Inverted Pathways to Power: Heavenly Knowledge and Authority in the Book of the Watchers and Aseneth

TY - CHAP

T1 - Inverted Pathways to Power: Heavenly Knowledge and Authority in the Book of the Watchers and Aseneth

AU - Glass, R. Gillian

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - This chapter is a comparative analysis of human acquisition of knowledge from the heavenly realm in two pieces of Second Temple Era Jewish literature. The first work is 1 Enoch, specifically the sections known as The Book of the Watchers (chapters 1-36) and the Parables of Enoch (chapters 37-71). In these pseudepigraphic works, illicit and licit information is given to humans by angels: angels descend to earth and provide women with unsanctioned knowledge; and Enoch, the eponymous hero, ascends to the Heavens and receives cosmological, astronomical, and moral knowledge from sanctioned heavenly sources. The second work is Aseneth, a Jewish novel of romance, politics, and family drama. In Aseneth, the central passage of the romance narrative (chapters 1-21) is the heroine’s encounter with the heavenly being called the Anthropos (14:3-17:9). Through this epiphany, Aseneth is transformed into the City of Refuge, eats honeycomb from Heaven, and learns ineffable mysteries. At first glance, these narratives are quite different. In 1 Enoch, a man ascends to heaven, in Aseneth a woman stays home. In 1 Enoch, women’s knowledge is illegitimately acquired, whereas a man’s is legitimately acquired; in Aseneth a woman’s knowledge is legitimately acquired. Both works, however, share structural features and thematic concerns which prompt a re-evaluation of the gendering of revelatory experiences in Second Temple literature. By attending to where and how the wives of the Watchers, Enoch, and Aseneth receive heavenly knowledge and the consequences of their encounters with the divine, we further our understanding of ancient Jewish ideas about who could or should have access to knowledge, and the nature of human and divine beings. In 1 Enoch and Aseneth, knowledge from the All-Powerful is truly power on Earth.

AB - This chapter is a comparative analysis of human acquisition of knowledge from the heavenly realm in two pieces of Second Temple Era Jewish literature. The first work is 1 Enoch, specifically the sections known as The Book of the Watchers (chapters 1-36) and the Parables of Enoch (chapters 37-71). In these pseudepigraphic works, illicit and licit information is given to humans by angels: angels descend to earth and provide women with unsanctioned knowledge; and Enoch, the eponymous hero, ascends to the Heavens and receives cosmological, astronomical, and moral knowledge from sanctioned heavenly sources. The second work is Aseneth, a Jewish novel of romance, politics, and family drama. In Aseneth, the central passage of the romance narrative (chapters 1-21) is the heroine’s encounter with the heavenly being called the Anthropos (14:3-17:9). Through this epiphany, Aseneth is transformed into the City of Refuge, eats honeycomb from Heaven, and learns ineffable mysteries. At first glance, these narratives are quite different. In 1 Enoch, a man ascends to heaven, in Aseneth a woman stays home. In 1 Enoch, women’s knowledge is illegitimately acquired, whereas a man’s is legitimately acquired; in Aseneth a woman’s knowledge is legitimately acquired. Both works, however, share structural features and thematic concerns which prompt a re-evaluation of the gendering of revelatory experiences in Second Temple literature. By attending to where and how the wives of the Watchers, Enoch, and Aseneth receive heavenly knowledge and the consequences of their encounters with the divine, we further our understanding of ancient Jewish ideas about who could or should have access to knowledge, and the nature of human and divine beings. In 1 Enoch and Aseneth, knowledge from the All-Powerful is truly power on Earth.

M3 - Book chapter

BT - The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion, Gender, and Sexuality in the Ancient Near Eas

A2 - Shectman, Sarah

A2 - Dolansky, Shawna

ER -