The Epistemology of Otherworldly Knowledge: Prolegomena to a New Approach to Jewish Apocalypticism

Abstract In recent decades, two methodological approaches have dominated the scholarly study of Jewish apocalyptic literature. The first examines apocalypticism through the lens of genre, an approach shaped in the late 1970s by the work of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Genres Project. The second approaches apocalypticism through the lens of ideology, as developed by the so-called Italian School. The present study proposes a third, epistemological approach, which examines Jewish apocalyptic literature through the category of knowledge. It argues that neither genre nor ideology, but rather the distinctive nature of reified otherworldly knowledge, constitutes the defining feature of Jewish apocalypticism.