Literature Analysis and Cri New Visions and Views. Nickelsburg — University of Iowa "Drawing on his vast knowledge of the Judaisms of the late Second Temple period, Michael Stone analyzes the scholarship of the past sixty years, indicating areas of significant progress and promise as well as some dead ends. Students of early Judaism and Christian origins should read, mark, and inwardly digest this book and keep it on their shelves, both for what it discusses and for the light its methodological clarity sheds on topics yet to be explored.
Christopher Rowland — Queen's College, Oxford "Michael Stone's work is unique in contemporary biblical and pseudepigrapha studies. In this book he covers a wide range of subjects and illuminates the way in which scholarly debate has been conducted. Stone's wide knowledge and the originality of his approach converge here to produce studies of insight and perceptiveness that push the boundaries of our understanding of the world of the pseudepigrapha, their history, and their reception.
Scholars and students alike continue to be in his debt. Journal of the American Oriental Society "This book is recommended for use in courses relating to the literature of Second Temple Judaism and as an overview of decades of research on this topic. A very fascinating, readable work. Journal of Hebrew Scripture "An appeal to expand the time period considered for the study of ancient Judaism. Andrews University Seminary Studies "Provides interesting new insights, a good overview of recent scholarship, and a helpful introduction to current methodologies that will benefit student and scholar alike.
Review of Biblical Literature "In a concise presentation, this book manages to illuminate several of the fundamental issues in the study of Second Temple Judaism with a methodological distance and clarity not often encountered in the field. Reviews in Religion and Theology "Well-written. It introduces the reader to the broad context and carefully threads to the deeper waters of the cutting-edge discussion at hand. This book should be of great interest to those making their ways into apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, and those interested in ancient Judaism or early Judaism or Christianity.
Choice "Wide-ranging and diffuse, readers will benefit from Stone's lifetime study of particular nonbiblical texts within Second Temple Judaism. Required Field Not a valid email. Don't Miss a Thing! Eerdmans is proud to publish many books that have remained in print for decades - true classics that have stood the test of time. Visit our Enduring Standards page to see some of our perennially best-selling backlist books. Eerdmans Publishing Company, All rights reserved.
Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views
In the present book, see Chapter 1, and note 45, and note 2 in this chapter. Of course, the range of writings found at Qumran that are not marked by sectarian terminology is not exhausted by the category "Pseudepigrapha. In addition, it is reasonable to suppose that some writings existed at Qumran that did not survive at all. Consequently, it is impossible to make absolute statements about what existed there and what did not.
Nonetheless, we may garner some indications from the manuscripts that have been identified, while bearing in mind that many scholars seem to presume that "not identified" means "never having existed," which is certainly wrong. Most recently, see Stephen Pfann's theories, esp. We regard it as always very perilous to make assertions based on the "absence" of material from among the identified Scrolls. Baruch is mentioned in CD 8: Frag 1, line 5 mentions "Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah" and Egypt, while the seventh line of that text mentions the River Sur, which should be related to the River Sud in Bar 1: This composition seems to have belonged to the JeremiahBaruch literature.
In general, for works associated with these twofigures,see DiTommaso, A Bibliography of Pseudepigrapha Research , s. The importance of this fact for the ongoing debate over the Jewish or Christian character of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is very considerable. Milik claimed to have found fragments of Judah and Joseph texts as well, but Harm Hollander and Marinus de Jonge have challenged this in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 17,29, and the bibliog. Recent 48 Adam and Enoch and the State of the World There seem to have been a number of pseudo-Mosaic writings at 65 Qumran, but there is no evidence of the Testament of Moses.
Among the surviving manuscripts there is also, it seems, no apocrypha of Job — a Targum exists — nor Psalms of Solomon either. We observed Noah's role as "bridge" between the ante- and postdiluvian worlds. Of course, Jubilees is technically also a pseudoMosaic work. Solomon does not figure greatly in the Dead Sea manuscripts, but for nQpsAp 2: In Cave 7 a number of Greek manuscripts have been discovered, including what are evidently Greek fragments of Epistle ofJeremiah.
Nickelsburg denies the presence of claimed Greek fragments of 1 Enoch in Cave 7: See Chapter 3, note 30 below. Since that article was written, the publication of virtually all the manuscripts from Qumran has been completed.
Which works occur in many copies and which in few? How does this pattern of distribution relate to the sectarian understanding of history? The sources we presented above, in the combination of which we traced somewhat artificially the priestly traditions from Noah down to Amram, would have remained unknown without the Qumran finds. The new manuscripts revealed many new works and works known previously by title alone.
Moreover, the Qumran finds enrich our knowledge of the texts of certain Pseudepigrapha and provide much new data. Once this data is integrated with what we already knew, we will be able to present a more textured and fuller picture of the Judaism of the Second Temple period. Yet I find myself struck by the fact that the Pseudepigrapha and the pseudepigraphic traditions mentioned — and these are among the most prominent at Qumran — do not include a series of books found among the Pseudepigrapha transmitted outside Qumran. Except for the texts studied by Joseph Baumgarten 4Q and Esther Chazon see note 57, above , few texts deal with Adam.
