Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World

A Comprehensive Introduction

Frederick J. Murphy

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780801039782
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441238740
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

2013 Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Award for Best Book Relating to the New Testament

Frank Moore Cross Award, American Schools of Oriental Research (2013)

Apocalypticism is not a peripheral topic in biblical studies. It represents the central, characteristic transformation of Hebrew thought in the period of the Second Temple. It therefore constituted the worldview of Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians, and it is the context in which the New Testament books were written. In this volume, Frederick Murphy defines apocalypticism while discussing its origins, where it comes into play in the Hebrew Bible, and how it relates to Jesus and the New Testament.

1

Definitions and Origins

The Advent of Apocalypticism in Ancient Judaism

The history of ancient Israel, like that of all peoples, is marked by key events and periods that define or redefine its identity. Many of those watershed moments are so important to the people’s self-conception that they become enshrined in a sacred story that changes over time, as does the people itself. History and legend intermingle and often become indistinguishable. This is especially true in the ancient world, when civic life and religious life were not separate realms. A change in the political or economic life of a people resulted in a change in its religion as well.

Israel’s sacred story is embodied in the Hebrew Bible, roughly what Christians call the Old Testament. Since all Jews and Christians whom we will study in this book take for granted at least the main lines of this story, it is well for us to begin by briefly outlining a few aspects of it that affect our study.

Discouraged with trying to deal with humanity as a whole, God called Abraham and told him that he would make of him a great people and would give him a land (Gen. 12). Abraham traveled from Mesopotamia to Canaan, the land God chose to give to Abraham’s posterity. Abraham and his descendants were to practice circumcision as a sign of their special relationship with God and their separateness from other nations (Gen. 17). Abraham’s son Isaac had a son Jacob. Jacob and eleven of his twelve sons traveled with their families to Egypt, where the twelfth son, Joseph, had assumed political power and could protect them. After spending about four centuries there, they escaped the clutches of an oppressive Pharaoh (an Egyptian king). God split the Red Sea to allow them, under Moses’s leadership, to cross and escape the Egyptians. God then brought the sea back onto their Egyptian pursuers, drowning them. This was the exodus, to which later generations would look back as the basis for their relationship with Yahweh, Israel’s own God.

Moses and Israel traveled to Mount Sinai in the desert where they made a covenant (an agreement) with the God who had just saved them. God promised to be their God if they obeyed his commands. He gave them the Ten Commandments, along with many other statutes. Central to those commands was how God was to be worshiped in the cult (Israel’s religion as it concerned temple, altar, sacrifice, priests, and priestly liturgy), as well as instructions for keeping the major feasts (weekly Sabbath, the Day of Atonement, Passover and Unleavened Bread, Weeks, Tabernacles, New Year). Other rules concerned food, ritual purity, sexual practices, and civil law. The totality was Torah, literally “instruction,” but usually translated “law.” It was Israel’s road map to God’s will. Although “Torah” can be used more widely, it comes to mean primarily the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—also known as the books of Moses.

After wandering for forty years in the desert as punishment for not trusting God, the Israelites entered Canaan under Joshua’s leadership and took possession of it. Joshua distributed the land among the twelve tribes. After several centuries of rule by tribal heroes called judges, a monarchy was established. The first king, Saul, failed to establish a lasting dynasty, so he was succeeded by David and then by David’s son Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into a northern kingdom called Israel and a southern realm called Judah (922 BCE).

In 721 BCE, the north was swallowed up by the expanding Assyrian Empire, and the northern tribes were not heard from again. Legend believes that the ten lost tribes still exist somewhere in the world. Ultimately, these tribes must be restored. This restoration plays a role in many “eschatological” scenarios—pictures of the end of history as we know it, involving a radical change in current conditions.

In 586 BCE, the southern kingdom, Judah, was destroyed by the Babylonians, and Jerusalem and its temple were torn down. The most important members of the Judahite community were exiled to Babylonia, so this period is called the Babylonian exile.

The Persian Cyrus the Great conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE; he allowed the Judahites to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their city and temple. This is the Restoration. The temple was rebuilt in 520–515 BCE, and it stood until the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. This defines the Second Temple period. Differences in the historical situation and in Israel’s religion before and after the exile have led to the use of the adjective “Israelite” for the preexilic period and “Jewish” for the postexilic period. Cyrus did not allow the reinstitution of the monarchy. Eschatological scenarios often anticipated a renewal of the monarchy. Since the king was anointed, he was a māšîyaḥ, a messiah, Hebrew for “anointed one.”

