Cosmic Eschatology in Jewish Apocalypses in the Mid-periods (1)

Abstract

The time period between the translation of seventies and writing of the New Testament is referred to as mid-periods. In this period because of the adjacency of Jewish people with other nations, created a very rich literature which included a wide variety of literary genres. Apocalypse was a literary which due to reasons such as Iranian influence on Jewish thought, was greatly strengthened. Abuses inflicted on this people by Greeks and Romans formed a new eschatology in the apocalypses of mid-periods which was both in conformity with the teachings of the Old Testament and a sedative to this people's pain. The structure of this eschatology was based on a historical determinism which considered corruptions in human society as a cause of corruption and shortcomings in the field of cosmos and regarded these two as the grounds for the coming of Messiah and his reforms.
Eschatology of apocalypses with providing a meta-historical perspective on the events of the Apocalypse, completely changed historical eschatological views of the Old Testament, because from the perspective of writers of apocalypses in the mid-periods, hereafter was running in parallel with the material world and the heavenly Jerusalem, which was the symbol of the divine kingdom, could at any moment be established in the hearts of men and be the seat of God.
Keywords: eschatology, Jewish eschatology, apocalypses, mid-periods, apocalypse, Messiah.

Eschatology

The word eschatology originates from a Greek word meaning “the end”. Therefore, eschatology can be considered the science of studying the final, or teleology. This knowledge has two main branches: the first is individual eschatology which relates to things like death and life after death, resurrection of men, judgment and audition of actions, descriptions of heaven and hell and man's ultimate destiny. The other branch is cosmic eschatology which investigates matters such as signs of the end of the world, coming of the Savior, the punishment of the wicked and the beginning of a new era. In this study, we concentrate only on cosmic eschatology, although a number of topics, including the resurrection and judgment overlap with individual eschatology.

