Eschatological Relativity. On the Scriptural Undermining of Apocalypses in Jewish Second Temple, Late Antique and Medieval Receptions of the Book of Watchers

Abstract

The First Book of Enoch (third century BCE) is currently placed between apocryphal and canonical status. Its position at the end of the Old Testament mirrors and prefigures the Book of Revelation of the New Testament. The first part of this pentateuch, the Book of Watchers is named after angels who slept with human females, thus creating heroic, but uncontrollable giants. The protagonist Enoch visits the Beyond in order to bring these Watchers’ pleas to God – thus creating the starting point of the socalled Jenseitsreisen (“Journeys to the Beyond”). While the genre of Jenseitsreisen had its heyday in the high Middle Ages, the Book of Watchers is believed to have been unknown at the time, only to reappear in the fifteenth century CE in a version written in an Old-Ethiopian language. In my contribution to the volume, I wish to suggest another theory of reception. My aim is to show how the plot of the Book of Watchers was included in chronological religious material up to the thirteenth century CE, creating a long durée narrative about a culture, writing tradition and way of thinking that is subversive to salvific history and its dogmatic eschatology.