In the next century, the Jewish Nehemiah was sent by the Persian crown to be governor of Judah, to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, and to institute certain reforms, especially ones that supported the temple’s operations and the observance of the Sabbath (his initial trip occurred in 445 BCE). Around the same time (perhaps 458 BCE, perhaps later), Ezra, another Jew well trusted by the Persians, was sent to Judah to bring the written Torah, assembled and edited by the Babylonian Jewish community, to become the law of the land, along with applicable Persian law. The introduction of a written Torah helped make Judaism a religion of the book, as well as one centered on temple sacrifice and residence in a particular God-given land. Ezra was a Jewish priest of the line of Zadok (Solomon’s high priest) and a scribe, one of the few in the ancient world who could read and write and who was therefore qualified to know Israel’s traditions in depth (Hezser 2001; Harris 1989).

The conquests of Alexander the Great (333–323 BCE) initiated the Hellenistic period. “Hellenistic” comes from the Greek word hellas, meaning Greece. This was a long period of intense interaction between Greek culture and local culture, and it met with mixed reactions by the Jews. Some welcomed the changes, and some resisted. Conflict between parties in Jewish Palestine was ideological and sometimes violent.

At this time, Jewish apocalypticism makes its appearance. It is at least partly a reaction to momentous changes taking place in the world as a consequence of Alexander’s conquests. Those changes were political, economic, religious, social, and cultural. Apocalypticism was one way to resist the inroads of empire in Israel (Horsley 2010b; Portier-Young 2011). Apocalyptic ideas and literature are attested in Persia, Israel’s former overlord and still the residence of many Jews, and in Egypt, which had a considerable Jewish population. The earliest extant Jewish apocalypses are two sections of 1 Enoch—the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) and the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82), both written sometime in the third century BCE, shortly after the imposition of Hellenistic imperial rule. The book of Daniel, the only apocalypse in the Jewish Bible, was written in the following century (165 BCE). It was written in response to the attempts of the Hellenistic king Antiochus IV to impose Hellenism and annihilate Judaism.

Apocalypticism changed Israel’s view of the world and history. Information about God, history, Israel, and the world was now available through direct revelation to a seer (one who “sees” visions). History was viewed as a whole, from beginning to an inevitable end. Death was not the end for individuals; there were rewards and punishments after death. Corresponding beliefs in a last judgment, cosmic dissolution, resurrection, heaven and hell, and a restored Israel became common. The unseen world of angels and demons became a subject of intense interest and speculation.

Christianity began as an apocalyptic sect within Judaism. When the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, Judaism redefined itself with the Torah at its core, and apocalyptic beliefs became less important for Jews. Christianity’s identity was tied up with apocalypticism, so as it emerged as a religion separate from Judaism, it preserved its apocalyptic foundations and has done so to the present day.

The Problem of Definition

Scholars have spilled a lot of ink trying to define the terms that head this chapter. Why is it so hard to define apocalypses, apocalypticism, and millenarianism? One obstacle is the difference between scholarly and popular usage. Although there were many ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses, the most popular has always been the book of Revelation. It is the only apocalypse included in the New Testament.

Revelation gives us only one version of an apocalyptic worldview. It describes divine direction of eschatological events; foresees a great battle at Armageddon in which God, Satan, and their allies wage the final battle; expects the defeat of Satan and his angelic and human supporters by Jesus and his angelic forces; and anticipates cosmic disaster, resurrection, last judgment, postmortem (after death) rewards and punishments, and a new heaven and a new earth. It culminates in the descent of the new Jerusalem onto earth, the dwelling place of God and Christ. Popular views of apocalypticism are heavily influenced by Revelation. Cosmic disaster is central, so that the very word “apocalypse,” which literally means simply “revelation” and which scholars use to designate the literary genre, has come to mean that disaster itself. It can designate any such catastrophe or any situation that puts the existence of the world at risk. The movie Apocalypse Now, concerning the chaos and destruction of the Vietnam War, is typical in that regard.

