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May 31 - July 6, 2025
the Roman Empire in Asia Minor offered Christians the opportunity to assimilate into imperial culture and look to the pax romana as their source of peace and prosperity, an assimilation John sees as incompatible with allegiance to Christ.
Being generally unaware of the literature produced during the Second Temple period, many assume that the so-called “silent years” between the Testaments witnessed little to no development beyond the inherited traditions
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Such readers therefore overlook early Jewish literature because they assume that the New Testament was written in a literary and theological vacuum.
For others, this avoidance is a matter of canonicity. Although aware of the existence of extrabiblical Jewish literature, these readers often consider ancient religious books lying outside of Scripture to be theologically irrelevant or even dangerous. Accordingly, they bar these works from hermeneutical consideration, basing such avoidance on their commitment to s...
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many remain unsure how these noncanonical texts can be studied profitably alongside the Bible.
the rewards for even nonspecialists studying Second Temple texts far outweigh the challenges and supposed risks of doing so.
it would be altogether extravagant to call the Apocrypha the keystone of the two Testaments, it is not too much to regard these intertestamental books as an historical hyphen that serves a useful function in bridging what to most readers of the Bible is a blank of several hundred years. To neglect what the Apocrypha have to tell us about the development of Jewish life and thought during those critical times is as foolish as to imagine that one can understand the civilization and culture of America today by passing from colonial days to the twentieth century without taking into account the
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the appropriate solution to the misuse of comparative literature is not its outright dismissal but responsible handling by students of Scripture.
comparative studies are (or should be) just as interested in exposing the theological differences between texts as observing their similarities.
To interpret Revelation responsibly, then, students must not ignore Second Temple Jewish literature, but engage it with frequency, precision, and a willingness to acknowledge theological continuity and discontinuity.
Instead, generation after generation witnessed subjugation and suffering at the hands of still other foreign powers—namely, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome—and these experiences significantly colored the texts these Jews produced.
The Seleucid Kingdom in particular, under the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167 BC, raided Jerusalem (1 Macc 1:20–40), desecrated the temple (1:47, 54, 59), outlawed observance of the covenant (1:41–53), and prohibited possession of the Torah (1:56–57).
Jewish resistance that arose in response (the Maccabean Revolt, 167–160 BC) resulted in the Jews’ repossession of the land, rededication of the temple, and institution of the festival of Hanukkah (1 Macc 4:36–59; Josephus, Ant. 12.316–25).
In addition to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and what later became known as the Apocrypha, the LXX also includes, in certain copies, the books of 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, the Psalms of Solomon, and Odes of Solomon (including the Prayer of Manasseh).
Pseudepigrapha (meaning “falsely attributed writings”)
neither the Wisdom of Solomon nor Psalms of Solomon were authored by Israel’s third king, though they bear his name.
an alternative and more descriptive way to group these writings is according to genre.
early Jewish literary genres is apocalypse, which normally consists of otherworldly visions given to a human recipient (seer) through the mediation of a supernatural, sometimes angelic, being.
Most Jewish apocalypses were written in the second and third centuries BC during times of great distress.
For the most comprehensive overview of early Jewish literature, see Craig A. Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005),
See also David W. Chapman and Andreas J. Köstenberger, “Jewish Intertestamental and Early Rabbinic Literature: An Annotated Bibliographic Resource Updated (Part 1),”
Bauckham, Richard, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov, eds. Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.
Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.
Helyer, Larry R. Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period: A Guide for
New Testament Students. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
Nickelsburg, George W. E. Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011.
Revelation’s Son of Man, therefore, may be understood as a more exalted figure than that of the Parables, perhaps even sharing in the divine identity.
This concern over the accumulation of wealth
among the people of God finds significant parallels in the Second Temple literature, especially those works that are apocalyptic in nature. The most obvious parallels are found in the Epistle of Enoch.
Within the epistle, the rich are categorically deemed wicked. Any expectation of material blessing for the righteous
is pushed into the future eschatological age.
example, 1 Enoch 96:4 says: “Woe to you sinners for your riches give you the appearance of righteousness but your hearts convict you of being sinners, and this fact will serve against you—a testament to your evil deeds!”7
The term in chapters 17–18 refers not to sexual immorality but to the economic activity of the kings of the earth and the merchants who have grown rich from the luxurious lifestyle of Babylon (18:3).
John opposes the idea that the pious and faithful can accumulate individual wealth through activity with the immoral Roman Empire while remaining faithful to God.
not simply because he sees the Roman world as evil, but because of his apocalyptic worldview that understands the present age as one in which the wicked flourish while the righteous suffer.
Their triumph is bound up with that of the faithful Lamb who also conquered through death (3:21; 5:5–6). And it is through his death that he is said to be worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (5:12).
This does not mean that John is asking his readers to become martyrs. What he is demanding is that they separate themselves from the evil world system in the present age and its promises of peace and prosperity, and that they instead follow the slaughtered Lamb wherever he may lead.
John envisions the world in the present age as irretrievably evil and ruled temporarily by Satan.
like antecedent apocalyptic traditions (the epistle in particular), John utilizes the rhetorical device of imputed speech that labels rich sinners and exposes their perverted worldview, while also revealing the consequences for their alliances (3:17; 18:7).
unlike the epistle, which makes no accommodation for repentance for rich sinners, John calls for both repentance and conquering.
the remainder of the Apocalypse, which portrays the world not as it is but as it should be, suggests that unless God’s people repent and conquer, they will prove themselves to be as false as the teachers they are following. They will find themselves aligned with the dragon and his beasts.
The very nature of the eschatological age, as John sees it, is that people will be lured into seeking affluence in order to find some sense of false security and establish their self-sufficiency.
Bold claim
This pursuit of wealth bears upon them the mark of Satan.
John is encouraging the rich in the church to reject riches in the present age and receive the reproof and discipline of God (3:19), which reflects an alternative, otherworldly economic system.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs were preserved and handed down not in Jewish circles, but in Christian circles. The oldest complete manuscripts were produced by Christian scribes. They bear the unmistakable mark of Christian convictions about Jesus as the promised heir of Judah and Levi through whom God’s deliverance would come to God’s people.
Scholars are divided concerning the extent to which the Testaments offer a window into pre-Christian Judaism.
the Testaments regularly echo many traditions found in early Jewish texts but they do not echo early Christian literature, with which the authors seem entirely unfamiliar.
The Testaments thus remain an important witness to pre-Christian Jewish exegesis, ethics, and eschatology.
John’s images are admittedly stranger than those presented in Testament of Levi, but this is due to John’s weaving in significant elements from the more colorful visions of God’s throne and God’s heavenly attendants in the older vision reports of Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6.
