Stephen Barkley
One of my students asked a great question in class this week: “Why isn’t Daniel considered one of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible?” Well, that’s because he isn’t—not exactly. There’s a common misconception that prophets are primarily future-tellers. By this logic, Daniel most certainly does belong with the prophets. But read Daniel alongside Hosea (for example)—the difference is obvious. Daniel’s an apocalypse of the same genre as Revelation and other noncanonical books like 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. John J. Collins provides an detailed, scholarly, yet clearly written introduction to apocalyptic literature in his Apocalyptic Imagination.
Apocalyptic is a broad genre with a variety of features. Collins defines apocalyptic as:
a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another supernatural world. (5)
Apocalypses shake down into two main categories, although the boundaries are not rigid (7):
- Otherworldly journeys (e.g., Testament of Abraham, 2 Enoch, 1 Enoch 1–36)
- “Historical” apocalypses (e.g., Daniel, 2 Baruch, Jubilees)
Beyond those two basic categories, Collins lists many other identifying features of the genre including the judgment of the wicked, acknowledgment of persecution, and cosmic transformation.
After defining the apocalyptic genre in chapter one, Collins devotes chapters to the main apocalyptic works. Casual Christian readers will be most interested in the chapters on Daniel and Early Christianity, but each chapter effectively contributes the reader’s understanding of the genre as a whole.
Published as part of the “Biblical Resource Series,” The Apocalyptic Imagination provides readers with everything they need to read and more fully grasp these commonly misunderstood works.
Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998.
