Page - 99 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

This belief in the end of days penetrated Christianity mainly through the book of Revelation, the Revelation of John. This book was heavily influenced by the apocalyptic revelations of Daniel, which became a kind of model for all the vi- sionary revelations that came after it: “And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall be” (Dan. 8:19). The things described in Daniel’s vision became a cornerstone of historical perception in Western culture. Empires come and empires go, colliding with one another and replacing each other in turn, but this essential structure is the singular purpose that binds this process in an inevita- ble movement towards the end. The Revelation of John consists of a series of visions composed sometime around the end of the first century CE and attrib- uted to John of Patmos, Jesus’s beloved apostle. It was a call for Christians to persevere in their faith and to look forward to the final triumph over their ene- mies. According to Christian dogma, the history of mankind begins with the Fall, the original sin in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s subsequent exile, and continues through to the final salvation. The foundations laid in the book of Daniel were elaborated upon towards the end of the Second Temple period, just before the Temple’s destruction.13 There are those who maintain that this literature was written out of despair and loss of faith in daily religious worship as having an influence on the salvation of the individual and of the nation.14 The idea of the apocalypse in the New Testament is rooted in the Old Testament,15 and this fact raises two somewhat contradic- tory points: the Christian conception of apocalyptic time is not possible without the basic assumption of biblical time, but at the same time it requires a sharp deviation from the way time is perceived in the Old Testament, perhaps even a rupture.16 The Hebrew Bible, unlike many ancient eastern cultures, ignores the supernatural and places the human experience within one-dimensional, earthly time. In such a view of time, the end of days is included as part of historical real- ity. The Old Testament sources put forth not a coherent vision of salvation but rather a series of apocalyptic motifs which place an emphasis on the momentum towards salvation and redemption in the last days. Joseph Klausner stressed that the Israelites were the only ancient people who had a messianic outlook, and this legacy, he claims, was passed on to the Western world by way of Christianity.17 13 Flusser identifies a link between ancient Christianity and certain schools of thought in Second Temple era Judaism. His overall conclusion is that Jesus himself associated with the sages and that there is a common denominator between Jesus’s philosophy and different factions of Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period, including patterns of belief concerning the end of days. See Flusser 2009, 131–132. 14 Dan 2000, 38. 15 Efron 2004, 269–270. 16 Dan 2009. 17 Klausner 1926. Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time | 99www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116