The necessity of form and spatial content for defining “apocalypse” and “apocalyptic”

Abstract

The Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse defined apocalypses as a constellation of form, temporal content, and spatial content, but temporal content (particularly eschatological features) remains the dominant lens through which the genre of apocalypse and related texts are understood. Defining apocalypses primarily in terms of eschatology, however, narrows the definition of apocalypse and dismisses some texts that reflect non-eschatological features of apocalypses. Form and spatial content are often neglected in the examination of apocalypses and “apocalyptic” texts. When we pay attention to form and spatial content, along with temporal content, new horizons open for considering what may be considered apocalypse-like. Jubilees and the Gospel of John are presented as two examples of revelatory texts that reflect the form and spatial content of apocalypses.

The study of Jewish apocalypses and apocalypticism has come a long way from the late 1970s, ¹ which saw the publication of Semeia 14 and the Uppsala conference on “Apocalypticism and the Mediterranean World.” ² These two events refocused the discussions about apocalypses and apocalypticism that took place in the 1960s and early 1970s, resulting from research on the discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the expanding interest in the Pseudepigrapha. Since the trajectory of defining the genre of apocalypse has been retold many times, I will not retell it here; ³ however, I think it is important to note significant points in the history of the scholarly definition of “apocalypse” and to draw attention to those places where many of the pre-Semeia 14 concepts about apocalypticism and apocalypses still remain within scholarship. These remaining ideas narrow our understanding of the literary genre of “apocalypse” and surprisingly proliferate the texts referred to by the adjective “apocalyptic.” ⁴ This proliferation of “apocalyptic texts” has taken place because discussions of “apocalypse” continue to give preference to temporal content (that is, eschatology), while the form of apocalypses and their spatial content are often neglected. ⁵ Form and spatial content are significant parts in the Semeia 14 definition of an apocalypse, and that definition, even with the critiques it has received, remains the best starting point for defining the genre and should guide our use of the adjective “apocalyptic.” ⁶

In what follows, I will note how form and spatial content are typically neglected in defining and describing “apocalypse” and “apocalyptic,” and I will suggest areas where the study of spatial content can be more detailed. When form and spatial content are included along with temporal content in the study of apocalypses and apocalypse-like texts, new possibilities arise for studying the constellation of features that make up the genre of apocalypse. Such an approach will narrow the number of texts described as “apocalyptic” for mere eschatological reasons, but some texts that have been dismissed as not being apocalypses or “apocalyptic,” such as Jubilees and the Gospel of John, have more in common with apocalypses than is generally assumed.

Genre and the form and spatial content of apocalypses

Prior to the Semeia 14 definition, the common way of describing apocalypses and “apocalyptic” was to provide lists of features that are evident in apocalypses. The feature lists presented by Philipp Vielhauer and Klaus Koch serve as important examples of this method of delineating the genre. Vielhauer listed pseudonymity, vision accounts, surveys of history, and “forms and combinations of forms,” and the apocalyptic “world of ideas” as literary characteristics of “apocalyptic.” ⁷ Koch listed six literary features: discourse cycles, spiritual turmoils, paraenetic discourses, pseudonymity, symbolic images, and a long literary development. ⁸ More recent discussions of apocalypticism and apocalyptic literature have also made use of lists to describe what is “apocalyptic”; ⁹ however, recent genre theory has shown that lists of features pose challenges for defining a specific genre and for comparing texts with that genre. When using lists to assess a given text for its participation or non-participation in a genre, we are faced with questions concerning how many features and which features are necessary to indicate participation in the genre or at least similarity with the genre. Lists do not reflect hierarchies of importance among the listed features. Without a hierarchy of features, the temptation is to claim that a text containing any number of features on the list belongs to that genre. Thus, a text that is dualistic, pseudonymous, and mentions angels and judgment could be called “apocalyptic.” More often, eschatological judgment alone can earn a text the “apocalyptic” descriptor, especially in New Testament scholarship. What is missing in many applications of the adjective “apocalyptic” is an explanation of how the features are interconnected with one another, especially since not all apocalypses include all of the features on these lists.

