APOCALITTICA, LETTERATURA

APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE. — A complete body of pseudonymous writings judged to have arisen 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 the subject ἀποκάλυψις ("revelation"), a term that served (after 50-70 A.D.) 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 divine secrets concerning the mission and destinies of Israel and the Gentiles.

OUTLINE. — Of the apocalyptic writings, which are treated separately in this encyclopedia, the following common points are set forth here:

I. Origin

2. Theme and Doctrine

3. Literary Genre

I. ORIGIN

Apocalyptic literature derives directly from the Prophets, whose tradition it claims to continue and complete. From them it draws its principal materials, arranging them into new constructions. Non-Catholic critics include in apocalyptic literature many prophetic sections (Is. 11; 24-27; 29:1-8; 60; Ezek. 26-32; 34-48; Dan. 2; 7-12; Zech. 9-14; all of Joel). Conversely, it is the apocalyptic writings that claim their origins from such prophetic sayings. Ezekiel is considered "the father of apocalyptic" (though L. Dürr objects), because in chapters 38-39 he gathers images and symbols scattered among the other Prophets concerning the final struggle (as in Zech. 14), and in chapters 40-48 he designs the new Jerusalem. "Critics," and partially some Catholics (M.-J. Lagrange), place Daniel (which they assert was written shortly before Antiochus IV) at the head of apocalyptic literature, of which it would be the first product and the typical example. But Catholics ascribe to apocalyptic literature only apocryphal books or fragments, while acknowledging that those canonical passages contain in embryo some essential features of later apocalyptic growth, and that the Apocalypse (v.) of John may have drawn from it stylistic and literary motifs (B. Allo, p. VIII).

Most of the apocryphal (v.) Jewish writings belong, to varying degrees, to apocalyptic literature. Many Alexandrian apocrypha, whose haggadic parenesis concerns the present rather than the future, remain foreign to II. Apocalyptic literature developed in Palestinian soil, except for the Sibylline and Slavonic Enoch literatures.

The apocalyptic writings that have come down to us are: 1) from the 2nd century B.C.: the Book of Enoch (Ethiopic), the proemium and Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (the Book of Jubilees is rather a midrash [v.]; the Psalms of Solomon are not "apocalypses" despite their rich eschatology); 2) from the 1st-2nd centuries A.D., a) prior to 70 A.D.: the Assumption of Moses, Slavonic Enoch (Secrets of Enoch), the Jewish nucleus of the Ascension of Isaiah; b) after 70 A.D.: the Apocalypse of Moses (and the Life of Adam and Eve), the 4th Book of Ezra, the Apocalypse and Vision of Ezra, the Apocalypse of Sedrach, the "Syriac" Apocalypse of Baruch, Books IV and V of the Sibylline Oracles, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Jewish nucleus of the "Greek" Apocalypse of Baruch and the Apocalypse of Elijah, the Testament of Isaac. The apocryphal Ezekiel, the Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Adam, are rather midrashim. According to A. Schweitzer, the 4th Ezra and the Syriac and Greek Apocalypses of Baruch, which are very similar in conception, represent traditional popular thought.

Wrongly, H. Gunkel, W. Bousset, H. Gressmann, and others of the "Religionsgeschichtliche Schule" detect in apocalyptic literature broad foreign influences: Babylonian astral myths, dualism and eschatology of Parsism. Astrology abounds in the "apocalypses," but it is of crude naivety, equidistant from Akkadian mythology and Hellenistic science. One might perhaps admit a certain dependence, in expression, on Iranian compilations (Bahman Yasht, Bih Afrid, Aytākār i Zāmāspik, ed. G. Messina, Rome 1939, the "Oracles of Hystaspes," etc.), although the surviving Parsi and Pahlavi texts date only from the Sassanid era (especially the 3rd-4th centuries A.D.). Nor are there lacking some contacts with ancient esoteric traditions widely diffused, such as in particular Orphism (Plato’s myths, Republic, X) and Hermetism (Poimandres).

Since all "apocalypses" are strictly anonymous, it is impossible to identify the Jewish circles from which they arose. They have been attributed to one or another of the closed cenacles then flourishing, to which the esoteric character of these apocrypha seems to lend credence. After A. Hilgenfeld (Die jüdische Apokalypitik, Jena 1857), attribution to the Essenes (v.) was proposed, a view now supported 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) who stood apart from official politics and Pharisaic legalism (W. Baldensperger, W. Bousset, M. Friedländer, A. Causse). But these are uncertain hypotheses, there being no solid reasons for confining them to any particular "apocalypses"; despite their esotericism, the ideology they reflect does not diverge from the common Jewish mentality.

