Full Description
Persepolis and Jerusalem reconsiders Iranian influence upon Jewish apocalyptic, and offers grounds upon which such study may proceed. After describing the history of scholarship on the question of Iranian influence and on Jewish apocalyptic, the author reformulates the methodology for understanding apocalyptic and influence. Two chapters set the discussion firmly in the Achaemenid Empire, describing the sources for Iranian religion, the issues involved in attempting a historical reconstruction, the methodology by which one can date the various texts and ideas, and the potential loci for Iranian-Judaean interaction. The historical context is expanded through media-contextualization, particularly Oral Theory, and critiques the standard text-centric method of current Biblical Scholarship. With this background, pericopes from Ezekiel, Daniel, and 1 Enoch are analyzed for Iranian influence.
The study then brings together the contexts and analyses to argue for an 'Apocalyptic Hermeneutic' which relates the phenomena of apocalypticism, apocalypse, and millenarianism--seeing the hermeneutic as a dialectical thread holding them all together as well as apart-- and posits this as the best place to understand Iranian influences.
Contents
Table of Figures and Illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Prolegomena: Iran, the Apocalypses, and Influence; - Introit; - History of Iranian Influence; - Apocalyptic Studies; - Types of Influence and Transmission; I: The Iranian Sources: Religion and Royal Ideology; - Introduction; - Evidence from Classical Authors; - Religious Situation in Iran ; - Persian Archaeology and Royal Ideology; - Summary; II: The Achaemenid Context; - Babylonia; - Media and Iranian Lands; - Egypt; - Palestine; - Royal Road and Royal Mail Summary; - Excursus: Elam and Eastern Iran in Ansan; - Several Theological and Sociological Affinities; III: The Media of Influence: Orality, Literacy, and Interaction; - Importance of Orality and its Role in Influence; -Importance of Interiorization for Apocalyptic; -Implications for Investigation of Influence; IVa: Textual Analyses, Biblical Literature; - Ezekiel 37:1-14; - Ezekiel 38-39; - Daniel 2; - Excursus: On the Watchers; IVb: Textual Analyses, Enochic Literature; - Book of Watchers (1-36); - Book of Parables/Similitudes (37-71); - Birth of Noah Fragment (106-107); - Conclusion; V: An Apocalyptic Hermeneutic; - Introit: The Proposal; - Hermeneutics: Re-Interpretation and Application of Traditions; - The Apocalyptic Hermeneutic's Blueprint; - Reconstructing the Apocalyptic Hermeneutic (with an Eye towards Iran); - Conclusions; Metalegomena; Appendix I: Primary Sources; Appendix II: Glossary of Iranian Terms; Appendix III: Annotated Definitions; Bibliography.
