The prophets’ concerted efforts to disassociate worship from any natural phenomena transferred the significance of the yearly festivals from seasonal events in nature to episodes in the history of Israel. It reached its goal at the Exile. Throughout the course of Israel’s dwelling in the promised land, the worship of fertility gods and goddesses was alive and well among the Israelites. The Former and the Latter Prophets never tire of condemning the fertility rites taking place at the groves and the high places throughout the land. From the Exile on, the Israelites became monotheists, and Yahveh was enthroned as the only God. All others were not gods but idols. Loyalty to Yahveh, was essential not only because of the historical relationship the Israelites had with Yahveh, but also because he is the universal only true God.
This had not been so earlier, as evidenced in the story of Ruth. When Ruth and Orpah, Naomi’s daughters-in-law, inform her that they wish to go with her on her return to Judah, Naomi tells them that they must remain with their families in Moab and worship their family’s gods. Orpah takes the advice and goes back to her family and its gods. Ruth, however, insists that she will go to Judah and worship Naomi’s god (Ru. 1:15-16). The story presupposes that it is perfectly proper for people to worship the gods of their families in their land. Once in the promised land most Israelites naturally became worshipers of the gods of their new land at the groves and the high places. Altars to them were found in the court of the Jerusalem temple.
The prophetic battle against the worship of other gods and the explicit denial of the existence of other Gods, one of the main purposes of the post-exilic chapters in Isaiah, was severely compromised by the apocalyptic introduction of Satan and his angels as cosmic forces that influence human actions. The notion of The Fall was necessary in order to account for the suffering of the just, those who were loyal to Yahveh. To admit that God is no longer the god who rules over history and dispenses rewards and punishments was unthinkable. The way out of the dilemma was to admit that at the moment God is not in total direct control of what goes on in the world, but it is not the case that women and men have free will allowing them to develop evil habits. The problem is not a historical problem that affects only human beings. The problem is that the whole of creation has fallen under the power of the forces of evil, personified by the Devil, Belzebul or Satan and his angels. The introduction of Satan as the one who controls, or at least is a free agent in, the fallen creation, and thus brought with him sin and death into the world, shifted the extent of the predicament from that of the Israelites living in their land to that of the whole of humanity living under cosmic evil forces. In fact, sin is not just a Jewish problem connected to the Law given at Sinai. It is the problem of all humanity connected with a creation fallen under Satan and his evil forces.
This cosmic problem requires a cosmic solution. For the prophets, the problem had been a historical problem that was to be solved historically. On the Day of the Lord God would intervene and set up Jerusalem as the capital of the world and all the kings of the world would come to learn the Law and wisdom from Yahveh at Jerusalem (Mic. 4:1-4; Is. 2:1-4). For the apocalypticists, the prophetic solution was no longer tenable. The problem was beyond repair within the present fallen creation. It required the termination of a fallen creation and its history. The evil in the world had become so pervasive that it could not be fixed within the present structure of things.
To have a world in which God’s intentions when he created the world could be operational, God needed to destroy the world that is now controlled by evil forces and create a new world to take its place. This is the doctrine of the Two Ages: reality consists of This Age and The Age to Come. The suffering of the just is possible now because retributive justice may not be operative in this present evil Age. This means that it is possible for righteous people to suffer in the fallen creation. God’s justice, however, will be fully operative in the Age to Come. Then, both those whose ways are evil and those whose ways are just will receive the recompense they deserve. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary at the moment, ultimately, behind the scenes, God is in control of the universe. Even if in This Age the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, in The Age to Come things will be set right. To know this is wisdom, but for most it is a mystery. This mystery, however, has been revealed to a chosen few. The prophets envisioned “the restoration of the fortunes of Israel” in the promised land within the historical continuum. The apocalypticists envisioned the functioning of God’s retributive justice in The Age to Come, after the end of history.
The divine revelation of the mystery which the apocalyptic texts convey takes place in one of two ways. According to one of them, as the author was praying and wondering about the incongruity of believing that he lives in God’s world when so many terrible things are going on all around him, an angel of God comes down from heaven and reveals to him God’s understanding of what is going on and how God will take care of things. He is assured by the angel that God’s ultimate purpose is going to be accomplished. According to the alternative way, the author was taken up to heaven and brought before the presence of God. There he is informed of what is going on by witnessing the actions of different angels. In either case, the context for the apocalyptic resolution of the human predicament of the righteous sufferer, while described in earthly, historical activities, is in reality being determined by divine activities that contribute to the accomplishment of God’s righteous purposes for Creation. By placing himself in the heavenly realm before the throne of God (Rev. 4:1), or by receiving a message by an angel sent from the throne of God (Dan. 8:15-20), the apocalyptic visionary escapes the nationalistic perspective of the prophets. He may still envision Jerusalem as the umbilical cord of the universe and the Torah as central, but the dwellers of the New Jerusalem are the chosen ones from every nation. This means that the apocalyptic perspective has no attachments to political of national identities. Its only attachment is to the God of creation. The prophets, by contrast, were attached to the God of Israel’s history.
Another major cosmological shift took place in the period following the Exile. It contributed to the way in which the apocalyptic imagination described the future bliss of the elect. It involved the conception of the human person in the world. It is natural to conceive one’s home as the place where one was born. Throughout one’s life one remains attached to one’s birthplace. Humans are normally permanently attached emotionally to their place of origin; finding themselves in any other place they feel “away from home.” In that situation, their underlying desire is to “return.” The notion of one’s home can be understood not only in personal terms, but also in terms of humanity at large. According to the traditional Hebrew understanding of human origins, God had made them from dust of the earth and the earth was their home. On the earth, God had designated the land where he directed Abraham on his journey out of Mesopotamia, and in which he became a sojourner, as the land where his descendants would dwell and become a great nation. For the Hebrews the possession of the land, and dwelling in the Promised Land had become a major element of their self-awareness as a people. As noticed earlier, they understood that their future with God after the restoration of their fortunes would continue to be in their earthly home.
With the opening of travel, commerce and political connections between the Mediterranean and the Indian cultures, the notion of the human soul as an immortal, eternal living thing that had become entrapped in a physical body became widespread in the West and it convinced women and men that the earth was not their real home. Their essential being, their immortal soul, was “at home” only in heaven, the soul’s place of origin. This shift to heaven as the true home of human beings created the pervasive desire to return home to heaven. Salvation ceased to be identified with health and prosperity on earth and became attached to the ability to escape the earth and return home to heaven. This gave rise to multiple esoteric, ascetic religious ways to achieve salvation through knowledge of the path on which the soul could make the journey back to heaven. It became the main agenda of the Mystery Cults that invaded the Roman Empire from the East, where they had been originally fertility cults. In a way, the notion that