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Presentation
The Editors

Catastrophes of all kinds have marked and are still marking the times in which we are living. The media present to us in frightening images these horrors and crimes, as well as the imbalance in the realm of nature which humanity thought it was conquering, and which seems now to drag it along paths it would have preferred not
to enter. These are the reasons for our fear, and we cannot help asking ourselves whether these upsetting facts are not in reality precursory signs of the end of the world!
We speak frequently of "apocalyptic" events as though the word were synonymous with cataclysms linked with the last days. The real meaning of the word, however, whether it be in biblical or apocryphal writings, is first and foremost, etymologically speaking, an account of a "revelation", going back to the origins of the prophetic genre.
Like prophecy, its source is in history, even if it seems to be more interested in scrutinizing the heavens than in being involved in earthly realities. In a certain sense it follows the prophetic manner of expression in so far as it appeals to the imagination and to symbols to convey its message of faith.
This type of literature developed during moments of crisis when it seemed that life's situation was without hope, at least from a human point of view. This is true for the prophets such as Daniel and for all authors of Jewish apocalypses, for Christian apocalyptic writers of the primitive Church and for many others after them dawn to our own day. The tendency to apocalyptic literature is not, in fact,
"a religious phenomenon limited to Judaism alane. During the same period we see everywhere in non-Jewish circles as well analogous currents of thought centered on the expectation of salvation and marked by a strong tendency to consider that the end of the world has arrived."
K. Hruby: Orient Syrien 1966, vol. XI, fasc. 3, N. 43
Such currents are very much alive today.
We often imagine that the message of apocalyptic literature is one of misfortune, despair, of the end of time; but Jewish and Christian apocalypses, including the apocryphal ones, are always shot through with a spirit of faith. They are a "revelation" from God, delivering a message of hope in him who, through all the vicissitudes of history, intervenes to save humanity and who will manifest himself at the end of the ages.
It is interesting to remark that, if official Judaism has finally rejected apocalyptic (let it enter into an eclipse, as Joseph Stiassny says), Christianity on the other hand has been strongly marked by it. The Revelation (Apocalypse) of John, among others, has always exercised a deep influence on Christians, an apocalypse which Christians of
our day, anguishing over "apocalyptic" occurrences, would do well to reflect upon more than they do, as Mary Travers suggests (cf. p. 33).
All of us, Christians and Jews, feel the effects of the apocalyptic thinking of intertestamental times, especially in what concerns eschatology. To it we owe a good number of our expressions, images, concepts. We await, for example, the end of time, the resurrection of the dead, the coming of the Messiah and the glorious establishment of the kingdom of God.