MAP IS NOT TERRITORY

" " ,

\

.....

MAP IS NOT TERRITORY

,

Studies in Jhe HisJory of Religions

BY

JONATHAN Z.SMITH

,

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

•

66 THE PRAYER OF JOSEPH

AFTERWORD

The fragments of the PJ have been conveniently edited by A.-M. Denis. Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum Graeca ([Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testament; Graeca, vol. III] Leiden, 1970), pp. 61f. and discussed by Denis in Introduction aux pseudepigraphes grecs d' Ancien Testament ([ S tudia in Veteris Testamenti Ps~u~epigra!ha, vol. I] Leiden, 1970), pp. 125-127. I regret, when originally Wr1tI~g this ess~y, I had not s~en H. Priebatsch, Die Josephsgeschichte in der Welthteratur: Eme legendengeschtchtliche Studie (Breslau, 1937), pp. iv-v, xvii, 8-14, 22f., 33f., 37-44 who offers a fantastic argument for a first century Essen7 provenance, and su~ge~ts that Philo knew the PIl Of more significance IS a personal commUnICatIon from Professor Gershom Scholem which states that he has always believed the PJ to be a Jewish mystical text.

~~ile I have. added many more parallels, they only strengthen the pOSItion argued In the paper. I would call attention to the important article by G. Vermes, "The Archangel Sariel: A Targumic Parallel to the Dead Sea Scrolls," in J. Neusner, ed., Christianity, Judaism and Other GrecoRoman c.u1ts : Festschrift M. Smith ([Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, vol. XIII] Leiden, 1975), Vol. III, pp. 159-166, which makes all but certain, without reference to the P J, the antiquity and Palestinian provenance of the PI's combat tradition on the basis of the Neoftti Targum to Genesis 32:25~32 which identifies the angel with whom Jacob wrestled as Sariel "the chief of tho~e who prai.se on high". As noted above (and expanded by Vermes) ?Uriel appears In place of Uriel in the Ethiopic version of I Enoch 9: 1 ; In I Enoch 10: lone Greek manuscript reads Uriel, another reads Israel and the. Ethiopic reads Asreelyor/Likewise, Vermes' explanation of the identificatI~n strengthens my suggGStion that "it is possible that the angel Israel's serVIce before the 'face of God' (as well as the motif of his 'seeing') may be based on the title Peniel ... in Genesis 32: 30." I shall make full use of this ar~~le in my forthcoming commentary on the PJ in the Duke-Doubleday edItIon of the Pseudepigrapha edited by J. Charlesworth.

CHAPTER THREE

WISDOM AND APOCALYPTIC

One of the more vexing problems in contemporary Biblical scholarship is that of determining the relationship between Wisdom and Apocalypticism. It is my hope that in this essay, writing as a historian of religions, I shall raise a set of questions which stem from presuppositions different from those frequently employed by specialists in Biblical research, and shall utilize as evidence a wider range of materials than those usually considered and thus achieve some modest progress towards a resolution of this problem. Therefore I shall not confine myself to questions such as the mythology of the figure of Wisdom in apocalyptic literature or the relationship of wisdom and apocalyptic literature to prophecy; rather, I shall take a more oblique approach and focus on materials removed from a Jewish or Christian provenance. I do so partly because I believe that such an examination may raise new questions and categories for further research and partly because of my own presuppositions as to the international character of many religious phenomena (including wisdom and apoca-lypticism) in the period of late Antiquity.I I should like to join with Hans Dieter Betz in arguing that "Jewish and, subsequently, Christian apocalypticism as well, cannot be understood from themselves or from the Old Testament alone, but must be seen and' presented as peculiar expressions within the entire development of Hellenistic syncretism;"2 although I differ from Betz in largely rejecting the explanatory utility of the concept of" syncretism and by emphasizing the continuity of Hellenistic religious forms with the archaic.s

I agree with Betz and von Rad that apocalypticism cannot be reduced to a mere catalogue of elements such as secret or heavenly books, journeys to heaven by a sage, etc., as these motifs can be found within the archaic religions of the Near East and are typical

1 See J. Z. Smith, "Native Cults in the Hellenistic Period," ,History of Religions, 11 (1971), esp. 236-239.

2 H. D. Betz, "Zum Problem des religionsgeschichtlichen Verstandnisses der Apokalyptik," Zeitschrift fiir Tbeologie und Kirche, 63 (1966), 409; English trans!' Journ(/l/or The%gy (/nd r:hllrch, 6 (1969), 155.

3 Smith, o/J. cit.

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68 WISDOM AND APOCALYPTIC

of all modes of Hellenistic religiosity.4 What I should like to explore in this paper is the pattern of these elements in combination and their underlying social structure in the apocalyptic literature of Late Antiquity.

I

A valuable starting point for our inquiry may be gained by a consideration of the fragments from the Bal?Jloniaka of Berossus.5

A priest of Marduk in Babylon, he wrote his book c.290-280 B.C. and dedicated it to Antiochus I, .soter.

The testimonia concerning Berossus divide into two categories. From Greco-Roman authors we learn that he was an astronomer . ' astrologer (Vitruvius, De arch. 9.6.2; Pliny, N.H. 7.123) and an apoca-lyptist related to the Babylonian Sibyl (pausanias, 10.12.9; the Suda, s.v. Sibulla Delphis; cf. Moses Chorene, Hist. armen 1.6). From Jewish and Christian sources, we learn that he was a mythographer and historian (Josephus and Eusebius, both apparently dependent upon the excerpts from Berossus by Alexander Polyhistor). While these two types of testimonia clearly value different aspects of Berossus and put hi~ to different uses, taken as a whole they reveal an overall pattern fami1!ar to us from apocalypticism: a history of the cosmos and a peop~e from creation to final catastrophe which is dominated by astrological determinism. .

It is tempting to begin our consideration of Berossus by exploring the relationship between him and the Babylonian Sibyl, and the Babylonian Sibyl's relationship to the Jewish Sil?Jllines, especially, with respect to the redaction of Oracula Sibyll ina III. 97-154, 809-829. But the tradition is extremely obscure, as witnessed by its oldest testimony in Pausanias: "The Hebrews who lived beyond Palestine had a prophetess called Sabbe (more recently corrected to Sambethe or Sambathis) whose father they say was Berossus and mother Erymanthe; but some say she was a Babylonian Sibyl and others an Egyptian" (10.12.9; cf. pseudo-Justin, Cohor. ad Graecos, 37.3).6

<I Compare G. Widengren, The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book (1950) with G. von Rad, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 4 ed. (1965), Vol. II, p. 327 and Betz, op. cit. 392f. (135f.).

5 Se.e the edition of the fragments of Berossus in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der.l!riechischen Historiker (1923-), Vol. IIIC, no. 680, pp.364-397 and the older edItlOn by P. Schnabel, Berossos und die babylonisch-hellenisJische LiteratllT (1923), pp.250-275. Schnabel's work is the only substantial monograph on BerossllS.

