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{en} Elena L. Dugan. The Apocalypse of the Birds: 1 Enoch and the Jewish Revolt against Rome. Edinburgh UNiversity Press, 2023.

Abstract

This book identifies a new apocalyptic work—the Apocalypse of the Birds—contained in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85-90), and argues that it is born of the chaotic Jewish-Christian world of the first-century CE. Through close analysis of texts and manuscripts in Ge’ez, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, alongside historical and numismatic evidence, the book situates the Apocalypse of the Birds alongside literature and historiography of the first-century CE. It argues that the Apocalypse of the Birds belongs to the heady early days of the First Jewish Revolt, and represents crucial evidence for the early optimism of the revolutionaries, the dynamic and progressive evolution of the Animal Apocalyptic tradition, and the blurred and porous boundaries between Jew and Jesus-follower in the first-century CE.

"This learned and ingenious monograph raises important methodological questions for the study of the Pseudepigrapha that will define the study of this corpus of ancient writings in the coming generation."--John J. Collins.

Contents

Introduction: Absence of Evidence or Evidence of Absence?

• 1 On Subsidiary Works, Absent and Present from our Documents

• 2 The Nature of the Beast: Literary Evidence for Animal Apocalypse(s) of Enoch

• 3 Material Evidence for Animal Apocalypse(s) of Enoch

• 4 Dating the Animal Apocalypses

• 5 The Early Christian Readers of the Apocalypse of the Birds

• 6 The Apocalypse of the Birds and the First Jewish Revolt

• 7 On Animal Apocalypses in the First Century and Beyond

Appendix: An Annotated Apocalypse of the Birds (1 Enoch 89.59–90.42)

About the Author

Elena Dugan is a dual affiliate with Harvard University’s Department of Classics and Center for Jewish Studies, and an instructor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Phillips Academy Andover. She earned her doctorate in 2021 at Princeton University, where she received the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Fellowship, the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship, and the Dean’s Completion Fellowship, as well as department and university-wide awards for teaching. Her work has been published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Jewish Studies Quarterly, and the Classical World.

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