Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

Over the past several decades since Frank Snowden published his seminal monograph Blacks in Antiquity, scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the ethnic and racial frameworks deployed by ancient peoples. The intersections of race, color, and ethnicity in classical literature have long been debated, but ancient Jewish texts tend to be left out of these discussions. In this article, I first analyze 1 Enoch’s Animal Apocalypse against the backdrop of Hellenistic-era environmental theory to show that it displays early forms of race-making through its differentiation of colored bulls. Although leading commentaries offered by Nickelsburg and Tiller reject racial readings of the Animal Apocalypse’s colored bulls, Matthew Black’s commentary from the 1980s does not. I show that ancient Hellenistic conceptions of peoples’ color, ethnicity, and behaviors shaped by environmental determinism support Matthew Black’s framework for understanding the Animal Apocalypse’s use of color, namely his equating of Chapter 89’s black bull with Ham, contra Nickelsburg and Tiller. Second, I stress that the Animal Apocalypse’s schema of colored bulls reflects the view that all of humanity derives from white, red, and black ancestors and that this ordering of the three colors constitutes a hierarchal sequencing of humankind, classified into three different types of people in descending order.

The Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse defined apocalypses as a constellation of form, temporal content, and spatial content, but temporal content (particularly eschatological features) remains the dominant lens through which the genre of apocalypse and related texts are understood. Defining apocalypses primarily in terms of eschatology, however, narrows the definition of apocalypse and dismisses some texts that reflect non-eschatological features of apocalypses. Form and spatial content are often neglected in the examination of apocalypses and “apocalyptic” texts. When we pay attention to form and spatial content, along with temporal content, new horizons open for considering what may be considered apocalypse-like. Jubilees and the Gospel of John are presented as two examples of revelatory texts that reflect the form and spatial content of apocalypses.

The Life of Adam and Eve contains an episode in which Satan describes the protoplast Adam receiving worship from the angels of heaven, worship commanded by God himself. This tradition has played a role in recent debates over the nature of Second Temple religious devotion to the God of Israel. In particular, it has been put forward as an example that undermines arguments that Israel’s God alone was the exclusive recipient of Jewish cultic worship. Within this debate, the reliability of Satan as a narrator within the Life of Adam and Eve has yet to be considered. Demonstrating Satan to be an unreliable narrator would have significant implications for the role of the Life of Adam and Eve in the debate regarding the nature of Jewish religious devotion.

Although shrouded in mystery, the oracles of the high priest (Urim and Thummim) have often been the subject of curious interest in the literature of the Second Temple, as well as in the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (L.A.B.). The present research studies the mentions of this device in Pseudo-Philo’s narrative to shed new light on its configuration, role, and function. Despite the attempts made by recent scholarship to distinguish and separate them from the priestly attire, the most plausible hypothesis is to consider Pseudo-Philo’s understanding of Urim and Thummim as light-giving stones, closely related to the ephod, used by the high priest especially when he has to exercise judgment. Thus, such objects gain importance in reconstructing the peculiar significance of priesthood in L.A.B. In this framework, the strange narrative of L.A.B. 25–26 about the idolatrous stones replaced by new luminous ones becomes more intelligible.

The common assertions that Enoch in 2 Enoch is transformed into an angel, if not something more, are shown to lack support from the key bases on which this assertion is made, namely, his standing in the divine presence, the “sounding out” or testing of the angels to his entry into the divine presence, and his change of clothing for priestly service. Moreover, scholarly assertions of Enoch’s “angelic transformation” do not cohere with the clear emphases he later makes to his family of his shared humanity with them. Much of this misreading of the portrayal of Enoch in this book may owe to retrojections of later Hekhalot mysticism back into the book in an effort to discern a “line of development” or trajectory from 1 Enoch to 3 Enoch. Such a trajectory can be warranted only on the basis of a coherent portrayal of Enoch as he is presented in 2 Enoch. There he is clearly depicted as a man who is glorified among the angels but who remains a human being. While Enoch may be “angelomorphic” in having some of the various forms and functions of an angel, even though not explicitly called an “angel” or considered to have the created nature of an angel, this terminology should be used with caution, since it may tend to blur distinctions between the function and ontology of created heavenly and created earthly beings.