4. THEME AND DOCTRINE

The “apocalypses” are variations on the classic prophetic theme of the “day of Jahweh,” namely the final divine vengeance upon the forces of evil that are now triumphant; vengeance on the Gentiles and the glorious restoration of Israel. The intrepid fancies of the self-styled “seers” construct a refuge in the future and, sotto voce, convey a message of optimism to the pious Jews—that is, the nationalists—laden with threats against the Gentiles and against the collaborating Jews. Clinging to the faith that this world is on the verge of ending, they fix their gaze on the final catastrophe, horrendous for the impious Gentiles, which will usher in the kingdom of Jahweh and of His faithful. While describing the historical phases that precede and prepare the universal catastrophe from which Israel’s salvation 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 pregnant with precursor signs; the past and the arcane cosmic order (world, heavens, abysses) demonstrate the execution of God’s wise plans and guarantee the just and foreseen restoration to come. The “seers” satisfy the anxious curiosity of those awaiting the end by “revealing” the invisible world and the world to come, supplying the omissions of the Bible regarding the past (creation of matter, of angels, of man, the fall of angels and of the first parents, the flood, various events presented as future) and the present (cosmography and astronomy, angelology, demonology, abode of the dead). Hence it is possible to distinguish the “historical apocalypse” from the “cosmic apocalypse,” although in practice they are mostly blended.

In this unwieldy eschatology, national and individual interest is stretched toward the longed-for conclusion: God suddenly intervenes in the final struggle of the Gentiles against Israel, and lo, the victory and dominion of this new Jerusalem are realized, along with messianic blessings, resurrection and retribution, and cosmic apocalypse. The basic data come from the Prophets, but they are reworked, hypertrophied, and distorted; the majestic grandeur of prophetic eschatology gives way to puerile miracle-mongering, and the broad, indefinite perspective of historical Providence is replaced by a pedestrian and cumbersome chronology crammed with minute calculations of 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” is sharpened. No longer is the sublimation of this wretched world foretold, but rather its overthrow and transformation through fairy-tale processes, spectacular collapses and rebirths. The transition from the present age to the future is heralded by “signs,” manifestations of God’s wrath, with 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 marvels (sun by night, stars by day, stones sweating blood, swords in the sky, newborns with white hair, etc.), and they emphasize the persecution of the righteous and their flight into the desert.

The “kingdom of God” generally takes on a nationalistic-earthly aspect: the overwhelming vengeance of Israel, forever filled with prosperity and dominion. At times it assumes an otherworldly guise, but on the whole it is the apotheosis of the people of Israel, exalted to eternal fullness, 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 (though the question of personal immortality is generally evaded), or else (in Psalms of Solomon, 4 Ezra, Apocalypse of Baruch) by the happiness of the surviving living “at that hour,” who, after the final universal resurrection, will enter into eternal blessedness. The empire of the Law seems to wane “on that day.”

The kingdom, to be inaugurated or founded by the Messiah (v.), will be of this world: it will be characterized by a “new earth and new heaven,” peace, eternal light, glory, “garments,” and the “banquet.” The theme of the “celestial Jerusalem” is central: the messianic people, idealized, is transported to heaven. The great messianic crisis will mark a new beginning for the earthly world, a definitive palingenesis that will restore Eden here below. 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 rather 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 portrayed as a king and military hero (1 Enoch 1–37 and 72–90; Sibylline Oracles 3). He is present, though hidden, in the world, and will manifest Himself at the end of time (1 Enoch 38:7; 62:7; 4 Ezra 12:15; 13:52; cf. John 7:27 and Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 8). He thus appears as pre-existent, with the mission of judging men according to their deeds (1 Enoch 37–69 and 91–104; Sibylline Oracles 4); yet it must be noted that everything is pre-existent, and first and foremost Israel. The Messiah is never envisaged as a spiritual redeemer, an expiator of the sins of the world.

