by
Ted Daniels, Ph.D.
Electronic version copyright © Ted Daniels 1997. All rights reserved
Originally published in Millennialism: An International Bibliography
by Garland Publishing New York, 1992. Reproduced here by permission.
URL for this article is http://www.
27. Aune, David C. The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity. Leiden: E.J. Brill, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, vol. XXVIII. 1972.
Christ viewed the Kingdom of God as both present and to come. The earliest church's Christ-cult believed that the eschaton had already happened with allowance for the continuance of history. This view is functionally equivalent to protology. This work is concerned with the writings of the earliest church fathers and is of interest mostly to specialists.
- 28. ———. Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983.
A study of the social place of prophets at the time of Jesus and before and of the special rhetoric of various kinds of prophecy. Features of the genre are pseudonymity, reports of visions, history reviews presented as prophecies, number speculation, the interpreting angel, frequent allusions to but no quotes from the OT, and deliberate attempts to present the work as revelation. Religious features include imminent eschatology, pessimism, spatial and temporal dualism, determinism, secrecy, a longing for personal salvation and an emphasis on detailed knowledge of the physical and metaphysical universe.
All are attributed to canonical authors; this practice was widespread at the time. There are a lot of theories which attempt to account for this. Seldom were attributions made to actual prophets, which may suggest that these authors did not think themselves or their work comparable. Aune concludes that this was a legitimizing device, since it occurs in conjunction with others that can also be seen that way: e.g., their secrecy: these books are supposed to be sealed until the end of time. This in turn suggests that this was not cult literature. [This distinction seems curious; esotericism is fairly typical of cults].
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