The Fiction of a Jewish Hellenistic Magical-Medical Paideia.

• Author: Geller, M.J.

The elusive quest for a Greek-Jewish paideia governing the cultural life of Judea carries on unabated, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. The absence of Hebrew or Aramaic translations of classic works such as pre-Socratic philosophy, medicine (Hippocrates), or science (e.g., Plato or Aristotle), or even specific citation of this literature, does not appear to deter scholars from the tendency to rely upon Greek thought as the main comparative frame of reference for Jewish texts from Qumran and rabbinic literature. A recent book by Annette Yoshiko Reed, with the somewhat misleading title of Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism, is actually a proponent of the idea of Hellenistic Jewish paideia rather than a treatise on magic. The book follows a long and venerable tradition of works by a previous generation of scholars led by Saul Lieberman and Martin Hengel,' as well as many highly competent younger scholars like Yair Furstenberg and Ishay Rosen-Zvi (2) among others, who envisage the deep penetration of Hellenistic intellectual culture and even Greek philosophy into Hellenistic Palestine after Alexander and under Roman rule. It is a daunting task to swim against such a strong current, but arguments counter to this popular consensus have been generally overlooked and need to be put forward. (3)

The book produced by A. Yoshiko Reed is a good starting point. For someone interested in demons (like the present reviewer), her book should be read from back to front. The fullest treatment of angels and demons appears in the final chapter five on Jubilees, but otherwise the reader has to wait until chapter four for a fuller discussion of demonology. The bulk of the book has less to do with angelology and demonology than with the globalization of Greek paideia and the influence of Hellenism on Second Temple-period Jewish writings, based upon a broad range and impressive selection of secondary sources, clearly demonstrating the author's erudition and industry. Although Yoshiko Reed never engages directly with any primary sources, she succeeds in summarizing and drawing inferences from almost every corner of Anglophone scholarship on Hellenistic-period Jewish literature, making her work an invaluable reference work for the current communis opinio on the period under study.

Nevertheless, certain central themes put forward in Yoshiko Reed's work are open to questions that challenge some basic assumptions of current scholarship. Leaving aside the problem of how angels and demons may have appeared contradictory to strict monotheism (raised in chapter one), let us turn to the pertinent question of Enochic literature, (4) which features prominently in relation to the so-called Astronomical Book and Book of Watchers, two subsections of 1 Enoch. This work is treated as pre-Maccabean, and although Greek translations existed, Yoshiko Reed acknowledges that Enoch was originally composed in Aramaic, as now proven by fragmentary extracts from Qumran. Her problem is how to square this literature with the "globalization of paidea" often mentioned in this book (pp. 128, 187, 220, etc.). In order to put this question into perspective, it may be useful to provide some historical context.

Yoshiko Reed assumes that Judea under Ptolemaic sovereignty, after the dissolution of Alexander's empire, experienced an enlightened century, introducing Hellenistic scholastic culture into a Palestine that had been previously been under Persian domination. Citing a number of secondary sources, Yoshiko Reed downplays the intensive anti-Hellenistic rhetoric of the Books of Maccabees (p. 103) in favor of seeing this period as a time of institutional stability (p. 246), allowing for the introduction of highly valued Greek paideia. There are two problems with this viewpoint. There is no evidence for a literary culture in fourth-century BCE Palestine, Greek or otherwise, since sources from this period are scarce except perhaps for the Zenon papyri, which show that Ptolemaic rule was only interested in acquiring commodities and slaves from Judea rather than instilling Hellenistic culture into the region. What is surprising about the historical record is how little popular opposition there was to the enormously significant transition from Ptolemaic to Seleucid rule in 200 BCE; the rabbis and apocryphal sources were completely silent on this momentous change, probably for a reason. If we take the anti-Hellenistic stance of the books ot Maccabees seriously (as we ought to do), the perceived advantage of Seleucid Babylonian hegemony was that it was not Hellenized; there was no Alexandria in Babylonia, nor was there a large Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora. Only after forty years, when Antiochus raided the Jerusalem temple treasury, did revolt break out in Judea, but this had more to do with imperial politics than anti-Hellenistic sentiments (although Hellenism took the blame). In any case, the strong opposition to Greek culture should not be underestimated.

