Apocalyptic literature

Apocalyptic literature was a new genre of prophetical writing that developed in post-Exilic Jewish culture and was popular among millennialist early Christians.

"Apocalypse" is from the Greek word for "revelation" which means "an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling" (Goswiller 1987 p. 3). The poetry of the Book of Revelation that is traditionally ascribed to John is well known to many Christians who are otherwise unaware of the literary genre it represents.

The apocalyptic literature of Judaism and Christianity embraces a considerable period, from the centuries following the exile down to the close of the middle ages. In the present survey, we shall limit ourselves to the great formative periods in this literature—in Judaism from 200 B.C.E. to 100 C.E., and in Christianity from 50 to approximately 350 C.E.

Apocalyptic literature is written in symbolism, poetry, and imageries, as well as in an Old Testament prophecy style (Matt. 24-25; Mark 13; Luke 21; Rev. 1:2-4; 19:9; 22:7-19), all woven as a tapestry to describe literal events but with a twist, using language with symbols that are cataclysmic, words that are exaggerated, and metaphors that may be lost to a twenty-first century person. Such imagery is often used for God’s judgments and the end of days, and when emploted in narrative style, provides exaggeration for a purpose, such as in Daniel and most of Revelation. Apocalyptic writing is a more specific form of prophecy that warns us of future events, but the full meaning is hidden to us for the time being.

Metaphors are very evident in apocalyptic writing, such as when Jesus says he is the bread of life (John 6:35) does that mean we only find him in a bakery? Does it mean Jesus is a door, a light, a rock, hears sheep, or that he went to every city, or the Lord’s Supper is cannibalism (Matt. 5:14; 9:35, Luke 22:19; John 10:9, 11)? We may not always know the meanings now, but time will flush them out.

Perspectives on the apocalyptic

An apocalypse is a literary report of a fearful, often violent, vision that reveals truths about past, present, and future times in highly symbolic and poetical terms. The poet may represent himself as transported into a heavenly realm, or the vision may be unveiled— and even interpreted— by an angelic messenger. Apocalyptic exhortations are aimed at chastening and reforming their hearers with threats of punishment and rewards in the coming "end times." A brief apocalyptic vision is found in Gospel of Mark 13 is sometimes called the "Little Apocalypse" and parallel passages can be found in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.

Apocalyptic poetry concentrates the character that Northrop Frye has found in the Bible as a whole: "a series of ecstatic moments or points of expanding apprehension—this approach is in fact the assumption on which every selection of a text for a sermon is based" (Frye 1957 p 326).

In connection with a PBS documentary "Apocalypse!" Dr. L. Michael White said, "Apocalyptic thinking has been called "the child of prophecy in a new idiom." White drew attention to the new direction prophecy took after the Hebrews' return from the trauma of the "Babylonian captivity." Earlier prophets of Israel and Judah had spoken of the word of God, calling the children of Israel to their duty. The newer apocalyptic writings, in the aftermath of the destruction of Solomon's temple looked forward to coming divine retribution and made forecasts of the future that contrasted hope and despair.

The throne of David, itself, as it was not unshakeable as events had proved, took on metaphoric meanings. Early examples of the apocalyptic world-view can be found in the late additions made to Isaiah by the pseudepigraphical writer called the "Third Isaiah" (chapters 56 to 66), and in the collection of prophetic forecasts of this new kind that are collected as Ezekiel

The new cultural element included extreme and vivid polarized contrasts, a distinctly realized Satan in opposition to Yahweh, a city of Evil (Babylon) contrasted to the city of God (Jerusalem), the evil, corruption, and despair of the visible world contrasted with the blinding light of the world to come and often embodied in demons and dragons, elements deriving from Zoroastrian dualism. A new focus on eschatology, the End of All Things, was also foreign to the earlier Hebrew tradition. Some, though not all apocalyptic literature was messianic, predicting the imminent arrival of a savior—even in Essene writings, of more than one savior.

The overtly allegorical nature of this new literature inspired new allegorical readings, now applied to every kind of earlier statement, a detailed unravelling of texts, often to give results not originally foreseen, which influenced the development of techniques of exegesis for Jewish and Christian scholar alike and became a foundation of the medieval hermeneutics, which are still practiced today in some traditionalist circles, as "Biblical hermeneutics."

Among books of prophecy of this new kind, the Book of Daniel was accepted into the Hebrew Bible, among the "Writings," as the sense of a canonic literature developed in the Rabbinic tradition during the first centuries of the Common Era. Other apocalyptic literature did not make the cut: The Book of Enoch, some of which is older than Daniel (though it has received some Christian interpolations and editing in the versions that have survived) was never considered canonical by Jews or Christians, though it is quoted or paralleled dozens of times in the New Testament. Enoch has been called "an ecstatic elaboration" of the line in Genesis (v.22): "And Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he begat Methuselah."

The book of Jubilees (second century B.C.E.) also contains some apocalyptic poetry. The so-called Sibylline Oracles, which were assembled partly in Alexandria, are filled with pseudo-prophecy (vaticinium ex eventu, written after the fact) and threatening generalities; they bridge any apparent gap between late Jewish apocalyptic literature and early Christian writings in the genre.

