Divinity United

"...a solely eschatological understanding of “apocalyptic” overlooks the way in which the revelatory nature of apocalypses may have influenced New Testament language and its portrayal of revelation."  For more see, 'Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition in the New Testament' at BibleInterp.com .

This past semester I taught a course on the New Testament and Jewish apocalypses. For the required texts, along with reading the Jewish apocalypses themselves, I required John Collins' The Apocalyptic Imagination and the recent award-winning and posthumously published Apocalypticism in the Bible and Its World  by Frederick Murphy. I have a book review of Murphy coming out in next Trinity Journal , but I wanted to make some comments here that I was not able to include in the more traditional book review. My students found Murphy more readable and accessible than Collins. I suspect that this is because Murphy has written in a style that an undergraduate can more easily grasp, and I think the fact that Murphy summarizes more familiar (biblical) material than Collins (Jewish apocalypses) also made Murphy seem more friendly. One challenge with using a book like Murphy is that it is a long textbook that summarizes a lot of primary material, while highlighting specific themes through...

George MacDonald's, Lilith  is a great piece of fantasy literature, and after reading the book, it is easy to see how MacDonald inspired Tolkien and especially Lewis. Toward the beginning of the book there is a great exchange between the Raven and the protagonist. The Raven who is also a man (the Man) leads the protagonist into another world. They pass through a mirror in the attic garret of an large, old house out into "the open heath" (in classic MacDonald style). The protagonist then asks: "Oblige me by telling me where I am." And the response of the raven: "That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home." (George MacDonald, Lilith . Merchant Books, 1895. Reprint 2009. Page 12.) Nothing about whereness...a striking comment and a challenge to learn about home.

"Die danielische Vision eines 'wie ein Mensch ' aussehenden Himmelwesens und der sogenannte 'apokalyptische Menschensohn' spielen bei Joh keine Rolle" (Hartwig Thyen, Johannesevangelium , 205). I should say that I couldn't disagree more. 

In his 1964 introduction to "Apocalyptic," P. Vielhauer defines apocalyptic as primarily focused on eschatology or the imminent expectation of the end ("Introduction," in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha (W. Schneemelcher, ed.; R. McL. Wilson, ed. ET; vol. 2; London: Lutterworth Press, 1965) 581-607). The majority of scholars of apocalyptic literature today would not define "apocalyptic" as essentially eschatology. The following quote highlights some of the difficulties of defining "apocalyptic" and the contents of apocalypses. "'For the youth of the world is past; the strength of the creation has long ago come to its end, and the approach of the times is (already) at hand and (indeed already) passed by. For the pitcher is near to the well, the ship to harbour, the caravan to the city, and life to its conclusion' (syr. Bar. 85:10). "This cosmological statement makes it clear that the conviction concerning the nearne...

The finalized schedule for the Enoch Seminar in Milan has recently been posted. Links to most of the papers have been made available, although access is restricted to attendees. One of the Enoch Seminar traditions is that no papers are read at the conference. The attendees are to read all of the papers (yes, all of the papers) ahead of time. The sessions at the conference sessions are given to a brief summary of the papers and to significant discussion. Seems like a much more enjoyable and interesting way to run a conference, especially one located in Italy.

The biennial Enoch Seminar will be meeting in Milan, Italy the last week of June. The topic of this year's seminar is "Second Baruch and Fourth Ezra: Jewish Apocalypticism in Late First Century Israel." The schedule of papers and participants can be found here . Some of top scholars in the area of Second Temple Judaism will be presenting on various aspect of these two late first century apocalypses. The format of the seminar is designed for discussion with responses to almost every paper. It looks to be a good conference.

Now, almost two months since the colloquium at the University of Bangor, I will offer some final comments on the well-run colloquium that was put on by Catrin Williams and facilitated by Hazel Thompson. Attending a small, intimate conference on a single topic is of so much more value than any large conference with multiple sessions. With everyone in attendance for all the papers, it is possible to have ongoing discussion about certain topics and for links to be made and suggested between papers. One thing that is abundantly clear to me is the continual need to address the definition of 'apocalyptic' and 'apocalypse'. These words, particularly the former, are often used in various ways that can cause confusion about what is being discussed. Numerous texts that are not generally considered apocalypses can be fit under the heading of 'apocalyptic' and there usually is no rationale as to why this is the case. Clearly, texts can have 'apocalyptic' materia...

There is a day long Conference in Uppsala entitled "Faces of Apocalyptics" . There are three papers and two are by John Collins and Adela Yarbro Collins. If Sweden were only closer... "Apocalyptics", by the way, is being used to refer to "Apocalypticism". Another example of the slippery use of the terminology related to apocalypses.

Day 1. We had some excellent papers to start off the first day of the colloquium. John Ashton commenced the precedings with a well-written look at some of the historical traditions behind the connections between the Gospel of John and the apocalyptic genre. I find it fascinating that this sort of discussion always brings us to 1 Enoch . There are different views regarding what we do with any sort of connection between 1 Enoch and John, but the two texts have surprising similarities. One of the other questions that arises is whether the Fourth Evangelist is consciously replicating an apocalyptic structure or if such a structure was just part of his worldview. Judith Lieu gave the next paper and discussed the issues of text and authority. She raised some excellent questions about writings in apocalypses (such as heavenly tablets) and the relationship these writings have with the written apocalypse. In relation to John, this comes to a head specifically in 20:30-31 and 21:24-25. The G...

Rafael Rodriguez has written two posts reviewing my book T he Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John (WUNT II/249) on his blog Verily Verily . He is writing a review for BBR.

Reading through the Jewish apocalypses again, I have found the definition of apocalypse given by the SBL Genre Group back in 1979 to be entirely appropriate. John Collins has been one of the main proponents of this definition, which states that an apocalypse is "a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world" (Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Literature , 2nd ed. 1998, p. 5).        There have been a number of suggested additions to the definition, but this is the essential starting point for any discussion of "apocalypse" and therefore also of the adjective "apocalyptic".