To a large extent, Christianity is what it is — as a religion, as a tradition, as an institution (or collection of them) — because of apocalypticism. Arguably, it grew out of Jewish apocalypticism; its reported founder spoke often and fervently about “the Kingdom of God” (or “of Heaven”) to come. His primary message to his followers was that they should prepare for an apocalypse.
The word comes to us from the ancient Greek αποκαλυπτειν (apokalyptein) in which apo- meant “off, away, depart” and kalyptein meant “to conceal, to hide, to cover.” Thus it means an uncovering or revelation.
The fundamental concept behind any kind of apocalypticism is that reality is not as it appears, and at some point, this will be proven — compellingly, unquestionably, and possibly catastrophically — to one and all. Long before the 1st century and Jesus’ reported ministry, apocalypticism had grown within Judaism (as evidenced, for example, in the book of Daniel, along with some of the pronouncements of the Hebrew prophets). Jesus’ career, and many of his teachings, are fully in line with then-existing Judaic apocalypticism.
But apocalypticism didn’t live only within Judaism. In the Hellenic world, for example, a number of the philosophical “schools” taught that the world itself was deceptive. Plato’s allegory of the cave is one example of this kind of thinking. Other Hellenic traditions, such as Pythagoreanism and the Orpheanism from which it originally developed, considered the world itself to be a prison from which human beings would one day be freed.
Jewish scripture taught that YHWH had set the Hebrews up as “his people” in “his land” under “his rule” with “his kings” and “his priesthood” acting as “his regents” on earth. But the Hebrews’ relationship with him was always fraught, and over a number of generations things changed, for the worse.
They viewed themselves as a people who’d escaped from Egypt — one of the most powerful empires on earth at the time — in brazen fashion, what with the Red Sea having opened up to allow them through but closed again to swallow up the vast hosts of the Pharaoh. They then reconquered their homeland in Canaan. At last, sometime in the 9th century BCE or so, they’d set themselves up as a kingdom capable of fending off all comers.
They had a golden age in which the Hebrews impressed the world with their sanctity, and their deity showed he was truly the king of the universe. All other nations stood in awe of them.
But it didn’t last. They proved unequal to the task, and over time, not righteous enough to keep up with YHWH’s standards for them. Something of a schism rent them into two separate realms. Later, their dual kingdom was destroyed in two large gulps: The northern land, Israel, was utterly wiped out by Assyria in 721 BCE, and the southern land, Judah, fell to Babylonia by 586 BCE.
Of the two realms, only survivors from Judah remained, in the form of refugees in the wilderness, or captives living in Babylon under their hated conquerors. Virtually all memory of the realm of Israel had been wiped from the face of the earth. Those Judean refugees and captives kept the faith, though, and YHWH ultimately rewarded them. The conquerors were destroyed by yet another conqueror, King Cyrus of Persia, and they were allowed to return to their homeland and rebuild their ruined Temple.
At first Judah existed as a protectorate of Persia, and enjoyed some autonomy, but it remained part of the larger Persian empire. That was defeated by Alexander the Great. In 333 CE, Judah went from being a component of one empire (Persia) to a component of another (Alexander’s, followed by that of the Ptolemies and then the Seleucids).
Although some Jews who’d been in Babylon or refugees in neighboring districts returned to Judah, a contingent remained where they were. Thus, for the first time, there were sizeable populations of Jews living in regions other than Judah or Israel. After Alexander’s conquest of the Near East, Jews from Judah began to move through the Near East. In particular a number of them had been invited by Alexander to move to the new capital he’d built, at Alexandria in Egypt.
Over the following centuries, Jews moved about more freely than they had previously. This was the Jewish Diaspora, or dispersion. They were exposed to regimes, peoples, languages, cultures, and even religions that had been foreign to them. While in some areas they weren’t treated well, in others they were accepted and established something of a beachhead (again, particularly in and around Alexandria, as well as other parts of the Hellenistic world).
This exposed Jews to a wider range of influences. It also led to a reconsideration of their place in the world. Especially vexing was their lack of independence. This came to a head in the middle of the 2nd century BCE when fighting broke out between the Seleucid state under Antiochus IV and various parties — particularly elements of the priesthood — in Judah. The fighting led to Antiochus outlawing the Jewish religion. That, in turn, grew into an outright revolt under a Judean priest named Matatthias whose sons (the oldest being Judas Maccabaeus) eventually won the day and Judah became independent again.
The Temple which the Seleucids had defiled was miraculously re-sanctified. The kingdom they’d had, of old, from their “golden age,” was restored — to an extent. The renewed realm of Judah existed within a larger world in which campaigns and warfare were common, and it could not stand alone forever.
That ongoing conflict eroded a number of Near Eastern states, and step by step, Rome relentlessly took advantage of it. They defeated the Seleucids, who’d constantly threatened Judah to the north, at about the same time that a civil conflict arose inside Judah. Goaded by Antipater, governor of Idumaea — a district just south of Judah that the renewed kingdom had annexed, some decades before, and whose people had been converted to Judaism — her two sons became rivals over the royal succession.
