Christianity Seminar: The Language of Apocalyptic · 2019. 5. 10. · ing his breakthrough experience in prophetic terms, Paul utilizes apocalyptic notes to declare that what has

F O R U Mthird series 6,2 fall 2017

Foundationsand Facets

Preface 101

lane c. mcgaughy God, ReTALIation, and the Apocalyptic Scenario 107

arthur j. dewey Switchback Codes Paul, Apocalyptic, and the Art

of Resistance 131

heidi wendt From the Herodians to Hadrian The Shifting Status of Judean

Religion in Post-Flavian Rome 145

john w. marshall Judean Diaspora, Judean War Class and Networks 171

Christianity Seminar: The Language of Apocalyptic

publisher Polebridge Press

editorsNina E. Livesey

University of Oklahoma Clayton N. Jefford

Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology

editorial board Arthur J. Dewey

Xavier UniversityRobert T. Fortna

Vassar College, Emeritus

Julian V. Hills Marquette University

Roy W. Hoover Whitman College, Emeritus

Lane C. McGaughy Willamette University, Emeritus

Chris Shea Ball State University

James Veitch Victoria University

issn 0883–4970

Forum, a biannual journal first published in 1985, contains current research in biblical and cognate studies. The journal features articles on the historical Jesus, Christian origins, and related fields.Manuscripts may be submitted to the publisher, Polebridge Press, PO Box 346, Farmington, MN 55024; (651) 200-2372. [email protected]. A style guide is available from Polebridge Press. Please note that all manuscripts must be double-spaced, and accompanied by a matching electronic copy.Subscription Information: The annual Forum subscription rate is $30. Back issues may be ordered from the publisher. Direct all inquiries concerning subscriptions, memberships, and permissions to Polebridge Press, PO Box 346, Farmington, MN 55024; (651) 200-2372.Copyright © 2017 by Polebridge Press, Inc.All rights reserved. The contents of this publication cannot be reproduced either in whole or in part, except for brief quotations in scholarly reviews and publications. Permission requests should be directed to the publisher.

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Contributors

Lane C. McGaughy is the Geo. H. Atkinson Professor of Religious and Ethical Studies Emeritus at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He is a former Assistant Executive Secretary of the Society of Biblical Literature and former President and Executive Secretary of the Pacific Northwest Region of the SBL and AAR. He is a charter Fellow of the Jesus Seminar and former Chair of the Boards of Directors of Westar Institute and Polebridge Press. As a special-ist in Hellenistic Greek, he has published two books and numerous articles on Greek grammar and various NT topics. He is co-author of The Authentic Letters of Paul (2010).

Arthur J. Dewey is Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati and a long-time Fellow of the Jesus Seminar. His recent works include Wisdom Notes (2016), the re-edited The Gospel of Jesus (2015), The Complete Gospel Parallels (with Robert J. Miller, 2011) and The Authentic Letters of Paul (with Roy W. Hoover, Lane C. McGaughy, and Daryl D. Schmidt, 2010). His most recent book, Inventing the Passion, is forthcoming (2017, Polebridge Press). He has written numerous articles on Paul, the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Thomas and the passion narrative tradition. For over a dozen years he was a commen-tator for the NPR station WXVU in Cincinnati. In1987 he co-founded and con-tinues to offer “Healing Deadly Enemies,” a program dealing with the virus of anti-Semitism and the NT.

Heidi Wendt is Assistant Professor of Religions of the Greco-Roman World at McGill University, where she is jointly appointed in the School of Religious Studies and the Department of History and Classical Studies. Her recent work has appeared in the Journal of Roman Studies, the Journal of Biblical Literature, and the Journal of Ancient Judaism. Her first book, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2016), examines evi-dence for the rise of self-authorized experts in specialized religious skills, rites, and wisdom under the Roman empire with a view to situating Christian ori-gins in this milieu.

John W. Marshall is Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and is jointly appointed to the Centre for Jewish Studies and the Department of Classics. His current academic interests include apocalyptic literature, colonialism and religion in the ancient world, early Jewish-Christian relations, historical Jesus, “magic,” and the role of Paul

in the construction of Christianity. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications, which aim to take into account how ancient literary sources ad-dress social-historical questions in Second Temple Judaism and in the devel-opment of early Christianity.

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FORUM third series 6,2 fall 2017

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Preface

Ancient apocalyptic, both in scrolls and imaginative strategy, emerges out of social upheaval. When pressed to explain social change, the ancient mind was often at a loss. Only a dramatic scenario could account for the loss of one’s social world or the advent of a new one. Apocalyptic writing was a creative response to being thrown into the vortex of life. In the four following articles the authors demonstrate how the ancients could accommodate and even participate in the changed conditions of living. At the same time, applying a variety of modern critical approaches, the authors attempt to re-imagine the usual way in which the origins of Christianity are conceived. Lane C. McGaughy provides a tra-dition-history analysis on the origins of apocalyptic thought. Arthur J. Dewey demonstrates how Paul could use the tropes of apocalyptic to underscore the radically changed condition of his audiences. Through the analysis of freelance experts, Heidi Wendt demonstrates how telling changes in their work and per-spective reveal the seismic shocks brought about by the Bar Kokhba revolt. John W. Marshall, through a contrast between apocalyptic texts and social inscrip-tions, traces the movement of apocalyptic thinking from a Jewish to a Christian embedding. In the lead article “God, ReTALIation, and the Apocalyptic Scenario,” Lane C. McGaughy provides the historical and cultural overview necessary for understanding the phenomenon of apocalypticism in the first century ce. Drawing upon anthropological studies, McGaughy distinguishes between communities formed through kinship and those centered on story. Blood-ties, exclusivity, and escalating vendettas characterize the former groups, while diversity and the possibility of transcending tribal limits sustain the lat-ter. Yet, even with story-based communities, McGaughy notes how they often imitate tribal groups when under social duress. They succumb to social scripts of martyrdom or revenge. It is from these “blood-feud roots” that McGaughy contends that the revenge narrative of apocalypticism emerged. The Christian tradition has from the first century been conflicted. Is it an inclusive community of forgiveness or a gated community longing for retribution?

For McGaughy the troubling matter begins with the earliest material from Near Eastern traditions where an ongoing cultural duel can be found in the perennial feuding between nomadic and urban life. This has ranged from The Gilgamesh Epic through the Joseph cycle in Genesis, from the Sumerian dynas-ties to the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyksos. McGaughy then deepens this cul-tural description by noting how that dueling contest, reflecting Sumerian and

Akkadian values and structures, comes into relief through the Mesopotamian creation myth, the Enuma Elish. This violent myth provides the “template for all subsequent epics in the ancient Near East.” It declares that, unless there is divine domination, order is not assured and catastrophe is ever at hand. Even the Hebrew Creation Epic (Gen 1:1–2:4) plays off of (and sometimes against) this story.

McGaughy then turns directly to apocalyptic texts. He sees that they com-bine a litany of disasters and suffering narrated as prophecies ex eventu and vi-sions of seers about the catastrophic end of time. He argues that this combined material was a constructed response to social crisis. He points out that the apocalyptic material surfaces as one of a number of responses to the Babylonian exile. But it is in the crisis ensuing from Alexander’s conquering of the Near East that apocalyptic comes to full voice. The persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes IV (168–165 bce) occasions the scroll of Daniel while the fall of the temple (70 ce) brings the apocalyptic strains out in full throat once again.

It is in the period between the time of the Maccabees and the temple’s de-struction that Jesus and Paul are found. Both are often described as apocalyp-tic visionaries. McGaughy disputes these claims. Drawing upon the work of Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar, he maintains that the note of revenge is not to be found in the sayings of the historical Jesus. In fact, Jesus’ concern was for the Empire of God that was effectively breaking in—not a future apocalyptic scenario of revenge. McGaughy also contends that one cannot simply label Paul an apocalypticist. He argues that Paul also does not display any narratives of re-venge. Instead, the faithfulness of Jesus, of his followers, and of God accents his letters. And when Paul uses apocalyptic language, it is only one of a number of shifting discourses used to communicate with his listeners. There is no simple seismic line to be drawn from Daniel to Jesus to Paul.

McGaughy ends by noting that much of the conversation about apocalyptic comes from a three-century span (from about 200 bce to 100 ce). The texts from this period draw on the long-standing myth of conquest and domination. What sadly has been lost in this furious bombardment of images are the voices that speak in quite a different tone.

In “Switchback Codes: Paul, Apocalyptic, and the Art of Resistance,” Arthur J. Dewey continues one of the concerns of McGaughy by exploring the apoca-lyptic strategy of Paul. If Paul saw himself more as a Jewish prophet, then why does he use those apocalyptic tropes, especially when addressing what would have been non-Jewish audiences? Why is Paul sending such seismic signals to his listeners?

