I am finishing up a substantial article on ancient Jewish and early Christian “apocalypticism” for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Millennialism, edited by Catherine Wessinger. Although the origins and development of apocalypticism, both ancient and modern (see my book Why Waco, first chapter on-line for browsing), has been one of my central professional interests for several decades now in the course of writing htis article I have had occasion to pull out all sorts of things and poke around here and there in my previous work. One rather substantial article that might be of interest to readers of this Blog, as I mentioned here recently, was published in the December, 1999 issue of Bible Review. Please note the date and remember our “turn of the millennium” frenzy over Y2K and other matters. It is posted conveniently on my University Web site if anyone wants to take a look, titled appropriately: Why 2K?: The Biblical Roots of Millennialism.

Just the past week I was looking at some very informal and preliminary work I did on the New Testament book of Revelation, inspired by my former colleague at the University of Notre Dame, Josephine Masssyngberde Ford in her  volume on Revelation in the Anchor Bible Commentary series (now Anchor Yale Bible Commentary, edited by J. J. Collins). Although colleagues have been fairly critical of Ford’s work in this volume, and particularly her claim that the book of Revelation can be traced back to pre-Christian John the Baptizer circles, with links to Qumran and the DSS, I have found her basic insights quite compelling.

One thing I noticed in my own work on the book of Revelation is that the explicit references to Jesus/Christ, outside the letters to the churches of chapters 2 & 3, are mostly clustered in chapters 1 and 22, with few in the middle chapters, and all of these references can be easily removed without detracting in any way from the structure or flow of the passages in which they occur.  Notice carefully the bold italicized words in brackets that I am suggesting are later Christian interpolations inserted to “Christianize” a book that in its origins had nothing to do with Jesus. The original text remains intact and makes complete sense without these references:

Rev 1:1 The revelation [of Jesus Christ,] which God gave [him] to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,
2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
[5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,
6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.]

Rev 1:9 I, John, your brother who share with you [in Jesus] the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God [and the testimony of Jesus.]

NRS Rev 11:8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, [where also their Lord was crucified.]

Rev 12:17 Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God [and hold the testimony of Jesus.]

Rev 14:12 Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God [and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.]

Rev 17:6 And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints [and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.] When I saw her, I was greatly amazed.

Rev 19:10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your comrades [who hold the testimony of Jesus.]Worship God! [For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."]

Rev 20:4 Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded [for their testimony to Jesus and] for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned [with Christ] a thousand years.

Rev 22:16 ["It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."]

Rev 22:20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. [Come, Lord Jesus]

Rev 22:21 [The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.]

The remaining references to the “Lord” or to the “Messiah,” such as those in 11:15, 12:10, and 20:6, are generic and fit easily into the thought world of generic late 2nd Temple Jewish apocalypticism, with nothing implicitly “Christian,” while the reference to “the Lamb” that is slain fits well into the generic image of the suffering “Son of Man,” returning triumphantly in the clouds of heaven, taken from Daniel 7:13-14, where it is understood to  be the corporate people of the “saints of the Most High,” not an individual slain messiah figure.

In contrast to these references to Jesus, that so clearly exhibit a heavy hand of Christian interpolation, one finds multiple references to the LORD God Almighty, as well as “his Messiah,” that echoes closely the language of the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible. None of these contain explicit references to Jesus and clearly exhibit a textual integrity that reflects the language and thought world of pre-Christian Jewish apocalypticism:

Rev 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the LORD God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Rev 4:8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, LORD God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

Rev 4:11 “You are worthy, our LORD and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Rev 6:10 they cried out with a loud voice, “LORD LORD, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?”

Rev 11:4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the LORD of the earth.

Rev 11:17 singing, “We give you thanks, LORD God Almighty, who are and who were, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.

Rev 15:3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “Great and amazing are your deeds, LORD God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations!

Rev 15:4 LORD, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.”

Rev 16:7 And I heard the altar respond, “Yes, O LORD God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just!”

Rev 18:8 therefore her plagues will come in a single day — pestilence and mourning and famine — and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the LORD God who judges her.”

Rev 19:6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals, crying out, “Hallelujah! For LORD our God the Almighty reigns.

Rev 21:22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is LORD God the Almighty [and the Lamb.]

Rev 22:5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the LORD God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Rev 22:6 And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true, for LORD, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his Messenger to show his servants what must soon take place.”

