I guess I could have just said that instead of posting a lengthy blog earlier, but brevity has never been my forte, especially with this much time to write. In any case, I ended that post on a cliff-hanger: Why was there an apocalyptic movement? Why did people write apocalypses? These are complicated questions, and anyone who knows me well knows that I'm high-context. So I apologize; I'm going to have to give you a little bit of biblical background. First, I recommend that you check out my blog post from four years ago entitled "Greek Week: The Bible in the Hellenistic Period." It should provide a fairly decent historical backdrop for Jewish apocalyptic literature.
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It's important to keep in mind that the books of the Bible come from a variety of different time periods in Judeo-Christian history. While there is continuity in the Scriptures, over time the Bible also reveals an evolution of theology. One issue that the authors of Scripture grappled with is that of God's justice (a.k.a. theodicy). When it comes right down to it, theodicy today and for much of history asks, If God is all good and all powerful, why does evil exist? For the ancient people of Israel, however, this wasn't quite the question that was on their minds. They didn't try to reconcile God's benevolence and omnipotence with the existence of evil in the same sort of post-enlightenment way that we do. They were more comfortable with accepting the reality that evil exists and that bad things happen.1 Furthermore, the Scriptures frequently remind us that God has a special love for the poor and seeks to rescue the innocent. All that being said, it didn't stop them from asking why good people suffered so much or why corrupt people seemed to have it so easy.
You see, one prevailing notion from an earlier scriptural tradition was that goodness and faithfulness were rewarded in this lifetime and evil was cursed. Proverbs draws upon this theme quite a bit: e.g. Truly the evil man shall not go unpunished, but those who are just shall escape (Prv 11:21). Another earlier belief was that everyone - the just and the unjust, rich and poor alike - had the same fate after death. They would go to Sheol, a sort of shadowy underworld. Belief in a eternal reward or punishment developed later, as did a theology of resurrection. Until then, there wasn't much of any kind of existence to look forward to in the afterlife. So the suffering of the innocent flew smack into the face of their ideology that the righteous would be blessed and the wicked would be cursed. With the belief that everyone shared the same fate after death, where was God's justice to be found?
Various books and literary styles of the Bible deal with this issue differently. Wisdom literature, like Psalm 49 and Ecclesiastes, point to the futility of wealth. They remind their audience that, since both the rich and the poor will die alike, those who amass riches will not be able to take any of it with them. For Ecclesiastes especially, everything was vanity and that suffering was just a part of life, but the author still believed that God had a plan. We just aren't privy to what that plan is. Down the road, apocalyptic literature will be like, "Guys, I have seen the plan, and let me tell you what it is!" But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Job is perhaps wisdom literature's theodicist par excellence. In the midst of his devastating anguish, his so-called friends keep telling him that he should admit that he did something to offend God and therefore deserved his lot. They tow the line that the good are blessed and the wicked are cursed. But Job maintains his innocence and demands that God explain himself. God's answer is, in short, that God is God and Job is not. However, God justifies Job for speaking rightly of him, while his friends are chastised for upholding a flawed concept of God's justice. One message of Job is that it's fair to question God and God's ways and even to cry out to God for suffering that is unmerited. In the end, though, we'll never quite know why. On the other hand, to think that affliction is a curse for evildoing, or even that wealth and comfort are a reward for righteousness, is definitely not the wisdom of God.
Prophetic literature is different in that it's generally more concerned with the whole of the community or nation than with the individual. Communal suffering, therefore, is attributed to social sin. The prophets were not theodicists, asking why bad things happened to good people. Instead, they were the moral conscience of society, beckoning their communities to fidelity to the covenant. They knew why bad things were happening or would eventually happen. They could see the writing on the wall, the consequences of idolatry, injustice, ill-advised foreign policy, etc., and they called their people out on it. Some prophetic literature though, especially after the Babylonian exile, began to look toward an eschatological climax and end to the suffering of the Jewish people.
PAUSE! Yes, eschatology refers to the end times. Eschaton in Greek is related to the last days, or the end. But don't be afraid! It didn't mean the ultimate annihilation of the earth, though it would probably involve some form of destruction. Rather it refers more to the cosmic fulfillment of time, end of oppression, and renewal of heaven and earth. It's not the end of the world per se; it's the end of the world as we know it.
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So now we can start talking about an apocalyptic movement, because you can't have apocalypticism without eschatology. You can't have an apocalyptic ideology without conflict between good and evil and the pronouncement of God's judgement upon the earth. And you can't have apocalyptic literature without a sense that history is moving forward to some ultimate event, resurrection, renewal, and coming of God's kingdom.
After the Babylonian exile and return to Judea there were certain promises that were not fulfilled. The land didn't belong to the Jewish people anymore; it was a province in the Persian empire. Moreover, they did not have a descendant of David on the throne. There was a prophetic movement to rebuild the Temple so as to hasten these expectations, but even when the Temple was rebuilt, it did not seem that God's reign had come. The Gentiles were ultimately in power, internal corruption was rampant, and infidelity to God's law persisted. Some prophets had pointed to a time of doom and God's intervening salvation in the future: "On that day... on that day." But for centuries that day never seemed to come. For those of the apocalyptic worldview, however, that day was near. So what does it take to go from prophetic to apocalyptic eschatology? The same thing it takes for coal to turn into a diamond: pressure. Pressure, in this case, manifested as oppression and persecution, because apocalyptic literature is not written at Starbucks sipping on a latte, folks.2
Again, I recommend that you check out the Greek Week blog post for a little bit more detail on this period in Old Testament history, but let me do a quick run through on some of what went down.
