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RE: orion Enoch 10



> ----------
> From: 	stephen goranson[SMTP:goranson@duke.edu]
> Reply To: 	orion@mscc.huji.ac.il
> Sent: 	Tuesday, February 23, 1999 11:43 AM
> To: 	orion@mscc.huji.ac.il
> Subject: 	orion osiotes & law-observing; Enoch 108; Essenes
> trans-Jordan 
> 
> 
> 2. Thanks, David Suter for comment on Enoch 108. I guess the burden of
> proof you suggest accords with the default position advocated in Robert
> Kraft's writing on pseudepigrapha; and you know Enoch better than I do.
> But, in this case, would it be better to assume neither a Jewish or a
> Christian provenance a priori?  If this chapter were a Christian addition,
> wouldn't one expect something more obviously Christian about it? You say
> the dualism seems supercessionist to you. Be that as it may, is
> supercessionism (indeed found in some Christian texts) absent from all
> Qumran texts? Is wheat and tares solely a Christian image?  Admittedly, it
> doesn't help my (and Flusser's and Charles') Essene-identification
> suggestion that this chapter is not identified at Qumran, though it is
> merely one brief chapter, more easily lost than a long book. Perhaps the
> usage in 108:2 represents a stage in the generic to specific evolution of
> the name.
> 
> Stephen Goranson
> 
> 
Stephen,

I had Kraft's paper in mind in part in suggesting Christianity as the
default position.  It seems to me that to leave the question completely open
would shortcurcuit his approach:  one begins with what one has in the
context in which it is found.  The chapter strikes me as having echoes of
the scrolls or the Enochic literature in the light/dark language and the
mention of mountains; however, the references somehow seem to be off key.
Perhaps you should glance at Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch) in reaching a
conclusion about the passage.  There are other examples of literature in
which we do not have explicit references to Christian ideas (the Adam and
Eve) literature in which one can still debate the issue of Christian versus
Jewish origins.  

David Suter
Saint Martin's College

For private reply, e-mail to dsuter@stmartin.edu
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