devil Sin, soul,

12. The Devil in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs The devil is presented essentially as evil activity in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, especially if read in their first century B C E redaction. In T. Reub. 2.2 we read that he places in the human being, at the moment of birth, seven spirits, which are the roots 'of the deeds of youth'. 'When a soul is continually disturbed, the Lord draws away from it and the devil takes dominion' (T. Dan 4.7). The devil here lives very close to humans; he is already inside them. It is the devil who has placed within the person every evil instinct, and he himself will enter the person who has lost internal equilibrium and serenity. In this work earlier ambiguities about the relation between God and the tempter are resolved: the boundary between good and evil is clear. The devil is entirely extraneous to God; his is a will inimical to God. 'You must hold fast to the will of God and reject that of Belial' (T. Naph. 3.1). 'God is in Light, Belial is in Darkness' (T. Jos. 20.2). The two kingdoms have clearly separate locales and, more than being merely distinct are opposed. The presence within humans of the devil, at least at the level of spirits he himself placed in the person, posed the problem of evil and the devil in terms which we today would call psychological. The great defense against Belial and his spirits is interior peace, protected by an angel called, aptly, the angel of peace (T. Benj. 6.1). Along with this historical aspect, the devil also maintains metaphysical dimensions. The author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is not so much interested in the problem of the origin of evil as in that of its end. The good and just time of the future will begin when the priestly 30

30. Cf. J. Becker, Die Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchen (Judische Scriften aus hellenistisch-romischer Zeit, III. 1; Giitersloh, 1974); idem, Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Testamente der Zwolf Patriarchen (AGJU, 8; Leiden, 1970).

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messiah binds forever the devil, whose ruinous action is possible and easy inasmuch as he acts upon a humanity impoverished and disempowered by impurity, which begins to be identified with sex. But this is yet another problem. 32

13. The Devil in the Book of Parables The concept of the devil in the Book of Parables is extremely complex and probably not consistent, since it sometimes depends very directly on other sources. The author knows of angels of God, called satans, who have the task of reporting to God the sins of humans. He also knows of an angelic voice that forces (or attempts to force, and that is not a small difference) these satans not to draw near to God (7 En. 40.7). These satans do not seem to belong to the diabolical kingdom, but are looked upon by the other angels with contempt and fear because of the evil they can bring upon humans. The 'satan' angels, once again in Jewish thought, have an ambiguous position. They are at the service of God, but their service must be watched and, if possible, impeded. Chapter 54 is much more interesting. It is not an elaboration of other sources, but belongs directly to the author. He tells of having seen in a vision the chains prepared for Azazel, head of the fallen angels. Therefore, for our author the head of the fallen angels has not yet been bound: this is not an inactive devil, but one that is still at work, still heading his troops that will follow him into eternal damnation. There are no longer evil spirits distinct from fallen angels: the demons are all of the same rank, they are only fallen angels. The myth of the giants has become legend. What is striking is the way in which the author indicates the fault of all these beings: this consists in their having been servants of Satan and having led humans to sin (1 En. 54.6). Thus Azazel sinned in that he placed himself at the service of Satan, which has become, in this era spanning the first century BCE and the first century CE, the common name indicating the devil, and cannot in any way be identified with the angel of Job's heavenly court. It is also surprising that the punishments are reserved exclusively for 31. Cf. T. Levi 18.12: 'Beliar will be bound by him' (that is, by the high priestmessiah of the future). 32. Cf. L. Rosso Ubigli, 'Alcuni aspetti della concezione della "porneia" nel tardo giudaismo', Henoch 1 (1979), pp. 201-45.


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Azazel and his army. Once again in 55.4 the author repeats that the elect, that is, the Son of Man 'will judge Azazel and his army', with no mention of Satan. It seems, staying close to the text, that the first prin ciple of evil, called Satan, is not liable to judgment. The fault lies in following him. But then who is this Satan? Could the author be under such strong Iranian influence as to think of a being independent of God? The text is what it is, and we cannot make it say what it does not; but this figure of a Satan of unknown origin, neither judged nor subject to judgment, is disturbing. We may refer to what I said earlier in regard to the Book of Jubilees. Once again, in ch. 69, the devil is mentioned, but this is a passage the author has taken from another source, the already cited Book of Noah, and rewritten. The author's thought can be grasped more through his way of reading the ancient myth than through the structures of the myth itself. The chapter contains some details regarding the fall of the angels, which were not of interest to Apl: in v. 2 we have twenty-one names of angels, among whom is also Azazel, but strangely, only in tenth place. There follows another list, containing the names of the leaders of the fallen angels. Our author interprets the story in such a way that their rebellion against God is understood as earlier than the time of the so-called fall, something that occurred seemingly before the very creation of the world. The first of these leaders is Yequn (the name is not documented elsewhere), indicated as the one who led the angels into error (v. 4). He is, therefore, the first sinner, the real devil. The second is called Asbel and is the one directly responsible for the 'fall'. To him is attributed the origin of contamination and impurity, though the text is not clear (v. 5). The third is most interesting: he is called Gadriel, and is the one identified expressly with Eve's serpent. Apart from the flurry of dia bolical names, it seems to me that in this chapter the thought of the Book of Parables' author is clear. There was a rebellion that took place before time. The first sinner seduced the other angels. One of the angels seduced was the one who provoked the so-called fall of the angels, another the one who successfully tempted Eve. All these demons are still active, even though their future condemnation and imprisonment are certain. They are the ones who lead people to sin.

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14. The Devil in the Testament of Job: The Other Face of God If we think once again of the texts we have been examining until now, we observe a problem that pops up here and there, particularly in the Book of Jubilees: the relation between God and the devil. Even if some saw the devil as the always active and obstinate oppo nent of God, they were never able to think that this opposition could finally conclude in the devil's favor. God is the stronger, and, if he wished, could annihilate the devil at any moment. If he has not yet done so it is because the moment has not yet arrived. At this point an idea begins to take hold, that in some way the devil has a part in God's plans. This connivance in its turn poses problems. Is it possible that God allows a demonic power to do whatever it wishes? Would not God inter vene perhaps when the forces of the angels and the good are nearing defeat? This is the idea of a certain apocalyptic, which saw in the degene ration of history the approach of this necessary divine intervention. A text that can be dated to the middle of the first century, the Testament of Job, responds to this problem. Here the devil, called by this name or that of Satan, appears more as the opponent of humans than of God. He is the one 'by whom human nature is deceived' (3.3), in the sense that he attempts to deceive it. As a tempter, he has freedom of initiative and encounters an obstacle only in the human conscience; but if Satan wants to attack someone in a material way, he must request authorization from God (ch. 8), and becomes in some way God's instrument and collaborator, somewhat like the satan in the canonical book of Job. Ancient Hebrew religion did not hesitate to attribute any misfortune to God. Now the preference turns to a formula of 'diabolical initiative and divine authorization'. The two figures, God and the devil, draw strangely closer: the devil must converse with God if he wishes to carry out certain plans of his. There is a reason why the principal human virtue, according to the author, is patience, tested virtue, more or less as Paul would say (Rom. 5.4). Sirach, who did not believe in the devil, said 33

33. It is a common concept in apocalyptic that history is degenerating constantly. The idea is nevertheless found also outside true apocalyptic and even outside the Hebraic world. A typical image of this historical degeneration is the vision of the statue made of four elements, each worse than the other, with the last one also breakable, leading to the ruin of the whole. Cf. P. Siniscalco, Mito e storia tra paganesimo e cristianesimo—Le eta del mondo in fond antiche (Turin, 1976).


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that only one who is tested by God can be considered truly just: 'gold is tested by fire and those dear to God by humiliation' (Sir. 2.5). For Sirach the person can be put to the test by God, without any need of using Satan, or, as in the Testament of Job, even his initiative. 15. The Devil in the New Testament Though the New Testament is not part of the topic assigned to me, some brief mention of it is indispensable if I am not to leave the topic half-done, since the New Testament is an integral part of the Jewish culture of the first century CE. Also in New Testament writings the devil appears in various forms, from the tempter of Jesus to Peter's roaring lion, prowling around us (1 Pet. 5.8), and the first sinner of John (1 Jn 3.8), the cause of a terrifying cosmic drama, which still affects us (see the canonical Apocalypse). Moreover, in the New Testament, that is, in Paul, we also find the sin of Adam. In Jewish writings of the end of the first century the devil suddenly disappears. We have three of broad horizons: 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra and Slavonic Enoch. In none of these is the devil mentioned, even though the story of the fall is recalled, but in 2 Bar. 55.10-12 it is called the con sequence of Adam's bad example (thus Adam's sin involves the angels, not vice versa!); and in 2 En. 1 the apostate angels stay in the second heaven, tormented and weeping, deprived of any power. But the eclipse of the devil will last for only a brief time: the very rewriting of Slavonic Enoch, some centuries later, will give ample room for speculation on Satan. About this I am certain: the figure of the devil in its multiple aspects is not the fruit of fantasy as a recent work has suggested. The devil does not at all represent the triumph of aesthetics over logic, but rather collects in himself very reasonable demands of human thought confronted with the problem of evil. The devil is that x, which resolves a complex equation of I know not what level, wherein account is taken of multiple factors not easily reconciled among them selves, such as the existence of a just God, the freedom of the human person who becomes such in the face of a choice between good and evil, in which one of the two terms, the light, is made to derive from God, 34

34. Cf. B. Teyssedre, Le diable et I'enfer au temps de Jesus (Paris, 1985), p. 48: 'Rien ne montrerait mieux comme les visions de 1' Au-dela sont un produit des affects, non des concepts. L'Enfer, c'est l'image en negatif d'un triomphe de l'esthethique sur la logique.'

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while the other, the darkness, remains impossible to lead back to that point, at least directly. In the figure of the devil there is also the intuition of evil as an organized force, in that it has a purpose of destruction that does not strike just this or that one, but is turned against everything and everyone, and thus cannot be the work simply of an evil spirit. The devil is a force that the person senses as being at the same time external and internal. The devil of Judaism is not 'that part of everything called Darkness' as in Goethe, nor the death that assumes its place as in ancient Canaanite myths. The devil shows that evil is, and always is, out of place, so to speak, because it is that force which opposes order and which cannot, in any way, be made to conform to any reassuring structure of being. 35

36

37

35. 'Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der Anfangs Alles War—Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar' (Faust, vv. 1349-50). 36. See the Myth of Baal and Death, published with other myths in C. Kappler, Apocalypses et voyages dans Vau-dela (Paris, 1987). 37. Concerning the aspiration, destined always to remain such, of bringing the devil within order, cf. J.B. Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithaca, NY, 1976), p. 32: 'Not by repression, which only increases the shadow in the unconscious, but by conscious suppression of the evil elements that we have recognized in ourselves, will that element of the divine we call the Devil be brought out of chaos and out of opposition into order and under control.' Cited in the review by A.H. Kelly, JR 67 (1987), p. 519.