Within the Christian tradition, the Apocalypse of Peter and The Shepherd of Hermas are examples of apocalyptic literature that devotees of Revelation would also enjoy, though their poetry never reaches the same intensity.

Apocalyptic literature has had a long history. Some aspects of apocalyptic visions can be found in the Kabbalah.

Old Testament Era Apocalyptic Literature

Canonical books

• Isaiah xxiv-xxvii; xxxiii; xxxiv-xxxv
• possibly Jeremiah xxxiii 14-26?
• Ezekiel ii. 8; xxxviii-xxxix
• Joel iii. 9-17
• Zechariah xii—xiv
• Daniel

Non-Canonical Books

• Book of Noah. This is a lost work, known through fragments.
• 1 Enoch, or the Ethiopic Book of Enoch. This is the most important of all the apocryphal writings for the history of religious thought.
• Testaments of the XII Patriarchs. This book, in some respects, is the most important of Old Testament apocryphs, has only recently come into its own. Owing to Christian interpolations, it was taken to be a Christian apocryph, written originally in Greek in the second century C.E. Now it is acknowledged by Christian and Jewish scholars alike to have been written in Hebrew in the second century B.C.E. From Hebrew it was translated into Greek and from Greek into Amenian and Slavonic. The versions have come down in their entirety, and small portions of the Hebrew text have been recovered from later Jewish writings.

The Testaments were written about the same date as the Book of Jubilees. These two books form the only Apology in Jewish literature for the religious and civil hegemony of the Maccabees from the Pharisaic standpoint. To the Jewish interpolation of the first century B.C.E. (about 60-40), a large interest attaches; for these, like I Enoch xci.-civ. and the Psalms of Solomon, constitute an unmeasured attack on every office—prophetic, priestly, and kingly—administered by the Maccabees.

• Psalms of Solomon. These psalms, in all 18, enjoyed but small consideration in early times, for only six direct references to them are found in early literature. Their ascription to Solomon is due solely to the copyists or translators, for no such claim is made in any of the psalms. They protest against the Asmonaean house for usurping the throne of David, and laying violent hands on the high priesthood (xvii. 5, 6, 8), and proclaim the coming of the Messiah, the Son of David, who is to set all things right and establish the supremacy of Israel.
• The Assumption of Moses. This book was lost for many centuries till a large fragment of it was discovered by Antonio Maria Ceriani in 1861 (Monumenta Sacra, I. i. 55-64) from a palimpsest of the sixth century. Very little was known about the contents of this book prior to this discovery. The book was written between 4 B.C.E. and 7 C.E. As for the author, he was a Chasid of the ancient type, and glorifies the ideals which were cherished by the old Pharisaic party, but which were now being fast disowned in favor of a more active role in the political life of the nation. His object was to protest against the growing secularization of the Pharisaic party through its adoption of popular Messianic beliefs and political ideals.
• Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch. This apocalypse has survived only in the Syriac version. The Syriac is a translation from the Greek, and the Greek in turn from the Hebrew. The book treats of the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom, the woes of Israel in the past and the destruction of Jerusalem in the present, as well as of theological questions relating to original sin, free will, and works. The views expressed on several of these subjects are often conflicting. We must, therefore, assume a number of independent sources put together by an editor or else that the book is on the whole the work of one author who made use of independent writings but failed to blend them into one harmonious whole. In its present form the book was written soon after A.D. 70.
• 4 Ezra. This apocryph is variously named. In the first Arabic and Ethiopic versions it is called 1 Ezra; in some Latin MSS. and in the English authorized version it is 2 Ezra, and in the Armenian 3 Ezra. With the majority of the Latin MSS. we designate the book 4 Ezra. In its fullest form this apocryph consists of sixteen chapters, but i.-ii. and xv.-xvi. are of different authorship from each other and from the main work iii.-xiv. The book was written originally in Hebrew.
• Greek Apocalypse of Baruch. This book survives in two forms in Slavonic and Greek. The Slavonic is only of secondary value, as it is merely an abbreviated form of the Greek. Even the Greek cannot claim to be the original work, but only to be a recension of it; for, whereas Origen states that this apocalypse contained an account of the seven heavens, the existing Greek work describes only five, and the Slavonic only two. As the original, work presupposes 2 Enoch and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch) and was known to Origen, an early Christian scholar, theologian, and one of the most distinguished of the early fathers of the Christian Church. It was written between A.D. 80 and 200, and nearer the earlier date than the later, as it would otherwise be hard to understand how it came to circulate among Christians.
• Apocalypse of Abraham. This book is of Jewish origin, but in part worked over by a Christian reviser. The first part treats of Abraham's conversion, and the second forms an. apocalyptic expansion of Gen. xv.
• Lost Apocalypses: Prayer of Joseph. The Prayer of Joseph is quoted by Origen as speaking and claiming to be "the first servant in God's presence," "the first-begotten of every creature animated by God," and declaring that the angel who wrestled with Jacob (and was identified by Christians with Christ) was only eighth in rank. The work was obviously anti-Christian.
• Book of Eldad and Modad. This book was written in the name of the two prophets mentioned in Num. xi. 26-29. It consisted, according to the Targ. Jon. on Num. xi. 26-20, mainly of prophecies on Magog's last attack on Israel.
• Apocalypse of Elijah.
• Apocalypse of Zephaniah. Apart from two of the lists, this work is known to us in its original form only through a citation in Clem. Alex. Strom. v. II, 77.
• 2 Enoch, or the Slavonic Enoch, or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. This new fragment of the Enochic literature was recently brought to light through five MSS. discovered in Russia and Servia. The book in its present form was written before A.D. 70 in Greek by an orthodox Hellenistic Jew, who lived in Egypt.
• Oracles of Hystaspes.
• Testament of Job. Apocrypha Anecdota, ii. pp. lxxii.-cii., 104-137, holds that the book in its present form was written by a Christian Jew in Egypt on the basis of a Hebrew Midrash on Job in the second or third century.
• Testaments of the III Patriarchs. This work was written in Egypt, according to James, and survives also in Slavonic, Romanian, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions. It deals with Abraham's reluctance to die and the means by which his death was brought about. With the exception of chaps. x.-xi., it is really a legend and not an apocalypse.
• Sibylline Oracles. Of the books which have come down to us, the main part is Jewish, and was written at various dates, iii. 97-829, iv.-v. are decidedly of Jewish authorship, and probably xi.-xii., xiv. and parts of i.-ii. The oldest portions are in iii., and belong to the second century B.C.E.

