I have recently taken to doing my one hour of government-mandated exercise in a balaclava and heels, because I feel like if the world is ending, I should at least have a decent uniform. I’m hoping the trend will catch on because so far this apocalypse’s aesthetic is rather dry.
The unfolding events are not nearly as exciting as any of the hellscapes I’ve seen portrayed in the media. Where is Tina Turner running a motorbike death club in the desert, like in Mad Max 2: Beyond Thunderdome? Where are the human beings who magically evolved gills to live under the sea, like in Waterworld?
Apparently I am not the only one having such thoughts. Book retailers are struggling to keep up with skyrocketing demand for end-of-the-world disaster literature. The boredom of helplessly enduring a plague from our bedrooms has obviously made us all hungry for a more dramatic news cycle.
But when it comes to cataclysms, I’m a hipster. Stephen King and Justin Cronin won’t do it for me. I need the oldschool disasters. And I’m not talking about the Christians’ Revelation of St John. That’s far too normie and mainstream.
No. Jews were coming up with catastrophic visions for the end of days before they were cool. If you want to get a taste of the original disaster fiction, it doesn’t get much more vintage apocalypse than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Some time around the 2nd Century BCE, a group of pious sectarians1 gathered together in caves where they had very little contact with the outside world. They obsessed over cleanliness and physical purity, ensuring that they were fully washed before undertaking any activity.2 They physically distanced themselves even from each other and lived a life of regimented, hierarchical discipline.3 The World Health Organisation would have loved them.
While in these caves, they wrote, preserved and protected ancient scrolls. Some of them are familiar to us, because they appear in the Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha. But they also composed some works that were wholly their own. Most significantly, these guys kickstarted apocalyptic fantasy as a genre. They wrote reams of prophetic texts imagining the final unravelling of history.
These scrolls were lost to us for nearly 2000 years. They would have remained so, were it not for a chance happening in 1946. Three Bedouin shepherds were grazing their goats in the Jordanian desert. One fell into a cave and stumbled upon clay jars containing some of the texts. The Arab Legion then followed up by searching the whole area, discovering multiple caves, each containing manuscripts.
And among those manuscripts were some of the most imaginative descriptions of the end of the world. Their works gave rise to the original meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’. Every other attempt at eschatology in theWestern traditions was riffing off this bass line.
Take this as an example:
They know not the mystery to come, nor do they understand the things of the past. They know not that which shall befall them, nor do they save their soul from the mystery to come. And this shall be the sign for you that these things shall come to pass.
When the breed of iniquity is shut up, wickedness shall then be banished by righteousness as darkness is banished by the light. As smoke clears and is no more, so shall wickedness perish for ever and righteousness be revealed like a sun governing the world. All who cleave to the mysteries of sin shall be no more; knowledge shall fill the world and folly shall exist no longer. This word shall surely come to pass; this prophecy is true. And by this may it be known to you that it shall not be taken back.4
But hang on a second. This apocalypse doesn’t contain any zombies or plagues or destruction either. If anything, it sounds like quite a good thing. The end of wickedness and sin. The triumph of goodness and knowledge. There’s hardly any of the misery and gore I was looking for here.
There must be another, more awful story that I can refer to. Let me just rummage around in these pots. One of these caves must have some gorgons and dragons. Oh, here we go. Here’s a fragment from a text that the scholars have named ‘The Messianic Apocalypse’. This should be a good one:
Seekers of the Eternal One, strengthen yourselves in God’s service! All you hopeful in your hearts, will you not find the Eternal One in this? For the Eternal One will consider the loving and call the righteous by name. Over the poor will God’s spirit will hover and renew the faithful with strength […] The One who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the bent, forever will I cleave to the hopeful and to God’s mercy.5
But this isn’t devastation and destruction either. This is… optimistic.
Even in the places where they talk about death and war, the focus is on the ultimate triumph of the good guys:
Oppression will come to the earth and a great massacre in the provinces. Like the sparks of the vision, so will be their kingdom. They will reign for years on the earth and they will trample all. People will trample people and one province another province until the people of God will arise and all will rest from the sword. The people of God’s kingdom will be an eternal kingdom and all their paths will be in truth. They will judge the earth in truth and all will make peace. The sword will cease from the earth, and all the provinces will pay homage to them. The Great God is their helper, who will wage war for them. Their dominion will be an eternal dominion.6
The people who hid out in caves in the Jordanian desert over 2000 years ago really did write the first ever apocalypses. But they look nothing like what we imagine by the genre today. The word ‘apocalypse’ is a Greek translation of the Aramaic ‘gilayon’, literally meaning ‘revelation’. It is an expression of how God’s will for the world is revealed. So it’s up to us to decide how we understand that. If we think humanity is on the brink of a major change, we have a choice about how to interpret it.
Sci-fi, storytelling and religious myths can tell us different narratives about the world. We can use them to say that everything is going to be terrible or we can use them to say that everything will be wonderful. We can use them to talk about the end of the world or we can use them to talk about the beginning of a new one. An apocalypse, as imagined by the genre’s originators, can be a cause for hope and liberation.
Maybe it’s time I stopped complaining this isn’t the apocalypse I want, and started turning it into the one the world needs. Either way, I’ll be doing it in heels.
Chag Pesach kasher vsameach. Happy Passover everyone.
I wrote this sermon for Pesach 5780.
1Probably. We don’t really know.
24Q274
34Q256:5
41Q27
54Q521:2
64Q246:2
Sim Lev 