Dewey first of all remarks that the letters of Paul have often been read anach-ronistically. There is a marked tendency to read his letters as if they came from the dominant voice of society. Using the political insights of James Scott, Dewey points out that the letters of Paul would not have been part of the command performances of the Roman world; rather, Paul’s letters were transcripts hidden

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from the public domain, an alternative voice that contradicted the dominant culture. Within these letters Paul was helping to carve out for his communities a social space where their dreams could grow and critical visions could find some breathing room.

Beginning with an analysis of Gal 1:12–16, Dewey indicates that, in describ-ing his breakthrough experience in prophetic terms, Paul utilizes apocalyptic notes to declare that what has occurred has turned the world upside down. In mixing prophetic and apocalyptic language Paul intimates that the paradigm shift he experienced indeed runs counter to the dominant voices of Rome. Dewey then works chronologically through three sections of Paul’s correspon-dence. In contrast to the Roman “gospel” indicated by the Gemma Augustea, where order is proclaimed through the use of controlled violence, where those who refuse to submit are brought to a shameful end, 1 Thessalonians provides evidence that Paul was fostering the Thessalonians’ grass roots experiment in trust. His use of apocalyptic language was employed to energize the commu-nity, to give hope even for those who have been lost in death. He intertwined wisdom and apocalyptic categories (1 Thess 5:1–11) to throw light on how the future is at work within this community of nobodies. Their lives are already part of what today we would call active resistance.

In his analysis of 2 Cor 5:16–21 Dewey argues that Paul continues to sub-vert the dominant paradigms. In speaking of a “new world order” Paul does not call for a return to the usual order of things but to a radically new situa-tion. Through a sensitive contextualization of Paul’s terms Dewey argues that Paul was calling his listeners to participate in a radical transformation. Using language usually found in the dominating public transcript, Paul inverted its meaning and invited his listeners to participate in the re-imagination of the conditions of human existence. This radical re-imagining continues full bore in Rom 8:18–23. Contrasting the scene of abundance and vitality found in the Ara Pacis with Rom 8:18–23, Dewey shows how the apocalyptic trope of a woman in labor (mentioned in 1 Thess 5:3) becomes the fundamental metaphor in his last apocalyptic envisioning. Paul re-reads Genesis 1. Creation for Paul did not hap-pen long ago; it was finally becoming realized in the very midst of the listening communities. Paul did not call his listeners to return to a golden age. Rather, he urged his listeners to recognize that all of their existence, including their pains and unspoken dreams, was part of the cosmic labor. Thus, Paul strategically used apocalyptic tropes and terms to provide space for these communities to breathe, to shore them up against the dominant voices of the empire and to un-derscore that transformation and change were already underway and in play. With the delivery of these hidden transcripts those fledgling communities of trust could begin to rehearse what could be imagined as a cosmic revolution.

In her article “From the Herodians to Hadrian: The Shifting Status of Judean Religion in Post-Flavian Rome,” Heidi Wendt explores the recent scholarly at-tempts to interpret the key historical developments from the Judean War to the

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Bar Kokhba revolt. Wendt particularly focuses on how the Bar Kokhba revolt precipitated a shift in the status of Judean religion among Roman audiences. She asks why more adversarial positions towards Judeans surfaced, especially in “Christian” writings, and how we are to understand such dramatic changes.

In order to get some critical traction on the fragmentary evidence and to avoid apologetic or anachronistic explanations, Wendt begins with a slice of social analysis in reprising her understanding of freelance experts. She argues that within the first two centuries of the Roman empire there were numerous self-authorized purveyors of specialized skills who competed for recognition and offered services exceeding ordinary religious benefits. Within the spectrum of such experts were philosophers, doctors of law and medicine, rhetoricians, as well as experts in matters of religion. It is crucial, in her judgment, to see that experts on matters of wisdom, rites, and interpretation of sacred texts were visible and varied throughout the culture. Hence, Judean freelancers were part of this overall competitive world. Indeed, at least in the first century, the ethnic dimension of the freelancer’s activity had a distinctive appeal. Wendt locates the career of Paul within this social category. Paul would draw upon his ethnic background, just as his opponents would. While he claims a distinctive perspective, he does not renounce his ethnic embedding. His interpretation of Torah, use of prophecies and revelations, and exegeses of mythic figures would not be idiosyncratic. Further, the Jewish revolt did not diminish this ethnic at-traction; in fact, the Flavian victory might actually have focused attention on Judean intellectualizing religious experts and their offerings. Josephus serves as an example. Even the reputation of Jewish writings for their oracular character increased in the post-bellum period as they were considered on par with the Sibylline books. Despite the Flavian blows against particular forms of the civic institutions of Judean religion, the interest in Judean oracles and freelancers did not diminish.

However, by the middle of the second century there was a palpable shift regarding Judean experts. In fact, this shift seems to have been occurring on a number of fronts. Arguments that once were embedded in ethnic coding were now encased in more universal, philosophical discourse. Even Judean writ-ings used as oracles were now interpreted by different experts, not located in a distinctive ethnic background. Christians who no longer identified with their Judean roots edited and interpreted the sacred writings. Moreover, when gen-tile Christians identified as “Israel,” they had begun a radical reconfiguration of cultural boundaries. In this shift in focus from Judean and Christian groups to individual experts, we see that it is in the second century that the no man’s land of religious identities emerges. There are still freelance experts but now they are generating boundaries from their interpretations of sacred texts and prophecies.

Was this development simply a process of social differentiation? Wendt sees in the Bar Kokhba revolt and its aftermath a probable cause. This second revolt

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may well have soured many towards the Judean religion. Simon’s legitimization as the messiah by Rabbi Akiba and his ambition to restore the temple and its priesthood may have been seen as a refusal to accept the inevitability of Rome’s domination. The plight of Jesus followers in Judea who refused to acknowledge Simon as the messiah may also have had a major part in this. Certainly the writings of Justin would suggest that these matters were not forgotten. At the same time the arguments of Justin demonstrate another freelance expert, who now utilizes philosophical discourse rather than ethnic attraction to interpret sacred oracles.

In the final section of her paper, Wendt builds upon the shift in regard to the status of Judean religion between the Flavian period and the rule of Hadrian. Just as she sees shifts in how the freelance experts distance themselves from things Judean, Wendt asks whether this movement can be detected in the gospel material. Already strong cases for the re-dating of Luke-Acts have been ad-vanced. The influence of Marcion on NT material has also been strongly argued. The question then becomes whether the Bar Kokhba revolt can be a plausible historical context for the composition and content of the canonical gospels. This means that the synoptic apocalypse (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21) needs reinvestigation. Does the warning about false prophets and messiahs allude to Bar Kokhba? Is 70 ce the only reliable terminus a quo for these texts? Tellingly, scholars are hardly concerned that non-canonical texts (such as the Apocalypse of Peter) are relegated to the second century. What prevents a reconsideration of the canonical books? Is it simply the assumption that such texts must be as close as possible to the time of Jesus to be reliable? These questions will only be answered if scholars are willing to locate the evidence within a richer historical description of the first two centuries.

The final article, “Judean Diaspora, Judean War: Class and Networks,” con-tinues the social examination of late first-century Judaism. John W. Marshall throws light upon diaspora Judaism as he explores the book of Revelation and 6 Ezra along with what can be gleaned about social networking from relevant inscriptions.

Marshall makes a cogent case that both the book of Revelation and 6 Ezra are Jewish apocalyptic texts coming from Asia Minor. He notes that the term “Christian” comes no earlier than 1 Peter and the Acts of the Apostles, both of which can be dated no earlier than the late first century and may quite likely be located in the early second. Moreover, the concerns of the writer of Revelation come from fundamentally Jewish issues. It deals with “those who say they are Jews and are not (Rev 2:9; 3:9).” The identity of the 144,000 from Israel (Rev 7:4–8; 14:1–5), the keeping of the commandments (Rev 12:17), as well as the contrast of Rome with the heavenly Jerusalem, all argue for a Jewish hand. As for 6 Ezra, the case for its being Christian is derived from its connection to the book of Revelation. But if Revelation is a Jewish text, then that argument falls.

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Moreover, Marshall points out that the “Anointed” is never mentioned, nor are there any Christian ideas. In sum, this too is a Jewish text. We thus have two Jewish texts within the diaspora.

Marshall then raises the question of the situation of Jews within the Diaspora during and after the Jewish War against Rome. He cites Agrippa’s speech in Josephus (J.W. 2.398–400), declaring that such a revolution will have bloody consequences for those Jews who live outside of Israel. Josephus notes specific conflicts in Caesarea and Syria. There had also been issues in Alexandria and Damascus. It would seem from what Josephus intimates that the situation could only get worse if the Jews in Israel took the path towards rebellion. Marshall points out that Roman troop movement in Anatolia, Syria, and parts of Asia could suggest that some hostile situations might be in the offing. But he notes that Paul Trebilco is convinced that there was no effect on Jews in Asia Minor from either the Jewish War or the revolt of Bar Kokhba.