6 See, in general, A. Piretti, La sibilla babilonese nella propaf!,anda hellenis!ica (1943)-especially pp. 215-301. For special studies, see ]. Geffcken, "Die bahy-

WISDOM AND APOCALYPTIC 69

further clarification on this point, I propose instead merely refer to some elements in Berossus, setting aside the more usual

IU\;llU'JW> as to the historical accuracy of the traditions he transmits. 7

.. The Bal?Jloniaka describes the history of the world from its creation its final destruction and offers a periodization of the history of

which stretches in between.8 In the former, Berossos upon a learned mythic tradtion; in the la~ter, upon ~n equally

..... ILlll::U chronicle tradition. A number of detatls are of lOterest as motifs in apocalyptic literature: the tradition of the books of Oannes (Fl, Jacoby) and the hidden books of

(F4) which contain cosmogonical and flood traditions related to those represented by the Atrahasis epic, Enuma

and Gilgamesh;9 the correlation of the rule of foreign kings with rise of idolatry and religious desecration (Fll), etc. !n ~he key

apocalyptic fragment which has survived (F21), the beglOmng and the end are clearly correlated. All things will be consumed by fire

. a.nd the world will be flooded and return to the watery chaos that

.. existed in the beginning.l~ 17i~ I ./ ",J1

lonische Sibylle" Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Phil-hist. Kl. (1900), 88-102; W. Bousset, "Die Beziehungen der a~testen !udischen Slbylle zur chaldaischen Sibylle," Zeitschrift fur die neutestamenthche WlSSensc~aft, S (1902) 23-49; K. Mras, "'Babylonische' und 'ertryaische' Sibyll.e," u:zener

· Siudien, 29 (1907), 25-49; E. Schur~r, Geschichte der JUdisthen Vollees 1m Zeltalter I'IU Christi, 4 ed. (1909), Vol. III, pp. 563-5~7; P. ~chnabel, Berossos, pp. 69-93: H. C. Youtie, "Sambathis," Harvard TheologIcal Review, 37 (1944), esp. 213-217, V. Tcherikover, et al., Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (1~64), Vol. III, pp.47-52; A. M. Denis, Introduction aux pseudepigraphes grec! d'Anclen Testament (1970), esp. pp.113f.; V. Nikiprovetsky, La troisieme Sibylle (1970), pp. 8~-122.

'. 7 For a recent example of such inquiries, see W. SpoerrI, Untersuchung zur

.abylonische Urgeschichte (1961).", . . .• .. • While I reject genetic arguments as methodologIcally un~~und when dealt~g

w1th international religious phenomena such as apocalyptlCISm, s,~e H. LU~ln Jansen Die Henoch-~estalt (1939), pp. 74-81 who claims Berossus as das Vorbtld

· der h~nochitischen Geschichtsubersicht" and compare, M. Hengel, Judentum

II"" Hellenismus (1969), pp. 348-352 . • It may be noted that a major crux, the identification ~f the ~gure of O~:mes,

, has been resolved by the discovery of his name on cuneiform bsts as the first, · primeval sage." See W. C. Lambert, "Catalogues of Texts and Authors," Journal

"Cuneiform Studies, 11 (1957), 73f. ." " 10 On this apocalyptic fragment, see J. Bldez, Berose et la grande annee,

Mllanges P. Fredericq (1904), pp. 9-19 .. P. Sc~nabel, "~pokalyptische B.erechnung

der Endzeiten bei Berossos," Orienta/tsche Lzteraturzeltung (1910), 4Olf., Schnabel, B,rom!, pp.94-109; W. Gundel in F. Boll-C. Bezold, Sternglaube und Stern.,ullino 4 ed. (1931), pp.200-205 (compare the note in W. and H. G. Gundel,

...' 14) d· B L W d "Da grosse AJlr%f!,lImena (1966), pp.45-46, n. an .. van aer en, s Jahr und die ewige Wiederkehr," Hermes, 80 (1952), 129-155.

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What is of importance for us with respect to this book, which might be described as "proto-apocalyptic", is not an argument as to the nature of the work and the erection of some pan-Babylonian theory of the origins of apocalypticismll but an argument as to the nature of its author. Berossus was a learned Babylonian priest during the Seleucid period at a time when the Babylonian "Schools" were world-famous and the major activities of a Babylonian intellectual were astronomy, astrology, mathematics, historiography and the recovery of archaic ritual lore. These Babylonian intellectuals, for all the novelty of their speculation which would culminate in the rich literature of Greco-Egyptian astronomy and astrology and the rich philosophic school of Stoicism, stood in continuity with ancient Babylonian scribalism, an unbroken tradition from the Sumerian period to the sages of the Babylonian Talmud. It is to this §cribalism that Berossus directs us for our first clue as to the interrelationship of wisdom and apocalyptic.

The scribes were an elite group of learned, literate men, an intellectual aristocracy which played an inva,luable role in the administration of their people in both religious and political affairs. They were dedicated to a \Tariety of roles: guardians of their cultural heritage, intellectual inJ:nvators, world travelers who brought about a cross-cultural flow;:'of wisdom, lawyers, doctors, astrologers, diviners, magicians, scientists, court functionaries, linguists, exegetes, etc. Their greatest love was the study' of themselves and they guarded and transmitted their teaching, wrote biographies and hagiographies of their lives and their ancestral prototypes, preserved and annotated one another's labors. They projected their scribal activities on high, on a god who created by law aCCQrdjn~Q.CLwritten plan, on a god who was a teacher in his heavenly' court. They hypostatized the ~ and scribal activities in the figure of Divine Wisdom. They speculated about hidden heavenly tablets, about creation by divine word, about the beginning and the end and thereby claimed to possess the secrets of creation. Above all, they talked, they memorized and remembered, they wrote. .

The essence of scribal knowledge was its character as Listenwisse~schajt, to use A. Alt's useful term.12 It depends upon catalogues

--------~

11 As has been by members of the classical pan-Babylonian School such as A. Jeremias and as may be found in attenuated form in Gunkel and Bousset.

12 See A. Alt, "Die Weisheit Salomos," Theologische Literaturzeitung, 76 (1951), 139-144 and note the comments by von Rad, Theologie, Vol. II, pp.317f. See


and classification; it progresses by establishing precedents, by observing patterns, similarities and conjunctions and by noting their repetitions. As such their basic faith was in the relevance of a limited number of paradigms to every new situation. Their goal-whether the scribe be called d"bshar, sopher, "Chaldean" or rabbi-was nothing less than absolute perfection, the inclusion of everything within their categories. In the quest of this perfection, they developed complex hermeneutic and exegetical techniques to bridge the gap between paradigm and particular instance, between past and pre~ent.

This faith of the scribe may be most clearly seen 10 the great Babvlonian omen series which are the major intellectual achievement of drchaic Eabylonia.13 It permeates every other genre of literature as well, including the historiographic. For the scribe, if events have significance largely in terms of their precedent, then the same text may be used to describe two widely separated historical events so long as their pattern, their 'value' was perceived to be the same.

, For example, one of the great monuments of Sumerian literary composition is the "Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur,'~ a work composed c. 2100 B.C. bewailing the invasion of the Gut!

in 2500 B.C.

