Gendering Revealed Knowledge? Prophecy, Positionality, and Perspective across Sibylline and Enochic Discourses

Updated by: 
Shlomo Brand
Research notes: 
SB/not checked/28/09/2022
Reference type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
Reed, Annette Yoshiko
year: 
2022
Full title: 

Gendering Revealed Knowledge? Prophecy, Positionality, and Perspective across Sibylline and Enochic Discourses

Journal / Book Title || Series Title: 
Journal of Ancient Judaism
Volume: 
13
Issue / Series Volume: 
2
Abbreviated Series Name: 
JAJ
Place of Publication: 
Leiden
Publisher: 
Brill
Pages: 
113–150
Work type: 
Essay/Monograph
Abstract: 

This article is an experimental exploration of how gender shapes the conceptualization of knowledge, both among ancient Jews and among modern scholars of ancient Judaism. It focuses on the Sibylline Oracles, putting recent specialist research on their earliest strata into conversation with theoretical discussions of positionality. Attention to the anachronism of modern scholarly assumptions about embodiment and knowledge opens the way for analyzing the different meanings made by the female positioning of the Sibyl in antiquity. This article argues that her gender functions differently even in the Hellenistic-era and the Roman-era strata of the Third Sibylline Oracle. To read its Hellenistic-era strata with an eye to the gendering of knowledge, moreover, adds much to our analysis of Jewish responses to Greek paideia, while also enriching our understanding of the transformation of biblical prophecy in other Hellenistic-era Jewish writings, like the Enochic Book of the Watchers.

Primary Texts: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: 
Composition / Author: 
1 Enoch
URL: 
https://brill.com/view/journals/jaj/13/2/article-p113_1.xml
Label: 
03/10/2022
Record number: 
110 476