Chapter 11 H I S T O R I C A L I N T R O D U C T I O N T O T H E BOOK OF THE OF ENOCH

(SLAVONIC

SECRETS

ENOCH)"

1. Outline of the Book The Book of the Secrets of Enoch recounts a journey of Enoch to heaven. The Enoch tradition knows of several heavenly journeys attri buted to Enoch and each one, evidently, had the purpose of adding new elements to the Enochic revelation or even, as often happened, of correcting something in the preceding revelations. When Enoch was 365 years old, and therefore already close to death, two angels appeared to him, who took him with them, carrying him to the very presence of God, who lived in the seventh heaven, making him pass through, one by one, all the intermediate heavens. Thus Enoch was able to see the heavenly world, which has two aspects: this is the place of the heavenly bodies, of the angels and of God; it is also the place of the eschaton, which will be (and to some extent already is) in heaven and not on earth. He sees the heavenly structures that we would call physical: the causes of atmospheric phenomena, the movements of the stars with their laws and the angels that guide them; the true measure of time and, at the same moment, the structures of the beyond, with hell and paradise; he sees the prison of the sinful angels; he convinces the Grigori angels, who had suspended liturgical services, to resume them. Having arrived at the seventh heaven and guided no longer by two simple angels, but by higher angels, he is called to God's own presence. This he can see, contrary to the more ancient Enoch tradition, which insisted on the human impossibility of seeing God (cf. 1 En. 14.18-19, where it is said that not even the angels can look at God) and, con1

* First published as 'Introduzione storica al Libro dei Segreti di Enoch (= Enoc Slavo o 2 Enoc)', in P. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento (Turin, 1989), II, pp. 491-511. 1. Cf. M. Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys (Judentum und Umwelt, 8; Frankfurt a. M., 1984).


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sequently, on the ineffability of the divine. God himself speaks to him to tell him that he intends to reveal to him also the secret of creation, which is unknown even to the angels. Therefore he commands the archangel Vreveil (probably the Uriel of Ethiopic Enoch) to tell Enoch all the secrets of creation. Thus are generated the 360 books of Enoch, containing all that is knowable. Enoch is thus accompanied back to earth where he can remain for one month, during which time he will teach his sons all that he has seen in the heavens, and will give them the principles of the true halakah, founded on love for all living beings, including animals. There is no men tion of universalism, but this is not improbable. Worship has great importance for our author and on this point he is in contrast with the norms of worship regarding the manner of sacrificing animals, as these were practiced in Jerusalem. At the end of the period allowed him, Enoch is led once again to heaven. This is the beginning of the so-called 'Melchizedek Appendix', which I will call 2EM. I will use the symbol 2E to indicate the first part of the work, when it is necessary to contrast it with the second. From this point on the story has Melchizedek as its central figure. As Enoch has left this world, the people ask the son of Enoch, Methuselah, for a priest, as once they asked Samuel for a king. Methuselah says that God will choose one, but God only tells Methuselah that he must listen to the voice of the people: we will soon see the cause of this limited involvement of God. The people make Methuselah himself the priest. When Methuselah is near death, God appears to him in a dream and invites him to pass on his priesthood to his nephew Nir, the otherwise unknown brother of Noah. Nir has a wife, Sophonim, who conceives virginally and gives birth to a child who is born bearing the insignia of the priesthood and is already able to express himself as an adult. Nir immediately renounces the priesthood to make room for this priest, who will be 'priest of priests forever': Methuselah's priesthood was purely historical. Authentic priesthood is only that eternal priesthood of Melchizedek. As the Flood is about to begin and sweep away Nir and his offspring, the archangel Michael carries the baby to safety in Eden, where he will live forever. Overall, one has the impression of a work that develops an Enochic priestly tradition in the midst of the problems of first-century Jewish 2

2. Cf. L. Rosso Ubigli, 'La fortuna di Enoc nel giudaismo antico: valenzc e problemi', AS£ 1 (1984), pp. 153-64.

11. Historical Introduction to the Book of the Secrets

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thought, with particular reference to the relation between the functions of Enoch and those of Melchizedek. 2. The Problems of the Text-Tradition in the History of Research The situation of the text of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch is peculiar. It exists in two forms, one rather different from the other, called the long recension and the short recension: A and B. The history of research shows the terms of the problem, as I will indicate here. The first complete publication of a manuscript containing the text of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch occurred in 1880 and was the work of Popov (Kniga Enocha [Moscow: 1880]). This was a manuscript (P) of the long recension, perhaps the worst of them all. From this publication we derive the traditional division of the work into 73 chapters which, although debatable, is very widely accepted. De Santos Otero has given a division into 24 chapters which is much more probable and organic but which, being uncommon, creates confusion, because the text is normally cited by scholars using the division into more numerous chapters. This manuscript, having been the first published, has influenced to some degree all successive research with its form. In 1884 the first manuscript of the short recension (N) was published. This was con sidered a summary of the long version by the first editors to take into account the whole tradition of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Charles and Bonwetsch ). Only in 1921, with the publication of a brief but well-reasoned and lucid article by N. Schmidt did the problem turn inside-out. B represented the more ancient, and A the more recent form; the history of the text was marked by expansion, not reduction. Vaillant's edition, a very rare example of a critical edition in the field of Jewish apocalyptic literature, signalled the acceptance, with which I agree, of the B text as definitive. Yet there have still been critiques from later editors. De Santos Otero reproves Vaillant for not having posed 3

4

5

6

7

8

3. Libro de los secretos de Henoc, in A. Dfez Macho, Los apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento, IV (Madrid, 1984), pp. 145-202. 4. R.H. Charles, in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, II (Oxford, 1913), pp. 635ff. 5. G. Bonwetsch, Die Biicher der Geheimnisse Henochs, das sogenannte Henochbuch (TU, 44.2; Leipzig, 1922). 6. 'The Two Recensions of Slavonic Enoch', JAOS 41 (1921), pp. 307-12. 7. A. Vaillant, Le Livre des secrets d'Henoch (Paris, 1952). 8. De Santos Otero, Los secretos de Henoc, p. 149.

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the basic problem, which would have allowed the construction of the critical text: do the two recensions represent a single tradition or do they rather represent multiple traditions? In fact Vaillant considered the expan sions of A as additions to the Slavonic archetype, translated around the ninth century: an internal problem of the Slavonic tradition, and nothing more. Here he was following, while interpreting in his own way, the studies of Maunder and Fotheringham, who placed the accent on the relation between medieval Slavic culture and the text of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Milik," while moving the problem from the Slavic to the Byzantine world, remained sympathetic to a relatively late dating of the work as a whole (ninth century). About the problem of single or multiple traditions, only a Slavonic scholar can respond. Andersen insists that the difference in length of the two recensions is due to two different factors. On the one hand there are blocks of text found only in A; on the other, even the passages common to both recensions, with rare exceptions, are longer in A than in B. The two types of problems, though both contributing in the same way to altering the text of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (by lengthening or abbreviating it), must still be studied separately, because they have different motivations. However, 'there is so much verbal simi larity when the passages correspond that a common source must be supposed; that is, we have recensions, not different versions.' Whatever the origin of the materials exclusive to A, it is clear that these were introduced in the Slavonic tradition only in a second phase. Even the fact, reaffirmed by Enrietti, that the language of the added parts in A is later clearly shows that these are amplifications to the basic work, whatever their origin may be. 9

10

12

13

9. A.S. Maunder, 'The Date and Place of Writing of the Slavonic Book of Enoch', The Observatory 41 (1918), pp. 309-16. 10. K. Fotheringham, review of Maunder, JTS 20 (1919), p. 252; and 'The Easter Calendar and the Slavonic Enoch', JTS 23 (1922), pp. 49-56. 11. J.T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford, 1976). 12. F.I. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York, 1983), I, pp. 91-213, 93. 13. M. Enrietti, Libro dei segreti di Enoc, in P. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento (Turin, 1989), II, pp. 477ff. (480). Other arguments in favor of the pri ority of B and of the substantial Tightness of Vaillant's work are in N.A. Mescerskij, 'Les apocryphes de l'Ancien Testament dans la litterature slave ancienne', Bulletin des Etudes karai'tes 2 (1989), pp. 47-64, 58-61.


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The problem can only be considered unresolved if these additions as a block go back to an intervention of redactional expansion in the Byzantine world around the fifth-sixth centuries, or if these were joined in 2 Enoch only by learned Slavs of the late Middle Ages. The materials of the A tradition certainly need further study but, in any case, they are clearly late. De Santos Otero says that it is risky to take B as the original. It is probable that some problems also need to be resolved in B's history, but overall it can be considered the text closest to the original, at least in our present state of knowledge. The original is an abstract concept; no one possesses the author's manuscript. Even the original of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch is only the most ancient form of the text available, and therefore the closest to the Original (with a capital ' O ' ) . Among the problems of B to be resolved he indicates some passages in B which are longer than in A, contrary to the norm, and other passages in A which are abbreviated. The first group of passages, which are not numerous, really need clarification. I think that Vaillant's methodological approach is valid: he chooses as a better representative of the B recension the MS U , con taining a longer text than other B manuscripts, such as to be considered representative of an intermediate recension. Cf. Sokolov, in Russian, cited by Vaillant and Andersen, who distinguishes in both recension A and B a longer and briefer form. De Santos Otero refers to Pines who speaks of the work's abrupt end at ch. 70 in M S J (the scribe stopped at the point where he was to begin the story of the virginal con ception of Melchizedek), while in MS P, a copy of a manuscript of the same family as the former the end of the work has been fixed at the 14

15

16

17

18

19

14. De Santos Otero, Los secretos de Henoc, p. 152. 15. The concept of the original in its scholarly application has been much studied by Romance text criticism. Cf. A.S. Avalle, 'Principi di critica testuale', Vulgares eloquentes 7 (Padua, 1972); and P.G. Borbone, 'Riflessioni sulla critica del testo dell'Antico Testamento ebraico in riferimento al libro di Osea', Henoch 8 (1986), pp. 281-320. In this article one can find an ample bibliography on the concept of the original, and there is mention of the possibility of applying it to Old Testament issues. 16. Vaillant, Secrets d'Henoch, pp. ii and iv. 17. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 93. 18. S. Pines, 'Eschatology and the Concept of Time in the Slavonic Book of Enoch', in Types of Redemption, Numen, Supplement 18 (1970), pp. 72-87 (74). 19. Vaillant, Secrets d'Henoch, p. vii.


