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The study of especially apocalyptic traditions from the Second Temple period that are concerned with the figure of Melchizedek throws light on a vitality of interest that presupposes but is no longer simply dependent on the pre-texts of Gen. 14 and Ps. 110 in the Hebrew Bible. Although the epistle to the Hebrews is clearly influenced by these pre-texts, the latitude its author takes in focusing on Jesus as both priest ‘after the order of Melchizedek’ and as Son may be said to have been shaped by the kind of creative and imaginative engagement with tradition reflected in other Second Temple texts.

To the extent that a writing openly presents itself as the result of authorial activity, discussions of genre cannot dispense with the question of how, formally, communication occurs. Taking the Epistle of Enoch and Apocalypse of Weeks in 1 Enochas the points of departure, the present essay attempts to show that a discussion of what a document declares about its own writtenness opens up a way of understanding it in comparison to other documents that do the same along analogous lines, whether sapiential or apocalyptic.

During the last twenty-five years an increasing number of publications have focussed on the "watchers" (often called "fallen angels") and their "giant" offspring (sometimes associated with "demons") in Jewish literature of the second temple period. It has been recognised that a number of early Jewish traditions regarded these beings as essentially evil, representative of forces that are inimical to God's original purpose for creation.' This picture is, of course, most well known through apocalyptic and wisdom literature composed prior to the Common Era, remains of some being attested among the Dead Sea Scrolls: the early Enoch traditions-so especially the Book of Watchers and Animal Apocalypse in I Enoch, and the Book of