For the misfortunes of Uruk, for the misfortunes of Agade, I.am stricken. The Ladv of Uruk wept, that departed was her might. The Lady of Agade wept, that departed was her ~lory .. . Weep for Uruk, ravaging and shame has she receIved .. . The throne of thy glory has been caused to pass away from me. The bridegroom, the husband of my well being, Marduk, has been taken away from me.

The same text was recopied in 287-286 B.C. bewailing the destructive acts of the Hellenistic monarch, Antigonus.14 The same text is, at one and the same time, a Sumerian "original" religious expression and a Hellenistic Babylonian "original" religious expression. (The notion of "late copy" must be abandoned in such instances.) The

further, \'1. von Soden, "Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft" Welt als Geschichte, 2 (1936), 411-464, 509-557. .

13 On om~ns and oracles, see J. Nougayrol, et al., La divination en AUsopotamle (1966); A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (1964), ~p. 206-227. .

U T. Pinches, Historical Records and Legends of As.ryrta and Baby/o.ma (1902), pp.477f. Sec now the translation of the Sumerian by S. N. ~raemer tn the Supplnmnl to J. B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relattng to the Old Testa-

",tnl, pp. 611-619.

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Guti invasion provided a pattern for interpreting all acts of foreign invasion and domination in Babylonian in the same way as the Hyksos invasion provided a pattern for the Egyptian.

This paradigmatic (or, if you prefer, typological) ideology leads to what I would term an apoca!Jptic situation, though not necessarily to apocalyptic literature. While many examples may be furnished from the so-called historical omens and from the various patterns in historiographic literature,15 I prefer to call attention to a better known example-the Babylonian Akitu festival and its relation to the creation epic, Enuma elish. ',.

As Enuma elish has been dated by some as early as 1600 B.c. (although a date around 1200 B.C. is more likely) and as there are early mentions of Akitu festivals, it has been almost universally assumed that the New Year festival which we reconstruct from Akkadian texts, with its reading of Enuma elish and its ritual humiliation of the king is equally archaic (even though the ritual events in no way resemble the events described in the myth). It has rarely been observed that the Akkadian ritual texts, on which the MythRitual School based their pattern of a Dying-Rising God and a DyingRising King (a pattern wliich, in fact, never existed in the Near East with the possible, but;~doubtful,' exception of Dumuzi)l6 are not from the archaic periq:d. Rather, they are Hellenistic Babylonian documents written during the period of Seleucid domination. They are clear witness to Hellenistic Babylonian religiosity and only possible witness to earlier practice. The Hellenistic Babylonian New Year festival is either a repetition of an earlier ritual typologically understood to describe the current situation of foreign domination, to have contemporary political as well as religious implications; or the text is anew, Hellenistic composition.

The ritual text begins by reminding the Lord Marduk of his protection of his sacred city and prays that he may return to his city and "establish the liberty of the peoples of Babylon." The priest

15 See ]. Nougayrol, "Note sur la place des 'presages historiques' dans extispicine babylonienne," Annuaire de rEcole pratique des Hautes Etudes (1944-1945), 5-41 and the c)assic study by H. G. Guterbock, "Die historische Tradition und ihre literari:;che Gestaltung bei Babyloniern und Hethitern bis 1200," Ze'tschrift fur Assyriologie (1934), 1-91, 44 (1938),45-149.

16 This is not the context for an exhaustive bibliography on this growing consensus; see especially W. von Soden, "Gibt es ein Zeugnis daftir, dass die Babylonier an die Wiederauferstehung Marduks geglaubt hahen?" Zeitschrift /iir Assyriologie, n. s. 17 (1955). 130-166,


then prays: "To your city, Babylon, grant release." It is impossible not to read contemporary nationalistic propaganda here-what

I ever may have been the original ritualistic understanding of the phrases. The king is then "dragged by the ears" befo~e the stat~e of Marduk by the priest, struck on the cheek and stnpped of ~IS royal garments. He then offers a negative confession to the, deIty ("I have not sinned ... ") and his insignia are restored. Is th~s the ~l slaying' of a pious Babylonian king, or is this a threa~ (If, you prefet., a nationalistic phantasy) of what will happen ~o t~e Im~l~us, foreign, Seleucid monarch? The confession of the klOg IS declSlve:

1 was not neglectful of the requirements of your lordship, 1 did not destroy Babylon; 1 did not command its overthrow. I [did not destroy] the temple EsagiIa, I did not forget its rites ... [1 watched over] Babylon, 1 did not smash its walls.

What native Babylonian king ever did? These were all acts committed by foreign rulers: during the period of Assyrian domination fro~ 1360-1200 and 1116-990, under Sennacharib in 689, under Xerxes 10

480-476 and finally under Antigonus in 316. As with Cyrus among the Israelites (whose promise to rebuild Jerusal~m and its Te~ple concludes the Jewish version of ,the Hebrew Scnptures, 2C.hromcles 36.23) so too for the Babylonians-foreign kings could be pOlOted to who restored Esagila and Babylon: TigIat Pileser III, Sargon II, Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, Seleuko~ I and Antiochus I and IV. The implication of the New Year's text 15 clear. If you act as the evil foreign .kings hav:e acted, you. will be stri~red of your kingship by th,e gods; If you act 10 the OppOSIte manner, the

d h 11 b d h k· "17 sceptre, and crown and the swor s a e restore to ~ e. 109. .

This religious and nationalistic polemic is placed ';lthlO a. COsmIC setting by the reading of Enuma dish. For this text. IS not SImply ,a cosmogony. It is preeminently a myth of thecreatton of Mard~k s city, Babylon and his temple, Esagila. Originally composed dU~lOg the first period of Assyrian domination it correlates Marduk's klOg-

17 I cannot here argue the thesis thllt the texts of ~he Ne~ Year ceremony break into two groups-an qlder, ambiguous collection WhlC~ focus on the absence of Marduk from Babylon, all of which are of an AssyrIan proven~n~e and seem to be a parody on Babylonian, ritual ,and bel,ief; and the HellenIstIc series whieh 1 have interpreted as reflectmg antl-Seleucld propaganda,

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ship with kingship in Babylon, the creation of the world with the building of Esagila. The opposite is likewise the case. Destroy Babylon or Esagila, neglect Marduk, and the world will be decreated, will return to its primeval watery chaos.

Examples such as this are what I have termed apocalyptic situations. All of the elements are present, but they have not yet been turned to the future orientation of apocalyptic literature. We may find the beginning of this turning in the proto-apocalyptic works of Hellenistic Babylonian authors such as Berossus and Abydenos.l8

But no native Babylonian apocalyps~has survived. I9

I would argue that wisdom and apocalyptic are related in that they are both essentially scribal phenomena. It is the paradigmatic thought of the scribe-a way of thinking that is both pragmatic and speculative-which has given rise to both. This initial perspective may be enlarged by examining Egyptian materials.

