A faithful understanding of John’s Apocalypse and other apocalyptic passages demands an appreciation for the Jewish apocalyptic worldview. The Jewish apocalyptic worldview refers to “the attitudes, presuppositions, expectations, and beliefs that form the religious or cultural milieu.”[1] These worldviews incorporate visions that provide “the theological backdrop against which reality should be understood, according to which God will distribute recompense to the wicked and the righteous in the eschatological future.”[2]
Jewish apocalypticists typically see themselves as righteous victims of violent upheaval, seeking imminent divine intervention and eschatological vindication against their oppressors.[3] Consequently, these apocalyptic dramas provide a vivid pictural of their perceived reality. Such images include a man from the sea who spews fire from his mouth, mountains moving, the sun, moon, and stars falling; a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns; a land beast with the horns of a lamb who speaks as a dragon; or numerous other graphic pictures. These hyperbolic images represent meaning known by the author and his immediate audience while also serving to mask their significance from their oppressors.
Though it may be challenging to reconstruct the situations distressing the author and his audience, “there is wide agreement that Jewish apocalypses were written or revised during times of social or political crisis, though such crises may run the spectrum from real to perceived.”[4]
Klaus Koch identifies eight groups of themes found throughout various apocalypses.[5] He suggests that these apocalyptic revelations have multiple approaches to express a particular “attitude of mind.”[6] His eight typical apocalyptic motifs are summarized:
- An urgent expectation of the impending overthrow of all earthly conditions in the immediate future dominates the writings.
- The end appears as a vast cosmic catastrophe.
- The end-time is closely connected with the previous history of humanity and of the cosmos.
- To explain the course of historical events and the happening of the end-time, an army of angels and demons is mustered and divided into a hierarchy of orders.
- Beyond the catastrophe, a new salvation arises, paradisiac in character.
- The transition from disaster to final redemption is expected to occur through an act issued from the throne of God.
- A mediator with royal function is frequently introduced to accomplish and guarantee final redemption.
- The catchword glory is used wherever the last state of affairs is set apart from the present and whenever a final amalgamation of the earthly and heavenly spheres is prophesied.[7]
E. Aune suggests eight similar distinctive features of the apocalyptic worldview:
- The temporal dualism of the ages,
- The radical discontinuity between this age and the next coupled with pessimism regarding the existing order and otherworldly hope directed toward the future order,
- The division of history into segments (four, seven, twelve) reflecting a predetermined plan,
- The expectation of the imminent arrival of the reign of God as an act of God and spelling the doom of existing earthly conditions,
- A cosmic perspective in which the primary location of an individual is no longer with a collective entity such as Israel or the people of God, and the impending crisis is not local but cosmic in scope,
- The cataclysmic intervention of God will result in salvation for the righteous, conceived as the regaining of Edenic conditions,
- The introduction of angels and demons to explain historical and eschatological events,
- The introduction of a new mediator with royal functions.[8]
Richard Taylor presents thematic characteristics of seven major themes typical of an apocalypse.
- Developed angelology,
- Ethical dualism,
- Deterministic outlook,
- Belief in an imminent crisis,
- Presence of a faithful remnant,
- Warning of divine judgment, and
- Anticipation of eschatological hope.[9]
Taylor affirms the apocalyptist’s tendencies to see the world in black-and-white terms with little grey in between.[10] Their reductionist view results in an ethical dualism contrasting opposites such as light and darkness.[11] Apocalyptic literature often expresses moral order with dualism: good versus evil, righteous versus wicked, and God versus Satan. These moral comparisons typically alternate between the struggles and victory of the righteous.[12]
The apocalyptist reflects a deterministic outlook from a sovereign God. He reasons that world history consists of fixed periods, running their course until the final Day.[13] He views world history from his own troubled era, stressing that their audience should prepare themselves for the inevitable end fast approaching them.[14] Although the immediate crisis threatens their way of life, the faithful are exhorted to resist evil and serve God, who will bring victory to the righteous and condemn the wicked.[15] Consequently, the faithful remnant clings to an eschatological hope as their future reality.[16]
These apocalyptic worldviews depict both the spatial and temporal sovereignty of God. God reigns over all his creation – the heavens and the earth, from eternity to eternity – from before the primordial beginnings to the never-ending end. The struggles of the righteous in a fallen and oppressive world seek a glimpse of God’s sovereign perspective as a reassurance of His faithfulness to them. Frederick J. Murphy concludes that “every apocalypse assumes an unseen world” that directly “affects and even determines the visible world.”[17] Apocalyptic language evokes deep emotions, fears, and desires, bringing the reader into the unseen world, thus giving the reader a godly perspective on the reality of earthly events.[18]
Jewish apocalyptic literature such as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, The Sibylline Oracles, Daniel, and Revelation encourages the faithful to remain steadfast even when persecuted. It also warns the apostate to turn away from their wickedness before judgment befalls them. These hidden heavenly mysteries are at the heart of Jewish apocalyptic literature, revealing heavenly and earthly knowledge.[19] This revelatory knowledge offered hope to the faithful “by emphasizing imminent divine intervention into human events to bring deliverance to the righteous and judgment to the wicked.”[20]
Consequently, we need to put on our Jewish apocalyptic glasses when exegeting passages from Daniel 7–12, Ezekiel 1, Matthew 24–25, Mark 13, Revelation, and more. These biblical authors understood the exhortative value of apocalyptic rhetoric. So must we.
[1] Richard Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature: An Exegetical Handbook. Handbooks for Old Testament Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2016, 33.
[2] Matthew Goff, “Wisdom and Apocalypticism,” The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 53.
[3] Richard Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 33.
[4] D. E. Aune, T. J. Geddert, and Craig A. Evans, “Apocalypticism,” Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship 47.
[5] Klaus Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic: A Polemical Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and Philosophy, ed. Peter Ackroyd et al., trans. Margaret Kohl, First British Edition, vol. 22, Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1972), 33.
[6] Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, 33.
[7] Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, 28–32.
[8] Aune, Geddert, and Evans, “Apocalypticism,” 48.
[9] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 73.
[10] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 76.
[11] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 76.
[12] Carol A. Newsom, ed., “Rhetoric of Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 213.
[13] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 77.
[14] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 80.
[15] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 80–81.
[16] Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 84.
[17] Frederick J. Murphy, Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World: A Comprehensive Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 8.
[18] Murphy, Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World, 13.
[19] Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982), 14.
[20] Richard A. Taylor, Interpreting Apocalyptic Literature, 26.