Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

One feature of antiquity which can be hard for modern readers to make sense of is ancient three-tier cosmology. This article explores this difficulty and responses to it, focusing particularly on Rudolf Bultmann’s articulation of myth and demythologization in relation to the location of heaven in the New Testament. While some scholars suggest that Jewish and Christian writers in the late Second Temple period had already demythologized their cosmology, there is evidence in this literature of cosmological realism with respect to heaven’s vertical location “up there.” Moreover, scholars sometimes “remythologize” heaven using language of alternative realities, dimensions, or universes. Such language vindicates the importance of myth-making and suggests that demythologization is neither necessary nor sufficient. Further, it suggests that we instinctively reach for language at the edge of our observable cosmos to articulate the transcendence-with-immanence of the location of God’s abode.

The parable of Luke 16:19-31 depicts the afterlife with a combination of Greek and Jewish concepts. It features a χάσμα μέγα which prevents passage between the place of torment and the comfort of Abraham’s bosom, yet also permits conversation between the rich man and Abraham. The chasm complexifies the expected relation between the places of punishment and reward, resulting in divergent topographical interpretations. Because the parable is usually discussed regarding parallels with similar form and message, less emphasis has been placed on the “great chasm” which does not occur in these parallels. Nonetheless, the χάσμα μέγα is a significant trope in other Greco-Roman depictions of the afterlife. I will first examine Luke’s ethical-eschatological use of spatiality in the wider Gospel narrative; then the apparent problems created by the spatiality of the parable within that framework; and finally compare the varied Greco-Roman usages of otherworldly chasms in Hesiod, Plato, Plutarch, Lucian, and the (Hellenised Jewish) Book of the Watchers. This will produce fresh exegetical possibilities that address problems with the parable’s spatiality and help locate Luke within the Greco-Roman tradition of otherworldly chasms.

When the risen Christ appears to his disciples, he offers the marks of his crucifixion as proof of physical resurrection and tokens of recognition but also as confronting symbols of trauma and suffering. Comparisons have been drawn between the appearance of the post-resurrection Christ and the expectations of those shaped by the Greco-Roman tradition to explain both the nature and function of these “marks” as scars. I argue that there are significant dissonances between the representation of scars and death-wounds narrated in Greco-Roman literature and the account of the above-world body of the resurrected Christ in the book of John. These differences impel us to read the “marks” on the body of the resurrected Christ as transfigured wounds rather than scars, with important implications for their narrative function and characterisation of Christ. The startling disjuncture here is that the fullness of life experienced in the world above, as exemplified in the post-resurrection Christ, is not incompatible with woundedness. This points toward a redefinition of what that life might entail, particularly as it relates to trauma, disability, and impairment and also for broader conceptions of authority, honor, and resolution in this world here below.

Commentators have searched in vain for a Jewish precedent for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium in Revelation 20. There are well-known Jewish parallels for the concept of such an interim eschatological period. Although unrecognized in earlier scholarship, the earliest of these parallels, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1–10; 91:11–17), also provides the precursor for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium. This conclusion follows from various findings concerning the Apocalypse of Weeks: that the ten šhabuʿîn (conventionally, “weeks”) have a literal meaning as a heptadic period (one divisible by seven); that each of these ten periods have equal lengths of 490 years; and that the resulting 20-jubilee (980-year) interim eschatological period symbolizes legal recompense and restoration for earlier periods of Israelite history. The additional 20 years in Revelation’s Millennium may have resulted simply from the author’s approximation or, alternatively, from his use of 50-year rather than 49-year jubilee periods.

Although comparison is central to biblical scholarship, it is usually carried out only where genealogical relationships exist between texts. Analogical comparison has traditionally been less central to biblical studies. The two modes of comparison, homology and analogy, may usefully be thought of as centered either on length or on girth. In the absence of genealogical connection, analogical comparison remains justifiable by being anchored in structurally similar causal processes. A comparison of the way John has employed eschatological precursors in constructing the Millennium in Revelation 20 with Virgil’s handling of afterlife traditions in book 6 of the Aeneid demonstrates the benefits of analogical comparison over homological comparison in terms of its thickness or girth of explanation. Although the focus is on Revelation, analogical-synchronic comparison of Revelation 20 with book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid mutually illuminates their techniques and rationales for combining and reformulating earlier Jewish eschatological traditions. Analogical comparison provides a girth of insight into ancient techniques to harmonize tensions in earlier tradition; the importance of existential needs for preserving earlier conceptions of the afterlife at the risk of remaining inconsistencies and tensions; the strong reading of precursors driven by the profundity of the subject matter; the distinction of Revelation’s transformative-mantological intertextuality from the device of allusion; and the importance of elite political ideology (for both elites and wannabe elites) in tracing the construction of the afterlife. Girth thus potentially offers hermeneuts far greater satisfaction than length.