Apocalyptic studies flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. This interest probably had something to do with the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and their effects, but I won't go into that issue today. In 1970, Klaus Koch's book Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik was published in Germany. In 1972 it appeared in English under a title more friendly to scholars: The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic. The subtitle, however, preserved the edginess of the original: A Polemical Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and Philosophy. Footnote 1 My favorite chapter is the one entitled “The Agonized Attempt to Save Jesus from Apocalyptic.” The main title of the English version, as well as the title of the chapter I just mentioned, unfortunately converted a respectable German noun into the substantive use of an adjective with a vague referent.
The problem of terminology was addressed by our honoree in an article entitled “Apocalypticism” published in 1976 in the supplementary volume of The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible.Footnote 2 He proposed that discussion and analysis take place on three distinct but interrelated levels: the literary genre “apocalypse,” apocalyptic eschatology, and apocalypticism. He quite rightly emphasized that the definitions of these levels should be flexible and not be viewed as a static system but as a phenomenon characterized by diversity and change. He defined apocalyptic eschatology as “a religious perspective, a way of viewing divine plans in relation to mundane realities.”Footnote 3 This perspective may be present in works of various genres. He proposed that the term “apocalypticism” be used to refer to “the symbolic universe in which an apocalyptic movement codifies its identity and interpretation of reality.”Footnote 4 In many cases, however, there is little or no evidence of an apocalyptic movement related to a particular apocalypse or a work expressing apocalyptic eschatology. So the term “apocalypticism” is often used to refer to the symbolic universe or worldview expressed in such works.
Koch and many other scholars emphasized eschatological expectation as a key aspect of apocalyptic phenomena. In response, Michael Stone published an essay in 1976 in the memorial volume for G. Ernest Wright entitled, “Lists of Revealed Things in Apocalyptic Literature.”Footnote 5 In this article he argued that the revelation of things in heaven and other places not normally accessible to human beings was as important as eschatology in apocalyptic texts. Typically, these revelations are related to astronomy and meteorology, uranography and cosmology, and the secrets of nature and Wisdom.Footnote 6
In the mid-seventies, Robert W. Funk initiated a project to update and expand the form critical project exemplified by Rudolf Bultmann's History of the Synoptic Tradition. It was called the Forms and Genres project. John J. Collins was recruited to establish and head a working group on the genre “apocalypse.” The results were published in 1979 as volume 14 of the journal Semeia under the title Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre.Footnote 7 The initial objective was the modest one of reaching agreement on what body of texts could be identified as belonging to this genre. The inductive and cross-cultural process led to the following definition:
[The term “apocalypse” refers to] a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.Footnote 8
This definition emphasizes literary form and content. The character of the revelation as “mediated” by an otherworldly being distinguishes apocalypses from prophetic oracles and other types of revelatory literature. The dual description of the content takes both eschatology and the revelation of heavenly secrets into account. The question of function was deliberately omitted in the belief that an abstract definition of function would be less helpful than detailed study of the function of each of the particular works.
In the same year, 1979, an international colloquium on apocalypticism was held in Uppsala. The proceedings were published in 1983 and edited by David Hellholm.Footnote 9 A wide variety of views on the genre were expressed. At one extreme was that of Jean Carmignac, who defined the genre “apocalypse” as including all heavenly revelations in symbolic form.Footnote 10 At another was E. P. Sanders's advocacy of a return to an “essentialist” definition of Jewish apocalypses as “revelation of restoration and reversal.”Footnote 11 The body of contributors voted in the final session to continue working at describing apocalypses rather than trying to define them.
