Apocalypse originally meant revelation, not the end of the world
To scholars, an apocalypse is not a catastrophe at all. The Greek word means an unveiling: a heavenly messenger shows a human secrets about the cosmos, the past or the future. The Book of Daniel, written in the 2nd century BCE under the name of a 6th-century hero, is the classic example.
The genre grew up in Judaism in the centuries after the Babylonian exile and carried on in Christianity and Islam, flourishing roughly between 250 BCE and 250 CE. Its revelations arrive through dreams, visions, angels and journeys through the heavens, and the texts are thick with symbolic imagery, histories divided into periods, and numerology such as the number of the beast in Revelation. The scholar John J. Collins defines it as revelatory literature in which an otherworldly being discloses a transcendent reality, both a coming salvation and a supernatural world.
Canonical examples are rare. In the Hebrew Bible the only clear case is chapters 7 to 12 of Daniel, and in the New Testament the Book of Revelation stands alone, though traces run through the gospels and Paul's letters. Earlier prophets such as Ezekiel and Zechariah show a transition, and ancient Near Eastern myth supplied images like the sea as chaos. Zoroastrian dualism may also have contributed, and some attribute the growing idea of rebellious angelic rulers of nations to Persian influence.
Almost every apocalypse except John's used a borrowed name. Pseudonymity may have won acceptance for new writings, shielded authors from reprisals, or reflected a sincere sense of writing on behalf of a revered figure. The genre often surged in crises: Daniel's final vision reflects the persecution of Jews in the 2nd century BCE, while 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch respond to the Temple's destruction in 70 CE.
Apocalyptic writers differed from the prophets in mood. Prophets called the nation to repent and escape judgment within a future growing out of the present; apocalyptists despaired of a corrupt present and counselled patience until God's new world arrived. Delayed promises fed the style, such as Jeremiah's seventy years, which later readers linked to Daniel's seventy weeks of years. One scheme even read the six days of creation as six thousand years of history, followed by a thousand-year rest.
Source: Apocalypse
