apocalypse Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

A New Genre in Jewish Antiquity: The Apocalypse

I am in midst of starting to explain how a new view of the afterlife came into existence in Jewish circles right around the time of the Maccabean revolt, and to that end I have devoted one post to a brief narrative of what happened leading up to the revolt and a second post to two of our principal sources of information about it, 1 and 2 Maccabees. Now, I need to provide yet more background: it was at this time, and in this context, that a new genre of literature appeared within ancient Judaism, the “apocalypse.” As we will see, the first Jewish apocalypse we have is in the book of Daniel, the final book of the Hebrew Bible to be written. To understand Daniel (and its view of the afterlife) it is important to know something about the conventions of its literary genre. That’s what I will explain in this post, in terms taken (with only a little editing) from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ******************************************************* Apocalypse as a [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-23T01:30:44-05:00July 30th, 2017|Early Judaism, Forgery in Antiquity, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Bart Ehrman discusses the Apocalypticist

This is a very strange video! One of the strangest I've ever been in. To begin with, the title doesn't make any sense (I'm not sure who called it this). The word "apocalypticist" means "a person who holds to an apocalyptic world view." So who or what is "The apocalypticist"? I've never heard someone being given that title ("THE" apocalypticist; as if there were just one??). Maybe it means Jesus the Apocalypticist? Maybe, but that's not really what the clip is mainly about. It's about the ancient world view of apocalypticism. It starts with a movie with Richard Harris, moves to an interview with me about what the term "apocalypse" means, goes (briefly) to the question of whether Jesus was an apocalypticist; and ends with Harold Camping, this fellow who claimed the end of the world was coming on May 21, 2011. It's a very odd clip. But here it is! (NOTE: This particular post is open to everyone. Most posts on this blog are for MEMBERS ONLY. Think about joining. You get tons of [...]

BDEhrman2019-03-20T17:52:15-04:00July 27th, 2016|Christian Apocrypha, Jesus and Film, Religion in the News, Revelation of John, Video Media|

Were Jesus’ Followers Crazy? Was He? Mailbag June 4, 2016

I’ll be dealing with two questions in this week’s Readers Mailbag, both dealing, as it turns out, with issues related to psychology and the early Christian movement: one has to do with why the followers of Jesus didn’t simply give up and disband when the end-of-the-world-apocalypse they had been anticipating didn’t happen (so that they were proven to be *wrong*) and the other about whether Jesus was, literally, crazy. Interesting questions! If you have one you would like me to address, just ask in a comment on any of my posts. QUESTION I get that when the Apocalypse didn’t happen as the apocalyptic Jesus had predicted that a kind of reinterpretation of events including the resurrection took place. But why? Why didn’t the fledgling fringe then Jesus-Jewish (my term) sect simply die out? RESPONSE Ah, this is a meaty question that someone could write a book about. In fact, people have written books about it! I won’t give a definitive answer here, but will instead mention just one book – now a classic [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-03T16:12:13-04:00June 4th, 2016|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

The Book of Revelation as an Apocalypse

I can now give a brief description of how the book of Revelation functions as an apocalypse – that is, how the features of the genre, that I’ve already mentioned, work themselves out in the narrative of the book. Again, this is taken from my textbook on the New Testament. ******************************************************** In general terms, Revelation corresponds to the basic description of apocalypses that I have given. It is a first-hand account written by a prophet who has been shown a vision of heaven that explains the realities of earth, a vision that is mediated by angels and that is chock-full of bizarre and mysterious symbolism. The nature of the book is indicated at the outset, in the magnificent vision of the exalted Christ that the prophet describes in ch. 1. Here Christ appears as "one like a Son of Man" (cf. Dan 7:13-14, where the phrase describes the cosmic judge of the earth) and is seen walking amidst the seven golden lampstands (i.e., he is present among the seven churches of Asia Minor, 1:20), with [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T13:59:37-04:00February 25th, 2015|Revelation of John|

The Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse Genre

I’m devoting a thread to the book of Revelation and its interpretation. This began by my raising the issue of what 666 stands for, which led me to say a few things about the symbolism of the book, which occasioned several comments from readers wanting to know what my broader take is on how to interpret it. Yesterday I began to stress the importance of knowing what an “apocalypse” is before trying to interpret any one particular apocalypse. Today I pursue that a bit more, by talking about this genre which has numerous representatives in ancient Jewish and Christian writings. Here is how I begin to describe the genre more fully in my textbook on the New Testament: ************************************************************ Despite their wide-ranging differences, our surviving apocalypses typically share specific literary features. The most common of these are the following: Pseudonymity. Almost all of our ancient apocalypses were written pseudonymously, in the name of a famous religious person from the past (the book of Revelation, interestingly enough, is a rare exception). Among our surviving Jewish apocalypses [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T11:46:01-04:00February 20th, 2015|Forgery in Antiquity, Revelation of John|

Apocalypticism and Apocalypses

In the just finished thread I discussed the number of the Beast, 666, in the context of the book of Revelation and its broader symbolism. In response, several readers asked me to say some more about Revelation (which by the ways does NOT have an “s” on the end!! That’s one of my pet pieves. It’s not the book of Revelations but the book of Revelation). So I think I’ll do two or three posts on it. It is the one book my students are *most* interested in. The book is so weird, so unlike anything they’ve ever seen, that they assume that it can only have come about by divine revelation, and that it is in fact predicting something that is to happen in our near future. I’m afraid that I end up disappointing my students by my understanding of the book. I don’t think it is a blue-print for what is to transpire in the early 21st century. It is a book written in its own day, and for its own audience, to [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T14:00:04-04:00February 20th, 2015|Early Judaism, Revelation of John|

Symbolism in the Book of Revelation

I will soon conclude this thread dealing with the ancient use of letters of the alphabet for numerals by discussing the most famous instance of them all, the “number of the beast” in the Book of Revelation: 666. What is this number referring to? I’ve decided that to make sense of this intriguing number, I need first to say a brief word about how the symbolism of the book works more generally. My students usually think of the book of Revelation as an amazing one-of-a-kind book, unlike anything ever written, a blue print for the future of earth. What they learn in class is that in fact it is a lot one-of-a-kind, but instead is like a number of ancient books, both Jewish and Christian, that are called “apocalypses.” The term “apocalypse,” in this context, refers to a literary genre. Like all genres, apocalypses had set literary features. The reason Revelation seems so weird and unusual to readers today is that they are not familiar with the genre. But there were numerous other books like [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T14:00:19-04:00February 17th, 2015|Revelation of John|

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A New Genre in Jewish Antiquity: The Apocalypse

Bart Ehrman discusses the Apocalypticist

Were Jesus’ Followers Crazy? Was He? Mailbag June 4, 2016

The Book of Revelation as an Apocalypse

The Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse Genre

Apocalypticism and Apocalypses

Symbolism in the Book of Revelation