The definition and other results of the Semeia 14 volume were widely appreciated and recognized as furthering the discussion. Soon after it was published, some scholars criticized the omission of the element of function from the definition. At the Uppsala conference, Lars Hartman spoke about the “illocution” of the text, that is, “what the author wants to say with that which he says.” He claimed, “the fact that a text belongs to a certain genre means that it may have a specific semantic function.”Footnote 12
In 1981 a consultation on Early Christian Apocalypticism was held at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. The program unit became a seminar for a five-year period beginning in 1983. The purpose of the unit was to build on the work of the apocalypse group of the Forms and Genres project by pursuing the study of the genre “apocalypse” with special reference to early Christianity. Papers from that seminar were published in 1986 as volume 36 of Semeia under the title Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting.Footnote 13 In their essays, David Aune and Martha Himmelfarb tried to correct what they saw as an overemphasis in Semeia 14 on eschatology. Aune demoted it from an essential to a frequent element.Footnote 14 Himmelfarb argued that relatively little attention was paid to “otherworldly elements.”Footnote 15 Her 1983 book Tours of Hell, her essay in Semeia 36, and her 1993 book Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses correct this perceived imbalance.Footnote 16
In his essay David Hellholm took up the issue of function raised in Uppsala by Lars Hartman.Footnote 17 He proposed adding the following phrases to the definition of an apocalypse: “intended for a group in crisis with the purpose of exhortation and/or consolation by means of divine authority.”Footnote 18 Although the working group agreed that function should be taken into account, this proposal was seen as too specific. It does not apply to all apocalypses. Based on suggestions by Hellholm and Aune, the following addition to the definition was proposed: intended to interpret present, earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority.Footnote 19
The issue of an overemphasis on eschatology was also a live topic in Christopher Rowland's 1982 book The Open Heaven.Footnote 20 In his perception, “concentration on the future orientation of the apocalypses has at times given a rather distorted view of the essence of apocalyptic.” Instead he chose to focus on “the world above and its mysteries as a means for explaining human existence in the present.”Footnote 21
Rowland's former student Crispin Fletcher-Louis has raised a different issue in two recently published essays.Footnote 22 He criticizes the Semeia 14 volume, arguing, “The starting point for a robustly historical search for an ancient genre should be the conventions, expectations and intentions of ancient authors, not the twentieth century judgments of modern scholars who may, in fact, inhabit an entirely different worldview and be guilty of their own back-projections on the ancient texts.”Footnote 23
The issue at stake here is whether historical scholars should attempt to reconstruct an ancient understanding of a particular genre or construct their own understanding of the nature and purpose of a body of ancient texts. Surely the response should be that both approaches are legitimate. The working groups that produced the two Semeia volumes chose the modern, critical approach for a variety of reasons. One is that ancient Jewish and Christian authors of apocalyptic works did not reflect systematically on the genre “apocalypse” or indeed on any other genre. Another is that there existed already a rather large body of scholarship raising questions and making proposals about how modern scholars should understand and describe these works. It seemed important to clarify the scholarly discussion and attempt to make it more precise.
Finally, modern scholars often find it useful to make distinctions that ancient writers did not make. For example, the author of the book of Revelation calls his work a “prophecy” as well as a “revelation.”Footnote 24 The book is filled with allusions to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in a way that applies them to a new situation. The author apparently sought recognition as a prophet like the classic prophets of ancient Israel. The informed reader cannot miss the continuity between the prophetic books and the Revelation of John. Yet most modern scholars would recognize that it differs from them in significant ways that can be articulated by noting its similarities with other apocalypses. For example, the prophets speak about resurrection from the dead as a metaphor for the restoration of Israel. The literalness and individuality of the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of the faithful followers of God and Jesus, and finally the general resurrection cannot be missed as a new development.
In an essay published in 1974, John Collins argued that this feature of apocalyptic texts themselves, which he called the transcendence of death, constitutes the most reliable criterion for distinguishing between Jewish prophecy and Jewish and early Christian apocalypticism.Footnote 25
Theories of Genre and Apocalyptic Studies
An article published by William Doty in the SBL Seminar Papers in 1972 provides a sense of the state of genre studies at the time the SBL working group on apocalypses began its task.Footnote 26 Quoting R. S. Crane, Doty remarked, “Few critics work with formal or structural criteria alone, preferring something like ‘complexes of qualities.’ Style, themes, and motifs, and often some means of indicating the motivational purpose are also usually discussed as generic identifiers.”Footnote 27 The working group adopted the criteria of form and content but not that of “motivational purpose,” which is a way of describing “function” from the author's point of view.