Chazon studied traditions about the creation and fall of Adam in three apparently nonsectarian works, Dibre Hamme'orot, Paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus, and Sapiental Work A now better known as 4QInstruction. Although these works share some exegetical traditions, they contain no legendary expansions of and variations on the biblical narrative.
Chazon, "The Creation and Fall of Adam. So, this tradition did exist at Qumran alongside the prevalent Enoch-Watchers-Noah axis. Legendary Adam texts seem to be rare or nonexistent. As we shall see below, this is no small matter, but indeed very significant. The number of copies of parts of 1 Enoch 11 manuscripts , of Jubilees 15 manuscripts , and of Book of the Giants 8 manuscripts is remarkable. The Noachic texts, too, belong to this circle of writings. As we have already remarked, the amount of the Genesis Apocryphon 1Q20 devoted to Noah is large and may be disproportionate to the subjects of the other parts of that work.
Further Noah writings have been found at Qumran as well. The numerous copies of these Pseudepigrapha and the absence of developed Adam traditions highlight the sect's concentration on the period from Enoch to Noah. Their understanding of biblical history must have had a particular configuration. The Watchers begat the giants. The giants drowned in the Flood and their spirits survived.
In her article, Chazon compares the three texts she selects with two other accounts of the creation and fall of Adam current at Qumran, viz. The exact character of the fragment 4Q, originally published by Baillet in DJD 7, 78, and identified by Joseph Baumgarten as referring to Eden as Gods garden, is not really clear. According to Baumgarten's interpretation, this text links the garden of Eden with the temple.
Its first fragment p. Note the material assembled by Bernstein, "Noah and the Flood at Qumran. In the postdiluvian world, this evil persists, though in an attenuated form cf. Jubilees 10 , and it is perpetrated and perpetuated by the demonic order, itself an outcome of antediluvian wickedness. This view of the world, based on a mythical perspective, emerges from our reading these Pseudepigrapha together and combining elements in them. Their presence at Qumran, some in an astounding number of copies, and the fact that they were quoted in the sectarian writings proper, show how important they were to the sect.
Any assessment of the Qumran sect's ideas must take into account that the sectarians viewed this period of the past as pivotal. Their sin was to disobey the di79 The Byzantine reinterpretation of the "sons of God" and "daughters of men" as the Sethites and the Cainites is an example of an alternative, nonmythological perhaps antimythological understanding of the same texts.
See Stone, Armenian Apocrypha: See further Adler, Time Immemorial, Legendary Adam material is to be found in Jubilees, of course, which follows the text of Genesis. This merely makes its absence from the other Qumran documents the more striking. See above, 32 and note 4. Above we traced various of the complex interpretations of the story of Genesis , which may be found in the New Testament and 4 Ezra, as well as in the various versions of the Life of Adam and Eve.
Given the context of the prevalence of Enoch, Giants, and Noah texts together in the Qumran library, the absence of legendary Adam material takes on a redoubled significance. In the Books of Adam and Eve, the Adam and Eve stories serve as aetiologies for agricultural labour, the pangs of childbirth, death, illness, and the loss of the paradisiacal state.
These sufferings are explained as the result of the curses laid upon the protoplasts, ultimately deriving from their sin. Let us consider this situation somewhat further. Paul, even if we do not follow Augustine's reading of him, knew and developed views according to which Adam's sin had dire consequences for the history of humanity — death, illness, and all the curses of Gen 3: Yet this aspect of the Adam traditions is not at all prominent in the Qumran texts and does not seem to play a substantial role in them. Both Jubilees and Ben Sira were found in the Qumran library, Jubilees in a very large number of copies.
Chazon, "The Creation and Fall of Adam," See Chapter 5, below on the number of copies of Jubilees at Qumran and their significance. Of course, another, more substantially preserved manuscript of Ben Sira was found at Masada, but it carries no weight as a witness to the Dead Sea sectaries' views.
That raises a different set of issues. In any case, at Qumran these Adamic ideas do not play a role in the slightest measure commensurate with that played by the Pseudepigrapha located on the axis from Enoch to N o a h. This can be contrasted with a view that regards it as the outcome of the disobedience of the parents of humanity.
To the observation that the serpent plays, on the face of it, an external role in the Adam and Eve story, one can respond that the decision to hearken to 86 the serpent was, nonetheless, Eve's and then Adam's. This is certainly the case even before the identification of the serpent with Satan, or the idea Contrast my view in the Hermeneia commentary with that of Brandenburger and of Wolfgang Harnisch in Verhangnis und Verheifiung der Geschichte.
This is so, even in other texts in which the propensity to sin is not considered to be innate. The paucity of Adam texts from Qumran, moreover, does not mean that the Dead Sea sect was not interested in how the world got to be the way it is. That issue lies, of course, at the basis of the dual determinism that formed part of the conceptual undergirding of the sect's Weltanschauung. Professor Gregory Sterling in personal communication. A few preliminary remarks, however, are in order. For Adam and Eve's sin, the Books of Adam and Eve, and in other terms 4 Ezra, offered eschatological intervention as a solution.
