In this endeavour, we will focus on four texts: 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and
Revelation. There are, of course, a number of others which could have been included. The first volume of Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha178 contains no fewer than 19 apocalypses. The earlier taxonomies of John J. Collins and Adela Yarbro
Collins list no fewer than 15 Jewish and 24 Christian apocalypses.179 It is important to recognise, too, that this is not simply a question of volume but also of variety. As
175 Ibid., 270. 176 Ibid., 292.
177 E.g. Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, 83. Gaventa here also accuses Matlock of failing to do justice to the close engagement with the primary texts provided by the work of Martinus de Boer, and I am inclined to agree with her assessment here. As noted above (n173), I should therefore be clear that while endorsing Matlock’s call for close engagement with the texts I am by no means suggesting that de Boer has ignored them. Far from it. The evidence of his PhD dissertation alone (published as de Boer, Defeat of Death, esp. 39–91) demonstrates the opposite.
178 Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha.
179 J. J. Collins, “The Jewish Apocalypses,” Semeia 14(1979): 21–60; A. Yarbro Collins, “The Early Christian Apocalypses,” Semeia 14(1979): 61–122.
Tigchelaar notes, ‘the close analysis of apocalypses has disclosed that their modes of thought are anything but homogeneous’.180 There is thus no strict theological mould into which all these texts fit neatly, and any analysis of a selection of apocalyptic material must proceed in a manner mindful of this diversity.
It is thus vital that the present project avoid the charge of ‘cherry-picking’. Why these apocalypses and not others? 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch have been chosen because they are not only representative of the variety in apocalyptic literature, but are also the texts cited most frequently by the scholars with whom I am in dialogue. As such, whatever questions I may subsequently raise about the contemporary ‘apocalyptic Paul’, this can at least be done on the basis of shared methodological starting-points and a shared corpus of apocalyptic literature and thus, I hope, some progress can be made.
It is also important to explain the rationale for comparing Paul with texts that post-date his letters. On the matter of the relative dating of 4 Ezra/2 Baruch and the Pauline corpus, de Boer states his position quite plainly: ‘these books, though written some decades after Paul wrote Romans, clearly make use of earlier and commonly available traditions and do so independently of each other.’181 As such he considers it entirely appropriate to allow these two texts to help us understand apocalyptic in Paul, who ‘shows his deep familiarity’182 with such traditions. De Boer is, of course, not alone here. Dunn has called 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra ‘the two classic Jewish apocalypses’ which, despite their post-dating Paul’s letters may nevertheless be useful in Pauline exegesis since ‘the degree of continuity with motifs already developed suggests that in our immediate area of interest they may reflect themes already current in Jewish
theologizing at the time of Paul’183 concluding, therefore, that ‘Paul was entering into an already well-developed debate and that his own views were not uninfluenced by its earlier participants.’184 Moreover, long before de Boer and Dunn, Schweitzer had listed these two apocalypses along with 1 Enoch and the Psalms of Solomon as the key
180 Tigchelaar, Prophets of Old, 7. Thus the preference for ‘mode of thought’ over ‘worldview’ does not entirely avoid the dangers of assumed uniformity discussed by Macaskill in the works cited above. 181 de Boer, “Paul’s Mythologizing Program”, 11.
182 Ibid., 13.
183 James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 88. 184 Ibid., 90.
writings to be considered in discussions of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, particularly as related to Paul’s thought.185
There is, however, one glaring omission from this list: the book of Revelation.186 By the above rationale for using the later apocalypses of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, there is no reason for excluding Revelation and every reason why it must be included. Given these methodological arguments, it seems odd to place such an emphasis on these two Jewish apocalypses in the debate over the ‘apocalyptic Paul’ while all but ignoring the New Testament’s only full apocalypse.187 If the choice of Revelation as a conversation partner for Paul still seems irretrievably peculiar, this perhaps demonstrates the
enduring influence of the pre-Schweitzer prejudice against ‘apocalyptic’ in New Testament studies which should, by now, have gone by the wayside. Now that ‘apocalyptic’ has been retrieved from that prejudice and employed effectively as a window onto Paul’s thought, a dialogue between Paul and Revelation should really be quite an obvious thing to do. Any attempt to approach what de Boer calls ‘Paul’s christologically determined apocalyptic eschatology’188 which does not make substantial use of this thoroughly Christological apocalypse is bound to be
impoverished. Yet the absence of a comparison of the Apocalypse of John with the ‘apocalyptic Paul’ remains a remarkable lacuna in this important conversation about the apostle’s thought. As such, I not only include it here but give it the greater attention it deserves, reflecting its importance as the canonical Christian apocalypse and, I hope, redressing this imbalance in contemporary scholarship on New Testament ‘apocalyptic’.
185 Schweitzer, Mysticism, 54–5. Besides these four, Schweitzer also mentions the Book of Jubilees, the
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Ascension of Moses. Cf. de Boer, “Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology”, 347. Sadly, constraints of space preclude what would be a valuable discussion of Jubilees, though footnotes pointing in the direction of such a discussion will be made at key points.
186 Though cf. Koch, Rediscovery, 23, where Revelation is included alongside Daniel, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch,
4 Ezra and the Apocalypse of Abraham as the crucial writings for the construction of ‘a serviceable and generally applicable concept of apocalyptic.’
187 Though note here Beker’s use of Revelation, discussed above.
188 de Boer, Defeat of Death, 18. It is striking that, while devoting an entire chapter (pp. 39–91) to examining Jewish apocalyptic literature, de Boer gives less that two pages to Revelation (134–5).