II

Egypt presents us with a variety of phenomena analogous to those in Babylonian. It is essentially a scribal culture dominated by Listenwissenschaft.20 If pas a learned historicistic tradition which, when paraphrased into .Greek, may be described as proto-apocalyptic (e.g. Manetho).~1 It employs the paradigm of the Hyksos invasion, not only to interpret all acts of invasion and foreign domination, but also in apocalyptic materials.22 Indeed, it uses this material in a thoroughly mythic fashion by identifying the Hyksos with the deity of confusion and chaos, Seth.23 It has ritual texts written in a deliberately archaic style which parallel the apocalyptic

18 On Abydenos, see Jacoby, Fragmente, Vol. IIIC, no. 685. 19 I am discounting the Akkadian "prophecies" interpreted by Hallo as a

pocalypses, W. W. Hallo, "Akkadian Apocalypses," Israel Exploration Journal, 16 (1966), 231-242; cf. A. K. Gregson-W. G. Lambert, "Akkadian Prophecies," Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 18 (1964), 7-30. Nor am I including Babylonian material preserved in other apocalyptic works from Sibylline Oracles III and Revelationto ManL

20 See, for example, G. Maspero, "Manuel d'hierarchie egyptienne," Journal asiatiqtlt·, ser. VIII, 11 (1888), 250-280.

21 See the Loeb edition of Manetho by W. G. Waddell (1940). ( 22 On the Hyksos-pattem, see the classic work by R. Weill, La fin du m~yen

empire egyptien (1918), esp. pp. 22-68, 76-83 and 605-623 and the recent study by J. Yoyette, "L'Egypte ancienne et les origines de l'antijudaisme," Revue d'histoire des religions, 163 (1963), 133-143.

23 J. G. Griffiths, "The Interpretation of the Horus-Myth of Edfu," Journal of !1,eyptian Archaeology, 44 (1958),75-85.


situation described with respect to the Akitu festival (e.g. the Ho()k of Overthrowing Apophis in P. Bremner-Rhind dated 310 B.C.).24 However, in contradistinction to Babylonia, we have a variety of full blown apocalypses from Egypt, spanning a period of almost two millennia.25 Thus it is possible, in the case of Egypt, to investigate not only the apocalyptic form but also the process of apocalypticization.

The materials available for analysis range from the hieratic apocof Neferti (c. 1900 B.C.)26 through demotic texts such as

so-called Demotic Chronicle (second century, B.C.)27 and the Curse of the Lamb (beginning of the first century, A.D.)28 to first century Greek materials such as the Potter's Oracle,29 the apocalypse preserved in Asclepius (IX) 24-26 (now recovered in a Coptic recension from Nag Hammadi)3° as well as the older Ptolemaic materials

24 See the translation by R. O. Faulkner in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 22 (1936), 121-140; 23 (1937), 10-16, 166-185; 24 (1938), 41-53.

25 See the comprehensive treatment by C. C. McCown, "Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature," Harvard Theological Review, 18 (1925), 357-411 and J. Doresse, "Apocalypses egyptiennes," La Table ronde, 110 (1957), 29-39. The treatment by H. Gressmann, Der Messias (1929), pp.417-445 should also be noted. For extremely archaic elements, which fall outside the scope of this paper, see S. Schott, "Altagyptische Vorstellungen vom Weltende," Analecta Biblica, 12:3 (1959) = Studia Bib/ica et Oreintalia, Vol. III, pp. 319-330 and G. Lanczkowski, "Eschatology in Ancient Egyptian Religion," Proceedings of the I X International Congress for the History of Religions (1960), pp. 129-134.

26 See the translations of this text in Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2ed. (1955), pp.444-446 (to be cited as ANEP) and R. O. Faulkner, et al., The Literatllre of Ancient Egypt (1972), pp. 234-240. See the study by G. Posener, Litterature et politique dans I' Egypte de la XII dynastie (1956), pp. 21-60, 145-157 for an argument as to the progandistic character of this work. Cf. W. Heick, Die Prophezeihung der Nfr. tj (1970).

27 W. Spiegelberg, Die sogenannte demotische Chronik des Pap. 215 der Bibliotheque Nationale zu Paris (1914). There is a recent Italian translation in E. Bresciani, Letteratura poesia dell'antico egitto (1969), pp.551-560. The classic study remains E. Meyer, "Agyptische Dokumente aus der Perserzeit, I: Eine eschatologische Prophetie tiber die Geschichte Agyptens in persischer und griechischer Zeit," Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil-hist. Kl. (1915), 287-304.

28 J. Krall, "Vom Konig Bokchoris," Festgaben zu Ehren Max Budingers (1898), pp. 1-11; A. Moret, De Bocchori Rege (1903), pp. 35-49; J. M. A. Janssen, "Over Farao Bocchoris," in Varia Historica aangeboden aan A. W. Byvanck (1954),

pp.17-29. h' d 'T" r '" 29 See now the edition by L. Koenen, "Die Prop ezelUngen es oplers ,

Zeitschrift /iir Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 2 (1968), 178-209 which supersedes all previous editions and cites all important secondary literature.

30 See A. D. Nock-A. J. Festugiere, CorplIs Hermeticum, 2ed. (1960), Vol. II, pp. 322-335. On the Coptic Text (Nag Hammadi, VI:8), see M. Krause and .1'. Lahib, Gnostiscbe und hermetische Schriften atlS Codex II lind Codex VI (Berlin, 1971);.1. Doresse, "Hermes ct la gnose: A propos de I'Asciepius copte," Novum

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C~&1S ~ -l"",~~'''~ 76


recoverable from the Si~lline Oracles III.350-361, 367-380 (cf. III. 46-54, 75-92; V.512-632; XI.24S-314).31 In spite of the chronological range of some two thousand years which separate these texts, their varying language and situation, it is possible to construct a model Egyptian apocalypse by comparing these various documents.

(A) (1) The prophet came before the king and proclaimed to him all that he had asked concerning that which was to come. (2) And these are the words which he spoke on that occasion.

(B) (3) Behold the people are in confusion because there is disorder in the land. (4) Social relations have become reversed. (5) Religious obligations are ignored. (6) The natural cycle is overthrown. (7) Foreigners have appeared and are acting as if they were Egyptians. (8) The whole world is upside down, even the gods are affected. (9) The gods have abandoned Egypt. (10) The land of life has become a land of death.

(C) (11) But then shall come forth a great king sent by the gods. (12) The foreigners shall be driven out. (13) All relations will be restored. (14) All that is good will return to the people, the land and the gods and Egypt will again be a land of life.

(D) (15) Thus the prophet finished speaking before the king and was greatly renowned for the wisdom which he had spoken.

The overall structure is b~sically that' of Heils- und Unheilseschatologie which shifts between a present a.nd future set of woes and a future promise. There is att introduction (A) which serves as a narrative framework for the/prophecy, usually an encounter between prophet and king. (B) The woes are perceived as a set of reverses affecting the people (3-5), the cosmos (6, 8, 10) and the gods (8-9)the cause being identified as the intrusion of foreigners (7) who are homologized to the Hyksos pattern and interpreted in a mythical manner-parallel to the Old Testament~s "enemies from the North."32 This is followed by (C), a promise of restoration by a divine king (11) who will expel chaos (i.e., the foreigners (12» and restore good order (13-14) and (D) a narrative conclusion.

