Early Apocalyptic Literature

An important development in the literature of the late Second Temple period was the emergence of the genre of apocalypse, from the Greek word for revelation. These writings reveal hidden secrets, often through an angelic or quasi-divine intermediary.

Jewish apocalyptic literature was for the most part concerned with the revelation of secrets such as eschatology, the architecture of the heavens, and the mysteries of the cosmos. On the one hand, apocalyptic writing challenged the closure of the biblical canon with its claim of continued direct divine revelation. On the other hand, the authors of apocalyptic texts—with the exception of the book of Revelation in the New Testament—attribute their revelations to earlier biblical figures, including Enoch, Moses, Elijah, Baruch, and Ezra. Even as apocalypses are attributed to great (or lesser) figures from biblical history, they tell, in many cases, the history of the real author’s own time or immediate past. Their constant use of cryptic language and fanciful symbolism makes their subsequent decoding difficult for interpreters.

There were three main periods in Jewish history during which apocalypses were written. The first was in the early second century BCE, before and after the Maccabean revolt (ca. 167–160 BCE). The next was during the late first and early second centuries CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans (70 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). The last period ran from the late sixth to the early ninth century CE and was a product of the upheavals engendered by the Byzantine-Sasanian wars of that period and the turmoil caused by the rise of Islam and the subsequent Islamic conquest. Scholars attribute the emergence of apocalyptic literature during times of political crisis to the power of these texts and their ideas to console the persecuted and bewildered community as they try to understand their present circumstances.

Although the terms apocalypse and apocalyptic are widely used in modern parlance to hyperbolically refer to catastrophic events perceived to signal the imminent end times, scholars have defined ancient apocalyptic literature more narrowly, as a genre with specific, identifiable features, including the schematization of history. Behind these apocalyptic texts lies the fundamental idea that history is moving inexorably toward a grand climax, a day of divine judgment, and that the end of history is at hand. This motif includes apocalyptic scenarios that portray the end of history with a great battle between the forces of good and evil that will inaugurate the kingdom of God. Some texts also speak of the messianic agent or agents who they imagine will usher humanity into the kingdom of heaven. (See also Heavenly Judgment and Messianism.) Apocalyptic narratives sometimes take the form of “otherworldly journeys,” in which nondivine figures, such as Enoch and Baruch, are transported to the cosmos, where they encounter divine beings who reveal otherworldly secrets to them or learn about the architecture of the heavens.