The Encyclopedia of World Religions

24 S Apocrypha

That sparked the Maccabean revolt. Daniel’s vision predicts this abomination will last only 1,150 days. Indeed, after about three and a half years the Mac cabeans expelled the Seleucids and rededicated the temple. That event is celebrated in the Jewish festival of H ANUKKAH . Some scholars speculate that apocalyptic lit erature has roots in Z OROASTRIANISM . Zoroastrian ism was the official religion of the Persians, who freed the Jewish people from exile in Babylon. It envisions a final battle in which good defeats evil. Apocalyptic literature also has its roots in the visions of ancient prophets. A good example is I SA IAH ’s vision of G OD ’s heavenly throne (Isaiah 6). The earliest apocalypse may be as old as the 300s B . C . E . But most Jewish apocalypses addressed the uncertain time from the Maccabean revolt to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C . E . Apocalyptic thinking assured people whose political fortunes were uncertain that God was on their side. After 70 C . E . rabbinical Judaism largely rejected apocalyptic thinking. Apocalyptic thinking also appealed to a dif ferent movement that grew out of late Second Temple Judaism: Christianity. The GOSPELS of Mat thew, Mark, and Luke ascribe a minor apocalypse to Jesus himself (Mark 13.5–37 and parallel pas sages). It seems to refer to the siege of J ERUSA LEM and the destruction of the Temple. The New Testament book of Revelation is only one of sev eral apocalypses that the earliest Christians used. Ancient Gnostics also wrote apocalyptic literature. Three of them—the apocalypses of Peter, Paul, and James—were found among the Nag Hammadi Codices in 1945. At the end of the 20th century apocalyptic lit erature still exercised its fascination. It did so in several ways. Many fundamentalist Christians adopted a point of view known as “dispensationalism” ( see E VANGELICAL C HRISTIANITY and F UNDAMENTALISM , C HRISTIAN ). They divided history into several “dis pensations” and read biblical prophecies, espe cially the book of Revelation, as predicting current events. Some recent popular literature has made much of the RAPTURE , an apocalyptic motif.

Apocalyptic ideas and images are not, how ever, limited to these Christians. A popular book about indigenous Americans, Black Elk Speaks, records a great vision that resembles ancient apoc alyptic literature in many respects. Science fiction also develops apocalyptic themes. Further reading: Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Popular Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Stephen Cook, The Apocalyptic Literature (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003); Amy Frykholm, Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); D. S. Russell, Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). Apocrypha Books that Protestants do not recog nize as part of the Old Testament but that Roman Catholics and some Orthodox churches do. Apocry pha is a Greek word meaning “hidden.” Protestants use it for several books that they do not accept as biblical. Catholics prefer the term deuterocanoni cal. This term means that although the books were not part of the first canon of the Old Testament, they are still authoritative. The books in the Apoc rypha are Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also known as the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach), Baruch (including the Letter of J ER EMIAH ), and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with addi tions to the book of E STHER and three additions to the book of D ANIEL (The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon). Other apocryphal books that the Roman Catholic Church does not accept as deuterocanoni cal are: 1 and 2 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, The Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151. WHY IS THERE AN APOCRYPHA? C HRISTIANITY came into existence before the con tent of the Hebrew scriptures had been fixed ( see SCRIPTURES , H EBREW ). Because the earliest Christians spoke Greek, they used as their Old Testament a Greek version of Hebrew writings known as the