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end of ch. 68 (the new scribe preferred to eliminate the whole passage about Melchizedek). Clearly a copyist was scandalized, finding blasphe mous the story of the miraculous birth of Melchizedek because it resembled too closely that of Jesus. But the problem is easily explained and is rather late (sixteenth century). This does not mean that 2EM does not belong to the first writing of the text. But for this question, see below. 3. The Environment of the Oldest Text The basic problem in interpreting B is represented, obviously, by its date and the environment that produced it. The great majority of authorities favor a Jewish interpretation. De Santos Otero lists the supporters of its Jewish origin, a position he himself shares: Charles, Bonwetsch, Bousset, Harnack, Schiirer, Szekely, Riessler, Schmidt, Eissfeldt, Scholem, Pines, Delcor, Denis, Kamlah, Mescerskij, Philonenko, Stichel. I might add H.H. Rowley and also Andersen. Those in opposition, besides those mentioned earlier who consider the text late, are also Vaillant and Danielou, both of whom see strong Christian influences in it, and especially Rubinstein, who in fact speaks of a Christian origin. Regarding Andersen, even though he declares the Book of the Secrets of Enoch an enigma, and thus not to be used for historical purposes, still it seems to me that his position depends more on a philosophy of super-prudence (not rare among scholars today) rather than a real lack of arguments to present. He excludes both a Christian and a Jewish origin, but clearly only in the sense that the Book of the Secrets of Enoch cannot belong to the mainstream of either religion. There is no doubt about this point. The Book of the Secrets of Enoch ignores Moses and Abraham; 2EM substitutes the biblical expression 'God of Abraham...' with the expres sion 'God of Enoch'. But this is an internal polemic within Judaism and Andersen is right in advancing the hypothesis that the Book of the Secrets 20

21

22

23

24

20. De Santos Otero, Los secretos de Henoc, p. 151. 21. H.H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic (London, 2nd edn, 1955), p. 96, n. 3. 22. A. Rubinstein, 'Observations on the Slavonic Book of Enoch', JJS 13 (1962), pp. 1-21. 23. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 97. 24. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 95.


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25

of Enoch is the product of a fringe sect. According to Andersen, in order to resolve the mystery of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch it is necessary to identify this group. But it is the very Book of the Secrets of Enoch that identifies it, even if it does not give its name. Furthermore, it is improbable that its own members would give its name: the name of the Essenes does not come to us from their works, but from outside. It is also notable that all the possible hypotheses advanced by Andersen, which are not mutually exclusive, circle around the first century CE. He makes a particularly acute observation about the relation between the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Comparisons between the New Testament and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch are limited to the Gospel of Matthew: it is improbable that a later Christian author knew only Matthew out of the whole New Testament, with the consequence that the most probable solution is that the Book of the Secrets of Enoch derives from a Palestinian environ ment that knew the Gospel of Matthew, the most Jewish in mentality among the Synoptics and that of which tradition recalls the existence of an Aramaic version. Rubinstein's basic argument for affirming the Christian origin of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch merits discussion, or at least presentation. He observes that scholars of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch generally limit themselves to speaking of the text up to ch. 68, which concludes the translation of Enoch to heaven. They leave aside the problem of the long 'appendix' which tells of the virgin birth of Melchizedek and how he is the eternal priest, 'the priest of all priests forever' (for example, see 71.29). The analogy with the Letter to the Hebrews is evident; but pre cisely this fact, that the eternal priesthood is attributed to Melchizedek, not to Jesus according to the order of Melchizedek, represents, on the one hand, a serious difficulty for a Christian interpretation and, on the other, also places the text of 2 EM in the time when the figure of Melchizedek was the subject of myths concerning the messiah and the 26

27

25. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 96. 26. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 95, n. 13 27. That Mark may be earlier than 70 CE is a rather widely held opinion. Cf. R.P. Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity: Tradition, History and Legal History in Mark 7 (JSNTSup, 13; Sheffield, 1986), p. 150. The opinion that the other Synoptics also, at least in large part, existed before 70 has been defended with serious arguments: cf. J.A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London, 1976); J. Carmignac, La naissance des Evangiles synoptiques (Paris, 1984); cf. also P. Sacchi, 'I sinottici furono scritti in ebraico? una valida ipotesi di lavoro', Henoch 8 (1986), pp. 67-78.


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priesthood, the time between Qumran and the Letter to the Hebrews. It happens rather frequently that one encounters in this type of litera ture ways of thinking similar to those of Christians, but this does not at all justify the hypothesis that the works are Christian, only that they are works of a certain period, and of a certain type of Judaism. Christianity took its theology from that of the Judaism of its time, but applied it to the figure of Jesus. It is not the fact that the Son of Man is mentioned that makes one think of Christian influence; it is that the Son of Man is identified with Jesus. It is not mention of the messiah that makes one think of a Christian origin, but that the messianic role is attributed to Jesus. It is not the fact that one tries to base one's priesthood on Melchizedek that indicates a Christian origin, but the fact that this Melchizedek is seen in relation to Jesus. Christian additions to the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs can be identified precisely on this basis: the figure of Jesus is grafted onto a Jewish theological discourse. Rubinstein has, however, posed perfectly the problem of the relation between 2E and 2EM, between the base-text and its 'appendix'. De Santos Otero calls this appendix a 'colophon': 'como colofon se afiade...' Charles, in his edition of the Pseudepigrapha preferred not to publish 2EM, a clear sign of religious embarrassment, especially con sidering that he did publish it in the 1896 edition. This appendix is really an integral part of the work, and it can be understood only if read in strict relation to the first part. Though I am not a Slavonic expert, it is hard for me to avoid the impression that we are dealing with a work from a hand different to that of the first. The discourse is more fluid, there is notable attention to detail, there are some terms different from those used in 2E (at least in the B form): for example, 2EM uses the term 'archangel' instead of 'glorious one', a difference unlikely to depend on the Slavonic trans lation; 2EM uses the expression 'God of your father Enoch', recasting the biblical 'God of Abraham...God of your fathers' with a specific meaning, an expression not documented in the first part. A phenomenon like this cannot depend on the translation. The language of the original text seems, however, to be Hebrew, as Andersen emphasizes, while leaving open the question (probably insoluble in terms of absolute certainty) whether the language is Hebrew or 'Pseudo-Biblical'. 28

29

28. De Santos Otero, Los secretos de Henoc, p. 150. 29. Andersen, (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch, p. 196, with evident allusions to the problem of the language of the New Testament.


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We might also add that the first part makes complete sense by itself, while the second part makes sense only if read after the first. Consequently, I think that the Book of the Secrets of Enoch should be interpreted as a unitary work, while taking account of the fact that 2EM was added by a second author, one who shared all the ideas of the first author but wanted to confirm or explain better some things which, for him, must have been very important and which, given their importance, can shed some light on the environment that produced this work. 4. Dating the Text With most scholars I believe that 2 Enoch can be dated to the first century CE. Charles proposed the century from 30 BCE to 70 CE. The year 30 BCE is assumed as a terminus post quern because the author knows books such as Sirach, Wisdom, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Ethiopic Enoch. The terminus ante quern is given by the year 70, because the author writes when the temple is still standing. Even though I have many doubts that the author is speaking about the Jerusalem temple when using exclamations like 'how beautiful it is to go to the temple three times a day', it is certain that he is speaking of the Jerusalem temple when he criticizes the sacrificial rites carried out there. In regard to 2EM, since it was necessarily written after 2E, it has as a terminus post quern the date of 2£"s composition. The terminus ante quern is represented by the Letter to the Hebrews, which is addressed to people who knew and experienced the problem of the Melchizedek priesthood. Naturally the terminus ante quern should be understood broadly, because nothing prevents the two works being more or less contemporary. 5. The Original Language When the A text was considered the older, the language proposed for the original was Greek: just think of the name of Adam interpreted according to the acrostic as dvatoA.r|, Sucre,, apKxoc,, ueaeu(3p(a (30.13). Today, however, based on the greater antiquity of B, the tendency (especially in Andersen) is to note that many expressions, though coming from Greek into Slavonic, still maintain traces of Hebrew forms. Apart from the problem of language, it is the inner world of the author that clearly

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belongs to an educated first-century Jew in conflict with the Jerusalem temple. 6. The Author's

Thought

The strongest confirmation that this is a work of the first century is provided by the fact that the book is easy to read against the back ground of the ideas and problems of that century. This does not mean that the work can be fitted into one of those currents of Jewish thought that critics usually recognize and which I doubt ever existed in the form in which they are usually presented. In the Book of the Secrets of Enoch we find the problems of the time, not the conclusions which, even when unoriginal, never match our mental points of reference, which corres pond essentially to the framework we have made for the era from Flavius Josephus's presentation. His interpretation is valid, but can be only an interpretation which, precisely because it is such, summarizes the events narrated on the basis of his criterion of judgment. The author certainly knows the Wisdom literature well: the influence of Sirach is strong, as Charles's apparatus demonstrates quite well; the already recognized contribution of Proverbs is also notable. Personally, I added in my commentary for UTET some similarities to Qoheleth which seem evident to me, but this does not lead us beyond the traditional framework of studies on the question. The author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch also knows very well the Ethiopic Enoch; perhaps it is the text most often cited—in any case it is the one that inspired the work. This does not take away from the fact that many times it is cited more in a spirit of polemic than support. For example, De Santos Otero indicates as a theme common to the two works that of the watchers. This theme is actually present in both works, but we must distinguish between that which is merely repeated and that which is repeated but in a different form. In 2 Enoch there are sinful angels, following the older Enochic tradition, but there is a clear difference in the value of the myth of the fallen angels. For the Ethiopic Enoch the fall contaminated nature, ruined it; for our author it was only an act of pride, complete in itself and punished as such. In the Book of the Secrets of Enoch there fore evil on earth does not have metahistorical origins. It is caused neither by the sin of Adam (Paul; 4 Ezra 3.4ff.; 7.116ff; 2 Bar. 54.15); 30