This is evident from the ALD, and also from the more recently-discovered apocrypha of Amram and of Qahat. The attitudes of the sect towards the priesthood reflected in the Qumran legal 89 Although Gregory Sterling's observation reported above, 54, seems to strike home, a problem exists in its formulation. This is that the distinction between internal and external motivation or cause of sin surely partly reflects a post-Freudian mindset. In "Ecrits preesseniens de Qumran," Joseph T.
Milik attempts to reconstruct a preQumran literary corpus, but his views are rather too speculative. Abraham and Isaac learned the laws of sacrifice from a "Book of Noah" and transmitted them to Levi. The claims of ALD about the Levitical priesthood are even more far-reaching than those of the Qumran sectarian documents. They inform us not only about Qumran origins, but also about the obscure history of Judaism in the third century B. These two views are formulated in quite different conceptual terms. A relationship often exists between cosmogony and the origins of sin on one hand and eschatology and redemption on the other.
The medieval placing of the angelic rebel92 93 94 See on this, with some critical remarks, note 52 above. This point was made by Shaul Shaked in his analysis of Qumran thought; see "Qumran and Iran" for the relation between cosmology and eschatology.
The relationship between cosmogony and sin, which can follow various patterns, may bear on the origins of eschatology. For him, this is an indication of Iranian influence on the origins of Jewish eschatology. The matter is still open to debate, and my analysis indicates that there may be further ramifications. Once this move is made, of course, the cosmogony of Treatise on the Two Spirits can be viewed as a "theologized" form of the Fall of the Angels story.
This shift of the Fallen Angels story was already foreshadowed in the Second Temple period. We remark that the revelations to and sacrifice by Noah on the one hand and eschatological prophecies on the other provide the means to resolve these aporiae. This is made abundantly clear in Jubilees 10 as far as illness and other afflictions are concerned and in more general terms in the Book of the Watchers in 1 En.
This starkly contrasts with the usual understanding of the Adam and Eve story. According to it, whether the evil heart is inherited or not, and views on this differ, the state of the world is caused by Adam and Eve's transgression. One is that the deliberate tying of the sacrificial cult in particular back to Noah does not necessarily make it antediluvian. The commandments in Genesis 8 and 9 about sacrifice indicate that sacrifice is part of the world order established after the flood.
Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views | James McGrath
If this is so, then the tradition of priestly teaching we have 98 On this form of the story, see the remarks and bibliography in Stone, A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve, The date of Life of Adam and Eve is uncertain, but the tradition seems to be older. The story of Abel's sacrifice, Gen 4: On the other hand, according to Gen 8: See above at note 7. It is also distinct from traditions such as those in 2 Enoch or the Christian Cave of Treasures in which the high priesthood too is traced back ultimately to A d a m.
Like Deucalion and Pyrrha, they reseeded the earth. However, it should be remarked that through the Enochic material which includes Giants we can explain the fall of the angels, the origins of the demons and their plagues, as well as the flood and the destruction of the earth. The present world order is the postdiluvian state. Into that state, among other things, Noah introduced sacrifice, and in it, Noah received a book of antidemonic healing.
The displacement of the "true" cult from Jerusalem was most likely a catalytic factor for the wing of Judaism to which the sect belonged. That wing of Judaism, however, was perhaps more extensive, and certainly older, than the Qumran sect proper. That stream of Judaism preceded the events leading up to the expulsion of the Oniad priests ca.
See note 51 above. The name is widely known in Byzantine tradition; cf. Of course, this insight did not originate with her, but her observation is apposite. More than thirty years earlier, in two studies of time and eschatology in Qumran literature, Jacob Licht dealt with the way that apocalypses structure time, the overall course of 2 history, in an all-inclusive and orderly pattern. My use denotes a schematic understanding of this historical process. On the other hand, Neusner says, "They [i.
Paradigmatic thinking generalizes and treats the past as undifferentiated from the present. The paradigm consists of generalizations concerning the human situation, patterns of conduct and consequence, and the paradigm governs present and past without distinction" The difference in our uses of "pattern" should be kept in mind.
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It is the apocalyptic literature that first strives to embrace the whole span of time, to comprehend the overall structure of history in a pattern from the beginning to the eschaton. Periodization has focused on the number of periods or ages into which history was divided. A number of such divisions were derived from biblical texts. The use of this sort of schematic device seeks "to demonstrate that history is both significant and comprehensible.
Swain and others traced the idea of the four 6 7 3. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, He deals with schematic structure of the "Deuteronomic work" on pp. I do not maintain that history exhausts the content of apocalypticism, but simply that when the apocalypses do deal with history, what I am describing here helps understand what they are doing. DiTommaso, "The Development of Apocalyptic Historiography in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls," has set forth a theoretical framework for the functioning of history in the context of apocalyptic. Russell suggests that the idea of the organization of history in great periods characterized by fixed numbers is Zoroastrian in origin.