It would be tempting to study all of these texts in detail noting their kinship with archaic Egyptian cosmogonies and kingship

Testamentum, 1 (1956), 54-69 and M. Krause, "Agyptisches Gedenkengut in der Apokalypse des Asclepius," in XVII Deutscher Orientalistentag, Vortrage (1969) Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, Supplementa 1), 48-57.

31 See esp. W. W. Tarn, "Alexander Helios and the Golden Age," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 22 (1932), 135-160 fot a study of this example of Ptolemaic propaganda.

32 Jeremiah 4.6f.; 6.22f. See B. Childs, "The Enemy from the North and the Chaos Tradition," j. of Biblical Literature, 78 (1959), 187-19R.


Of particular relevance to our them~ is the ~lose pa~al-.' between the "woes" in these texts and, SOCIal te~ching:4 whic~ , be found in the rich Egyptian prophetlc33 and WIsdom tradI-,may . As "woes" they resemble materials in such well known texts

The Lamentations of Khakheperre-Soabe, The Admonitions of lpu- Werand Dispute of a Man with his Ba (esp. 1ine~ 103b-l~~a).3:,rheY"reverse instructions found in the widespread' AdmomtIOns a~d Te.ach-

"N . C £ n" ! ' literature as well as in the well-known egative on essIO I from the Book of the Dead, chapter 125-a text :vhich, by the way, . was translated into Greek.36 However, I should hke to focus att~ntion on another set of problems, in consonance ",'ith my sugges~IOn as to the centrality of scribalism for an understandlOg of the relatlon-ship of Wisdom and Apocalyptic. .

The paradigmatic concerns of the scribes, whether ~xpres~ed 10

the interpretation of oracles and omens, in legal .rullngs, 10. the hermeneutics of sacred texts or in their other mamfold functIOns, led to the development of complex exegetical techniques de."oted to the task of discovering the everchanging relevance of .ancient precedents and archetypes. (These concerns also led, at tImes, to .the

, fabrication of ancient precedents and archetypes). These e~egetical techniques were international, being diffused throughout scnbal centers in the Eastern Mediterranean world.37 Texts are used and reused, glossed, interpreted and reinterpreted in a continual process of "updating" the materials.

33 See the comprehensive survey by G. Lanczkowski, Altagyptischer Prophe-tismus (1960). "t

34 See the rich bibliographical essay by J. Leclant, Docu~e~lts Za0~veaux ~ oints du vue recents sur les sagesses de I'Egypt~ ancienne, 10 agesse

;roche-orient ancien: Colloque du Strasbourg, 17-19 mal, 1962 (196;), r' 5-2;he Lit-35 For the most recent translation of these three texts, see au ner,

erature of Ancient Egypt, pp. 230-233, 210-229, 201-209. ,. . d 36 AN EP pp 34-36 and Ch. Maystre, Les declarations d znnocence: LIvre .es

morts chapitre' 125 (1937). See the Greek translation by Euphantus, q~ot;; ~ P h' De Abstinentia IV:lO. For the possibility that the Book of t e. ea,

orp yry, , k bEd J G Gnffiths including ch.125, was translated into Gree f, u o.x~sQ' see i 15 (1965)' "A Translation from the Egyptian by Eudoxus, Classlca uarterry, ,

75;?8Por an archaic example, see the wide diffusion of ?men-~eries and. commentaries which have been found in Akkadian in such ~ldely dlsperse~ s~~s .as Susa Nuzi Hattusha, Qatna and Hazor and translated 1Oto Elaml~e .an lttlte (see A L Oppenheim Ancient A1esopotamia, p. 206). For a HeJIemsttc exam~le,

. . d I' k f D Daube "Rabbinic Methods of Interpretatton see the fun amenta wor 0., (1949) 239 264 and Hellenistic Rhetoric," Hebrew Union College Annual, 22 , - .

•


'I 'his process of "updating" was particularly acute in prophetic (lracular and apocalyptic traditions with their ambiguous messages and unfulfilled predictions. The various techniques of interpretations have been well explored for Jewish apocalyptic literature. as Each one of these have clear Egyptian parallels which demand close comparative investigation. For example, the pesher technique employed in the Qumran materials (1 QpHab., 1 QpMicah, 4QpNah, 4QpPs 37, 1QpPs 68, 1QpZeph, etc.) find an almost exact counterpart in the exegetical procedures of the Demotic Chronicle.39

The clarification of this process of '~'updating" is more difficult for us to accomplish in the Egyptian materials than it is in the Jewish and Christian because, in most instances, we do not have the various recensions of a tradition to compare (e.g. 4 Ezra 12 with Daniel 7). In the main we must rest content with the analysis of isolated motifs such as Hans Dieter Betz's intricate and convincing discussion of the tradition of the elements addressing the creator deity with prayer, 40 However there is one Egyptian text, the "Potter's Oracle" as interpreted in the pioneering researches of Ludwig Koenen,41 that provides the possibility of perceiving the dynamics of tradition at work.

Koenen's work depends ;upon the ,fact that while the narrative framework of the prophec~;ls found in only one papyrus (P. Graf 29787), the actual prophecy;. is preserved in two recensions: P. Ranier 19813 and P. Oxyrhynchus 2332. This makes it possible to compare variants of the same tradition and determine redactional elements and interpolations.42 Several further papyrus fragments have been tentatively identified as belonging to the "Potter" tradition.43 While Koenen does not provide any detailed discussion of these, one

36 E.g. D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (1964), pp. 183-187 et passim.

39 I know of only one scholar who has studied these parallels F. Daumas "Litterature prophetique et exegetique egyptienne et commentarie's esseniens ,; Memorial A. Gelin (1961), pp. 203-211. '

40 Betz, "Zum Problem des religionsgeschichtlichen Verstandnisses der Apokalyptik," 398-409 (= 138-154).

41 L. Koenen, "Die Prophezeiungen des 'T6pfers'" (supra, n.29); "The ~rophecies of a Potter: A Prophecy of World Renewal Becomes an Apocalypse," In D. H. Samuel, ed., Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology (1970), 249.-254.

42 See the detailed discussion in Koenen, "Die Prophezeiungen," 187-193. See the SUmmary in E. Loebel-C. H. Roberts, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. XII (1954), p. 89.

43 See R. A. Pack, The Greek and Latin Literar:y Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, 2ed. (1967), nos. 2488, 2639 and note 44, below.


demonstrates additional interpretative possibilities by the foreign, chaotic invaders as the Jews.44 . .