Into that fray stepped the “hi-there-I-just-happened-to-be-in-the-neighborhood-stomping-those-nasty-Seleucids-for-you” Roman general Pompey. Antipater took advantage, appearing every inch the good and dutiful host to his Roman allies (which Judah had been for the past few decades). He also undermined the Jewish royal house. Eventually, Pompey saw the need to take charge, in the only way a general like he knew how: He appointed Antipater Rome’s procurator for Judah. Effectively Antipater absconded with rule of the region and set aside the existing royal house.
In short order, the kingdom of Judah became the province of Judaea with Antipater’s son, Herod the Great, as its ostensible “king” but only as a Roman client. That is, he was king … but only so long as the Roman state permitted him any authority and allowed him to remain on the throne.
Perhaps the most galling aspect of this, for many Judaeans, was that Rome’s conquest of their realm had been fashioned from the inside. Antipater and his progeny, including Herod, were hated for it; and the Judaeans never forgot that, in prior centuries, the Idumaeans had been filthy pagan Edomites.
(They conveniently forgot that their then-newly-minted-but-now-lost kingdom had conquered Idumaea, incorporated it into their realm, and forcibly converted its people to the worship of YHWH. There was hatred, but to an extent, it was mutual.)
The reborn Kingdom of Judah had lasted barely a century, but its rulers were also the High Kings of the faith of YHWH, and they were theocrats through and through. Their land and history was reimagined as theocratic, from its very beginning, back in the 9th century BCE. The early warlord who’d carved it out of the Canaanite hinterland, Saul and David, had supposedly been hand-picked by YHWH and (initially, at least) guided by his prophet Samuel. David’s son Solomon had been granted vast amounts of divine wisdom, by YHWH.
Solomon’s magnificent Temple was larger, grander, and more ornate than any structure on earth, before or since — even though many other Near Eastern structures were actually far bigger, more complex, and it had been patterned, architecturally, from the oversized tent the Hebrews (then Jews) imagined they’d gathered in occasionally after they fled Egypt and wandered the Sinai wilderness.
All that was great about their people, their land, their regime, and their fortunes, had come directly from YHWH. All the disasters, destruction, and misery that had befallen since, had been caused by very-flawed and mostly-profane humans.
With the Romans backing the new (and only theoretically-independent) monarchy, taxes became an increasing burden. Rome was famous for its taxation of conquered lands. Some of them were prosperous enough to handle what the Romans extracted (I’m looking at you, Egypt, and you, Attica), but large swaths of the Levant (which included Judaea, Idumea, Galilee, and other districts to the north) were not. People who live at a subsistence level can’t always manage to cough up the coinage demanded by Rome.
Another thing Rome was famous for was taking what it wanted. They routinely marched off with harvests, olive oil, wine, and pretty much anything of value they could get their hands on. Many of the natives of the Levant were left with little.
Given that many Jews envisioned YHWH as the engineer of all that was good that they’d ever enjoyed, and that they’d been relieved on occasion from their tormentous existence (as a slave-race in Egypt; as wanderers in the Sinai wilderness; as victims of Assyrian and Babylonian conquest; and as cogs in the repressive machinery of the Seleucid regime), a lot of them came to believe that YHWH would lift them out of this, as well.
Occasionally some of them decided they had YHWH’s favor, grabbed a few weapons, and did what they could to harass the Romans into giving up. Among the more famous of these, around the turn of the 1st century CE, was Judas of Galilee, who’d gone so far as to proclaim himself the Messiah — a shadowy figure mentioned a few times in their holy scripture as a man who’d take up a divine mantle and show the rest of the world who’s boss. (If you were guessing that Boss is YHWH and his chosen people, you’d be right.)
There’s a reason you don’t hear Judas of Galilee much any more. He didn’t end up making his mark among the Romans. The legions took care of him, for good.
Over time some of the Jews came up with more metaphysical visions of how their world would be set right again. After all, they’d put up with warlords and rulers building them up, only to watch them fall to other warlords and rulers. It was time, perhaps, for YHWH to step in — himself — and set things right, in ways only he could do.
This is when Jewish apocalypticism took off. It had existed for some time, becoming something of a minor institution during the period when the Seleucids ruled. But as the reborn kingdom of Judah began to fade, the last century BCE ended and the 1st century CE began, it ramped up.
Into this stepped one Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant preacher from Galilee. He spoke of the soon-to-come Kingdom of God (or of Heaven). He taught, among other things, that it wouldn’t be through expressions of earthly power that things would be set right again and the “golden age” would return. It would happen when YHWH was good and ready for it to happen — and nothing said or done by any human, whether a follower of his or a foe was going to start or stop it.
Various scenarios were imagined, including cataclysmic ones in which armies were wiped out, the earth itself wrecked by earthquakes, tidal waves, massive fires, etc. Other scenarios were less violent, but at their core, all viewed this “apocalypse” as being unleashed by the Almighty himself.
Elsewhere, I’ve covered the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, aka Jesus the Christ, assuming he lived and taught. Christian tradition claims he ran afoul of the Temple priesthood, the crown of Judaea, and Roman officials, and was executed. As far as we can tell, if there had been a Historical Jesus, it’s likely that was his fate.