This hypothesis is distinct from the view I shall now present of the Iranian origin of the four kingdoms pattern. On different uses of the term "pattern," see note 2 above. Licht, "Time and Eschatology" He is contrasting this idea to Greek concepts. It is to be found early in Hesiod, Works and Days, ca. This happened, he maintains, before the oracle was taken over by the Jewish author of the Fourth Sibyl, who wrote ca. Coggins, Samaritans and Jews, , discusses the influence of periodization in Daniel 2 and 7 on Samaritan thought. Many scholars have spoken of the relationship between the four divisions and the series of four metals; see note 8 above.
It is to be found in Hesiod, Works and Days, , who speaks of four ages or races who have preceded the present, fifth race. The connection of the four kingdoms theory and the four metals does not play a major role in his discussion. In a note on p. Sometimes the end follows the fourth stage, and on others it is the culmination of the fourth stage.
The broken context does not clarify what it was that was made of the four metals. Swain, "The Theory of Four Monarchies," 9, n. He also opines that "[t]he few similarities of the Greek and oriental stories are purely coincidental" and notes that Eduard Meyer was of the view that Hesiod invented his theory independently and does not analyze the similarities with Daniel; see Meyer, "Hesiods Erga und das Gedicht von den fiinf Menschengeschlechten," and He remarks that "[i]t is possible that Hesiod influenced the Persian tradition, b u t. This position is controversial.
Neither the four metals nor the four kingdoms are found in the Achaemenid inscriptions.
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Nonetheless, Koch makes a good circumstantial case. Hesiod was evidently adapting a schema, and the inclusion of Media in the sequence strongly suggests an ultimate Persian source. This position will continue to be disputed, but Koch provides a more extensive discussion of the Persian sources than any previous commentary. This strengthens the view that the series of materials, including the four metals, may be a common cultural given.
The best-known Iranian sources are Bahman Yast, ch. A main point made by Flusser in "The Four Empires," , esp. See West, Pahlavi Texts, We cannot tell whether the Iranian sources which contain ancient traditions but were edited late in the first millennium C. A good deal has been written on this number, and its interpretation and reinterpretation have been traced in Jewish and Christian sources. Collins, Daniel, and notes 10 and 11 above. Servius, in a comment on Eclogue 4. See Stone, Fourth Ezra, Flusser, "The Four Empires," , argues strongly for the oriental, anti-Roman origin of this scheme: This is also the view of Albertz, Israel in Exile, 43, who speaks of a Greek intermediary.
The propaganda role of the four-empires scheme seems beyond doubt. Both its Persian origin and the independence of that origin from Hesiod, the earliest source in which the four ages pattern occurs, are less certain. See further, note 8 above. See the discussion in Stone, Fourth Ezra, The word "mixed" in 2: There are, however, only four kingdoms. A judicious discussion of the four metals is to be found in Collins, Daniel, In addition to 4 Ezra A thorough treatment of this number concentrating on the period of the restoration, is Ackroyd, "Two Old Testament Historical Problems of the Early Persian Period," esp.
He is not as interested in the developments in Daniel and Chronicles, on which see below. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. In any case, this prediction formed a fertile seedbed for later calculations, and it is intriguing to follow the development of this number in subsequent biblical writing. The way that Jer Thus, in the sixth century B.
Rainer Albertz analyzes the various views of the exile held by Jeremiah, Kings, and Chronicles in Israel in Exile, Holladay, Jeremiah 1, , remarks on Jeremiah But it may reflect an idiom wider than the OT: This is clear from Zech 1: When you fasted and lamented in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?
See further note 26 below. See Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, This is significant, for as a result, in 2 Chronicles these seventy years refer not to Babylon but to Israel. Third, we also encounter the typical language of Lev The Chronicler again refers to the seventy years in Ezra 1: Thus their fulfilment involves the combination of a tenfold division with a sevenfold division. See Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration, , for sabbatical years.
Return and restoration and the new period begin there. From his longer perspective he sees this as the fulfilment of the seventy-year prophecy of Jeremiah"; Exile and Restoration, See Knibb, "The Exile in the Literature," esp. Of course, it is an open question why Jeremiah chose the number 70; see note 21 above. It occurs fairly frequently in the Hebrew Bible as a round number; see Gen It cannot be shown that Jeremiah chose 70 because it was 10 x 7. Certainly 7, being the number of days in the week, was significant, particularly with a lunar calendar.
Russell, The Method and Message ofjewisih Apocalyptic, Here, in Dan 9: This develops the sabbath-week idea introduced in 2 Chr One is how Jeremiah's prophecy could be developed to embrace a far longer period than the prophet originally intended. After all, Daniel 9 was written long after Jeremiah and, for that matter, long after the Chronicler's hope in Cyrus was disappointed. This is an example of a phenomenon much more widespread subsequently, that periods which overran their stated limits were adjusted by recalculation.
Knibb, "The Exile in the Literature," , remarks that Daniel is more dependent on Jeremiah thematically than in terms of use of language. As Knibb points out, Dan 9: No number is given. Neither of these texts, nor several others, count the restoration and the Second Temple in their timetable of redemption. Werman discusses a year period, present in some Qumran documents, which served at times in a recital of past history and at times in future history.