Under Persian rule things were, relatively speaking, not too bad for the return community, especially after rebuilding a temple by 515 B.C.E. Nevertheless, the collective memory of the Babylonian exile and the destruction of Solomon's Temple would forever be with them. It should be noted that Jews were not just living in Judea, but at this point were all over the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East due to the the deportations of Israel and Judah by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively This is known as the Diaspora. Much of this Persian period saw a consolidation of their traditions and sacred texts. And then came Alexander the Great, who conquers the Persian Empire (and specifically Palestine in 333 B.C.E.).
While the Persians had been pretty chill about their subjects as long as they paid their tribute, the Greeks were all about Hellenism (i.e. Greek culture). They wanted everyone to be Greek, and there were a lot of Jews who, either from pressure and discrimination or by their own will, assimilated to the Greek culture - learning the language, hiding their circumcision in the gymnasium (or foregoing it altogether), intermarrying with Greeks, etc. It was not outright oppression and persecution, but it was certainly perceived that way by some Jews. A dominant, invasive culture was snuffing out their Jewish identity! They had already experienced the destruction of their monarchy, capital city, and temple for not keeping the covenant once before; they weren't going to lose what little they had left because Jews were compromising their faith and identity.
The earth was ripe for cultivating the seeds of an apocalyptic worldview. Prophetic literature had already begun to set the stage for some kind of restorative culmination to the Jewish narrative since the devastation of Babylon. It was clear that there were forces of good (those who kept the covenant) and forces of evil (those who made concessions to their faith and Gentiles who led Jews astray). It was in this time of cultural crisis that early apocalypses were composed, though almost none of them made it into the Jewish canon of Scripture. A radical theodicy was developing in which the suffering faithful would be vindicated and the backsliders and oppressors would get their comeuppance. No more of the equalizing perception of death from the wisdom literature of the past. The theme of judgment becomes very prevalent, and in fact is one characteristic that is in nearly all apocalyptic writings.
One example of an early apocalypse is the Book of the Watchers, which is part of a much larger corpus known as Enochic literature after its protagonist, Enoch. Enoch is an obscure figure from Genesis, and it says of him, "Enoch walked with God, and he was no longer here, for God took him" (Gen 5:24). The mystery surrounding Enoch made him a perfect candidate for someone to have supposedly received a secret revelation from God about the future. So in this book, as with other apocalypses, the visionary is taken on an otherworldly journey and learns of the places of paradise prepared for the righteous and those of torment for the wrongdoers.
The Watchers also draws on another obscure passage from Genesis in which angels from heaven have intercourse with the women on earth and beget giants known has the Nephilim (Gen 6:1-4). Now I urge you not to read too much into that weird passage. I can't say the same thing to the apocalyptists at the turn of the second century B.C.E., though. This narrative from Genesis made some interesting source material for them. We'd probably call it fan fiction today. In Enoch's account, the evil "Watcher" angels teach humans things like weaponry, cosmetics, fornication, and astrology (1 Enoch 8:1-4). Some scholars speculate that this may be an allegorical reference to leaders of the Greek forces teaching the Jewish people their pagan ways.3 Later on in the story we discover that there's a special place in hell (so to speak) prepared for the Watchers. We can assume that the authors felt the same for the Greeks as well as those Jews who had succumbed to Greek ways.
Whereas the issue at hand in the early stages of this apocalyptic movement had to do with cultural and religious compromise, the pressures from persecution were about to become more dire, and the apocalyptic heat was about to get turned up! It was one thing to feel as though justice was lacking when fidelity to the covenant made life challenging. Even more so when your fellow Jew was living well yet betraying the Torah. But what happens when all perceptions of God's justice go up in smoke and you're put to death because you keep the covenant? Extreme times such as that call for extreme literature!
On that note, I'll leave you with another cliff-hanger until I write again. Next time I shall write about that son-of-a-beast, Antiochus IV, and the effect of bloodshed on apocalyptic writings. I hope, though, that this provides some insight into how apocalypticism developed, especially in regards to the notion of God's justice in the midst of fidelity and compromise to God's Law. In the meantime, my Scripture recommendation for the week is 1 Maccabees 1:1-64. I know it's not in every Bible, so if it's not in yours at home, you can click the link and read it online. This chapter and all the atrocities described within really get at the heart of why there was an apocalyptic movement at this time in Jewish history. As you read it, put yourself in the shoes of the Jewish people living under the reign of Antiochus. What would be your response to God? How would you interpret your experience? What kind of salvation would you look forward to, and how would you want God's justice to unfold?
Until next time,
Peace and all good,
Bro. Ian
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1 Gregory Stevenson, A Slaughtered Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering, (Abilene, ACU Press, 2013), 40-45.↩
2 Timothy Milinovich, Class Lecture, January 12, 2010.↩
3 Mitchell Reddish Ed., Apocalyptic Literature: A Reader, (Peabody, Abingdon Press, 1990), 145.↩
