The word “apocalyptic,” or rather the corresponding German nominal form Apokalyptik, was introduced into scholarly discussion by Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke in 1832, in the context of an introduction to the Apocalypse of John, or Book of Revelation (Lücke 1832). Prompted in part by the recent publication of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, Lücke grouped together such works as 1 Enoch 1, 4 Ezra and the Sibylline Oracles to reconstruct a literary context for the Christian apocalypse. “Apocalypse” and “apocalyptic” are modern analytical categories that coincide only partially with ancient generic labels. There was little sustained generic analysis in either ancient Judaism or early Christianity.
A Literary Genre
Only in the 1970s was there a systematic attempt to impose order on the usage of the term. Klaus Koch argued that “if we are to succeed at all in the future in arriving at a binding definition of apocalyptic, a starting point in form criticism and literary and linguistic history is, in the nature of things, the only one possible” (1972: 23). Koch did not deny that apocalypticism could also be discussed from historical and sociological perspectives, and he offered preliminary demonstrations of both “apocalypse” as a literary type and “apocalyptic” as a historical movement, but he made a basic point about the need to clarify what literary evidence we are talking about. In the wake of Koch’s work, Paul Hanson proposed distinctions between “apocalypse” as a literary type, “apocalypticism” as a social ideology, and “apocalyptic eschatology” as a set of ideas and motifs (1976). Both apocalypticism and apocalyptic eschatology could find expression in other genres besides apocalypses. The use of “apocalyptic” as a noun was largely abandoned in American scholarship, although it persists in the United Kingdom (Grabbe 2003). The attempt to define a literary genre that would serve as the touchstone of what might be called “apocalyptic” culminated in the publication of a definition and morphology of the genre in the journal Semeia, in 1979 (Collins 1979; compare Collins 1998: 2–9). An “apocalypse” was defined as 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.
The definition offered in Semeia 14 identified apocalypses on the basis of both form and content. Other scholars have argued for a purely formal definition. So, for example, Christopher Rowland writes, “to speak of apocalyptic . . .is to concentrate on the theme of the direct communication of the heavenly mysteries in all their diversity” (1982: 14). Other scholars have argued for a thematic definition. E. P. Sanders (1983: 447–59) would define “apocalyptic” as a combination of the themes of revelation and reversal (of the fortunes of a group). In fact, the classic Jewish and Christian apocalypses are characterized not only by the theme of revelation but also by the prominence of the supernatural world and of eschatology. Eschatology is not only concerned with the end of the world or history in the manner of the historical apocalypses, but also with the fate of the dead. The pervasive importance of the latter concern is sometimes missed by critics who think of “eschatology” only in historical terms (e.g., Fletcher Louis 2011: 1578–79). Eschatological concerns are not adequately described as the theme of reversal.
- The Question of Function
- A follow-up volume Early Christian Apocalypticism, in Semeia 36 (1986), emended the definition by adding that an apocalypse is “intended to interpret present, earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority” (Yarbro Collins 1986: 7). This formulation is considerably more abstract than the idea that an apocalypse is addressed to a group in crisis. Here again, the level of abstraction makes a difference, and one has to decide what level of abstraction is most helpful for one’s purpose.
The real issue here is whether there is a simple correlation between form and function, and I would argue that there is not. An obvious consideration here is the possibility of parody or ironic usage: think for example of the parodies of Lucian, or of the Testament of Abraham, which includes a heavenly journey that is formally similar to the journeys of Enoch but serves a very different purpose. More fundamentally, literary forms are adaptable. Many of the Jewish and Christian apocalypses are subversive and revolutionary (Collins 2002), and resistance to empire, whether Seleucid or Roman, figures prominently in some major apocalypses, notably Daniel and Revelation (Portier-Young 2011). But there is also what Bernard McGinn has called an imperial apocalypticism, in which the coming judgment reinforces the authority of imperial power (1979: 33–36). This appears especially in the Middle Ages, but the journey of Aeneas to the Netherworld in the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, with its promise of glory for Rome, may perhaps qualify as an early example. Apocalypses, like other genres, could be bent to more than one purpose, even if some functions are more typical than others.
