A Myth of Imperial Death

The narrative spanning 1 Enoch 6–11 is often regarded as an apocalyptic Jewish response to the rise of Hellenistic imperialism, but a re-examination of its contents points to the demise of the Persian empire as the background to its redaction. The narrative rejects the imperial mythology sustained throughout the Achaemenid period and by extension, the priestly-scribal curriculum in Jerusalem supported by it that yielded works like Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles. Consequently, the redactors of 1 Enoch 6–11 re-read and repudiate those works and their assumptions about Jewish identity and foreign imperialism.