Apocalyptic Literature I: Introduction

{There are three articles in this series and I have put them in sequence below.)

It is literally impossible to fully understand the book of Revelation if we do not understand apocalyptic literature. And indeed, this lack of comprehension is probably the major reason the book has been so widely misinterpreted. The word “apocalyptic” is from a Greek word, “apokalupsis,” which means “unveiling,” or “revelation.” And, yes, it is title of the book of Revelation in the original Greek. The purpose of apocalyptic literature is to make the message of the writer increasingly vivid through signs and symbols, and often very grotesque and frightening symbols they are. Most religions actually have something of this kind of literature within them, so it’s not peculiar to Judaism and Christianity.

But within the Jewish and Christian religions, this genre of literature was prominent from about 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., although there are examples of it earlier and later; Daniel 7 and Ezekiel 1 are illustrations of it in earlier Biblical books. To understand why it became so prominent around 200 B.C., we need—not surprisingly—a little historical background.

We’ve all heard of Alexander the Great. In about 333 B.C., he left Greece and headed east towards the Persian empire. Persia was a huge kingdom at that time and controlled Judea; recall your Biblical history. The Jews were in Babylonian captivity until 536 B.C. when the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to return home. Persia had destroyed Babylon and had taken over to become the great Middle Eastern empire. The Old Testament ends with the Jews under the domination of Persia. Well, in a series of wars in the 330s and 320s, Alexander conquered Persia and replaced it with a great Greek empire. Alexander died in 323 never having returned to Greece, and his great empire was divided among four of his generals. Judea and the Jews fell under the control of the Seleucid family of that division. And it’s from that origin that the apocalyptic literature of 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. began to arise.

Many of the Jews became quite enamored with Greek philosophy, much to the consternation of the more conservative thinkers of that religion (such as Pharisees). But that liberal Jewish element compromised the purity of Judaism and this led a strong backlash—an anti-Greek movement that was determined to keep the religion untainted from foreign influence. Some of this latter, anti-Greek group became mystics, people who see visions and have dreams—and in this case, visions and dreams of a better day, a release from the darkened conditions of the present time; darkened conditions such as the Greek domination and philosophical influence upon Judaism. Remember the book of Daniel; in chapter 7 he sees some vivid, “apocalyptic” scenes because of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon—four horrible, frightening creatures, but then the promise of the coming of the “Ancient of Days,” a deliverer. That’s a very good summary of apocalyptic literature, and quite frankly, that’s basically what it consists of. Think of the book of Revelation.

This form of literature got a big boost in the early 2nd century B.C. when a man named Antiochus Epiphanes ruled Judea (175-164). He was a bitter anti-Semite, the Adolf Hitler of his day. His reign was the darkest days the Jews had known since the Babylonian captivity. He prohibited on the pain of death observance of the Jewish religion. Antiochus put a statue of a heathen god in the temple in Jerusalem; he even sacrificed a pig on the altar. The Jews revolted against Antiochus, led by a family named Maccabee, and they actually will throw off the Greek regime and inaugurate a period of freedom for the Jews which will last about 100 years until the Romans show up. But what’s important for our study here is that the horrors of Antiochus Epiphanes’ reign led to the release of another series of apocalyptic visions from the mystics of the day—stunning, dramatic visions of horror followed by glorious deliverance—the very essence of apocalyptic literature. I’ll look at some of the conditions and purposes of that literature in my next post.