Game Over?

Reconsidering Eschatology

Christophe Chalamet, Andreas Dettwiler, Mariel Mazzocco, Ghislain Waterlot, Christophe Chalamet, Andreas Dettwiler, Mariel Mazzocco, Ghislain Waterlot

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9783110519822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Modern science informs us about the end of the universe: "game over" is the message which lies ahead of our world. Christian theology, on the other hand, sees in the end not the cessation of all life, but rather an invitation to play again, in God's presence. Is there a way to articulate together such vastly different claims?
Eschatology is a theological topic which merits being considered from several different angles. This book seeks to do this by gathering contributions from esteemed and fresh voices from the fields of biblical exegesis, history, systematic theology, philosophy, and ethics.
How can we make sense, today, of Jesus' (and the New Testament's) eschatological message? How did he, his early disciples, and the Christian tradition, envision the "end" of the world? Is there a way for us to articulate together what modern science tells us about the end of the universe with the biblical and Christian claims about God who judges and who will wipe every tear?
Eschatology has been at the heart of Christian theology for 100 years in the West. What should we do with this legacy? Are there ways to move our reflection forward, in our century? Scholars and other interested readers will find here a wealth of insights.

Part 1:Biblical Interpretation and Reception

Stefan Beyerle

“Many of those who sleep in the land of dust shall awake!” (Dan 12:2)

Towards a Matrix of Apocalyptic Eschatology in Ancient Judaism

1“Apocalyptic Eschatology” in Time and Space

In his early novel In the Country of Last Things the American author Paul Auster introduces the female protagonist Anna Blume as a writer of a letter that retells all things that happened to her in order to protect these things from being lost and forgotten. By means of a somewhat paradoxical contrast, all things, experiences, events and acquaintances of the protagonist that are documented in this letter are designed to vanish in the haze within an “apocalyptic reality.” The letter – that is represented by the whole of Auster’s novel – includes Anna Blume’s ambition to seek order. But even this desire remains unfulfilled: “Faced with the most ordinary occurrence, you no longer know how to act, and because you cannot act, you find yourself unable to think. The brain is muddle. All around you one change follows another, each day produces a new upheaval, the old assumptions are so much air and emptiness.”19

The focus in the quoted passage can be found in the last sentence, wherein the “old assumptions are so much air and emptiness.” Not only place and time, but also thoughts, what remains beyond every “thing,” are in danger to disappear forever. Despite Paul Auster himself explicitly denying that his book deals with the future or any kind of science fiction, most interpreters call In the Country of Last Things a dystopian epistolary novel.20 Be that as it may, Anna’s world is out of order. She starts her letter with the following words: “These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone. A street you walked down yesterday is no longer there today. Even the weather is in constant flux.”21

Constant disappearance characterizes the “Country of Last Things,” and especially topical disorder evokes a world-view that in general can be called “apocalyptic.” With regards to this disorder, untidiness or chaos, the novel constructs a reality that can be called in its best sense “u-topian.” Beyond this topical orientation there is also a temporal or chronological level that is apparent, at the latest, when the reader comes to the end of the novel. Here, Anna Blume’s diary ends with the following sentences: “Once we get to where we are going, I will try to write to you again, I promise.”22

In Paul Auster’s novel the future is untold as the protagonist’s past is lost. Nevertheless, the finishing parts of the novel emphasize a future orientation. Consequently, time and space – in their specific settings – constitute Auster’s understanding of the “Country of Last Things.” The role of time and space is embedded in an “apocalyptic” world-view that reflects a “mythic” and also “mystic” re-interpretation of the real world. As can be concluded from most of the other novels of Paul Auster, the “mystical” aspect is much more apparent in the plots of his stories.23

On the other hand, “apocalypses” rather tend to reflect a “mythical” view about time and space, e.g., in their use of Urzeit-Endzeit schemes, how they reflect on “creation” and “new creation” (cf. 4 Ezra, 2 Bar.), in the “apocalypses’” use of “binitarian models” when the divine is conceptualized (cf. Dan 7:13–14) or in the way a heavenly temple (cf. 1 En. 14) is imagined.24 All in all, for a better understanding of what is meant by the term “apocalyptic eschatology,” a further examination of “time” and “space” is helpful.

2“History” and the Genre of an “Apocalypse”

Before I discuss the most intriguing examples of “time” and “space” in apocalyptic eschatology, let me first explain what is meant by an “apocalypse,” and further, of how historical aspects come into view within this literary genre.25 In general, it is important to distinguish between the genre of an “apocalypse” and literatures commonly marketed with labels referring to apocalyptic traditions or groups. The following differentiation is at hand: “apocalypse” as a product of literary genre, “apocalypticism” as marking the social identity of a group, e.g., the groups attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls – including a certain world-view – and “apocalyptic eschatology” as articulated in the later prophetic and wisdom writings, also in the Dead Sea Scrolls.26

The literary genre “apocalypse” can only be described but not defined. In his re-evaluation of a definition of the genre, especially with regards to aspects of method and theory, John Collins emphasizes on the one hand: “At the end of the Uppsala conference on apocalypticism, a resolution contra definitionem, pro descriptione was carried. This was not, however, the outcome of systematic discussion: it was simply a diplomatic evasion of the issue at the end of a stimulating but exhausting conference.”27

A description, on the other hand, embraces core motifs like the addiction of the whole world to sin and evil. The trajectories that mostly originate from times of crisis articulate hope for a transcendent world that is incomparable to a this-worldly sphere. This incomparability is guaranteed by means of several tools. One of them emerges in the concept of end-time mysteries that are paralleled by divine revelations, culminating most of the times in an eschatological judgment.

