The End of the Scroll. Herold Weiss

in a body of flesh was another version of the notion of The Fall. According to it, The Fall consists of the entrapment of the immortal soul in a mortal body. Unlike the prophetic visions of a blessed future on this earth, the apocalyptic conceptions of salvation envision the future in either an earthly or a heavenly new home. The choice seems to be influenced by whether the apocalyptic author is still strongly conditioned by his Jewish roots, or is somewhat more open to the Hellenistic cultural milieu.

      Symbolic Apocalyptic Language

      Finally, I would like to consider the most immediately evident difference between prophecy and apocalypticism: its appropriation of the language of creation myths and of ancient iconography. Many factors seem to have been involved in the development of apocalyptic discourse. To come to terms with them, it may help to start with a consideration of the risks involved in the use of words. Words are the indispensable means for communication, but words may also be the barriers to communication. In verbal communication three factors are involved: the speaker (writer), the hearer (reader) and the reality being symbolized by words. Modern philosophy has been particularly interested in the connotative and the denotative aspects of words. As a result, it has been affirmed that what is said but is “beyond proof” is meaningless. This reduction of meaningful speech to what can be demonstrated functions well in systematic scientific discourse that works through logic and appeals to reason, constricting the role of the imagination. It says that a human person may express ideas, desires, feelings, regrets, aspirations, etc., but since they cannot be confirmed with the objectivity required of scientific discourse, they are ultimately disconnected from reality. Discourse about what the imagination conceives, be it artistic, literary or religious, however, cannot be demoted to the fantasies of childhood that have no connection with reality. When what the imagination conceives is expressed by an intelligent adult it does not reveal immature flights to unreality. It has to do with what is as real as anything that can be proven in time and space. Attempts to give meaning to such discourse by transposing it to verifiable prose do not improve communication of what the discourse is about. To represent something symbolically does not imply that the speaker is in doubt about the reality or the validity of what he is saying. The use of symbols is concomitant to the use of words; it does not reflect the desire to impress aesthetically, or to lack confidence about the content of the discourse. The prophets not only used symbolic language, but also symbolic actions. By their performances they were not trying to magically bring about the future. They were trying to make as plain as they could what they understood to be the will of God. It was the most effective way for them to communicate the divine involvement with the present.

      The authors of apocalypses conceived the crisis of their present as more dire than that faced by the prophets. It involved not just the unjust conduct of Israel’s princes, priests and kings. It involved the whole of creation. This crisis could not be solved by using intermediaries: locust, drought, hunger, foreign armies, etc. This crisis required the direct intervention of the Omnipotent God. The only way to depict the personal impingement of God in the material and historical order in which people lived was the radical way in which God had brought about creation, as was being said by their time, “out of nothing,” thus increasing the power of the God who does not use water or soil to create, as said in the creation stories of Genesis. The adoption of the language of creation myths, however, was not just an easy revival of traditional language. It was a very conscious use of mythological symbols to give conceptual clarification to the existential confusion of life in the present.

      The symbols used by the authors of apocalypses were indeed traditional. They found them in the ancient myths of creation and in earlier books of the Old Testament, and they were easily understood by their contemporaries. Modern attempts by some interpreters to distinguish between what is to be taken literally and what is to be taken symbolically would have been inconceivable to the original readers of these books. They lived in the symbolic world of the imagination. There were no canons telling them that they were to tell about the past as it actually happened, or to prognosticate about the future as it would actually happen. Historical writing as an academic discipline committed to tell it “as it actually happened,” as von Ranke in the nineteenth century taught historians to be their duty, did not exist back then. Before von Ranke everyone who wrote about the past, including all ancient Greek and Latin “historians,” told about the past with a heuristic agenda. The prophets looked at the past to understand the present and offer moral advice. From the past they learned about the times when the Israelites had rebelled against their God and about the many demonstrations of God’s covenant loyalty to his people. Thus, they contrasted the people’s loyalty to their covenant with God by describing God’s loyalty as a “Rock,” and the people’s loyalty as “the morning dew.” It evaporates as soon as the sun heats up the atmosphere. They hoped, however, that the people would turn away, repent from their past and the future they envisioned would actually not happen.

      The apocalypticists looked at the past to counterbalance the blessed future that will put an end to the past that got the people into their unacceptable present. After the exile, the Endzeit wird Urzeit pattern is standard in apocalypses. The future “end time” is to become like “primeval time.” The future is described in terms of the pastoral simplicity, agricultural abundance and creature harmony that obtained in Eden. The final judgment is described with parallels with Noah’s times. According to the first Greek thinkers, all matter is made of four basic elements: air, water, earth and fire. Two of them are characterized as being essential to the flourishing and the destruction of life: water and fire. While God destroyed the world of Noah with water, his future destruction of the fallen world will be with fire. It is not surprising that the authors of apocalypses found the appropriate language with which to depict the future that would displace the present in the language of the ancient stories that told how chaos was displaced by cosmos and the flood put an end to a world engulfed in wickedness.

      The apocalypticists used a range of symbols: white bulls for the patriarchs of Israel, fallen stars for the sons of God that descended to earth to marry women, wild animals for the gentiles, blind sheep for the Jews, composite, monstrous beasts for nations, and their horns for their kings, etc. If today these symbols seem distractions it is because we may fail to perceive the agendas informing these apocalyptic accounts. It is also probable that sometimes the symbols were understood only by those belonging to a particular apocalyptic tradition. In any case, to use them now to extract “revelations” about the historical future is to abuse them.

      The function of the apocalyptic texts was to give the members of a community a secure self-understanding at a time when the present brought about confusing distortions of accepted theological notions. When the present does not make sense, and does not provide significant prospects for the future, persons in an individualistic society feel insecure in a confusing existential situation, their very being finds itself anchored in a void. The present becomes oppressive. At such times, the attention of people is not directed to a phenomenological explanation of what is happening, but to a basis for ontological certitude. The function of apocalyptic texts is to provide needed ontological certitude in the present and prescribe a course of action. For this, the symbolic language that enriches the imagination is the most effective means of communication.

      I conclude this introduction by summarizing that on the basis of the doctrines of The Fall and of The Two Ages, apocalypticism developed all kinds of scenarios in order to affirm God’s sovereignty and God’s justice in circumstances that required significant modifications of the prophetic tradition. These scenarios often depict how what is going on in heaven directly affects the conditions on earth as God demonstrates his ultimate control over his creation. Their intention, however, is not to foretell what will happen. They are designed to tell confused believers who cannot make sense of their present in a fallen world to persevere with patience so as to receive their just reward at the end. They affirm that while in This Age they are experiencing tribulations, in The Age to Come they will enjoy eternal life. The apocalyptic message is: patient endurance and faithfulness to Yahveh will be rewarded. In the following chapters I will elaborate on how the transitions described above appear in the late prophets and how the apocalyptic texts in the Bible express the message that while at the moment God’s justice is not quite evident it will be quite evident at the End. Those faithful to God will see their hopes fully realized. The expression of this basic message, however, does not always fit all the features singled out