Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition Research Articles

Christ as Charioteer: An Expanded Image in Early Armenian Literature

ABSTRACT Beginning with the perception of God as warrior in the Hebrew Bible, the article explores the image of God as charioteer in a spectrum of theophanic texts, both biblical and parabiblical, underlying Jewish apocalyptic traditions translated into Christian beliefs surrounding the Cross as means of heavenly ascent. Equating the Cross with the tetramorphic chariot-throne of God in Ezekiel’s visions, an interpretive tradition mediated primarily through Syriac Christianity and rooted in the Christology of the New Testament, Armenian interpreters expanded the tradition. A close reading of early Armenian texts conveying the reception and transmission of the imagery of Christ as charioteer shows an expansion to a point of reordering the chariot’s heavenly ascent to earthly descent, a divine visitation to the land of Armenia, thus driving the tradition to a sort of realized eschatology.

The Justice of the Cosmos: Philosophical Cosmology and Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Wisdom of Solomon

This article argues that the Wisdom of Solomon complicates Martinus C. de Boer's typology of two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology (‘forensic apocalyptic eschatology’ and ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’). Wisdom, which entails both ‘forensic’ depictions of an eschatological courtroom (5.1–14) and ‘cosmological’ depictions of cosmic war (5.15–23), offers a cosmology fundamentally incompatible with the cosmology presumed in de Boer's ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’. Instead of envisioning eschatological justice as the result of a divine invasion, Wisdom envisions it as the result of divine pervasion. That is, cosmological eschatology in Wisdom entails a fully functioning, divinely pervaded cosmos operating as it was intended to operate. Wisdom innovates within Jewish apocalyptic tradition by employing the mythological idiom of apocalypticism to defend the philosophical claim that the cosmos is just and facilitates life for those who are likewise just.

Who tempted the woman? Variations of the Edenic episode in Jewish Apocalyptic literature

The Jewish Apocalyptic tradition shows various conceptions about the origin of evil, which are developed throughout the history of this school of thought. In the third century a. C., the Book of the Watchers states that the descending of a rebellious group of angels to the earth seeking beautiful women is the direct cause of the origin of evil. Contrary to this myth, the tradition of Adam and Eve emerges as the main alternative. The eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge by the first couple explains the hard life of humans and their mortality. Nevertheless, around the first century A. D., this last tradition is developed in such a way that the serpent of the garden is linked to a satanic figure in some of the texts. This is the case of the references to the Edenic episode in the Book of Parables, 2 Enoch, the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and the Greek and Latin versions of Life of Adam and Eve. Even if not all of them detail the description of the superhuman power hidden in the shape of the serpent, both 2 Enoch and the Latin version of Life of Adam and Eve refer to its initial state as one of the angels of the celestial court. An interpretation that influences the New Testament as well. The Watchers and Satan are all considered as heavenly beings that encourage humankind to superior learning and whose acts lead to the introduction and spread of evil in the world. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to analyse these late Apocalyptic references to the story of Adam and Eve in comparison to the myth of the Watchers in order to show the possible syncretism amongst these traditions.

Who tempted the woman? Variations of the Edenic episode in Jewish Apocalyptic literature

The Jewish Apocalyptic tradition shows various conceptions about the origin of evil, which are developed throughout the history of this school of thought. In the third century a. C., the Book of the Watchers states that the descending of a rebellious group of angels to the earth seeking beautiful women is the direct cause of the origin of evil. Contrary to this myth, the tradition of Adam and Eve emerges as the main alternative. The eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge by the first couple explains the hard life of humans and their mortality. Nevertheless, around the first century A. D., this last tradition is developed in such a way that the serpent of the garden is linked to a satanic figure in some of the texts. This is the case of the references to the Edenic episode in the Book of Parables, 2 Enoch, the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and the Greek and Latin versions of Life of Adam and Eve. Even if not all of them detail the description of the superhuman power hidden in the shape of the serpent, both 2 Enoch and the Latin version of Life of Adam and Eve refer to its initial state as one of the angels of the celestial court. An interpretation that influences the New Testament as well. The Watchers and Satan are all considered as heavenly beings that encourage humankind to superior learning and whose acts lead to the introduction and spread of evil in the world. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to analyse these late Apocalyptic references to the story of Adam and Eve in comparison to the myth of the Watchers in order to show the possible syncretism amongst these traditions.

The Quest for the “Community” of Q: Mapping Q Within the Social, Scribal, and Textual Landscape(s) of Second Temple Judaism

AbstractWas there a “Q community”? There are many who think that any quest for a “Q community” is a fool's errand. In this paper, I revisit this vexing question by focusing on several distinctive textual coordinates with which we can map Q's author within the social, textual, and theological landscape(s) of Second Temple Judaism. Since the author of Q was capable of crafting innovative scriptural allusions and adapting inherited Jesus traditions, I suggest that Q is not an isolated “Galilean” phenomenon but a textual production that combines Galilean Jesus traditions in conversation with contemporary Jewish apocalyptic traditions and can be located alongside the wider “Essenic” networks that pre-dated and co-existed with the Palestinian Jewish Jesus movement.