Christian tradition also claims his followers, the Apostles, knew him to have been YHWH-on-earth due to his miraculous resurrection. Although miracles of that sort aren’t something historians can traffic in, what we can say is that while Jesus was alive, he had followers. Also word of what he’d taught had spread around, within parts of the Levant initially, and later, beyond (in places like Syria, Cilicia, northern Egypt, etc.).
Jesus of Nazareth was gone, with no “apocalypse” having taken place. His followers, as well as people who’d heard of him, were left to pick up the pieces and make sense of it all. They did so in varying ways, as I’ve covered extensively.
Some of his followers had believed the apocalypse was coming very soon. Certainly, they thought they’d live to see it. And while he was still alive, they likely thought Jesus would be alive to see it, too. But he wasn’t, and a few years went by, and still no “apocalypse” came.
Keep in mind that the earliest generation of Christians (who were all converts, mostly from Judaism but some from Gentile paganism) earnestly believed they’d see this apocalypse. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, Paul wrote (in the late 40s CE) that, when “the End” finally came around, “we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.”
Yet more years passed … and no apocalypse. More passed. No apocalypse. Still more years passed with no apocalypse.
That lack of any apocalypse occurring caused no small amount of angst among many of the Jesus movements that had sprung up in the Greco-Roman world. They dealt with it as best they could … in the context of that world itself.
Although Jewish apocalypticism and Hellenic thinking were by no means the same, there did have something in common. And that is, the implicit, axiomatic belief that there was something wrong with the world itself.
In the case of Jewish religious tradition, this was because the world had “fallen,” largely due to the transgression of Adam and Eve, which was compounded by humanity’s failure, through the intervening generations, to live up to YHWH’s standards. In Hellenic thought, it was because the physical realm was inherently deceptive (especially according to the “mystery religions,” Pythagoreanism, etc.) and humanity was deprived of knowledge of its true divine origins and state.
So, although both of these perspectives were very different, this intrinsic belief in the inherent “wrongness” of reality, proved to be an intersection point.
As the initial generations of Christians lived and died without any promised “apocalypse” taking place, the many movements re-examined their thinking on the matter. And some of them leaned into Hellenic approaches to the subject.
At least some of these rethinking efforts led to the emergence of Gnostic Christianity. Others remained convinced “the End” would come at any moment, and they prepared for it by moving into secluded ascetic communities. Others had other ideas … including reimagining when the apocalypse would occur. Some admitted it might not be soon at all. It might not be for centuries to come.
In classical times there are reports that some Christian communities became so convinced the apocalypse was imminent, that they erupted in riots. How much of this actually happened, is open to interpretation. The religion’s pagan critics may have overstated this tendency, but that it was reported in more than one area and more than one time, suggests it was something that had occurred.
Obviously there have been many different apocalyptic religions, and apocalyptic movements within larger religious traditions. How they dealt with failed apocalypse predictions — which is the boat Christianity currently is in — has varied a great deal.
Some faith groups collapse and die out over it. Some are caught up in rifts, between those who depart over the failed prediction and those who double down and reset their expectations of it. A few have taken the route that Jehovah’s Witnesses have, and declared that a predicted apocalypse had actually taken place but that it had been “hidden” and its effects would trickle out over time.
Famously, the Heaven’s Gate cult — only marginally influenced by Christianity or Judaism — in 1997 found all of its members, including their leader, commit mass ceremonial suicide so they (or their spirits, the mechanics of what they’d imagined is hard to figure) could come aboard an extraterrestrial vessel hidden by the Hale-Bopp comet.
There is no question that early Christianity was founded on apocalypse predictions that failed to come true. One of these predictions, reportedly from the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth himself, is documented in each of the synoptic gospels:
“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (Mt 16:28)
“Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” (Mt 23:36)
“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” (Mt 24:34)
Jesus said to [Caiaphas the High Priest], “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mt 26:64)
And Jesus was saying to them, “Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mk 9:1)
“But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.” (Lk 9:27)
“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place.” (Lk 21:32)
Granted, the synoptic gospels were written in the latter part of the 1st century, but 1 Th 4:17 was written very early in the movements’ history. Other early works reflect that this was a concept baked into the many Jesus movements from their beginnings. It’s a problem they’ve all dealt with in various ways … some more dysfunctional than others.
Belief in a coming apocalypse has remained part of the religion since its founding, even if not every Christian imagines it’ll happen in the same way. There’s been a lot of movement in that regard, through the centuries, and across different movements.
There are some wide classifications of approaches to it: Premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. Within those are subclassifications, and sub-subclassifications within those. The most powerful religious/political movement in the US, the “Religious Right,” was established by Protestant fundamentalists mostly in the Southern Baptist Convention, and as such they strongly believe in an imminent apocalypse.
This has driven them to do some truly odd things, such as to attack Iraq (both in 1990 leading up to the Persian Gulf War, and the leadup to the Iraq War starting in 2003) and on the presumption that it might invoke Armageddon by causing Iraq to attack Israel. At the moment it explains some of the agitation surrounding Iran (the presumption is that Iran can somehow be goaded into attacking Israel thus triggering Armageddon).
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation.
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