The strange genre of apocalyptic literature

This piece is about a hair-raising form of writing which claims to give insights into the mysteries of the end times and the heavenly realms.

We are talking here about apocalyptic literature.

For some modern Christians, both laypeople and scholars, apocalypticism is an embarrassment. If you hear that someone at church is taking a keen interest in the Book of Revelation, you’re probably not going to want to sit near to them.

Yet apocalyptic is a genre which has an established place in Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, as well as in many other belief systems around the world.

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An ‘apocalypse’ (Greek apokalypsis) is literally a ‘revelation’. And indeed apocalyptic texts are revelatory in nature. They typically describe the experience of a revered historical figure – Abraham, for example – being shown visions or taken on a spiritual journey.

In practice, an apocalypse is a specific kind of revelation – one which involves what is known as ‘eschatology’. This is a Christian theological term derived from the Greek work eschaton, ‘the end’. It refers to matters pertaining to the end of the world, or to what happens at the end of a human’s life.

There are two broad types of apocalypse (although these are not completely separate and can intersect). One type, the ‘historical’ apocalypse, presents an account of history which culminates in the end of the present order of things. The other type, the ‘heavenly’ apocalypse, presents details of the spiritual world that people go to after death. The main common factor is that both types depict the judgement of God. In this piece, we will be mainly concerned with historical apocalypses.

The basic historical apocalyptic narrative was formulated by the ancient Jews and taken further by the early Christians. It went roughly as follows. There is a time of wickedness, immorality, and natural disasters. This ends with the decisive intervention of God, who comes to judge humanity. He punishes sinners with everlasting fire, and he grants the righteous eternal happiness in a utopian world – which is brought about on earth, it must be stressed, not in the heavens. God’s intervention may be accompanied by the appearance of a messiah figure, who was naturally identified by Christians with Jesus Christ.

If we want to know what is going to happen at the end of the world, where might we find an apocalypse to read? One place is the Bible. But – perhaps surprisingly – most apocalyptic texts didn’t make it into the Bible. They are largely apocryphal: that is, they sit outside the generally accepted canons of the Old and New Testaments. They tend to have unfamiliar names like The Book of Jubilees, The Assumption of Moses and The Psalms of Solomon.

The reason why apocalypses are mostly absent from the Bible is that they didn’t come along until a relatively late stage. The genre seems to have come into its own from the 200s BCE onwards, by which time most of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) had already been written.

It is fair to say that most of the Old Testament proceeds on the assumption that the world is going to continue in existence with history more or less running on its course. Yahweh grants rewards and punishments within the existing framework of time and space, not in a Last Judgement or in the spiritual realms.

Nevertheless, there are some passages in the Old Testament which appear to predict that Yahweh will intervene to bring about spectacular and climactic events which go beyond the normal course of history. For example, the so-called ‘Apocalypse of Isaiah’ combines a prophecy of Yahweh laying waste to the earth with anticipation of a utopian future (Isaiah 24-27). There are other texts of the same kind, including the famous ‘Gog of Magog’ narrative (Ezekiel 38-39), and the Books of Joel and Zechariah. Joel, for example, gives us this memorable passage:

Let the nations rouse themselves

and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat,

for there I will sit to judge

all the neighbouring nations.

Put in the sickle,

for the harvest is ripe.

Go in, tread,

for the winepress is full.

The vats overflow,

for their wickedness is great.

Multitudes, multitudes,

in the valley of decision!

For the day of the Lord is near

in the valley of decision.

The sun and the moon are darkened,

and the stars withdraw their shining.

The Lord roars from Zion

and utters his voice from Jerusalem,

and the heavens and the earth shake.

But the Lord is a refuge for his people,

a stronghold for the people of Israel.

So you shall know that I, the Lord your God,

dwell in Zion, my holy mountain.

And Jerusalem shall be holy,

and strangers shall never again pass through it.

In that day

the mountains shall drip sweet wine,

the hills shall flow with milk,

and all the streambeds of Judah

shall flow with water;

a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord

and water the Wadi Shittim.

