A00029 - The Differences between the Rabbinic and the Apocalyptic Perspectives of the Law and it Interpretation

 The writers of the apocalypses regarded the written Law and its oral interpretation in much the same way as the rabbis.  Nevertheless, there is a certain difference between the rabbinic and the apocalyptic types of thought.  They are preoccupied with different things.  To the rabbis the Law was the center around which Jewish life and thought revolved.  To spread abroad the knowledge of the Law, to extend the range of its practical application to the routine of everyday life -- in a word, to reduce the Law to practice, on the largest scale, as a rule of life for priests and people of the community of Israel, was the primary object of the rabbinical teachers.  True, they hoped for a better future; but they did not dwell unduly upon it.  The best preparation for it, and the best means for bringing it about, would be to enlarge the area of the Law's loyal adherents. The rabbinic ideal is aptly expressed in the opening paragraph of the Mishnah tractate, The Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, in the dictum ascribed to the men of the Great Synagogue.  They said three things: "Be deliberate in judgment"; and "Raise up many disciples"; and "Make a fence to the Torah".of these 

On the other hand, when we turn to the typical apocalyptic books we at once feel ourselves in a different atmosphere.  Perhaps the most striking characteristic of these books in their supernatural coloring.  The two poles of apocalyptic thought are not so much present and future, on the plane of earthly development.  Earth is but a shadow of heaven, the issues are really determined in the realm above.  The future age is conceived as a sudden irruption of celestial forces from the other world.  It is for this blinding but glorious catastrophe that the Apocalyptist longs and yearns with painful eagerness.  The other worldly spirit thus reaches, in these books, its most sublimated expression.  This supernatural coloring is also reflected in the form of the apocalyptic books.  They are full of strange and cryptic symbolism (e.g., the animal symbolism of Daniel and parts of Enoch); they employ the vision and the dream as regular vehicles for revelation; there is also a rich angelology and demonology.

Doubtless the employment of cryptograms and mystic signs (such as the number 666, and the "beast" in the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, and the "little horn" in Daniel, as symbols for Nero and Antiochus respectively was dictated partly by reasons of prudence.  Nevertheless, the particular symbols chosen reflect the mysterious character so much loved by these writers.  But the mystery is not mere literary mystification.  The Apocalyptists were conscious that divine secrets must contain in them something incomprehensible by merely finite intelligence.  This feeling often comes to expression.