Calendrical data, social groups and animosity in early Jewish apocalyptic texts

Abstract

Modern researchers do not have much information about the social contexts in which early Jewish apocalyptic texts originated and flourished, and have to rely on the texts themselves to try and recreate the circumstances in which the texts functioned. Within apocalyptic texts of the fourth to the second centuries BCE, undercurrents of animosity can be isolated, and in this article the way calendrical data is used by different texts to determine the important days of religious feasts is used to define such undercurrents. In this way it becomes possible to show how the respective apocalyptic books have nuances showing patterns of difference with other groups. These groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive and their differences are in many cases not incompatible. The books of Enoch, Daniel, Jubilees and Qumran literature share symbolism, ideas, genre, and literary techniques that distinguish it from other books. While the books of Enoch and Daniel each have distinctive emphases, they were not engaged in ideological warfare with each other, but rather with the temple hierarchy and Seleucid menace which was brought to a crisis point with the hellenisation process introduced by Antiochus Epiphanes IV.