Although most of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts have been lost over the centuries, many of them, translated into Greek or Oriental Christian languages (such as Ethiopic, Syriac or Armenian) have been found. These Jewish Greek writings were produced in the widespread Jewish Diaspora of the time, mainly in Egypt (Alexandria) and in North Africa. However, some of them, such as The Wisdom of Solomon, were written in Greek. Most of these works were written in the Land of Israel, in Aramaic or Hebrew. These works, contemporary with those of the early Rabbinic school of Yavneh, reflect the theological and ethical struggles and dilemmas aroused by the Roman conquest of Judea and the destruction of the Temple. The latest of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch, written in the decades following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The oldest copies of the Book of Enoch, dating from the third century BCE, were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see below). This is a complex work, written in the third (or perhaps even the late fourth) century BCE, after the return from the Babylonian Exile and the establishment of the Second Jewish Commonwealth (6th-5th centuries BCE) and before the Maccabean revolt in 172 BCE. The oldest known Jewish work not included in the Bible is the Book of Enoch. They have aroused much scholarly interest, since they provide information about Judaism at the turn of the era between the Bible and the Mishna (Biblical Law and Oral Law), and help explain how Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity came into being. 400 BCE) and the beginning of substantial rabbinic literature in the latter part of the first century CE. They provide essential evidence of Jewish literature and thought during the period between the end of biblical writing (ca. The Pseudepigrapha resemble the Apocrypha in general character, yet were not included in the Bible, Apocrypha, or rabbinic literature.Īll the Apocrypha and most of the Pseudepigrapha are Jewish works (some contain Christianizing additions). Books were attributed to pagan authors, and names drawn from the repertoire of biblical personalities, such as Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Ezekiel, Baruch, and Jeremiah. This was widespread in Greco-Roman antiquity - in Jewish, Christian, and pagan circles alike. The term Pseudepigrapha (Greek, "falsely attributed") was given to Jewish writings of the same period, which were attributed to authors who did not actually write them. The Apocrypha are still regarded as part of the canon of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, and as such, their number is fixed. The Apocrypha (Greek, "hidden books") are Jewish books from that period not preserved in the Tanakh, but included in the Latin (Vulgate) and Greek (Septuagint) Old Testaments. However, there are many other Jewish writings from the Second Temple Period which were excluded from the Tanakh these are known as the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. These books were included in the Jewish canon by the Talmudic sages at Yavneh around the end of the first century CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple. The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) consists of a collection of writings dating from approximately the 13th - 3rd centuries BCE. The syncretic atmosphere that pervaded Sasanian culture in general and the Manichaean identification of Yima with the son of man in particular facilitated, and perhaps reinforced, the refiguring of Enoch/Metatron in the Babylonian Talmud and 3 Enoch in the image of local Yima traditions.Jewish Holy Scriptures: Jewish Holy Scriptures: Table of Contents Beyond close parallels in the depictions of these figures, the connections between Metatron speculation and the Zoroastrian and Manichaean Yima traditions are supported by an identification of Yima with the son of man implied in two Sogdian fragments of the Manichaean Book of Giants. The figure of Enoch/Metatron was reimagined and reconfigured by the Babylonian authors so as to resemble local Yima traditions, though the process of translating and repackaging the figure of Enoch in the image of his Iranian counterpart was not merely a conscious act of comparison, in which an analogy is drawn in an attempt to highlight particular aspects common to both figures it was an expression of a more comprehensive discourse of identification. The article examines the reception and transmission of traditions about the figure of Enoch/Metatron in Sasanian Babylonia, and particularly the emergence of Metatron speculation in the Babylonian Talmud and 3 Enoch, by reading these traditions in light of Zoroastrian and Manichaean reports of the Iranian hero, Yima.
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