Jewish apocalypticism Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Explaining Jesus’ Apocalyptic Assumptions

One other aspect of Jesus’ teaching is important to emphasize before continuing on to consider his understanding of the afterlife. That is the thoroughly apocalyptic character of his views. I have discussed Jewish apocalypticism a number of times on the blog—including some months ago on the current thread. I don’t want to repeat all that here in the same form, but I do want to summarize what the view is and discuss its underlying assumptions. In a small nutshell, apocalypticists believed that this world was being controlled by evil forces responsible for this terrible mess of things (corrupt governments; natural disasters; persecution of the righteous), but that God, who was ultimately sovereign, was soon to intervene in the course of human affairs, overthrow the forces of evil, and establish a utopian kingdom here on earth. To Read the rest of this post you need to belong to the blog. Belonging is easy and relatively cheap -- less than 50 cents a week! And every cent goes to help those in need. You get tons for [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T01:57:06-04:00October 10th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Preaching of Jesus in a Nutshell

I am trying to set up what I want to say about Jesus' view of the afterlife, and am finding that it requires a good bit of background information. I have already done two things: shown what he taught about the coming kingdom and explained that his teaching (about the kingdom and everything else) is very different in John from the Synoptics. Scholars are almost unanimous that given these differences, the older sources (the Synoptics and the accounts they built on, e.g., Q, M, and L) are more likely to be accurate about Jesus' words than the later and heavily theologized John. Now I need to explain more broadly, if in very brief form, the major elements in Jesus' preaching/teaching. For that I have borrowed from a post a few years ago, as follows: ************************************************************** We could obviously have a year-long thread on the topic of what it was Jesus taught during his itinerant preaching ministry. Many people have written very long books on the subject – and the books just keep comin’ out. If [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T01:58:54-04:00October 9th, 2017|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

A Resurrection for Tortured Jews (2 Maccabees)

I have pointed out that the notion of “resurrection” first appears in Jewish writings in the book of Daniel, and I am arguing that this notion is intrinsically connected with the apocalyptic view of the world that developed at the time. In this view of the world, as I’ve laid it out on the blog before (e.g.: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-rise-of-apocalypticism/) the people of God suffer *not* necessarily because God is punishing them for their sins but because there are forces of evil in the world aligned against God and his people who are wreaking havoc among the faithful. But after this life, God will raise his faithful from the dead and reward them for their fidelity to his law. This view can be found in the apocalypses that began to be written around the time of Daniel and then for the next several centuries first among Jews and then among Christians, such books as 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and the New Testament book of Revelation (see further: https://ehrmanblog.org/a-new-genre-in-jewish-antiquity-the-apocalypse/) But aspects of this view could be [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:04:22-04:00August 17th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Origins of Heaven and Hell

Where did the idea of a “differentiated” afterlife come from? I’m not overly fond of the word “differentiated,” since it’s not one we normally use. But for the moment I can’t think of a better one for the phenomenon I’m thinking of. An “undifferentiated” afterlife is one in which everyone has the same experience: there is no difference between one person and the next. It doesn’t matter if the person lived a good life, was kind to strangers, was meek, humble, and mild, did his or her best to help those in need, lived a faithful and loving life OR was a wicked, mean-spirited, arrogant, violent sinner who disrespected others and went out of his or her way to do them harm. The loving and meek, and the despicable and murderous: It doesn’t matter. Both kinds of people end up in the same place and have the same experience after death (in an undifferentiated afterlife). As we have seen, that was the view of most of the Hebrew Bible. At death, everyone goes to Sheol. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:06:34-04:00August 3rd, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The First Apocalypse: The Book of Daniel

I have been arguing that to understand the radically new view of the afterlife that emerged in ancient Judea in the horrible years leading up to the Maccabean revolt, it is important to know something about a new genre or literature that began to be produced at the time, the apocalypse. The first surviving writing of this kind is in the book of Daniel. Here is what I say about Daniel as an apocalypse in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. *************************************************************** Daniel as an Apocalypse Daniel provides the earliest full-blown apocalypse that we have from Jewish antiquity. There are other passages in the Hebrew Bible that scholars have suggested embody clear – or reasonably clear – apocalyptic perspectives. In every case, these are passages that appear to have been added at a later time on to a writing that was already in existence. This is the case, for example, with Isaiah 24-27, known as the “little apocalypse” of Isaiah, not written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE, but [...]

