| Books and writing, says Jacques Derrida, are always concerned with questions of life and death. Nowhere is this more true than regarding the heavenly book motif. Widespread throughout the ancient Near East, the motif plays an important role in early Judeo-Christian literature, and especially in its apocalypses. In fact, it is the rare Jewish or Christian apocalypse from the heyday of the genre (200 B.C.E.-200 C.E.) that does not employ the motif. Although many have acknowledged the importance of heavenly books in apocalypses, this is the first full-length study of the phenomenon.; This project identifies four sub-types of the motif: the book of life, the book of deeds, the book of fate, and the book of action, and it examines the function and development of each of these throughout the period in question. In the Hebrew Bible inscription in a book of life indicates the earthly lives of the people as God's citizens (i.e., Exodus 32:32-33), but in Jewish apocalypses it manages entrance into the afterlife (i.e., Daniel 12:1). In Christian texts, the book of life moves out of the hands of God and/or angels and into the hands of Christ, and those who are written in it are members of the polity of Christ (i.e., Revelation 21:27). The book of deeds is a record of the actions of individuals or groups of people. It appears rarely in the Hebrew scriptures (i.e., Daniel 7:10) and early Christian literature (i.e., Revelation 20:12) but frequently in Second Temple apocalypses such as the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch and the Testament of Abraham . It is always used for judgment. The book of fate records what will happen in advance. Rare in the Hebrew scriptures, it is most popular in Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls, both of which evidence a deterministic worldview. The book of fate is not employed in Christian literature of this period. The book of action, as the name indicates, acts; its content is subordinate to its deleterious effects on its target population. The only examples of this sub-type appear in Zechariah 5:1-5, Revelation 5:1-8:1, and Odes of Solomon 23. |
