Apocalypse: Zow!

Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Van Eyck. CNN's Version Will Have Some Significant VariationsFrom the Mailbag:

Today you wrote this:
"The New Testament was an apocalyptic text when it was written, and has gradually become instead a theological one."

What do you mean by "an apocalyptic text," and what are (at least some of) the implications of that?  What does it *mean*?  How did the original audience see the text?

First, a crash course in apocalyptic literature.

The Israelites and Jews, like all cultures, have distinctive habits in their literature, little fingerprints that help us judge who wrote something.  Those fingerprints, as in all literature, depend on who the author is, to whom he's writing, and what shared assumptions those people have.

Think of it this way: you couldn't write today a poem or a short story that mentions "the towers falling down" without evoking a nod from your reader, who remembers September 11.  If you're both Americans, that's a grave, sober nod.  If you're both Islamic militant activists opposed to American policy in the Middle East, it's a much different recognition: maybe glee or triumph.

So author, audience, and context are tremendously important in understanding what a text says.  We're privileged to listen in, to read over their shoulders, but we will be looking at different texts unless we take the trouble to remember our history.

Conversely, if you lack the context, you're at sea in the literature.  If you grew up in America reading the Hebrew prophets, with the air conditioner humming and a good football game on television and a roast waiting for you in the oven after church and your duly elected representatives making the laws and levying the taxes, you stand almost no chance at all of getting your head into the space of the Israelites and the Jews.  If you grew up believing that "truth" is what a video camera sees and can present as documentation in a report, it's almost hopeless to read the histories in the Bible.  If you grew up thinking history is an unbiased, factual account of "what happened," you'll need a brain transplant before the gospels make any sense.

So out of the historical trouble of the Jews grows this kind of poetry called "apocalypse."

It's apparently wildly popular.

What it does is imagine history, and most usually some specific trouble, from God's perspective.

It's aim is to comfort those who are suffering by giving them hope that their sufferings are part of an arranged plan, and that they will therefore have retribution of some sort.

And as always, the form and habits of the literature serve the purposes of the literature. The Jews in Exile: Dreaming of The Past, and the Future

So how do you present God's perspective on history? 

• It must have the characteristics of a dream or vision, because only so does one enter into a divine perspective.  So the apocalyptic writers imitate one another in this way.  Of course I am not saying they did not have such dreams and visions: only that (whether they did or not) they obeyed the dream / vision convention in the literature as rigidly as your average songwriter keeps his tune between three and five minutes.  There are rules to genres.
• Apocalypse tends to telescope time.  That is, it is pleased to blend the memory of the past and the hope of the future into one imagistic vision.  It will present that vision or dream as "a vision of the time that will come," but of course that typically serves the purpose of seeing history as one coherent thing with a beginning and an ending and a goal or telos.
• Apocalyptic writers like to present history as a battle between good and evil, where "good" is of course the triumph of the Jewish nation and the restoration of its golden age under King David.  For all the sufferings of the Jews, there will be recompense, and there will be a day, the Day of YHWH (the phrase appears all over the prophets) when the kingdom and lineage of David is established securely against its enemies and those enemies will see the triumph of the Jews and their god YHWH.
• This battle against evil will have an appointed commander: the Messiah.  The word "Messiah" comes from the Hebrew ha maschiach, the anointed one (that is, the king).  He is generally understood to be of the lineage of David.  Note that not all pro-Davidic literature is apocalyptic.  The Hebrew Bible is loaded with it, but only a few segments are properly speaking apocalyptic.  But the apocalyptic bits are unquestionably reading over the shoulder of the pro-David bits.  When Daniel writes of The Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:9-10, it's frequently assumed that this is God himself.  But I think rather that the imagery points to it being a sort of divinized King David, a nostalgic but militant memory of Israel's glory.   When the "holy ones" (that is, Judah) is oppressed by foreign powers, the Ancient of Days is approached by the "Son of Adam" (that is, "the Son of Humankind," an idiom for "human being") in Daniel 7:13-14, and David passes on to him his authority.  Note that the more "human" king is in the shadow of David, and derives his power from him.
• Apocalypse must be allegorical.  Sometimes this is for safety (it's better to tell your captors that an eagle will rend a bear limb from limb than that they will themselves be destroyed).  Other times it's for the poet's protection.  Other times it seems to be just part of the game of apocalypse, the literary pleasure.  What is this beast?  Who is this figure?  What is meant?  It's a bit of a game or puzzle, but it's not unsolvable to the original readers.   They know full well who has oppressed them, who the players are in their own world.  But as I said, often the future is bound up with the past, so that (for instance) Revelation tells about a host of things that are quite fulfilled (the Beast is no more and no less than the Roman Emperor and his cult, and the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven is the Church); but it also looks forward in some ways to a writing of the wrongs.