In the later “apocalypses” (4 Ezra, Apocalypse of Baruch, Apocalypse of Moses, Apocalypse of Abraham), the earthly-nationalist and transcendent-universalistic tendencies, drawing on prophetic oracles, converge and intermingle in a syncretistic messianism (v.). The interplay between the two outlooks is evident in all “apocalypses,” but the former always prevails; as antithetical visions accumulate and merge, an inextricable conceptual tangle emerges. There are no spiritual features in apocalyptic eschatology that are entirely free from nationalistic character. In Jewish thought, the spiritual never shuns the pure state: the temporal and the eternal, the earthly and the celestial, produce a most strange emulsion.

The “apocalyptists” cannot be called “spiritual geniuses” (R. H. Charles), nor can their productions be termed “a mystical movement” (L. Cerfaux); from the laborious toil of mountains of symbols there emerges a “ridiculus mus.” Though they extend to the inaccessible cycles of the heavens, they remain on the earthly plane, far behind the religion of the Prophets in their understanding of God, the Messiah, and humanity. The supreme theme, the manifestation of God’s glory, appears exclusively in function of the glorification of Israel. The piety of the apocalyptists is, therefore, impoverished: little is said of inner renewal or moral virtues. The “righteous,” the “saints,” the “elect,” so often named, are always Israel; “faith” is the obstinate expectation of the longed-for vengeance upon the “impious,” who are the Gentiles. The aspiration to union with God, love of God and neighbor, are absent from these writings, which, by materializing the ancient prophecy, foment the passion for vengeance and world dominion. Even the moral dualism resolves itself into political-racial antagonism. The spiritual inspiration of the Prophets vanishes in the acrid nationalism.

The concept of retribution is paramount, but it is a matter of “divine vengeance” upon the “impious” of the present; impotent rage vents itself in visions of a future in which the deplored present situation will be overturned. Toward the Gentiles the apocalyptists are unrelenting: any compassion for them would be seen as a weakness of faith or treacherous connivance. Whereas the punishments described by the Prophets are limited to the present or are poetic hyperboles, the “seers” inflict them with ferocious delight, specifying torments with meticulous cruelty, extending them to eternal future and intensifying them with insatiable hatred.

The “apocalypses” occupy a decisive place in the
bitter propaganda against the Gentiles; they are engines
of war. Yet their authors, hidden in the shadows, are not
combatants but conspirators who, with cold calculation,
string together speculations on portents of reserve troops
and strategic surprises, secrets whose communication is
proclaimed celestial “wisdom.”

Contrary to the Gospel (Mt 6:34), apocalyptic religion has but one preoccupation and anxiety: the future. It seeks to unveil the future, drawing lessons and prognostications from the past, extracting omens from the present, and outlining a theology of history suspended upon the clouds of the “great evening.”

An indefinite revision of world history, apocalyptic literature claims to explain the divine counsels governing the succession of empires and peoples who annihilate one another until universal dominion passes to Israel. One point sustains and illuminates all: the “end” toward which all things unconsciously hasten, in which all times are resolved. There is no organic or vital evolution: the future is already present in the past and present. In function of the future, past and present fade under the aspect of eternity. The schema predetermined by the “seer” compels him to transmute history into prediction. Enmeshed in his own device, he continually predicts, reweaving past events into series of prophecies (post eventum!), which he then extends, undeterred, to the end of the world.

Human history is the work of God. By placing exclusive emphasis on divine causality, the “seer” falls into an unconscious determinism, all the more so since individual personalities vanish. He never denies individual freedom; indeed, he heaps grave responsibility upon enemies whose punishments are always deserved; he affirms that salvation presupposes repentance. Yet the future appears to him as a rigidly fixed web. Events are not made; they are made by invisible (angelic) and almost impersonal agents, whence the continual use of passive verbs, characteristic of apocalyptic style. The abiding and substantial is conceived as eternal: preexistent and future. The entire drama is already set behind the scenes, with the Messiah and the New Jerusalem at its climax. The Messiah, indeed, is already in the world, though hidden. Predestination is strongly accentuated.

Time stretches like tableaux on a double plane: earthly, where events seem at odds with divine wisdom and justice, and celestial, where all is preordained and manipulated by the Almighty. Many events appear fortuitous or disordered only to observers ignorant of the Book of God: “in which all is written.” Within this transcendental fatalism, individuals and nations are elements of a fideistic occasionalism, optimistic in a sense judged severe. History, divided into symmetrical periods (and hours), “days,” “weeks,” “years” based on numbers, is schematized almost to the point of mechanization; its parts are cogs in an immense clockwork. The final outcome is inexorably certain: the nations succeed one another, destroying each other to the benefit of Israel, the last survivor, to whom the eternal kingdom belongs.

There is no room for a psychological-moral improvement of humanity: when sins and disasters have reached their height, God’s dazzling intervention will not restore the world but create a new world. Transporting the reader to the end of time, over which no one can exert influence, the “seer” disregards the interval: it either does not exist or, during it, there is nothing to be done. Until the “end,” the “just” must only endure and wait, while God intervenes solely to inflict the precursor punishments of the great catastrophe, in which the vast majority of men (the nations) will perish.

A distinctive feature of apocalyptic belief is that the present world (aiōn, the universe conjoined with duration) is ruled by angels (both good and evil). This gives rise to a developed angelology and theosophy of the age (eternity, aeons, epochs), which will form a foundation for Gnosticism (aeons).

Though remaining, in substance, within the orthodox current of traditional faith, the eschatology of the “apocalypses” does not advance a single step beyond Jewish particularism, condemned by the Gospel. The most ambitious nationalism here redoubles its claims. The nations are despised and hated as never before: the chasm between Israel and them becomes an abyss.

5. LITERARY GENRE

a) The “vision.” Presenting their writings as “revelation,” portraying past and present as unveilings of a future already disclosed in antiquity, the apocalyptists create a fictive procedure of “literary vision,” matured in study and without open connection to the milieu in which they live. These epigones of the Prophets always teach by means of “visions”; the explanations they add are usually delivered by an angel, that is, they too are “visions.”

They adopt the posture 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; it addresses hearers or readers, exhorting them to the action willed by God and to moral reform. The “apocalypse,” by contrast, is a narrative work designed to satisfy curiosity and idle speculation about future times and destinies. While prophecy links all things to the present, even when it looks to the future, the “apocalypse” transfers interest from the present to the future. The Prophet participates in the events he narrates, wages war openly, armed with a word as sharp as a sword. The false seer, however, is a solitary suspended between heaven and earth; he is no longer an actor but only a spectator; he is a man of book and pen, who strikes enemies with verbal cataclysms. A visionary absorbed in his abstractions, he does not rise to ideal contemplation nor reflect concrete reality; instead, he composes a chaotic and hallucinatory metaphysical drama interwoven with spectral scenes. The pretense of revealing God’s ways in the total history of humanity alone lends formless mass a semblance of unity.

b) Pseudonymity. The first formal requirement of the apocalyptic literary genre is anonymity. The real authors could not proclaim themselves prophets, since the prophetic age was long considered closed (1 Macc 4:46; 9:27); nor could they make it seem that God entrusted His secrets to obscure meditators.

Therefore, transporting themselves to a remote point in the distant past, they presented their “revelations” as ancient books attributed to a hero of primordial times, quasi-sin-genealogizing all epochs, or to the most renowned saintly figures who had lived in intimacy with God. Only by cloaking themselves in the authority of illustrious names could they lend credence to their dreams. To avoid the charge of blasphemy for such imposture, it must be recalled that literary fiction or fraud was widely practiced at the time (pseudo-Orphics, pseudo-Pythagoreans, etc.), and that Jewish sages considered themselves conduits of an oral tradition, revealed as truly as the written Law, indeed older and the authentic commentary upon II.
c) **Esotericism.** To explain why such venerable writings remained ignored for so many centuries and to justify the novelty of their thought and form, recourse is had to esoteric transmission. These *hispani* books—“internal” (esoteric)—guarded by angels, were to remain hidden until the appointed day (apocryphal: “hidden”), accessible only to narrow circles of initiates (4 Esd. 12:36–38). The “wisdom,” of which apocalyptic science claims to be a branch, dwells in heaven (Enoch 42; 4 Esd. 8:52–54) and is communicated to men through divine revelation as a secret (Enoch 82:1; 4 Esd. 14:45–47). As Daniel had already commanded secrecy (12:4, 9), so Enoch commands it (1:2) regarding his “revelations,” reserved for the righteous and the wise (4:10–13). The restorer Ezra renews the injunction to hide the “reserved” books: God Himself is said to have ordered Moses on Sinai to conceal most of his discourses (4 Esd. 14:5–8, 42–47).

d) **Compilatory Character.** The apocalyptists did not intend to innovate, nor did they wish to omit anything from the traditions they had received. They did not create but built with stones taken from the heap of diverse, now unidentifiable traditions, juxtaposing disparate materials of varied origin.

Under the common mold of “visions” and “revelations,” they syncretistically gather old legends, popular memories, allegorical exegesis, oral parenesis, legal sayings, and even myths, without fusing or organically arranging them. The most heterogeneous elements are usually heaped together indiscriminately, without regard for taste or criticism: eschatological prophecies, cosmographic descriptions, moral exhortations, edifying tales. The lack of unity is inherent in the genre. It is difficult to harmonize the viewpoints and ideologies aligned not only in conglomerates by multiple authors (Enoch) but also in books by a single author (4 Esd., Apoc. Baruch). It is therefore dangerous to infer from disparities of material or style the plurality of authors in writings that, by system, renounce all originality.

e) **Indeterminate Style.** Apocalyptic style differs sharply from prophetic style in that, for esoteric exigencies, it is deliberately obscure and sibylline. The “vision,” with imprecise contours, must produce the sensation of the ineffable and unfathomable. To make credible the transcendence of its “visions,” the “seer” affects a style that claims to be unequal to the dazzling and overwhelming realities glimpsed. Because of their sublimity or remoteness in the future, things must appear indistinct. The “seer” himself must be assisted (by angels) to grasp the meaning and relations of things, and warns that “not all can understand,” that keys or interpretations are needed to perceive meaning and scope.

Thus scenes and tableaux parade by, but they are mere words without plastic evidence, evoking nothing in the mind or imagination; they are neither narratives, nor paintings, nor representations, but mere fireworks. Descriptive phraseology relies on existing comparisons (“it seemed like,” “it was similar to,” “it had the appearance of”; Enoch 14:10–13; 46:1–2; 71:5; 4 Esd. 11:37). It is the effort of one floundering toward the shores of the future, in whose twilight even the past and present are distorted. Especially cautious to avoid references to present reality, lest the ruse be betrayed, the apocalyptists evade every historical-local color. This timid and labored approximation aims to give the impression of fidelity with which the author reproduces the external forms of the “visions” without pronouncing on their nature; it also lends the text a mysterious tone that, by stimulating curiosity, inspires reverence for the revealed arcane heights.

f) **Symbolism.** A common expedient to avoid direct description is the symbol, the chief resource of the “apocalypses.” Symbolism extends far beyond the “vision,” which consists of symbolic actions or scenes; it pervades dialogues, prayers, and interpretations as well (cf. 4 Esd.). Like the later Prophets it imitates, the “seer” wishes to express himself “under the veil of strange verses,” all the more since he must maintain esoteric reserve. The apocalyptic-symbolic arsenal is partly drawn from Ezek. 1:30 and 39, Dan. 7–9, and Zech. 14. But in the “seer,” whose thought is deficient and imagination poor, the symbol arises from cunning laziness and is rather the product of convention than poetic initiative. It transforms and bleaches all the past into substantial types or symbols. Unconcerned with external nature, the writer steeped in reminiscences recycles and dries up biblical images, which have become literary *clichés*.

He covers the abyss of mystery with a thick artificial efflorescence of emphatic commonplaces: stars, metals and gems, composite or stylized monsters, gigantic plants; yet we are far from the “bestiaries” and “herbals” of medieval Christian symbolism, which, though more naive, are no less suggestive. Having grown accustomed to consider men and events only in their transcendental relation to the eternal, he dissolves the boundaries between objects. Disdaining to look upon the external world, he fabricates an allegorical world devoid of measure and verisimilitude. The elaborate “symbolic visions” fail to achieve their intended effect of impressing, stirring, or moving. Beneath the disguise of images with no connection to real nature or humanity, and with no coherence among themselves, the reader often falters: even after much pruning of those opaque symbols, which can signify anything, he finds nothing; for the resources of those arid minds are few, and by applying symbols to diverse realities, they empty them. The symbolism, tangled and incessant, becomes an enigmatism that makes reading laborious and the text unintelligible (cf. *Enoch* §3–90). The action knows no dramatic progression; from beginning to end there glows the flash of catastrophe, sinister and triumphant alike. In the labyrinth, the writer loses himself first; even he, more often than not, does not know the object of his discourse: whether real or supposed, whether realized 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, further complicates the tangle. Even the periods meant to measure time often intersect and cancel one another, as in *Apoc. Baruch* 27:13–15.

