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Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6-11
The history of the interpretation of Jude, broadly speaking, is one of omission or misunderstanding. Most commentary on the epistle over the last hundred years, while being highly derivative in nature, has lacked thoughtful inquiry. One factor that has discouraged serious study is the writer's use of OT and extrabiblical tradition-material. Surviving Jewish literature from the last two centuries B.C. and first century A.D. is decisive in helping to explain the religious thought-world reflected in the NT. This is particularly the case in Jude. The use of Jewish tradition-material in the epistle invites the reader to give attention to the writer's exegetical methodology— a methodology owing to a distinctly Palestinian Jewish-Christian cultural milieu. In Jude, significant theological truth is wrapped in literary arguments of the day. Literary sources, all part of a well-calculated literary strategy, are marshalled for the purpose of addressing urgent pastoral need. Lessons from the past bear forcefully on the present as a means of admonishing the Christian community.
El artículo expone la existencia y características de una teología judía del martirio en los escritos de Qumrán. Mediante un estudio de diversos textos como 4Q541 Aramaic Leví, 4QpPs171, 1QHa y 4Q491c el autor caracteriza esta teología por una inversión escatológica que da sentido a la situación de marginación y martirio que vive la comunidad. En ella, sujetos que son perseguidos, pobres y martirizados son considerados como los sujetos escatológicos que son justificados por el Espíritu de Dios, juzgarán a Israel y se les promete que heredarán la tierra y serán transformados en luz.
The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36; = BW ) features Asael as the culprit who illicitly distributed forbidden knowledge to the mortals. In retaliation, God rendered multiple punishments, one of which was the targeting of Asael’s sight (10:5). However, the text itself does not explain why God chose to inflict this form of penalty. This article aims to fill in this literary lacuna in light of the triadic association between sight, light, and knowledge – an association that was widely known in antiquity. This undertaking suggests that the particular offense of the Watchers, including Asael, described in 16:3 (i.e., misusing sight and light in knowledge acquisition) is critical to understanding Asael’s optical sentence. Ultimately, BW demonstrates a talionic correspondence between Asael’s sin and sentence.
La presencia de Henoc en Ben Sira ha causado discusión. La interpolación en Sir 44, 16 es reconocida en la investigación, así como la alusión a las tradiciones henóquicas de Sir 16, 7. En el estudio se sugiere que sólo el ms B de Sir 44, 16, la LXX, la Vg y el paralelo de Gen 5, 24 (TM y LXX), presentan a Henoc como modelo ético, mientras que el resto de mss y otros pasajes del Siracida favorecen una visión más legendaria y mística de Henoc.
The history of the interpretation of Jude, broadly speaking, is one of omission or misunderstanding. Most commentary on the epistle over the last hundred years, while being highly derivative in nature, has lacked thoughtful inquiry. One factor that has discouraged serious study is the writer's use of OT and extrabiblical tradition-material. Surviving Jewish literature from the last two centuries B.C. and first century A.D. is decisive in helping to explain the religious thought-world reflected in the NT. This is particularly the case in Jude. The use of Jewish tradition-material in the epistle invites the reader to give attention to the writer's exegetical methodology— a methodology owing to a distinctly Palestinian Jewish-Christian cultural milieu. In Jude, significant theological truth is wrapped in literary arguments of the day. Literary sources, all part of a well-calculated literary strategy, are marshalled for the purpose of addressing urgent pastoral need. Lessons from the past bear forcefully on the present as a means of admonishing the Christian community.
This book offers a thorough analysis of demons in the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint in the wider context of the ancient Near East and the Greek world. Taking a fresh and innovative angle of enquiry, Anna Angelini investigates continuities and changes in the representation of divine powers in Hellenistic Judaism, thereby revealing the role of the Greek translation of the Bible in shaping ancient demonology, angelology, and pneumatology. Combining philological and semantic analyses with a historical approach and anthropological insights, the author both develops a new method for analyzing religious categories within biblical traditions and sheds new light on the importance of the Septuagint for the history of ancient Judaism.
The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–38; BW ) describes a series of punishments that God renders against Asael (10:4–8). Several scholars have tried to identify possible traditions that stand behind these punishments in light of Jewish and Greek literatures. However, Henryk Drawnel recently challenges such attempts, positing a Mesopotamian background. Although Drawnel has shown that interacting with Mesopotamian literatures has something to offer in grasping a fuller understanding of the mentioned passage, this article argues that Greek literatures are still valuable sources, potentially shedding further light on the design of the punishment motifs in BW . In order to demonstrate this supposition, I interact with the myths of Prometheus, Tantalus, and Teiresias. Ultimately, I suggest that scholars should be open to the possibility that various traditions, rather than a single tradition, stand behind the punitive descriptions in BW 10:4–8.
