Introduction

Summary

Kingship and messianic language and ideologies pervade the Apocalypse; however, readers rarely appreciate the extent to which this rhetoric shapes the text. The Introduction explores how and why these lenses have been relegated or ignored altogether in modern scholarship.

Perhaps most influential was F.C. Baur’s notion of the decisive victory of “Pauline” Christianity over “Petrine” Christianity, whereby the “primitive Jewish” conceptions of a coming Messiah of the latter were replaced with “universal” non-Jewish Christologies of the former. This degradation of Jewish messianism in Paul paved the way for future commentators to make even further-reaching claims. For example, Wrede argued that Jesus own self-understanding was non-messianic, while Bousset claimed that gentile Christian communities appropriated Jewish messianic claims, but divested them of their erstwhile Jewish connotations and eventually replaced them altogether.

The so-called Postwar Turn identified the anti-Jewish underpinnings of this trajectory, recognizing both the extent and importance of messianic ideologies throughout New Testament Christologies, including especially in Pauline epistles and Gospel texts.