The Semeia 14 definition was an important turning point in the defining of “apocalypse” because it moved the defining of the genre beyond lists of features and toward consideration of the relationship of form and content in the genre. ¹⁰ Modern genre theory no longer categorizes genres in terms of lists and features. That sort of approach works better in biological classification. ¹¹ Genre theorists view genre as “complex constellations” of form, content, and function. ¹² The relationship of the constellations differs between genres, since form or content or function can be more important for a given genre. For example, haikus and sonnets are clearly form-centered genres. A text’s participation in a genre is best assessed by its relationship to a prototype of that genre. ¹³ While, as Carol Newsom has noted, the SBL Apocalypse group did not intentionally take a cognitive prototype approach to defining the apocalypse genre, they more or less did so. ¹⁴ The SBL group began their assessment of the apocalypse genre by reviewing agreed-upon apocalypses—prototypes, that included Daniel 7–12, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and Revelation. The group then assessed features related to the form (or framework) of the apocalypses and their content, paying attention to both temporally and spatially oriented content. The “master-paradigm” of features the group created serves then not as a list of features but as a description of the form and content in these prototypical apocalypses. ¹⁵ The hierarchy of features in the “master-paradigm” is needed in order to pay attention to the relationship of form and content in apocalypses. ¹⁶ A danger arises when the “master-paradigm” and the definition of apocalypse, which summarizes the major consistent features of the paradigm, are viewed as checklists for determining genre. ¹⁷ We have returned to the pre-Semeia 14 “chaos” when we use lists or specific features to declare a text “apocalyptic.” Focus on genre and generic participation must be concerned with the way form, content, and function work together, since readers are aware of genre by the interrelationship of these three. ¹⁸

The magnetism of temporal content in apocalypses

Describing and discussing what may be called “apocalyptic” is challenging because even while citing the Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse many scholars continue to use the term “apocalyptic” according to features they individually consider “apocalyptic.” ¹⁹ The use of the adjective, therefore, becomes untethered from the constellation of form, content, and function and shows little concern for or knowledge of the “master-paradigm” underlying the Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse. As a result, the adjective “apocalyptic” is often applied to texts that evidence eschatological temporal content but few, if any, aspects of form or spatial content. ²⁰

The emphasis on eschatological temporal content is notable in that the SBL Genre project on apocalypse did not provide an examination of spatial content beyond the single “master-paradigm” feature of “otherworldly elements” with its two subheadings of “otherworldly regions” and “otherworldly beings.” ²¹ Again, there are six elements of temporal content to one element of spatial content. The temporal bias is evident in one of the standard introductions to apocalyptic literature, John Collins’s The Apocalyptic Imagination. In the chapter introducing the genre of apocalypse, Collins includes a chart of features found in Jewish apocalypses. The chart is a version of the “master-paradigm” from Semeia 14, but rather than presenting the entire chart, only the temporal content is replicated (numbers 4–9). No elements of form and spatial content are included (1–3; 10–13). ²² Thus, those first introduced to apocalypses are presented with a list of temporal content as the defining features of the genre of apocalypse. Such a list is not unlike Vielhauer’s and Koch’s descriptions of “apocalyptic” that preceded the Semeia 14 definition.

Following the presentation of this chart, Collins discusses the “generic framework” of apocalypses, emphasizing how this framework indicates the way apocalypses present the structure of the world. He offers three “basic presuppositions about the way the world works, which are shared by all the apocalypses”:

the world is mysterious and revelation must be transmitted from a supernatural source, through the mediation of angels; there is a hidden world of angels and demons that is directly relevant to human destiny; and this destiny is finally determined by a definitive eschatological judgment. ²³