Apocalypses

Apocalypse is a spiritual and mystical experience based on intuition. The apocalypse occurs in a dream or trance, and is usually associated with a state of bewilderment, fear, occults sounds and inculcations, seeing some iconic sights, hardening of the body, anesthesia, and the desire for lightness and flight. Some of those who had been through this experience went on to write their observations. Their writings created a special literary form which became known as apocalypse.
In the Jewish literature there are apocalypses which are often attributed to the prophets and religious leaders. Although the correctness of this assignment is not certain and comparing these texts with other prophetical writings reveals that their authors persons other than those who claim to be. Fake authors of the texts led them to called pseud epigraphs, meaning the books incorrectly attributed or those which have fake titles. A large number of such works, especially from the Hellenistic period, indicates that once this naming had been common.
Historically, this fake assignment had two important consequences. First, it reduced the trust of the religious scholars and caused these apocalypses not to be accepted in the scriptures are not accepted and others that in the public, were given little credit to remain at least as historical documents. In the typological division of Jewish religious texts, the texts of apocalypses were categorized under a broader subset called apocryphal texts.
Apocryphal is Greek word meaning hidden and refers to a range of Jewish religious texts written in the delineation and development of the themes of the Bible. Each of these texts were credited when a number of sects and religious communities were accepted and constituted the basis of their beliefs and rituals, but at the time of determining the official texts, were not included among the legal books (the book of Daniel was the only paper Revelation of the Old Testament that was accepted in the official selection).
From a quantitative point of view, currently more than a dozen apocryphal and pseud epigraphs monographs are at hand, which represents growth of informal institutions among Jews. The existence of inconsistencies in the contents of the texts, which were sometimes at odds with the official teachings of the Torah led them to find hidden and informal aspect. Moreover, in a number of these texts it has been advised that they are to be kept away from the public eye and be offered only to the especial readers. It is evident that these texts do not recognize as a sign that they are useless. Especially in the Dead Sea discoveries showed that some Jewish sects were important in this context.
The main theme of apocalypses are: relating the history of a particular period or political and social situation of a people or group, describing the fate of a number of people, enumerating the attributes of different classes of the cosmos and meeting with a variety of creatures and worlds. This theme is often expressed in two forms. The first form is the story of the apocalypses which are symbolic, historic and allegorical often interpreted by an angel (like seeing different metals in the Revelations of Daniel in which each metal represents a historical period). The other form is the report of apocalypses which are direct, close and immediate and usually begins with the words "I saw" (such as the journey of Akhnon to different skies and seeing the position of people in heaven and hell).
Sometimes each of these two forms have subsets of their own. For example, in the symbolic apocalypse, there is a type of apocalypse called the revelation of animals in which each tribe is likened to an animal (for example Israel is resembled to sheep its enemies are likened to the wild beasts). This symbolic dimension of apocalypse led to the public's desire to hear and read a lot of them. It should be noted that from the perspective of time, the apocalypse is not necessarily limited to the present and future events, but sometimes it covers the past events, too.
The history of experiencing apocalypse dates back to the shamans. Since then, it is also seen in the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers. The Odyssey of Homer and Plato's Republic include subjects in this area, but it should be noted that Iranian ideas are ahead of these, because very prominent examples of Revelation can be seen in Zoroaster’s Guts, which relates the story of Ormazd. Today, we are pretty sure that Iranian revelations texts, both during the Babylonian captivity and in the Hellenistic period (the direct translation of the Greek) Revelation of Jewish background, but unfortunately the difficulties of dating led to the revelation of the Iran ignored genre originality and priority.
The first Jewish apocalypse can be traced in some brief references to the Old Testament revelation of the prophets of Israel dating back to the 6th century. Based on the findings at hand, it took a long time before the first independent Jewish apocalyptic texts were compiled in the 3rd Century BC. Although it seems that the original text of those apocalypses had been Hebrew, but the dispersion of Jews outside Jerusalem is a reason why those texts were written in other languages such as Ethiopian, Greek and Aramaic. Different reasons had been suggested to justify the formation of this genre among Jews.
The first reason is that after detachment of prophesy from Jews, some people went on to write apocalypses and revelations in order to fill the vacuum of prophecy and by explaining the texts of the prophets, take a position against the paganism of Greeks and Romans. The second reason was that a number of religious scholars with the aim of strengthening the Jewish people against abuses of the Greeks started writing revelations, thus promising the victory and deliverance.
The third reason was that a significant part of the revelations were about eschatological affairs, and hence the formation of Jewish apocalypses was in fact a response to the doubts which existed in didactic literature texts (like the Book of Job) about worldly affairs.
The fourth reason was that the Jewish mystical approaches had become so strong and mature to demonstrate his thoughts in parallel with the official and religious texts, in the form of revelations.
However, in my opinion, in addition to all the reasons mentioned above, the more important reason behind the formation and growth of apocalypse and revelation among Jews was the lack of eschatological teachings in the Old Testament. This lack of eschatological content was clearly manifest in their contact with Iranians who had a coherent and systematic eschatology. In order to compensate this lack and of course responding to the questions that existed on this issue, they grew seeds of eschatological of the revelations of their prophets in an underlying mystical ground, and sometimes with the addition of elements from the culture of the host (first from Iranian, and later from Greek and Roman) formed the genre of apocalypse.
Jewish apocalypses had important effects in the history of Judaism. First of all, by giving meaning to life and giving hope to the Jewish people, help them in bearing the suffering of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Lord also wrote that the Jewish Talmud and the books used and by high volume Notable revelations, parts of the Mishna and Torah commentaries to prove the resurrection, and the ideas of messianic respectively.
The other effect was that understanding of the texts of the Hebrew Bible was made easier with the help of revelation texts, because revelations were apparently the development of stories of the prophets and as it was claimed by them, like other scriptures, they were the products of the divine inspiration. In addition, apocalypses and revelations opened new discoveries in the field of religious experience which were based on intuition and hence, they were created in order to direct the flow of Jewish mysticism (including components) who emerged after this period. Some believe that the impact of apocalypses reached the book of Zohar. It was to an extent that we need to study apocalypses if we want to understand kabala and Hasidism.
The final point is that Jewish apocalypses left a great impact on the New Testament authors to the extent that many similarities can be seen between phrases and themes of the two. However, the question remains as to who wrote the texts of revelations, where they wrote them and exactly what they meant, but these works certainly challenges our traditional understanding of the Bible. The most recent list of Jewish apocalyptic texts are as follows:
First Book of Enoch (Ethiopic Bible), Second Book of Enoch (Enoch secrets or Old Slavonic), third Book of Enoch, Sibilin treatise, apocryphal Ezekiel, fourth Book of Ezra, Revelation of Zafanya, Revelation of Ezra, Ezra’s questions, Ezra’s intuition, revelation of Sadrak, second Book of Baruch (Syriac Baruch Revelation), third treatise of Baruch (Greek Baruch Revelation), Revelation of Abraham, Apocalypse of Adam, Revelation of Elijah, Daniel’s Revelation.

