ABSTRACT
In modern English, the noun “apocalypse” and the related adjective “apocalyptic” have come to connote a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. So one speaks of the possibility of a nuclear apocalypse, or of the apocalyptic landscape of some futuristic films. It may come as something of a surprise, then, to learn that the underlying Greek word, apokalypsis, means simply “revelation” or “uncovering.” The catastrophic connotations of the word come from its use in the last book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse, or Revelation of St John. The Apocalypse is indeed a revelation. It reports the visions of St John, when he was in the spirit on the island called Patmos. But his revelation has a particular character. Much of it concerns visions of cosmic destruction. It culminates in a grisly banquet in which the birds of heaven are called “to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains . . . the flesh of all both free and slave, both small and great” (Rev 19:18). This is followed by the resurrection and judgment of the dead, and then the revelation of “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (21:1). Because of the content of this particular revelation, the word “apocalypse” came to refer broadly to the end of this world, or to any catastrophe of such a scale that it seems to put this world in jeopardy.