These three presuppositions rightly hold together the revelatory form of apocalypses and the spatial and temporal content that is revealed. Yet, as Collins continues further, he breaks from the revelatory form of the genre and states, “If we say that a work is apocalyptic we encourage the reader to expect that it frames its message within the view of the world that is characteristic of the genre.” ²⁴ He offers the Qumran War Scroll (1QM) as an example of a non-apocalypse that may be “rightly regarded as ‘apocalyptic’ in the extended sense, although it is not presented as a revelation.” Collins contends for the “apocalyptic” descriptor because the War Scroll has the “conceptual structure” of an apocalypse, which he specifies as emphasizing “the supernatural world and the judgement to come.” ²⁵ In essence, Collins argues that the adjective “apocalyptic” may be applied to texts that contain future judgment and some spatial features of apocalypses. The War Scroll does share similar content with some apocalypses regarding eschatological turmoil and the mention of angels, but the War Scroll and other texts like it should not be considered apocalyptic merely because they relate conflict between good and evil and judgment of the wicked. ²⁶ Likewise, Jesus’s discourse in Mark 13 is an eschatological discourse and not an apocalyptic discourse. Jesus relates future eschatological events with some hints of cosmology in Mark 13, but his message is not mediated as revelation. ²⁷ This narrow conception of “apocalyptic” as eschatological or judgment-oriented allows the application of the adjective to a broad spectrum of texts that discuss eschatological crises and final judgment with little or no consideration of the revelatory form or spatial content of apocalypses.

Giving less time to temporal content

Christopher Rowland pushed back against this focus on eschatological content and argued for a greater focus on the revelatory form of apocalypses. He noted that eschatology, while being important to apocalypses, is not what makes apocalypses distinctive. Spatial content and various other mysteries are revealed in apocalypses, and it is this revelation and disclosure of heavenly mysteries, mysteries that include temporal content, that is central to apocalypses. ²⁸ Rowland has been accused of contending that eschatology is absent from apocalypses, ²⁹ but his point is that eschatology is not central to apocalypses and should not therefore dominate our understanding or description of them. ³⁰

Apocalypses reveal many things, ³¹ and the eschatology evident in apocalypses is not even as prevalent as most tend to think. ³² The tables of apocalyptic elements that are present in Collins’s work ³³ give the impression that the Book of the Heavenly Luminaries (1 En. 72–82) is just as concerned with the judgment of the wicked as the Testament of Abraham and the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17), since all three contain an “X” in the judgment of the wicked row on the chart of “master-paradigm” elements. ³⁴ Judgment of the wicked is obvious in the latter two apocalypses. The Testament of Abraham narrates a judgment scene (T. Ab. 13), and the Apocalypse of Weeks speaks of the execution of judgment against the wicked and the Watchers in the eighth to tenth weeks (1 En. 91:12–15).

Eschatological judgment is less prominent or evident in the Book of the Luminaries. In the Book of the Luminaries, the focus is on the movement of the sun, moon, stars, and winds, the solar calendar, the writing of this information, and communicating this revelation to Enoch’s son Methuselah. There are references to sinners who do not follow the solar calendar and the punishment of the winds (1 En. 82:4–5; 76:4), but the closest example of judgment in the Book of the Luminaries is found in 1 En. 80:1–8, which speaks of the days of the sinners and punishment that will destroy all (80:2, 8). This material seems to contradict earlier information about the new creation (72:1). ³⁵ Even if 1 Enoch 80 is original, there is only minor evidence of judgment against the sinners, and there is nothing like the judgment scene in the Testament of Abraham or the judgment of the kings of the earth in the Parables of Enoch (1 En. 62–63). Similarly, the Book of the Watchers contains little specific reference to eschatological judgment. The text is primarily concerned with the fall of the Watchers, the evil that they begin (protology; 1 En. 6–8), and Enoch’s ascent to heaven (1 En. 14) and tour (1 En. 17–36). The closest aspects of judgment against the wicked may be found in 1 Enoch 22, where Enoch is shown the hollow places for the dead. Judith Newman says “the ‘eschatology’ of the [Book of the Watchers] remains limited. There is no clear view of the end, as a singular event, nor of what its character entails because there are multiple scenarios described.” ³⁶ The limited eschatological judgment in the Book of the Luminaries and the Book of the Watchers is noteworthy, especially since these two apocalypses are considered the earliest apocalypses.

