Robert Henry Charles

“ It was Christianity that preserved Jewish apocalyptic, when it was abandoned by Judaism as it sank into Rabbinism, and gave it a Christian character either by a forcible exegesis or by a systematic process of interpolation. Moreover, it cultivated this form of literature and made it the vehicle of its own ideas. Though apocalyptic served its purpose in the opening centuries of the Christian era, it must be confessed that in many of its aspects its office is transitory, as they belong not to the essence of Christian thought. ”

“ When the divine word is thus conceived as a written message, the sole office of the prophet is to communicate what is written. Thus the human element is reduced to zero, and the conception of prophecy becomes mechanical. And as the personal element disappears in the conception of the prophetic calling, so it tends to disappear in the prophetic view of history, and the future comes to be conceived not as the organic result of the present under the divine guidance, but as mechanically determined from the beginning in the counsels of God, and arranged under artificial categories of time. ”

“ Their writers were students of ancient prophecy and apocalyptical tradition, and, though they might recast and reinterpret them, they could not regard them as their own inventions. Each fresh apocalypse would in the eyes of its writer be in some degree but a fresh edition of the traditions naturally attaching themselves to great names in Israel’s past, and thus the books named respectively Enoch, Noah, Ezra would to some slight extent be not pseudonymous. ”

“ Apocalypse of Esdras.—This Greek production resembles the more ancient fourth book of Esdras in some respects. The prophet is perplexed about the mysteries of life, and questions God respecting them. The punishment of the wicked especially occupies his thoughts. Since they have sinned in consequence of Adam’s fall, their fate is considered worse than that of the irrational creation. The description of the tortures suffered in the infernal regions is tolerably minute. At last the prophet consents to give up his spirit to God, who has prepared for him a crown of immortality. ”

“ The fourth and last empire which, according to Daniel vii. 19-25, was to be Greek, was now declared to be Roman by the Apocalypse of Baruch (xxxvi.-xl.) and 4 Ezra (x. 60-xii. 35) . Once more such ideas as those of “the day of Yahweh” and the “new heavens and a new earth” were constantly re-edited with fresh nuances in conformity with their new settings. Thus the inner development of Jewish apocalyptic was always conditioned by the historical experiences of the nation. ”

“ The righteous as a nation should yet possess the earth, even in this world the faithful community should attain its rights in an eternal Messianic kingdom on earth, or else in temporary blessedness here and eternal blessedness hereafter. ”

“ By its dualistic Theology.—Prophecy believes that this world is God’s world and that in this world His goodness and truth will yet be vindicated. Hence the prophet prophesies of a definite future arising out of and organically connected with the present. The apocalyptic writer on the other hand despairs of the present, and directs his hopes absolutely to the future, to a new world standing in essential opposition to the present. ”

“ Though the individual might perish amid the disorders of this world, he would not fail, apocalyptic taught, to attain through resurrection the recompense that was his due in the Messianic kingdom or in heaven itself. Apocalyptic thus forms the indispensable preparation for the religion of the New Testament.
iii. Form of Apocalyptic.—The form of apocalyptic is a literary form; for we cannot suppose that the writers experienced the voluminous and detailed visions we find in their books. ”

“ Under the guidance of such a principle the writer naturally expected the world’s culmination in evil to be the immediate precursor of God’s intervention on behalf of the righteous, and every fresh growth in evil to be an additional sign that the time was at hand. ”

“ Even the Greek cannot claim to be the original work, but only to be a recension of it; for, whereas Origen states that this apocalypse contained an account of the seven heavens, the existing Greek work describes only five, and the Slavonic only two. As the original, work presupposes 2 Enoch and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and was known to Origen, it was written between A.D. 80 and 200, and nearer the earlier date than the later, as it would otherwise be hard to understand how it came to circulate among Christians. ”

“ The natural concomitant in conduct of such a belief is an uncompromising asceticism. He that would live to the next world must shun this. Visions are vouchsafed only to those who to prayer have added fasting.
(c) By pseudonymous Authorship.—We have already touched on this characteristic of apocalyptic. The prophet stood in direct relations with his people; his prophecy was first spoken and afterwards written. The apocalyptic writer could obtain no hearing from his contemporaries, who held that, though God spoke in the past, “there was no more any prophet.” ”

“ However we may explain the inconsistency, we are precluded by the moral earnestness of the writer from assuming the visions to be pure inventions. But the inconsistency has in part been explained by Gunkel, who has rightly emphasized that the writer did not freely invent his materials but derived them in the main from tradition, as he held that these mysterious traditions of his people were, if rightly expounded, forecasts of the time to come. ”

“ Beginning in the bosom of prophecy, and steadily differentiating itself from it in its successive developments, it never came to stand in absolute contrast to it. Apocalyptical elements disclose themselves in the prophetical books of Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, while in Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii. and xxxiii. we find well-developed apocalypses; but it is not until we come to Daniel that we have a fully matured and classical example of this class of literature. ”

“ Till a few years ago, owing to Christian interpolations, it was taken to be a Christian apocryph, written originally in Greek in the 2nd century A.D. Now it is acknowledged by Christian and Jewish scholars alike to have been written in Hebrew in the 2nd century B.C. From Hebrew it was translated into Greek and from Greek into Armenian and Slavonic. The versions have come down in their entirety, and small portions of the Hebrew text have been recovered from later Jewish writings. ”

“ Furthermore, the visionary who is found at most periods of great spiritual excitement was forced by the prejudice of his time, which refused to acknowledge any inspiration in the present, to ascribe his visionary experiences and reinterpretations of the mysterious traditions of his people to some heroic figure of the past. ”

“ Moreover, there will always be a difficulty in determining what belongs to his actual vision and what to the literary skill or free invention of the author, seeing that the visionary must be dependent on memory and past experience for the forms and much of the matter of the actual vision. ”

“ This is essentially the apocalyptic conception of history, and Ezekiel may be justly represented as in certain essential aspects its founder in Israel.
We shall now consider (I.) Apocalyptic, its origin and general characteristics; (II.) Old Testament Apocalyptic; (III.) New Testament Apocalyptic.
I. Apocalyptic—its Origin and General Characteristics
i. Sources of Apocalyptic.—The origin of Apocalyptic is to be sought in (a) unfulfilled prophecy and in (b) traditional elements drawn from various sources.
(a) The origin of Apocalyptic is to be sought in unfulfilled prophecy. ”

“ There are independent versions of these chapters in Latin and Slavonic. (See Isaiah, Ascension of.)
Shepherd of Hermas.—In the latter half of the 2nd century this book enjoyed a respect bordering on that paid to the writings of the New Testament. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen quote it as Scripture, though in Africa it was not held in such high consideration, as Tertullian speaks slightingly of it. The writer belongs really to the prophetic and not to the apocalyptic school. His book is divided into three parts containing visions, commands, similitudes. ”

“ It is true that these might have been due to the writer’s borrowings from earlier Greek works ultimately of Hebrew origin. The date of the book is also quite uncertain, though several scholars have ascribed it to the 3rd century.
Christian Sibyllines.—Critics are still at variance as to the extent of the Christian Sibyllines. It is practically agreed that vi.-viii. are of Christian origin. As for i.-ii., xi.-xiv. most writers are in favour of Christian authorship; but not so Geffcken (ed. Sibyll., 1902) , who strongly insists on the Jewish origin of large sections of these books. ”

“ This represents the second advent as heralded by a succession of signs which are unmistakable precursors of its appearance, such as wars, earthquakes, famines, the destruction of Jerusalem and the like. Our suspicion is justified by a further examination of Mark xiii. For the words “let him that readeth understand” (ver. 14) indicate that the prediction referred to appeared first not in a spoken address but in a written form, as was characteristic of apocalypses. ”

“ This work was written in Egypt, according to James, and survives also in Slavonic, Rumanian, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions. It deals with Abraham’s reluctance to die and the means by which his death was brought about. James holds that this book is referred to by Origen (Hom. in Luc. xxxv.) , but this is denied by Schürer, who also questions its Jewish origin. With the exception of chaps. x.–xi., it is really a legend and not an apocalypse. An English translation of James’s texts will be found in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Clark, 1897) , pp. ”