Wars from the Stars: A New Hope
As we’ve seen many examples of, much of the earlier parts of the Hebrew Bible’s focus on God’s promises for his people, which primarily involved a promise of rest, lie in the physical land of Canaan. His promised blessings if they’re obedient are mostly earthly in nature, such as peace from their enemies, good crops, and fertility of their livestock and their women. Even God’s covenants, as we’ve seen, are phrased in earthly terms, with promises like a son of David would rule on the throne in Jerusalem, to usher in a kingdom of God. But in the actual sacred narrative of Israel, those promises seemed to keep getting further away, especially after the Davidic dynasty ended when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, so we see a tendency in the prophets after this pivotal event to focus on the either spiritual and/or future prophecy. Such new foci among the latter prophets could take many forms, such as a focus on the cleansing of the sins of the people rather merely avoidance of the loss of earthly blessing (as we saw with Ezekiel), or an appeal for social justice and Torah study[1], rather than observances of ritual Temple laws, which could not be practiced during certain periods of their history. But the major covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David, which were arguably the framework for the entire worldview of Israel, had to be understood somehow. So in the post exilic period, we see a rise in an explanation of how these grand prophecies would be fulfilled, and one of the most predominant ways the latter prophets did so was by taking an apocalyptic stance, which had both spiritualized and futuristic views of prophecy.
One of the problems one encounters when trying to nail down the nature of apocalyptic literature is the tremendous variety of how it manifests. Scholars have difficulty even defining terms like “apocalypse”, “apocalypticism”, and “apocalyptic”.[2] I will not wade off into the vast arguments for how these terms should be defined, but merely give an over-simplified explanation in the interest of brevity here. Apocalypse comes from a Greek word meaning a revealing. In the context of the prophetic literature of the Bible, it is an attempt to understand how God’s grand promises will be fulfilled. As we’ve seen, those promises could only be seen as being fulfilled in the future, or spiritually, or both. Apocalyptic books of the Bible do accomplish this, and on a much grander scale than the earlier, non-apocalyptic prophets.
Apocalyptic writings tend to have certain traits, but do not always have all of the ones listed below. But these should help the reader begin to differentiate this trend that began to emerge in the post-exilic period. Almost always, apocalyptic literature is pseudonymous, with the prophet being presented as a great man from antiquity, such as Adam, Enoch, or Abraham; Revelation is sort of/possibly[3] the only major exception to this. Most apocalyptic books include incredible visions, such as those found in Daniel,[4] which focus on a supernatural world. The one receiving the vision often is transported to heavenly realms, where secret knowledge is revealed by angels. (Paul himself mentions such a vision that some guy had in 2 Corinthians 12.) Information revealed can be about the fate of the dead, but also what the future holds. Typically, the “end time” is imminent, the time when all things will be restored, as they were at the beginning of creation, especially when man was close to God in the Eden. The wicked will finally be punished, and the righteous will finally have their reward. The meek will inherit the earth. Some apocalyptic literature looks forward to simply God establishing his throne in Jerusalem with a descendent of David; some look forward to an utterly transformed “new heavens and new earth”, as in Isaiah 65 and 66.
Not all apocalyptic writings have all of the above criteria. Some apocalyptic elements are found in books like Joel and Zechariah. Passages in Isaiah such as chapters 24-27 and 33 are quite well-developed apocalypses. The last half of Daniel (chapter 7 and onward) is seen by scholars as one of the most quintessentially apocalyptic works.
To further understand the importance of apocalyptic prophecy, we should mention a few more things that the New Testament writers believed about the coming of the kingdom that are almost always overlooked by moderns. They believed in celestial armies of angels which would restore God’s reign on earth at the end of the age; men would not have to. That’s why Jesus told his followers that the couple of swords they had was enough in Luke 22, and he never told his followers that they would have to fight physical battles.
They also believed that the angelic armies fought battles that could not be seen, but which were mirrored in the earthy battles that the earthly nations fought! This concept is especially visible in Daniel, where, to cite one example, an angel is delayed twenty-one days from coming to Daniel, because he was apparently fighting against the “prince of the Persian kingdom”, until the arch angel Michael reinforced him in the battle; the prince of Persia could very well have been the divine counterpart to the actual earthly king; in other words, the ancients may very well have viewed this as heavenly war between “good” angels and what we would now call demons. The authorities in the heavens with their corresponding authorities on the Earth, are to be thrown into the pit, for the heavens languish together with the earth.[5] This connection that causes the earthly to mirror the heavenly realm is often expressed today with the expression “as above, so below,” or the principle of correspondence,[6] and is not just limited to astrology, which also appears in the Bible, as we’ve seen. And I think it very likely that the “time of the Gentiles”, when the Temple and the nation of Israel were being judged, was seen as having a heavenly parallel. We’ll come back to this topic in chapter 8 below, where we’ll see that the apocalyptic-minded Jews of the first century had a fairly developed angelology and demonology.[7]
Is there a cure? The sky obscured
And the monsters crawling out…
While the world burns down…
Locked in your paradise
Our sanctuary burns while you play God
As above, so below.
