The End of the Scroll. Herold Weiss

feasts; therefore love truth and peace” (Zech. 8:19). The future will not consist of fasts but of celebrations. The only explanation for the question having been raised by the delegation from Bethel, it would seem, is that they thought that on account of their syncretistic practices during the exile in Babylon they were now in no condition to observe the fast commemorating the destruction of the temple in 587 B.C.E. The answer, rather than to place attention to the destruction of the temple, calls attention to the restoration of the fortunes of Israel, something which apocalyptic texts will consider essential.

      In the tradition of the prophets, Zechariah reviews what is going on at the time and pleads with the people to repent and live according to the ways the Lord expects from them. Yet, significantly, he does what no other prophet had done before. At the very introduction, God instructs Zechariah, “The Lord was very angry with your fathers, . . Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. Be not like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or heed me, says the Lord. ‘Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?’” (Zech. 1:2-6). Zechariah is calling attention to the past as a source of valuable lessons. Their fathers did not follow God’s advice to repent, and the punishments God described to them in advance came to pass. In this way he places himself in the tradition of the “former prophets” (Zech. 7:7, 12), and applies their oracles to his own day. Many of his images are taken from them, suggesting that he sees himself as the interpreter of previous prophetic sayings. He refers to the seventy years of Jeremiah (Zech. 1:12; Jer. 25:11; 29:10), the smiths (Is. 54:16-17), the measuring line (Ez. 42:20), the north country (Jer. 1:13-16; Ez. 38:6), the Branch (Jer. 22:5; 33:15), the wall of fire (Is. 4:5) and probably the horsemen with news of Babylon’s defeat (Is. 21:9). Thus, Zechariah is the forerunner of a characteristic of the authors of apocalypses who saw themselves as the eschatological interpreters of the “former prophets.”

      Another innovation found in Zechariah is the way in which angels functions in his oracles. In Micah and in Isaiah one reads of supernatural beings who speak to each other or with the seer. It is only in Zechariah that the angel becomes the interpreter of what the prophet is seeing. This means that the role of the prophet has been changed. Rather than being the one who receives the Word of the Lord, or is inspired to speak for the Lord, the prophet has become the interpreter of previous words of the Lord, or the messenger of the interpretation of visions provided by an angel. One needs to note that the Hebrew word for angel, mal’ak, also means messenger, and in time also came to mean prophet. In Zechariah the angel also functions as intercessor (Zech. 1:12) and the giver of oracles (Zech. 1:14-17; 2:4-5).

      As I said at the beginning of this section, chapters 9 to 14 of Zechariah come from a different, later source. They are actually two booklets of a collection of three anonymous announcements that are titled “oracles” (massa’). The third one is now known as the book of Malachi (from mal’ak), that is to say “my messenger,” on account of the expression, “Behold, I send my messenger” (Mal. 3:1). The first two oracles now found in Zechariah (Zech. 9:1-11:17 and 12:1-14:21) are also eschatological oracles of “the messenger” who had been identified before as a prophet. These two are similar to the third massa’ which was published independently as Malachi.

      Like Ezekiel, Zechariah envisions the restoration of the land in peace and prosperity to take place in Judah and the surrounding regions, especially toward the South. God’s promise is, “I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.” Like Ezekiel, Zechariah gives to Jerusalem a new name, actually two different ones: “The faithful city,” “The mountain of the Lord of hosts,” or “The holy mountain” (Zech. 8:3), rather than “The Lord is there” (Ez. 48:35). Then the Lord promises that “old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets .… For there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, and the ground shall give its increase, and the heavens shall give their dew” (Zech. 8:4-5, 12). Also in agreement with Ezekiel, Zechariah understands that God is the source of both good and evil. God says, “As I purposed to do evil to you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the Lord of hosts, so again have I purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; fear not” (Zech. 8:14-15). Unlike the future apocalypticists, Zechariah does not attribute to Satan and his cohorts the power to bring about the suffering experienced by God’s people. As in Job, here Satan is known as the accuser at the heavenly court, not as the one who operates freely in a fallen world. It is clear that Zechariah introduces changes to the prophetic perspective in reference to its view of inspiration and its view of God as the Lord of history. These changes became prominent in apocalyptic texts, but Zechariah is not yet an apocalyptic book. In the tradition of the prophets, Zechariah shows a God who is zealous and punishes discreet sins in specific ways, and he envisions the future of Israel still in nationalistic terms. He does not envision the people’s historical experience as the result of a cosmic Fall, and the future he describes is still a historical one in a purified land.

      The Book of the Watchers

      The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, also identified as First Enoch, was first brought to the attention of modern biblical scholarship when it was published at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Later, fragments of the book were found in a Greek version, which was the basis for the Ethiopic version. Copies in Aramaic have also become available. Among the discoveries made in the caves near the ruins of Kirbeth Qumran by the Dead Sea, fragments of the book were found in Hebrew. These fragments have been most diligently studied because they are in the book’s original language. The full text of First Enoch in our possession, however, is found only in Ethiopic. After two centuries of intense study by biblical scholars, it is agreed that First Enoch is not one book, but a collection of five independent books, which are themselves editorial compilations of different earlier texts. The five separate compositions have been identified as follows: The Book of the Watchers (chaps. 1-36), The Parables [or Similitudes] (chaps. 37-71), The Book of the Luminaries [or The Astronomical Book] (chaps. 72-82), The Book of Dreams (chaps. 83-90), and The Epistle of Enoch (chaps. 91-108).

      The discovery of fragments of First Enoch at Qumran in the 1950s greatly strengthen the dating of its two earliest documents before the Maccabean revolt in 167-164 B.C.E. These are the Book of the Luminaries and the Book of the Watchers. The first is primarily concerned to defend the authority of a 360-day yearly calendar against various others being used by Jews at the time. This was very important because the proper celebration of the festivals and the keeping of the Sabbath depended on following the “correct” calendar. Thus, The Book of the Luminaries serves purposes similar to those of the book of Jubilees, which comes from about the same time. The establishment of the right calendar became necessary after Hellenistic culture and greater travel opportunities gave the Jews access to the lifestyles of other societies with more accurate calendars.

      The Book of the Watchers, is of special interest to the theme of my book on account of two reasons. One is that it predates the book of Daniel, which was published at the time of the Maccabean revolt (167-164 B.C.E.). Thus, it contributes to our understanding of the transition from prophetic to apocalyptic literature, even if it did not become part of the Jewish canon of Scripture at the Council of Jamnia in the second century C.E. The second reason is that it was extremely popular and considered authoritative by Jews and early Christians before their respective canons were established. That it was considered Scripture by early Christians is evident by the adoption of some of its peculiar features by the authors of First Peter, Second Peter, Jude and Revelation. The author of Jude specifically identifies Enoch, the seventh from Adam, as the author of the book, thus taking at face value the pseudonym used by the author to establish his authority. Jude says that Enoch prophesied that the false teachers among the early Christians were going to be “wandering stars … for whom the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for ever” (Jude 14). First Peter says that when Christ was crucified he was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went to preach to the spirits in prison who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience