Animals,Humans,Angels and God: Animal Symbolism in the Historiography of the ‘Animal Apocalypse’ of 1 Enoch

a. Human Metaphors

(1) The Man. The man is used as a metaphor for celestial beings in the An. Apoc.: the good archangels are represented as ‘white men’, the bad angels put in charge of the sheep are the ‘seventy shepherds’, and God himself is consistently called ‘the Lord of the sheep’. The choice of the man metaphor not only shows that angels are a higher level of being than humans, but also is in line with the author's religious conviction that humans were created in the image of God. In Genesis God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness’; ‘…so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’ (1.26–27). Angels are also called ‘sons of God’ in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Gen. 6.2, 4; Job 1.6; 2.1; 38.7). In older traditions, celestial beings are represented in human forms. For example, Abraham entertained three men who were angels (Gen. 18.1–2) and Jacob wrestled with a man who was God (Gen. 32.25–33). In traditions closer or contemporary to the time of An. Apoc., angels and God continued to be represented in anthropomorphic forms. In the prophet Ezekiel's vision, God is represented as a ‘figure like that of a man’ (Ezek. 1.26; 8.2). Likewise, in the book of Daniel, written around the same time as the An. Apoc., we are told in a vision of God, who is called ‘the Ancient of Days’, that ‘his clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool’ (7.9). In Daniel's other visions angels such as Gabriel and Michael are clearly portrayed as men (8.15; 10.4–20; 12.5–7). Therefore, the man metaphor for angels and God in the An. Apoc. seems a rather natural choice, given the author's belief in human's resemblance of the divine. On the other hand, the anthropomorphic representation of celestial beings makes it possible for the divine to have a closer relationship with the world while maintaining their higher order. The only angels not symbolized as men are the evil ones that descended from heaven and had illicit children with women on earth. They are given the metaphor of fallen stars which turned into bulls (86.1–3). The anthropomorphic metaphor for God in the An. Apoc. also stands in sharp contrast to zoomorphic representations of the divine in the wider Mesopotamian culture in which the Hebrew culture was a part.

(2) The shepherd. A specific metaphor used in the An. Apoc. for angels is the shepherd, which is a common metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, and its significance reflects the historical way of life of the Israelites. However, the shepherd metaphor in the Bible does not have any exclusive referent. It is most often used to refer to a leader of Israel, with the sheep correspondingly referring to Israel. ¹⁵ Foreign leaders are also referred to as a shepherd; for example, Jeremiah uses this metaphor for the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (43.12) and Isaiah uses it for the Persian king Cyrus (44.28). The shepherd and sheep is also used as a metaphor for a foreign king and his troops (Jer. 6.3). For once, it is even the image of death shepherding the dead in sheol (Ps. 49.15). God himself is also symbolized as the shepherd. ¹⁶ There is a striking similarity between An. Apoc. 89.28, ‘…the Lord of the sheep was pasturing them and giving them water and grass…’, and Ps 23.1–2, ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.’ The shepherd metaphor is thus not a simple substitution for a particular subject; it is the notion of leading and guiding as well as the shepherd's relationship with the sheep that is evoked to refer to a variety of things according to context.

(3) The ‘seventy shepherds’. The ‘seventy shepherds’ metaphor in the An. Apoc. is an unsurprising, yet still most creative usage of a common symbol. The shepherd is not even used once in the Bible to refer to an angel, but the tradition of seventy angels guarding seventy Gentile nations is well attested. Genesis 10 gives seventy nations as descendants of Noah's three sons. Deuteronomy 32.8 in the lxx states that God divided the nations according to the number of the angels of God. ¹⁷ The book of Daniel implies a strong belief that each nation has an angelic prince (10.13, 21–22). The ingenuity of the An. Apoc. lies in its change of the seventy shepherds from a spatial concept into a temporal one, i.e. seventy angels in charge of seventy periods of time, apparently as an alternative interpretation of Jeremiah's prophecy of seventy years of the Exile. ¹⁸ In doing so, the An. Apoc. offers a unique explanation for the excessive suffering of the Israelites under foreign powers: that God abandoned Israel because of her apostasy to the care of seventy angels, but the angels, in disobedience to God, gave more sheep than what they were allowed to the wild beasts and birds to destroy. ¹⁹

b. Positive Animal Metaphors

A range of animals are chosen to symbolize humans in the story, but the only positive metaphors are the cattle and the sheep. A first impression of what marks the two species out from the rest is their being domestic animals, valuable to a society whose life is based on agriculture and animal husbandry.

(1) The cattle. Antediluvian men and women are represented as bulls, heifers and calves, with the only exception of the offspring of the fallen angels. Noah and his sons as well as Abraham and Isaac are also symbolized as bulls. From Jacob onwards bulls disappeared, to be replaced by sheep and other wild beasts and birds, until the Messiah, who is described as a white bull with large horns; with him all other species became white bulls (90.37–38).

In the Hebrew Bible, the bull and its related terms are used in different contexts either positively or negatively to refer to a range of things, from kings and princes to tribes and nations. In other words, the bull as a metaphor has an array of associated meanings that can only be determined by context. When referring to the tribe of Joseph, it denotes strength (Deut. 33.17); when used on enemies it suggests danger and ferocity (Ps. 22.13). At other times it symbolizes stubborn and wanton behaviour of nations such as Egyptians, Edomites or Babylonians that calls for chastisement. ²⁰ There is much evidence in the Hebrew Bible that ancient Israelites were under the strong influence of the Canaanite cult of Baal who is represented as a bull—the episode of the molten calf in Exodus 32 can be seen as an example to show the struggle of monotheistic thought against the popular cult of Baal. Not only in the Canaanite culture, the bull was a common symbol in the entire ancient Near East standing for gods and the royal house. Power and fertility are the two most significant features of the bull metaphor. ²¹ The Hebrew Bible shows that although the Israelites shared the common notion of strength associated with the bull, it is never used as a representation for fertility or the image of their God.

In this cultural background, An. Apoc.'s use of the bull as a metaphor for the antediluvian world as well as patriarchs Abraham and Isaac is both faithful to its cultural tradition and innovative. Humankind at its beginning was represented as strong, a condition it will resume at the end. The value of this metaphor rests not only in its being an animal both fit for food and for sacrifice (more on this below), but also in its association with vigour, which the sheep metaphor lacks.

(2) The colours—white, red and black. In the antediluvian epoch moral judgment is carried out by means of colour metaphors, with a basic scheme of white, red and black. While Adam was a white bull, Abel was a red bull and Cain, black. In the postdiluvian age, Noah's three sons were also identified with colours: Shem was a white bull, but Ham was red and Japheth was black. The colour white is also used for Adam's son, Seth, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob (white ram), the good angels (white men) and Israelites after the last battle, the Messiah and people in the New Age.

White symbolizes purity and righteousness in the Bible. It is a colour associated with God and angels. ²² Black, in antithesis, represents sin and evil. Black and white should not be seen in racial terms, but rather like the dichotomy of light and darkness. ²³ Red, on the other hand, seems to have the association with bloodshed (e.g. 2 Kgs 3.22; Isa. 63.2). In Isa. 1.18, it is red, not black, that is placed in antithesis with white:

In this sense, red also symbolises sin and iniquity.

The metaphor of Abel as a red bull naturally calls into mind the meaning of bloodshed and victim of murder; but the metaphor of Ham as a red bull is more puzzling. It is possible that the author has Noah's curse of Canaan, son of Ham, in mind. ²⁴ Tiller suggests that the three colours representing the three brothers perhaps should be taken together to ‘characterize the postdiluvian age as essentially the same as the antediluvian age, inhabited by both righteous and wicked, both perpetrators and victims of evil’. ²⁵ I think it is a well-reasoned argument. The author seems to be most concerned with making sure the line of white bulls is not interrupted and corrupted. In the final age, all creatures return to being white cattle with no exception, no more red or black.

(3) The sheep. The sheep metaphor is closely related to that of the shepherd. The ‘shepherd–sheep’ symbolism is commonly used in the ancient Near East to refer to a king and his people; ²⁶ the Hebrew culture is no exception. In the Bible, a flock of sheep with God as the shepherd is a most common metaphor for Israel, although the shepherd can also be a Davidic king. But it is important to point out that even so, the sheep is never an exclusive metaphor for Israel in the Bible. Foreign people are also described as flocks of sheep under their leaders. ²⁷ In our text the sheep is a metaphor for Israel; moral judgment of the Israelites is symbolized by blindness and going astray as religious apostasy. The blindness calls to mind a Leviticus law that damaged sheep are not eligible for sacrifice (22.22–25).

Five individuals are represented by the ram metaphor in the An. Apoc.: Jacob (89.12, 14), Saul (89.42), David (89.45, 47), Solomon (89.48) and Judas Maccabee (90.9, 13, 31)—all five of which were Israelite leaders. The use of the ram as a term for leaders is also widely attested in ancient Near Eastern cultures, ²⁸ and Hebrew culture included. In the Bible both Judean and foreign leaders are described as rams. ²⁹ The most well-known ram metaphor in the Bible is in Daniel 8.3–7, 20, where Daniel has a vision of a ram with two horns explained as Media and Persia. Closely related to the ram is the horn, a symbol for power and honour, ³⁰ or aggressive rulers and kingdoms. ³¹

In the An. Apoc. the horn is a metaphor for the strength and military prowess of Israelite leaders, in particular in the case of Saul, David and Judas Maccabee.

c. Negative animal metaphors

Before the flood humankind was one herd of cattle without racial distinction. Positive and negative judgment is carried out through the colour scheme. Ethnic distinctions were introduced in the postdiluvian epoch after Noah's three sons; from then on positive and negative evaluation is reflected mainly in the choice of animals standing for different races. Even before Noah, however, three animals are chosen to represent the illicit offspring of the fallen stars and women on earth.

(1) The elephant, the camel and the donkey. The elephant is never mentioned in the Bible; the camel and the donkey appear as common domestic animals, but with associations of being unclean. It is said that these three animals were chosen for their names in Aramaic are puns on ‘Nephilim’, ‘Gibborim’ and ‘Elioud’, the three types of giant offspring mentioned in 1 En. 7.2. ³² The elephant and the camel metaphors certainly suggest the size and the grotesque nature of these creatures. All three animals are related to the cattle by their being herbivores that chew the cud, but different in not parting the hoof, thus showing their partial human origin.

(2) The predators and scavengers. A list of animals is given in 89.10 to represent the nations engendered from Noah's three sons: lions, tigers, wolves, dogs, hyenas, wild boars, foxes, rock badgers, pigs, falcons, vultures, kites, eagles and ravens. ³³ From the last two white bulls came wild asses (from Abraham) and black wild boars and sheep (from Isaac). Three of these metaphors for Gentile nations are directly from the Hebrew Bible: dogs referring to Philistines (1 Sam. 17.43), wild asses referring to the Ishmaelites (Gen. 16.12) and the lion standing for Babylonians (Jer. 4.7; 49.19; 50.17; 51.38). Despite these direct borrowings, the symbols should be seen not as simple substitutions but selected notions filtered through coloured lenses.

To take the lion for an example, although here it may be a direct borrowing from the Bible, the lion is never a one-dimensional metaphor for Babylon. In the Bible it can be a positive symbol for bravery and strength, ³⁴ for the royal house of Judah, ³⁵ or for God—either in his power or his wrath; ³⁶ otherwise it can be a negative symbol for dangerous foreign powers such as Assyria and Babylonia, ³⁷ or for stealth and ferocity. ³⁸ The lion as a metaphor, therefore, may evoke a range of associated notions in the Hebrew cultural background. The specific meaning of a metaphor must be understood depending on the context. The same principle works for the other animal metaphors as well.

It is interesting to observe how these animals stand in relation to the sheep. Although cast in a negative light the Ishmaelites and Edomites, related to the Hebrew people through Abraham and Isaac, are represented by hoofed animals. Other nations known to Israel through oppression and conquest are represented as wild carnivorous beasts and scavenging birds. Nations known from the Fertile Crescent with links to Israel by land, such as Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Philistines, Arameans and Ammonites, are given the symbols of predatory mammals whereas the Macedonian, Ptolemaic and Seleucid Greek powers are symbolized by dangerous birds, probably indicating their original distance from the land of Israel and their arrival with swift movement.

d. Clean and Unclean Animals

At this point the criterion of domestic versus wild animals is obviously inadequate, as is that of carnivores versus herbivores, for why are domestic, non-carnivorous animals such as camels, donkeys and pigs also used as negative metaphors? A major principle at work behind the author's rationale for animal choice is clean versus unclean in the Jewish dietary and sacrificial law.

Complicated legislation regarding clean and unclean animals in cultic rituals and matters of holiness is dealt with in Leviticus 11 and Deut. 14.1–18. I will limit my discussion to beasts and birds and omit other creatures that are not used as metaphors in the An. Apoc. In terms of dietary law, beasts that are clean to eat must part the hoof and chew the cud; an animal failing to meet either one of the two conditions is unclean. Thus the camel, although it chews the cud, is unclean because it does not part the hoof. Similar logic is applied to the pig, which, although its hoof is parted, does not chew cud (Lev. 11.3–8; Deut. 14.6–8). The ox, the sheep, the goat and other wild species that meet the two conditions are clean to eat (Deut. 14.4–5). Whatever goes upon its paws among beasts is unclean (Lev. 11.27); this would include the carnivores such as the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the wolf, the dog, the hyena etc. Birds such as the eagle, the vulture, the kite, the raven, the owl, the hawk, etc. are an abomination (Lev. 11.13–19; Deut. 14.11–18). Not all clean animals can be sacrificed to God; only offering of the cattle of the herd and sheep of the flock is acceptable (Lev. 1.2). If the offering is of birds, only turtledoves or pigeons are possible (Lev. 1.14). The choice of the bull and the sheep in the An. Apoc. as positive metaphors is clearly because they are prized as clean animals, whereas the choice for the Gentiles is unclean animals, many of which are spelt out in the Torah.