—Cryoshell and Matthew Bowe, “As Above, So Below”
What you reap is what you sow
What you give comes back threefold
As above, so below.
—In This Moment, “As Above, So Below”
For the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation
Up in dark and empty skies
When the cities are on fire
With the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end.
—Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. (Note the parallel between the light and dark above and the fires and darkness below.)
As we’ve noted, earlier prophetic content of the Hebrew Bible saw YHVH’s blessings or curses as earthly in nature, and predicated on the obedience of both his people Israel and even the nations, at least in some passages. There is virtually a total absence of mentions of the afterlife,[8] and certainly no need to explain that there will be ultimate justice in the next world, as that justice is usually seen as carried out on Earth itself. The latter prophets would be a major shift away from this focus.
Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet
By the time of the New Testament, apocalyptic fervor had reached its height, as we’ve already noted. Although the year count had somewhat already overshot Daniel’s sevenfold adaptation of Jeremiah’s 70 years, that did not stop it from being a period of a flourishing number of messiahs, and of insurrection against the Roman “world” empire, in anticipation of the advent of a son of David who would establish a new one-world order, when God would finally get hold of his rule on Earth. This issue was compounded by the fact that Daniel explicitly stated that the Messiah’s rule would arise during a fourth empire, which many then and now concluded to be Rome.[9]
Although the book of Revelation is one of the most apocalyptic books of the New Testament, borrowing heavily from such works as Ezekiel and Daniel, there is much else in the New Testament which is apocalyptic. We’ve already noted language regarding Jesus’ second coming to “restore all things”. But Jesus himself actually taught a message that was essentially apocalyptic.[10] Near the end of each of the three synoptic gospels, Jesus leaves behind some of his most important messages in a sermon before his ascension, and it is such an apocalyptic message that it is actually called Jesus’ “Little Apocalypse”.[11] We’ll come back to the apocalyptic nature of the gospel and the last days in the last chapter below, fittingly enough. To read that, check out my book here.
[1] E.g., Psalm 119 and Ezra
[2] The Dawn of Apocalyptic, by John Hanson, revised edition, introduction. This is a very in-depth, long, and scholarly study on the topic.
[3] I say possibly because most scholars state that Revelation only claims to be written by a man named John, not an apostle; but it could have been that the author intended the authorial claim to be understood as the apostle John, in which case those same scholars would consider it a pseudonymous work. However, John, whoever he was, was not from an antiquity, from the perspective of first century Jews.
[4] See also the first 36 chapters of 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch 1-3 and 53-74, and 4 Ezra 3-14.
[5] Isaiah 24
[6] Though this expression is first coined, as far as we know, in the Hermetic Emerald Tablet, c. 8th or 9th century CE, the concept is seen as early as the biblical writings as well as Anaximander (6th century BCE) and Plato (5th century BCE).
[7] See Luke 21 and Matthew 24 and 25.
[8] It is often erroneously stated by scholars that there is no mention of an afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, at least not until Daniel 12. While it is true that there are clear statements that strongly suggest that there is no existence once one descends to Sheol (e.g., Ecclesiastes 9:3-6), other passages suggest that there is an afterlife (e.g., 2 Samuel 12:23). Certainly however, the Hebrew Bible has a consciously absent clearly defined teaching on the topic; e.g., Moses never told the people they would end up in Hell if they didn’t follow God’s law, nor did he preach a Heaven; contrast Jesus’ extensive teachings on both. It is actually only in the latest apocalyptic literature where we begin to see a few explicit references to resurrection of the dead, such as Daniel 12, which interestingly speaks of the resurrection of both the just and the wicked for judgment. Scholars have cogently argued that Ezekiel’s resurrection of dry bones (ch. 24) is spiritual symbology referring to the restoration of Israel herself. Some apologists have argued that the Torah’s absence of mentions of an afterlife was one of many ways Israel’s religion was distinguished from the nations’, especially with the Egyptian fascination with a physical afterlife; see Duane Garrett’s commentary in the Apologetics Study Bible.
[9] A possible issue with this could be that the fourth kingdom of the statue dream in Daniel 2 seems to correspond with the fourth kingdom of the beasts in chapter 7, which seems to refer to Greek rule.
[10] John Crossan is one notable scholar who has argued that Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet at all, but later writers merely put apocalyptic messages in his mouth, since Jesus didn’t write anything. I will not address this here, as Bart Ehrman has done an excellent job of refuting it in The New Testament, ch. 16. Plus, I am focusing more on what the authors wrote anyway, not the actual validity or even historicity of the prophetic message.
[11] See Matthew 24-25; Mark 13, and Luke 21.