30. De Santos Otero, Los secretos de Henoc, p. 150.


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nor by the sin of Satan (Rev. 12.3 and 1 Jn 3.8; 1 En. 86.1). It may be possible to find an antecedent, in the Enoch literature, only in the Epistle of Enoch (cf. 7 En. 98.4). The Rabbinic tradition will follow these positions. It is clear therefore, even though never explicitly stated, that the author of 2 Enoch believes in complete human liberty of choice, and consequently refuses any theology of original sin. The refusal of intercession follows along the same lines. In regard to the calendar, the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (recension B) knows a 364-day calendar. It is therefore in the tradition of the Ethiopic Enoch, Jubilees, and works from Qumran, but for this very reason it is against Jerusalem. It is worth noting also its interest in the temple (cf. 51.4 and 45.1), even if it is easy to observe that in respect to the sacrificial rite it is strongly critical of Jerusalem: it insists that the animals must be sacrificed with all four legs bound (cf. ch. 59). This leads one to think that the group to which our author belonged had its own temple outside Jerusalem, where it celebrated its sacrifices according to its own rites (cf. Rubinstein and, for a different view, Schmidt ). The place of the temple is called Azukhan or, less probably, Akhuzan, but only with difficulty can the name indicate the temple of Jerusalem (chs. 64 and 68). Also in 2EM the place of the temple maintains the same name. This shows that the author of 2EM belongs to the same group as the author of 2E. In recension A Azuchan takes on the appearance of an eschatological place: it is the center of the world, the place of Adam's tomb (cf. 81.35). It is clear that the author of A knows nothing of Azuchan, but in recension B it seems to indicate a real place. In an era in which the problem of intercession was felt strongly, and consequently messianic expectations were strong, our author takes a position against intercession and does not even mention the messiah. In ch. 7, the conversation between Enoch and the watchers shows that the referent 'intercession' is well known to the mind of the author. Enoch 31

32

33

31. On the relation between apocalyptic and Essenism, particularly the influence of the former on the origins of the latter, cf. P. Sacchi, 'Riflessioni sull'essenza dell'apocalittica: peccato d'origine e Iiberta dell'uomo', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 31-61; and F. Garcia Martinez, 'Orfgenes apocalipticos del movimiento esenio y orfgenes de la secta qumranica', Communio 18 (1985), pp. 353-68. 32. A. Rubinstein, 'Observations on the Slavonic Book of Enoch', JJS 13 (1962), pp. 1-21 (13). 33. Schmidt, 'Two Recensions', p. 312.

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refuses to intercede, but understands well enough what is being asked of him. In 33.10 Michael is called 'intercessor' but, in this context, it means only 'protector': it is probably only a bad translation. In 53.1 the possi bility of intercession is clearly denied to the sons who evidently expected it. In other words, the author is engaged in a polemic against those who believe in the possibility of intercession: and there must have been some of these within his own group, if the author has the very sons of Enoch present this idea. In 64.5 we find again the hope held by the sons of Enoch, but this time it is expressed by the people who glorify Enoch by saying, among other things: 'The Lord has chosen you to place you as one who carries away our sins.' The similarity to the phrase of John the Baptist, as referred in Mt. 1.9 is evident, but once again we are dealing with a pre-Christian problem, to which Christianity gave one response. A Qumran text, HQMelch 2.6, introduces the heavenly figure of Melchizedek as capable of taking away the sins of the people ('freeing them from the [weight of] all their iniquities'). On the opposite side to that of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch we may recall the authors of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah (2.9; 6.10; 7.8) and Rom. 8.34. The stance of the Book of Parables is interesting (38.6 and 40.6): a very high angel prays, interceding for humans, but it is unclear whether this intercession is useful or not, and in any case the intercession is destined to finish with the judgment. This is a position we could define as questioning or uncertain. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and the Fourth Book of Ezra are deeply aware of the problem and seem to consider their own solution as innovative. The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch says that there was a time in which intercession was possible. This time seems to be very ancient according to the expression of the author, but it is more probable that he refers to his own time (8.1, 2, 12). In 4 Ezra 7.102ff., the author actually poses the problem to God and obtains a negative response; but, unsatisfied, he quotes for God biblical passages in which intercession is mentioned (for example, Abraham who intercedes for Gomorrah). God's response seems to be modelled on the treatment in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, but with more complexity, finally seeming to allow, at least for the present, some possibility of intercession: The present world is not the end and the glory of God does not abide in it forever. For this reason those who had power prayed for the weak, but the day of judgment will be the end of this age and the beginning of the immortal age to come, in which corruption has passed away.. .No one will then be able to have mercy on him who has been overcome...(112-115).


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We can see that this is more nuanced position than that of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. As a whole, the problem of intercession and the solution offered by the Book of the Secrets of Enoch can be framed well within the period around the year 70. A basic precept of the morality of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch is love for all living beings, having its basis, at least in regard to humans, in the fact that God has created them in his image (ch. 44). But the animals too must be treated justly by humans. Animals have a soul similar to that of humans, thought not immortal. They survive death to await the Great Judgment in which they must testify against those who offended them; only after the judgment will their souls be destroyed (56.6). This type of morality, centered entirely on love, has led to the thought of Christian influence (Vaillant). The author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch insists on love for all creatures more than on the Law, the single commandments of which he seems to ignore, preferring to summarize it all under the general concepts of 'sweetness and patience', accompanied by a strong sense of what today we call 'interiorization' (cf., for interiorization, 61.5 and 63.2; for sweetness and patience, 42.13; 50.2; 51.3; 62.1; 66.6). But these are attitudes that are not new to Jewish thought and, in any case, are already documented in pre-Christian works. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs also tends to unify the Law under the commandment of love. Patience too, the capacity to bear misfortune with serenity while knowing oneself to be just, is a fundamental virtue for our author. Perhaps only the just, precisely as such, is capable of this t>7touovf|. With regard to love for animals, this is generally thought to show Iranian influence, but it is not necessary to think of this as direct, because already the Testament ofNaphtali (5.1) knew this theme. The development of the theme of love for animals in 2 Enoch should, in any case, be connected also with problems of a ritual character, which have their roots in the specific environment in which the work was produced. A prominent characteristic of the morality of 2 Enoch is the absence of the theme of fornication, in the wide sense that the word had in this period. Compared with the Book of Jubilees (33.20) which affirms that porneia is the most serious sin, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs which sees in porneia the root of every sin (T. Reub. 2-3), 34

35

34. Cf. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifidell'Antico Testamento, I(Turin, 1981), pp. 744-52. 35. Cf. L. Rosso Ubigli, 'Alcuni aspetti della concezione della "porneia" nel tardo giudaismo', Henoch 1 (1979), pp. 201-45.

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and Paul (1 Cor. 5.1ff.; 6.13ff; 1 Thess. 4.3ff.), the silence of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch on this theme, even in contexts where ethics is the prime concern, becomes something more than an argumentum e silentio. The mention of virtues other than love is rare: in 63.3 poverty is mentioned, and in 61.5 and 63.3-4, humility, elements that may make the Book of the Secrets of Enoch more similar to the Book of Parables, the New Testament and Qumran texts. The fact that these are sporadic mentions does not mean that these virtues are not appreciated by the author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. More probably they are mentioned infrequently only because the author tends to concentrate his treatment on essential foci. Towards the poor he has a compassionate emphasis, and offering them aid is a duty for those who are able. Yet he avoids the populist tone of the Book of Parables, which considers poverty synonymous with righteousness and wealth as the synonym of iniquity. The poor must be humble in patience, that other basic virtue, as we have already seen. God does not accept the haughty (cf. 63.4). The author is also aware of the theme of God's future descent upon the earth (58.1 and 32.1, the latter only in recension A), as first docu mented in Jub. 1.26 and in numerous passages of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs?*" Differing from earlier texts, however, he interprets this descent in a way somewhat similar to the Christian parousia: God, after having descended to earth a first time to create Adam, will come again for the Great Judgment. The Book of the Secrets of Enoch thus positions itself once again in the Enochic and apocalyptic tradition, but interprets it in a way that could be accepted also by a Pharisee. A central piece of our author's thought is considered to be that of speculation on creation, and in this Iranian and Egyptian influences can be noted. However, I believe that in the overall scheme of the author's thought this has less importance than is generally suggested. When Enoch summarizes for his sons the meaning and basic elements of creation (ch. 65), much of the doctrinal baggage of the great revelation (chs. 24-34) disappears. What remains is the kernel of religious meaning that creation has for the Jews. Andersen has spoken of a first attempt to make science and faith agree, a valid explanation, except that, unlike a person today who strains to find such agreement, the author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch sees or reads in the structures of his 'scientific' knowledge the unfolding of the great work narrated too briefly in the Bible. The differences between the thought of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch 36. Cf. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi, I. p. 747.


