Wisdom Poured Out Like Water

Studies on Jewish and Christian Antiquity in Honor of Gabriele Boccaccini

J. Harold Ellens, Isaac W. Oliver, Jason von Ehrenkrook, James Waddell, Jason M. Zurawski, J. Harold Ellens, Isaac W. Oliver, Jason von Ehrenkrook, James Waddell, Jason M. Zurawski

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110593792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion antique

This collection presents innovative research by scholars from across the globe in celebration of Gabriele Boccaccini's sixtieth birthday and to honor his contribution to the study of early Judaism and Christianity. In harmony with Boccaccini's determination to promote the study of Second Temple Judaism in its own right, this volume includes studies on various issues raised in early Jewish apocalyptic literature (e.g., 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other early Jewish texts, from Tobit to Ben Sira to Philo and beyond. The volume also provides several investigations on early Christianity in intimate conversation with its Jewish sources, consistent with Boccaccini's efforts to transcend confessional and disciplinary divisions by situating the origins of Christianity firmly within Second Temple Judaism. Finally, the volume includes essays that look at Jewish-Christian relations in the centuries following the Second Temple period, a harvest of Boccaccini's labor to rethink the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in light of their shared yet contested heritage.

Part I:Enoch and the Roots of Apocalyptic

Luca Arcari

1Giants or Titans? Remarks on the Greek Versions of 1 Enoch 7.2 and 9.9

Introduction

As is well known, from the sexual union between the Watchers and human women the so-called Giants came into the world. In both 4Q201 (4QEna) 1 III 16–22 // 4Q202 (4QEnb) 1 II 20–25b (= 1 En. 7:3ff.), the texts are somewhat mutilated, and the reconstruction of the Aramaic term for the sons of the Watchers is purely hypothetical, based exclusively on a retroversion from the Greek and the Ethiopic texts. In the Aramaic version reconstructed by Milik, the term by which the sons of the Watchers are identified is gbryn,33 more or less corresponding to the locution γίγας μέγας attested in the Greek texts (according to the Codex Panopolitanus [henceforth, G] and Syncellus’s version transmitted in his Chronographia universalis [henceforth, S]).34

According to Nickelsburg, “Greek mythology appears also to have left its imprint at a number of points of 1 Enoch.” Although none of the examples reported by scholars definitively demonstrates this influence, if considered together, they seem to suggest different forms of “contact with material at home in the Greek world.”35 A very instructive case for this analysis, according to Nickelsburg, is the narrative of 1 En. 6–11. Following (and, simultaneously, countering) suggestions by other scholars, Nickelsburg argues for a problematic dependence on Greek tales about Prometheus:

The precise relationship between the Enochic Asael material and the Greek Prometheus myth remains problematic. Is it likely that the Jewish author of the Asael myth read and used mythic material from pagan Greek writings or popular oral versions of this material? Could the Greek material itself reflect Semitic versions no longer available to us? This last option has the weakness of positing a stage in the development of the tradition for which we have no definitive evidence. The first and second options have the advantage of using available evidence. Moreover, the Hebrew Scriptures supply many analogies for the Israelite use and transformation of the common Semitic myth. If one dates the creation of the Asael myth to the fourth century B.C.E., before the reforms that led to the revolt and the persecution by Antiochos, there are no clear reasons why Jews would be reticent to use pagan sources from their Greek environment.36

In an essay published some years ago, I have analyzed the account of the fall of the Watchers contained in 1 En. 8:1, as well as the differences between the versions of this narrative contained in both G and S.37 In observing how S generally tries to “normalize” the tale of the primordial fall in light of the Genesis account, I have also underlined that the insertion of the detail about the women who “corrupt” the angels attested in S may imply that his source belongs to an Enochic tradition, written in Greek, that is different from the one attested in G. In my analysis, such an Enochic tradition certainly dates to a later, but nevertheless ancient period, and it doubtlessly precedes S and the chronographers that it refers to. In the analysis published in 2012, I claim that the Greek materials preserved in both S and G derive from two different social and cultural contexts. Such a position implies that every analysis of the so-called Greek parallels in the Enochic accounts should be evaluated as a result of cultural operations connected to the different phases of transmission of the texts in different languages. Although in many cases a choice from among the different texts can be necessary as a critical operation for the reconstruction of an “original” text of the Enochic account, in other cases their transmissions should be judged as ideologically oriented. This is the point that I wish to stress in this chapter.

Giants or Titans?

The tale of the union between the angels and the women, in its different versions, is the symbol of the union of two incompatible realities. This is the origin of a hybrid, the so-called Giant, the symbol of a reality that is contaminated and impure.38 The imagery of sexual union between two incompatible realities recalls a state of social chaos which subverts the established order. It is not an accident that—beside the angels teaching the women magic techniques and herbal cures—the Giants eat “all the toil of men until men were unable to sustain them” (1 En. 7:3). A further consequence of the subversion of the order of creation is the fact that Asa’el teaches men “to make swords and daggers, and shields and breastplates,” and shows them the way to manufacture “[…] bracelets and ornaments. Then the art of making up the eyes and beautifying the eyelids, and the most precious and choice stones, and all kinds of colored dyes” (8:1).

