To Whom Does Knowledge Belong?
I had an “aha” moment reading the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) this weekend. As far as I can tell, this question (To whom does knowledge belong?) is the root of any connection between wisdom and apocalyptic literature. Can it really be that easy? This quarter we have been wading through swamps of nuanced attempts to uncover the social history of wisdom literature. I think several of us in the seminar have been a bit bewildered by the topic.
Just this week we made the transition to discussing wisdom and apocalyptic together, using Ben Sira and the Book of the Watchers. As I was rereading 1 Enoch–perhaps my favorite ancient text outside the biblical canon (Perpetua and Felicitas is a contender as well)–it just hit me. What is wisdom literature about? The pursuit of knowledge. What is apocalyptic literature about? The revelation of hidden things. Both genres are focused upon access to knowledge and the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge. I’m not saying that the two genres (wisdom and apocalyptic) have the same approach to the question, but it appears they share the question in common.
These are some of the things that sparked my epiphany . . . The Book of the Watchers discusses the scandalous acts of the “bad angels” who swoop down to earth not only to have sex with and make wives out of human women, but also to unveil hidden secrets that had disastrous consequences. 1 Enoch says that Asael (though he was not alone!) “has taught all iniquity on the earth, and has revealed eternal mysteries that are in heaven” (9:6). Later, Enoch notices the “tree of wisdom, whose fruit the holy ones eat and learn great wisdom” (32:4). This is the tree that “your father of old and your mother of old . . . ate and learned wisdom. And their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they were driven from the garden” (32:6). So, two Genesis stories (Adam and Eve, and Gen 6) exemplify the inappropriate disbursement of knowledge.
God, of course, sees all things: “there is nothing that can be hidden from you” (9:5). For now, aside from God and the heavenly beings, Enoch alone (the “righteous scribe”!) has access to the divine secrets. But at the final judgment, “wisdom will be given to all the chosen” (5:8). Enoch–another Genesis reference–exemplifies the appropriate acquiring of knowledge. The chosen holy ones will also enter into that knowledge when the time is right.
A Biblical Studies Scholar from 1955 Wakes Up…
. . . after sleeping through the last half century. You have to update him (probably a “him”) on the developments in scholarship regarding apocalypticism. What do you say? That was the mental exercise we played in Boustan’s seminar yesterday.
It was interesting to try to pin down what might be this gentleman’s perspective. We need to know what he knows before we update him. So, he’s probably working under the assumption that apocalypticism is a popular or populist movement driven by an ideology formed in crisis or persecution (often compared with other “millenarian” movements). This understanding would be set up against the established–perhaps “institutionalized”–tradition.
This understanding goes back to Max Weber’s dichotomy between the priest and the prophet. The priest is embedded within the institutionalized structures and their authority is generated by their status within those structures. The prophet is imagined to be a charismatic leader, whose authority is derived simply from the leader’s own charisma. Weber has preference for charismatic leaders as the force for change in world history. He believes the early charisma is always institutionalized if the movement continues. All that to say there is an underlying bias here: prophet = good and priest = bad.
Boustan asked if this hypothetical person would “like” apocalyptic writings. There was some disagreement in the seminar about this. I thought that the fictional 50′s scholar would not like apocalyptic writings because, in general, I believe the bias of embarrassment by apocalyptic thought (See Weiss, Schweitzer, and later, Koch) would still be more likely than a Marxist Bible scholar.
Even though the apocalyptic writings would have been conceived in the tradition of prophecy (and prophecy is a good thing viz-a-viz Weber), apocalyptic would have been a kind of corruption of that tradition.
Since the 70′s, in addition to the definitional issues, we would have to update this fictional scholar on the developments in the relation between Wisdom and Apocalypticism. That is, more and more, scholars see apocalyptic literature as learned and scribal. Jonathan Z. Smith called apocalyptic literature “Wisdom without a royal patron.” And that theme is what we’ll be talking about this quarter in our seminar.
Jonathan Z. Smith on Wisdom and Apocalypticism
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.
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- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
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- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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