Egypt shall become a desolation

and Edom a desolate wilderness,

because of the violence done to the people of Judah,

in whose land they have shed innocent blood.

But Judah shall be inhabited forever

and Jerusalem to all generations. (Joel 3.12-20, NRSV)

So we can find what might be called proto-apocalyptic texts in various parts of the Old Testament. But only one Old Testament book contains fully-developed apocalyptic material, and that book was written at the very end of the OT period: the Book of Daniel.*

[* = Strictly speaking, Daniel is the only apocalyptic book contained in the generally accepted canons of the Old Testament. There is apocalyptic material in the books known as 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, which some groups would also include as scriptural.]

The Book of Daniel was composed in the mid-160s BCE. It came into being at a time when one of the imperial strongmen of the age, King Antiochus IV, had been persecuting the Jewish people. This persecution is a key part of the context of the book. In Daniel 7, we find a vision of four beasts, which represent four successive Middle-Eastern empires. All of them perish and are replaced by the rule of “the people of the holy ones of the Most High”. The vision includes a figure described as “one like a son of man”, who was later identified by Christians with Jesus Christ. Later on, in Daniel 10-12, we find an account of historical geopolitical events, culminating in the reign of Antiochus IV, following which God resurrects the dead and judges them.

So it is that at this, the latest stage of Old Testament history, we see a shift from a situation in which normal history in running on its course to a situation of terminal crisis – a shift from an outlook in which God acts within history to one in which he is soon going to bring history to an end.

Why did this shift take place? We don’t know. It’s not entirely clear where the practice of writing apocalyptic texts came from. In part, it may have developed out of the older tradition of Hebrew prophecy, which went back several centuries. In part, it may have been influenced by foreign (e.g. Persian) traditions. It is also unclear who wrote apocalypses, although they must necessarily have had enough education (and therefore money) to have been able to compose sacred literary texts.

It is sometimes said that apocalyptic sprang from disaffection and despair. At a time when the Jews were being dominated and harassed by imperial powers, it was understandable that pious writers would imagine God delivering divine justice to the oppressed and meting out justice to their oppressors. This theory may be partly true, and apocalyptic did feed into later anti-imperialist politics: for example, the Book of Daniel appears to have influenced the rebels in the great Jewish War against the Romans of 66-70 CE. But the anti-imperialist interpretation of apocalyptic is a little too glib. The appeal of apocalyptic ideas is not specific to oppressed peoples.

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If apocalyptic thinking is a minor presence in the Old Testament, it is absolutely central to the New Testament. If we do not keep it in mind when reading and studying the text, much of it will not fully make sense.

The apocalyptic character of early Christianity seems to go back to Jesus of Nazareth himself, and Jesus in turn seems to have been influenced in his apocalyptic ideas by the prophetic figure known as John the Baptist.

From the information provided by the New Testament and by the Jewish historian Josephus, we can identify a few basic facts about John the Baptist. He was an ascetic who was active in the wilderness of the lower Jordan valley in the late 20s CE. He wore simple clothes and ate simple food. He warned that God’s wrath was approaching and declared that repentance was required to avoid a fiery punishment. He ended up being executed by King Herod Agrippa, who was worried that a subversive political movement was forming around him.

John must have been inspired by the apocalyptic tradition of his time. It has been suggested, specifically, that he was influenced by the Jewish apocalyptic sect based at Qumran which created the Dead Sea Scrolls. (The Qumran sect in turn seems to have belong to or emerged from the mystical movement known as the Essenes.) Scholars have not succeeded in proving this theory, but it is certainly plausible: John was active in roughly the right time and the right place to have had connections with the Qumran community.

In any event, it appears that John was an important influence on Jesus, and that he played a major part in encouraging the latter to embrace an apocalyptic worldview. Scholars have long understood that the evidence of the New Testament indicates that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. Predictions and warnings about the coming end times appear to have formed an important part of his ministry – although he seems to have taught his apocalyptic message by means of short, pithy sayings rather than literary texts.*

[* = How far we can get to the particulars of what Jesus actually taught is a perennial problem. Perhaps the most famous apocalyptic statement ascribed to him is a speech known as the ‘Little Apocalypse’ (Mark 13). But this speech is unlikely to have been delivered by the historical Jesus. It seems to be informed by later events, such as early Christian experiences of persecution and the Jewish War.]