g) **Artifice and Conventionalism** thus characterize the apocalyptic genre, which is a degenerate form of prophecy. While every prophetic book is a world unto itself, grand and unmistakable, the “apocalypses,” lacking spontaneity, all resemble one another. At least three-quarters of apocalyptic texts consist of the same commonplaces; every “seer,” repeating the obligatory theme, “predicts” events that have already transpired and projects the persistent hope of Israel onto the screen of the future. He aims to be sublime, since the theme demands it, but achieves only bombast and pedantry, lacking even the dry density of gnomic utterance that rabbinic *ma’al* sometimes attains (e.g., in *Aboth*, v.). The continual “revelations” in celestial journeys or angelic confidences emit a false theatrical light that sometimes dazzles but neither enlightens nor warms. The continuous metaphors and hyperboles, intended to express the inexpressible, accentuate the atmosphere of unreality in which these fictitious constructions stand.

Sophisticated prophecy ends in caricature of prophecy. The glory of God is no longer the grand epic of universal salvation; the Kingdom of God, shrunk to the Jewish horizon, is no longer presented with prophetic lyricism but with astonishing acrobatics. These “seers,” insensitive to Hellenistic aesthetic canons, cannot speak of God and His designs without offending and wounding nature. In their architecturally formless constructions, everything is phantasmal and without proportion, where the grotesque replaces the tragic and the monstrous the wonderful. The bizarre, which seeks to excite attention, prevents emotion. All true pathos is banished from rhetoric, except in a few chapters—imitated from *Daniel*—where anxiety and patriotic passion throb (*in 4 Ezra* and elsewhere). The only remaining concreteness and center of interest is indeed Israel. The apocalyptic style achieves sincerity of tone only when it expresses hatred for the Gentiles, enthusiasm or trepidation for the people of God, and unwavering adherence to the faith of the fathers.

These labored and monotonous works, hovering heavily in unbreathable air like monstrous birds of geological epochs, leave the impression of effort in a void, a nightmare flight in the delirium of a feverish patient. Their only merit and justification is that they come from anguished souls that confront oppression fiercely and inflexibly, waiting and hoping, reliving the adage that has become the spring of their faith: “in omnibus respice finem.”

4. *Influence.* — Although M. Friedländer, W. Bousset, F. Perles, and G. Hölscher hold that the “apocalypses” were widely circulated and reflect the current Jewish thought of the time, they do not seem to have had much echo among the Jewish masses. Official Judaism in the 1st century must have been unfavorable to them. Yet there is no evidence that such literature was then prohibited. Its supporters appear to have been confined to wretched circles of the “pious” (K. Kohler, B. M. Epstein, W. Baldensperger, M.-J. Lagrange attribute much of this literature to them), though 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 apocalyptists, along with other formulas and notions. Knowledge of the “apocalypses” spread in the 1st century from Jews to Christians.

Most modern Jews (I. Elbogen, I. Abrahams, etc.), followed by R. T. Herford and G. F. Moore, deny any importance for the understanding of authentic Judaism to the “apocalypses.” J. Klausner, however, revalues them, asserting that the messianic “dream” of Jesus depends on them, and calls them a “link” between the Old Testament and the Talmud. Today, moreover, many non-Catholics ascribe to apocalypticism a decisive influence on Christianity: it would have been the transition and link between the prophetic ideal and the Christian ideal, understood as the outcome of a slow evolutionary process.

A. Sabatier, A. Loisy, and 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 an interior religion and the spiritual kingdom; R. H. Charles, that it “was the bridge between the Old and New Testaments” and that St. Paul and other New Testament authors depend on it at fundamental points (moral doctrine, future life); A. Causse, that without the “apocalypses” the religious ideas of the Gospel cannot be understood. P. Batiffol calls apocalypticism “a kind of extension and epilogue of the canonical prophets, and at the same time a prologue to the Gospel” (*DB*, I, col. 757); a similar view is held by A. Weiser (*Einleitung in das Alte Testament*, Stuttgart 1939, p. 224).

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

It is certain, however, that the New Testament writings do not depend—either in ideas or in form—on Jewish apocalypticism; on the contrary, certain affinities are due to Christian reworkings (in *Enoch*, the *Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs*, the *Ascension of Isaiah*, *4 Ezra*, etc.). Apart from the literary dependence of *Jude* 14–15, no demonstrated citation or allusion to apocalyptic works appears in the New Testament or in early Christian writers. B. Allo admits, though with hesitation, that the *Apocalypse* of John presupposes knowledge of earlier “apocalypses.”

