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The Apocalyptic Background
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6 The Apocalyptic Background In this chapter, I have two aims in mind. I want to refer back to the Essenes, because I believe that a greater knowledge of this sect will help us to arrive at an understanding of the relationship between John’s Gospel and its author’s Jewish contemporaries. But I will be focusing particularly on the Gospel’s affinity to a manner of thinking, left unmentioned until now, that emerged relatively late in the long history of Judaism but is clearly discernible in the Qumran corpus. This way of thinking, which rests on the conviction succinctly expressed by the prophet Daniel that “there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries” (2:28), is what we call apocalyptic. This word is commonly used to mean something ominous, portentous, or doom-laden. But I use it here, in a sense much closer to the Greek word from which it is derived, to mean revelatory: having to do with the disclosure of mysteries. Applied to the thought and writing of Jewish seers and scribes, it refers to their belief that God’s revelation did not cease with the Law and the Prophets or with what more generally was accepted as Scripture (which would have to include the Psalms, and also wisdom writings such as Proverbs and the book of Job). God continued to be “a God who reveals mysteries.” Accordingly, I propose to take a fresh look at a topic I discussed more than twenty years ago in a chapter of my book Understanding the Fourth Gospel entitled “Intimations of Apocalyptic.” I argued in my earlier work that there were notable affinities between the Gospel of John and apocalyptic literature. Since that book was written I have considerably revised my views on this topic; but still believing that the comparison is illuminating, I will discuss it, as I did before, under four headings, starting with the Two Ages. The Two Ages The topic can be usefully addressed through the Dead Sea Scrolls, in particular through one very significant text: the Habakkuk pesher. The prophet’s 97 complaint to God, right at the beginning of this little book (consisting of three short chapters), that “the wicked [singular] besets the righteous” (1:4), gives the author of the pesher the immediate opportunity of identifying the wicked as “the Wicked Priest” and the righteous as “the Teacher of Righteousness.” This is the rivalry, or rather enmity, that really concerned him, although it had nothing to do with what the prophet is actually saying. In the following verse, God, through the mouth of the prophet, responds: “I am doing a work in your days that if told you would not believe” (1:5), and goes on (1:6-11) to speak of the Chaldeans, whom he is rousing up to perform acts of terrible violence. The commentator, however, takes these two verses separately, interpreting the Chaldeans, or Neo-Babylonians, the big threat during Habakkuk’s lifetime, around the end of the seventh century bce, to mean the Kittim (that is, the Romans, who controlled the whole of the Near East throughout the duration of the Qumran settlement),1 and the incredulous in v. 5 (actually the people the prophet was addressing centuries earlier) to refer to those among the contemporaries of the Teacher of Righteousness who refused to listen to the word received by him from the mouth of God. Underlying and justifying what to a modern reader looks like a blatant disregard for the real meaning of the text is the conviction that the prophet’s message is not for the people of his own time but for what the commentator calls “the final generation,” that is to say his own contemporaries. The reason for this conviction is clarified later, in a comment on Hab. 2:1-2: and God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but he did not make known to him when time would come to an end. And as for that which he said, That he who reads may run with it (read it speedily): interpreted this concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of his servants the prophets. (1QpHab 7:1-5) “. . . to whom God made known all the mysteries of his servants the prophets.” A similar boast occurs in one of the Hodayot (Songs of Praise), where the author speaks of himself as “a discerning interpreter of marvelous mysteries” (1QH 10:13...