There are problems with using our terms this way. One objection is that we cannot rest with Revelation as our sole source for determining what an apocalypse is or what an apocalyptic worldview entails. We must use all the evidence at our disposal, which means examining at least a healthy selection of extant apocalypses. We also will not use “apocalypse” to mean the end of the world or a situation that puts the world at risk. For that, we will use the word “eschaton,” which comes from the Greek word eschaton meaning “end.” “Eschatology,” commonly used in this context, means knowledge about the end of things as we know them, often involving the sorts of events mentioned above with respect to Revelation, but sometimes involving things that differ from that book. In any case, eschatological events are end-time happenings. We reserve “apocalypse” to refer to a literary work of a particular genre.

Another issue in defining apocalypticism is that it has assumed many different forms and has played a variety of functions. It was once common to include all sorts of phenomena under the term “apocalyptic,” including literary genres, social movements, religious ideas, and eschatological expectations. Daniel and Revelation have always been influential in such definitions, but each scholar decided what other texts and phenomena to use. This produced imprecise usage. Eventually, many grew uncomfortable with the vagueness of it all and tried to sharpen the definitions.

In this book we use the following terminology: “apocalypse” is a literary genre; “apocalypticism” is a worldview; the adjective “apocalyptic” designates imagery, concepts, worldview, themes, literary forms, and social manifestations associated with apocalypses (Koch 1972; Hanson 1976a, 1976b). When speaking of a social movement, we make that clear. We discuss the term “millenarianism” later in this chapter.

Apocalypse: The Apocalyptic Genre

A major contribution to defining apocalypses and apocalypticism came through a study group of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). They reasoned that genre was the place to begin the project of clarification, since everything posited about apocalypticism ultimately originates in literary texts deemed apocalyptic. Apocalypticism is the worldview shared by apocalypses.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, scholars began to attend closely to a collection of literary works from the ancient world, both Jewish and Christian, that resembled each other in form and content. Interest was originally spurred by the publication in 1821 of 1 Enoch, which had been brought back to England from Ethiopia (Collins 1997, 2). The works that caught scholarly notice all bore some resemblance to the canonical texts of Daniel and Revelation. (“Canonical” means belonging to the Bible; the “canon,” those books deemed authoritative by Judaism or Christianity.) At the same time, they manifested variety in form and content.

In 1832, Lücke used the apocalyptic texts then available to him (Daniel, 4 Ezra, 1 Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles) to illuminate Revelation (Lücke 1832). As the century progressed, more texts came to light that belonged to the same genre (2 Baruch; 3 Baruch; 2 Enoch; Apocalypse of Abraham) (Collins 1997, 2). Scholars began to call such texts “apocalypses,” because they resembled Revelation, whose first words are “the revelation [apocalypsis] of Jesus Christ.” The ancient texts predating Revelation did not explicitly call themselves apocalypses, but many written afterward did (Morton Smith 1983).

In 1979, the SBL group published its results. It had developed a definition for “apocalypse” and had classified ancient texts accordingly. The definition it produced is the following:

A genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world. (Collins 1998)

The group judged that every apocalypse had these characteristics. In a later article, Collins characterized content of apocalypses in other words: “The mysteries they disclose involve a view of human affairs in which major importance is attached to the influence of the supernatural world and the expectation of eschatological judgment” (Collins 1991, 16).

Some advocate including social function in the definition of genre. Determining function is a slippery process, however. A given genre might serve a variety of functions. A novel should entertain, but it might also instruct. The instruction might be a moral lesson, or it might also give the reader a taste of a given historical period or a different culture. To determine function accurately, we would have to know a good deal about how a specific culture operates. Such knowledge is not always available. Despite these reservations, trying to determine the function of a genre can be informative. In the case of apocalypses, another study group of the SBL tackled the problem and produced the following statement:

[Apocalypses are] intended to interpret the present, earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority. (Yarbro Collins 1986, 7)

What do modern readers expect when they pick up an apocalypse? One answer is “nothing.” How would they know what to expect? Little in our modern literary experience prepares us to read one. Christians with an apocalyptic wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Definitions and Origins
• 2 Proto-Apocalyptic Biblical Texts
• 3 Daniel and the Animal Apocalypse
• 4 The Book of Revelation
• 5 Ancient Jewish Apocalypses
• 6 Ancient Jewish Literature Related to Apocalypticism
• 7 The Dead Sea Scrolls
• 8 The Gospels, Q, and Acts of the Apostles
• 9 Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet
• 10 The Apostle Paul
• 11 The Rest of the New Testament
• 12 The Ongoing Legacy of Apocalypticism
• Works Cited
• Glossary
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Other Works by Frederick J. Murphy
• Back Cover