By and large, these core motifs constitute similarities that refer to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of “family resemblance,” and, in fact, all these motifs are not sufficiently significant to define a literary genre – even if Wittgenstein did not refer to literary genres in his example. Consequently, John Collins cannot accept this idea as a basis for his definition of the genre “apocalypse.”28 Nevertheless, he still retains the proposed definition of the Semeia group, even though he has to concede that several examples from the “world of the texts” do not fit clearly with any definition. Consequently and concerning the method, Collins refers to the “prototype theory,” as it was established in the field of cognitive psychology. He points out that the Semeia project “started from a list of apocalypses that were regarded as prototypical, and distinguished between central and peripheral characteristics. The main difference is that prototype theory would refuse to establish a strict boundary between texts that are members of the genre and those that were not. It rather distinguishes between texts that are highly typical and those that are less typical.”29

Thus, at least all “less typical” literary examples of an “apocalypse” could only come close to what the definition of the genre requests. What is more, the distinction between “highly typical” and “less typical” implies a hierarchic taxonomy of “genre.” Each criterion of this hierarchy is modeled by prerequisites that stem from the modern, post-enlightenment scholarly discussion. In the end, the question of what constitutes a “highly typical” exemplar of the genre can only be answered with the help of sources that already had been classified in terms of form and genre. All in all, the theoretical problems are due to the fact that every approach to the genre “apocalypse” has to take an “etic” point of view.30 And in the end, the question of description or definition remains undecided. Due to the above-mentioned theoretical and methodological problems, I would still prefer the term description.

Nevertheless, the narrative framework of an “apocalypse”31 is of genre-specific importance. This framework embraces two different strategies of revelation: the first one is the use of heavenly or cosmological journeys of the protagonists. A second strategy reconstructs history – for instance, “history” of a kind as it also appears in the canonical writings of the Old Testament. Here, I would like to stay away from terms like “Heilsgeschichte” (or the “history of salvation”) because of the rather diverging concepts of historical remembrance within the so-called “Historical Apocalypses.” Among German speaking scholars, it was a former student of Gerhard von Rad, Günter Reese, who assumed that some of the apocalyptic sources, as, e.g., the Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 85–90), attest to an ongoing tradition of Old Testament “salvation history.”32 But against this, the concept of “history” in texts like the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17) or the Animal Apocalypse is much too cosmologically focused and includes unexpected turns in mode – from a negative to a positive view on “history” and vice versa.33 In general, the narration, or reshaping, of “history” in Jewish apocalypses to a certain degree participates in the construction of the transcendent world, as it is presented in these apocalypses. As a result, “history” becomes part of divine revelation.

The Book of Daniel is a good case in point. The final vision starts in chapter 10 with the following introduction (v. 1): “In the third year of Cyrus, King of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar. And the word was true, and it concerned a great trouble. He understood the word, understanding was his in the vision.” What follows, is an epiphany of an angel and the well-known visionary examination of history within the seer’s discourse with an angel (Dan 11:2–12:4). This heavenly dialog focuses on the Seleucids and the career of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (cf. 10:20 –21). Daniel’s ability to be a visionary is unique, because the people who were with him did not see (10:7). This is because Daniel is the one who set his mind to gain understanding and to humble himself before his God (10:12). Consequently, already the setting of the third vision of Daniel paves the way for an understanding of “history” in terms of an end-time revelation.34

All in all, the meaning of “history” in apocalypses is closely linked with, and in several ways contextualized or embedded in, a mythic end-time scheme.35

3Notions of “Time” and “Apocalyptic Eschatology”

Recently, the well-known antagonism of “mythic,” i.e., cyclic time and Jewish-Christian “historical,” i.e., linear notion of time among the Greeks and Hebrews is challenged. The reason for this can be seen in the way documents from ancient Israel used “mythical” and “historical” models of time simultaneously. Several texts in the Hebrew Bible lead to a complex concept of time wherein cyclic models are integrated into a pattern of strictly construed linear “history.” E.g., the late summary text of Israel’s history in Deut 26:5–9, Gerhard von Rad once upon a time called “Das kleine geschichtliche Credo,” reminds the reader on the epochs of Exodus and the entering into the promised land. At the same time, the literary framework (Deut 26:1–4, 10–11) informs the reader that the same “historical” text should be used as a quotation within the feast of the first fruits. Consequently, as the feast and its agricultural context presuppose repetition, a cyclic notion of time is concerned as well36.

With regards to apocalyptic literature and apocalypses, the linearity of a future oriented “historical” concept seems to be predominant. E.g., in the Enochic literature, the Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 85–90) and the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17) are good cases in point. With regards to the Animal Apocalypse, the preservation of four Aramaic manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, of which the oldest dates back to the second half of the second century BCE, points to the second third of the second century BCE as the date of the apocalypse’s origin37. The language distinguishes between different animals for mankind: wild and unclean animals for the nations and sheep for the Israelites. Stars and humans represent angels and superhuman beings. God is called the “Lord of the sheep”. Within the structure of a cosmic timetable and comparable to the Apocalypse of Weeks, the world history is clearly structured into three ages. Each of them starts with a “white bull”: Adam, Noah and an “eschatological” patriarch. In the end, a last judgment (1 En. 90:20 –27) together with the constructio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Editors’ Introduction
• Part 1: Biblical Interpretation and Reception
• Part 2: Eschatology, Modern Science, and Transhumanism
• Part 3: Eschatology, the Political, Literature and Ethics
• Part 4: Constructing Theological Perspectives
• Contributors
• Summaries
• Index of Names
• Index of Ancient Sources