In order to throw some light on the situation in Asia Minor during and after the Jewish War, Marshall returns to the book of Revelation and points out that in addressing the seven assemblies as well as in the critique of the empire, the writer is assuming the presence of a rich network of social interactions. We can see that Revelation 17–18 presents a major critique of those embedded in the network of trade (indeed, slave trade). He also can make the case that 6 Ezra 16:47–48 envisages a critique of those who conduct business as usual with the expected social networks.

At the same time Marshall presents evidence that Jews were very much part of the interconnected web of society within Asia Minor. Distinguishing inscrip-tions prior to the Jewish War from those after, Marshall notes that there is signif-icant evidence that Jews continued after the war to participate in the networks that rule their cities. Indeed, the mounting evidence is that the Jews continued to be embedded in their social world. Thus, Marshall sees two conflicting lines of evidence. The apocalyptic texts seem to be quite opposed to the inscriptional evidence. It would seem, despite these texts, that Jews found a modus vivendi within the empire. What then happens to those who shared the convictions of Revelation and 6 Ezra? Marshall suggests that these two writings represent a movement that would find itself more agreeably in the developing apocalyptic Jesus communities. The strident valorization of martyrdom in the third and fourth centuries would carry forward those apocalyptic critiques. Thus, the trajectory of Jewish apocalyptic may well have carried forward into specifically Christian communities, who saw themselves over against the empire.

—A. J. Dewey


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God, ReTALIation, and the Apocalyptic Scenario

Lane C. McGaughy

The apocalyptic scenario is one strand of the history of Western civilization that haunts Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The larger ethical question is, why is justice in the Western tradition commonly taken to mean revenge, “getting even,” quite literally, retaliation1 against the Other? More specifically, why is the apocalyptic version of eschatology so dominant in Christianity that, on the one hand, Jesus and Paul are often (mis)interpreted as apocalyptic prophets and, on the other, a pervasive influence (millenarianism) in modern Protestantism can claim that the entire Bible is end-time prophecy?

I began to question Albert Schweitzer’s claim that Jesus saw himself as an end-time apocalyptic prophet when major NT scholars in the 1960s and 1970s were debating Jesus’ view of the future. In his contribution to an issue of the Journal for Theology and the Church on apocalypticism, Robert Funk argued that apocalypticism was not Jesus’ view of the future, but the default mode of thought in first-century Palestine linked to the war against Rome: “Jesus’ peculiar understanding of temporality got leveled in the subsequent history of the tradition, that is, . . . the process of handing the Jesus tradition around and on made inevitable the assimilation of his understanding to the everyday, and presumably apocalyptic, notion of time.”2 One version of this leveling is the fallacious argument that, since John the Baptist before Jesus and Paul after Jesus

1. The capitalized root of “reTALIation” in the paper’s title calls attention to its Latin etymology: lex talionis is the Latin phrase for retributive justice that is often paraphrased as the “eye for an eye” rule cited in Exod 21:23–25. This rule is frequently invoked in support of the tribal view that one is obligated to avenge a wrong by inflicting comparable revenge on the perpetrator. The rule goes back to second-millennium Mesopotamian law codes, long before it was quoted in Exodus: “If a seignior has destroyed the eye of a member of the aristocracy, they shall destroy his eye. If he has broken a(nother) seignior’s bone, they shall break his bone” (Pritchard, ed., ANET, 175). There is no evidence this rule was ever utilized, so ancient historians assume its purpose was the reverse: to limit retribution, since excessive retaliation was often carried out (blood-feuds tend to escalate in violence). From the begin-ning Mesopotamian law codes listed the monetary value of body parts and property, so fines were substituted for actual punishments in kind. 2. Funk, “Apocalyptic as an Historical and Theological Problem in Current New Testament Scholarship,” 177. Since time in apocalyptic thought is linear, Jesus’ “peculiar” notion that present and future coinhere imply, for Funk and others, that Jesus was not an apocalypticist. In a recent study of Jesus’ temporal view, the Japanese NT scholar Takashi Onuki, Jesus’ Time: The Image Network of the Historical Jesus, argues that Jesus viewed the fu-ture kingdom of God as a present renewal of creation, not a future exodus from this world.

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were apocalypticists, Jesus must have been one too.3 The hyperbolic claim that “everyone” believes or does something does not prove that individual X also believes or does it!4

What follows is a retelling of the story of the ancient world that locates apocalypticism in a history of traditions context, both in terms of the timeless myth that produced it and its timely appropriation during seminal historical moments.

Cultural Categories: Kinship-based vs. Story-formed Communities

At the broadest level anthropologists divide societies into “story-formed” and “kinship-based” communities. Kinship-based communities are genetically linked, endogamous groups, often called tribes or clans, since members claim descent from a common ancestor. Tribal religion thus includes some form of ancestor worship and ethics is based on unquestioned loyalty to other members of one’s tribe. Such “blood ties” entail the fundamental obligation to retaliate against members of another tribe to avenge a perceived wrong, whether the retaliation is justified or not. This produces an endless cycle of escalating ven-dettas (“blood feuds”) in which each tribe cites a prior offense from the other tribe as the cause of the feud, thus rationalizing the perpetuation of the cycle of violence.5

Story-formed communities, on the other hand, are ethnically and linguisti-cally diverse social groups that are bound together by a shared foundation myth.6 In effect, the charter myth creates the community, and it will survive as long as the myth is taken to be true; in political terms, as long as the story can sustain a viable community. Those who join story-formed communities do so because the myth inspires them to embrace the values of the founding vision and invites them to live into its possibilities. In theory, such is the case with world religions like Christianity that transcend and replace tribal boundaries.7

3. E. P. Sanders is one of the current proponents of Schweitzer’s view that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. His basic argument is contextual: that Jesus was the middle term between John the Baptist and post-Easter Christianity. See Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 91–95. 4. Social scientists describe typical patterns of behavior, what the demographic majority believes or does, based on statistics and polls. Historians, on the other hand, focus on the unique behavior of individuals, how they stand out from the crowd, and thus employ some version of Norman Perrin’s criterion of dissimilarity. 5. Herodotus famously begins his account of the war between the Persians and the Greeks with a litany of prior affronts that came to a head with the Persian invasion of Greece in 490 bce. 6. Stanley Hauerwas uses the various communities in Richard Adams’s novel, Watership Down, to illustrate the narrative basis of non-kinship based societies. See Hauerwas, A Community of Character, 9–35. 7. The literal meaning of the Latin word root (re)LIG(are) indicates that the foundation myth “re-binds” or “re-connects” individuals who have become alienated from prior social units and their gods.

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Complications for a story-formed community’s identity arise when it imi-tates kinship groups by claiming to be an extended (fictive) family, embracing the family-like values of tribes and imposing them on the disparate members of the community. This end is pursued through family-like institutional structures and practices that create walls around the community and replace the diversity of its origins with insider-outsider distinctions. Community members often come to view themselves as under siege and thus as victims. This contrived tribal mentality expresses itself either in terms of a martyrdom narrative (suffer-ing as proof of one’s loyalty to the embattled community) or a revenge narrative (we will triumph over our persecutors either here or in the hereafter).

The thesis of this paper is that apocalypticism is a revenge narrative going back to the tribal, “blood-feud” roots of Western civilization. Despite being a story-formed community, Christianity is conflicted over its communal identity as the heirs of Jesus’ message about the “realm of God:” Is Christianity an ex-clusive tribe with a retributive ethics or an inclusive community with an “open table” (distributive ethics)?8 Is the community one of borders or hospitality, punishment or forgiveness?

Step I: In the Beginning, Dueling Cultures

When our grandparents were students, it was assumed that history started with Homer and the Hebrew Bible in the early first millennium bce. Discoveries of ancient cuneiform documents in the past two centuries, however, have pushed back the beginnings of Near Eastern history two millennia to c. 3200 bce. There was such widespread destruction and trauma at the end of the Bronze Age that a three-century “dark age” (1200–900 bce) eclipsed the achievements of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, turning them into faded memories and etio-logical myths. Awareness of the history of the Bronze Age was lost until textual discoveries at sites like Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh enabled scholars to reconstruct history from 900 bce back to 3200 bce, dramatically transforming our understanding of the roots of Western civilization.