The major discovery of archaic Wisdom was the paradIgmatIc Jigure of the sacred king. In the employ of the roy~ co~rts and , . (whether in Babylonia, Egypt or Jude~) the s~rtbe dIscerned, : developed, articulated and created th~ ~ario~s IdeologIes and my~hologies in which the king, through dIVIne wIsdom, was ~he. cent~ r ~~ ,so~'al and cosmic order. In the archaic "prot~-apocal~ptic sIt~atlOn, th saving power of the king, his destruction of ~IS ene~Ies, th.e

; esta . shment of his rule and law were correlated wIth mythIc. traditions of the creation of cosmic and social order by a god I~ the

i ,beginning through his defeat of chaos .. This pattern underl~es a wide variety of materials from cosmogomes to New .Year. festivals,

, from royal praise hymns and chronicles to coronatIo~ rtt~als. In , Egypt it is expressed in the two gre.at patterns. of kIngshIp: . t~e '. solar cycle of Amon-Re and the essentIally chthomc cycle of OStrlS-

Horus. The former pattern, which depicts the new Pharaoh as the son of the deity, conceived by the Sun ~od who assumes th,e form of the ruling Pharaoh and has intercourse wIth the new Pharaoh s.moth~r, presents a cosmogony where the Sun god is born on a prtmordial island, defeats the powers of chaos and establish~s. order and the cosmos. The Osiris pattern, which depicts every liVIng Pharaoh as Horus, the son of Osiris, and every' dead Pharaoh as Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, presents the primordial struggle as th~t betw~e? Osiris' brother, Seth and Osiris-Horus. Seth revolted agatnst OStrlS and slew him with cosmic and social consequences. Horus avenges his father's death by slaying Seth and restoring order.45 In the ~omplex royal ideologies, these two patterns are fre.quen~ly combIned .. In "proto-apocalyptic" materials, these two kIngs~p patterns yIeld corresponding patterns of woes. The Amon-Re Ideology. expresses chaos as an eclipse of the sun and violent storms; th~ OSIrIs patte~n, while having signs of cosmic chaos such as the fl.oo~tng ~f the Ntle, expresses the chaotic primarily as rebe~1ion .or the I~vaslOn of foreigners. These two series of woes are hkewise combtned. "

Archaic examples of these traditions in what I have termed protoapocalyptic situations'.' abound (e.g. the Hymns of Merenptah46 and

-44 See the full discussion in V. Tcherikover et al., Corpus PapyrorumJudaicarum, Vol. III (1964), no. 520 (pp. 119-121).

45 There is no "tradition-history" of the Amon-Re cycle comparable to J. G. Griffiths, Tbe Conflict of Horus and Seth (1960).

46 ANJ:P, pp. 58 and 377.

I,

•


Ramses IV47) and these elements persist into the Ptolemiac period. Perhaps the best known example is the Rosetta Stone decree of March 27, 196 B.C., celebrating the performance of the Djed festival for Ptolemy V:

In the reign of the young one-who has received his royalty from his father-lord of crowns, glorious, who has established Egypt and is pious towards the gods, superior to his foes, who has restored the civilized life of men . .. a king like the Sun . .. son of the Sun . .. being a god sprung from a god and goddess (like Horus the son of Isis and Osiris who avenged his father Osiris) . . . .

After these introductory praises, the text goes on to describe in paradigmatic fashion the central political and cosmic act of the foreign Ptolemaic king: the defeat of the rebels of Lycopolis. The king was first prevented from this by an inundation of the Nile, but this he controlled by "having damned at many points the outlets of the streams" and having accoinplished this strategic (and cosmogonic) deed, he marched against Lycopolis, a city of "impious men ... who had done great harm to the temples and all the dwellers in Egypt," and "took the town by storm, and destroyed all the impious men in it, even as Her1n,es and Ho~us, the son of Isis and Osiris formerlY subdued the rebels in the/same district."48 .

Texts such as these~ associated with coronation, renewal of kingship or celebrating a victory, must be interpreted as political propaganda created by the scribe in service of his king. They represent the use of paradigms for typological ends-the presentation of a specific king as the fulfillment (or repetition) of the ancient patterns. These same propagandistic concerns, as Georges Posener has brilliantly demonstrated, yield the oldest' surviving "apocalypse," that of Neferti in 1991 B.C. The narrative is cast in the form of a prophecy by the sage Neferti before King Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty; it is actually a piece of blatant propaganda in favor of the legitimacy of King Ammenemes I, the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty.

Re must begin by recreating the land, which is utterly ruined, and nothing remains ... The sun is veiled and will not shine ... none will live when the (sun) is veiled (by) cloud ... Enemies have come into being in the east, Asiatics have come down into Egypt ... I will

• show you the land in calamity, for what has never happened before

47 ANEP, pp. 378f. 48 I have followed the translation by E. Bevan, A History of Egypt Under the

Ptolemaic Dynasty (1927), pp.263-268. (Emphasis, mine).


has now happened ... Re has separated himself fr~~ mankind A king of the South will come, Ameny by name ...

81

will be subdued; Re's recreation of the world will have begun

his reign. texts may be found in Egypt over a period of close. to two

Employing vaticinia ex eventu, the prophet describes the of a specific king as overcoming c~a~s (represented by

rebellions and foreigners) and estabhshmg a n~,: order, . While such texts "tend towards" apocalyptlclsm, one creatlOn. .

not find a full blown apocalypse until the propheCies and pr~pa-are disassociated from a specific king. This becomes p~sslble

Egypt (as well as for Babylonia ~nd, ~erhaps Judea) only m the itt':co-K,orrlan period when native kmgshtp ceases. 1 am tempte.d, to

. (A defirutton as "

, will serve at least to question both the "lachrymose theo~y 'of a ocalypticism as growing out of a situation of general p~rsecutlOn :, Ph la.r recent theory that it reflects lowerclass mterests.) " t e popu . 'al' ::In such contexts, the older models may become xenophobic na;}on IS~-: ic propaganda as in the case of some fragments o~ the ~o~ter s

,'. Oracle" where the woes have been reduced to antt-Hellerusttc ~r :,anti-Jewish polemics-a prophecy against foreigners rather. t~an m

I:. f 'fic kl'ng Or the king may be utterly cosmlclzed (a Lavor 0 a speci. .., . h') '. tendency always present in the various ideologies of dlvme k~ngs lp ,.'. h' lypse I find Koenen's work most mterest-, m a thoroug -gomg apoca . . , l'ng because he attempts to identify the various stages of thiS process . "P '0 I" .at work in the different redactions of the otter. s rac e. '7

" The narrative frame of the story (extant only m P. Graf 2978, -2nd century A.D.) is pregnant with archaic significance:

. During the reign of king Amenhotep (18th Dynasty): a potterh, at t~e

d f Hermes-Thot goes to the island of Hehos-Re were e com~an h? t But the p~ople are upset by this sacrilegious action. practlces 1S ar . k . d d the potter

ull the otter out Of the oven, brea 1t an rag, . ~~f;:ePthe kin: The ~otter defends himself by interpreting th1s act1o~

h tic sign Just as the pottery has been destroyed, so Egyp. ' :~~ 1~Jl/the city' of the followers of the evil god Typhon-Set w1ll

be destroyed.50

.... -.. --.. _- hI" W K Simpson The Literature of Ancient 49 I have followed t e trans atlon In ." A V 1 n

E pt p 234-240. See the literature cited above, note 26 and further, . 0 te ,

Z~?:ei ~E;~~ptische politische Schriften (1945). " r,o Kocnen, "The Prophccies of a Potter, 249,

•


The prophecies which then follow speak of the breakdown of cosmic and social order and the return of chaos. A savior-king (described in extraordinarily vague language) will come "from the sun" and reestablish order, Egypt and the cosmos.