Taking also as ten jubilees, the texts are quite complex. See Werman, "Epochs and End of Time," particularly See also the important article by Irshai referred to in note 36 and the remarks by Collins, "The Expectation of the End," Koch, "Is Daniel Also among the Prophets? From Daniel to Qumran," esp. Nonetheless, the number of copies of Hebrew-Aramaic Daniel found at Qumran eight , together with the "pseudo-Danielic" works discovered there, show what a major role this book and its pseudepigraphic author played for the Essenes.
It is not my intention to enumerate them all here, but a few can be mentioned. So, Testament of Moses 3 refers 33 to an exile of 77 y e a r s ; 1 Enoch, in the Animal Apocalypse, speaks of 70 angels responsible for the time of the exile 1 En. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, as is well known, asserts his view that apocalypticism originated from wisdom. Regardless of my estimate of that hypothesis, he does gather a good number of mantic wisdom characteristics of Daniel in 2: See further, Chapter 2, note 68 above. See the grandson's prologue to Ben Sira 1 and 5, probably written in B.
See Chapter 5, below. Note that certain of the so-called "Additions to Daniel" may also be in origin independent of the stories in Daniel Testament of Moses ch. On this passage, see Tromp, The Assumption of Moses, The oddness of 77 is not resolved. See further Knibb, "The Exile in the Literature," Typological Numbers Four, ten, seventy, seven, twelve, and other typological numbers came to serve for the number of years, periods, or divisions of the course of this world or of this world age. The idea of a fixed number of years or of certain divisions within history between one significant point and another, e.
Greek Testament of Levi 16 is also dependent on Jeremiah's 70 years; cf. Stone, Fourth Ezra, Week of years; see Stone, Fourth Ezra, See for a further type, 2 Apoc. Jacob Licht analyzed and graphed both the symmetrical structure of the Apocalypse of Weeks and its patterned division of historical time; see "Time and Eschatology," Another type of use of 12 is 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 27, where the signs of the end are divided into See the comments in Stone, Signs of the Judgement, 16, and some further sources 69 Ancient Judaism that we can discern a major movement of thought.
Daniel's four kingdoms, which conclude in both chapters 2 and 7 with the eschaton, hold the middle ground conceptually, covering the time from the rise of the first empire usually Assyria to the eschaton, but not from creation to eschaton. The idea that the length of history is fixed in creation is to be found in many other sources as well. In the interpretation of this vision, the angel Remiel is quite specific: A particularly interesting discussion of the matter is to be found in the article of Licht, "Taxo, or the Apocalyptic Doctrine of Vengeance.
Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch, The lists of questions about things to be revealed often include "the 70 Apocalyptic Historiography The Apocalypse of Weeks in 1 En. In 4 Ezra 6: The question in the lists clearly refers to a fixed number of days; see Stone, Fourth Ezra, See Flusser, "The Four Empires," He argues that a ten-generations scheme was original to the Sibylline Oracles See also the ten kings, concluding with God in PRE ch.
The tenth of these "will restore sovereignty to its owners"; see Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, The second Targum on Esther says at the beginning, "And it was in the days of Ahasuerus, he is Ahasuerus one of ten kings who ruled and will rule in the world. See Stone, Fourth Ezra ,,, and The three are parallel in structure. Note, however, that this type of language is common in 4 Ezra 4: Later, creation by measures is referred to in Test.
The usage is much older, of course; so already Isa. The idea is well expressed in 4 Ezra 7: All things happen in due time 4 Ezra 3: It follows, therefore, that the times can be the subject of revelation, e. This idea too makes possible the revelation of the end, which, when it became combined with intense eschatological expectation, had great implications for apocalyptic revelatory understanding.
Tahlipha sent a message to R. Joseph, "I met a man who possessed scrolls written in square Hebrew characters and in the holy language. And I said to him, 'Whence did you get this? And it was written therein, "Four thousand, two hundred and ninety-one years after the creation, the world will come to an end; some years will be the wars of the Leviathians i. And the Holy One, blessed be He, will not renew his world before seven thousand have elapsed.
The understanding of 4,, the period from creation to the end of the age, is difficult. One possibility is that the figure is 7 x , and is the traditional number of commandments in the Torah. This would give us a doubling of the week, once in 4, 7 x and once in 7, 7 x 1, The origin of the number remains mysterious. Naomi Cohen points out that according to b. Both explanations 51 52 53 Cohen, "Taryag and the Noahide Commandments," discusses the question of whether the number is to be taken literally or symbolically.
Rabinowitz, Taryag, does not even raise the issue. See Cohen, "Taryag and the Noahide Commandments," She also discussed the seven Noahide commandments as another example of the use of a typical number for a group of commandments. Tanhuma Ki Tesei to Deut Buber clearly associates 1 1 72 Apocalyptic Historiography make the impression of being post factum. Therefore, it is not surprising that in b. It is possible that 4, or 4, may have actually referred to a specific historical event, 54 which was expected, but did not eventuate it would have been either C. The latter, as she rightly remarks 54 , is odd because the rabbis did not use a solar year and, indeed, opposed it.
She would regard, therefore, the combination of these two elements, the body and the year, as a quasi-philosophical explanation combining physical activity and time, and therefore an assertion that the world is in time. Her analysis is too speculative. Rabinowitz, Taryag, discusses the general subject from a very traditional point of view. He offers no speculation as to why the number of was selected. Note that by the rabbinic calculus the destruction of the temple took place in a.
