7 - On Animal Apocalypses in the First Century and Beyond

Summary

At the start of this project, I provided a summary of the Animal Apocalypse as it has been handled in previous scholarship: as a product of the Maccabean Revolt. I can now provide my own summary, this time focusing on the Apocalypse of the Birds's function within the tumultuous and complex historical and literary world of first-century Roman Judaea.

As the first century ce progressed, an already fraught relationship between province and empire deteriorated. Various Jews acting in opposition to the Roman Empire (including Jesus of Nazareth) experienced some degree of local popularity but little military success. Then, for reasons still largely opaque to modern historians, what had previously been isolated and quickly extinguished sparks of resistance caught flame in 66 ce. Surprising ancient and modern observers alike, a Judaean resistance force rebuffed a Roman siege of Jerusalem and achieved a decisive rout of the retreating legion. According to Suetonius, it walked away from this stunning victory with no less a trophy than the legion's aquila, or eagle standard. This historical matrix is the first horizon in which I situate the emergence of the Apocalypse of the Birds.

Meanwhile, a work that I have labeled the Vision of the Beasts was in circulation among Jews. The Vision of the Beasts as it has come down to us is heavily invested in the idea of natural conflict. By this I mean, first, the idea of a kind of inevitability of struggle; any ancient people practiced in animal husbandry knows that sheep will always be beset by predators. But, second, this presumption of natural conflict is predicated upon an understanding of the world as inherently segmented into different and irreconcilable groupings. There are many ways to tell a story of Israelite history, but the Vision of the Beasts's particular symbolism ensures that the Israelites are envisioned as fundamentally vulnerable to and separable from other groups of people. Since we likely do not have the full version of the Vision of the Beasts as it once circulated, it is not clear to what end this imaging of the precarious position of the Israelites in history was originally pursued.