Apocalyptic, Literature

APOCALYPTIC, LITERATURE. - A body of pseudonymous Jewish writings, arising between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., which for about a century critics have placed in a single category, naming them from their subject ἀποκάλυψις ("revelation"), a name that served (after A.D. 50-70) as the title of various such works. These "apocalypses" contain the "revelation," which they claim to have received in visions or in conversations with angels, of the divine secrets concerning the mission and the destinies of Israel and of the Gentiles.
SOMMARIO. - Of the apocalyptic writings, each of which has a separate treatment in this encyclopedia, the points common to them are set out here:

1. Origin

2. Theme and Doctrine

3. Literary genre. - 4. Influence.

1. ORIGIN

At the time when pagan Hellenism was triumphant and Israel was oppressed and the Temple profaned (168-164 B.C.), there rose again and grew more bitter among the Jews faithful to their God and their homeland the hope of deliverance. In the face of the success of the impure foreigner, from Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) to the Romans of Pompey (63 B.C.) and of Titus (A.D. 70), ferment grew among those who considered themselves « the remnant of Israel », anguished also by the relaxation and the growing betrayal within Israel, especially in the priestly class. The a. arose to sustain faith in the truthfulness of the divine promises; it seeks to justify the ways of Providence, to resolve the disconcerting contradiction between the happiness promised by the Prophets and the political and religious abjection to which Israel was reduced; it sets itself the goal of feeding Jewish pride, shaken by trials, orienting it toward future dawns. Supposed « seers » took upon themselves the task of showing their downcast compatriots that soon God would visit and exalt his people, that the glorious prophecies had not been fulfilled because they would come true in an already imminent future: Israel would be liberated and avenged, and, guided by Jahweh and his Messiah, would feast in peace and abundance; the 12 tribes would return, to rule over the subdued and trampled Gentiles.

The a. derives directly from the Prophets, whom it claims to continue and complete. From them it draws its principal materials, arranging them in new constructions. Catholic critics include in the a. many prophetic sections (Jer. 11; 24-27; 29, 1-8; 60; Ezek. 26-32; 34-48; Dan. 2; 7-12; Zech. 9-14; the whole of Joel). But it is rather the a. writings that trace their origins to these prophetic sayings. Ezekiel is considered « father of the a. » (but L. Dürer reacts against this) because in chs. 38-39 he gathers together images and symbols scattered in the other Prophets, concerning the final struggle (like Zech. 14), and in chs. 40-48 he designs the new Jerusalem. The « critics », and partially some Catholics (M.-J. Lagrange), place Dan. (which they assert was composed under Antiochus IV) at the head of the a., of which it would be the first product and the typical example. But Catholics ascribe to the a. only apocryphal books or fragments, while recognizing that those canonical passages contain in embryo some essential features of the later a. growth, and that the Apoc. (v.) of John was able to draw from it literary hints and schemata (B. Allo, p. VIII).

Most of the Jewish apocrypha (v.) belong, in varying measure, to the a. Many apocrypha of Alexandrian origin remain extraneous to it, whose haggadic parenesis concerns the present more than the future. The a. developed on Palestinian soil, except for the Sibylline literature and the Slavonic Enoch.

The apocalyptic writings that have come down to us are: 1) from the 2nd-1st centuries B.C.: Book of Enoch (Ethiopic), proem and bk. III of the Sibylline Oracles, Testament of the XII Patriarchs (the Bk. of Jubilees is rather a midraš [v.]; the Psalms of Solomon are not « apocalypses » although rich in eschatology); 2) from the 1st-2nd centuries A.D., a) earlier than 70: Assumption of Moses, Slavonic Enoch (Secrets of Enoch), Jewish nucleus of the Ascension of Isaiah; b) later than 70: Apocalypse of Moses (and Life of Adam and Eve), Apoc. (IV bk.) of Ezra, Apoc. and Vision of Ezra, Apoc. of Sedrach, « Syriac » Apoc. of Baruch, the IV and V Sibylline books, Apocalypse of Abraham, Apoc. of Zephaniah, Jewish nucleus of the « Greek » Apoc. of Baruch and of the Apoc. of Elijah, Testament of Isaac. The apocryphon of Ezekiel, the Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Adam, are rather midhrāšim. According to A. Schweitzer, IV Ezra and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, very akin in conception, would represent traditional popular thought.

Wrongly H. Gunkel, W. Bousset, H. Gressmann and others of the « Religionsgeschichtliche Schule » detect in the a. broad foreign influences: Babylonian astral myths, Persian dualism and eschatology. Astrology abounds in the « apocalypses », but it is of a crude naivety, equidistant from Akkadian mythology and from Hellenistic science. One may perhaps admit a certain dependence, for expression, on Iranian compilations (Bahman Yasth, Bih Afrid, Ayāthār i Zāmāspik, ed. G. Messina, Rome 1939, the « Oracles of Hystaspes », etc.), although the Parsi and Pahlavi texts that have come down to us go back only to the Sassanid era (especially to the 3rd-4th centuries A.D.). Nor is there lacking some contact with ancient esoteric traditions widely diffused, as in particular

Orphism (myths of Plato, Respublica, X) and Hermetism (Poimandres).

Since all the « apocalypses » are rigorously anonymous, it is not possible to identify the Jewish circle from which they arose. Attempts have been made to place them in one or another of the closed conventicles then flourishing, to which the esoteric character of these apocrypha would seem to lend credence. After A. Hilgenfeld (Die jüdische Apokalyptik, Jena 1857) the attribution to the Essenes (v.) became fashionable, today upheld by M.-J. Lagrange. While many, with E. Kautzsch and R. H. Charles, think of the Pharisees, the prevailing tendency for now is to trace the « seers » among the Hasideans and their successors (the pious) withdrawn from official politics and from Pharisaic legalism (W. Baldensperger, W. Bousset, M. Friedländer, A. Causse). But these are uncertain hypotheses, since there are no solid reasons for confining the authors of « apocalypses » to some dissident sect or secluded sector; despite the esotericism, the ideology they reflect does not diverge from the common Jewish mentality.

2. THEME AND DOCTRINE

The theological equipment of the « apocalypses » is reduced to a few points, since dogma and morality have slight prominence in them. The religious truths, few in number in Judaism, are assumed to be common knowledge. The specific subject matter of the « apocalypses » is eschatology (v.), whose elements common to all are variously expressed and combined. After the disasters of A.D. 70, apocalyptic ideology, while remaining fundamentally homogeneous, takes on aspects somewhat different from before.

The « apocalypses » are variations on the classic prophetic theme of the « day of Jahweh », that is, of the final divine revenge upon the forces of evil now triumphant; vengeance upon the Gentiles and glorious restoration of Israel. The intrepid fantasies of the supposed « seers » build themselves a refuge in the future and discreetly launch at the pious Jews, that is, nationalists, a message of optimism, heavy with threats for the Gentiles and for the collaborationist Jews. Clinging to faith in the imminent end of this world, they stake everything on the final catastrophe, horrible for the impious Gentiles, which will introduce the kingdom of Jahweh and of his faithful. Describing the historical phases that precede and prepare the universal catastrophe from which the salvation of Israel will emerge, the « apocalypses » channel everything toward the future. Past and present are generally considered only in function of the future establishment of the longed-for new order: the present is heavy with precursor signs; the past, and the arcane cosmic order (world, heavens, abysses), demonstrate the execution of the wise divine plans, and are a guarantee of the just and provident restoration to come. The « seers » satisfy the anxious curiosity of those who await the end, « revealing » the invisible world and the world to come, supplying the omissions of the Bible concerning the past (creation of matter, of the angels, of man, fall of the angels and of the first parents, the flood, various events given as future) and the present (cosmography and astronomy, angelology, demonology, the abode of the dead). Whence one may distinguish the historical « apocalypse » from the cosmic one, although in concrete terms they are mostly mixed.

In this muddled eschatology the national and individual interest is strained toward the longed-for conclusion: God suddenly swoops down into the final struggle of the Gentiles against Israel, and behold, victory and dominion are realized for this new Jerusalem, messianic goods, resurrection and retribution, cosmic apocatastasis. The basic data come from the Prophets, but they are reworked, hypertrophied and deformed; the grandiose majesty of prophetic eschatology is succeeded by a puerile miracle-mongering, the broad and indefinite perspective of historical Providence by a pedestrian and awkward chronologism bristling with minute calculations about the times, so as to make known the final hour of the upheaval, the hour of God. As the serene vision of the economy of the spirit is lost, the opposition between the "present age" and the "age to come" sharpens. No longer is the sublimation of this wretched world foretold, but its overthrow and re-creation by fairy-tale procedures, spectacular collapses and rebirths. The passage from the present age to the future is preceded by "signs," manifestations of the wrath of God, with the angels as executors. To the calamities already announced by the Prophets (war, plagues, famines, droughts, earthquakes, darkening and falling of the stars) the "apocalypses" add new marvelous ones (sun by night, stars by day, stones sweating blood, swords in the sky, newborns with white hair, etc.), and give prominence to the persecution of the righteous and their flight into the desert.

The "Kingdom of God" generally takes on a nationalistic-terrestrial aspect: a crushing revenge of Israel, forever filled with prosperity and dominion. It sometimes assumes an otherworldly guise, but on the whole it is the apotheosis of the people of Israel, exalted even to the eternal empyrean, and only in this sense can one speak of supernaturalism in the "apocalypses." The conception is limited to what later, among Christians, will be millenarianism. The Kingdom will be inaugurated by the resurrection of the dead (but the unknown quantity of personal immortality is generally evaded), or else (in the Psalms of Solomon, IV Esd., Apoc. Baruch) by the happiness of the living survivors in "that hour," who after the final universal resurrection will enter into eternal blessedness. The empire of the Law seems "on that day" to set.

The Kingdom, to be inaugurated or founded by the Messiah (v.), will be of this world: it will be characterized by "new earth and new heaven," peace, eternal light, glory, the "garments," the "banquet." The theme of the "heavenly Jerusalem" is central: the messianic people, idealized, is transported into heaven. The great messianic crisis will mark a recommencement of the terrestrial world, a definitive palingenesis that will bring Eden back down here. In this Jewish conception, the human person counts for very little: Israel becomes an absolute and transcendent reality, redemption is collective rather than individual, indeed cosmic more than anthropological. It is a dream of imperialism that inserts cosmic-political chimeras into the new religious-moral order foretold by the Prophets.

The Messiah is represented as a king and military hero (Enoch 1-37 and 72-90; Sib. III). He is present, but hidden, in the world, and will manifest himself at the end of the times (Enoch 38, 7; 62, 7; IV Esd. 12, 15; 13, 52; cf. Jn. 7, 27 and Justin, C. Tryph., 8). He therefore appears as preexistent, with the mission of judging men on the works they have done (Enoch 37-69 and 91-104; Sib. IV); but let it be noted that everything is preexistent, and Israel first of all. Never is the Messiah glimpsed as a spiritual redeemer, atoner for the sins of the world.

In the later "apocalypses" (IV Esd., Apoc. Baruch, Apoc. Moses, Apoc. Abraham) the terrestrial-nationalist and transcendent-universalist tendencies, recalling the prophetic oracles, converge and intermingle in a syncretistic messianism (v.). The interferences between the two visions are perceptible in all the "apocalypses," but the first always prevails; as antithetical visions accumulate and become confused, an inextricable conceptual tangle emerges from them. Nowhere do there occur, in apocalyptic eschatology, spiritual features in contexts totally immune from a nationalistic character. In the Jewish mentality the spiritual never remains in a pure state: the temporal and the eternal, the terrestrial and the celestial produce in it a most strange emulsion.

The "apocalyptic" writers cannot be called "spiritual geniuses" (R. H. Charles), nor their productions "a mystical movement" (L. Cerfaux); from the horrendous labor of mountains of symbols comes forth a "ridiculus mus." Even while raising themselves to the inaccessible "heavens of heavens," they remain on the terrestrial plane, far behind the religion of the Prophets concerning God, the Messiah, and humanity. The supreme theme, the manifestation of the glory of God, appears in exclusive function of the glorification of Israel. The religiosity of the a. is therefore poor: it occupies itself little with interior renewal and the moral virtues. The "righteous," the "saints," the "elect," often named, are always Israel; "faith" is the impatient waiting for the longed-for vengeance on the "wicked," who are the Gentiles. The aspiration to union with God, the love of God and neighbor, are foreign to these writings, which, materializing the ancient prophecy, foster the passion for revenge and world dominion. The same moral dualism resolves itself into political-racial antagonism. The spiritual breath of the Prophets vanishes in nationalistic bitterness.

The concept of retribution is at the top, but it is a matter of divine "vengeance" on the "wicked" now prevailing: impotent rage vents itself in visions of a future in which the deplored present situation will be overturned. Toward the Gentiles the apocalyptic writers are implacable: any compassion for them would pass for weakness of faith or treacherous connivance. While the punishments described by the Prophets are limited to the present or are poetic hyperboles, the "seers" infer, specify the torments with ferocious relish, extending them to the eternal future and intensifying them with insatiable hatred.

The "apocalypses" assume a decisive place in the hateful propaganda against the Gentiles; they are engines of war. But their authors, hidden in the shadows, are not combatants, but conspirators who with cold mind string together speculations on the marvels of reserve forces and strategic surprises, secrets whose communication proclaims itself celestial "wisdom."

Contrary to the Gospel (Mt. 6, 34), the apocalyptic religion has a single grief and anxiety: the future. And to unveil the future, it derives lessons and prognoses from the past, draws omens from the present, outlines a theology of history built on the clouds of the "great evening."

An indefinite revision of the history of the world, the a. claims to explain the divine counsels regarding the succession of Empires and of Gentiles that annihilate one another until universal dominion passes to Israel. One point sustains and illuminates everything: the "end" toward which everything unconsciously hastens, in which all times are resolved. No organic and vital evolution: the future is already in the present and in the past. In function of the future, the past and the present fade away sub specie aeternitatis. The scheme the "seer" has set for himself forces him to transform history into prediction. Caught up in his game, he always predicts, reweaving past events into a series of predictions (post eventum!), which he then prolongs, undaunted, to the end of the world.

Human history is the work of God. By giving exclusive prominence to divine causality, the "seer" falls into an unconscious determinism, all the more so since individual personalities disappear. He never denies individual freedom; indeed he heaps most grave responsibilities on the enemies, whose punishments always turn out to be deserved; affirms that salvation presupposes penance. But the future presents itself to him as a rigidly fixed plot. Events are not made, but are made by invisible and almost impersonal agents (angels); hence the continuous use of passive verbs, characteristic of the apocalyptic style. The enduring and substantial is conceived as eternal: pre-existent and future. The whole drama is ready behind the scenes, with the Messiah and the new Jerusalem at the top. Indeed, the Messiah is already in the world, though hidden. Predestination is strongly emphasized.

The ages file past like pictures on a double plane: the earthly, where the unfolding seems to be in contrast with divine wisdom and justice, and the heavenly, where everything is preordained and maneuvered by the Almighty. Many events are fortuitous or disordered only for observers ignorant of the Book of God "in which everything is written." In this transcendental fatalism, individuals and nations are elements of a fideistic occasionalism, optimistic in the Jewish sense. History, divided into symmetrical periods ("hours," "days," "weeks," "years"), based on numbers, is schematized to the point of almost becoming mechanized: its parts are the gears of an immense clockwork. The final outcome is inexorably certain: the Gentiles succeed one another, destroying each other for the benefit of Israel, the last survivor, to whom the eternal Kingdom belongs.

There is no place for a psychological-moral improvement of humanity: when sins and disasters have reached their height, God's dazzling intervention will not heal the world, but will create a new world. Transporting the reader to the end of time, over which no one can have any influence, the "seer" neglects the interval: either it does not exist, or during it there is nothing to be done. Until the "end," the "righteous" must only be patient and wait, while God intervenes only to inflict the punishments that are precursors of the great catastrophe, in which the great majority of men (the Gentiles) will perish.

Characteristic is the apocalyptic belief that the present world (δάλη, αἰών: the universe conjoined with duration) is governed by the angels (good and evil). From this, the angelology and theosophy of the time (eternity, ages, epochs) draw much development, which would become a basis of Gnosticism (aeons).

While remaining, in substance, within the orthodox current of traditional faith, the eschatology of the "apocalypses" does not take a single step beyond the Jewish particularism condemned by the Gospel. The most ambitious nationalism redoubles its claims therein. The Gentiles are more despised and hated there than ever: the ditch between Israel and them is transformed into an abyss.

3. LITERARY GENRE

As on the religious side, the distance between the "apocalypses" and the canonical prophecies is incommensurable also on the literary side. Linking themselves to the prophetic genre and exploiting the historico-religious traditions conveyed in the haggada (v.), the "apocalypses" chop up or romanticize the prophecies with that petty and hermetic subtlety that would culminate in cabalistic speculation. "The 'apocalypse' is to prophecy what the Mishnah is to the Torah" (A. Sabatier). Devoid of divine inspiration and of poetic talent, the apocalyptic writers form a new literary genre, extravagant for non-Jewish mentalities. The logic of the genre imposes certain essential laws, uniform and inescapable: a) The "vision." Presenting their writings as "revelation," proposing past and present as the unveiling of the future made in most ancient times, the apocalyptic writers create a fictitious procedure of "literary vision," matured in study and without any open connection to the environment in which they live. These epigones of the Prophets always teach by means of "visions"; the explanations they add are usually given by an angel, that is, they too are "visions."

They assume the attitude of ecstatic vision, from which proceeds an experience closed in upon itself, a monologue, whereas prophecy, endowed with practical and immediate social efficacy, is a dialogue. Prophecy, rooted in the present, belongs to the oratorical genre, addressing hearers or readers and exhorting them to the action willed by God and to moral reform; the "apocalypse," on the other hand, is a narrative writing destined to satisfy idle curiosity about future times and destinies. While prophecy connects everything to the present, even when it looks to the future, the apocalypse effects the transfer of interest from the present to the future. The Prophet participates in the events he narrates, wages war with open face, armed with a word sharp as a sword. The false seer, by contrast, is a solitary suspended between heaven and earth; he is no longer an actor, but only a spectator; he is a man of the book and the pen, who strikes down enemies with verbal cataclysms. A visionary concentrated on his abstractions, he does not rise to ideal contemplation, nor does he mirror concrete reality; but he composes a chaotic and hallucinatory metaphysical drama interwoven with spectral scenes. To the formless block, unity is conferred only by the claim to unveil the ways of God in the integral history of humanity.

b) Pseudonymity. The first formal requirement of the apocalyptic genre is anonymity. The true authors could not proclaim themselves prophets, considering the prophetic age to have long been closed (1 Macc. 4:46; 9:27); nor could they make it believed that God entrusted his secrets to obscure contemplatives.

Transporting themselves therefore to a given point of the remote past, they presented their "revelations" as ancient books that they attributed to a hero of the primordial age, as though he presided over all times, or to the most famous holy figures known to be on familiar terms with God. Only by covering themselves with the authority of illustrious names could they obtain credence for their dreams. In order not to brand such imposture as blasphemy, it must be remembered that at that time literary fiction or fraud was in wide use (pseudo-Orphics, pseudo-Pythagoreans, etc.), and that Jewish sages regarded themselves as channels of the oral tradition, revealed just like the written Law, indeed more ancient and the authentic commentary on it.

c) Esotericism. To explain how writings so venerable had remained ignored for so many centuries, and to legitimize their novelties of thought and form, esoteric transmission is invoked. These books hisōnlus ("inner": esoteric), guarded by the angels, were to remain, until the appointed day, hidden (apocryphal: "concealed"), the preserve of restricted circles of initiates (4 Ezra 12:36-38). The "wisdom," of which apocalyptic science claims to be a branch, dwells in heaven (Enoch 42; 4 Ezra 8:52-54), and is communicated to men, through divine revelation, as a secret (Enoch 82:1; 4 Ezra 14:45-47). And as already Daniel (12:4, 9), Enoch commands secrecy (1:2) for his "revelations," reserved for the righteous and the wise (4:10-13). The restorer Ezra renews the injunction of the "reserved" books: God himself would have ordered Moses on Sinai to hide the greater part of his discourses (4 Ezra 14:5-8, 42-47).

d) Compilatory character. The apocalyptic writers did not intend to innovate, but neither did they wish to omit anything of the traditions received. They do not create, but build with stones taken from the heap of diverse traditions, no longer identifiable today, juxtaposing disparate materials of varying provenance.

Under the common stamp of "visions" and "revelations," they receive in syncretism old legends, popular memories, allegorical exegeses, oral paraenesis, legal sayings, even myths, without fusing or arranging them organically. The most heterogeneous elements are usually piled up in confusion, with no demands of taste or criticism: eschatological predictions, cosmographic descriptions, moral exhortations, edifying tales. The lack of unity is inherent in the genre. It is difficult to harmonize the points of view and the ideologies aligned not only in conglomerates of several authors (Enoch), but also in books by a single author (IV Esd., Apoc. Baruch). It is therefore dangerous to infer plurality of authors from a disparity of matter or style, in writings that by their very system disown all originality.

e) Stylistic indeterminacy. The apocalyptic style differs sharply from the prophetic in that, for esoteric requirements, it is deliberately obscure and sibylline. The "vision" with imprecise contours must produce the sensation of the ungraspable and ineffable. To make his "visions" believed to be transcendent, the "seer" affects a style that he declares unequal to the dazzling and astounding realities glimpsed. Because of their sublimity or their remoteness in the future, things must appear indistinct. The "seer" himself must be assisted (by angels) in order to understand the meaning and the relations of things, and he warns that "not all can understand," that interpretation or keys are needed to perceive their meaning and import.

There then pass in review scenes, tableaux, tints; but they are mere words without plastic vividness, evoking nothing in the mind or the imagination, being neither narratives, nor paintings, nor representations, but only flashes and fireworks. The descriptive phraseology is built on hesitant comparisons ("it seemed like," "it was similar to," "it had the appearance of"; Enoch 14:10-13; 46:1-2; 71:5; IV Esd. 11:37). It is the effort of one gasping toward the shores of the future, in whose twilight he also disguises the past and the present. Especially wary of avoiding any allusion to present reality, so as not to betray the trick, the apocalyptic writers elude all historical-local color. Such timid and laborious approximation is meant to give the impression of the fidelity with which the author reproduces the external forms of the "visions" without pronouncing on their nature; it also confers on the text a mysterious tone which, piquing curiosity, instills reverence for the arcane silences revealed.

f) Symbolism. A common expedient for avoiding direct description is the symbol, the chief resource of the "apocalypses." The symbol extends there far beyond the "vision," which consists of fanciful symbolic actions or scenes; it pervades also the dialogues, the prayers and the interpretations (cf. IV Esd.). Like the later Prophets whom he imitates, the "seer" wants to express himself "beneath the veil of strange verses," all the more so since he must maintain an esoteric reserve. The symbolic-apocalyptic arsenal is in part taken from Ez. 30 and 39, Dan. 7-9 and Zech. 14. But in the "seer," in whom thought is lacking and imagination is poor, the symbol derives from cunning laziness and is rather the fruit of convention than of poetic initiative. It transforms and drains all the past into type or substantial symbol. Careless of external nature, the writer steeped in reminiscences takes up and dries out the biblical images, now become literary "clichés."

He covers the abyss of mystery by heaping over it a dense, artificial efflorescence of emphatic commonplaces: stars, metals and gems, composite or stylized monsters, gigantic plants; but we are far indeed from the "bestiaries" and "herbals" of medieval Christian symbolism, more naive and yet so suggestive. Having grown accustomed to considering men and events only in their transcendental relation to the eternal, he dissolves the boundaries between real objects. Withdrawing his gaze in disdain from the external world, he fabricates for himself an allegorical world devoid of measure and verisimilitude. And the contrived symbolic "visions" fail to achieve the effect of impressing, shaking or moving. Beneath the whirl of images with no connection to nature and real humanity, with no connection among themselves, the reader often succumbs: he cannot find anything, even after having much pruned away those symbols without transparency, good for signifying anything; for the resources of those arid minds are few, and by applying the symbols to different realities they empty them. The symbolism, tangled and incessant, becomes enigmatism that makes the reading labored and arduous, the text unintelligible (cf. Enoch 83-90). The action knows no dramatic progression; from beginning to end flashes the glare of catastrophe, sinister and triumphant at once. In the labyrinth the writer himself is the first to be lost; not even he knows, most of the time, the object of which he treats: whether real or supposed, whether accomplished or hoped for, whether new or identical to what has already been said.

The frequent numerical symbolism (especially 7 and 12: fullness), no less wavering and obscure, complicates the tangle. The very periods that should measure time, often intersecting, cancel each other out, as in Apoc. Baruch 27:13-15.

g) Artificiality and conventionalism thus characterize the apocalyptic genre, which is prophecy gone to seed. While every prophetic book is a world unto itself, grandiose and unmistakable, the "apocalypses," devoid of spontaneity, all resemble one another. At least three quarters of the apocalyptic texts are formed of the same commonplaces; every "seer," repeating the obligatory theme, "predicts" past events and projects onto the screen of the future the tenacious hope of Israel. He wants to be sublime, since the theme demands it, but he is only emphatic and pedantic, without even the dry gnomic density that the rabbinic maxim (madal) sometimes attains (for example, in Aboth, v.). The continual "revelations" in celestial journeys or in angelic confidences emanate a false theatrical light that sometimes dazzles, but neither illuminates nor warms. The metaphor and hyperbole in continuous jet, which would express the inexpressible, accentuate the atmosphere of unreality in which these fictitious constructions stand.

Sophisticated prophecy, it ends in caricature of prophecy. The glory of God is no longer the grandiose epic of universal salvation; the Kingdom of God, shrunk to the Jewish horizon, is no longer presented with prophetic lyricism, but with transcendent acrobatics. These "seers," insensitive to the aesthetic canons of Hellenism, cannot speak of God and his designs without offending and wounding nature. In their buildings without architecture, everything is phantasmagoria without proportions, in which the horrid replaces the tragic and the monstrous the marvelous. The bizarre, which would overexcite attention, prevents emotion. All true pathos is banished from the rhetoric, except for certain chapters, imitated from Dan., in which anguish and patriotic passion quiver (in IV Esd., and elsewhere). The only concreteness left, and the only center of interest, is in fact Israel. The apocalyptic style attains sincerity of accents only when it expresses hatred for the Gentiles, enthusiasm or trepidation for the people of God, unshakable adherence to the faith of the fathers.

These contrived and monotonous works, heavily hovering in unbreathable air like immense birds of geological epochs, leave the impression of an effort in the void, of a nightmare flight in the delirium of a fevered man. Their only merit and justification is that they come from anguished souls who proudly and inflexibly face oppression while waiting and hoping, reliving the adage that became the mainspring of their faith: "in omnibus respice finem."

4. INFLUENCE

Although M. Friedländer, W. Bousset, F. Perles, G. Hölscher hold that the "apocalypses" had wide diffusion and mirror the current Jewish thought of the time, they do not seem to have had much echo among the Jewish masses. Official Judaism of the 1st century must have been unfavorable to them. It does not appear, however, that such literature was then prohibited. Its supporters were limited, it seems, to meager circles of the "pious" (K. Kohler, B. M. Epstein, W. Baldensperger, M.-J. Lagrange attribute a great part of these writings to the Essenes); but these were fervent and respected. It is therefore probable that the messianic title "Son of Man" (v.), adopted by Jesus and understood by the Sanhedrin (Mt. 26:64-66), had been propagated by the apocalyptic writers, together with other formulas and notions. Knowledge of the "apocalypses" gradually spread, in the 1st century, from the Jews to the Christians.

For the most part modern Jews (I. Elbogen, I. Abrahams, etc.), followed by R. T. Herford and G. F. Moore, deny any importance, for the knowledge of authentic Judaism, to the "apocalypses"; but J. Klausner reassesses them, asserting that the messianic "dream" of Jesus depends on them, and describing them as a "link" between the Old Testament and the Talmud. Today, moreover, many Catholics attribute to apocalyptic literature a capital influence on Christianity: it would have been the transition and the bond between the prophetic ideal and the Christian ideal, understood as the result of a slow evolutionary process.

A. Sabatier, A. Loisy, A. Schweitzer maintain that the eschatological messianism of the "apocalypses" dominated Jesus and the apostles; W. Baldensperger and S. Schechter, that it prepared men for the interior religion and the spiritual kingdom; R. H. Charles, that it "was the bridge between the Old and the New Testament" and that St. Paul and other New Testament authors depend on it in fundamental points (moral doctrine, future life); A. Causse, that without the "apocalypses" the religious ideas of the Gospel cannot be understood. P. Batiffol calls apocalyptic literature "a kind of prolongation and epilogue of the canonical prophets, and at the same time a prologue of the Gospel" (DB, I, col. 757); A. Weiser holds a similar opinion (Einleitung in das Alte Test., Stuttgart 1939, p. 224).

The ideas of the New Testament that these critics say are drawn from the apocryphal apocalypses would be: the distinction of the two ages (present and future), the sorrows of the messianic era, the final judgment (sound of the trumpet), the triumph of the Messiah over the adverse powers, anthropological pessimism (infection of the human race in Adam), the notion of Christ the restorer.

It is certain, on the other hand, that the writings of the New Testament do not depend, either for their ideas or for their form, on Jewish apocalyptic literature; on the contrary, certain affinities are due to Christian retouching (in Enoch, Testaments of the XII Patriarchs, Ascension of Isaiah, IV Esd., etc.). Apart from the literary dependence of Jude 14-15, no demonstrated quotation or allusion occurs either in the New Testament or in ancient Christian writers. B. Allo admits, though not without hesitation, that the Apocalypse of John presupposes knowledge of the earlier "apocalypses."

Nor can it be said that apocalyptic literature, typically Jewish in mentality as in aspirations, prepared the way for the Gospel. It flourished in Judaism when Jesus appeared; many, from B. H. Streeter to M. Dibelius (Johann der Täufer, in Rel. in Gesch. u. Gegenwart, 3 [1929], col. 317) and to J. Thomas, affirm that the preaching of the Baptist links up with it. But apocalyptic literature rather falsified the Old Testament and, by lowering the messianic ideal of the Prophets, obstructed the ways to the Gospel, predisposed the Jews to reject Jesus. By presenting a Messiah who restores political independence to Israel and procures for it universal dominion, apocalyptic literature accentuated nationalistic particularism and drove Israel to rebellion against Christ and against Rome, and therefore to disaster. In later "apocalypses" (IV Esd., Apoc. Baruch) one can discern anti-Christian elements. Therefore Jesus, who unmasks the false prophets (Mt. 7:15; 24:11, 24), announces a "judgment" of condemnation and not of revenge for Israel.

Already latent for centuries between legalism and prophetism, the conflict was inevitable between rabbinism and apocalyptic literature, and led to the disappearance of the latter. Distrust of apocalyptic dreams increases after 70, and, despite the attempt at rehabilitation in IV Esd. 14, the prohibition becomes formal and sharp after the national collapse of 135 (already Johanan ben Zakkai, in Genesis Rabbā', 44, then Hağigāh, II, 1). With the priestly office gone along with the Temple, the doctors of the law, who oppose "prophetic" nostalgias, remain the sole spiritual leaders. Orthodox Judaism was on the path of Talmudism, with which it today identifies itself.

Despite the prohibition of the Miṣāḥ "to seek to know four things: what is above, what is below, what was before, what will be after" (Hağigāh, II, 1), some Jews continued to investigate, in cosmotheosophical "revelations," the future and the beyond. From this came the apocalyptic literature of a late period (2nd-6th century A.D.) with a rabbinic conception, in which the Law and its study are introduced into the empyrean and become beatitude: "Hebrew" Book of Enoch, Revelations of Joshua ben Levi, "Hebrew" Book of Elijah, Book of Zerubbabel, Wars of the King Messiah, Secrets of R. Simeon ben Johai, Prayer of R. Simeon ben Johai, Midhrāš of the Ten Kings, Persian Apocalypse of Daniel. Apocalyptic literature also runs through many Midhrāšim, in the Targāmin of the Prophets and of the Song of Songs; then, enriched by the myths of Gnosticism, it will flow into the Cabala (v.).

The influence of Jewish apocalyptic literature on Christian writers of eschatology is undeniable. Not the synoptic "apocalypse" (Mt. 24; Mk. 13), but the millenarianism (v.) of Papias, Hippolytus and others depends on it. In the Christian apocrypha and in Hippolytus, Commodianus, Lactantius (Divinae Iustitutiones, VII), eschatological particulars abound, held to be certain but not contained in the Bible, and going back to the most ancient core of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. The genre too had Christian imitators from the 2nd century onward, apart from the writings of Gnostic syncretism (Pistis Sophia); but Christian apocalyptic literature (Shepherd of Hermas in the "visions" and "similitudes," Epistola Apostolorum, Apocalypses of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas) achieves variety of structure, and, through a usually transparent symbolism, manifests didactic intentions and ethical-parenetic concerns.

The apocalyptic schema survived in the Middle Ages, often enlivened by faith and by art: from the three Apocalypses of John and the two Apoc. of the B. V. Mary, to the Navigatio sancti Brandani (11th century), which influenced the plot of the Divina Commedia, to the Mirabili Visioni of so many saints, to the Compendium Revelationum (1495) of G. Savonarola. Dante excels in the genre (e.g. Par. XXVII, 64-66; XXVIII, 16-139). But after El Purgatorio de s. Patricio and various other theological dramas of Calderón (1600-81), the future and the beyond are diluted into the "marvellous," a mere object or pretext of art. The Dream of Gerontius (1865), by J. H. Newman, is a solitary masterpiece.

Antonino Romeo