As I shall argue in chapter 10, ‘apocalyptic’ is a type of literature which was both available to all in principle as one way of saying things that might be difficult to say otherwise, and most likely cherished and read, in the case of individual writings, by a comparatively small group. That is, any Jew might read, say, 1 Enoch, and might find there meanings of which he or she could approve; but the chances are that most Jews, including many who cherished wild dreams about the future, did not in fact know most of the works now collected in Charlesworth’s Pseudepigrapha, and that many Jews, if
...more