Giving more space to spatial content

Since the Semeia 14 master-paradigm only lists one element of spatial content (“otherworldly elements”) alongside six elements of temporal content, more care and attention should be given to spatial content in apocalypses. The two subcategories of spatial content (“otherworldly regions” and “otherworldly beings”) offer some clarity, but providing greater detail would aid in explaining and understanding the apocalypse genre.

“Otherworldly regions” obviously describes non-earthly places. They include both regions of punishment for the wicked and regions of reward for the righteous (T. Abr. 13). A few apocalypses describe levels of heaven and their content, such as types of angels (3 Bar. 2-11; 2 En. 3-22). ³⁷ Several Jewish apocalypses mention and describe the heavenly temple or the heavenly throne room (1 En. 14; 46; 61–62; T. Levi 3–5; 2 En. 22; Apoc. Ab. 15–19). ³⁸ Also, the righteous dwelling with the God of Israel appears often enough in apocalypses to be considered as a remarkable feature of spatial content (1 En. 39, 41, 45, 71; 2 En. 61, 65; 3 Bar. 9). Tours of heaven or tours of non-earthly (otherworldly) realms are additional details in apocalypses that can be examined in relation to the genre’s spatial content.

The second subheading “otherworldly beings” could also be clarified further. Otherworldly beings obviously include angelic beings, such as the mediating angel, angelic hosts at the various levels of heaven, and angels who lead the human recipients on tours of otherworldly regions. In the Book of the Watchers, angelic beings include Sariel, Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel who take part in subduing the Watchers (1 En. 10). In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the four living creatures are present, along with a vast multitude of angels (Apoc. Ab. 18:3–8; 19:4). Evil “otherworldly beings” are another important consideration. Among these belong the Watchers, fallen angels, and/or demons, but the more recognizable evil “otherworldly beings” are their leaders, whether Shemihazah and Azazel (1 En. 6–8) or Mastema (Jubilees) or Beliar, the Satan, or the devil. ³⁹ In addition, we should not forget that angels are not the only otherworldly beings. Not a few of the Jewish apocalypses depict the God of Israel sitting upon the heavenly throne (1 En. 14; 46; 62; T. Levi 5; Apoc. Ab. 19; cf. 3 Bar. 16:4; Rev 4) and various others of his actions. One of the most significant actions of Israel’s God includes when the “Mighty One” leads Abraham on a tour, revealing many aspects of creation to him (Apoc. Ab. 19–32). Another otherworldly being to consider is the Son of Man figure. While this figure is not common in apocalypses, the Son of Man appears primarily in apocalypses (1 En. 46; 48; 62; 4 Ezra 13; 2 Bar. 29–30; 39; 70–72).

Spatial content belongs to the transcendent reality revealed in apocalypses and thus what defines an apocalypse. ⁴⁰ By naming and noting the variety of spatial content in apocalypses, we can better hold together form, spatial content, and temporal content in thinking about apocalypses and “apocalyptic” texts.

Implications for Jubilees and the Gospel of John

Jubilees and the Gospel of John are both examples of revelatory texts that are considered non-apocalyptic because they lack overt eschatological features. Jubilees has been called a “borderline case for the apocalyptic genre.” ⁴¹ In Semeia 14, John Collins only focused on Jubilees 23 because that section of Jubilees contains eschatological material. ⁴² His more recent discussion of Jubilees is more wide-ranging and notes the revelatory form of Jubilees, but Collins underlines the eschatological features of Jubilees when considering the text’s relationship to the apocalypse genre. ⁴³ Recently, James VanderKam has highlighted the text’s alignment with the Semeia 14 definition, but VanderKam refrains from classifying Jubilees as an apocalypse because “the writer does not focus on the future . . .” ⁴⁴

