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The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature is unavailable, but you can change that!

Apocalyptic literature evokes an imaginative world that is set in deliberate counterpoint to the experiential world of the present. Apocalypticism thrives especially in times of crisis, and it functions by offering a resolution of the relevant crisis, not in practical terms but in terms of imagination and faith. The Apocalyptic Imagination by John Collins is one of the most widely praised...

sequences of dates, and chap. 7 is linked with chaps. 8–12. In this way chap. 7 is associated with both halves of the book and forms a bridge between them. The Hebrew chap. 1 serves to form an enclosure with the later Hebrew chapters. Whether it was specially composed for this purpose is uncertain. The concern for purity in this chapter is not repeated in the tales. Yet chap. 1 sets the scene for chaps. 2–6 but does not anticipate the concerns of chaps. 7–12. It seems somewhat more probable that
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