New Testament Era Apocalyptic Literature

When we pass from Jewish literature to that of the New Testament, we enter into a new and larger atmosphere at once recalling and transcending what had been best in the prophetic periods of the past. Again the heavens had opened and the divine teaching come to mankind, no longer merely in books bearing the names of ancient patriarchs, but on the lips of living men, who had taken courage to appear in person as God's messengers before His people. But though Christianity was in spirit the descendant of ancient Jewish prophecy, it was no less truly the child of that Judaism which had expressed its highest aspirations and ideals in pseudepigraphic and apocalyptic literature. Hence we shall not be surprised to find that the two tendencies are fully represented in primitive Christianity, and, still more strange as it may appear, that New Testament apocalyptic found a more ready hearing amid the stress and storm of the 1st century than the prophetic side of Christianity, and that the type of the forerunner on the side of its declared asceticism appealed more readily to primitive Christianity than that of Him who came "eating and drinking," declaring both worlds good and both God's.

Early Christianity had thus naturally a special fondness for this class of literature. It was Christianity that preserved Jewish apocalyptic, when it was abandoned by Judaism as it sank into Rabbinism, and gave it a Christian character either by a forcible exegesis or by a systematic process of interpolation. Moreover, it cultivated this form of literature and made it the vehicle of its own ideas. Though apocalyptic served its purpose in the opening centuries of the Christian era, it must be confessed that in many of its aspects its office is transitory, as they belong not to the essence of Christian thought. When once it had taught men that the next world was God's world, though it did so at the cost of relinquishing the present to Satan, it had achieved its real task, and the time had come for it to quit the stage of history, when Christianity appeared as the heir of this true spiritual achievement. But Christianity was no less assuredly the heir of ancient prophecy, and thus as spiritual representative of what was true in prophecy and apocalyptic; its essential teaching was as that of its Founder that both worlds were of God and that both should be made God's.

Canonical apocryphal works include Apocalypse in Mark xiii, 2 Thessalonians ii, and ApocalypseRevelation). Non-Canonical apocryphal works include Greek Apocalypse of Peter, Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, Testament of Hezekiah, Testament of Abraham, Oracles of Hystaspes, Vision of Isaiah, Shepherd of Hermas, 5 Ezra, 6 Ezra, Christian Sibyllines, Apocalypses of Paul, Thomas, and Stephen, Apocalypse of Esdras, Apocalypse of Paul, Apocalypse of John, Arabic Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of the Virgin, Apocalypse of Sedrach, Apocalypse of Daniel, Thee Revelations of Bartholomew, Questions of St Bartholomew, and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Chartsworth, James H. Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, Anchor Bible, 1983. ISBN 978-0385096300
• Cook, Stephen L. The Apocalyptic Literature: Interpreting Biblical Texts, Abingdon Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0687051960
• Collins, John Joseph. The Apocalyptic Imagination: A Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. ISBN 978-0802843715
• Goswiller, Richard. Revelation, Pacific Study Series, Melbourne, 1987.
• Reddish, Mitchell G. Apocalyptic Literature: A Reader, Hendrickson Publishers, 1995. ISBN 978-1565632103

External links

• L. Michael White, "Apocalyptic literature in Judaeism and early Christianity" Thorough historical introduction.
• Prof. Felix Just, S.J., offers definitions of apocalypse.
• David M. Williams, "The Book of Revelation as Jewish Apocalyptic Literature" Concise introduction to the genre.

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