God’s people in visions and letters: 2 Baruch and Revelation as epistolary apocalypses

The Apocalypse of John and 2 Baruch are Jewish apocalypses in which the authors and their communities wrestle with the question of what Israel’s being chosen as God’s people means in view of the destruction of the second temple and shifting historical circumstances. Both works uphold God’s faithfulness toward Israel but define it in different ways. While 2 Baruch stresses the validity of Torah, the Apocalypse of John emphasizes the role of the Messiah for his people. Both apocalypses, however, uphold that God’s people can only be defined as the people of the twelve tribes and thus try to put the Israel of their works in the closest possible continuity with the Israel of the Hebrew scriptures. On a form-critical level, visionary depictions of Israel are combined with letter-writing forms, making both works an interesting phenomenon of “epistolary apocalypses.”