The present report applies Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory to the study of ancient Judaean apocalypticism in its historical, socioeconomic, and political contexts. Its central thesis is that each Judaean apocalyptic discourse is waged against the dominant ideology of its society and its perceived sustainers and beneficiaries. The particular focus in this report is Flavian ideology—the dominant ideology of the Roman Empire in the last three decades of the first century CE—and its subversion by the apocalyptic discourse of the late-first century CE text Fourth Ezra. After the Romans quashed a revolt in the province of Judaea and sacked the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, the soon-to-be Roman emperor Vespasian, and his sons Titus and Domitian, initiated and maintained an empire-wide discourse proclaiming Iudaea capta (‘Judaea captured’). By means of coins, monuments, statues, literary propaganda, and the institution of a new Judaean tax, the Flavian emperors magnified their successful suppression of this provincial revolt in order to legitimate their dynasty. This discourse, which quickly became misrecognized in society and persisted long after the tenure of the Flavian dynasty, marked all Judaeans throughout the empire as foreign rebels and barbarians. The author of Fourth Ezra challenged Flavian ideology, and the Iudaea capta discourse in particular, by “revealing”—that is, persuading his audience to believe—that Rome’s victory over Judaea is part of the divine plan, the glory of Rome is fleeting, and the righteous ones who keep God’s Law will still have an opportunity for redemption. A focus of the present analysis is the figure of a lamenting woman employed by both discourses. Whereas the Flavian discourse used a dejected Judaean woman to represent Judaea after the Roman victory, Fourth Ezra’s apocalyptic discourse reveals a similar figure of a lamenting Judaean woman to be Mother Zion, and has her transform into the new, eschatological Jerusalem. When these two discourses are viewed together, regardless of direct influence or dependence, it is clear that the apocalyptic discourse subverts Flavian ideology. In the process, the author of Fourth Ezra recycles power by simultaneously delegitimating the Flavian emperors and legitimating his own social circle of sage-leaders. / text

This dissertation is a study of four ancient stories about the creation and transmission of all or part of the Hebrew Bible: Moses and the stone tablets (Exodus 32-34), Josiah and the discovery of the law-book (2 Kings 22-23), the scroll of Jeremiah and Baruch (Jeremiah 36), and Ezra's legendary restoration of the entire Bible (4 Ezra 14). Each story is a variation on the common narrative pattern of textual loss and recovery, a fact that is noteworthy because this narrative theme stands in tension with one of the cardinal aspirations of scribal culture in antiquity, as it is known from colophons: the fixity, permanence, and inviolability of writing. When the scribal creators of biblical literature told stories about the texts they produced, they represented the text in its early history as vulnerable and threatened. The purpose of this dissertation is to account for that counter-intuitive choice. My central argument is that in each of the three biblical stories, the common narrative pattern of textual loss and recovery serves as the vehicle for a particular argument related to the textualization of divine revelation, and that the stories function in ways that a plotline of uninterrupted textual transmission would not. Stories of textual loss and recovery can be viewed as strategic transactions in which the ideal of the pristine text is sacrificed in order to express other arguments about divine written revelation. After discussing three texts from the Hebrew Bible, I discuss the legend of Ezra's miraculous restoration of the entire Bible after the exile, reconstructing the biblical-exegetical background of 4 Ezra 14 and tracing the meanings of the story in later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literature. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations