82 CHAPTER TWOin some circles, the consciousness that it was separate from the covenantal
system, and some individuals or groups may have consciously rejected it. How
did the myth function?
The Functions of the MythWherever the myth and its components came from, our main information
about them comes from literature. The classic formulations of the myth, with
their interest in lists and systematization, and their scholasticism,^80 are evi-
dently products of a scribal ethos.^81 There are indications in the books them-
selves that some of the scribes/wise men who formulated the myth considered
it esoteric. Hence Ben Sira’s advice not to concern oneself with hidden lore
(perhaps apocalyptic speculation); the esoteric “heavenly tablets” often men-
tioned in the Book of Watchers and Jubilees;^82 the emphasis in the Dead Sea
Scrolls on the “mysterious” character of the myth (and Josephus’s statement
that Essenes swore to keep the names of the angels secret—War 2.145); the
suggestioninboththeDeadSeaScrollsand4Ezrathatthereexistsanexoteric
and an esoteric Torah, the latter probably to be identified with a corpus of
mythological exegesis and/or apocalyptic books.^83 Thus some scribes/wise
men supplemented the prestige and influence they enjoyed as priests, legal
experts, and teachers by claiming access to divine mysteries even more ob-
scure than those written down in the Torah. Other scribes may simply have
had a taste for the abstruse. Though these developments are no woften ex-
plained by adducing the influence of the convergence of scribalism and man-
ticism in Babylonia, it is perhaps easier to suppose that such a convergence
developed independently in Palestine in part as a result of the ever greater
sanctity generally attributed to the Israelite books that the scribes interpreted,
resulting in a “mantic” reading of the books—a reading motivated by the
conviction that they conceal cosmic mysteries that can be revealed through
exegesis.^84 This is not to deny the influence of Babylonian manticism on the
(^80) On the derivation of the angels from exegesis, see S. Olyan,A Thousand Thousands Served
Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism(Tu ̈bingen: Mohr, 1993).
(^81) In addition to Davies, “Social Setting,” see J. Z. Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,”Map Is
Not Territory(Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 67–87; Stone, “Lists of Revealed Things.”
(^82) See no wH. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority-Con-
ferring Strategies,”JSJ30 (1999): 379–410.
(^83) The scribal conception of the mythology as esoteric helps explain why none of this literature
except Daniel, which is only half apocalyptic and which of all the apocalyptic books is most
closely linked to classical prophecy, became canonical—this despite the fact that the Enoch
booksandJubileesandafewotherswerewidelyreadand wereinfactconsideredholyatQumran.
“Our” (i.e., the rabbinic) canon is exoteric.
(^84) On mantic, or “mantological” exegesis, see M. Fishbane,Biblical Interpretation in Ancient
Israel(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 443–505; also, Blenkinsopp,Prophecy and