Even though Jubilees does not contain a judgment scene, it has the form of an apocalypse and some spatial content. Jubilees is framed as a revelation mediated by the angel of the presence, and that revelation is received by the human recipient Moses (Jub. 2:1). This mediation of revelation fits the form of an apocalypse. As a written version of the writing on the heavenly tablets, Jubilees reflects the use of writing as a revelatory medium. ⁴⁵ The references to Mastema (Jub. 10:8–12; 17:15–16) and angels indicate hints of spatial content by noting otherworldly beings. Also, temporal content is not absent. Jubilees recounts protology in the creation of heaven and earth and humanity’s sin (Jub. 2–3) and highlights aspects of personal eschatological salvation (Jub. 6:17–22; 13:26; 15:25–27; 23:26–31; 32:10–15; 33:10–14; 49:1–50:13), as well as eschatological crisis and judgment (23:12–23). ⁴⁶ Todd Hanneken and others have rightly recognized that Jubilees as a whole, and not merely Jubilees 23, meets the literary form of an apocalypse. ⁴⁷ If the standard for apocalypses is Daniel, Revelation, and the Apocalypse of Weeks, Jubilees is an outlier, but if the standard is a reading of the complex constellation of form and content in the Semeia 14 definition, Jubilees fits the definition of an apocalypse more snugly than is often admitted.

A second example of a text with the revelatory form of an apocalypse is the Gospel of John. The Fourth Gospel does not contain obvious eschatological content (cf. Mark 13; Luke 3:17) and is often described as non-apocalyptic, ⁴⁸ but it does reflect the form and spatial content of apocalypses. ⁴⁹ The Gospel contains revelation that is mediated by an otherworldly being, namely Jesus who descended from heaven (John 3:13, 31; 6:33, 51; cf. 6:62). The revelation is revelation of the Father (1:18; 14:9–10), and the Johannine Jesus is the revealed arm of the Lord (John 12:38, ἀπεκαλύφθη). ⁵⁰ Spatial content of apocalypses is evident in the references to heaven, from which Jesus has descended, and to heavenly dwellings for Jesus’s followers (14:2–3). Otherworldly beings are noted in the mention of angels (1:51; 20:12–13) and Satan (13:27), the devil (8:44; 13:2), the evil one (17:15), and “the ruler of this world” (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). ⁵¹ Temporal content is not absent from John, as evident in the repeated line that Jesus will raise believers “on the last day” (6:39, 40, 44, 54). ⁵² The references to Satan as a human-killer hint at protology (8:44); judgment and the double resurrection of the wicked and the righteous reflect eschatological judgment and salvation (5:27–29; 9:39); and both eschatological salvation and otherworldly regions are implied when Jesus speaks of his return to take his disciples to be with the Father (14:2–3; 21:22). The alignment of the Gospel of John with the form and content of apocalypses should allow us to call its revelatory form “apocalyptic.” ⁵³

Conclusion: The necessity of form and spatial content

Throughout definitional discussions of apocalypses, there have been few disagreements about which texts are clearly apocalypses, ⁵⁴ but disagreements abound when it comes to describing which texts we think are similar to apocalypses or which exist on the borders of genre participation. In other words, which texts may be described as “apocalyptic”? On the basis of cognitive prototype models of genre, I find it best to apply the adjective “apocalyptic” narrowly to those texts that are (1) revelatory narratives that include heavenly mediated revelation and (2) contain a combination of spatially and temporally transcendent content. ⁵⁵ If this sounds like the Semeia 14 definition of the apocalypse genre, it should. We cannot pick and choose between features found on a list. The starting point provided to us by the Semeia 14 definition is where we should begin our defining of apocalypse and “apocalyptic.” ⁵⁶ By focusing on eschatological content, particularly judgment, we narrow our understanding of what an “apocalypse” is and call many texts “apocalyptic” that lack key features of the genre. The revelatory form and the spatial content revealed in apocalypses are also necessary aspects of the complex constellation of the genre of apocalypse.