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and that of the Bible must not have been considered a motive for scandal, but for deeper inquiry (consider the creation of the angels, of which the Bible does not speak). The central point for understanding the theory of creation is the inter pretation of the idea that God created the world 'from not being to being, from invisible to visible'. If we accept the interpretation of two terms of the phrase, 'from not being to being' and 'from invisible to visible', as equivalents, Iranian influence appears overwhelming. But if we understand the two moments as one succeeding the other, we are dealing with a Jewish response to Greek thought, and not only Greek. The world is created; but the author thinks that spiritual things and beings were created before physical things and beings. In other words, though the terminology used is, in part, typically Iranian ('from invisible to visible'), this does not mean that our author took from the Iranian world much more than the terminology. The author of the Book of the Secrets of Enoch has an interesting concept of the possibility of humans knowing God. Unlike the earlier Enoch tradition, which insisted on the ineffability of all that regards the world of the spirit, our author claims explicitly to have seen God, but that this is a particular grace confirming the validity of his revelation. For the ordinary person there is another way: finding God in things (cf. Rom. 1.20). Taken as a whole, the figure of Enoch in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch has been reconfigured in comparison with the earlier Enoch tradition. He is not identified with the Son of Man as Enoch is in the Book of Parables (71.14) or Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. He is not even an intercessor, since the author puts into Enoch's own mouth the explanation of intercession's impossibility (ch. 53). He does not have priestly functions, as in Jub. 4.26, or those of an organizer of worship as in Jub. 21.10. He is merely the one who reveals to the faithful of the Enoch tradition the structures of heaven and the true halakah. His specific task is not that of being judge (as the Son of Man is in the Book of Parables), but only that of noting all human misdeeds so as to be able to read them before God on the day of the Great Judgment (ch. 50). With these premises regarding Enoch, the exaltation of Melchizedek in 2EM takes on a very special importance, permitting us both to situate 2EM historically and to understand 2E better. From the second century BCE there must have existed in Israel a priesthood that referred itself back to Melchizedek—not the Melchizedek of the biblical account, but


248

rather a heavenly figure, certainly derived from the biblical one, but dis tinctly different, having been exalted to the point of becoming an elohim with very high functions reserved by the Bible for God alone, such as the execution of the judgment or at least of the great vengeance. This heavenly Melchizedek is presented to us in a Qumran fragment of the first century B C E (HQMelch) which refers to this heavenly Melchizedek the words of Isa. 61.2 (Senat rason yhwh), which becomes Senat rason Melkisedeq (1. 9). And this Melchizedek has his own 'party' on earth, represented by the 'men of the party of Melchizedek' ('anSe goral Melkisedeq). Yet the figure of the heavenly Melchizedek must have been earlier than the text of H Q that speaks of him, since the Book of Jubilees, which can be dated to the second century BCE and which added so many details to the biblical account of Genesis, omitted the Melchizedek episode. In this omission there is an evident antiMelchizedek polemic. Perhaps in the past one might have believed this an anti-Hasmonean polemic, but the discovery of this Qumran fragment that speaks of the heavenly figure of Melchizedek leads to the idea that the object of the polemic was another religious party, another sect or a fringe group of the same sect. A confirmation of the existence of this heavenly Melchizedek can also be found in the fragment 4QAmram , which does not speak of Melchizedek but of an enemy of the good who is called Mlkyrs' (king of evil), evidently opposed to the former. Moreover it seems that the Hasmoneans used to justify their own position as priests and princes by referring back to Reuben. 31

b

38

It seems, therefore, that alongside an Enoch tradition, which in the second century BCE must already have been rather ancient, another developed which referred to another superhuman being, Melchizedek. Another tradition, certainly later (late first century BCE) will develop along these lines the figure of the Son of Man, who is distinguished from the former by what may be called his ever more heavenly charac teristics. He in fact was created before things (1 En. 48.3) and did not have a name. This probably favored the assimilation of his figure with others: the Gospels identify Jesus with him; a Jewish interpolation of the Book of Parables (1 En. 71.14) identifies Enoch himself with him. Now we may say something more about the environment in which 39

37. 38. e nelle 39.

Cf. C. Gianotto, Melchisedek e la sua tipologia (Brescia, 1984), p. 71. Cf. B. Chiesa, 'Contrasti ideologici del tempo degli Asmonei nella Aggadah versioni di Gen. 49,3', AlON 37 (1977), pp. 417-40. Cf. Sacchi (ed.), Apocrifi, I, pp. 571-72.


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there arose the variant, 'You (Enoch) are the Son of Man.' It was that of the Enochic priests of the Book of Jubilees, who saw in the figure of Enoch not only a great revealer but also a judge, a savior, and, probably, the foundation of their priesthood. The author of 2EM tries to blend the two traditions into one: on the one hand, he reaffirms the greatness of Enoch, but only as a revealer; on the other, he accepts the existence of a single true priest, the superhuman Melchizedek of the tradition we have called the Melchizedek tradition for lack of a better term. Yet this antediluvian Melchizedek is linked in some way to the family of Enoch, because he is born virginally of Sophonim, wife of Nir, brother of Noah, and thus descendant of Enoch. In form the text of 2EM is very different from that of 2E. 2E, though not a vision, has at its center a heavenly journey, in which Enoch sees the structures of the cosmos. But 2EM is even further removed from the apocalyptic genre (in the formal sense of the term). Everything becomes a story: if it were not fantasy, it would seem history. We may conclude with a few words about the relation between 2EM and the Letter to the Hebrews. The relation in content is evident. The Letter to the Hebrews also has the figure of Melchizedek, this time the biblical one, but with superhuman characteristics like the one in 1 lQMelch and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch ('Without father, with out mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever' [7.3]). The author of the Letter is well aware of all the speculations about Melchizedek. He seems to concede that this Melchizedek really has superhuman characteristics, but insists that his functions are to be attributed to Jesus. And with this comes confirmation for the thesis advanced by A. Vivian that those for whom the Letter to the Hebrews was written were Essene priests. 2EM and the Letter to the Hebrews must be works very close to each other in time. 40

41

40. See above, n. 2. 41. A. Vivian, 'La crisi del sacerdozio aaronita e l'origine della Mishna', in Atti del III Congresso Internationale dell' AISG, S. Miniato 1984 (Rome, 1987), pp. 105-20.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Given the impossibility of identifying the greater part of Jewish apocalypses as such, we have no comprehensive collection of apocalyptic works. These must therefore be sought in editions of the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Those who also consider the books of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John as apocalyptic works will easily find these works in editions of the Old and New Testaments. The division of the material here is subjective. Often the same work should appear in various sections. Furthermore, many problems that touch on apocalyptic belong to all Jewish thought. Hence the apparent arbitrariness with which I have inserted in the bibliography some works that do not seem to speak of apocalyptic. The editions of the individual texts and studies of a purely philological character have not been listed to avoid making the text overly heavy. It is otiose to note that this bibliography is incomplete: it aims only at a certain usefulness.

1. General

Works

a. Historical Works Ackroyd, P.R., Israel under Babylon and Persia (London, New York, 1970). Bartlett, J.R., Jews in the Hellenistic World (Cambridge, 1985). Bauer, J.B., Die Zeit Jesu. Herrscher, Sekten und Parteien (Stuttgart, 1969). Bickerman, E.J., From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Postbiblical Judaism (New York, 1962). — T h e Generation of Ezra and Nehemia', PAAJR 40 (1978), pp. 1-28. Bonsirven, J., Le judaisme palestinien au temps de Jesus Christ: Sa theologie (2 vols.; Paris, 1934-35). Boschi, G.B., 'Alle radici del giudaismo', in Atti del V Congresso internazionale dell'AlSG, S. Miniato, 12-15 nov. 1984 (Rome, 1987), pp. 9-24. Bousset, W., Die Religion des Judentums im spdthellenistischen Zeitalter (Tubingen, 3rd edn, repr. 1966 [1903]). Davies, W.D., and L. Finkelstein (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism. I. The Persian Period (Cambridge, 1984). Devoti, D., 'Sociologia e/o psicanalisi del movimento di Gesu', Henoch 4 (1982), pp. 87-96. Gaggero, G., Palestina e Giudeafra il III e II secolo a.C (Genoa, 1979). Glatzer, N.N., Anfdnge des Judentums, eine Einfiihrung (Giitersloh, 1966). Hayes, J.H., and J.M. Miller (eds.), Israelite and Judaean History (London, 1977). Hengel, M., Judentum und Hellenismus (Tubingen, 3rd edn, 1988 [1969]).

Bibliography

251

—Juden, Griechen und Barbaren (Stuttgart, 1976). Imschoot, P. van, Theologie de VAncient Testament (2 vols.; Paris-Tournai, 1954-56). Jacob, E., Theologie de I'Ancien Testament (Neuchatel, 2nd edn, 1968). Jossa, G., Gesii e i movimenti di liberazione della Palestina (Brescia, 1980). Lagrange, M.J., Le judaisme avant Jesus Christ (Paris, 1931). Le Moyne, J., Les sadduceens (Paris, 1972). Lieberman, E., Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1950). Lohse, E., Umwelt des Neue'n Testaments (Gottingen, 1971). Maier, J., Geschichte des Judentums im Altertum: Grundziige (Darmstadt, 2nd edn, 1989 [1981]). Meyer, E., Die Entstehung des Judentums im Altertum: Grundziige (Halle, 1965 [1896]). —Ursprung und Anfdnge des Christentums (3 vols.; Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921-23). Neusner, J., From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism (New York, 1979). —'The Formation of Rabbinic Judaism: Havneh (Jamnia) from AD 70 to 100', in ANRW 19.2 (Berlin, 1979), pp. 3-42. — From Testament to Torah: An Introduction to Judaism in its Formative Age (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988). —// giudaismo nei primi secoli del cristianesimo (Brescia, 1989). Noth, M., The History of Israel (trans. S. Godman; New York, 1958). Parente, F., 'Giudaismo nel I secolo. Note su un'opera recente', RSLR 20 (1984), pp. 457-79. Penna, R., L'ambiente storico-culturale delle origini cristiane (Bologna, 2nd edn, 1986). Rad, G. von, Old Testament Theology. II. The Theology of Israel's Prophetic Tradition (trans. D.M.G. Stalker; New York, 1965). Rofe-Roifer, A., 'Gli albori delle sette nel giudaismo postesilico. (Notizie inedite dai Settanta, Trito-Isaia e Malachia)', in Atti del V Congresso Internationale dell'AISG, S. Miniato, 12-15 novembre 1984 (Rome, 1987), pp. 25-36. Sacchi, P., Storia del mondo giudaico (Turin, 1976). Safrai, S., and M. Stern, The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions (2 vols.; CRINT; Assen, 1974, 1976). Saulnier, C , Histoire d'Israel: De la conquete d'Alexandre a la destruction du temple (331 a.C-135 a.D.) (Paris, 1985). Schiirer, E., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 BC-AD 135) (4 vols.; ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Black; Edinburgh, 1973-87). Smith, M., Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (London, 1987). Soggin, J.A., Storia d'Israele (Brescia, 1984). Stone, M.E., Scriptures, Sects and Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolts (Oxford, 2nd edn, 1982). Theissen, G., Soziologie der Jesusbewegung (Munich, 1977). Vaux, R. de, Les institutions de I'Ancient Testament (2 vols.; Paris, 1958-60).

