It follows from all this that there is no justification for seeing ‘apocalyptic’ as necessarily speaking of the ‘end of the world’ in a literally cosmic sense. This modern idea has regularly been fuelled by the belief that ‘apocalyptic’ is ‘dualistic’, in a way which we have now seen to be unfounded. The great bulk of apocalyptic writing does not suggest that the space-time universe is evil, and does not look for it to come to an end. An end to the present world order, yes: only such language, as Jeremiah found, could do justice to the terrible events of his day.42 The end of the space-time
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