Enoch’s Knowledge and the Rise of Apocalyptic Science

shows how Hellenistic Judean scribes came to share key features with late Babylonian scribes and in contrast with the earlier Judahite scholarly culture represented in the Hebrew Bible. These include an interest in identification with heavenly sages such as Enoch and systematic exact knowledge of the physical world. The core of the chapter is a case study of this new knowledge, examining how Babylonian astronomy was presented in the language of the Tabernacle revelation from Exodus. The chapter elucidates the two ways this new approach to knowledge and identity came into being. The first is parallel transformations in culture: with the death of native kingship scribes increasingly reflected on themselves, inserting themselves into history as heroes. The second is the way Judean scribes came to share a cosmopolitan Babylonian-Aramaic culture with larger communities of knowledge, but was marked by a distinctive concern to correlate human practice with the revealed nature of the cosmos.