The implications of these textual factors are quite fascinating. First, it appears that one can fairly easily recover the pre-Christian version of this text, more or less, with very little change to the underlying text itself. What this would then allow is a re-reading of the book as a whole, with its references to the “Beast,” the “False Prophet,” and “Babylon” in a pre-70 CE setting. Scholars have most often applied the basic setting of the book to the reigns of the Roman emperors Nero and Domitian, with several stages of redaction in the period from 68 to 100 CE. However, since Rev 11:15 appears to be a clear reference to the city of Jerusalem, not Rome, as “Sodom and Egypt,” an entirely different line of interpretation opens up. The perspective of the authors of this primitive Ur-text is a radical disenfranchisement from the authority structures of pre-70 CE Roman destruction Jerusalem, whom they consider agents of the “Beast.” Further, the martyrs in this Ur-text are the “two witnesses,” whose slain bodies are left in the streets of Jerusalem, not Jesus the crucified messiah.

I am convinced that in the same way the basic apocalyptic texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls have as their historical reference points the parties and politics of the mid-1st century BCE, the Ur-text of revelation is most likely composed against the backdrop of local events in Judea in the 40s and 50s CE–and has little to do with Rome and its emperors. More thoughts on this line of interpretation to come.

Although it is common among both Christians and Jews to refer to the notion of “Resurrection of the Dead,” as a formal category of Apocalyptic Eschatology, the Hebrew phrase found in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish liturgical traditions, and most recently, the so-called “Gabriel Revelation,” is much more literal–namely, “to make live the dead ones.”

In this Blog I wanted to put up a few posts offering some thoughts regarding both this phrase, and the concept of “resurrection of the dead,” in late 2nd Temple Jewish materials–including early Christian. Since Christians in particular ended up making the affirmation of Jesus being “raised the third day,” so central to confessional faith, the implications of the language itself is important and far-reaching.

I begin in this post with one of the more intriguing texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, a fragment that has been titled “A Messianic Apocalypse” (4Q521). This text contains three rather striking features that are of particular significance for comparing the apocalyptic beliefs and expectations of the Qumran community with the emerging early Christian movement. First, the text speaks of a single Messiah figure who will rule heaven and earth. Second, it mentions in the clearest language the expectation of the resurrection of the dead during the time of this Messiah. And third, and perhaps most important for students of the New Testament, it contains an exact verbal parallel with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke for identifying of the signs of the Messiah.

First, a translation of the fragment itself:
[the hea]vens and the earth will listen to His Messiah, and none therein will
stray from the commandments of the holy ones.
Seekers of the Lord, strengthen yourselves in His service!
All you hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find the Lord in this?
For the Lord will consider the pious (hasidim) and call the righteous by name.
Over the poor His spirit will hover and will renew the faithful with His power.
And He will glorify the pious on the throne of the eternal Kingdom.
He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the b[ent]
And f[or] ever I will cleav[ve to the h]opeful and in His mercy . . .
And the fr[uit . . .] will not be delayed for anyone.
And the Lord will accomplish glorious things which have never been as [He . . .]
For He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead (lit. make live the dead)  and bring good news
to the poor…
(Michael O. Wise, translation)
The early Christians obviously focused on a single Messiah or Christ, a descendent of king David, whom they identified as Jesus of Nazareth (Mark 8:27-30; Acts 2:36). They clearly saw him as God’s cosmic agent, who would return in power and glory to rule heaven and earth (Mark 14:61-62; 13:26-27). They expected that the entire cosmos would come under subjection to him (Phil 2:9-10; 1 Cor 15:24-28)). They remembered him as one who had power over the demonic spirits, over disease and death, and even over the forces of nature. This exalted view of Jesus is well summed up in the Markan version of the disciples’ exclamation when he calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:35-41).

But like those at Qumran, they associated other special figures and groups with the age of the Messiah. John the Baptist was of the Aaronic priesthood and was revered as a returned “Elijah,” a sure sign that the End was near (Mark 9:9-13; Malachi 4:5 [Hebrew 3:23]). The Twelve apostles were expected to sit on thrones over the regathered twelve tribes of Israel in the coming Messianic rule (Matthew 19:28). The followers of Jesus, referred to as the “elect” or “saints,” were expecting to rule over the Gentile nations and even judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:1-4). In line 11 we have a clear reference to the resurrection of the dead. Why is this so significant? Much ink has been spilled over the past few decades discussing whether or not the people who composed the Scrolls believed in the distinctively Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. We know that various Jewish groups during the Second Temple period disputed over this doctrine of the afterlife. The first references to the idea of the dead being raised occur only in very late portions of the Hebrew Bible (Daniel 12:1-3). It was a doctrine that was emerging in certain Jewish circles from the 2nd century BCE down through the 1st century CE. We see evidence of the dispute reflected in the Apocrypha and in the New Testament (2 Maccabees 12:43-45; 15:11-16; Mark 12:18-27; Acts 23:6-10). Obviously, for the early Christians, faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and indeed, of all humankind at the end of days, was a cardinal doctrine (1 Corinthians 15:12; Acts 24:15).

