From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon by Seth L. Sanders (review)

This book is an epigraphically focused exploration of scribal consciousness and interrelationships of Babylonian and Judean scribal cultures, with a focus (in the case of the latter) on the Second Temple period.

The body of the book starts with a substantial chapter providing a richly detailed overview of the invocation of the figure of Adapa in a variety of genres of Mesopotamian literature, not just the iterations of the myth of Adapa and the South Wind and at the head of lists of primeval sages (apkallū), but also in a widely circulated incantation collection (udug.hul, "evil demons"), several Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, catalogues of texts and authors, and (with the demise of native kingship) even identification of Adapa as the founder of massive Resh temple of Seleucid-period Uruk (and named author in a catalogue fragment found there). Based on this broad survey, Sanders argues that Adapa was the most prominent image in Mesopotamia of a human figure who traveled to heaven, was enthroned there, and mastered the secrets of the universe. As such, S. argues that Adapa is the most likely model for later Judean elaboration of the figure of Enoch in Second Temple Judaism, rather than the figure of Enmeduranki, who is often seen as Enoch's precursor. S. notes that Enmeduranki is noted as communing with the gods only in two somewhat idiosyncratic Neo-Assyrian texts, and he does not even clearly travel to heaven in them (cf. Adapa and Enoch).

In chaps. 2 and 6, S. draws on a variety of theoretical resources to explore how Mesopotamian ritual texts about Adapa (chap. 2) and Qumran texts (chap. 6) provide scripts by which textual professionals could participate in the divine realm. In the case of Mesopotamia, exorcistic and divinitory texts provided a means by which scribes could take on the masterful persona (//mask) of Adapa in order to draw on divine power. Similarly, in the case of Qumran, texts such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Self-Glorification Hymn (see esp. 4Q491) reconfigure elements of Daniel 11–12 and other biblical texts to provide a textual means by which readers at Qumran could join the heavenly council of the holy ones. Both bodies of literature, so S., are crafted in a scribal context that does not distinguish linguistic (social) and natural orders the way Westerners are prone to do, so that Adapa-like textual mastery of these literary scripts can provide cosmic mastery and communion with divine beings.

The intervening chapters (3–5) build a history of how Second Temple Jewish scribes came to adopt and reframe Babylonian science. In chap. 3, S. argues for a movement from the preexilic use of "unproblematic language of direct perception of God" (p. 110; e.g., Amos 7:7; Isaiah 6; and the Micaiah vision of 1 Kings 22) to extended Ezekielian discourses about visions of God that are approximate (a likeness, ), mediated, and often distinctively somatic (introduced by "hand of Yhwh" [] language; e.g., Ezek 1:3; 40:1). In chap. 4, S. then looks at how Ezekiel's visionary emphasis and focus on exactitude in dating and measurement (in the temple vision of chaps. 40–48) is continued in later Enochic literature. That literature, however, is distinguished from earlier biblical literature that was hostile to Babylonian science (e.g., Deut 4:19) in now narratively depicting a Torah figure, Enoch, being "shown" Babylonian-like calculations (e.g., 4Q209 frag. 25, line 3) and other astronomical wisdom. In this way, S. sees Enoch's revelation as being introduced in a way analogous to Priestly language of Moses "being shown" the pattern of the Priestly tabernacle (Exod 25:40; 26:30; see also 27:8).

In chap. 5, S. explores the possible means by which such Babylonian science might have found its way into Second Temple Judean apocalyptic texts. He provides an overview of...