This recalls the general theme of Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, raised by Saul Lieberman long ago and still dominating current thinking. Although there is no doubt that koine Greek was widely spoken in Judea, along with Aramaic and Hebrew, this is far from proving the influence of Greek thought on local scholarship or a Hellenistic-Jewish episteme in Palestine. There is not a single reference to Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, or any single Stoic philosopher in any of the apocrypha or rabbinic literature. The Greek vocabulary imbedded within Mishnaic Hebrew was not philosophical, nor did it reflect Greek literature. On the contrary, after the Roman conquest of Judea in 63 BCE, the local language had to conform to the Pax Romana but not to a Greek worldview, which was very different in its orientation, as Tim Whitmarsh has shown in his well-crafted arguments on atheistic thought. (5) We know from later periods and places such as Edessa in Syria what Hellenistic influence looks like: translations of Greek literature into Syriac and numerous citations of Greek authors. None of this can be demonstrated for Palestine before the Byzantine period.

Then there is the Jewish community of Seleucid Babylonia, the history of which we know virtually nothing about. We do know that the famous scholar Hillel came from Babylonia to Palestine, which might indicate that he had some schooling before he arrived. (6) Two things are clear from the Babylonian Talmud--that Babylonian rabbis generally knew no Greek, and that Babylonian dialects of Aramaic (such as Eastern Syriac and Mandaic) show little evidence of Greek loanwords or influence. This picture allows us to contextualize Enochic literature, which was clearly composed in Aramaic, although translations were later made into Greek, Ethiopic, Latin, and Syriac. There are a number of salient points that need to be clarified about Enoch.

First, there is no evidence that the books of Enoch were composed in Palestine, since neither Jerusalem or Judea is ever mentioned in this literature, nor is there any secure evidence for Greek loanwords in the Aramaic of this text. An interesting case in point is the name for Watchers--"Gregoroi"-used in Syncellus's Greek text and in Slavonic Enoch, and this same word was employed by the LXX for being 'wakeful'. (7) However, instead of being a Greek term, the word "Gregoroi" might actually be a Semitic loan into Greek, reflecting the root [phrase omitted] ('wr) 'to rouse, watch', with an intensive palpel form [phrase omitted] or [phrase omitted], with the same meaning. (8) Not only is there scarcely any noticeable Greek influence in Enoch, but the overwhelming number of correspondences between the Aramaic Astronomical Book and Akkadian astronomical texts MUL.APIN and Enuma Anu Enlil leave virtually no doubt about the Babylonian origin of this material. While Yoshiko Reed has cited Henry Drawnel's detailed text edition and convincing study of Qumran astronomical texts (including fragments of 1 Enoch), (9) she avoids drawing the obvious inference that 1 Enoch and other Aramaic astronomical fragments were composed in the third century BCE in Babylonia and were later brought to Palestine and integrated into a Hellenistic intellectual environment. (10)

Part of the problem is a general lack of familiarity with Hellenistic astronomy and what impact this had on the period in question. Although the third century BCE witnessed a dramatic growth in mathematical astronomy in Babylonia, which profoundly influenced Greek astronomy (rather than the other way around), (11) the Enochic Astronomical Book and the Aramaic fragments of astronomy found at Qumran reflect classical textbook astronomy rather than the more up-to-date mathematical astronomy (so-called Goal Year Texts and Ephemerides, as well as Astronomical Diaries). The highly abstract observation-based technical astronomy known to Babylonian scholars of this period was not exported to provincial Judea, although Greek astronomy made good use of it. (12) Nevertheless, astronomy made a considerable cultural impact, which is why Enoch the visionary traveled up to heaven in order to acquire knowledge, rather than down to the netherworld, as was common in previous literature (Gilgamesh, Homer, etc.). There was an earlier Babylonian model for Enoch's ascent in the person of Enmeduranki, an antediluvian scholar who was brought to heaven to acquire knowledge of celestial divination, according to a tablet from Nineveh from roughly the seventh century BCE. Although it is described in detail by Drawnel (Aramaic Astronomical Book, p. 12) and by Seth Sanders, (13) Yoshiko Reed overlooked this crucial information as background to Enoch's apocalypse. Both of these texts reflect a shift from...