Future Agents of 4Ezra in Light of First and Second Century Jewish Visionary Experiences

Considering that a distinction between Jewish and proto-Christian visionary accounts for the 1st-2nd cent. CE cannot exist, this paper aims at illustrating how the so-called apocalyptic texts, and especially the Fourth Book of Ezra (IV Ezra), inasmuch narratives of concrete visionary experiences or accounts of real contacts with the other world, can be considered as veritable “mosaics” composed of images or segments of traditional images. This re-assembly is the product of the typical process through which visionaries remember and/or reconstruct their contacts with the other world in attempt of conferring authority to what they have experienced in the name of the authoritative tradition of their particular socio-cultural context. Therefore, a distinction between Judaism and Christianity is useless since the cultural context to which the first believers in Christ belonged during the 1st and the 2nd century CE is still totally Jewish, hence the tradition they refer to is the many-sided and versatile Jewish one. The area of interest I have chosen is that of the so-called "eschatological agents." I have used this expression since I believe it perfectly describes the complexity of these figures more than it describes the figure of Messiah, inevitably teleological for their Christianity-centered purposes. One aspect we have to consider when we talk about “eschatological agents” is that we are dealing with a relevant element of Jewish visionary texts: the veneration of beings that appeared during an experience of contact with the other world. The Jewish veneration scenes of the Roman-Hellenistic period provide a series of traditional images, veritable “tools of utterability” for what is per se ineffable. The re-reading and the subsequent re-consideration of traditional elements of various origins is functional for the cultural realization of what the seer claims to have seen during his experience. Hence, these can be defined as representations of a veritable veneration scenes (with all the characteristics connected to them: elements that imply kingdom and/or power, tributes such as bows, obeisance, celebrations etc.) in the sense that the ways in which the seer says and communicates what he or other beings in his visions have experienced are traditionally dialectical, very often being also identifications between social actors (an individual or a group) and imaginary agents. Therefore, "veneration” is a term that does not only indicate the tradition through which various visionaries recount their experience of contact with supernatural beings but it also refers to the dynamic of identification between concrete social agents directly entering (through rituals) the other world and imaginary agents.