incarcerated, the saints are vindicated, and then the dragon is released again. Thedragon must be released for a short time (20:3) because the activity of the dragonduring this period is necessary for God’s complete victory to be accomplished,and for the story of the dragon to harmonize with John’s sources.

mais je préfère t’adresser une demande au nom de la charité : moi, Paul, tel que je suis, un vieil homme et, qui plus est, prisonnier maintenant à cause du Christ Jésus,

of ancient canon lists and the book’stextual transmission (Markschies 2012, 115–46). While the (Western) MuratorianFragment, (perhaps not yet a real canon list) regards both Revelation and (with somereservations) the Apocalypse of Peter as accepted texts (ll. 71–73), canon 60 of theregional synod of Laodicea (perhaps in the 360s ce) does not mention Revelation ascanonical.

Oui, le NT reprend la structure conceptuelle des Rephaïm (un collectif de puissants défunts qui a une influence sur le monde des vivants), mais il renverse radicalement le signe :

Compare how nT texts bend over backwards to insist that Jesus’ resur-rection was both an individual and a collective phenomenon (Matt 27:51–53; 1 Cor15:20; Col 1:18)

group interests coincided. To think about group identity and hope was necessar-ily to think about the fate after death of these individuals.

The Persians did not imagine the rising of buried corpses, but a recreation of bod-ies from the bare elements of nature. Three centuries before a Jewish apocalypsedescribes a resurrection, herodotus attests to the Zoroastrian practice of exposingdead corpses to be picked clean by vultures and dogs (Hist. 1.140).

the hope of bodily resurrection in theearly Jewish apocalypses is discontinuous with preceding biblical tradition. itis not found in so-called apocalyptic prophecy. Contact with Zoroastrianismis sometimes posited as the impetus behind resurrection faith (e.g., see lang2008). This particular hypothesis, however, is unnecessary (see hays 2011: 331;levenson 2006)

TheZechariah authors had the image in their own Zadokite traditions of the Torah (seenum 31:23, a text of the Zadokite holiness school strand). Using this motif in no waybetrayed their heritage

ezekiel even describes a “likeness” or “semblance” of God (ezek 1:26; cf. ezek 8:2lxx ), an affront that would horrify other biblical authors (see isa 40:18, 25; 46:5). inhis visionary travels to Jerusalem (chs. 8–11), ezekiel sees the un-see-able. at 8:3 hepeers across time to observe an asherah that king Manasseh set up (2 kgs 21:7) butthat was removed by his own time (2 kgs 23:6). his visionary gaze penetrates thedepths of the underworld (ezek 32:17–32). he finds assyria relegated to the deep-est, uttermost recesses of the Pit (32:22–23; cf. isa 14:15). long before the hellenisticapocalypses, ezekiel knew that the wicked have a distinctive fate set aside for themafter death

The work of Jesuit theologian karl rahner (1904–1984) is particularly illuminatingof the above remarks. rahner is keenly concerned with transcendence, powerfullyaware of “the infinite counterpart of this earthly emptiness,” of “the frail and nar-row frame of . . . present existence” (rahner 1999: 48, 57). he explains that the truthsof transcendent reality have a backdoor entrée into perception via the archetypesknown to comparative religion and psychoanalytic study. in his philosophy, arche-types are a prethematic, “natural” witness to the transcendent plane. if this is true, nowonder apocalyptic literature avails itself of them as windows or openings out intothe absolute.

it remains true that belief in an imminent eschaton has not always led to theabolition of earthly distinctions. even communities that share possessions areoften highly authoritarian and hierarchical, as can be seen already in the dead seascrolls. but here again apocalyptic traditions are open to more than one kind ofinterpretation

master;

“The apocalypse,” writes TinaPippin, à propos of Mark 13, “is to occur by mass murder and destruction; what-ever it takes . . . why did i ever think that this apocalypse was ethically acceptable?”

Where the ancient apocalypses often arose out of crisis and persecution, their mod-ern counterparts often seem smugly self-congratulatory on the part of a presumedelect. They lack the sense of anomie and existential angst that characterizes the clas-sic apocalyptic texts (Wilder 1971: 440).

nonetheless there have been severalhigh-profile calculations in recent years, notably harold Camping’s prediction thatthe world would end on May 21, 2011 (Camping 2005) and the much-publicized endof the Mayan calendar on december 21, 2012

other intersecting ideological axis was constituted by a mythological complex thatreceived its classic literary formulation in some of the so-called apocalyptic books”(2001: 74–75). schwartz refers to his complex as “the apocalyptic myth.”

There is no doubt thatthere is continuity between biblical prophecy and apocalypticism, but there are dif-ferences too. The differences pertain especially to the degree to which the vision-ary has access to the supernatural world. isaiah or Jeremiah may have stood in thecouncil of the lord, but there are no descriptions of ascents of prophets throughthe heavens such as we find in the case of enoch.

but there is also what bernard McGinn hascalled an imperial apocalypticism, in which the coming judgment reinforces theauthority of imperial power (1979: 33–36). This appears especially in the Middle ages,but the journey of aeneas to the netherworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid, withits promise of glory for rome, may perhaps qualify as an early example.

because the Gestalt structure contains default and optionalcomponents, as well as necessary ones, individual exemplars can depart from theprototypical exemplars with respect to default and optional elements and still be rec-ognizable as an extended case of ‘that sort of text’ ”

the limitations of history.entailed in the use of mythic patterns is the sense that the course of history is notcontrolled by human actions but b

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