Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [205]
Yet, allusions to figures rising from the sea come from earlier in the chapter in Daniel, where the beasts are said to arise from the sea. This kind of melange of images is not the result of exegesis; indeed it is totally anathema to any educated Hebrew exegesis, which is quite exacting and governed by many technical terms, but actually the result of meditation on the whole chapter, reorganized by a free-ranging consciousness. As Rowland himself concludes: “It is most unlikely that a careful interpreter of Daniel 7 would have linked the divine envoy with the home of the beasts and thereby deliberately linked the divine with the demonic in the way in which we find it in this chapter.”26
The specific details of the vision in 4 Ezra are brought about, according to the text, not just by dream visions but induced by fasting and mourning leading to a revelation. Regardless, the characteristics of the text remain the same. The writers do not comment on the text and produce a commentary. They seemingly combine the images at will and come up with a detailed new narrative which uses the fragmentary images of the Bible to forge a new story of consolation. The presence of RISC is undeniable.
These texts differ fundamentally from any of the accepted means of exegesis. They are not Midrash, not Rabbinic exegesis. Neither are they homilies, nor targums, all of which are clearly understood genres of exegesis, each with its own format and technical terms. Nor are they pesher, which is commonly believed itself to be an inspired exegesis. (So most scholars have no problem accepting even some exegesis as inspired.)27 Even more obvious is the relationship between the various ascent texts in Enoch and their Biblical forebears. Many of the traditions found in the Enoch cycle are excellent examples. The ascent texts appear to flesh out various Biblical texts into a vision of heavenly reward and punishment.
We are constantly given the details of Daniel 12 spelled out in many ways. The good are rewarded and the evil punished. We see the leaders rewarded with heavenly immortality as stars and the very worst of the sinners punished for having persecuted the righteous. A very interesting relationship between Biblical texts and those found in Enoch is formed by the elements from Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6. The theophany in 1 Enoch 14:8 is clearly related to the theophany in Ezekiel, but there are very few precise contacts. Apart from the reference to the throne which is just as much influenced by Isaiah 6:1 (see 1 En 14:18, “a lofty throne”) the frequent mention of fire and certain key words like “lightning” and “crystal,” as well as the reference to the wheels of the Merkabah (14:18), there are very few actual contacts. But the chapters from Ezekiel and Isaiah are clearly informing the Enoch texts.
We must not discount the idea that somewhere along the line, a literary copyist glossed some of the Biblical material. But the most obvious way to describe the relationships between the two sets of texts is that the Biblical quotations were read and understood by people who studied them carefully, and then they became parts of the dreams and visions which those same people experienced. The glossing came afterwards when the exegetes noticed inconsistencies. The reading is the process by which the seer assimilated details of the text into memory, which made them available later as the bits of experience out of which the ascensions were formulated.
Jews of the first centuries BCE and CE, like all preceding and succeeding centuries, took RISC very seriously.28 They also valued ecstasy, or trance, as a medium for revelation and developed techniques for signaling that ecstasy or trance was occurring.29 The same language also seemed to the ancients to suggest something very deep and mystical about the way in which humans resembled God and conversely how God could be figured in human form. These beliefs