Historical Settings Of Apocalyptic Texts

Since the beginning of the Judaism, the Jewish people have been subject to hardships and discrimination. They have not been allowed to have a stabile place of worship and have also faced persecution and atrocities that most of us can not even imagine. Three events that have had a big impact on the Jewish faith were the building and destruction of the First Great Temple, the Second Great Temple and the events of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will discuss these three events and also explain and give examples as to why I feel that the Jewish people have always been discriminated against and not allowed the freedom of worship.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is known as one of his greatest theological works. It has been passed down for thousands of years and is still just as relevant today as it was in Paul’s time. How exactly is it relevant the modern day Christian may ask? What with its harsh language that includes strong sentences such as “the wages of sin is death” (6:23) and “the wrath of God” (1:18) one may say that the times have changed. Some may say that these issues in Paul’s time are acceptable in society today. Jesus is all loving not wrathful. What exactly is the Christian to think? The purpose of this short essay is to examine how the Book of Romans relates to the Christian in the twenty-first century and how it helps to shape his worldview.

Before we can totally dive into how the Temple destruction changed Judaism, we must gain some knowledge of the Jewish faith itself, as well as Jewish terms. One of the first ideas many people may discover about the term “Jew” is its lack of use in the Old Testament scriptures.

Throughout the history of the world, the Jewish people have been persecuted and oppressed because of their religious beliefs and faith. Many groups of people have made Jews their scapegoat. Jews have suffered from years of intolerance because people have not understood what the religion really means. They do not understand where and why the religion began, nor the customs of it's people. For one to understand the great hardships, triumphs, and history of the Jewish people one must open-mindedly peruse a greater knowledge of the Jewish people and faith.

With now an empty spot for theological views in the book of Revelation, Rossing goes on to give the book of Revelation a message of hope. She frames the book of revelation as an anti-Roman piece of literature. As Rome was brutality conquering and controlling its people she believed

There is no other culture on planet Earth more oppressed throughout human history than the Jewish people. From their hardships in the Middle East recounted in the Torah and Bible to the infamous event known as the Holocaust, the suffering that the Jewish people have faced is incalculable. One of the few silver linings that forms through oppression is the strong expression of culture. Jewish culture has grown exponentially since 1900, and the events of the Holocaust brought the Jewish community as close as it was in the ancient times.

Although it is argued that rabbis began work on compiling the oral histories prior to the fall of the Second Temple, there was a definite resurgence in documentation of the important history and moral laws of Judaism after the fall. The most important of these written documents in the Jewish faith is the Hebrew Bible. This bible is comprised of the Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim, these three components combine to make up the Tanakh. The Torah is the core of the Hebrew Bible and contains the story of creation, as well as directions on daily conduct and religious rituals. The Nevi’im contains the stories of prophets. The prophets were people that spoke on behalf of God to the Jewish people. Lastly, the Ketuvim is comprised of mostly imaginative literature such as psalms, proverbs and poetry (Molloy, 294). Shifting the focus from priests and temple to a written work that is accessible to all regardless of location was the main adaptation of Judaism and certainly saved the faith. Although the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible is debatable, as some stories may have morphed from their origination to when they were assembled in writing, the bible still remains at the core of Judaism today.

The Second World War is seen by the modern world to be the most famous war that shaped the communities of the world today, but for the Jewish community in Europe at the time this was the war to fight for their own existence. The Holocaust was the systematic extinction of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2. Of the millions of Jewish people that lost their lives there were many that did resist and did escape the Nazism and Nazi racial policy that was conducted on the Jewish lives throughout the war. There were different ways the Jews did resist through different dimensions of wellbeing, through uprising in the ghettos and camps in a stretch to revolting against their German captivators whilst secretly keeping their spiritual and religious beliefs as something that the Nazis could never physically take from them. The Jews showed resistance to German control also by escaping the camps, and creating Armies and Partisan Groups to fight back. In the findings I was able to establish an understanding of the different ways during the war the Jews managed to create upheaval and resist German authority and the fact that a percentage were able to resist.

