Popalyptic II: Apocalypse Then

First things first, before this post really begins... Effie and I have been updating our daugter's blog if you are interested. She is now three months and cute as usual. Secondly, this strange new site called Bohemian Alien has published an aritle I wrote many months ago on Kafka. You can check that out here. I titled it A Kafka Kick to the Face, so you know it has to be good. Okay, now on to today's post...

Before we can get into the meat of where these posts are going, I feel the definite need to define our terms. Pop and the idea of pop culture will have to be fleshed out in future posts, but of course the most important thing to start with is apocalypse and apocalyptic literature. Although I am not a scholar on this, I do have some understanding that I would like to share and use to move us into the heart of this conversation.

The first for us to do, then is to find some definitions of “apocalypse.” I want to share a variety, look for themes, but leave it somewhat open as to exactly what it is, because I believe what it was historically and what it has become are not necessarily the same thing. Today we will look at apocalyptic literature from history, setting us up for the next post, which will (if all goes according to plan) focus on how our understanding of apocalypse has changed over time. So here goes…

In How to Read the Bible for All it’s Worth, Fee and Stuart list five common characteristics of Apocalyptic literature:
1. “Apocalyptic was born either in persecution or in a time of oppression [for the Bible, think how apocalypse is seen during the exile and during persecution of the early church]. Therefore, its great concern was no longer with God’s activity within history. The apocalyptists looked exclusively forward to a time when God would bring a violent, radical end to history, an end that would mean the triumph of right and the final judgement of evil.”
2. “Apocalypse is a form of literature. It has a particular written structure and form.”
3. “Most frequently the ‘stuff’ of apocalyptic is presented in the form of visions and dreams, and its language is cryptic (having hidden meanings) and symbolic.”
4. “The images of apocalyptic are often forms of fantasy, rather than of reality.”
5. “Because they were literary, most of the apocalypses were very formally stylized [think of the use of numbers, time, neat arrangements of these and more].”

Leland Ryken, in How to Read the Bible as Literature, calls this visionary literature, which “transforms the known world or the present state of things into a situation that at the time of writing is as yet only imagined.” The apocalyptic author writes in such a way because “visionary literature, with its arresting strangeness, breaks through our normal way of thinking and shocks us into seeing things are not as they appear.” Think of how awesome these combined statement are; an apocalyptic writer uses wild imagery for the sake of the readers, so they can have their eyes opened and realize the world is not as everybody around them assumes. As Bob Dylan sang, “There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” To have eyes opened, the jarring style of apocalypse becomes necessary.

The online etymology dictionary, one of my favorite places to dink around online, points out that the word apocalypse comes from a root that means “to uncover.” The way it was once described to me was that it is similar to coming into a room where somebody is cooking an amazing soup. You can smell it and you are desiring whatever it is that is setting your tastebuds off. Then, suddenly, the cook takes the lid off and lets you see what is inside and, BAM, apocalypse.

Last one, then we will move on. Craig Hill, in his book In God’s Time (which I consider the best book I have ever read about apocalyptic literature), lays out 12 characteristics of apocalyptic literature, which are as follows:
1. Division of History into Old and New Ages.
2. Dualism: full of good and evil, with little in between. Or, as Hill puts it, “short on grays but copiously supplied with black and white.”
3. Determinism: “history is moving forward to its inevitable conclusion.”
4. Exclusivism: there are “few insiders” and “many outsiders.” Guess who gets in.
5. Portrayals of Judgement.
6. Expectations of the End: “to such a mindset, bad news is good news.”
7. Code Words, Numerology, and Cryptic Symbols
8. Means of Revelation: visions, dreams, and archangels reveal God’s plan.
9. Transportation of the Visionary: author taken away, most often to heaven or the heavenly realm.
10. The Heavenly Realm: highly involved with what happens on earth.
11. Exhortations to Endurance.
12. Demonstrations of God’s Justice.

Okay, that’s a lot to ask blog readers, known for their short attention spans, to digest. I hope you can see that even when it comes to reading ancient apocalyptic literature, there is not perfect agreement as to what defines it. We can know what it is when we read it, but it is not so easy to define. Which is what makes it tricky, but also what makes it so wonderful. Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful commentary on Revelation, Reversed Thunder, says that the Christian community needs teachers, apologists and “masters of the imagination… [who] keep us awake and aware before the living God who speaks to us…to remind us that we are living beings who are being spoken to.”

We could go further today, especially to listen to some other scholars and their opinions on apocalyptic literature, but I’d rather let Peterson’s words ring out for us to end on. “We are living beings who are being spoken to.” Let us listen for those words.



Peace,

Matt