In both Second Temple Judaism and the patristic era, there was a conceptual exegetical practice known as defectus litterae (“the missing literal sense”) that understood absurd, dubious, or scandalous biblical passages as signifying deeper spiritual truths. The hermeneutical goal was to develop an interpretation that was theoprepēs (God-befitting). In other words, ancient writers sought a biblical interpretation that would rationalize and justify God’s immoral behavior in order to maintain belief in a good and righteous deity. However, there is another aspect of defectus litterae that patristic scholars have yet to classify. Coined here for the first time as hermeneutical hagioprepēs, or saint-befitting, many Jewish and patristic writers employed the same exegetical tactic to salvage the reputation of so-called saintly biblical characters. This stratagem allowed ancient interpreters to rationalize certain behavior in order to justify continued reverence for members of their own religious heritage. To illustrate the use of hagioprepēs, this study will first present examples of ancient interpreters minimizing, sanitizing, or omitting the embarrassing and immoral behavior of biblical saints. The study will then offer post-hermeneutical examples of hagioprepēs being used to rationalize and justify the crimes of fellow religionists.
From the weberian formulation of theodicy, this inquiry will hold the centrality of the question of theodicy for religion. However, the weberian definition of theodicy presents problems for its application to texts of antiquity, because, according to Sarot, theodicy would be a modern phenomenon that would mark a new way of thinking about evil. From which the article reviews various theodicy showing the variety of responses, highlighting a different picture than that presented by Weber and Berger. The question about the suffering of the visionary and the prophet transcends the habitual ways of thinking about the existence of suffering and evil at a specific time to be open to interrogation and protest against all suffering, leading us to think again about God's relationship in the world, in such a way that rather than talking about a justification of God for suffering and evil in the world, theodicy interrogates and challenges the believer and God to look for other answers.
The Book of the Watchers (i.e., 1 Enoch 1–36) contains several punishments for the fallen Watchers’ crimes. Interestingly, one of the penalties is optical in nature – God forces the Watchers to observe the eradication of their beloved offspring (10:12; 12:6; 14:6). However, the text itself does not explain why God chose to inflict this form of penalty. The present article seeks to provide a satisfactory explanation in light of the ocular theories contemporaneous with the mentioned literature. This undertaking reveals that the Watchers’ particular offense – voyeurism (6:2) – is critical to understanding their optical sentence because the deities often employed visual penalties to punish improper amorous gazing. In this regard, the Book of the Watchers demonstrates a talionic correspondence between the Watchers’ voyeurism and God’s response to it. Ultimately, the ocular penalty depicts God as the righteous judge who renders fitting retributions to the criminal.
Artykuł analizuje strukturę 1Hen 9,1-3 i jego funkcję w strukturze mitu o upadłych aniołach (1Hen 6-11). Ten krótki tekst przedstawia czterech aniołów, ich postrzeganie nieszczęśliwego stanu ludzkości i przyjęcie ludzkiej skargi skierowanej do Boga. Pozytywna prezentacja czterech aniołów może zostać skontrastowana przez negatywną prezentację poległych Czuwających w 1Hen 6,2-3,7-8. Z drugiej strony, 1Hen 9,1-3 odnosi się do 1Hen 10, 1-16, gdzie ci sami czterej aniołowie otrzymują od Boga boskie zlecenie. Ponieważ stanowi decydujący zwrot w narracji mitu, 1Hen 9,1-3 dzieli go na dwie części, co implikuje symetryczny układ mitu.
In this article, I argue that ancient expulsion rites and early Jewish scapegoat traditions have influenced the composition of Mk 5.1-20. These rites and traditions inform Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ transfer of the demons into the swine and their disposal into the sea, which heals the Gentile man. Jesus’ scapegoat-like expulsion of Legion signals God’s banishment of hostile spiritual powers from their positions of authority over the nations and augurs God’s kingdom reign, in which Gentiles are released from bondage to cosmic forces, and their earthly counterparts, cleansed and welcomed into the family of God.
