Why is it that the one thing these apocalyptic trajectories have in common is a Final Judgment?
Those who claim that God wrote or dictated the Bible usually don’t take at face value what each one of the texts now in the Bible actually says. Their method, as I explained above, allows them to choose texts and make them say what they see fit. I read the books of the Bible to discover how the biblical ancestors of my faith in the Creator God expressed their faith in terms of their historical circumstances. Their inspiration did not provide them with information, but with the necessity to proclaim the Word that the world in which humans live is God’s world, and life in it is a gift of God. Thus, in the various biblical books, God reveals himself as the Living God who is the source of life, even as biblical authors affirm this within the limits of their own cultural horizons.
I have written this book, in part, to demonstrate that when reading the Bible as the depository of God’s Word in the twenty-first century it is not only necessary to have faith in God; it is also necessary to be a citizen of one’s own culture and society, just as the authors and editors of the books in the Bible were. One cannot be a fully integrated person and ignore what modern sciences, and the technologies they have made possible, say about the universe and the inner lives of human beings. To affirm that we live in God’s world while ignoring what the study of history, literature, psychology and all modern sciences have contributed to our understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we live only makes whatever one may say totally irrelevant. Just as biblical authors, writing between the tenth century B.C.E. and the second century C.E., were fully alive to their culture and society, so too those of us who believe in God must be alive to our culture and society if we intend to say something significant in the twenty-first century. It is with this end in mind that I have written this book.
This means that I have not read the apocalyptic texts found in the Bible with an apocalyptic hermeneutic because, as I argue in this book, my contemporaries no longer live in the symbolic universe in which the authors of these texts lived. Their hermeneutic was based on two presuppositions:1) the prophets did not write for their contemporaries. They wrote for those living at the time of the end, and 2) we are living at the time of the end. I agree with the authors of apocalyptic texts in that they wrote for the benefit of their own contemporaries. But the authors of the writings they recycle for that purpose also wrote for their contemporaries. Since this is the case, I have examined their texts in their most likely chronological sequence. This becomes necessary because biblical apocalyptic authors and editors used the writings of their predecessors as a foundation on which to build their message for their own contemporaries.
In the writing of this book I have benefited from the generous help of friends and family. As it has been the case for over twenty-five years, my colleague at Saint Mary’s College and good friend, Terence Martin, has read and commented on every one of the chapters of this book. Our lunches, in which we go over what one of us has been writing, have been a steady source of delight and enlightenment over the years, especially lately when both of us are enjoying retirement. Another former colleague and long-standing friend, Edward W. H. Vick, has also given me generous and wise suggestions for the improvement of early drafts. I am also indebted to Christopher Eyre, of Energion Publications, for the professional editing of my manuscript. The dedication expresses my belief that in university classrooms the one who learns the most is the teacher.
Introduction to
Apocalyptic Literature
The apocalyptic literature of the Bible has been seen as both the most important element within it, to be given singular attention as the key to a successful Christian life, or as a source of embarrassment that is better ignored. These opposing attitudes toward apocalypticism within Christianity have been a constant feature of its history. It would be possible to write a history of Christianity with the contrasting views of the value of apocalyptic literature as its organizing principle. My purpose in this book is to take a serious look at the apocalyptic texts found in the Bible in order to establish why they were written and what they were concerned with at the time of writing. I will pursue this objective by asking:1) for whom were they written? 2) What is the issue they are concerned with? And 3) within which symbolic universe does their message make sense? My task is to reconstruct as much as possible their historical context. The ancient Hebrews, the post-exilic Jews and the early Christians went through traumatic experiences of national defeat, exile, denials of national independence and significant changes in the cultural and religious milieu in which they lived. It was within these circumstances that the authors of these texts wrote. All these factors need to be taken into account before one can make any sense of these texts in the twenty-first century.
The Bible contains full blown apocalyptic books, like Daniel and Revelation, books that contain apocalyptic chapters which don’t fit comfortably within them, and books that while belonging to a different category work up themes that eventually became characteristic of the apocalyptic perspective. Since the biblical apocalyptic perspective developed as a descendant of the prophetic tradition in Israel, in this book I will first establish the nature of the prophetic tradition. Then I will explore how the apocalyptic perspective developed within the prophetic and other traditions. After that, I will analyze the mayor apocalyptic texts in the Bible. Finally, I will draw some conclusions and make some practical suggestions as to the relevance of the apocalyptic perspective in the twenty-first century. For full disclosure, I am using the labels “prophetic” and “apocalyptic” as heuristic devices that help in the analysis of these texts. No author of one of these books understood himself as an apocalyptic author. These labels are modern tools of analysis with which to contrast and compare different points of view. Characteristics of one or the other of these labels may be found in books classified in the other group.
The function of prophecy in Israel
The apocalyptic authors of the Old Testament were descendants of the prophets. Both aimed at quite similar objectives. It is a misunderstanding, however, to think that their basic objective was to forecast the future. The prophets’ primary interest was to interpret the present, call for a change of direction in the lives of the people of Israel and advise them on what needed to be done at the moment. That they are known as prophets does not say that they foretold what would happen in the future, but that they spoke on behalf of another. The word “prophet” is composed of two Greek words: pro and phemi. The preposition pro may mean either “to anticipate” or “to take the place of.” Thus, in English we have the word prophylactic (to anticipate an infection), propensity (to anticipate liking) and proscribe (to anticipate writing). We also have the word proselyte (an alien who is in), prosthesis (taking the place of a missing part), and protestant (one who testifies against, or for another). Phemi means “to say,” “to affirm.” The prophets spoke for another, for the Lord. Doing this, they were not “fore-telling,” but “telling for,” standing for, in place of the Lord. Through them the Lord was telling the Israelites how he viewed their present course of action, describing what the future held if they continued in their present course, and advising them to change course.
This definition of a prophet was still in use in early Christian times. The apostle Paul points out that different members of the church have been given different gifts and identifies “prophecy” among them (1 Cor. 12:10). He also gives a list of the roles God has established for the proper functioning of the church. He lists “prophets” after “apostles” and before “teachers” (1 Cor. 12:28). As Paul describes them, the prophets were the ones who spoke a “Word of the Lord.” We would call them “preachers.” In antiquity, the Word of the Lord was understood to be oral, even after its later compilation in books by editors. With some significant