The "Potter" is an epiphany of the ancient ram-headed deity Chnum who created the sun, the gods and man on his potter's wheel.51

He is a traditional giver of royal oracles, including a number from the Hellenistic period that bear a close resemblance to themes in the "Potter's Oracle."52 Thus his"" apocalyptic interpretation of the broken pottery goes far beyond the prophetic, symbolic actions of Jeremiah 19. For Chnum to have his pots broken is to plunge the world into total decreatiot} and chaos. But the theme of re-creation i~ likewise sugg<;sted by the setting. The island of Helios-Re (in Egyptian, the Island of Flames) is the traditional birthplace of the solar deity and' the scene of his defeat of the powers of chaos and darkness.53 Thus the prophecy which predicts a destruction and restoration plays on a setting and a prophet who are inextricably related to both themes in archaic Egyptian mythology.

The frame story could have originally led to a set of historically identifiable woes and ~e prediction of a specific king who would set things right. If th~ttext as we now have it is a translation of an Egyptian original and,'if (on the basis of the alleged similarity to P. Trinity College Dublin 192b) the original composition can be dated to the fourth or middle third centuries B.C.-this would be likely. 54

But I consider both of these suggestions to be extremely dubious. More likely is the suggestion that the text may have originally been produced at the time of the revolt. of Harsiesis, c. 130 B.C. and promised his successful restoration of native rule.55 However this , revolt was quickly crushed, and no native king did rise to overthrow the Ptolemies.

The text describes in vague terms (following the old OsirisHorus pattern) the desolation of Egypt by the "Typhonians" and the

51 The identification of the Potter and Chnum was first proposed by W. Struve, "Zum Topferorakel," Racco/ta G, Lumbroso (1925), 274 and has been followed by all subsequent commentators.

52 'Se~ the examples in L. Kakosy, "Prophecies of Ram Gods," Acta Orienta/ia Hungartcae, 19 (1966), 341-358 esp. 343f.

53 See the argument and the literature cited in Koenen, "Die Prophezeiungen," 184f. and esp. n. 12.

54 Lobel-Roberts, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, XII, 92f. 55 Koenen, "Die Prophezciungen," 191.


WI:IlIU:<ll salvation (now combining both Solar and Horus patterns) by a king "who shall appear from the sun, establishe~ b,r

most great goddess Isis." But, as Koenen has remar.ked, thIS IS totally from any individual features and testIfies to the

awareness of their own weakness: "It is not he (the savior-king) who defeats the Greeks; the Ptolemies will

each other. Nor is he the destroyer of Alexandria; the dewill result from the departure of the protective deity. And

he is not the one who recovers the statues of the gods which b~en carried off; they will come back on their own ... The

~rcmrleC.1eS of the potter are not so much propaganda in favor of a c king as propagaqda directed against the Greeks."56 The

" represents a characteristic apocalyptic shift necessitate.d by the of native divine kingship-all decisive historical actlOn and

've has been transferred from the human to the divine realm. However even this most general hope did not come true. The

Ptolemies and Seleucids did not destroy each other; Alexandria en· dured. Hence the elite, scribal clergy of Chnum (to whom author: ship of this oracle must be traced), introduced a learned set of inter-· polations designed to "update" the pred~ctions. The~e may be isolated by the fortunate chance that P. Ramer 19813 (thtrd centu:y

, A.D.) and P. Oxyrhynchus 2332 (late third century A.D.) contam some forty-five lines of closely parallel material as well as many lines which reveal striking variations and interpolations.

The most significant of these interpolations for our purposes occurs in P. Oxyrhynchus 2332, lines 31-34. The prophecy, in ~oth

· recensions, had assigned a reign of fifty-five years to the promIsed king. The later gloss now declares (if the editor's proposed reconstruction be accepted) that the fifty-five years do riot refer to the good king's reign but rather to the period of evil which the Greeks will bring "as predicted by Bokcharis the Lamb."

The Prophecy of Bokcharis the Lamb (which is likewise a ~rophecy of the ram-headed potter deity Chnum) is extant both 10 a demotic papyrus from the first decade of the first centur~ (A.D.) and is alluded to in Greco-Egyptian and Greco-Roman hterature from :Manetho to pseudo-Plutarch, Aelian and the Suda.57 It predicts nine hundred years of woes for Egypt from the time of King Bok-

b8 Koenen, "The Prophecies of a Potter," 252. ',7 See the literature cited above, n. 28.

•

..


charis, before the promised restoration will begin. This period roughly corresponds ~o 790 B.C.-192 A.D. If one subtracts the fifty-five, ye:u-s from this date by assuming that it refers to the last period of evll, one gets a date for the beginning of the turning towards a new world at 137 A.D. This date has already passed by the writing of P. Oxyrhynchus and hence the prophecy at first glance is a failure. However the date 137 is remarkably close to the beginning of the ~e~ Sothis cycle in 139 A.D. and thus Koenen argues, the prophecy IS, In fact, greatly extended. The promjsed restoration will come at some point in the next cycle-a period which stretches from 139-1599 A-D.l "The potter's prophecy ... in which the idea of the concrete sav~or-king had virtually disappeared, was reshaped by historical reahty. It became something new, namely, a prophecy of a new world cycle. :Vhat.was or~ginally a prophecy based upon the'Egyptian concept of kIngship was 10 the process of being transformed into an apocalypse. "58

The fact that our surviving papyri indicate that the Oracle was circulated during the late third century and the fact that our latest copy (p.Oxyrhynchus) lacks both a narrative beginning and end suggests that the text had bfen divor<;ed from all historical context and was being understood a~ a portrait of cosmic renewal rather than nationalistic restoration. In short, the "Potter's Oracle" by means of learned, scribal reinterpretation had become severed from its original Egyptian genre and had become an apocalypse. As in the case of the. Babylonian Berossus, so in Egypt, the historical patterns o~ the scrIbal tradent were converted into a paradigm of cosmic hIstory, a recurrent cycle of world creation, destruction and recreation. (One .might compare Manetho's Aegyptiaka with the epistle of pseudo-Manetho accompanying the Book of Sothis for a close Egyptian a.nalogu~ ~o Berossus).59 In both the case of Babylonian and Egyp~an tradltlOn (and I wo~ld want to argue the same for the Jewish) it IS. n~cessary to see this development as an internal "trajectory" ':lthtn Ne.ar Eastern scribalism for which it is unnecessary to postulate eIther StOlc or Iranian influence.

