The mountains should disappear: imagetic syncretism in jewish-zoroastrian apocalypticism

Abstract

This article aims to compare two apocalyptic landscapes whose similarities end up jumping in the eyes despite belonging to different religious traditions. It is the "Leveling of the Earth" that appears in both Jewish and Zoroastrian apocalyptic. To what extent has one tradition influenced the other? Would we have here a case of image syncretism? Could the Jewish text of 1 Enoch 67 be regarded as a herald of Zoroastrian eschatological traditions present in the Great Iranian Bundahishn? To deal with these issues the article looks at the theme of the Mountains in poetic, prophetic, and cosmogonic sources, both Zoroastrian and Jewish, in order to conceive how these geographical accidents were treated when quoted. Based on the analysis of these texts, an exercise in historical understanding is made: Why, for both traditions, should the Mountains disappear? Constructing his dialogue with the state of the art, the article does not shy away from waging an interpretive debate in order to bring the reading of the ancient sources to their more immediate context of reception. Thus, we try to avoid the problem of feedbacking anachronistic conceptions on ancient texts.