Levine’s book titled The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus proves to be a highly informative resource when trying to understand the intricate relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Levine’s primary objective seems to be a desire to address the idea that there is a vast, irreconcilable disparity between the beliefs and practices of Christians and Jews. Levine’s central argument focuses upon a common misperception of this dissimilarity: it is the result of Jesus being in direct opposition to Judaism. Furthermore, she contends that only a decided openness and interfaith dialogue between Christianity and Judaism can truly provide the most complete and compelling portrait of Jesus’s life and work. To me, the most edifying facet of Levine’s argument was her call to anchor Jesus within the historical and cultural context in which he was teaching in order to best understand his work and his message. Levine not only provides support for this idea throughout The Misunderstood Jew, but near the end of the novel also offers up ways in which both Christians and Jews can reconcile these two ostensibly conflicting perceptions of Jesus. Therefore, in this essay, I will analyze Levine’s arguments regarding the importance of historical/cultural context in Chapter One and Chapter Four while synthesizing it with her solutions presented in Chapter Seven.

The book of Revelation, written in c. 95 A.D. by John the apostle, was written to Christians who were facing increasing hostility from the Roman Empire, which was beginning to enforce the cult of emperor worship. John had been exiled to the island of Patmos for his activities as a Christian missionary. The book of Revelation is considered apocalyptic literature, a kind of writing that is highly symbolic, but the book itself provides a number of clues for its own interpretation. There are several purposes of the book of Revelation, including encouraging believers by showing the final outcome of God 's plan, showing the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and revealing Christ in all his glory. John writes to encourage the faithful to resist the demands of emperor worship and hold fast to God 's promises: that the final showdown between God and Satan is imminent, the believers are sealed against spiritual harm and will be vindicated when Christ returns, the wicked will be forever destroyed, and God 's people will enter an eternity of glory and blessedness. In this vision that John receives, he is shown many things about the final judgment to come and the establishment of the Messiah 's kingdom. The vision begins with Jesus giving a command for John to write letters to seven churches addressing problems that are common to most churches across the world (chapters 2-3). Chapter 5 introduces a book, or scroll, with seven seals that represent seven judgments. This begins the

A common adage is that the pen is mightier than the sword. The amount of power that a pen truly holds can be observed by viewing the influence writing has had on the formation of the Jewish state of Israel. Before there was a Jewish state, around the time of 1,300 BCE there was a Jewish nation that rose up in response to Moses’ leadership and contribution of the Torah. Over 3,000 years later, Theodor Herzl’s pamphlet “The Jewish State” sparked the nationalist movement of Zionism that eventually led to the formation of the state of Israel. The immense impact written works can have on the development of nations and eventually states is exhibited through the influence of Moses’ writing of the Torah and Herzl’s creation of “The Jewish State” on

Once a faith centered on priesthood, sacrificial rituals, communal gatherings and oral traditions, the people of the Jewish religion decided to restructure the faith around written scripture. Although it is argued that rabbis began work on compiling the oral histories prior to the fall of the Second Temple, there was a marked resurgence in documentation of the important history and moral laws of Judaism after the fall (Molloy, 291). The Jewish people felt a sense of urgency to finish the written works. They believed the incorporation of written word into Judaism would help to solidify their place in the religious world, as well as make the faith easier to correctly interpret among their own vastly dispersed people (BBC, 2009).

Over thousands of years, the religion of Judaism has evolved. With years of suffering, persecution, and dispersion the Jews’ religion stays constant. When researching the religion, the history is extremely strong, and the doctrine of the religion dates back thousands of years. With such a vast history, one might want to examine the change into modern society.

In comparison to this, the section of the Hebrew Scriptures known as ‘prophecy’ is a far harder collection from which to discern common threads in the sense of genre or content. Set as a continuation of the greater biblical narrative, the Prophecy section is best understood when divided further into two parts, that of the former prophets and the later prophets . The former prophets consist of the books of Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 kings and are generally referred to as ‘deutero-historical books’, expressing the role the theology of Deuteronomy plays in its

Zechariah, experience many visions as we read this great book it puts us in the mind set of an Revelation or Daniel. It’s hard not to get caught up in the apocalyptic style of writing. The writer sucks you in to this almost dream world before you have to pull back and reexamine were you were and the real message that he’s conveying. To keep it simple his message was about encouraging the people to finish what they had started. Rebuilding the temple, throwing in the golden nuggets about the Messiah would come.