Apocalypse When?. Jerry L. Sumney

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СКАЧАТЬ In 2 Esdras,1 the leading character looks about himself and sees the great sinfulness of the Babylonians who have conquered Israel. His question is, “Are the deeds of those who inhabit Babylon any better [than those of Israel]?” (2 Esdras 3:28). Then he complains that no one can understand what God has done and that God has given no explanation (see 3:28—4:36).

      Apocalyptic arises in situations where the questions of theodicy become acute. The problem of evil in the world is always with us, but it becomes more important for an individual or a group when it is brought home, when you are the good person who is suffering unjustly. Groups adopt an apocalyptic outlook in times of crisis, when it seems they are being overwhelmed by their enemies, enemies who are beyond their capacity to defeat. Apocalyptic helps such groups interpret their experience in a way that preserves and strengthens their faith in God. Examples of such groups from the ancient world include the inhabitants of Qumran (who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls), Jews living at the time of the Maccabean Revolt (see the discussion of the setting of Daniel in chapter 3 below), and Christians facing persecution. All of these groups faced overwhelming opposition or defeat while believing they were God’s people. All asked, “How can God allow this? How will God respond to this?” Apocalyptic thought addresses these questions.

      Apocalyptic responds by pointing beyond history, by asserting that the ultimate answer to these questions lies in another realm. So, it gives a larger context in which to understand the events of the world. It argues that earthly events are only one part of a cosmic drama that involves forces most people are unaware of, but which are now being revealed to God’s people. It asserts that God will set things right in the end, that God’s justice will be exercised. This satisfaction of God’s justice includes both punishing the wicked and rewarding the group’s faithfulness. On a personal level, it says that the last word is not said when you die; rather, there are rewards for the faithful individual.

      Some Common Characteristics of Apocalyptic Writings

      To understand the apocalyptic material in the Bible, it is useful to look at some common characteristics of apocalyptic writings. Through recognizing these characteristics, apocalyptic texts will be more accessible and more profitable as sources for Christian thought about and response to the world we know.

Apocalyptic writings are usually pseudepigraphic, i.e., written by someone other than the person by whom the document claims to be written.2 While this sounds like plagiarism to us, it was a widespread practice in the ancient world. Writers were castigated if they were caught writing in the name of another person, but many thought it was worth the risk because the message they wanted to get across was so important. We find, for example, works that were written in the name of Socrates more than 300 years after he died. Writers often used this technique when they thought they represented the thought of the claimed writer and so could bring the earlier person’s insight to bear on the actual writer’s situation. Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings often claim to be written by someone known from the Bible who lived long before the actual writing (e.g., Enoch, Ezra, Baruch, Abraham, etc.).

      Apocalyptic writings claim that they contain a revelation from God that consists of knowledge that has been hidden from all but a very few people but is now revealed to the wider circle of the people of God because the end is near. They often contain information about angels, the ordering of the cosmos, or the nature of heavenly realms. This knowledge is usually given to the writer by an angelic mediator. The writer’s claim to authority comes primarily from the assertion that what is written is directly a revelation from God.

      Connected with their pseudonymity, apocalyptic writings often include ex eventu prophecy. This means that they have their supposed writer predict something that is in the future for that figure but is a past event for the real author. When Enoch, who is taken from Genesis 5, has correctly predicted the history of the world from the Flood to the second century BCE (when it was actually written), the reader has good reason to think he will also be right about what is to come next. So ex eventu prophecy gives assurance to the reader that what the writer says is trustworthy. This sure word is precisely what those who are suffering need.

      Finally, the most basic point apocalyptic writers want to establish is that God will make things right. All apocalyptic thought asserts that God will be true to God’s own nature by defeating evil and establishing justice for the faithful. God will establish a reign of justice and goodness which evil cannot overcome. The readers can take courage, even in the most dire circumstances, that this is the certain end and that they will be included in this victory of God. All the other characteristics of apocalyptic are intended to help establish this point.

      Not all apocalyptic texts have all of these characteristics (e.g., Revelation has no ex eventu prophecy), but they give us a place to start as we investigate this material.

      The Origins of Apocalyptic Thought

      Our understanding of apocalyptic thought will also be enhanced if we know something about the origins of this type of thought. Two related questions bear on this issue: When did apocalyptic thought emerge? and What are its sources? We begin with the second question. There have been many suggestions about where the roots of apocalyptic thought are to be found. Some have argued that it only drew on Hebrew prophetic thought, others that it was derived solely from Wisdom traditions, and still others that the strongest influences came from Persian or Greek thought. Most interpreters think apocalyptic thought drew on all of these resources when facing certain types of social circumstances.

      Most interpreters also agree that the primary source for apocalyptic is Hebrew prophecy. The faith of the Hebrew prophets always had an eschatological orientation. They believed in a God who worked in the world and who would bring about God’s own purposes, including establishing the triumphant rule of God. The prophets never doubted that God’s purposes would win out in the end. Apocalyptic thought refocuses this belief, giving more emphasis to the final conclusion. Given that the return from exile did not begin a period of national prominence in which God was clearly ruler of the world, and given the failure of other nationalistic hopes expressed by the prophets, apocalyptic thought relocated those hopes outside the realm of history. They began to look for their fulfillment in a more dramatic movement by God, an action which affected history but was brought in from another realm.

      In addition to this stream of thought from the prophets, apocalyptic drew on characteristics often found in the Wisdom tradition. Daniel is an interpreter of dreams, a function usually associated with the Wisdom tradition rather than prophets. Daniel, the leading character in the apocalyptic book which bears his name, is even ranked among the “wise men” in Babylonia (Dan 4:68). Additionally, some of the determinism found in Wisdom thought was appropriated as apocalyptic thought developed. Apocalypticists are certain about the outcome of history and the main lines of the course of history. This is seen not only in its confidence that God’s reign will be established, but also in the foretelling of world history found in many apocalyptic texts. This certainty about the course of history and its ultimate outcome does not necessarily mean that human free will is diminished. In apocalyptic thought humans are free to make their own choices about whether they will be on God’s side or that of evil. So some events of history are determined, but it is up to the individual to respond to God appropriately. The importance of free will can also be seen in the apocalyptic writers’ belief that individuals will be judged by God.

      The prophetic and wisdom traditions cannot, however, account for all one finds in apocalyptic. It seems clear that its dualism, its development of traditions about angels, and its cosmology are significantly influenced by Greek and Persian thought. Thus, many sources contributed to the kind of thought which is found in apocalyptic writings. Materials from these various traditions were combined and synthesized to create a way of thinking, a way of perceiving God, the world, and themselves that made sense of the addressed communities’ experience.

      What finally brings all these influences together into what we recognize as apocalyptic thought are the circumstances of life faced by particular communities. СКАЧАТЬ