What is the author's understanding of the significance of the purity law? No doubt he would have been familiar with what he believed God to have commanded, that Israel must not make her soul abominable by unclean beast or bird (Lev. 20.25), and that

These are clear statements that it is a law of holiness in a religious sense, on the one hand, and an identify marker, on the other hand, to single out Israel as a nation with a unique relationship with God. The cattle and sheep metaphors are indications of such a relationship.

Further to holiness and separation, the differentiation of the clean and the unclean also represents a serious moral judgment by the author of the other nations. There have been a number of modern speculations about the rationale behind the clean and unclean categorizations. ³⁹ What may help us explain the choice of animal metaphors, however, is what the author himself could have thought. In this regard, another Jewish work written less than half a century after the An. Apoc. may perhaps shed some light. The Letter of Aristeas, written in Alexandria about 150–100 bce, demonstrates Jewish understanding that ‘in the matter of meats…the whole underlying rationale is directed toward righteousness and righteous human relationships’ (169). ⁴⁰ The wild and carnivorous birds ‘seize lambs and kids and outrage human beings dead or alive’; thus by declaring them impure, the law giver establishes ‘the solemn binding duty’ to ‘practice righteousness and not to lord it over anyone in reliance upon their own strength’ (145–48). The cloven hoof of clean animals is understood as ‘symbolism’ so the Jewish people know why they are ‘distinct from all other men’, the majority of whom ‘defile themselves in their relationships’, ‘committing a serious offense’ taking lands and whole cities (150–53). Rumination stands for a constant reminder to ‘remember the Lord, who did great and wonderful deeds in thee’ (154–57). Another Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria (20 bce–50 ce), also offers an ethical explanation of the law. If a moral understanding of the law is a shared Jewish outlook, then the choice of the unclean animals in the An. Apoc. expresses the author's conviction about Israel's status as God's chosen people despite her great misfortune at the hands of other nations, his recognition of the cruel and savage oppression Israel suffered under foreign powers, and his critical attitude to the morality of the Gentile people.

The dichotomy of clean versus unclean, holiness versus abomination, also underlies David Bryan's study of animal symbolism in the An. Apoc. ⁴¹ By adopting Mary Douglas' anthropological approach to kosher legislation, Bryan highlights the kosher mentality of the assumed priestly author of the An. Apoc. as the underpinning worldview of his symbolic work, in which clean animals represent the created order whereas unclean animals stand for forces of chaos. Thus human history is a battle between cosmos and chaos, with each stage filled with cycles of order, destruction and temporary restoration, until the Eschaton—the final restoration to primeval condition. ⁴² Bryan's thesis is criticized by Olson, ⁴³ who questions why there is a lack of examples of dietary transgression if the author was so influenced by a ‘kosher mentality’. ⁴⁴ Olson believes that it could be a simple artistic choice to cast Israel in a positive light, on the one hand, and pick symbols with repulsing connotations for Israel's enemies. ⁴⁵ He challenges Bryan's view by citing a conflict between a kosher mentality and the salvation of unclean Gentiles at the end of the narrative. ⁴⁶

Olson's criticism is not fully justified. The use of clean and unclean animals in the An. Apoc. is simply too consistent and systematic to be random, or a simple artistic device. ⁴⁷ While the priestly identity of the author remains a conjecture, there is indeed allusion to dietary transgression, change of lifestyle and behaviour in the story (86.2). Also, a kosher mentality is not necessarily set against a belief in universal salvation; there is no logical conclusion that the unclean cannot be transformed into the clean again. I agree with Bryan that the choice of clean and unclean animals to represent Israel and her enemies reflects the author's deep worldview and is central to understanding the significance of history as understood in the An. Apoc. However, the weakness of Bryan's argument lies in his identifying the unclean animals as representations of forces of chaos, yet the author seems to be drawing our attention to evil angelic forces on the cosmic plane as the main cause for disorder rather than the Gentile on the worldly plane. This is clearly demonstrated by the final judgment of the fallen angels, rebellious shepherds and apostate Israelites, but not the unclean Gentiles (90.20–27).

Therefore, the choice of clean and unclean animals indeed reflects the author's worldview and carries deep meanings for the text. It should be interpreted, however, not in terms of order and chaos, but rather as an indication of Israel's special relationship with God, her victimization by other nations, as well as her moral judgment of the Gentiles, as I have argued above. A moral explanation of clean and unclean animals such as that offered by Aristeas and Philo may seem inadequate to our modern mind, as Bryan points out; ⁴⁸ nevertheless it reflects the Jewish understanding of themselves and the others at the time the An. Apoc. was written and read.