Apocalypticism
In intertestamental Jewish literature a special trend developed: namely, apocalypticism. Apokalypsis is a Greek term meaning “revelation of divine mysteries,” both about the nature of God and about the last days (eschatology). Apocalyptic writings were composed in both Judaism and Christianity; one of them (the Book of Daniel) was accepted in the Jewish canon and another (the book of Revelation) in the New Testament. Other apocalypses form a part of the Pseudepigrapha, and influences of apocalypticism or similar approaches are found in some of the Apocrypha. The sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls are the works of an apocalyptic movement, though not all are written in the style of apocalypses. The Sibylline Oracles are, in their Jewish passages, a part of Jewish Hellenistic literature; inasmuch as they contain eschatological prophecies of future doom and salvation, they are apocalyptic, but in their polemics against idolatry and their apology for Jewish faith, they are a product of Jewish Hellenistic propagandistic literature. Because one of the central themes of apocalypticism is that of future salvation, messianic hopes involving the advent of a deliverer are usually the object of intertestamental Jewish apocalypticism.