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b. Collections of Texts in Translation Charles, R.H., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English (2 vols.; Oxford, 1913). Charles worth, J.H., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; Garden City, NY, 1983-85). Dfez Macho, A., Los apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento (7 vols.; Madrid, 1982-1986) (vol. I contains a general introduction to the apocrypha). Dupont-Sommer, A., and M. Philonenko, La Bible: Ecrits intertestamentaires (Paris, 1987). de Jonge, M., Outside the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1985). Kautsch, E., Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments (2 vols.; Tubingen, 2nd edn, 1921 [1900]). Kummel, W.G. et al., Jiidische Schriften aus hellenistisch-rdmischer Zeit (Gtitersloh, 1973-). Migne, J.P., Dictionnaire des Apocryphes (2 vols.; 1856-1858). Riessler, P., Altjiidisches Schriftum ausserhalb der Bibel (Augsburg, 1966 [1928]). Sacchi, P., Apocrifi dell'Antico Testamento (2 vols.; Turin, 1981, 1989). Sparks, H.S.D., Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford, 1984). c. Introductions Denis, A.M., Introduction aux pseudepigraphes grecs d'Ancien Testament (Leiden, 1970). —Concordance grecque des pseudepigraphes d Ancient Testament (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1987). Eissfeldt, O., Einleitung in das Alte Testament, unter Einschluss der Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen, sowie der apokryphenund pseudepigraphenartigen Qumranschriften (Tubingen, 3rd edn, 1964). McNamara, M., Intertestamental Literature (Dublin, 1983). Nickelsburg, G.W.E., Jewish Literature between the Bible and Mishnah: A Historical Introduction (Philadelphia, 1981). Paul, A., 'Les pseudepigraphes juifs de langue grecque', in R. Kuntzmann (ed.), Etudes sur le Judaisme hellenistique, congres de Strasbourg 5-9 Sept. 1983 (Paris, 1984), pp. 71-94. Rost, L., Einleitung in die alttestamentlichen Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen einschliesslich der grossen Qumran-Handschriften (Heidelberg, 1971). Stone, M.E., et al. (eds.), Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus (AssenPhiladelphia, 1984). This introduction concerns, besides apocryphal texts, also Hellenistic and Qumran texts. Turdeanu, E., Apocryphes slaves et romains de TAncient Testament (Leiden, 1981). Vermes, G., 'Methodology in the Study of Jewish Literature in the Graeco-Roman Period', JJS 36 (1985), pp. 145-58. 2. Histories of Research,

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Delcor, M., 'Le mythe de la chute des anges et de l'origine des geants comme explication du mal dans le monde dans l'apocalyptique juive; histoire des traditions', RHR 189 (1976), pp. 3-53. Dfez Merino, L., 'Los vigilantes en la literatura intertestamentaria', in Simposio biblico espahol (Madrid, 1984), pp. 575-609. Di Nola, A.M., // diavolo (Rome, 1987). Fischer, K., and H. Schiedermair, Die Sache mit dent Teufel (Frankfurt a. M., 1980). Forsyth, N., The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton, New York, 1987). Fronzarolil, P., Tre scongiuri eblaiti (ARET 5,1-3)', Vicino Oriente 7 (1988), pp. 1123. Grabbe, L.L., 'The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation', JSJ 18 (1987), pp. 152-67. Graf, A., // diavolo (Milan, 2nd edn, 1980 [1889]). Grelot, P., 'Miracles de J£sus et d^monologie juive', in X. Leon-Dufour (ed.), Les miracles de Jesus selon le Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1977), pp. 59-72. —'J6sus devant le monde du mal', in Atti della sessione plenaria 1979 della Pontificia Commissione Biblica (Leumann, Turin, 1981), pp. 131-201. Hanson, P.D., 'Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel and Euhemeristic Heroes in I Enoch 6-11', JBL 96 (1977), pp. 195-233. Kappler, C , 'Le monstre: figure paradoxale du religieux', in Langages et deplacements du religieux (Paris, 1987), pp. 131-51. Kee, H.C., 'Satan, Magic, and Salvation in the "Testament of Job"', in C. Kraft (ed.), The Testament of Job (Missoula, MT, 1974), pp. 53-76. Keller, C.A., 'Das Problem des Bosen in Apokalyptik und Gnostik', in M. Krause (ed.), Gnosis and Gnosticism (Leiden, 1977), pp. 70-90. Koch, K., '"Adam, was hast du getan?": Erkenntnis und Fall in der zwischentestamentlichen Literatur', in R. Rendtorff (ed.), Glaube und Tolerant (Gutersloh, 1982), pp. 211-42. Maier, J., Mensch undfreier Wille (Tubingen, 1971). Mazzanti, A.M., 'Antropologia e radici del male in Filone di Alessandria: due possibili opzioni', Aug 28 (1988), pp. 187-202. Molenberg, C , 'A Study of the Role of Shemihaza and Asael in 1 Enoch 6-11', JSJ 35 (1984), pp. 136-46. Naldini, M., 'Un frammento esorcistico e il Testamento di Salomone', in Studia Florentina Alexandro Ronconi sexagenario oblata (Rome, 1970), pp. 281-87. North, R., 'Violence and the Bible', CBQ 47 (1986), pp. 1-27. Roskoff, G., Geschichte des Teufels (2 vols.; Aalen, 1967 [1869]). Russell, J.B., The Devil: Perception of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithaca, NY 1977). —Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca, NY, 1981). —Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 1984). —Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, NY, 1986). Sacchi, P., 'La protesta nella Sapienza', RivB 24 (1976), pp. 137-63. —'L'apocalittica e il problema del male', PdV 25 (1980), pp. 325-47. —'Ordine cosmico e prospettiva ultraterrena nel postesilio: II problema del male e l'origine dell'apocalittica', RivB 30 (1982), pp. 6-25. —'Riflessioni sull'essenza dell'apocalittica: Peccato d'origine e liberta dell'uomo', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 31-58.

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10. The Angelic World Barton, G.A., 'The Origin of the Names of Angels and Demons in the Extra-Canonical Apocalyptic Literature to 100 AD', JBL 31 (1912), pp. 156-67. Brownlee, W.H., 'The Cosmic Role of Angels in the 11Q Targum of Job', JSJ 8 (1977), pp. 83-84. Caquot, A., 'Anges et demons en Israel', in D. Bernot et al. (eds.), Genies, anges et demons: Egypte, Babylone, Israel, Islam, peuples altaiques, lnde, Birmanie, Asie du Sud-Est, Tibet, Chine (Sources Orientales, 8; Paris, 1971), pp. 113-52. —'Les protecteurs des Tribus d'lsrael: Notes d'angeiologie a propos du Testament de Juda 25,2', in La vie de la Parole, de I'Ancien au Nouveau Testament: Etudes d'exegese et d'hermeneutique bibliques offertes a P. Grelot (ed. H. Cazelles; Paris, 1987), pp. 49-60. Culianu, LP., 'The Angels of the Nations and the Origins of Gnostic Dualism', in R. van den Broek and M.J. Vermaseren (eds.), Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to G. Quispel (Leiden, 1981), pp. 78-91. Cunchillos, J.L., 'Le dieu Mut, guerrier de EI', Syria 62 (1985), pp. 205-18. Farber, P., 'Wesen, Aufgabe und Hierarchie der Engel in den drei Henochbuchern', TRev 80 (1984), pp. 78-91. Gry, L., 'Quelques noms d'anges et d'etres mysterieux en II Henoch', RB 49 (1940), pp. 195-204. Kolenkow, A.B., 'The Angelology of the Testament of Abraham', in G.W.E. Nickelsburg (ed.), Studies in the Testament of Abraham (Missoula, MT, 1972), pp. 228-45. Lana, M., 'Dueteronomio e angelologia alia luce di una variante qumranica (4QDt 32,8)', Henoch 5 (1983), pp. 179-208. Lods, A., 'La chute des anges', RHPR 7 (1927), pp. 295-315. Philonenko, M., 'Priere au soleil et liturgie angelique', in Litterature intertestamentaire, Colloque de Strasbourg (17-19 octobre 1983} (Paris, 1985), pp. 221-28. Rofe, A., Israelite Belief in Angels in the Pre-Exilic Period as Evidenced by Biblical Traditions (Jerusalem, 1969 [Hebrew orig., Engl, summary]). Schwab, M., Vocabulaire de I'angelologie d'apres les manuscrits hebreux de la Bibliotheque Rationale (Paris, 1897).

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11. The Pure and the Impure Bettenzoli, G., Geist der Heiligkeit: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung des QD§Begriffes im Buch Ezechiel (Florence, 1979). Booth, R.P., Jesus and the Laws of Purity: Tradition History and Legal History in Mark 1 (Sheffield, 1986). Catastini, A., 'La commistione di'sangue e acqua nell'Antico Testamento: atto rituale e tabu letterario', in Sangue e antropologia. Riti e culto (V) (Rome, 1984), pp. 63551. Crouzel, H., Mariage et divorce, celibat et caractere sacerdotaux dans Veglise ancienne (Turin, repr. 1982). Douglas, M., Purity and Danger (London, 1966). Eliade, M., The Sacred and the Profane (New York, 1959). Flandrin, J.L., Le sexe et VOccident (Paris, 1981). — Un temps pour embrasser: aux origines de la morale sexuelle occidentale (VI-XI siecle) (Paris, 1983). Galbiati, E., T segni sacri nell'Antico Testamento', in E. Galbiati, Scritti minori (Brescia, 1979), pp. 299-319. Garcia Martinez, F., 'II problema della purita: La soluzione qumranica', RSB 1 (1989), pp. 169-92. Garnet, P., Salvation and Atonement in the Qumran Scrolls (Tubingen, 1977). Gerleman, G., 'Die Wurzel kpr im hebraischen', in G. Gerleman, Studien zur alttestamentlichen Theologie (Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 11-23. Klijn, A.F.J., and G.E. Rinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish Christian Sects (Leiden, 1973). Kuhn, K.G., ' M e i p a c u o q - d u a p t i a - c r d p ^ im Neuen Testament und die dann zusammenhangenden Vorstellungen', ZTK 49 (1952), pp. 200-22. Manns, F., 'Une tradition judeo-chretienne mentionnee par Egerie', Henoch 10 (1988), pp. 283-91. Mattioli, A., Le realtd sessuali nella Bibbia (Casale, 1987). Neusner, J., The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism: From the First to the Seventh Century (Leiden, 1973). —A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purity (26 vols.; Leiden, 1974-77). Newton, M., The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul (Cambridge, 1985). Neyrey, J.H., 'Idea of Purity in Mark's Gospek', Semeia 35 (1986), pp. 91-128. Noja, S., 'La question se pose encore une fois: la purete rituelle de ITslam derive-t-elle ou non de celle du Judaisme?', JSAl 9 (1987), pp. 183-94. Noonan, J.T., Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, MA, 1965). Paschen, W., Rein und Unrein (Munich, 1970). Penna, R., 'Osservazioni sull'anti-edonismo nel Nuovo Testamento in rapporto al suo ambiente culturale', in Testimonium Christ) (scritti in onore di J. Dupont) (Brescia, 1985), pp. 351-77.

