RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 79thing to Mesopotamian lore associated with the antediluvian hero Enmedura-
nki,^74 but in its Jewish version this lore is associated with a biblical hero. It is
furthermore possible to read the Book of Watchers as a dramatic expansion
of the biblical Flood story, in which the entire mythological narrative is com-
pressed into the fe wgenerations bet ween the descent of the sons of the gods
and Noah, with the Flood serving as the final act of the drama. It is only in
the first and last chapters of 1 Enoch that the compiler of the collection made
an explicit link between the book’s expanded Enoch story and the “present.”
Jubilees is a rewriting of Genesis 1–Exodus 12, which argues that the Torah
was studied and a particular version of halakhah was observed even by the
pre-Mosaicpatriarchs;yetitisalso suffusedwiththemythologicalethos,imag-
ining a world filled with angels and demons. And it contains in chapter 23
an important account of the apocalyptic myth.
The juxtaposition of these incongruous systems seems to me to be present
in its most poignant and self-conscious form in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
for the Qumran sectarians had an especially stark dualistic cosmology (as
sectarian groups often do), but also an extremely strong devotion to the study
andstrictobservanceoftheLaw(andplentyoftimetocontemplatethecontra-
diction).^75 Inthe following passage,taken from thediscourse that themaster of
the sect is commanded to deliver to novices, I have formatted the covenantal
passages in bold type, and the mythological passages in italics:
From the God of knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before ever they
existed He established their whole design, and when, as ordained for them,
they come into being, it is in accord with His glorious design that they accom-
plish their task without change. The laws of all things are in His hand and He
provides them with all their needs.
He has created man to govern the world, and has appointed for himtwo
spirits in which to walk until the time of His visitation: the spirits of truth and
falsehood. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of
falsehood spring from a source of darkness. All the children of righteousness are
ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of
falsehood are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness.(^74) This is the main argument of both J. VanderKam,Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic
Tradition(Washington: CatholicBiblical Association,1984),and H.Kvanvig,The Roots of Apoca-
lyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and the Son of Man(Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener-Verlag, 1988).
(^75) See S. Fraade, “Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran,”JJS 54
(1993): 46–69; on Qumran dualism (with some perhaps excessively subtle conclusions), see J.
Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran Library: Reflections on Their
Background and History”; M. Bernstein, F. Garcı ́a Martı ́nez, and J. Kampen, eds.,Legal Texts
and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran
Studies, Cambridge 1995, Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten(Leiden: Brill, 1997),
pp. 275–335.