Nor can it be said that apocalypticism, with its typically Jewish mentality and 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 *Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart*, 3 [1929], col. 317), and J. Thomas, affirm that the preaching of the Baptist is connected with II. But apocalypticism rather falsified the Old Testament and, by lowering the messianic ideal of the Prophets, obstructed the way to the Gospel and disposed the Jews to reject Jesus. By presenting a Messiah who restores political independence to Israel and procures universal dominion, apocalypticism accentuated particularistic nationalism and drove Israel to rebellion against Christ and against Rome, and thus to disaster. In later apocalypses (*4 Ezra*, *Apocalypse of Baruch*), anti-Christian tendencies can be discerned. Hence Jesus, who unmasks false prophets (*Mt.* 7:15; 24:11, 24), announces a “judgment” of condemnation rather than vindication for Israel.

Long latent between legalism and prophecy, the conflict between rabbinism and apocalypticism was inevitable and led to the disappearance of the latter. Distrust of apocalyptic dreams increased after A.D. 70, and despite the attempted rehabilitation in *4 Ezra* 14, prohibition became formal and decisive after the national collapse of 135 (already by Johanan ben Zakkai in *Genesis Rabbah* 44, then in *Hagigah* II, 1). With the destruction of the Temple, the priestly office vanished, and the doctors of the law, who opposed “prophetic” longings, remained the sole spiritual leaders. Orthodox Judaism was on the path to Talmudism, with which it is now identified.

Despite the prohibition in the Mishnah “to inquire into four things: what is above, what is below, what was before, and what will be after” (*Hagigah* II, 1), some Jews continued to investigate in cosmic and theosophical “revelations” the future and the beyond. From this arose late apocalypticism (2nd–6th centuries A.D.) with a rabbinic conception in which the Law and its study are introduced into the empyrean and become beatitude: the “Hebrew” Book of Enoch, the Revelations of Joshua ben Levi, the “Hebrew” Book of Elijah, the Book of Zerubbabel, the Wars of the King Messiah, the Secrets of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, the Prayer of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, the Midrash of the Ten Kings, the Persian Apocalypse of Daniel. Apocalypticism also flows into many Midrashim, into the Targums of the Prophets and the Song of Songs... and, enriched with Gnostic myths, it culminates in the Kabbalah (v.).

BIBL.:
A. Causse, *Les apocalypses juives*, Paris 1906.
R. H. Charles, *The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament*, Oxford 1913.
J. Klausner, *Messianic Idea in Israel*, New York 1955.
M.-J. Lagrange, *Le messianisme chez les Juifs*, Paris 1909.
A. Loisy, *Les mythes babyloniens et les origines du Judaïsme*, Paris 1927.
A. Sabatier, *L’apôtre Paul*, Paris 1896.
A. Schweitzer, *Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung*, Tübingen 1913.
P. Volz, *Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter*, Tübingen 1934.

Undeniable is the influence of Jewish apocalyptic literature on Christian writers of eschatology. Not the apocalyptic genre itself is noted (Mt. 24; Mk. 13), but the millenarianism (v.) of Papias, Hippolytus and others depends on II. In Christian apocrypha and in Hippolytus, Commodianus, Lactantius (Divinae Institutiones, VII), there abound eschatological details, considered certain but not contained in the Bible, and tracing back to the most ancient core of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. The Christian genre also had imitators from the 2nd century onward, apart from the writings of Gnostic syncretism (Pistis Sophia); but Christian apocalyptic literature (Shepherd of Hermas in its "Visions" and "Similitudes," Epistola Apostolorum, Apocalypses of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas) achieves a variety of structure, and, through a symbolism usually transparent, manifests didactic intentions and ethical-parenetic concerns.

The apocalyptic schema will survive into the Middle Ages, often enlivened by faith and art: from the three Apocalypses of John and the two Apocalypses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the Navigatio sancti Brandani (11th century), which influenced the plot of the Divine Comedy, to the Mirabilia Visiones of so many saints, to the Compendium Revelationum (1495) by G. Savonarola. Dante excels in the genre (e.g., Par. XXVII, 64-66; XXVIII, 16-19). But after El Purgatorio de S. Patricio and various other theological dramas by Calderón (1600-81), the future and the hereafter dissolve into the "marvellous," a mere object or pretext for art. The Dream of Gerontius (1865), by J. H. Newman, is a solitary masterpiece.