The earliest extant literary text in Western civilization, The Gilgamesh Epic,9 was discovered in 1872 and narrates the adventures of the king of Uruk (bibli-cal Ereck), c. 2600 bce. Its two themes are (1) the tension between urban and rural lifestyles and values and (2) the elusive quest for immortality. From the beginning issues of social formation and human mortality have shaped Western consciousness.

8. For a current discussion of retributive versus distributive ethics, see Crossan, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian. 9. Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative.


Prior to the invention of writing (cuneiform) and the creation of cities (Ur, Umma, Lagash, Uruk, Shurupak, and Nippur) at the beginning of the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia, hunters and gatherers were nomadic and assumed that this was the “natural” way the gods intended for humans to live. The creation of cities, monumental architecture, writing, and new artistic forms were viewed as human inventions that, from the point of view of the nomads, defied the will of the gods. Hence, ancient texts like The Gilgamesh Epic address this conflict between nature and culture (“culture wars”) that has been a major thread of Western civilization for the past five thousand years.

What is important to note is that the hero of these conflict narratives depends on which side produces the text. In Dumuzi and Enkimdu: the Dispute between the Shepherd-God and the Farmer-God,10 a Sumerian poem, the goddess Inanna chooses to marry the farmer-god (the personification of culture) instead of the shepherd-god (the nomadic persona). On the other hand, in the story of Cain and Abel, composed by the nomadic Hebrews, the nomad (Abel) is the hero:

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep [seasonal nomad], and Cain a tiller of the ground [a farmer represents culture in ancient texts]. In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering [the LORD] had no regard. (Gen 4:2b–5a NRSV)

The J [Judean] source depicts Yahweh as endorsing the nomadic lifestyle (Abel) and rejecting the urban one (Cain). The antagonism between urban and nomadic lifestyles is explicitly noted in the composite JE source in Gen 46:34c: “all shepherds [= nomads] are abhorrent to the Egyptians.”

The inscriptional evidence confirms that a perennial feud between no-mads and urbanites continued throughout the Bronze Age (3200–1200 bce). The indigenous Semitic-speaking tribes of the ancient Near East were sea-sonal nomads (long-range nomadism did not exist before the domestication of the camel c. 1000 bce.). At the beginning of the Bronze Age non-Semitic speaking peoples (Subartu in the north and Sumerians in the south) invaded Mesopotamia and launched civilization (invented bronze and cuneiform writ-ing, built walled cities and monumental structures).11 The history of ancient Mesopotamia oscillated between Sumerian (urban) and Semitic (nomadic) domination (see chart 1).

10. Pritchard, ed., ANET, 41–42. 11. Among the many surveys of Bronze Age history and culture, I would mention two: Bottéro, Cassin, and Vercoutter, eds., The Near East, and Hallo and Simpson, The Ancient Near East.


Chart 1: Bronze Age Near Eastern EmpiresSumerian Dynasties Semitic EmpiresI. 3000–2350: Sumerian City-States II. 2350–2109

A. 2340–2198: Agade/Akkad (Sargon the Great, 2340–2284) B. 2198–2110 Gutians (N) and Second Dynasty of Lagash (S)

III. 2110–1900: Sumerian Dynasties 2110–2003: Third Dynasty of Ur 2003–c. 1900: Isin-Larsa Period IV. c. 1900–1594: Old Babylonian Period (Mari archive, 1810–1760; Hammurapi, 1792–1750)

c. 1500: Kassite invasions and decline of Bronze Age culture in Mespotamia

The response of the nomadic tribes to the arrival of the Sumerians after 3000 bce was one of fascination: both attraction to the novelties of urban culture and repulsion from its temptations. The Gilgamesh Epic begins with the citizens of Uruk using a prostitute (a symbol of the benefits of civilization!) to domesticate the innocent nomad Enkidu. Many of the nomads were seduced by the appeals of urban life or were hired as laborers or mercenaries and gradually were as-similated to the sedentary lifestyle, culminating in the old Akkadian empire of Sargon the Great.12 Other nomadic groups remained convinced that the gods intended for humans to live as nomads, since that was the “natural” lifestyle of their ancestors, and so resisted assimilation. They believed that abandoning the values of the nomadic lifestyle was a rejection of one’s tribal gods. Ancient Near Eastern nomads believed that god wanted humans to dwell in the wilderness, not in cities made by humans.

Like other nomadic groups in the region, the Hebrews were not immune to the fascination of culture. The earliest narratives in Genesis contain allusions to the cultural practices of ancient Mesopotamia.13 The ancient Hebrews were fas-cinated by large-scale architecture such as the ziqqurat in Babylon, though they condemned human innovations as contrary to the divine will: “And the LORD said, ‘. . . this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them’” (Gen 11:6 NRSV).

12. Sumerian texts refer to nomads as the Martu. In Akkadian texts they are called Amurrum. Since these Amorites spoke a Semitic dialect from the “Canaanite” or Northwest Semitic language family, ancient Near Eastern nomads are often identified as Semites. But the Bronze Age conflict is between urban and rural, not Sumerian and Semite. 13. For legal parallels to Pentateuchal customs in the Nuzi texts, see Pritchard, ed., ANET, 219–20.


Beginning with the Joseph cycle (Genesis 37–50), the cultural threat to the nomadic values of the Hebrews shifts to ancient Egypt. The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39), for example, closely parallels the Egyptian “Tale of Two Brothers.”14 Soon after the creation of Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, a similar cultural lurch forward from Neolithic hunters to the unified monarchy of the Old Kingdom occurred with the invention of writ-ing (hieroglyphics) and the large-scale architecture of the Fourth Dynasty pyramids of Gizeh. Surrounded by deserts, ancient Egypt was protected from foreign invasions for 1500 years. When nomads (called Hyksos in the Egyptian records) successfully invaded Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period, the sense of Egyptian superiority and security was shattered. The subsequent uprising against the Hyksos rulers was led by military pharaohs. These war-riors were brutal in their retaliation against the Hyksos and expanded the New Kingdom into the first Egyptian empire with forays into Asia. If the Hyksos are identified with or included the Hebrews, then the story of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt is linked to the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyksos beginning with the reign of Ah-mose I in the Eighteenth Dynasty.15 Pottery and other physical evidence show that the Hyksos were composed of a variety of ethnic groups. This suggests that those who escaped or were expelled from the Egyptian Delta constituted a “story-formed community,” a collection of peoples who embraced the Exodus narrative as the bond that united them in following the dream of freedom announced by Moses in the name of Yahweh.

The First Crisis: Charismatic vs. Institutional AuthorityThe first crisis among the nascent Hebrew people after their arrival in Palestine occurred when those who were attracted to the benefits of urban culture proposed that the tribal amphictyony, led by charismatic judges/prophets, be replaced by a centralized monarchy. The simmering tension between nomadic roots and the urban centralization of her neighbors finally came to a head when the Philistines invaded from the south.16 The war between the Philistines and Israelites lasted for two centuries during which the Israelites were loosely orga-nized into a tribal confederation (an amphictyony) under the leadership of char-ismatic figures called judges. The last judge of Israel before the establishment

14. Pritchard, ed., ANET, 23–25. 15. See “The Expulsion of the Hyksos,” in Pritchard, ed., ANET, 233–34. 16. The Philistines, also called Pelasgians, were Achaeans who fled when the Dorians invaded Greece at the end of the Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence indicates that many Achaean settlements were destroyed, likely by the Dorians in this period. Some Achaeans fled east to Asia Minor and established Ionia. They also destroyed the Hittite empire of east-ern Anatolia and the city of Ugarit. Still others continued south to the Egyptian delta during the reign of Ramses III (1195–1164 bce), but these invading “sea-peoples” were repelled by the Egyptians. They retreated up the coastal plain to Gaza and threatened the Hebrews with their iron weaponry (1 Sam 13:19–22). See Edwards, et al., The Cambridge Ancient History, chapters XXVIII and XXXIII.


of the monarchy was Samuel who at first resisted pressure to appoint a king in order to defeat the Philistines: “Then all the elders of Israel . . . came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, ’. . . appoint for us . . . a king to govern us like other nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel. . . .” (1 Sam 8:4–6 NRSV). As the Hebrews moved from their nomadic lifestyle and its basis in the covenant that pledges allegiance to Yahweh as their only king (Joshua 24) to the establishment of the Davidic monarchy, Samuel represented nomadic opposition to the nega-tive aspects of urban civilization (1 Sam 8:10–18). As a prophet, Samuel is what we would call “a culture critic.” He responded to the allure of culture with a keen analysis of its potential evils. It is not surprising that whenever Israelite kings strayed from Yahweh or oppressed the people that a prophet like Samuel would harangue them with the cry: “To your tents, O Israel!” (1 Kgs 12:16c).