Mid-periods

The time interval between compilation of the last book of the Old Testament (probably Daniel in the late 2 BC) until the development of the New Testament (late 1st century AD), is referred to as mid-periods. One of the most important features of this period is the emergence of a huge collection of Jewish writings which were generally known as mid-periods literature. The religious part of this literature is made up of apocryphal and pseud epigraphs. The height of Jewish apocalyptic literature was almost coincided with mid-periods (200 BC to 100 AD).
This period was very rich in terms of eschatology and almost all apocalyptic texts that were written were adopted by aesthetic appeals. The aforesaid time limit begins almost with the beginning of the Hellenistic period (c. 187 BC), covers part of Roman domination period and covers the period of the Christian tradition. Thus, the mid-periods should be considered the confluence of several cultures. Of course, this has led to an accurate diagnosis of a number of Jewish or Christian Revelation is difficult and even impossible, in such a way that some text in the Jewish revelation, and others know the text of the Christian revelation. Another point is that dating is very difficult and sometimes all the more apocalyptic visions of Jewish and Christian scholars disagree about the revelation of some of them. So maybe a researcher consider the text as a Revelation but others do not accept it.

Cosmic Eschatology

1. Messiah

The word “Messiah” has been used 38 times in the Hebrew sacred book; altogether, it has six different meanings among which are “the leader to come” and “great king or priest”. Some of them refer to historical figures like Cyrus. Generally speaking, there are two main views as to the references to this word in the Old Testament.
The first view is that the word Messiah comes from political conflicts and historical events, and other view believes that Messiah is a meta-historical figure which possesses miracles and cosmic forces. Until the mid-periods, the first view prevailed and historical looks had overshadowed messianic interpretations, however, in the mid-periods, apocalypses that emerged from meta-historical views, interpreted Messiah from this specific view. However, the existence of these two views led to formation of two types of messianic expectation in Judaism in mid-periods. First, a worldly Messiah that was affiliated with the house of David and responsible for earthly kingdom and political affairs.
He was supposed to come at the end of the world and fulfill the aspirations of the Jewish world. Another, waiting for the messianic religious leader was that he was on the verge of resurrection appearance to judge the actions of men. However, in a number of texts, Messiah refers to a person who has both religious and political dignity.
In Jewish revelations there are epithets and titles that are used sometimes to refer to the Messiah; some of them include: the chosen, immortal King, the superior of days, the benefactor and the Son of Man. The latter title is symbolically used in Daniel, but took a factual form in the mid-periods. It seems that in the mid-periods the popular notion has been that the temple, the people of Israel, the Bible and of course the Messiah have all been there before the creation of the world and are eternal. In particular, it is said that Messiah existed before the creation of the stars and the sun and had been sitting on the throne of God.
What he should do is predetermined. It would clearly be inconsistent with the provisions of the prophetic books. In addition, it was believed that Messiah is born from miseries and suffering of children of Israel and is a gift that God has bestowed upon them to bear this pain. God has chosen him and with His wisdom has inspired him holiness and truth to him. Glory and dignity cannot be taken away from the Messiah, veracity depends on him and cannot be separated from him. The Messiah in addition to reigning over everything had been hidden from the beginning and God has revealed him only to the elect. He will resurrect before the Day of Judgment. He will cast down cruel kings, chooses the righteous and the saints among people and give them a place in the throne of God. He removes the veil of secrets and what he says is the truth and wisdom.
These images motivated some people to have messianic claims, for this reason we can witness several of these cases in the mid-periods. However, the later Jewish scholars did not approve of such features for the Messiah. Ibn Meimun considered the Messiah as a person who does not change the structure of creation or law. He simply establishes the law as it was before. So we cannot expect him to create something, gives life to the dead or brings a miracle.
Another issue is that Enoch visited Messiah in his heavenly journey and this shows that in the mid-periods meeting with the eternal Messiah was deemed to be possible. In addition, a story is related in the Talmud in which Messiah is alive and Elijah sends someone to visit him. That person visits Messiah at the gate of Babylon while he is busy dealing with the poor. He asks Messiah about his coming? And Messiah answers: today. The person goes back and thinks that he has been deceived. But Elijah tells him that he has not understood the purpose of the Messiah and the meeting you had with him was a kind of coming and appearance to you.