Jesus’ earliest followers inherited his apocalyptic worldview, which is why apocalyptic thinking is such a big influence on the New Testament. We may mention here the most famous convert of the early church, Paul, who seems to have been expecting the end of the world any day, accompanied by divine wrath and fire.

Against this background, it may seem surprising that actual fully-fledged apocalyptic texts are as rare in the New Testament as they are in the Old. The only apocalyptic book in the New Testament is the Book of Revelation – although this one book is quite enough to be going on with.

Revelation is a complex text which has several cycles of tribulation and triumph. In its immediate historical context, it can be seen as a prediction of the approaching triumph of God over the Roman Empire and the second coming of Christ. But its rhetoric has an enduring power and fascination. It contains passages like this:

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’ (Revelation 6.12-17, NRSV)

And this passage, which is sometimes read at funerals (and was featured in the final part of Titanic):

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21.2-5, NRSV)

The Book of Revelation was historically treated with suspicion, particularly in the Eastern churches. It was eventually included in the canon of scripture, but with greater hesitation than any other book.

We noted earlier that apocalypticism in general has tended to be something of an embarrassment to most believers. In the major Christian churches, and in mainstream rabbinic Judaism, scholastic traditions have grown up which have mostly kept apocalyptic expectations safely suppressed. Nor are such expectations encouraged in public worship. You will rarely hear a sermon on the subject; and it has been noted that both Protestant and Catholic liturgical books tend to leave Revelation alone, with the exception of a minority of the more positive passages.

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Apocalypticism may not have taken hold in the mainstream, but it never went away. Crucially, the theme was imported from Judaism and Christianity into Islam.

Eschatology is one of the main themes of the Qur’an – and, while this eschatological interest is generally focussed on the fate of human souls after death, the text does also refer to the end of history. Here, for example, is a passage on the Day of Judgement:

When the heaven is cleft asunder,

When the planets are dispersed,

When the seas are poured forth,

And the sepulchres are overturned,

A soul will know what it hath sent before (it) and what left behind.

O man! What hath made thee careless concerning thy Lord, the Bountiful,

Who created thee, then fashioned, then proportioned thee?

Into whatsoever form He will, He casteth thee.

Nay, but ye deny the Judgment.

Lo! there are above you guardians,

Generous and recording,

Who know (all) that ye do.

Lo! the righteous verily will be in delight.

And lo! the wicked verily will be in hell;

They will burn therein on the Day of Judgment,

And will not be absent thence.

Ah, what will convey unto thee what the Day of Judgment is!

Again, what will convey unto thee what the Day of Judgment is!

A day on which no soul hath power at all for any (other) soul. The (absolute) command on that day is Allah’s. (Qur’an 82.1-19, trans. Pickthall)

It isn’t just the Abrahamic traditions. In cultures across the world, we find recurring narratives which tell of an era of degeneracy and evil being transformed into a utopian new world, often in conjunction with disarray in the natural order and the arrival of a messianic figure.

Narratives of this sort can be found in pre-Christian pagan literature. They can also be found in non-Western religious cultures, including Hinduism and Taoism. And – lest we overlook the elephant in the room – they can be found in modern secular ideologies such as fascism and communism. They recur in political discourse and political activism. They affect how politicians make decisions and how voters vote.

Apocalyptic, then, is not a fringe phenomenon, a marginal genre that attracts the desperate and the disaffected. The scholar Stephen L. Cook has written:

Apocalypticism emerges in eras of calm and in eras of disruption, in stable societies and amid the encounters and clashes of cultures, in peripheral or colonized peoples and in dominating or colonizing powers.

In a sense, apocalypticism is timeless. People are always curious to know the secrets of how the universe works and what path the world is on. They are also always inclined to think that things aren’t going very well at the moment – which creates a temptation to wonder if they might be much better in the future.