The influence of the “morphological” approach is evident from the title of the Semeia 14 volume. According to Doty, Martin Buss proposed this approach to genre in 1969.Footnote 28 It involves discerning the typical “thoughts and moods” of a literary type or genre, its “form-language” and other aspects of style, the “life-situation” out of which it grows, and the rationale or raison d’être, which interrelates the first three with each other in order to reach “insight” (in the hermeneutical sense of “Verstehen”). Buss was seeking a “morphological” criticism that could incorporate “the best features of form criticism” and go further by unifying the analysis into a comprehensive view of all the literary features of a text.Footnote 29 The approach taken in Semeia 14 addressed neither the “life situation” out of which the genre “apocalypse” grows nor its raison d’être. These limitations may be due to the preliminary nature of the project. A deeper reason, however, was probably the judgment that the functions of the various apocalypses are too diverse to be summarized in a definition.
In 1999 John Marincola published an article on genre and ancient historio-graphy.Footnote 30 He agreed with Gian Biaggio Conte's approach to Latin poetry as laid out in his book Genres and Readers, published in 1994.Footnote 31 Conte argued, “genre is not a static concept, functioning as a ‘recipe’ with a fixed set of ingredients that the work must contain.” Rather it “is dynamic and should be seen as a ‘strategy of literary composition.’” Genre can neither be based exclusively on formal characteristics nor on contents and recurring topoi. “The value of genre lies instead in the relationship between the structures of content and the structures of expression.” Marincola himself suggested that “one must pay attention to the interplay between form, content, and context for each work individually, and that one must always make allowance for innovation within any generic category.”Footnote 32
Although there was no systematic reflection on genre in Semeia 14, the approach was in effect quite compatible with Conte's approach. It differs from Marincola's proposal in paying little attention to specific contexts. His diachronic emphasis differs from the synchronic approach taken in Semeia 14. Yet the results of that volume show the variety among ancient apocalypses and thus provide a foundation for diachronic studies.
Marincola's essay appeared in a volume entitled The Limits of Historiography, edited by Christina Kraus. Christopher Pelling contributed an “Epilogue” to the collection. He begins by emphasizing that stories “typically fit into a ‘discursive exchange’: they communicate, and respond to earlier communications.” He also makes the point that genre is not entirely shaped by authorial intent. It also depends on how the work is generally received by its public.Footnote 33
He continues by taking up Marincola's emphasis on diachronic change, quoting Alastair Fowler's aphorism: “genre is ‘much less of a pigeon-hole than a pigeon,’ not so much a set of pre-cast categories as something [that] itself moves and changes.”Footnote 34 In part II of his epilogue, Pelling reflects further on “the role of the reader in generating meaning.” This role involves “continually putting questions to the narrative, continually redefining what sort of story it is.” In some cases, “the ‘sort of story’ can best be identified by toying with its affinities to individual texts.” Even when we can posit an awareness of the genre of the work on the part of the reader, “the same sort of progressive identification of genre and generic affinities can be important.”Footnote 35
This point is interesting in light of the way in which later apocalypses clearly and sometimes even explicitly allude to older ones. For example, both the book of Revelation and 4 Ezra allude to Daniel. Yet Revelation also alludes to Exodus, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. 4 Ezra seems to have used Job as a literary model by imitating the structure of dialogues followed by a theophany or, in the case of 4 Ezra, several visions. In both cases a highly imaginative literary form trumps the rational dialogues. In both cases, however, the content is much more similar to Daniel than to the other texts used as models.