In that case, would be years after the destruction i. Sanhedrin as a corruption of The text preceding the number in b. It is possible that the lead-up to the fall of the Western Empire in might have been regarded as significant to the earlier date and the reign of Justinian was related to the later date But this could only have been post factum, since the talmudic text was edited, never mind composed, well before these events.
Berger, "Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism," through a fairly complex argument, sees the date as equivalent to the years He deals also with a date of 85 Jubilees attributed to Elijah , but the matter remains obscure. The idea that a single divine day is 1, years was exegetically derived from Ps 73 Ancient Judaism In b. Tanna debe Eliyyahu says: Nonetheless, the connection of the week, the Sabbatical week, the world-week, and redemption lies behind all these numbers.
The world-week is inferred also in the following passage: See 72 and note 51 above. In 4 Ezra 7: The period of years in Exod After years, according to 4 Ezra, the Messiah will die, and the world will revert to chaos for seven days, and then new creation will appear. Jacob Licht remarked that "all these predictions are, to a greater or lesser degree, speculations about the significant period of history, and attempts to impose some pattern on history as a whole. The future is not delimited, the idea of an end does not yet exist, but instead there is a sequential series of events.
A century ago, scholars of the religionsgeschichtliche school perceived pervasive patterns in Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean religion that influenced Judaism in the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods. This is surely partly true. The eschaton will be the conclusion of the historical process. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, , See for a summary, Stone, "Apocalyptic Literature," , n.
Licht, "Time and Eschatology," , points out that in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the early apocalypses there is no specific reference to two worlds. In , simultaneously with Licht, I discussed the meaning of "two worlds" and the term olam, but in considerably more detail, in Features of the Eschatology of IV Ezra, this is a publication of a doctoral thesis submitted in ; see Licht's remarks on the topic in "Time and Eschatology," Preuss, '"61am," while noting the shift of meaning, makes no suggestions as to its origins. See the remarks in the article "aicov," in TDNT, 1: Shaked, The Wisdom of the Sasanian Sages, xxxiv and note 2.
See also Frye, "Reitzenstein and Qumran Revisited. There was a renaissance of interest in the apocalyptic literature in the s and s, which resulted in a series of publications 69 dealing with the phenomenon of the apocalypses. In a number of these works, the question of the origins of apocalyptic eschatology was 70 broached.
In an important article published in , Frank Moore Cross, Jr. Hanson, in a doctoral thesis, later reworked and published as a book entitled The Dawn of Apocalyptic , constructed an argument as follows. The community of the Restoration was heir of the heritage of earlier prophetic teaching of an expected, future restoration. The reality in which this early Second Commonwealth community was living was in fact very far from the conditions that might have made such a restoration plau The article on Persia does not mention the possibility of Iranian influence on Qumran or other Jewish eschatology, while the article on "Apocalyptic Texts" mentions "Greek and Near Eastern religions" 1: This is a true reflection of where current thinking is on this matter and certainly not the outcome of a conscious editorial policy.
The Morphology of a Genre, edited by John J. Knibb, and others were influential in this discussion. Cross, "New Directions in the Study of Apocalyptic. Future and past were illuminated only from within ordinary history. These attempts at the interpretation of history ultimately were inadequate.
Both were exercises in archaism. The eyes of their tradents were to the past" Thus Hanson argues that apocalyptic eschatology results from future hope pushed beyond the historical arena to history's end by dire current circumstances. According to this perception, then, apocalyptic eschatology is actually an extension of prophecy. Such a view does not necessarily conflict with that of Hanson, and both factors may have contributed to the development of the notion that there will be an end, an eschaton, in which event the process of history will come to an end and God's justice will be made evident.
Once this notion had taken root, the issue of the overall purpose of the historical process naturally arose. Precisely this change made possible the attempt to comprehend the whole historical progression as a single scheme and process. The sequence of this historical process could then be presented in a single, structured, and purposive pattern.
The outcome of this is to be found in apocalyptic historiography, which deals with the grand patterns, the overall structure of history from beginning to end. Hanson, The Dawn ofApocalyptic. See also his article, "Apocalypticism. Gerhard von Rad challenged the connection between prophecy and apocalyptic in his book Wisdom in Israel. He regards apocalyptic to have issued from wisdom.
Karina Martin Hogan, Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra, utilizes familiar theological categories and oppositions. It is viewed as a whole, from beginning to end, and usually divided into periods. Those periods or stages, as I have noted, are often numbered schematically in seven, ten, twelve, or seventy parts. They are, in any case, part of an overall scheme and the culmination of this overall pattern will be the end of the historical process or will transcend it and move beyond history.
The movement was from seventy years' exile, to a sabbatical-year calculation so 2 Chr The books we consider here as apocalypses were written over a period of more than four centuries, from the third century B. They were written in Judea and perhaps elsewhere in the land of Israel and some perhaps in the Diaspora. There was, of course, other literature written in the Diaspora as well, and that which we can readily identify as Diaspora literature was written in Greek.
