obscurity of imagery, which sometimes takes the form of a grotesqueness, and of an incongruity in details, which are excusable only upon the supposi- tion that the awkward imagery was capable of the twofold task of convej'ing the meaning to those for whom it was intended, and of veiling it from others.
This obscurity of style is connected with the fact that apocalypses were, so far as we know, in nearly every case pseudonymous. Daniel was not written, like the prophecies of Isaiah or Jeremiah, to be spokeji. It was written to be read. Prob- ably in the case of the author of Daniel, the pseudonymity was due, not so much to the feeling * that he would not be accepted by his fellow- countrymen as a prophet, as to the necessity of eluding the hostility and even the suspicion of the Syrian authorities. A prophet might be arrested in the street, a living author might be traced to his desk. But what could the Syrian do with the infiuence of writings that were three centuries old ? The example of the author of Daniel made pseudonymity a fashion. Writers who had no cause to fear arrest, but some perhaps to fear neglect, wrote in the names of prophets or saints of bygone days. It is difficult for us to conceive how any one able to handle a pen could have been deceived by such fictions. On the other hand, there is a certain impressiveness in the fact that questions regarding the real state of matters (in the literary sense) do not seem to have emerged. Readers and interpreters of the apocalypses were concerned with their message for their own time. If an interpreter had thoughts of his own regarding the literary structure of an apocalypse, he sup- pressed them. His instinct told him, as its equiva- lent tells the modern preacher, that a text does not become the word of God until it is released from bondage to its historical meaning. At the same time their artificial literary style takes from the spiritual value of the apocalyptic writings. If real history, in so far as it deals with the past, is a veil — though a transparent one— between God and the spirit of the reader, the fiction of history, behind which the apocalyptic writer found it necessary (even were it in the interest of his message) to conceal himself, becomes, at least for later readers, a veil that is opaque. Parables that are puzzles can hardly be edifying. Some of the parables of Daniel are puzzles to this day. It is a question of some moment how far such criticism applies to the canonical Apocalj'pse of the NT.
Besides community in general ideas and in pseudonymity, apocah'pses have a certain com- munity in imagery. There is, as it were, a sample stock of images always accessible to the apoca- lyptist.
On the side of good, we have (to take great examples) God and His throne, angels such as Michael and Gabriel, or angelic beings resembling men (of whom the chief, when he appears at all, is the Messiah), books written with the names of the saints, the paradise of God with its trees of healing and nourishment, the new creation with its wonders specialized in the new city and temple. On the side of evil, we have Satan, the opposer, deceiver, accuser, the monster of the deep (dragon or croco- dile), wild beasts of the land, which, however, rise out of the deep, + a ' man of lawlessness ' who
* The feeling was, however, undoubtedly present. The author's appeal to ' books ' is a confession of it (Dn 9^ ; of. Jer 25iif ). See L. A. Muirhead, The Eichatology of Jesus, London, 1904, p. Tiff.
t Ct. Kev 1.3'ff-, Dn 73ff-, U Ezr. ISif-. In the last passage the figure of ' one like a man ' (the Messiah) rises from the sea, and then flies among the clouds, and the explanation is given : ' As none can find out what is in the depths of the sea, so none of the inhabitants of the earth can see my Son and his companions save at the hour of his day' (v.5f). The depth of the sea rather than the height of heaven seemed to 'Ezra' the surest
APOCALYPSE
APOCALYPSE
embodies all blasphemy, a ' great whore ' who incarnates all the abominations of the heathen world. In view of this sameness of the underlying imagery, the originality of an apocalj'ptist is to be seen more in the use of his material tlian in the material itself. The forces of good and evil remain the same, the general aspect of conflict between them — the inherent strength of God's rule and the imminent collapse of the devil's — remains to the prophetic eye the same, but persons and events change. The apocalyptist of truly prophetic spirit lias his eye fixed on God and his own time ; and, while he uses what, abstractly considered, seems a cumbrous and partly alien literary form, he does so not to exercise a literary gift but to convey a message, the urgencj^ of which lies on his spirit as a ' burden ' of the Lord. An obvious criterion of the rightfulness of iiis claim to be a prophet will be the ease and freedom with which he is able to adapt the material, imposed by his choice of the apocalyptic form, to the purpose of his message.