In this article New Testament passages referring to the birth of Jesus are related to Celsus’ anti-Christian arguments and the Jewish Toledot Yeshu tradition with a new question: Why it was so difficult to speak about the virgin birth of Jesus? It is argued that the concept of the virgin birth of Jesus was seen to be problematic for two reasons: 1) The concept was liable to result in scurrilous rumours, even scoffing and parodic episodes revolving on its sexual aspects. 2) Every attempt to explain that God was in some way the agent when a young girl conceived came too close to Gen. 6:1–4 – the text which explained in ancient Judaism the origin of the demonic world. Therefore, some New Testament authors (for example, the writer of the Gospel of John) deliberately avoided speaking about the virgin birth and instead presented the birth of Jesus in terms of the idea of an incarnated, personified, divine Wisdom. In order to avoid erroneous connotations relating to Gen. 6:1–4, Matthew and Luke followed a tradition where the Holy Spirit (a feminine word in Hebrew and Aramaic) played an active role in the pregnancy.
The article deals with the issue of the origin of evil in the documents of Second Temple Judaism (the books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, Sirach, and some texts from Qumran - the Damascus Document, Sapiental Work A, the Community Rule). In the period between the Testaments, there was a very lively debate on the origin of sin. One explanation, provided by the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36, expanded the mythic account of the origin of evil on earth through the activity of fallen angels (Gen 6). The problem was how to balance a monistic belief in a good omnipotent Creator with the presence of evil in the world. A guilty inclination of man is the second explanation of the origin of sin. The text from Qumran Damascus Document (CD) bypasses the story of fallen angels, but subscribes to the tradition that the root of sinful behavior is the human decision to follow evil inclination. A much more elaborate explanation of the origin of evil is found in the Instruction on the Two Spirits in the Community Rule (1QS 3,13-4,26), according to which two spirits fight "in the heart of man" (1QS 4,23). Neither pseudepigrafic nor sapiental literature ever completely resolved the question of the origin of evil, because of the tension between free will of man and predestination. In the first century AD, the debate on these issues was still going on in 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and also in the epistles of Paul. In Christian tradition, the emphasis was put on the hereditary transmission of sin from Adam.
The literary pattern of Asael's punishment in the Enochic myth does not seem to stem from biblical literature or Greek mythology. It is far more probable that one has to look for its antecedents in Babylonian anti-witchcraft literature. The Jewish author who lived in Mesopotamia in Late Babylonian period treated Asael and other Watchers as warlocks against whom exorcistic rituals have to be applied. The elimination of Asael and other Watchers from the earthly realm paved the way for the Jewish context of knowledge transmission, exemplified by Enoch and his insight into the structure of the world, revealed to him by angels faithful to God of Israel.
‘Many great teachings have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the others that followed them.’ So wrote the grandson of Ben Sira in the late second century bce, in the preface to the translation of his grandfather’s book. The passage is often cited as evidence for the emerging notion of a tripartite canon. The third part (‘the others’) was ill-defined and open-ended. Ben Sira himself aspired to contribute something analogous. We do not know how the corpus of ‘the Prophets’ was delimited, and even the exact understanding of the Law might be open to some debate. But there is no doubt that by the second century bce there existed a corpus of authoritative writings, although its extent and the authority of the various books might vary from place to place. The existence of such an authoritative corpus is clearly presupposed in the Dead Sea scrolls. The existence of a body of authoritative writings by no means signalled the end of literary production in ancient Judaism. Ben Sira was not alone in wishing to contribute to the tradition. But the traditional corpus influenced the new writing in various ways. At one end of the spectrum, we see the beginnings of explicit interpretation of the old books, in the pesharim of the Dead Sea scrolls and the allegorical commentaries of Hellenistic Judaism. At the other end, even writings that were quite original in theme and genre usually allude to the older writings in various ways. In between there is a range of compositions that are modelled in various ways on the antecedent literature, or invoke the great figures of the tradition as pseudonymous authors or narrators for new works.
The Article exposes the imaginary antecedents of martyrdom in Jewish apocalyptic, which can be seen through the Study of two Metaphors: the Rapture to Heaven and the Blood of the Righteous. The apocalyptic as aesthetic thought, develops such metaphorica in marginal groups Jews who returned from exile to begin to develop a historical project based on a metaphorical delivery of life by the people or by God, with his subsequent exaltation to Heaven. This imagery is mainly characterized as a political-eschatological interpretation of Death because of the Justice of God, which shows a new rationality of giving life by divine justice.
This article seeks to reconsider the meaning(s) of the phrase al-shayṭān al-rajīm. It surveys the controversy surrounding the meaning of rajīm in this context and argues two points: first, that by the time the phrase was employed in the Qurʾan its original meaning had been forgotten, and second, that the original meaning of the term was related to Satan's role as a heavenly accuser.
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