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13. The Problem of Knowledge Berger, K., Die Amen-Worte Jesu: Eine Untersuchung zum Problem der Legitimation in Apokalyptischer Rede (Berlin, 1970). Brockington, L.H., 'The Lord Showed Me: The Correlation of Natural and Spiritual in Prophetic Experience', in E.A. Payne (ed.), Studies in History and Religions (London, 1942), pp. 30-43. Filoramo, G., Luce e gnosi; saggio sull'illuminazione nello gnoslicismo (Rome, 1980). Frey, J.B., 'Revelation d'apres les conceptions juives au temps de Jesus-Christ', RB 25 (1916), pp. 472-510. Halperin, D.L., 'Heavenly Ascension in Ancient Judaism: The Nature of the Experience', SBLSP 26 (1987), pp. 218-32. Hanson, P.D., Visionaries and their Apocalypses (London, Philadelphia, 1983). Kragelund Holt, E., 'd't 'Ihym und hsd im Buche Osea', SJOT 1 (1987), pp. 8 - l 0 3 . Passoni Dell'Acqua, A. 'La radice jd' (il conoscere/la conoscenza) nei documenti di Qumran', Aevum 58 (1984), pp. 20-37. Pinero Saenz, A., 'Les conceptions de l'inspiration dans l'apocalyptique juive et chretienne (Vie s. av. J.-C.-IIIe s. ap. J.-C.)', in C. Kappler (ed.). Apocalypses et voyages dans I'au-dela (Paris, 1987), pp. 157-84. Robinson, H.W., Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament (Oxford, 1946). Sacchi, P., '1QS, III, 15 sgg. e 1 Sam., 11,3', RSO 44 (1970), pp. 1-5. —'La conoscenza presso gli ebrei da Amos all'essenismo', RSB I (1989), pp. 123-49. Vermes, G., 'Le commentaire d'Habacuc et le NT', Cahiers Sioniens 4 (1951), pp. 337-49. 7

14. Pseudepigraphy and Forgeries Bickerman, E., 'Faux litteraires dans l'antiquite classique: En marge d'un livre recent', Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione classica 101 (1973), pp. 22-41. Brox, N. (ed.), Pseudepigraphie in der heidnischen und judisch-christlichen Antike (Darmstadt, 1977).


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INDEXES

INDEX OF REFERENCES

OLD TESTAMENT

Genesis 1.24-25 3 4.7 5.24 6 6.1-4

6.8 8.21 12.2-3 14.17-20 25.8 31 31.35 Exodus 10.2 12.16 20.5 20.10-11 20.11 31.14-15 33.11 33.20 Leviticus 3.17 1 1 15.18 19.26 19.31 20.6 23.7-8

215 215 107 156 48 47, 48, 54, 82, 93, 204 49 77 75 158 72 214 214

69 189 73 176 182 189 206 206

215 98 215 214 214 214 189

Numbers 1.8 6.24 12.6-8

39 198 177, 206

Deuteronomy 5.15 18.22 23.10-15 30.15 32.8

182 175 214 74 205

Judges 5.4

179

/ Samuel 14.41

171

2 Samuel 7 11 24.1

76, 180 150 62, 222

/ Kings 11.13 11.32

74 74

2 Kings 19.34 20.6

74 74

I Chronicles 21.1 24.1

62 222

Ezra 7.26

155

9.1

80

Nehemiah 1.1 7.4-5 10.32 13.15-22

139 79 189 189

Job 4.13 4.17 4.18 8.8 9.32-33 12.3 13.1 14.1-4 14.4 15.15 33.14 33.17 34.3-4 34.13 36 42.7

189, 133 217 189 81 189 189 221 221 217 190 190 190 69 190 81

Psalms 44 46.4-6 80.2 82.1 115.17

217 74 179 160 96

Ecclesiastes 1.4-7 1.13

69 190


282 1.15 1.16 2.1 2.3 2.9 3.1-8 3.11 3.18-21 5.4 5.6 7.24 9.1 Isaiah 4.2 6

6.8 7.16 1 1 11.1 24.23 34.14 37.16 38.18 40.2 40.22 40.24 44.24-28 45.1 45.7 45.18 45.19 49.3 52.7 53.4-8 55.3 55.10-11 56.3 56.6 61.2

206 190 190 190 190 69 190 61 190 173 190 69

153 173, 174, 179, 180 173 174 151, 153 75, 151 59 214 179 96 216 183 151 183 155, 183 183, 2 1 5 183 183 156, 216, 217 160 216 180 184 79 79 248

Jeremiah 1.11-13 7 7.1 12.1 13.23 20.7

216 77 77, 171

22.15

78

175 174 174

22.33 23.5 26.12-13 31.29 33.15 Ezekiel 1.1 1.14 1.21 2.8 3.12-15 3.14 4-5 1 I.I 18 20 34.23-24 34.23 34.27 37 37.24-26 37.24-25 45.9 Daniel 3.33 7 7.8 7.11 7.13 7.14 7.17 7.25 9 9.13 9.24 12.1 12.2 12.10 12.12 12.17 Hosea 1.2 4.3 4.4-5 6.6 12.12-14 12.13-15

175 152, 153 77 175 153

179 181 181 182 182 183 179 183 2 1 4 , 215 215, 216 152 180 180 180 152 180 152, 180

46 159, 165 104 44 66 46 66 137 67 67 66 66 104 67 66 66

171 172 172 172 172 172

Joel 4.19 Amos 1.2 2.4-5 3.6 4.13 5.8-9 5.8 5.9 7 7.1-9 Zechariah 3 3.2 3.8 4.12 4.14 6 9.9 12 Malachi 1.11 3.23-24 4.5-6

217

169 73 213 170 73 170 213 173 173

153, 184 222 153 153 153 153, 154 154 154

79 156 156

Wisdom of Solomon 227 1.3 1.14 227 2.24 227 7.17-21 191 Sirach 2.5 15.14 21.27 25.24

34.6 34.7

231 148 223 223 173 173 173 173

/ Maccabees 14.41

162

2 Maccabees 2.13 4.9

176 137

7.28

215

34.1 34.4

Index of References

283

NEW TESTAMENT

Matthew 1.9 8.12 13.24 13.36 15.10

244 218 121 121 121

167 121

Ephesians

167

4.27 5.8 6.11

John 6.15

Romans 1.20 2.14 5.4 5.12 5.14 7.14-20

120 120 244 121

Hebrews 7.3

246 246

/ Thessalonians 247 123

4.3

230 120 120 120

2 Timothy

119, 231

/ John 1.5 1.10 3.1 3.8

246

2.26

119 119

/ Peter 5.8

119 121 119

157

James 1.12-14 4.7

1 Corinthians 5.1 6.13

Mark 2.10-11 7.14

7.24 8.22 8.34 13.12

120 120 120 120, 231, 243

Revelation 119

1.9 5.4 11.15 12.3

46 103 46 243

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA

Apoc. Abr. 30

44

Apoc. Bar. (Syr.) 8.1 8.2 8.12

244 244 244

Apoc. Zeph. 2.9 6.10 7.8 1 1

244 244 244 124

2 Baruch 8.1 8.2 8.12 29.3 30.1 39 39.7 40.2 40.3

244 244 244 166 166 122 166 166 166

54.15 54.19 55.10-12 56.10 70.8

242 106 231 106 44

/ (Ethiopic) Enoch 1-36 Book of the Watchers 1-5 48, 91 1 90 1.1 48 1.3 48 2-5 89 5 6 4 , 65 5.2 64 5.4 91 5.8-9 48 6-36 47, 9 2 6-19 47 6-11 19, 4 8 , 55, 186, 213 6-7 95

6 7 7.1-2 7.2 7.4-5 8-1 1 8

8.3 8.4 9-11 9 9.3 9.8-9 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.13 10 10.4 10.6 10.7

48, 205 9 5 , 231 49 83 49 142 4 9 , 89, 9 5 , 117, 207 95 49 95 23, 56 50 83 49, 54 49 50 23 97 83, 102, 218 53, 96 50

284 10.8

10.9 10.12 10.15 10.20 10.22 1 1 12-36 12-16 12

12.1-2 12.1 12.4 13.1-2 14 14.3 14.8 14.18-19 14.18 14.22-23 15 15.4 15.5 15.6-9 15.6-7 15.11 15.32 16 16.1 16.3 17 17.4 17.46 18 18.2 18.5 18.12-14 18.14 18.15 18.16 19.1-2 19.3 20 21.1-2

Jewish Apocalyptic and its History 65, 83, 98, 111, 219 65, 97 51 51, 57 97 97 81 18, 48 205, 213 18, 48, 81,90, 187 57, 59 51 97, 141 141 57, 177, 187 57, 141 84 233 58 104 97, 141 97 56 83 52 52 65 141 53, 54, 84, 98 52, 60 99, 100 99 164 92 123 99 102 141 99, 111, 208, 220 92, 100, 112 57, 59 53, 123 96, 187 218

21.3 21.6 21.7 22 22.4 22.5 22.6-7 22.7 22.9 22.13 22.14 25 25.3 25.4 25.6 27 30 32.6

111, 220 92, 99, 102 141 56, 84, 99, 157 53 99 55 219 100 93, 100 60 60 60 101 60, 112 101 123 58

37-71 Book of Parables 37.1 23, 116 38.6 244 40.6 244 40.7 211, 228 41 46 41.8 116 48.1 117 48.2-3 166 48.3 117, 248 48.8-10 117 48.10 1 17 50 247 50.4 118 52.4 165 53 247 54 116, 228 54.6 228 54.19 123 55 116 56.10-13 123 56.10-11 123 56.11 123 57.2 123 62.14 117 64.1-2 117 69 116, 229 69.2 229 69.4 229 69.5 229