The protology underlying the account of the angelic fall presented in the Book of Watchers certainly does not represent something unique in the circle of ancient protological traditions. The theme of the influences of Near Eastern traditions in Jewish culture was already dear to the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, as evinced for example, in the work of Hermann Gunkel.39 Starting out from a new research perspective which adopts some of the presuppositions which stand behind the aforementioned religionsgeschichtliche Schule, rethinking and reformulating them, recent scholars have devoted their attention to the traditions hailing from the Mesopotamian and Babylonian worlds.40 Yet, what also undoubtedly emerges at a first glance, in my opinion, is the close similarity between the different Greek versions of the account and some elements that have survived in the Greek theogony.41 This emerges especially from the usage of terminology and phraseology well attested in Greek accounts concerning the origins of the status quo.

As others have underlined, in many cases the Greek versions of 1 Enoch have not hesitated to make use of terms drawn from Greek protological narratives, perhaps making use of the same techniques of mediation applied in the LXX. The term for Watchers, ‘yryn (4Q201 1 i 342) or ‘yry’ (4Q202 1 ii 343) in Aramaic, becomes in Greek οἱ ἄγγελοι υἱοὶ οὐρανοῦ in G and οἱ ἐγρήγοροι in S.44 Whereas in this case G appears closer to Gen 6:1–4 LXX (where, however, the Watchers are described as οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ), S employs a term less frequently used in classical Greek,45 which succeeds in rendering more faithfully the sense of ‘yryn, a substantive connected with waking/watching (cf. the Hebrew ‘r and the use of the Aramaic in Dan 4:10, 14, 20, 28). The Greek term seems to reinterpret the idea of the regional gods active in the time of Cronus, i.e., beings who have the functions of true divine shepherds, each of which appears so self-sufficient in providing for the needs of his own group that nothing violent can happen: no devouring of each other, no war, no strife (cf. Plato, Pol. 271d5; 271e1–2).

As we have seen, the Giants, according to Milik, are presumably identified with the Aramaic gbryn (cf. 4Q202 1 II 2046), a term that refers to the extraordinary strength with which these beings are endowed. G reports a variation between γίγαντες and τιτᾶνες; S, by contrast, is more uniform in its constant use of γίγαντες:

1 En. 7:2 G: Αἱ δὲ ἐν γαστρὶ λαβοῦσαι ἐτέκοσαν γίγαντας μεγάλους ἐκ πηχῶν τρισχιλίων.47 They conceived and bore great Giants of 3000 cubits.

1 En. 9:9 G: Καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες ἐγέννησαν τιτᾶνας, ὑφ' ὧν ὅλη ἡ γῆ ἐπλήσθη αἵματος καὶ ἀδικίας.48 And the women generated Titans, and the whole earth was filled with blood and iniquity.

1 En. 7:1 S: Καὶ ἔτεκον αὐτοῖς γένη τρία· πρῶτον γίγαντας μεγάλους.49 And they bore for them three races. First, the great Giants.

1 En. 9:9 S: Καὶ νῦν ἰδοὺ αἱ θυγατέρες τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἔτεκον ἐξ αὐτῶν υἱοὺς γίγαντας.50 And now look, the daughters of men bore sons from them, Giants.

Syncellus uses the term γίγας also in his introductory summary of the excerptum from 1 Enoch reported in his work:

Σὴθ ἡγεμόνευσε μετὰ τὸν Ἀδὰμ τῶν τηνικαῦτα ἀνθρώπων. οἱ δὲ ἐκ γένους αὐτοῦ διακόσιοι ἐγρήγοροι τῷ ͵α τῆς κοσμογονίας ἔτει, τεσσαρακοστοῦ ὄντος τοῦ Ἰάρεδ, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ Σὴθ ψοʹ, πλανηθέντες κατέβησαν, καὶ ἔλαβον ἑαυτοῖς γυναῖκας ἐκ τῶν θυγατέρων τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ἐγέννησαν τοὺς γίγαντας τοὺς ὀνομαστούς, ὥς φησιν ἡ γραφή. (Chron. univ. 11.7–11 [Mosshammer])

After Adam, Seth ruled over the people of that time. In AM 1000, in Jared’s 40th year, the 770th year of Set himself, 200 Watchers of his line went astray and went down and took for themselves wives from the daughters of men, and begot Giants, “men of renown,” as scripture states.51

Among other terms, classical Greek includes precisely the words γίγαντες and τιτᾶνες (or τιτῆνες) to indicate some of the actors of the primordial happenings.52 The first alludes to those beings born from the drops of blood trickling out of the wound of Uranus who had been wounded by Cronus (cf. Theog. 185–186), represented by Hesiod as “powerful and great Giants, splendid in arms, with long spears in their hands” (κρατερὰς μεγάλους τε Γίγαντας, / τεύχεσι λαμπομένους, δολίχ' ἔγχεα χερσὶν ἔχοντας). The second refers, more generally, to ancestral gods, those of the second generation (cf. Theog. 424, Τιτῆσι μέτα προτέροισι θεοῖσιν, 648 [and 668]: Τιτῆνές τε θεοὶ καὶ ὅσοι Κρόνου ἐκγενόμεσθα). Hesiod also provides us with a kind of etymology of the term τιτῆνες/τιτᾶνες. On the basis of its assonance with the verb “to stretch,” the poet specifies that Uranus called his sons “Titans” because, stretching out their arms with arrogance, they committed huge wrongs, for which they had paid the penalty (cf. Theog. 207–210). While, at least in the Theogony, the Giants are a relatively clear and well-defined category, the Titans appear several times in the poem as those who are contrary to the order that Zeus is trying laboriously to establish (cf. Theog. 393, 630–631, 648, 650, 663, 668). Moreover, one of the descendants of the titans is Prometheus, son of Japetus (cf...