Corpus-Paul

[George Athas <gathas AT mail.usyd.edu.au>]

In addition to Jeff Peterson's comment, let me offer these comments:

We need to be careful about the terminology we use. "Apocalyptic" certainly 
is a noun  (as well as
an adjective). I believe Collins' definition of Apocalyptic Lit doesn't go 
far enough -- or rather,
it is misfocused. Not all apocalyptic lit is eschatological. This is crucial. 
As Jeff pointed out,
some apocalypses are just works of curiosity. They are attempts to understand 
the world, the
universe, and how they work. Remember, there were no such things as science 
textbooks back then.
Everyone came from a theistic, non-scientific worldview. Some apocalypses are 
just the ancients'
attempts to write an astronomical treatise, coloured of course by their 
various personal
ideologies.

So, we should here be talking about eschatology and eschatologicalism (boy, 
what a mouthful! Try
saying that 5 times fast) - not apocalypticism.

Secondly, Josephus is probably not a good example on which to put solid 
conclusions about how far
ranging eschatologicalism was in his day. Remember that Josephus is writing 
for a noble Roman
audience and so he tries to put the Judaism(s) of his day in a good light. 
Obviously, this would
not involve divulging that every Jew in Palestine thought that Rome and the 
Romans sucked and that
they thought Yahweh or his Messiah was going to come along and teach them all 
a good lesson with a
sword and big stick and then throw them all into the Abyss to burn eternally 
in damnation while the
Jews ruled the world. As such, we should expect Josephus to downplay 
(probably significantly!) the
spread of eschatological sentiment amongst Jews of his day. I think the 
events he describes in the
first century smack of eschatological sentiment, though Josephus doesn't 
spell it out for his Roman
patrons.

(PS - a little plug for my Apocalyptic webpage - an introductory essay, found 
at
http://members.xoom.com/gathas/apocalyp.htm)

Best regards.
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GEORGE ATHAS
 Dept of Semitic Studies,
 University of Sydney
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