BDEhrman2020-06-03T15:38:05-04:00August 1st, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Background to The Christian Afterlife: The Maccabean Revolt: A Blast from the (Recent) Past!

Back in April I was in the middle of a thread about the afterlife, and now, after this unusual hiatus, I am able and eager to return to it. For those of you who were with us at the time, you may remember that this is the topic of the book I am working on now, that I have been reading massively about for most of the past year. My views have developed, changed, and deepened since April. I've had lots and lots of interesting ideas and thoughts, as I have pondered ancient sources (Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian) some of which I will be explaining over the course of this thread. In the thread to this point I have discussed how the afterlife was conceptualized in the ancient Israelite sources found in the Hebrew Bible. The basic story, for those of you who don't recall or who are not inclined to reread the posts from earlier in the year, is that for most of the Hebrew Bible, the place of the dead was Sheol, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:07:13-04:00July 27th, 2017|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Origins of Apocalypticism

In my previous post I began to explain how, in 1985, while teaching a class at Rutgers on the Problem of Suffering, I came to realize that I simply didn't accept any longer most of the views of the Bible on why there was suffering in the world. But one view did continue to appeal to me, the apocalyptic view that emerged toward the end of the New Testament period, and became the view of Jesus, John the Baptist before him, the apostle Paul after him, and, in fact, most of the early Christians. This would be a good time to review where this view came from and what motivated it. For that I am going to return to a post that I made on the blog a couple of years ago. Here I set up what apocalypticists believed (especially about suffering) by contrasting it with the view out of which it arose and to which it was reacting, the view of the traditional Hebrew prophets. ********************************************************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:21-04:00July 11th, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Prophetic Background of Jewish Apocalyptic Thought

Several members of the blog have asked me to go into greater detail to explain where Jewish apocalypticism came from. I’m happy to do so: it’s an important topic for understanding Jesus, Paul, and other early Christians. As is true for all religious and political ideologies, the historical background to the rise of apocalyptic thinking is complicated. To make sense of it, I have to say something about a very different perspective which provided the matrix out of which apocalyptic thought was eventually born and grew: the perspective of the “classical prophets” of the Israelite tradition. I will spend a couple of posts explaining what the prophets of the Hebrew Bible had to say, focusing on arguably the earliest, Amos (who in many key ways is typical) before explaining how these views came to be transformed and radically altered centuries later into the apocalyptic views held by so many Jews in the days of Jesus. In these posts I will simply reproduce material on the prophets as found in my recent textbook, The Bible: A [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:56:55-04:00January 10th, 2016|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 10 (and last!)

Q. In what way is the Jewish notion of a resurrection a different idea than either the fertility crop cycle idea, or what is sometimes said about pagan deities that either disappear or die? A. One of the reasons for thinking that the belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection is not exactly like what you can find in pagan myths about their gods is that it is solidly rooted in Jewish apocalyptic beliefs of the first century. This should come as no surprise, since Jesus and his followers were not pagans with pagan views of the divine realm, but first-century apocalyptically minded Jews. In some pagan circles, there was a belief in fertility gods, who would spend some time in the underworld and some time in this world, alternating year after year.... FOR THE REST OF MY RESPONSE, go to the Members Site. If you don't yet belong, JOIN NOW!!

BDEhrman2017-12-23T15:43:58-05:00June 29th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 10 (the last!)

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q is obviously his, the A is mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-02T00:11:16-05:00June 29th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

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