We are discussing Smith’s landmark essay in our Wisdom and Apocalyptic seminar today and I thought I might share this definitive quote from his summary:
In the course of this investigation, several characteristics of apocalypticism emerged on which I would insist. Apocalypticism is Wisdom lacking a royal court and patron and therefore it surfaces during the period of Late Antiquity not as a response to religious persecution but as an expression of the trauma of the cessation of native kingship. Apocalypticism is a learned rather than a popular religious phenomenon. It is widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean world and is best understood as part of the inner history of the tradition within which it occurs rather than as a syncretism with foreign (most usually held to be Iranian) influences.
From Jonathan Z. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” in Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 86.