And that leads us to the question you asked about the New Testament.

It seems to me that one of apocalypse's chief characteristics is that when it is not fulfilled, or is imperfectly fulfilled, it's cast forward into the future.  Or it must be reinterpreted.

Thus, for instance, in Isaiah chapter 7:13-17, Isaiah uses a newborn child of a "young woman" as a clock of sorts as well as a sign that "God is with us."  By the time the child is old enough to eat solid food and to choose right from wrong (possibly seven or twelve years is meant), the Syro-Ephramite crisis will have passed.  Isaiah even tells you that's what he's writing about, if you care to examine the chapter in detail.

And of course, Isaiah was right: Judah was spared the brunt of the Syro-Ephraimite conflict.

But on the other hand, Judah remained under Assyrian sway, and after that under the tyranny of the Babylonian Empire.  When the Babylonians crushed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., what was left?  What to make of your prophecy now, Isaiah?St. Michael & The Dragon: Revelation's Future, Tied Up With Its Present

Well... how about a restoration?  Let's sort of mentally drop the knowledge that it was historically situated in the Syro-Ephraimite conflict of the 8th century, and zero in on the striking image: a young woman will conceive.  A searing image of hope, no?  Conceive what?  A child, who shall be called "Immanuel, God is with us."

This "method" of handling prophecy contributes strongly to the crystallizing of apocalypse under guys like Ezekiel (who, being a priest, sees the coming new kingdom as being one in which the priests get extraordinarily plush new digs and even the king answers to them); or the writer of Daniel (who is writing apocalypse under the Seleucid and Hasmonean administrations and trying to keep alive Jewish nationalism in a very turbulent time).

And so in the midst of this agony of Jewish hope, Jesus comes on the scene, claiming to be the Son of Man to whom David has passed on his power and glory.

Whoa.

Well, by all rights, that should mean that the Jews are now triumphant in history.

Jesus, in the earliest gospel of Mark, certainly seems to see it that way.  He takes authority over the demons (who among other things are Roman / foreign powers... "Legion" one calls himself significantly before possessing a herd of unclean swine).  He engages in a throw-down with the (Roman-backed, Hasmonean) temple elite who have forsaken their fidelity (the word is usually translated "faith") to Israel and to its apocalyptic visions.  Jesus undertakes the royal duty of cleansing the temple (this was an annual ritual of the king), but specifically of foreigners (understood as "traders") in fulfillment of the apocalypse in Zechariah 14:21.Port-Side Ass-Cheek: American Narcissism As New Jerusalem

In Mark 13:1-37, Jesus describes the coming destruction of Jerusalem.  It's doubtful that you had to be a genius to read the writing on the wall, but he specifically refers to Daniel's gospel and other places where the "abomination of desolation," the idolatrous sacrifice or image, is placed in the temple, signifying the final betrayal of the Kingdom of God by the Jewish elite.

At his trial, the leader of this cadre of pro-Roman Jews, the chief priest, throws down to Jesus and demands to know whether he is the one who will claim the throne of Israel and throw down the enemies of God's people.  Jesus announces, "I am," and then quotes the apocalypse of Daniel: "You will see me coming on clouds of glory."

Whoa.

Paul similarly sees that "The present form of this world is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:29-31), and conceives of the Day of Atonement (the sounding of the trumpet) as being the final triumph of God's kingdom.  (This passage is frequently misread to produce the doctrine of "the rapture.")

Luke, though much less pro-Israel and anti-Roman, sees things more or less the same way.  For Matthew and Luke the issue is that the Gentiles can be part of the new apocalypse, the Day of YHWH.  Luke in the book of Acts 2:16-22 employs the apocalyptic mind of Joel (who, like several prophets, sees the conversion of the Gentiles to be an essential part of the Day of YHWH).  Similarly, Matthew's story of the Sheep and the Goats is about the way that the Gentiles treat the new Kingdom Jesus establishes: those who welcome the kingdom will be partners with it, those who do not will "go away into everlasting fire." (See Matthew 25:31-46.)

Finally, the Gospel of John and Revelation see the destruction of Jerusalem as being a logical moment in the inauguration of the Kingdom, as it now must make clear out as the dwelling of God on earth.

But note that again this is a casting-forward of the hopes of apocalypse: it was clear to the writer of Revelation that the Roman emperors, far from being overthrown, were a beast from water who persecuted the precious church.  It was clear to John that, although Jesus represents the entrance of God into history, only through death would the kingdom come about finally, something that Mark is not yet persuaded of.