Step II: Ancient Mesopotamian Religion, Dueling Gods

The religion of ancient Mesopotamia is a direct reflection of Sumerian and Akkadian cultural values and structures. The independent, competitive city-states of ancient Sumer were not secular cities like Athens, but temple-states. The function of the lugal (“big man” or “king”) or en (“priestly lord”) was to administer the god’s estate on earth. He was both a political and religious leader. The “temple” (ziqquarat) was located in the city center, with homes and commercial areas surrounding it. The temple owned most of the land and, ac-cording to Thorkild Jacobsen, most inhabitants survived as “sharecroppers, serfs, or servants of the gods.”17 It is therefore not surprising that the pyramidal economy of the temple state is duplicated in the celestial realm:

Anu: chief sky god // lugal or enAnnunaki: council of fifty “great gods” // council of elderspersonal gods // assembly of “men of the city” (Gilgamesh and Agga)18

The Sumerians mapped their social structure on the cosmic canvas and then reversed the causal direction: “After kingship had descended from heaven. . . .” (beginning of The Sumerian King List, c. 2125 bce).19 The autocratic rule of Sumerian and Akkadian kings is based on their role as the earthly representa-tives of the high god Anu. Jacobsen argues that the relative peacefulness of the fourth millennium bce quickly gave way to constant warfare and conquest following the creation of monarchy and the appearance of fortified cities in the early Dynastic period of third millennium Sumer.20

17. Jacobsen, “Mesopotamia,” in Frankfort, Before Philosophy, 201. 18. Pritchard, ed., ANET, 44–47. 19. Pritchard, ed., ANET, 265. 20. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness, 77.


A. The Mesopotamian Creation Epic (the symbol of the Dragon) The dramatic shift at the beginning of the Bronze Age to warrior kings is re-flected in the ancient Mesopotamian creation epic, the Enuma Elish.21 According to the Akkadian epic, the creation of the world is the result of a violent duel between two divine champions, one representing chaos, the other order.

1. Premise of the epic: before the world was created, there was no cosmic order and, moreover, this chaos was lifeless (= no motion or activity).

2. Genesis of the gods (theogony) from watery chaos: Apsu (male/fresh waters) and Tiamat (female/salt waters) mingle creating the alluvial delta, followed by the birth of other gods.

3. The activity of the newer gods (they like to dance) disturbs the rest (inactivity) of the older gods, so Apsu plots against them.

4. Marduk (Sumerian Enlil), grandson of Anu, agrees to champion the newer gods if they give him all powers (they acknowledge his power: “Marduk is king!”).

5. Marduk (god of the winds) defeats Ti’amat (depicted as a fire-breathing dragon) in a violent duel:

Ti’amat and the champion of the gods, Marduk, engaged,were tangled in single combat, joined in battle.The lord spread his net, encompassing her;the tempest, following after, he loosed in her face.Ti’amat opened her mouth as far as she could;he drove in the tempest lest she close her lips.The fierce winds filled her belly, her insides congested and (retching) she opened wide her mouth:He let fly an arrow, it split her belly,cut through her inward parts and gashed the heart.He held her fast, extinguished her.22

6. Lord Marduk’s creative actions: a. He creates the cosmos from Ti’amat’s dead body (the ordering of chaos as a

gift to the newer gods). b. He creates humans from the blood of Ti’amat’s second husband, Kingu, to

relieve the gods of their tasks. c. He oversees the construction of his house (ziqqurat) in Babylon.

The Enuma Elish provides the template for all subsequent creation epics in the ancient Near East: creation is the result of a war between primordial chaos (anarchy) and cosmic order. It is a myth of conquest and domination. Secondly, since order is not primary, but derivative, it is contingent on human piety. The creator God will punish disobedience by withdrawing the gift of order and

21. For a translation and exposition, see Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, chapter 6. 22. Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness, 178.


plunging the world back into chaos and anarchy.23 The threat of catastrophe is always lurking in the wings.24

B. The Canaanite Creation Epic (the symbol of the Whale)Two other influential versions of the Mesopotamian creation epic are the Ugaritic myth of Ba’al and Yam and the Mithraic tauroktonos. In the Ugaritic (Amorite) Ba’al Epic discovered at Ras Shamra in 1929ff. by Claude F. A. Schaeffer and a French team is embedded an account of Lord Ba’al’s (like Marduk, a weather god) defeat of Yam (Pardee: Yammu), god of the salt wa-ters.25 As a maritime people, these predecessors of the Phoenicians symbolized chaos as a sea-monster (whale), rather than as a dragon.26

C. The Mithraic Creation Epic (the symbol of the Bull) Mithraic monuments suggest a third version of the ancient Near Eastern cre-ation epic as a duel between the gods of chaos and order, but the symbol for chaos is now a raging bull. The apses of Mithraea (Mithraic churches) are usu-ally decorated with the scene of the god Mithras slaying a bull (tauroktonos). Franz Cumont interpreted this image as a repetition of the primeval fight be-tween Mithras and Ormazd’s first creation, a bull. When the bull reappears at the end of the age, Mithras will again slay it and its sacrificed body and blood will become the food and drink of immortality.27

23. Since created order is not constitutive of the cosmos but a gift of the high gods, the flood story soon follows to emphasize this fragility. Utnapishtim tells the story of the flood in the Gilgamesh Epic. Since he has survived the flood and become immortal, Gilgamesh seeks to learn the secret of eternal life from him. In another version of the flood story the hero is named Ziusudra (Pritchard, ed., ANET, 42–44), he is called Atrahasis in a Babylonian version (Beyerlin, ed., Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 90–93), and in the later Hebrew version Noah is the hero’s name. It is this belief that order is transitory, despite the covenant with Noah (Gen 9:8–17), that is the backdrop for the fear that God will once again destroy cosmic order in the apocalyptic scenario. 24. This explains why Western civilization focuses on “law and order.” Civilized order cannot be taken for granted in the Western tradition; it must constantly be defended from “barbarians at the gates.” 25. Beyerlin, Near Eastern Religious Texts, 203–6; Hallo, ed., The Context of Scripture, 1.246–47. 26. In Isa 27:1 the two images are combined: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Psalm 29 seems to be an enthrone-ment hymn to Ba’al as the storm god, though now ascribed to Yahweh. In Job 41:1 the sea-monster is called “Leviathan,” which may refer to a crocodile, rather than a whale. In Ps 74:14 God defeats a sea-monster, whereas in Ps 104:26 the Leviathan is reduced to a tame sea-creature. 27. Since there are very few literary sources, Cumont’s interpretation of this tableau has been challenged by others, including David Ulansey, who contends that the cult-relief is part of an astronomical code. See Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, and Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries. Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras, focuses on growing archaeo-logical evidence and avoids the speculative theories of previous monographs.


D. The Hebrew Creation Epic (the symbol of Water)The Priestly version of creation (Gen 1:1–2:4) draws directly upon the Ancient Near Eastern creation myth, but with one major exception: the symbol of chaos is demythologized. The dragon/whale/bull is replaced by water, a rationalized image of the formlessness of primeval chaos. But creation is still imagined as a contest in which God conquers Chaos: “In the beginning when God (Elohim) be-gan to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and dark-ness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:1–2 NRSV, see note a). Note that order is still derivative, a gift from God, and that God, like Marduk and Ba’al, is the lord of the winds.

As in ancient Mesopotamia, so two millennia later in ancient Israel, the cre-ation epic is used to justify monarchy as a reflection of the divine conquest of chaos. This autocratic ideology is reflected in enthronement Psalms like Psalm 29, 47, 93, 95–99: “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits en-throned as king forever” (Ps 29:10 NRSV).

Despite the gradual rationalization of ancient myths beginning with Homer and the Hebrew Bible, Mircea Eliade and others have noted that their traces continue throughout the history of Western consciousness. Marduk’s battle with Ti’amat is echoed in the legend of St. George slaying a fire-breathing dragon that captivated the imagination of medieval crusaders. Baal’s battle with the whale Yam generated stories like that of Jonah and Herman Melville’s American classic, Moby Dick. And the rituals of bull fights in Spain and bull riding in American rodeos are distant traces of the Mithraic tauroktonos.

Step III: Apocalyptic Poetics, From Urzeit to Endzeit

Apocalyptic texts (apocalypses) combine two literary forms: (1) prophecies ex eventu and (2) visions of seers about the catastrophic end of history. The end-time war between God and Satan is based on the conquest narrative of ancient Near Eastern creation epics and events leading up to the end-time war are cast as prophecies ex eventu. Paraphrasing Martin Kähler’s remark that, for some, “the gospels are passion stories with extended introductions,”28 one might ob-serve that an apocalypse is an account of the end-time war, prefixed by a list of penultimate disasters.