The books written in the land of Israel were written in 74 75 Such numbered divisions are discussed above, 69 and note There are, of course, later Jewish and Christian apocalypses, but they remain outside the ambit of this discussion. Likewise, the later Christian apocalypses have seen renewed attention. A great deal of literature on these topics is included by DiTommaso, A Bibliography of Pseudepigrapha Research It has been suggested that Tobit, e. What we cannot tell from external sources or even from the contents of the apocalypses is which, if any, of the known Jewish groups was responsible for them.
In the schematic presentations of history that are so typical of the apocalypses, what is consistent is that they conclude in virtually all cases with the eschaton, the end of history. Some of them, such as the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch As noted already, the four metals are already to be found in Hesiod and also in works such as the Pahlavi Denkart.
He worked out different possible sources of this tradition, and the late David Flusser added more. Whatever the ultimate origin of this series of metals, as noted above, the idea of the four empires became rather widespread. It was powerful enough to provide a pattern for history leading to an end, 76 77 78 79 in Hebrew or Aramaic, and new research also suggests that Epistle of Jeremiah was written in the Eastern Diaspora in a Semitic language.
It seems that Jews wrote some works in Greek in the land of Israel as well: See Chapter 1, , 28 above. John Collins acutely remarked that Nebuchadnezzar, being the head of gold Dan 2: Swain, "The Theory of Four Monarchies"; and above, note 8. See note 8 above. It might be suggested that the vaticinium ex eventu starts from the date of the alleged author.
Yet there are apocalyptic historical visions that commence before the time of the alleged author. Such are the Apocalypse of Weeks in 2 Enoch and the vision of the bright and dark waters in 2 Apocalypse ofBaruch. In the case of Daniel, it seems that the power of the four empires pattern has been determinative. This phenomenon is found elsewhere, where a prior, schematic pattern that does not necessarily go back to creation is used to describe the coming of the end.
At the same time, the less the present situation seemed likely to yield surcease, the more hope was centred beyond this world and this time. The measure of eschatological tension and the radical character of the end time were determined by the given situation. There was understood to be a direct relationship between Israel's action and Israel's fate. With the Antiochian martyrs the situation became even less bearable, as I have noted above.
Yet, we may be led to ask why it was that this view of the direct relationship of Israel's conduct and Israel's fate worked in the preceding age. Of all the apocalypses, 2 Enoch is most notable for its inclusion of cosmogony. This shift into the eschatological dimension is tellingly expounded by Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity 81 Ancient Judaism the fit became egregiously impossible, then special explanations could be written.
This same way of viewing God's relationship to Israel was current in the Second Temple period. Thus, Achior the Ammonite, in his speech to Holofernes in Jdt 5: The temple of their God was razed to the ground, and their towns were occupied by their enemies" NRSV. Vindication of the righteous and punishment of the wicked, the defeat of the wicked nations, and the restoration of Israel were guaranteed at the end, or beyond. And the heart of the earth's inhabitants shall be changed and converted to a different spirit.
For evil shall be blotted out, and deceit shall be quenched; faithfulness shall flourish, and corruption shall be overcome, and the truth shall be revealed which has been so long without fruit. His statement, made in a different context to the above, still is apposite: See the interpretation of this speech in Albertz, Israel in Exile, Soon after the destruction of the Second Temple, the author of 4 Ezra says: And my heart failed me, for I have seen, how thou dost endure those who sin, and hast spared those who act wickedly, and hast destroyed thy people, and hast preserved thy enemies, and hast not shown to any one how thy way may be comprehended.
A yearning for orderliness developed, a search for a clear structure grew, which could only find fulfilment outside the present world. This search for order was another aspect of the perplexity that arose over theodicy. Only the transposition of its resolution into the transcendent, both temporal and spatial, could achieve the fulfilment of this desire for order and coherence. On the other hand, one might maintain that the yearning for theodicy and for coherence led to the search for order in history.
This in turn engendered both a changed historiographic perception and also a transcendentalist eschatology of one or another sort. These two changes, which were fundamental to the conceptual shifts that took place in the Second Temple period, are intertwined, and questions of priority, or issues of "the chicken and the egg," are not relevant. This is a new thing. Therefore, apocalyptic historiographic schemes can be written in small compass. A single chapter suffices to tell all from creation to eschaton, to embrace the whole of history.
Division of History into Fixed Parts As a result of this, people sought to learn the divine pattern that underlies or determines the historical process. Consequently, it is evident that they regarded this pattern as giving that process structure and meaning to the A considerable amount has been written on the Greek pattern underlying Josephus's Jewish Antiquities. Josephus's writing of history is quite different in structure from apocalyptic historiographic surveys.
The pattern inevitably involves an eschaton, an end, a consummation. Moreover, all that has to be described is the pattern, not the events themselves. Since divisions of history sometimes served to exhibit this pattern, they too could be treated as completely schematic. History could be divided into six days of one thousand years and a seventh day "a thousand years in his eyes are as a single day," Ps The same numbers are present in these subpatterns as in the overall schemes.
