WHAT IS APOCALYPTIC?
The question needs answering because biblical scholars regard Matt 24, Mk 13, Lk 21 as apocalyptic literature. What is addressed in this paper contradicts some important aspects of what modern scholarship might regard as biblically, exegetically, and prophetically correct. This paper also challenges some insistent fundamentalist assumptions about end-time prophecy. The editor, James H. Charlesworth, in the two-volume THE OLD TESTAMENT Pseudepigrapha (Doubleday: 1983) says: “Apocalyptic-from the Greek word apokalupsis meaning “revelation” or “disclosure”-is an adjective that has been used to describe both a certain type of literature and a special feature of religions in late antiquity. Unfortunately there is presently no consensus regarding precise definition of this adjective; confusion sometimes arises because it is employed frequently in contradictory ways. The Old Testament contains only one apocalypse: the book of Daniel. The New Testament adds only one more: the book of Revelatio
