76 CHAPTER TWOcal Israelite prophecy).^66 All we can say for certain, more or less, is that the
narrative first appears in writing in the third centuryB.C.E. in the Enochic
Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) and that accounts of or allusions to it are
subsequently extremely common in Jewish literature and are of definitive im-
portance for early Christians.
Not only is the genesis of apocalypticism obscure, but all attempts to con-
nect its “emergence” with specific events have failed. It was once thought that
Daniel, published around the time of the Maccabean revolt, was the earliest
apocalypse and inferred from its date of composition that apocalypticism
emerged because of the Antiochan persecution and became popular subse-
quently as a reaction to Roman oppression in Palestine. But the discovery at
Qumran of manuscripts of the Enochic books, the earliest of them consensu-
ally dated to around 200B.C.E.,^67 made this combination of logical fallacy
(of thepost hoc ergo propter hoctype), historical naı ̈vete ́, and quasi-Marxian
romanticism impossible, though elements of the mix survive.^68 Though the
historicalapocalypsesareoften reactions to foreign domination (and some-
times to inadequate native rule), the apocalyptic mythology as an ideological
system has no unambiguous political content, nor is it reasonable to suppose
that its “emergence” and spread were mainly reactions to specific events of
political history. And there are no grounds for considering apocalypticism an
artifact of popular reaction to social oppression either.^69 In its literary expres-
sion, at least, it is in fact an elite or subelite phenomenon, for the most part
socially coextensive with wisdom literature.^70 As I will suggest in more detail
below,themythologyisconcernedwith solvingseveralrelatedproblems:How
can the knowledge that the world was created by a just, powerful, and benevo-
lent God be reconciled with the fact that the world is evil and chaotic; and
how can the distance between the world and God that is implied by the exis-
tence of evil be bridged? The conception of apocalyptic mythology as a set of
solutions to a complex of problems—reached, significantly, through mytho-
poiesis, not metaphysical speculation—has the inescapable consequence of
loosening its connection to events of political and social history: awareness of
(^66) Such an explanation was once common; its most recent and thorough proponent is P. D.
Hanson,The Dawn of Apocalyptic(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975); cf. Collins, “Genre, Ideology,”
16–17. For detailed criticism of Hanson, see R. Carroll, “Twilight of Prophecy or Dawn of Apoca-
lyptic?”JSOT14 (1979): 3–35.
(^67) See Milik,Books of Enoch, pp. 22–41; and M. Knibb,The Ethiopic Book of Enoch(Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978), pp. 6–15.
(^68) See G. Boccaccini, “Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition: The Contribution of Italian Scholar-
ship,” inMysteries and Revelations, 34–35 (in general a summary of Sacchi).
(^69) This point was well made by L. L. Grabbe, “The Social Setting of Early Jewish Apocalyp-
ticism,”JSP4 (1989): 27–47.
(^70) See P. R. Davies, “The Social World of Apocalyptic Writings,” in R. E. Clements, ed.,The
World of Ancient Israel: Social, Anthropological, and Political Perspectives(Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989), p. 263.