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315 22 / The End of theWorld and the Limits of Biblical Ecology 2001 It was only a year ago, though it seems much longer, that the end of the world was in the air. Places were going to drop out of the skies, not because their pilots went up in the rapture, but because their computers crashed on encountering double zeroes. Panic over Y2K brought back memories of doomsday fever at the end of the first millennium, and reminded us that apocalyptic ideas are part of the way that we see the world. Nonrational, nonscientific ways of imagining reality have found a new receptivity in the last fifty years, perhaps accompanying the collapse of absolute faith in science and rationalism in the postmodern shift of the latter half of the twentieth century. There has been a resurgence of both scholarly and popular interest in magic, in mysticism, in the occult and in apocalypticism. People are searching for old ways to express their spiritual understanding; scholars are seeking to recover and present long-forgotten ancient literature on these themes, to understand how this literature developed and to achieve a nuanced reading of these newly reintroduced writings. Our colleague Hans Dieter Betz has been in the forefront of this movement, and his work on Greco-Roman magic and on apocalyptic literature has been crucial in developing these areas of study. As early as 1966, Betz laid down several essential principles: that apocalypticism did not develop solely from inner-Jewish discourse, but was part of the “Hellenistic-oriental syncretism”; that understanding the theological intentions of an author demands clarity about the religiohistorical context and traditions at work; and that one needs to detect the underlying questions which cause older material to be transmuted and recast.1 To turn first to the question of the “Hellenistic-oriental syncretism,” the Hebrew Bible itself has more in common with Hellenism than is 316 Theologies I usually noted. Israel sat on several cultural axes, and participated in the culture of each complex. One was the “fertile crescent,” the cultural complex centered on Mesopotamia; another involved interaction with Egypt; and yet another was a set of traditions from the eastern Mediterranean. Certain biblical ideas have more in common with Hittite and Greek concepts than with Babylonian or Assyrian. These are ideas about purity, pollution, and blood, some of the very ideas that Betz discusses in later apocalyptic literature. His concrete example illustrates the intricacy of following the thread of these traditions. Betz demonstrated that the statement of the “Angel of the waters” in Revelation 16 involves ideas widespread in the literature of the day—ideas of the personification of the elements, and especially of their pollution through bloodshed. Ideas about the pollution of the earth, prominent in the Greco-Roman period, did not originate then. Pollution is a central concern of the Hebrew Bible. The pollution of the earth necessitated the primeval flood, and the pollution of the land of Israel brings exile. The chief cause of such pollution is murder, which forms a “gruesome threesome” with the other causes—serious sexual impropriety and (in Ezekiel) idolatry—and Israelite law warns the people to be careful not to pollute the land.2 Pollution of the land through bloodshed is also a concern of ancient Athenian law. Is the presence of this concern in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts a feature brought in from other Greco-Roman literature of their times, or was it an outgrowth of the biblical idea? Perhaps the answer is “yes” and “yes.” The pollution of water, on the other hand, is not an outgrowth from the Hebrew Bible. Both the Hebrew Bible and later apocalyptic literature conceive of a future redemption in which God will purify. When God redeems, God purifies. But there is an underlying question that has to be addressed: can we be sure that God will always redeem? Will future destructions always usher in new beginnings? Will there ever be a destruction of humanity, and will it involve the end of the world? Will the end of history involve an eschatological new reality? Or will it all end someday? The Hebrew Bible wrestles with this question, and with the underlying issue that it involves: does the world have a purpose? An old children ’s song expresses the difficulty of understanding this question: I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she’ll die. I know an old lady who swallowed...

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