69.6 69.8 69.9-11 71.14

207 134 135 165, 247, 248

72-82 Astronomical Books 128, 157 72-82 128, 72 130-32, 137 130 72.1 130 72.6 130, 73 132, 136 136 73.1-74.9 130 73.4 74 129-32, 136 131 74.4-8 74.9 131 74.10 129, 131, 139 74.13-16 131 74.14-16 139 129 74.17 129, 131 75 132 75.1 75.2 132 76-79 136 136 76-78 76 132 77 132 132 78 132 79 133 79.10-11 132 79.10 79.17 133 80-82 133 80.2-4 133 134 80.7 134 80.8 81 133 81.5 133, 135 82 128, 136, 139 82.4 134 132 82.5 137 82.9 82.13 128 82.15-20 136

Index of References 83-90 B o o k o f Dreams 85 220 189 85.1 220 86 86.1 141, 2 4 3 141 86.3 159 89.1 159 89.9 89.17 159 89.18 159 90.2 141 90.14 105 90.29 159 90.37 160 91-108 Epistle of Enoch 140 91.1-11 115 91.11 91.12-17 140 91.12 140 91.14 115 91.15 118, 140 146, 165 140 91.18-19 92 93 93.1-10 93.2 93.11-14 98.4

140 140 140 114 140 103, 114 146, 165 243

2 (Slavonic) Enoch 1 243 249 7.3 246 24-34 30.13 241 246 32.1 244 33.10 42.13 245 44 245 45.1 243 245 50.2 51.3 245 51.4 243 244 53.1 56.6 245 58.1 246

59 61.5 62.1 63.3-4 63.4 64 64.5 66.6 68 70 71.29 81.35

243 246 245 246 246 243 244 245 238, 239, 243 237 158, 2 3 9 243

4 Ezra 3.4 3.8 3.19-20 3.20 3.21-22 3.21 3.27 3.28 4.26 5.4-6 7.11 7.72 7.102 7.104 7.112-115 7.116-28 7.127-28 7.127 8.56-58 9.31-32 12.32

242 124 124 124 219 124 124 217 46 44 242 124 244 106, 124 244 125 106 124 124 124 166

Jubilees 1.1 1.26 4.16-22 4.22 4.26 5.6 5.11 5.14 5.17 6.35 7.7-10 10.7-11

64 66, 117, 149 63 89 247 224 224 224 65 138 224 224

285 10.13 15.31-32 21.10 23.30-31 25.4 33.20

212 66 160, 212, 247 90 90 245

LAB 60

214

Psalms of Solomon 17 164 Testament of Benjamin 5.2 121 6.1 227 Testament of Daniel 4.7 227 Testament of Job 3.3 230 8 230 Testament of Joseph 20.2 227 Testament of Judah 21.4 162 22.2-3

163

Testament of Levi 2.5-12 192 3.1-10 192 18.1-7 163 18.2 162 18.12 162,228 Testament of Naphtali 3.1 227 5.1 245 Testament of Reuben 2-3 245 2.1-3.15 118 2.2 3.8 6.8

227 118 161

286


QUMRAN

lQGenAp 20.28-29

214

1QH 1.8-29 1.23 3.19-23 4.24-37 4.29-30 4.38

225 86 70 198 69, 86 55, 69

lQpHab 7.1-8 7.4-5 8.1-3 8.2-3

193 193 115 195

1QS 1.4 1.9 1.10 2.2 3.3-6 3.13 3.15-21

69 69 69 198 115 195 162

3.15-19 3.15-17 3.15-16 3.15 3.17-23 3.18 3.26-4.1 4.1 5.11 8.13-15 8.40 9.10-11 9.16-17 10.26-11.2 11.2-21 11.3-4 11.3 11.4-5

116, 196 225 69 198 226 55, 69 226 86 194 196 196 161, 162 195 70, 87 197 69, 196 197 69

4QDt 32.8

205

4QEn* 22-23 22

146 146, 147

4QShir 510 511

214 214

HQMelch 2.6 5-6 18 19 113 118 124 125

244 160 160 248 160 161 161 161

CD 1.1 2.2 2.5-6 2.12 2.14 4.21 5.2-6 6.3-11 9.1 9.6

194 193 194 193 194 195 195 194 195 195

OTHER ANCIENT LITERATURE

Josephus Ant. 11.346-47 11.79 War 7.185

63 153

214

Talmuds y. Pes. 6.1.33

188

Letter of Aristeas 127 191 129 191 132 191

Macrobius In Somnium Scipionis 1.3.2 173 Tobias 6.8 6.17 8.3

214 214 214

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Allegro, J.M. 149 Althaus, H. 24 Andersen, F.I. 236-40 Arata, P. 92, 149 Avalle, A.S. 237 Becker, J. 36, 118, 162, 227 B6rard, C. 201 Black, M. 139 Boccaccini, G. 23 Bonwetsch, G. 235 Booth, R.P. 239 Borbone, P.G. 237 Bottero, J. 201 Braet, H. 201 Bresciani, E. 177 Bultmann, R. 32, 33 Caquot, A. 68 Carmignac, J. 16, 25, 68, 88, 119, 239 Carolini, F. 201 Cazelles, H. 189 Chabod, F. 185 Charles, R.H. 48, 140, 235 Charlesworth, J.H. 122, 142, 192, 236 Chiesa, B. 198, 248 Collins, J.J. 16 Coppens, J. 155 Cross, F.M. 42 Cryer, F.H. 188 Davies, P.R. 188 De Jonge, M. 36 De Santos Otero, A. 235, 237, 238, 240, 242 Dean-Otting, M. 233 Deiana, G. 212 Delcor, M. 17, 90 Denis, A.M. 64 Devoti, D. 173 Di Nola, A. 23, 42 Diels, H. 178 Dfez Macho, A. 143, 235

Dodds, E.R. 173, 178 Donadoni, S. 177 Douglas, M. 98 Eltester, W. 33 Enrietti, M. 236 Filoramo, G. 45 Fischer, U. 46 Fitzmyer, J.A. 16, 34 Fotheringham, K. 236 Franco, F. 64 Frankfort, H. 101, 178, 204 Fusella, L. 218, 224 Garbini, G. 217 Garcia Martinez, F. 17, 110, 186, 192, 198, 201, 209, 212, 243 Gianotto, C. 161, 248 Gignoux, P. 201 Grelot, P. 119 Grillmeier, A. 143 Gunkel, H. 171 Hanson, P.D. 21, 89 Heidt, W. 183 Hellholm, D. 16 Hengel, M. 186 Hilgenfeld, A. 42 Horbury, W. 180 Jaubert, A. 182 Kaiser, O. 151 Kappler, C. 200, 201, 209, 232 Kasemann, E. 33 Kautzsch, E. 141 Kelly, A.H. 232 Kettler, F.H. 33 Kittel, R. 181 Knibb, M.A. 21, 34, 142 Koch, K. 15, 16, 35, 36, 38, 40, 82, 89, 93


288 Kohler, L. 4 2 Kranx, W. 178 Kiimmel, W.G. 34

Rowley, H.H. 238 Rubinstein, A. 238, 2 4 3 Rudolph, W. 6 3 Russell, D.S. 13, 14, 22, 34, 38, 4 1 , 4 2 ,

Lamarche, P. 154 Lana, M. 183, 205 Lauterbach, J.Z. 122 Lipinski, E. 155, 180 Loprieno, A. 108, 144, 178 Maier, J. 24, 108, 199, 2 1 3 Manns, F. 188 Marchal, L. 6 3 Martin, F. 141 Maunder, A . S . 2 3 6 MeSCerskij, N.A. 236, 238 Metzger, B.M. 122 Milik, J.T. 15, 19, 34, 47, 6 1 , 9 0 , 9 1 , 9 3 , 105, 136, 146, 149, 159, 162, 186, 2 1 2 , 2 3 6 Mohn, G. 3 4 Murphy O'Connor, J. 92, 149

50, 89, 9 0 Russell, J.B. 2 3 2

Neugebauer, O. 139 Neusner, J. 122 Norelli, E. 19, 2 0 2 , 205 Noth, M. 108 Pasquali, G. 189 Penna, A. 151 Penna, R. 120 Piemintese, A.M. 201 Pines, S. 237 Pinero Saenz, A. 201 Ploeg, J. van der 68, 192 Pouilly, J. 92, 149 Prato, G.L. 186, 191

Sacchi, P. 19, 2 3 , 2 5 , 32, 4 1 , 4 3 , 7 2 , 9 0 , 93, 9 8 , 102, 107, 109, 116, 118, 128, 140, 142-44, 149-51, 154, 158, 166, 168, 180, 185, 2 0 0 , 202, 2 1 1 , 217, 218, 2 3 3 , 236, 239, 243, 245, 246, 248 Scarpat, G. 226 Schmid, H.H. 168 Schmidt, J.M. 39 Schmidt, N. 235, 2 4 3 Schmithals, W. 34, 4 1 , 4 5 , 67, 90, 93 Schreiner, J. 122 Scopello, M. 201 Seters, J. van 151 Siniscalco, P. 2 3 0 Smith, M. 153, 184 Soggin, J.A. 185 Starcky, J. 162 Stegemann, H. 16 Strugnell, J. 198 Teixidor, J. 201 Testa, E. 47, 88 Testuz, M. 89, 158 Teyssedre, B. 231 Tigchelaar, E.J.C. 2 2 Tosato, A. 199 Trestontant, C. 119 Ullendorff, E. 34, 144

Qimron, E.

198

Rad, G. von 1 4 , 4 1 , 4 7 , 186 Rahlfs, A. 181 Randellini, L. 63 Ravasi, G. 190, 217, 222 Reicke, B. 43 Renaud, E. 201 Ribichini, S. 201 Riessler, P. 142 Ringgren, H. 4 2 Robinson, J.A.T. 119, 239 Rofe, A. 183, 205 R o m e o , A. 4 2 Rosso Ubigli, L. 156, 158, 173, 190, 192, 214, 228, 234, 245

Vaillant, A. 235, 237 VanderKam, J.C. 17, 2 1 , 2 4 , 138, 182, 188 Vermes, G. 109, 166 Vernant, J. 201 Virgulin, S. 63 Vivian, A. 2 4 9 Wildberger, H. 151 Xella, P. 201 Ziegler, J. 181

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