• 58 Koenen, "!he Prophecies of a Potter," 253, compare the fuller discussion In Koenen; '.'Die Prophezeiunge~:' 189f. The .. Sothic element was perceived, but wrongly Interpreted, by U. Wtlcken, "Zur Agyptischen Prophetie," Hermes, 40 (1905), esp. 558f. and W. Struve "Zum Topferorakel," 279. Cpo R. ReitzensteinH·6~chaeder, Studien zum antiken Synkretismus (1926), p.42.

On pse~do-Manetho, W. G. Waddell, Manetho, pp.208-211 and compare the parallels In W. Scott, Hermetica (1926), Vol. III, pp. 491-493.


The pure apocalypse is, perhaps, best represented by the well:,known apocalypse preserved in the Hermetic Asclepius 24-26 whose 'kinship with the "Potter's Oracle," especially with the woes, has ,long been recognized.60 In Asclepius the woes are cosmicized and " . is no longer any hint of salvation through a king. Rather the , are characteristic of the "old age" of the world and when this

run its course at some unspecified time, God shall "recall the I .. e~h to its primeval form" and there shall be a "rebirth of the cos,m s." The renewal of Egypt which was correlated with the Sothic 'cye in the "Potter's Oracle" has become, in the Asclepitls, a cosmic , cycle correlated with the great World Year. In the Coptic recension " from Nag Hammadi the cyclical character is more pronounced and

the futuristic nature of the promised re-creation is more heavily emphasized.61 A final transformation of the Potter tradition is represented by Book VII of Lactanius, Divine Institutes. Blending together quotations from the Sibylline Oracles,62 the Asclepius ap~calypse and the Oracles of Hystaspes-the cyclical character of destructIon and re-creation has been altered, in a characteristically Christian redaction, into an eschatological vision of a final destruction, judgment and salvation. 63

III

In this paper I have suggested that Wisdom and Apocalyptic are interrelated in that both are essentially scribal phenomena;.. The! both depend on the relentless quest fo~ pa~adigmsl the pr~blem~tics of applying these paradigms to new Situations and the LtstenwlSse'!;,

, schaU which are the characteristic activities of the Near Eastern scribe. When these are applied to historiographic materials one may ~ntly discern proto-apocalyptic elements, though the genre apocalypse is lacking. When the historical patterns are correlated with cosmogonic and kingship traditions and when the attendant

-;-i~it;enstein-Schaeder, Studien, pp. 38-40; Nock-Festugiere, Hermes Trismigiste, Vol. II, pp. 288,379-381.

61 J. Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics (1960), pp. 245-248; Doresse, "Apocalypses egyptiens," 34f.

62 Note the parallels between elements in the Sibylline Oracles and t~e "P?tter's Oracle" in E. Norden, Die Geburt des Kinde! (1924), p. 55 and the dISCUSSIOn of parallels between the Sibylline Oracles and the Asclepius apocalypse in W. Scott-A. S. Ferguson, Hermetica, Vol. IV, pp. x-xvi, 416-419. ..

63 For the relations between the Oracle of Hystaspes, the Sibyllzne Oracles and the Asclepius apocalypse, see H. Windisch, Die Orakel des Hystaspes (1929), esp. pp. 26-33, 44, 89.

•

'I I I 86 WISDOM AND APOCALYPTIC

structures of woes and promises are directed towards a condition of foreign domination, there is an apocalyptic situation-though again lacking the literary form of the apocalypse, Both protoapocalyptic literature and apocalyptic situations were present in Babylonian materials from the Hellenistic period and these materials stand in close continuity with archaic scribal traditions and activities.

In Egypt, these same elements were found to be present, intertwined with and alongside of literary apocalypses which bore close kinship to other Egyptian wisdom materials, Following Koenen's work on the "Potter's Oracle," we"explored the twenty-five hundred year "trajectory" from Neferti to Lactantius, from political propaganda and prophecy to apocalypticism and eschatology emphasizing those techniques of interpretation and reinterpretation which provide the dynamics of scribal tradition.

In the course of this investigation, several characteristics of apocalypticism emerged on which I would insist. Apocalypticism is Wisdom lacking a royal court and patron and therefore it surfaces during the period of Late Antiquity not as a response to religious persecution but as an expression of the trauma of the cessation of native kingship. Apocalypticism is a learned rather than a popular religious phenomenon.:~ It is wioely distributed throughout the Mediterranean world ~nd is best understood as part of the inner history of the tradition within which it occurs rathet; than as a synsretism. with foreign (most usually held to be Iranian) influences ..

. It is tempting to continue in this vein, illustrating the movement. within Near Eastern scribal tradition from historical precedent and propaganda to apocalypticism and exploring the variety of genres . in which a single tradition may be found. 56 More research need,s to, be undertaken on the relationship of apocalypticism to archaic wisdom forms such as omens and Hellenistic wisdom forms such as astrology. Or we might press on to examine the radical interiorization of apocalyptic motifs in non-Christian gnostic and alchemical texts such as the Hymn of the Pearl and the Visions of Zosimos. But there is, within the world of academic discourse, a more definite and final Endzeit than has ever been dreamed of by the apocalypticist.

In this paper I have tried to illustrate the implications of adopting the perspective advanced by Peter Brown:

64 An excellent example would be the complex Egyptian and Greco-Egyptian traditions surrounding Nectanebo, the last native king of Egypt.


h' h ay in which Manichaeism ;p~::~ ~~t~:ot:eak~::'~~Pl::;i~e ~n~: j~g:aw puzzleMan~ thhe ~hinee~~

f h " puzzle sees aOlC aelsm box~s. The approach 0 t lie i~~~s::cretism. The scholar asks what cl.uslve~y a~ a.?~~~~c~fo~::i~haean ~eliefs appealed to what reli.gi<:>us pieces 1~ t e Jig Id This approach has severe hmlta-

ps 10 the Roman wor .,. T b ~~~~ I would prefer the approach of the Chin£ese ~oxes. 0 pec~~: a Ma'nichee or to favour the Manichee meant a~orlOg a grou . group had a distinctive and complex structure. .

1 this is to return to the older social-functional understanding

n a sense b d h ore recent of syncretism as cruV-XP1J't'L~e:LV an~ to a an on, t e ~ biological interpretation of syncretism as cruV-Xe:pIXVVU(.LL.

AFTERWORD f th Babylonian materials in "A

See my more e.xtend~d lr~tmen~t Ya::s' A Study in Situational 1nPearl of Great. Price an .. ~~o(1976) 1-19 Ihavebeenmuchstimulat-

ngruity " Htstory of Reltgtons, '" " " T XXXVII COd b R D' r ws "The Babylonian Chronicles and Berossus, ~raq, f hi e y. e , . I fi . of the argument 0 t s (1975), 39-55 which offers a partla con rmatlon paper.

. . h A if Saint Augustine (1972), p.l08. 65 P. Brown, Religion and ::cle~ In the ge t es of the Rosenstiel Fellowship 66 This paper was prepare unler t e aU~Plcfor the assistance and courtesies

at the University of Notre Dame. an: grate u extended by the Notre Dame the()loglcal faculty.

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MAP IS NOT TERRITORY

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