Divine Mysteries in the Enochic Tradition

In dieser Reihe werden Monographien und gesammelte Essays veröffentlicht, die sich mit dem Themenfeld der religiösen Erfahrung in der Antike befassen. Die Bände der Reihe werden verschiedene Bereiche religiöser Erfahrung und Strömungen ansprechen und besonders Ausdrucksformen religiösen Erlebens wie exstatischer Trance, Magie, Heilung, Weissagung, Prophezeiung, Träume und weitere Phänomene, die zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung religiöser Erfahrung beitragen. Dazu dient ein weites Spektrum von Methoden, das zeitgenössische soziologische, anthropologische, psychologische Herangehensweisen ebenso umfasst wie historische Analyse von textlichen, archäologischen und künstlerischen Quellen über religiöse Erfahrung.

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The book represents an in-depth investigation of acquisition, cultivation, and transmission of divine mysteries in Jewish apocalyptic and mystical accounts by focusing on the developments found in early Enochic writings. These accounts deal both with revelations unveiled by God and angels to the patriarch Enoch and with illicit transmission of divine knowledge by the rogue group of the fallen angels, known as the Watchers.

Orlov argues that the map of otherworldly knowledge revealed to Enoch inversely mirrors the map of illicit revelations given by the fallen Watchers to humankind. The study suggests that one of the possible objectives for the parallelism is that, by revealing to Enoch the same divine mysteries that were earlier transmitted by the Watchers, God attempts to mitigate the corruption caused by the fallen angels' illicit instructions.

This book will be of interest not only for scholars specializing in historical and religious areas, but also for experts in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and gender theory; it discusses several aspects of early and late Jewish religious epistemologies that elucidate the ideological context for the construction and affirmation of social roles and identities in various Jewish milieus.