This has manifold expressions, and I can only mention some of them. First, the idea that rd eaxata wq ra Ttpcbta, "the last things resemble the first things" Barn. Moreover, perhaps the week of creation is correlated with the world-week mentioned above. A number of events related to creation will be relived at the end. See note 86 above. See above, ; see the section on typology below. Of course, the seven-day week is of Mesopotamian origin; see note 26 above. The eating of Behemoth and Leviathan at the end corresponds to their appointment at creation. In the Armenian Penitence of Adam This is already found in Isa Compare also Vita ofEzekiel.
This is the true constitution of Israel, and the eschatological pattern repeats it. The eschaton was 96 On their creation, see 4 Ezra 6: The particular roles of Levi and Judah in Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are also seen as evidence for dual messianism, as is the mention of a priest on certain Bar Kokhba coins. In general, see Evans, "Messiahs. This vaticinium ex eventu presented the past as leading inevitably to the actual prediction that followed it.
Moreover, because past history was presented as future prophecy, the part of the discourse that was really future prophecy gained verisimilitude. This double typology of redemption is often regarded as representing a double view of the players: Second, in the texts from the Second Temple period a remythologization of the world becomes evident. In terms of history, the end of history, or 98 See discussion on four ages, above. This formulation is in fact a simplification. It is true of the "book religion" evident in the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
This reflects, in the end, more about the literature and its tradents than about what people "actually" thought. Yet, after all, my analysis here actually deals with religious ideas as reflected in the literature. This has been discussed in detail above. In contrast to the period of the First Temple, action took place in heavenly space and not just in this-worldly space. Action in the earthly realm reflected the events of the heavenly. Third, the understanding of the natural world also changed: Because the paganism among which the Israelites lived revered deities related to nature and the natural cycle, the assertion of nature's subjection to God was a powerful aspect of First Temple Israelite religion, as it is reflected in the biblical documents.
The reappearance of nature as an actor is an outcome of the same change. Meaning came to be sought not in the events of history but in its consummation. Vindication is beyond this time and often beyond this space. In the primordial, mythical world of time, Urzeit is Endzeit, the end is the beginning, and the process of history is not the arena of action. Earthly and Heavenly Space: Action takes place both in this world and in the heavenly arena. In the Second Temple-period literature, the world of angels, spirits, and demons is much more prominent.
The local dimension of the world was also transcended. See above; see also Stone, "Three Transformations in Judaism. This is, of course, the case in what Dever calls "book religion. The world, therefore, became very complex, and its parts were largely interrelated. The new worldview, which underlies apocalyptic historiography, can perhaps be called semimythological. This was not the regnant view then. Stone, "Apocalyptic — Vision or Hallucination? To quote, "The reader is conscious of a certain artificiality about the literature as a whole whose descriptions of visionary experiences, for example, give the impression of pseudo-ecstasy and assumed inspiration.
A "Baruch" or "Jeremiah" work about the destruction of the First Temple might well have been written after the destruction of the Second, but that had to be proved on other grounds than correspondence between the fictional situation and that of the author. Scholars regarded words and actions ascribed to the pseudepigraphic author as fiction. The Morphology of a Genre , the apocalypse is author, is the thread that holds the book together. See Stone, Fourth Ezra.
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This approach was typified by the writings of Wolfgang Harnisch esp. In fact, this is an oversimplification. Thus, as far as place is concerned, I hesitate to say the book was written in Rome because the author says he was writing in Babylon; see 4 Ezra 3: See note 2 above. Hogan, in Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra, criticizes my conclusion that "Ezra and the angel are both the author but are Janus faces of the author's self" Fourth Ezra, 29 , i. Collins, "The Jewish Apocalypses" and the definition on For a recent discussion of the definitional issue, see DiTommaso, "Apocalypses and Apocalypticism" and "The De91 Ancient Judaism described as "a genre of revelatory literature.
One source of the visions and their structure is biblical. More explicit is Ezekiel, whose religious experiences will be discussed below; cf. As a result of their attitudes towards religious experiences related in apocalypses, in recent decades scholars studying these writings have dealt with their composition, date, coherence, and so forth, basing themselves velopment of Apocalyptic Historiography in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
See my earlier remarks in "Apocalyptic Literature," esp. The basis was laid for my view in "Lists of Revealed Things in the Apocalyptic Literature" on the schedule of the publication of this article, see Since that time, the issue of the relationship between "sapiential literature" and apocalyptic literature has been discussed intensively. It is not clear, however, that many advances have been chalked up since the s in basic points of view.
Although the sapiential and the speculative were brought actively into the discussion by the s, during the last decade, largely due to the official publication of 4QInstruction, the barrier scholars erected between "apocalyptic" and "sapiential" has been breaking down, though no new synthesis has yet been reached.
See below, notes 49 and The formal and genre similarities between some particularly, late prophetic visions and the apocalypses are notable: My remarks do not even modestly broach the issue of the nature of apocalypticism and apocalypse as they have been viewed in recent decades, nor is that my purpose here. A recent general presentation on apocalyptic is Rowland, "Apocalyptic: The Disclosure of Heavenly Knowledge.
In the earlier part of the twentieth century, the psychological reality of vision experience was often acknowledged.