Pelling also suggests that “It may be a question of which ‘on-the-whole’ generic expectations are going to be met and which denied.”Footnote 36 Revelation evokes Daniel in various ways but omits the reviews of history implied in the dream of Daniel 2 and the vision of Daniel 7. This omission highlights Revelation's focus on the Christ-event and on the singularity of the Roman Empire.
In the same year, 1999, a volume edited by Greg Carey and Gregory Bloomquist was published. Their title is Vision and Persuasion: Rhetorical Dimensions of Apocalyptic Discourse.Footnote 37 In his introduction to the volume, Carey acknowledged that “We now have a firm foundation for assessing what counts as apocalyptic literature and what doesn't [and] how to characterize an apocalyptic worldview.” The volume in question seeks “to explore the variety of ends for which early apocalyptic rhetoric was employed.” The group of essays “demonstrates the remarkable flexibility of apocalyptic discourse to construct a variety of arguments.”Footnote 38 In order to illuminate what he means by “apocalyptic discourse,” he cites the literary critic Steven Mailloux, who described, “historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth [that] determine how texts are established as meaningful through rhetorical exchanges.”Footnote 39
The volume concludes with an essay by the other editor, Gregory Bloomquist, “Methodological Criteria for Apocalyptic Rhetoric.”Footnote 40 His main starting points are Hartman's essay in the Uppsala volume and the socio-rhetorical analysis practiced by Vernon Robbins.Footnote 41 Bloomquist envisions a massive project. On the one hand, he proposes not to begin with what he calls “an arbitrary identification of apocalyptic” but to create a broadly based “inner-textual” database of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Latin literatures. This database would reveal repetition of words and phrases, sounds, meter, and rhythm.Footnote 42 It is not clear how one would decide what constitutes apocalyptic repetition, et cetera.
He also calls for “a database of rhetorical argumentation … that will reveal the argumentative texture of Second Temple and Greco-Roman discourse.”Footnote 43 He does not explain how a notion of apocalyptic rhetorical argumentation can emerge from this database. On the other hand, he calls for analysis of the apocalyptic rhetoric of specific texts that provide “the unique characteristics of the writer.” In short, he asks that we attend “to the steps in the evolution of apocalyptic rhetoric that allow us to talk of both Daniel and Derrida as apocalyptic.”Footnote 44 This project may require a number of generations of dedicated socio-rhetorical researchers.
In her contribution to a Festschrift for Michael Fox published in 2005, Carol Newsom begins by recognizing the contributions of Semeia 14.Footnote 45 She then goes on to show how theories of genre have changed since then and what impact these changes may have on the study of apocalypses. Like Pelling, she quotes Alistair Fowler's aphorism about genre being more like a pigeon than a pigeonhole. In her paraphrase, “‘Mere’ classification obscures the way in which every text—however it relates to similar texts—whether ‘by conformity, variation, innovation, or antagonism’ will change the nature of the genre and indeed give rise to new genres.”Footnote 46
She follows Derrida's lead in “thinking of a genre in relation to a text's rhetorical orientation so that rather than referring to texts as belonging to genres one might think of texts as participating in them, invoking them, gesturing to them, playing in and out of them, and in so doing, continually changing them.” Such an approach, in her view, would accommodate better the multi-generic character of many apocalypses and allow greater flexibility in discussing their connections with related kinds of texts.Footnote 47
She is critical of the use of Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of “family resemblance” in genre studies, agreeing with John Swales that “family resemblance theory can make anything resemble anything.”Footnote 48
Newsom observes that one “of the most promising developments in exploring how people … actually acquire a sense of genre” comes from cognitive science, which radically overturns “our understanding of how mental categories are formed” and how they function. “The key insight” is that people do not form a conceptual category by discerning a group made up of members sharing a list of characteristics. Rather they have in mind a small group of prototypical examples “that serve as a template against which other possible instances are viewed.” For example, robins and sparrows are prototypical examples of the category “bird,” whereas ostriches and penguins are atypical. In her view this “prototype theory” is helpful in genre studies because it preserves “what seems so commonsensical in classificatory approaches” yet avoids their rigidity.Footnote 49
Prototype theory is not, however, just a “slightly chastened form of definition by features.” She illustrates her point by examining the definition of a “bachelor” as an unmarried male. But few people would think of the Pope or Tarzan as bachelors. Furthermore, the “cognitive model” or “schema” in this case involves “a script-like frame” of the typical man's life that involves marriage to one woman. Thus a Moslem with three wives cannot be called a “bachelor” even though he is not married to a single woman, as in the cognitive “frame.”Footnote 50
Newsom also points out a weakness of prototype theory, shared by all a-historical approaches. It ignores the genealogy of genres, that is, the history of genres. It ignores how one text influences another.Footnote 51 In my view, however, it provides an important control. The fact that one text has influenced another does not imply that they belong to the same genre. For example, Daniel has influenced the book of Revelation. Prototype theory can help establish that these two texts belong to the same genre. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah have also influenced Revelation. The same theory can help show, nevertheless, that they do not belong to the same genre.