A. The End-time War as a Reprise of the Primeval Duel (Visions)Many scholars have noticed that seers’ descriptions of the catastrophic end of history are based on creation narratives: descriptions of the Endzeit are mirror images of the Urzeit. An example of this is the “Unholy Trinity” of Revelation

28. Martin Kähler, The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 80 n. 11.


12–13: a dragon, a whale, and a raging bull.29 The author combines all three ver-sions of the ancient Near Eastern creation myth to describe the end-time duel between the champions of God and Satan:

Version 1 (Rev 12:1–17): Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon (δράκων μέγας πυρρὸς). . . . And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated. . . . The great dragon . . . was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Rev 12:3a, 7–8a, 9a,c NRSV)

Version 2 (Rev 13:1–10): And I saw a beast rising out of the sea (ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης τὸ θηρίον). . . . (Rev 13:1a)

Version 3 (Rev 13:11–18): Then I saw another beast (θηρίον . . . εἶχεν κέρατα δύο) which rose out of the earth; it had two horns. . . . (Rev 13:11a–b)

Here are three versions of the common creation myth, not three different figures as literalists would have it: the one enemy in three symbolic forms.

Note also that in projecting the golden age of the past onto the screen of the future, seers do so in terms of their own cultural horizons: for ancient nomadic Hebrews, paradise is a fertile oasis in the midst of a parched desert, the garden of Eden (Gen 2:4b–9); for the urbanized early Christians paradise is a shining city decorated with precious jewels and golden streets, the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21).

B. Prophecy ex eventu (Antedated list of penultimate events)Devastating events leading up to the culminating final battle in the apocalyptic scenario are formulated as predictions from the past, though actually composed after these traumatic events. Like the ancient Near Eastern creation myth, prophecy after the fact is also an ancient genre, with examples dating back to the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom in ancient Egypt. The Prophecy of Nefer-Rohu is set in the time of the Pharaoh Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty (2650–2500 bce). Snefru asks the priest-seer Nefer-Rohu to forecast the future. He predicts the political anarchy of the First Intermediate Period (2260–2040 bce) and then announces that Amen-em-het I (1991–1962 bce) would put down all rebellions and reunite Upper and Lower Egypt.

The rivers of Egypt are empty. . . . A foreign bird will be born in the marshes of Northland. . . . Foes have arisen in the east, the Asiatics have come down to Egypt. . . . This land is helter-skelter. . . . Men will take up weapons of warfare, (so that) the land lives in confusion. Men will make arrows of metal . . . Men

29. If there is a sequential narrative in Revelation, it runs from chapters 4–11. Beginning in Revelation 12, elements of the narrative are randomly expanded. Thus commentators who try to construct a linear outline of the author’s end-time scenario by going from Revelation 4–22 are never successful.


take man’s property away from him, and it is given to him who is from out-side. . . . Men will [treat] (fellow) citizens as hateful, in order to silence the mouth that speaks. If a statement is answered, an arm goes out with a stick, and men speak with: “Kill him!”

(Then) it is that a king will come, belonging to the south, Ameni, the triumphant, his name. He is the son of a woman of the land of Nubia; he is one born in Upper Egypt. He will take the [White] Crown; he will wear the Red Crown; he will unite the Two Mighty Ones. . . . Rejoice, ye people of his time! The son of a man will make his name forever and ever.30

According to the caste system of ancient Egypt, members of the royal family married only within their own ranks. During the fragmentation and cultural decline of the First Intermediate Period the genetic link to the Old Kingdom rulers was evidently broken and Amen-em-het I, son of a Nubian mother, was regarded as an illegitimate Pharaoh by the nobility. Hence, The Prophecy of Nefer-rohu was composed during his reign to legitimate his claim to the throne. One piece of evidence that this prophecy was created after the events it describes is the anachronistic sentence: “Men will make arrows of metal.” There is no evi-dence that metal-tipped arrows existed before the Eleventh Dynasty (c. 2000 bce).

An example of prophecy ex eventu in the NT is the “little apocalypse” of Mark 13. The author lists the terrible events that occurred during the Jewish war against the Roman empire (66–70 ce) but casts them as predictions of the historical Jesus. If Mark 13:2 is a reference to the destruction of the temple, then the first gospel may have been written just after the end of the war in the early 70s. This would also explain why the fading of apocalyptic is already beginning in Mark’s time: since God did not come to the aid of the Jewish freedom fight-ers, this war was not the end-time battle that supporters of the war had falsely prophesied (Mark 13:22). Therefore, there is no description of the end-time war in Mark 13; rather, Jesus is said to have rejected apocalyptic speculation: “As for that exact day or minute: no one knows, not even heaven’s messengers, nor even the son, no one, except the Father” (Mark 13:32 SV). The disparate sayings com-bined in Mark 13 are loosely organized in three clusters: (1) list of disasters that occurred as a result of the war (13:5–13) = a description of the current situation of Mark’s readers; (2) warnings about the imminent suffering and persecution of Mark’s readers (13:14–23) = the near future as the Romans continue their retalia-tion against Jews for the rebellion of 66–70; and, (3) more distant cosmic events (13:24–27) when the triumphal climax will be ushered in with the arrival of the son of Man/new Adam (SV) on the clouds, though the parousia cannot be dated (13:33–37). Since Mark 13 does not contain a vision of a triumphal end-time war but emphasizes impending suffering for the community, it ends with the out-come of the apocalyptic scenario unclear, much like the gospel as a whole (16:8).

30. Pritchard, ed., ANET, 444–46.


Step IV: Options after the Babylonian Conquest of Jerusalem

The establishment of the monarchy in ancient Israel occurred after the three centuries of historical “darkness” and chaos that followed the eclipse of the clas-sical empires of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt in the fourteenth century bce. This three-century power vacuum in the Ancient Near East created a space for smaller kingdoms like Israel, Phoenicia, and the Aramaeans around Damascus to flourish for several centuries during the first millennium bce. Only Assyria survived the upheavals at the end of the Bronze Age, mainly because of its iso-lation and protection from the invasions of the twelfth century. Assyrian domi-nance reasserted itself beginning with the reign of Ashur-dan II (933–910) and reached its zenith in the eighth century (782–727 bce). By the time the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel (722–721 bce), both Israel and Judah were caught in a vise between the more powerful empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt, allying now with one side, now with the other, until the Babylonians twice invaded Judah (597 and 587) and destroyed Jerusalem. The destruction of the Solomonic temple and the monarchy was a watershed for both the political and religious ideology of the First Temple period. The David-Zion ideology was based on the natural theology of the ancient Near Eastern creation epic in which Elohim/Yahweh as the creator of the world had enthroned the Davidic dynasty as the divinely-ordained rulers. The end of the monarchy challenged the divine right of kings and revitalized the Moses-Sinai ideology of the period of the judges and handed on by the prophetic tradition. The Deuteronomic re-forms under King Josiah in 621 (2 Kings 22–23) pressed this issue: “The LORD said, ‘I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I removed Israel; and I will reject this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there’” (2 Kgs 23:27 NRSV). Less than three decades later this had all come to pass (another example of prophecy ex eventu) as the Deuteronomist and Jeremiah had warned.

Chart 2: Near Eastern Empires of the First Millennium bceThe Assyrian Empire (933–612 bce)

Ashurbanipal (669–630)|

Late Seventh-Early Sixth Century: Four Regional StatesA. Neo-Babylonia (626–539) B. Media (699–550) C. Lydia (716–547) D. Egypt (664–525)

(= Chaldeans) | Saite DynastyThe Persian Empire (559–330)Cyrus the Great (559–529)

|The Hellenistic Kingdoms (323–31 bce)

Alexander the Great (356–323)A. Antigonids (306–168) B. Seleucids (305–95) C. Ptolemies (305–31) (Asia Minor) (Asia) (Egypt)


The Second Crisis: The Babylonian Exile Could Israel move beyond the trauma of exile and the undermining of its be-lief that Yahweh would protect Zion? Three major answers to the crisis of the Babylonian conquest were proposed in the wake of this tragedy. All three as-sume that the destruction of Jerusalem means that Yahweh has withdrawn from history. Yahweh has left this world and no longer will manipulate human affairs in favor of the Israelites. The new theological reality of the exile is that Yahweh has become an absent god, and thus irrelevant to daily affairs. The righteous are now thrown into the turbulence of history with no protection.

The responses to the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the loss of political independence, and the collapse of traditional religious certainties were worked out in a distant land. The heart of Jewish life was now in Babylon. How could the faithful deal with their alienation from Yahweh in an alien environment? The five laments compiled in the book of Lamentations give voice to various stages of grief following the tragic end of Jerusalem in 586, beginning with mourning its destruction: “How lonely sits the city that once was full of peo-ple! . . . She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; . . . The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her festivals” (Lam 1:1a, 2a, 4a NRSV). The three main narratives that grew out of the experience of the Babylonian exile can be summarized as follows:

Narrative 1: Torah and CultPremise: Yahweh has withdrawn from history.Theological response: Yahweh has left the Torah and the priestly traditions con-tained in it. The righteous should study Torah and follow its prescriptions in the absence of Yahweh (e.g., Ezekiel).

