Kidron and Hebron. Performative Space and Performati-ve Speech in 2 Baruch and 1 Enoch

Performative speech acts derive their potency from being uttered in exacting social contexts. Spatial demarcations in 2 Baruch and 1 Enoch combine performative speech and imagined space to construct illocutionary force for their messages. In 2 Baruch, the author presents the respected scribe receiving revelations and making proclamations from several diverse geographical contexts, particularly two notoriously ambivalent burial and cultic places: Kidron and Hebron. Revelatory trees figure prominently in these oracles at both locations. Unlike 1 Enoch, which graphically depicts Kidron and the surrounding topography as cursed (1 Enoch 26:1–27:5), 2 Baruch constructs imagined space for the righteous at Kidron, the consummate “exit threshold” demarking the boundary outside Zion. Like Kidron, Hebron is also an ambivalent site in the Second Temple period, known for the revered tombs of Israel’s ancestors but also as a site of pagan practices. Hebron marks the consummate “entry threshold” in the Hebrew Bible, a metaphor for a new era of restoration.