Jewish Apocalyptic Literary Analysis

Christopher Collins writes on authority and orality of myth. He proposes names attached to tales become single-references to recall entire stories. Such names gain authority through surviving trial and ordeals (Odysseus, for example). By comparison, ANE and Second Temple authors studied here legitimate texts by capitalizing on already assumed authorities—a god, angel, or king—acting as message originators. The revealed-secret recipient often contributes to engendered authority as well by name recognition. How, then, do authors orchestrate this authority in apocalyptic literature?

Use in Apocalyptic Literature

Jewish Apocalyptic authors weaved this topos into 1 and 2 Enoch, Jubilees, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, and the Testament of Levi. Yet, they did so in various ways, including Secrets

On myth places responsibility on Watchers for their sexual endeavors among women and the other myth reveals heavenly secrets associated with civilization. The topos in 1 En. 9:6 rests in this latter myth picturing the dangers of misusing and/or abusing heavenly knowledge. Margaret Barker’s research into 1 Enoch corroborates Himmelfarb’s assessment. Such knowledge resulted in “the whole earth bec[oming] corrupted by this invasion of divine secrets”; they abused divine knowledge. According to Barker, the audience against whom the Second Temple author wrote “altered the calendar, which is [also] a sign of their abuse of divine knowledge.” The topos of secrecy, then, results in divinely ordered events when properly revealed (such as in 89:2); but altering such knowledge results is chaos and destruction. The intrinsic power of this once-secreted knowledge adds another layer of authority to that already mentioned. These eternal, divine secrets are powerful enough to introduce chaos into divine order or create order from chaos, as typified in the following ANE