Riches, Poverty, and the Faithful: Perspectives on Wealth in the Second Temple Period and the Apocalypse of John

MATHEWS, MARK,DEWAYNE (2010) 

The present study considers the degree to which John’s portrayal of the faithful Christian community in the Apocalypse is informed by Jewish apocalyptic traditions related to wealth in the Second Temple period. Previous studies have attributed the author’s radical stance against wealth and economic participation to an ad hoc response against the idolatry and social injustices of the Roman Empire and imperial cults. This thesis argues that there is reasonable evidence to suggest that the author may have already been predisposed to reject affluence as a feature of the present age for the ideal faithful community based on received tradition.

The study begins by delineating the problem in a critical review of how scholars have attempted to deal with this language through either the social world of Roman Asia Minor or the author’s use of the biblical prophets. This discussion demonstrates the need to take a tradition-historical approach that includes an examination of Jewish apocalyptic traditions preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other Jewish literature not found at Qumran that demonstrate a decided concern over wealth. These Second Temple texts are then examined collectively against the language of wealth and poverty in selected passages of the Apocalypse. The evidence reveals an emphasis on the part of John on the irreversible, eschatological consequences of ethical behavior directly related to wealth based on a certain cosmological and theological understanding, an emphasis that has close analogies in some Second Temple literature.

The study concludes that traditions preserved in the Epistle of Enoch and later Enochic texts have played a formative role in shaping the author’s theological perspective concerning material blessing for the faithful in the present age and the world through which he legitimized the radical stance he imposed on his readers/hearers.

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Joseph Smith, Mormonism and Enochic Tradition

CIRILLO, SALVATORE (2010) 

Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley (1910-2005) claimed to have developed an argument, in two parts, that proved the bona fides of the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith (1805-1844). First, Nibley compared Smith’s extract of the prophecy of Enoch, written in 1830-31, with the pseudeupigraphic 1 Enoch, written prior to the first century CE, and Nibley found numerous parallels. Second, in a seven point argument, Nibley denied that Smith had access to any material related to 1 Enoch, in particular citing a translation of 1 Enoch published by Richard Laurence in 1821. Therefore, without access and with parallels, Nibley concludes that divine inspiration is the only explanation for the substantial similarities between Smith's own account of Enoch in his Book of Moses and 1 Enoch. This thesis investigates that conclusion and reconsiders Nibley’s argument in light of new scholarship on early Mormonism, recent discoveries about Enochic material in America during the early 1800's, and the availability of those Enochic materials to Smith and his companions. I argue that Smith did in fact have access to 1 Enoch and a variety of other Enochic materials, that beyond parallels there are substantial similarities that further argue influence occurred, and that evident in the practices of early Mormonism are the affects of that Enochic influence.

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