But what about those at Qumran? Geza Vermes, in earlier editions of his widely circulated book The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, says that the Scrolls never clearly mention the idea, and concludes that “resurrection” played no part in their eschatology (p. 56, 3rd edition). His view is commonly reflected in many standard Qumran studies. Of course, Vermes and other scholars had no access to this text until it was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1992. We now have an unambiguous statement that “raising the dead” was one of the key expectations of the Messianic age in this community.

Line 11 of this text also contains another highly striking feature. Indeed, it appears to be the closest and most direct linguistic parallel to a New Testament text that we have yet discovered. The line reads:

For he will heal the wounded, make live the dead,
and proclaim glad tiding to the poor.

In both Matthew and Luke we read of a deputation that John the Baptist sends to Jesus while John is imprisoned. John’s disciples ask Jesus, “Are you the coming one, or do we look for another?” The story is thus tightly framed around the question of messianic identity: what will the signs of the true Messiah be? Jesus answers:

Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the glad tiding preached to them (Luke 7:22-23 and Matthew 11:4-5).
This reply is cast in the style of a precise formula. It reflects a very early Christian expectation of the signs of the messianic age and the marks for identification of the Messiah. One indication that we have here a very early Christian tradition is that these passages from Luke and Matthew come from the source scholars have designated as Q, from the German word Quelle, meaning “source.” According to most N.T. scholars, Q was a collection of the “Sayings of Jesus,” somewhat like the Gospel of Thomas in genre, which was compiled in the middle of the first century, but before our finished Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were written.

The phrase at the end of line 11, about “proclaiming glad tidings to the poor” is a direct quotation from Isaiah 61:1, which tells of an “anointed one” (i.e., messiah) who will work various signs before the Day of the Lord. This passage is quite important in the Gospel of Luke. In fact, he highlights it as the inauguration of the Messianic mission of Jesus. According to Luke, it is this very verse from Isaiah which Jesus reads and claims to fulfill in his home town synagogue of Nazareth.

However, what is most noteworthy is that Isaiah 61:1 says nothing about this Anointed One raising the dead. Indeed, in the entire Hebrew Bible there is nothing about a messiah figure raising the dead. Yet, when we turn to the Q Source, which Luke and Matthew quote, regarding the “signs of the Messiah,” we find the two phrases linked: “the dead are raised up, the poor have the glad tidings preached to them,” precisely as we have in our Qumran text. Luke makes more than passing use of this notion of the “resurrection of the dead” as a sign of the age of the Messiah. In the two places he quotes Isaiah 61:1 he also mentions specific cases of resurrection of the dead: as Elijah once raised the son of the widow, Jesus now raises the son of the widow from Nain (Luke 4:26; 7:11-17). This is hardly accidental, as the close juxtaposition of the texts makes clear.

It is also significant that this section of the Q Source is dealing with traditions shared between the community of John the Baptist and that of the early followers of Jesus. The close connections between John the Baptist and the community that produced the Scrolls have been pointed out by many scholars. Through this Dead Sea Scroll fragment, coupled with the early Q Source of the Gospels, we are taken back to a very early common tradition within Palestinian Judaism regarding the “signs of the Messiah.” We are in a better position to speak of the common expectations of a variety of interrelated apocalyptic, sectarian, baptist groups which have fled to the “wilderness” to prepare the “Way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3; Luke 3:4; 1QS 8,9). They appear to share a specific set of expectations, and they draw in strikingly similar ways, upon a common core of prophetic texts from the Hebrew Bible and related Jewish literature.

Of course, this fragment alone does not settle our attempts to identify the people of the Scrolls—whether they should be labeled as Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots, Pharisees, Nazarenes, Ebionites, or a unique blend of their own amalgamation. However, the text does provide a most direct and significant example of a common messianic hope among the followers of John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Teacher of Righteousness.

For a fuller and more technical treatment of this text see James Tabor and Michael Wise, “4Q521 ‘On Resurrection’ and the Synoptic Gospel Tradition: A Preliminary Study,” in Qumran Questions, edited by James Charlesworth (Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 161-163.

Apocalypticism is in the air again, thick and vaporous. One might have thought that the run-up to the year 2000, with all the Y2K associated expectations, would have settled things down for a bit, but such is not the case. Back in 1999 Hershel Shanks asked me to do a “Millennium piece” for the magazine Bible Review to be published in December, 1999, just weeks before January 1, 2000 ticked in. Given my specialization in the ancient apocalyptic speculations within the varieties of late 2nd Temple Judaism (Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament writings, Pseudepigrapha), and my involvement in Waco back in 1993, he apparently though I was just the person to offer some perspective on the present, based on the past. The results are on-line in my article “Why 2K: The Biblical Roots of Millennialism,” that is still worth reading–more so than ever in our current climate.

