Jewish Apocalyptic Literary Analysis

Christopher Collins writes on authority and orality of myth. He proposes names attached to tales become single-references to recall entire stories. Such names gain authority through surviving trial and ordeals (Odysseus, for example). By comparison, ANE and Second Temple authors studied here legitimate texts by capitalizing on already assumed authorities—a god, angel, or king—acting as message originators. The revealed-secret recipient often contributes to engendered authority as well by name recognition. How, then, do authors orchestrate this authority in apocalyptic literature?

Use in Apocalyptic Literature

Jewish Apocalyptic authors weaved this topos into 1 and 2 Enoch, Jubilees, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, and the Testament of Levi. Yet, they did so in various ways, including Secrets

Revealed in Eschatological Scenarios (1 En. 38:3); Narrator-Explicit Secret Reception (as opposed to the entire writing as secret for later discloser—1 En. 41:1); Secrets of Specific Revealed Knowledge (such as the measurements of the depths of the earth in 1 En. 61:2 and the secrets of the heavenly city in Apoc. Zeph. 5:1). The two most relevant ways (for this study) that authors used this topos are Positive Revelation of Secrets and Negative Revelation of Secrets.
Positive Revelation of Secrets
In 1 En. 89:2, the author incorporated this topos to remind the reader of divine protection:
Then one of those four went to those snow-white bovids and taught (one of them) a secret: he was born a bovid but became a person; and he built for himself a big boat and dwelt upon it. Three cows dwelt together with him in that boat, and that boat was covered (over) them.
Angelic revelation protected Noah from the flood, but where did the secret originate? Although this author provides no clues, the authors of Genesis and Jubilees inform their readers God originated the secret and approved its delivery to Noah. The same, however, is not true of the revelation in 1 En. 9:6.
Negative Revelation of Secrets
This passage serves as a good exemplar for negative revelation of secrets, but note, negative revelation topoi also exist in 1 En. 10:7, 65:6, and 69:1.
You see what Azazʾel has done; how he has taught all (forms of) oppression upon the earth. And they revealed eternal secrets which are performed in heaven (and which) man learned.
The topos gains authority from both eternality (an eternal truth) and the place of performance. Through this revelation, the author legitimates the Watchers’s punishment and exonerates humanity, contra the Genesis 6-8 flood narrative. But, is this telling a single-author work, and if not, how might it affect this study?
Germane Scholarship
Himmelfarb argues the passage containing 9:6 is two separate origin-of-evil myths twined into a single story.

On myth places responsibility on Watchers for their sexual endeavors among women and the other myth reveals heavenly secrets associated with civilization. The topos in 1 En. 9:6 rests in this latter myth picturing the dangers of misusing and/or abusing heavenly knowledge. Margaret Barker’s research into 1 Enoch corroborates Himmelfarb’s assessment. Such knowledge resulted in “the whole earth bec[oming] corrupted by this invasion of divine secrets”; they abused divine knowledge. According to Barker, the audience against whom the Second Temple author wrote “altered the calendar, which is [also] a sign of their abuse of divine knowledge.” The topos of secrecy, then, results in divinely ordered events when properly revealed (such as in 89:2); but altering such knowledge results is chaos and destruction. The intrinsic power of this once-secreted knowledge adds another layer of authority to that already mentioned. These eternal, divine secrets are powerful enough to introduce chaos into divine order or create order from chaos, as typified in the following ANE

texts.
Possible ANE Sources
Revelation of Secrets as possible authoritative topoi occurs in over twenty-five ANE sources, ranging from Sumer, Babylon, and Persia in the east to Egypt and Greece in the west. The first subsection contains three positive-revelation sources possibly in a parent-child relationship with Second Temple writings; the second subsection, two for negative revelation.
Positive Revelation of Secrets
The three most likely sources to show a parent-child connection are: (1) the Ascent of Enmeduranki, (2) the Assyrian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and (3) the Tradition of Seven Lean Years in Egypt. Enmeduranki’s Ascent and the Gilgamesh Epic both originate from Sumer (although the Assyrian version of Gilgamesh holds interest here). The Seven Lean Years text is Egyptian and dates to the twenty-seventh century, BCE based on Djoser’s reign.
Ascent of Enmeduranki
In this story, Enmeduranki, king of Sippar in the antediluvian world, is given a gift by the gods Shamash and Adad:
Enmeduranki [king of Sippar]
The beloved of Anu, Enlil [and Ea]
Šamaš and Adad [brought him in] to their assembly
Šamaš and Adad [honored him]
Šamaš and Adad [set him] on a large throne of gold
They showed him how to observe oil on water, a mystery of Anu, [Enlil and Ea]
they gave him the tablet of the gods, the liver, a secret of heaven and [underworld].
Of the commonalities with 1 Enoch, Collins writes, “to a great extent, [Enoch] is modeled on the mythological figure of Enmeduranki.” He considers them equivalent characters, exploring likenesses based on equivalence (he also notes a second “model for Enoch” in Utnapishtim). But, does modeled equal dependent relationship? In the Sumerian text, two gods positively revealed a secret to Enmeduranki—the gift of divination by extispicy. By comparison, positive revelation in the Enochic texts comes twice to Noah, neither of which from the Hebraic deity. The same holds true for Enoch in 40:2, 8, 41:1, and 60:11 (plus other texts). Chapter 108 closes the Ethiopian version of 1 Enoch with angelic revelation about the eschaton. These secrets throughout 1 Enoch are rehearsals of history and the eschaton, which differs from the Enmeduranki text. This similar-but-different theme highlights two important points.
First, the receiver of secrets in 1 Enoch is not a true mediator, rather, God tasks him to deliver a distinct message as a go-between with no interpretive role. By comparison, while Enmeduranki repeats the divine teachings on divination, he also mediates in the role of haruspex by provoking the gods to answer human enquiry and then interpreting the response through extispicy. Second, a positive revelation of divine secrets exists in both 1 En. 89:2 and the Sumerian text, but 1 Enoch does not follow the divine gifting of the Sumerian text. Instead, he receives tasks to perform and judgments to announce (rather than interpret). Viewed through the aperture of authoritative topoi, these differences make it difficult to see “Noah correspond[ing] to Enmeduranki . . . [as] a primeval archetypal mediator of revelation.” A stretched definition of mediator might encompass both Noah and Enmeduranki, but their roles are only remotely similar, and grows more remote when understanding the Enochic text from a Second Temple perspective.
The teleological purpose behind Noah’s and Enoch’s received secrets are assurance and hope for both the Jewish community’s future deliverance and punishment of the wicked. The author creates no new societal role or position. The purpose behind the Sumerian text, however, is divine ordination of divination, legitimating the role of haruspex within Nippur, Sippar, and Babylon. The similar-but-different idea seen here continues with comparisons to the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Epic of Gilgamesh
In connection to this study, a topos of secrecy occurs twice in the Assyrian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The first instance is on Tablet XI, line 10: