a puzzle. Such behaviors do not make sense. They do not envision evil supernatural forces at work causing human beings to be disloyal to the covenant with their God.
Contrasts between prophetic and apocalyptic texts
Several factors came together to give rise to the apocalyptic perspective. Like prophecy, it was not a peculiar phenomenon to the Israelites, or the Jews. Apocalyptic literature is known from all the surrounding nations in antiquity, and most students of apocalyptic texts are concerned with the exploration of their features in different cultural situations. These studies come to different conclusions as to the distinctive features all apocalypses have in common. Among the most prominent are an emphasis on a final judgment, the revival of the language of creation stories and a predetermined understanding of history. The classification of apocalyptic and prophetic texts according to characteristics has been difficult; therefore, my use of characteristics in order to contrast apocalyptic and prophetic texts is purely heuristic.
As stated already, the apocalypticists were the descendants of the prophets, but they faced a problem which the prophets did not encounter. That Yahveh is a God of justice who rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked was an observable truism for the prophets who worked within a corporate personality understanding of identity. The apocalypticists had to find a way to affirm God’s retributive justice within the new understanding of the self as an individual person. To affirm that an almighty God deals with his creatures according to retributive justice became problematic when it was disproved by personal experience. Confronted with the suffering of a righteous person, it became difficult to argue that God is both almighty and just. It was primarily to solve this theological problem that apocalypticism arose among the Jews. Biblical apocalyptic literature, the only one with which I am concerned, differs in several significant ways from the prophetic literature of Israel because due to changes in their historical existence and direct contacts with other more developed societies made it necessary to give an account for the suffering of the righteous. The prophets working within a symbolic universe with a corporate understanding of human identity could assume that God’s retributive justice is at work.
Since in our civilization we are conditioned to think that the best way to understand something is to describe its historical development, some time ago it became almost axiomatic to see apocalyptic texts as the answers to unfulfilled prophecies. That is, Hebrew eschatology evolved this way because, as noticed above, the expectations of the re-establishment of the Davidic dynasty after the exile were not fulfilled. This linear explanation of the rise of apocalyptic texts overlooks the tensions existing between different traditions running within the people of Israel. Cultic, royal/military and wisdom traditions did not come to a satisfactory synthesis either before or after the exile. Different prophets had different allegiances and described different scenarios. As said above, they actually desired that their announcements of the coming doom would not actually take place.
The apocalyptic authors were dealing with a new, different situation because God’s judgment of his people had taken place at the Exile. Their agenda was to interpret the present for people who were in Exile, or were ruled by foreigners while living in their land. They were not addressing a people who enjoyed political and military stability and prosperity by abusing the weak among them. It was not that the prophecies of the prophets were unfulfilled, but that the present conditions were totally different from the ones in which their fathers lived. Thus, while the prophets pleaded for a change of course so that the coming punishment could be avoided, and the future could be the establishment of a restructured, purified present, the authors of apocalypses foretold a future that would break into the present and destroy it. For them, the future could not be a continuation of the present, not even a purified one. The difference in their perceptions of the future was caused by their different evaluations of the nature of history. Both the prophets and the authors of apocalypses had a negative view of the present. The prophets thought that the present could be salvaged because they understood that the future was open. If the people repented, God could change his mind. If they experienced suffering, it had been caused by the sins of their fathers. The apocalypticists could not see a happy future coming out of a chaotic present; conceived as chaotic especially from the perspective of individual identity. According to them, the present had no future because their suffering made no sense.
Like the prophets, the apocalypticists understood the connection between human beings and their God to be in history, but unlike the prophets the apocalypticists understood that the future was predetermined rather than open. According to the prophets, the Israelites needed to reconsider their course of action. If they continued as they were going, the future was bleak, but if they changed course and turned to the Lord, God was more than willing, in fact he was anxious, to relent from his anger and “love them deeply.” Thus the prophets admonished the people to repent. If they did so, God knew how to forgive and forget. Their sins will be buried in the depths of the sea.
By contrast, the apocalypticists understood that history is predetermined. God had set things up “from before the foundation of the world.” History has been running along as it was meant to be and the future is just as firmly set as the past was. There is nothing that men and women can do to change what the future brings. The apocalypticists plead for patience and endurance, rather than repentance. What “the chosen” now need is perseverance in their faithfulness and obedience to God. The apocalypticists do not advise repentance because their message is for the elect ones, those who are suffering unjustly. The course of history is firmly set; therefore, their advice to them is to persevere with patient endurance until God enters history on their behalf, as he has determined already before the foundation of the world to do at the appointed time.
Another significant difference between the prophets and the apocalypticists is their views on the origin of the human predicament and its full implications. The prophets considered the Exodus the formative period in the history of Israel. God had chosen them, taken them out of Egypt and made them a people at Sinai. There he had revealed himself to them and made a covenant with them, thus reaffirming all previous demonstrations of his loving care for them. How did the people respond to God’s multiple manifestations of his love for them? They rebelled. At the Sinai desert they worshiped the golden calf. Their rebellion against Yahveh at Sinai was for the prophets the paradigmatic sin that marked the existence of Israel as a rebellious, stiff-necked people. When they asked Aaron to make them “gods who shall go before us,” they established themselves in a continuous rebellion against Yahveh (Ex. 32:1-9; see Ez. 20:13). For them, idolatry is the sin that defines the conduct of the people. The prophets know nothing about the sin of Adam and Eve. Evil in the human heart is somewhat of a puzzle, but its presence among the Israelites is evident in their rebellion against the God who made them a nation and entered into a covenant relation with them at Sinai.
The shift to the consideration of the sin of Adam and Eve as the primordial sin becomes explicit within the biblical canon, for the first time, in the letters of the apostle Paul. With the shift from Sinai to the Garden of Eden the nature and the consequences of the primordial sin also become different. It is not just a sin that marks the Israelites as a rebellious people, but one that brings about the enslavement under the power of sin not only of all humanity, but of the whole creation. Paul is the one who tells us that Satan is the ruler of this world, intent on deceiving and taking advantage of the weak in faith (2 Cor. 2:11; 4:4). Jeremiah wondered how it could be that the mechanism that keeps migratory birds healthy by following the laws for their wellbeing the mechanism that makes for obedience to God’s designs is not functioning in human beings. Paul, on the other hand, took for granted that humans lived under the power of cosmic forces of evil that kept them bound to sin and used the power of the Law to kill them. He did not wonder about the reasons for their evil ways. He knew that Adam had opened the door and Satan had entered God’s world and taken control of it (Rom. 5:12-14). The difference between Jeremiah and Paul can only be understood when one realizes the emergence of the concept of The Fall as a cosmic tragedy that brought about a world no longer under Yahveh’s direct control. Satan and his angels are thought to be free agents in this “fallen” world (2 Cor. 4:4). What was a puzzle to Jeremiah was not a puzzle for Paul.
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