In our post 9-11 world, with wars in the Middle East, the dire rhetoric of Islamicist fundamentalists, the looming environmental crisis, and the unprecedented current economic meltdown, evoking haunting memories of 1929–or worse–this comes as no surprise. Anyone familiar with “Bible prophecy,” particularly the mysterious books of Daniel, Revelation, and the so-called “Synoptic Apocalypse,” of Mark 13 (with parallel edited versions in Matthew 24 and Luke 21), can try a hand at armchair interpretation. There we read about wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes and tsunamis, with war in the Middle East, and a “battle for Jerusalem” drawing the focus of “all nations.” Indeed, the funeral dirge over the fall of the mercantile empire of ancient Rome (symbolized by “Babylon”), as described in Revelation 18, reads like today’s headlines applied to New York, London, Berlin, or Paris.

I often tell my students that the 40 years from the death of Jesus in 30 AD until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE were the absolute “heyday” of apocalypticism. If ever the “end of the age” was to arrive, based on the scenario summarized in Mark 13, and elaborated in the book of Revelation, it should have been in the waning decades of the 1st century (from Nero to Domitian). Of course there are many rival periods of crisis in the West, from the late 5th century AD down through the troubled 11th through 13th centuries (Crusades, Black Plague, 100 Years War). And our parents or grandparents remember well the surge in apocalypticism connected to the dark days of the previous century (1929-1945).

We do indeed seem to be living through another such period of history, where uncertainty abounds and the undetermined future hangs in the balance. Just in the past few weeks a half dozen current examples have crossed my computer desktop, and I know these are just a tiny tip of the iceberg. Here are a couple of examples:

• The evangelist Harold Camping, who made hay back in 1994 with his predictions of the End, is at it again. In his latest book, Time Has An End, he settles on the revised date of 2011. Stephen Meyers offers a good summary analysis on his very fine Web site, Institute for Biblical and Scientific Studies here. For readers who have not “taken the cure” yet, for a case of biblical fundamentalism, Stephen offers a wealth of materials on a variety of subjects, expressed with sensitivity and uncommon honestly.

• Among the many offshoots of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, one of the most fascinating is the group led by Ronald Weinland, who confidently claims to be one of the “Two Witnesses” of Revelation 11, with the countdown of 1335, 1290, and 1260 days–found in Daniel 12, and echoed through the book of Revelation, taking us to the precise day of Pentecost, 2012. His two books, 2008-God’s Final Witness and The Prophesied End-Time, are distributed free, either in hard copy or via an Internet download. His Web site, appropriately domain-ed: www.the-end.com, offers this and much more. Apparently Mr. Weinland is stirring up lots of interest and controversy among the “144,000″ or so former WCG members. Bob Thiel, of the Living Church of God, one of the more prominent successor groups to Armstrong, led by Rod Meredith, provides an blow-by-blow analysis of the Weinland phenomenon on his site, before offering his own brand of post-Armstrong apocalypticism, stretching things out to the year 2018.

One particularly fascinating aspect of the broader phenomenon of current apocalypticism is the way in which non-biblical oriented schemes are being postulated in parallel thereto–particularly the craze over the Mayan Calendar, set to terminate its “Great Year” on December 21, 2012. Type in the search: “mayan calender end of the world” on Google and you can spend the next month browsing the nearly 500,000 references on the Web, and if you vary your search words a bit, the references grow into the millions. Wikipedia has a nice summary article of the amazing scope of the 2012 phenomenon. As of this writing that leaves us only 1437 days, 16 hours, and nine minutes–see the countdown clock at Thiel’s site, where he offers his own biblical perspective on the phenomenon. A new co-authored book (“25 renowned experts”) titled The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies, and Possibilities is selling briskly on at amazon.com, which lists a dozen other books with 2012 in their titles. There is even a new 200 million film called 2012 set for release on July 10, 2009 through Columbia pictures, directed by Robert Emmerich (“Independence Day” and “The Day after Tomorrow), with actors John Cusack and Amanda Peet, to mention a few.

Next week’s inauguration of Barack Obama has actually fueled and fanned many versions of the current apocalyptic bent to a fever pitch–whether he is viewed as messiah, or more commonly among those expecting the End–the Antichrist. The Google search string: “obama antichrist” yields over one million hits, including entire blogs, such as BarackObamaAntichrist.blogspot.com devoted thereto (loads slow but worth the wait).

I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet but I think I can safely predict that we are in the “apocalyptic ride” of our lives in the next five years. Stay tuned…