Narrative 2: Prudential WisdomPremise: Yahweh has withdrawn from history.Theological response: Yahweh has left an orderly cosmos and human reason. The sage should formulate practical guidance from the workings of nature and the cosmos and regulate his/her life on the basis of this proverbial wisdom in the absence of Yahweh (e.g., Proverbs, Ecclesiastes).

Narrative 3: ApocalypticismPremise: Yahweh has withdrawn from history.Theological response: (a) The vacuum has been filled by the forces of evil. As a result, the righteous are now suffering and the evil are prospering. (b) But the days of evil are numbered. Yahweh will soon return to history: then the forces of evil will be defeated and retaliation will be meted out in spades—the evil will be brutally punished and the righteous lavishly rewarded (e.g., Daniel).

The various responses to the end of the monarchy and the apparent absence of Yahweh led to the fragmentation of Jewish culture following the Exile (the beginning of the Jewish diaspora with leaders deported to Babylon and oth-


ers fleeing to Egypt) and the formation of an array of sectarian movements (Hasidim, Sadducees, Essenes, et al.).

The Third Crisis: Alexander’s Conquest of the Near EastThe trauma that the Babylonian conquest inflicted on the Jews was later inflicted on the rest of the Near East by Alexander the Great and his succes-sors. Aristotle’s student saw himself as the instrument for carrying out the long-standing PanHellenic vendetta against the Persians for their invasions of Greece in 490 and 480. His methods in dealing with enemies were brutal, but his goal was more than military conquest. He aimed to create the first “global” empire (oecumene or one “inhabited world”) by exporting Greek culture and institutions to the known world. As a result, the scars of Alexander’s military campaigns were not limited to the casualties of war, but included the loss of tribal identity throughout the Near East as a veneer of Hellenistic culture was imposed on local structures.

The negative impacts of Alexander’s decade-long crusade to conquer and Hellenize the Near East were social dislocation, personal alienation, and the overwhelming sense that evil is the most powerful force in the cosmos. The Hebrew feeling, following the Babylonian exile, that Yahweh had abandoned history exploded into the theodicy problem in the Hellenistic period. In the age of tribalism, there was no personal identity apart from one’s ethnic group. What sociologists refer to as the “dyadic” personality of tribal communities was no longer viable as persons were cut adrift in the wake of Alexander’s march to India. In order for a cosmopolitan culture to emerge, Zeno and the Stoics in-vented a new concept: the concept of the individual person. Once the concept of self-identity was formulated, new story-formed communities could be created and personal religious conversion became a possibility. During the Hellenistic period individualism took shape in two forms: (1) for intellectuals, Greek pai-deia became the basis for self-identity; (2) for many others, new religious cults (Greco-Roman mystery religions) provided the passport to a new identity.31

The trauma of Alexander’s grand plan, however, was not fully experienced by the Jews until the second century bce. The Ptolemies in Egypt controlled Palestine during the third century from the battle of Ipsus (301) to the battle of Panium (198 bce). Jews were allowed a measure of self-governance and, para-doxically, the Tobiads and other cosmopolitan Jews were gradually assimilated to the wider Hellenistic cultural milieu. This all changed when the Syrians (Seleucid dynasty) defeated the Ptolemies at the battle of Panium and gained control of Palestine. The efforts of the Seleucids to force Jews to abandon their religious practices and adopt Hellenistic culture, in order to strengthen Seleucid

31. The classic study of the idea of personal conversion and its relationship to the mys-tery religions is Nock, Conversion.


unity, reached a boiling point when Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163) an-nounced his intention to transform Judaism into a SyroHellenic religious cult by identifying Yahweh with Zeus: Jewish religious festivals were abolished, Jews were forced to eat pork, copies of Torah were burned, and the cult of Olympian Zeus was set up in the Jerusalem temple (2 Maccabees 6). This attempt to erase Jewish religious identity accelerated Jewish dispersion throughout the Mediterranean region and sparked the Maccabean revolt in order to regain independence and protect Jewish national identity.

Interlude: Summing Up the Argument

Before addressing the apocalyptic scenario that fueled the revolts against Rome in 66 and 132 ce, let me sum up with a series of propositions:

1. The apocalyptic scenario is a revenge narrative. 2. The roots of the revenge narrative go back to the beginnings of Western civili-

zation in ancient Mesopotamia. 3. The revenge narrative has two constituent parts: a. A litany of disasters and sufferings narrated as prophecies ex eventu. b. A visionary description of a climactic end-time war. 4. The two constituent parts of the apocalyptic scenario follow the crisis-response

pattern: a crisis causes the disasters and the violent conflict is a response to the crisis.

5. The history of the ancient Hebrews is narrated in the Bible as a series of crises and responses.32

6. The mythopoeic language of apocalyptic discourse is this-worldly, not other-worldly.33

Outline of the crisis-response pattern in the history of ancient Israel:

First Crisis: amphictyony or empire (c. 1050–960 bce)?Responses: monarchy versus prophetic tradition (critique of empire).Second Crisis: Kingdoms of Israel (721) and Judah (587) destroyed. Responses: Torah and cult, wisdom, and apocalyptic narratives.Third Crisis: Greek colonialism and loss of national identity (200–63 bce). Responses: assimilation versus Maccabean revolt and sectarian groups.Fourth Crisis: Roman colonialism and loss of homeland (63 bce–134 ce). Responses: collaboration versus resistance and the formation of rabbinic Judaism and diaspora identities.

32. The crisis-response pattern is used by Humphreys, Crisis and Story: Introduction to the Old Testament. 33. Given the holistic worldview of antiquity (sublunar gods are actors in the historical arena), myth functioned in antiquity as psychological projection does in the modern world: an externalization of irrational scenarios in order to guard against anxiety.


Jewish Apocalypticism in the Greco-Roman Period

The only complete apocalyptic text in the Hebrew Bible is Daniel. Daniel was written during the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (168–165 bce). It de-scribes the struggle for religious freedom before the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt in December 164 bce. Daniel is typical of the apocalyptic genre: though written during the third crisis (c. 165), the author uses the examples of the per-secution of Daniel and his three companions during the second crisis (sixth cen-tury Babylonian conquest and exile during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar) as a means to encourage resistance against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus in the second century, cast in the form of a prophecy ex eventu (Daniel 1–6). The second part of the apocalyptic genre, descriptions of future conflict and “the end the days” (12:13b), is narrated in four visions (Daniel 7–12).34

Jesus and the Apocalyptic Layer in the GospelsSince the time of Albert Schweitzer and Johannes Weiss, many scholars have argued that Jesus saw himself as an end-time apocalyptic prophet. This was one of the “assured results” of NT scholarship that the Jesus Seminar tested. Marcus Borg’s paper, “A Temperate Case for a Non-Eschatological Jesus,”35 persuaded members of the seminar to reject Schweitzer’s claim and conclude that Jesus did not have a messianic self-consciousness. Borg makes three arguments:

1. Though there is a layer of apocalyptic material in the synoptic gospels, the apocalyptic “son of Man” sayings are not authentic Jesus sayings, but post-Easter Christian scribal interpretations of Dan 7:13–14.

2. The term “kingdom of God” and a future arrival of the “son of Man” figure are never joined in the texts.

3. As a result, Jesus’ focus on the “kingdom of God” does not refer to an im-minent event in the future, but, in fact, is a creation metaphor referring to “Israel’s myth (or story) of God’s kingship over Israel and the world.”36

I would add the following point to Borg’s analysis. There is no revenge narra-tive in the authentic sayings of Jesus. A violent battle in which the righteous are rewarded and the evil are destroyed (the eschatological reversal) is the climax of the apocalyptic scenario. Jesus, however, does not describe a violent end-time battle in which the forces of God slaughter the forces of “the beast” (à la Rev 19:17–21). Quite the opposite: “As you know, we once were told, ‘An eye for an

34. Other literature of the Maccabean period following Daniel includes the book of Judith, evidently about the continuing struggle for political independence down to 141 bce, and the book of Esther, though set in the Persian period, seems to be about campaigns of revenge against the enemies of the Jews after 141 bce. 35. Borg’s paper was first published in Westar’s journal Forum 2,3 (1986) 81–102. It was reprinted as chapter 3 in Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, 47–68. 36. Borg, “A Temperate Case for a Non-Eschatological Jesus,” 92.


eye’ and ‘A tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you: Don’t react violently against one who is evil: when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well. When someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let that person have your coat along with it. Further, when anyone conscripts you for one mile, go an extra mile” (Matt 5:38–41 SV).37

Moreover, the analysis of the apocalyptic scenario as a two-part crisis-re-sponse narrative (1. account of current suffering and persecution; 2. revengeful violent battle) suggests that, while Jesus shared the apocalyptic’s negative as-sessment of history, he offered a radically different response: love and inclusive-ness, not revenge.