Conclusion
A lesson that we have all learned from the rediscovery of rhetoric in biblical studies is that an effective speech or writing is accommodated to its audience. Similarly, a student of apocalypses ought to select the theory of genre that best fits his or her purpose in a particular situation. If one wants to communicate a sense of “apocalypses” as such or argue that a particular text is a typical or an atypical apocalypse, prototype theory would be an excellent tool. If one wants to interpret a particular text in relation to its social context, then historical and rhetorical methods are most appropriate. A study of the history of the genre “apocalypse” would need to make use of all of these tools.
In closing I would like to address an issue that has been typical of apocalyptic studies at Harvard and elsewhere. It has also played a major role in my own work on the book of Revelation.Footnote 52 This issue is the tension between “myth and history.” When I was a graduate student here, there was a seminar led by and for students on the topic of myth. I was one of the few who were content with the old definition, according to which a myth is “a story about the gods.” Most of the others sought a definition more in keeping with the discipline of Religious Studies at the time, something that spoke more about the function of certain narratives than about their form or content.
In any case, much of the older discussion of “myth and history” had to do with distinguishing the “true” from the “false” or the normatively Jewish or Christian from the “pagan” or even the classic from the degenerate. Jimmy Roberts, in an essay in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly back in 1976, protested that many biblical scholars at the time were exaggerating the differences between biblical texts and Mesopotamian texts with regard to the presence of historical thinking and historical genres. He has helped me see the apologetic aspect of talk about “myth and history.” From another angle, a comment by a friend has created discomfort for me with the continuing use of the category of “myth.” He simply remarked that the term just means “story” in Greek language and culture.
Steven Friesen defended the use of the term “myth” with regard to the book of Revelation at a panel sponsored by the Wisdom and Apocalypticism Group at the Annual Meeting of the SBL in 2000. When he did so, it was hard for me not to feel affirmed, if not vindicated. Yet upon further reflection, it seems now that language about “discourse” and “rhetoric” is preferable to talk about “myth.” In fact, talk about “stories” and “types of stories” seems quite adequate.
The category of “history” is of course also problematic. Hayden White has shown that when a historian moves from collecting data to writing a historical narrative, he or she moves from collecting facts to a perhaps unconscious poetic construal of the kind of narrative one wants to write.Footnote 53 I have argued that the Gospel of Mark best fits the generic category of “historiography.”Footnote 54 Yet I do not assume that Mark's narrative is reliable, critical history.
The issue seems less complicated with regard to apocalypses. Because of the nature of the dreams and visions they narrate and the extraordinary character of their narratives, most scholars would now agree that an apocalypse is an imaginative response to a specific historical and social situation. Yet there is a significant minority in this country, whose presence is attested by the wide circulation of the “Left Behind” novels, for whom the canonical apocalypses are historical fact.Footnote 55
So we students of apocalypses still have our work cut out for us.
