Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 86:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: Apocalyptic Piety: A Comparative Analysis Of The Ethics Of Revelation
Author: Jonathan A. Campbell

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Apocalyptic Piety: A Comparative Analysis Of The Ethics Of Revelation

Jonathan A. Campbell

Jonathan A. Campbell is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Burman University, Canada.

The final book in the NT canon is known for its symbolic language and vivid description of end-time events. In this way it resembles many other apocalypses from the Second Temple period. In this study, four Second Temple apocalypses are surveyed for their ethical exhortation in order to understand better the ethics of Revelation. Specifically, the works of 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and the Apocalypse of Abraham serve as comparanda that are reviewed to determine how apocalyptic writings tended to express paraenetic teaching. Some, like the “Epistle of Enoch” in 1 Enoch and much of 2 Enoch, express their ethics via imperatives directed at the reader. Others, including the “Book of the Watchers” in 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham, show their readers the desired ethics through the way in which protagonists and antagonists are portrayed. While they express their ethical teachings in various ways, the content of those teachings is quite similar for all four works: the righteous should worship God alone and should treat their fellow humans well. These works serve as a comparative base by which Revelation is evaluated. It is shown that Revelation distinguishes itself from other apocalypses by focusing almost exclusively on the worship of God, rather than on human interrelations. Even those passages in Revelation that condemn injustice view such injustice as being ultimately derived from false worship. This departure from typical apocalyptic tendencies helps to emphasize the book’s call for the unadulterated worship of God.

Definitions of Second Temple apocalyptic literature tend to focus on form rather than function. The Apocalypse Group working with the SBL Genres Project produced the following definition for the apocalyptic genre:

“Apocalypse” is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative frame-work, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient,

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disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.1

This definition accurately describes the form of most apocalyptic literature from the Second Temple period, but it has little to say about the purpose of such revelations.2 Some have suggested that the apocalypses were written to encourage the reader in difficult times, with little inter...