Chart 3: Jesus’ Message vs. the Apocalyptic Scenario Crisis: Response:Apocalyptic: God has left history ➙ God will return in vengeance Evil is now in power ➙ God will conquer evilJesus: God is impartial (Matt 5:45) ➙ (but) God is here (Luke 17:20–21) This generation is evil (Luke 11:29) ➙ (but) Love one’s enemies (Matt

5:44)

Those who focus on Jesus’ negative attitude toward history tend to locate his message in the apocalyptic tradition. But if the accent is on Jesus’ vision of an inclusive community that is arriving through his parables, then he is not an apocalyptic prophet and his negative view of history reflects the prophetic cri-tique of culture, not the revenge scenario of apocalyptic. Thus, the earliest nar-rative that informs the story of Christianity was a protest narrative, the counter-cultural stance of the ancient Hebrew prophets who preceded the establishment of the Davidic monarchy.38

Seven years later Borg published a follow-up essay on whether Jesus was an apocalypticist.39 Here Borg critiques E. P. Sanders’s argument for an apocalyptic Jesus by noting that it ignores the bedrock of the Jesus tradition, his parables and aphorisms, and instead filters Jesus through Sanders’s hypothesis that Jesus was a prophet of restoration eschatology.40 After summarizing his view that Jesus was a teacher of subversive wisdom, Borg also notes that apocalyptic language and the language of social criticism are incompatible.41 Borg further observes that the “delay of the parousia” did not seem to create a crisis in early

37. If Matt 5:41 refers to the practice of Roman soldiers “conscripting” Jews to accom-pany them on unprotected highways like the one from Jerusalem to Jericho, then Jesus’ ad-monition to “go an extra mile” with a soldier suggests he would not have supported efforts to take up arms against Rome. 38. See Schneidau, Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition, for a discussion of classical prophecy as a form of social protest. Schneidau also argues that the prophetic cri-tique of culture is the forerunner of the critical spirit in the Western tradition. 39. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 69–96. 40. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 80–81. 41. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 82–83.


Christianity, since it was not the only, or even the main, theological issue in the formation of the tradition.42 If Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet, then why did the claim that he was one become an “assured result” of NT scholarship after Schweitzer? Borg argues that it is because of Mark’s influence. Mark, a “wartime gospel,” was written at the height of the crisis created by the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Herodian temple in 70 ce. The author of Mark was the one who believed the end-time was imminent and so, via prophecy ex eventu, turned Jesus into an apocalyptic prophet. Mark 1:15 (Jesus’ inaugural address), 9:1 (the imminence of the end), and chapter 13 (the little apocalypse) are all redactional.43

Was Paul an Apocalypticist?Borg not only questions whether Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, but also doubts that Paul was one, as the conventional paradigm assumes. “The domi-nant emphasis of Paul’s message. . . . seems to have been the new life in Christ available in the present, not primarily (or even very much) the need to repent before the judgment.”44 Many scholars have noted this “yet/not yet” juxtaposi-tion in Paul’s letters. He both asserts that the eschaton is already present (2 Cor 5:17), but that it is not yet complete (Phil 4:5b).

Despite the occasional apocalyptic language in Paul’s authentic letters, like Borg I have never been persuaded that Paul was an apocalyptic seer. The main reason is that there is no revenge narrative in Paul’s writings. Like Jesus, Paul does agree with the negative view of history in apocalyptic texts (Rom 1:18–23). But, like Jesus, Paul does not describe a slaughter at the end of history. Rather, he argues that the faithfulness of Jesus confirms the reliability of God (Rom 1:16–17) so that God will “triumph” or will be “vindicated,” not through a violent conquest, but through the faithfulness of those, whether Jews or the nations, who imitate the faithfulness of Jesus (Rom 3:23–26).45 We could thus expand chart 3 to include Paul:

Crisis: Response:Is (an absent) God trustworthy? ➙ Jesus’ faithfulness confirms God’s reli-

abilityJews and non-Jews are disobedient ➙ God accepts all who, like Jesus, trust

God

42. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 79. 43. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 86–87. Schmidt describes the features of Mark that indicate it was written during the Jewish war against Rome and labels Mark as “A War-Time Gospel.” See Schmidt, The Gospel of Mark, 3–6. 44. Borg, “Jesus and Eschatology,” 79. 45. This reading of Paul’s world-changing insight that the faithfulness of Jesus made pos-sible the inclusion of “the nations” in the eschatological community, and thus “vindicated” the righteousness of God (contrary to the apocalyptic scenario) is based on the Scholars Version translation. See Dewey et al., The Authentic Letters of Paul.


As a peripatetic evangelist and pastor, Paul corresponded with dissimilar groups in divergent cities of the early Roman empire. Because his audiences were diverse, he employed a range of discourses, shifting from one metaphor or rhetorical strategy to another, in his efforts to translate his world-changing in-sight into the idiom of his readers.46 I would suggest that apocalyptic language is only one of the symbolic fields that Paul exploits to communicate his insight about the significance of Jesus’ faithfulness as a way of solving the “gentile problem.”

Concluding Comments

After Judas Maccabeus fought the Syrian general Lysias to a draw at Beth-zur in the fall of 165 (1 Macc 4:26–35) and cleansed the rebuilt temple in December 165 (1 Macc 4:52–58), the path to political independence was again cleared. By the time the Maccabean dynasty was established two decades later, however, resistance to Hellenization had diminished and, under John Hyrcanus (134–104 bce), it became another Hellenistic kingdom much like the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms. Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II appealed to the Roman general Pompey to settle their dispute over the throne in 63 bce. When Pompey annexed Jerusalem instead, the local population did not experience much dif-ference between Maccabean and Roman rule. Thus the period from Pompey to Claudius was mostly peaceful in Palestine.47 The revolutionary movement did not begin until the Zealot party was established in 52 ce, and resistance against Roman rule was further fueled by widespread unemployment after the Herodian temple was completed in 62 ce. Within four years the revolt against Rome broke out, based on the apocalyptic hope that Yahweh would destroy the enemies of the righteous.

Much of the debate about apocalypticism has focused on its matrix: did it come from Babylonian, Persian, or Hellenistic influences? I am not especially interested in this question, since I think the dualism and mythological lan-guage of apocalyptic goes back to the beginnings of Western civilization in ancient Mesopotamia, as argued above. What intrigues me more is dating: all the apocalyptic texts seem to have been produced between 200 bce and 100 ce. Within this three-century span, there are two periods when many of the texts are dated: the generation following the edicts of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (e.g.,

46. Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought, discusses Paul’s juxtapo-sition of symbolic fields and his use of apocalyptic language to communicate his new view of God based on his insight about the significance of Jesus. See especially chapter 12 for a discussion of the various symbols of salvation and righteousness in Paul’s letters. 47. Since Josephus mentions no military invasions from 4 bce–66 ce in his list in Against Apion 1.34–5, Martin Goodman concludes that this seventy-year period, the generations of Jesus and Paul, was one of “stability and peace.” See Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 382.


Daniel, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and 1QM: the War Scroll) and the generation fol-lowing the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (e.g., Mark, Revelation, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and the Apocalypse of Abraham).48 This would mean that these apocalyptic texts were responses to the third and fourth crises described above. When times are peaceful, apocalyptic scenarios tend to fade. During times of crisis and persecution, however, evil seems to be more powerful than good, and the apocalyptic scenario provides some consolation for the victims and defends the (absent) power of God.

Some years ago a colleague asked me to list biblical stories that do not con-tain conflict or violence. The stories we tell our children, he argued, shape their values and worldviews. I replied that, off the top of my head, I could think of only two: the story of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible and the parable of the Good Samaritan in the NT. From its beginnings in Mesopotamia five thousand years ago, a myth of conquest and domination has shaped Western civilization. Tribal vendettas have been glorified in the name of God, whether they are called “Holy Wars,” “Crusades,” or “Jihad.” The basic mantra is the code of the war-rior, “to kill and survive,” rather than the rule of those who follow a path of self-sacrificial love, “to die and become.” Reevaluating the role of apocalyptic in early Christianity opens another window onto the forces that shaped Christian identities and the myth(s) that founded a new story-formed community.

48. Dating most of the apocalypses is difficult, especially since they are often composite texts. The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness (1QM) from Qumran is an example of this problem.

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