16 Sept 2026
2.1 John J. Collins - Apocalypticism as a Worldview
Watch Episode on YouTube (https://youtu.be/w1Zdt-JQ9k4)
What is an apocalypse, really — and why do we keep reducing it to "the end of the world"? In this episode, I sit down with John J. Collins, one of the foremost scholars of ancient Judaism and Christian origins, to discuss his newest book, Apocalypticism as a Worldview in Ancient Judaism.
Collins — who literally helped write the modern definition of "apocalypse" as a genre back in the 1970s — walks us through what fifty years of scholarship (and the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls) have revealed about this strange, vivid literature. We talk about Daniel's statue of four kingdoms and the idea of "total history," the myth of the Watchers as an allegory for cultural upheaval, the Persian roots of Jewish dualism, the puzzle of the Son of Man in the Similitudes of Enoch, and why the "end" in apocalyptic thought is never really the end — it's always the doorway to something else: resurrection, judgment, a new creation, life with the angels.
Along the way, we get into trauma and apocalyptic literature, the messy boundary between early Judaism and Christianity, and how geopolitical pressure from Persia, Greece, and Rome shaped the way these texts imagined history and the cosmos.
Whether you know Daniel and Enoch inside and out or you're just apocalypse-curious, this is a rich, wide-ranging conversation about one of the most influential and misunderstood genres in the ancient world.
John J. Collins - Apocalypticism as a Worldview (https://amzn.to/3SQVJDH)
00:00:00 – Introduction & welcome
00:01:01 – What is an apocalypse? Defining the term
00:02:14 – Building the genre definition: the 1970s SBL project
00:06:39 – How the Dead Sea Scrolls changed the field
00:07:24 – Ongoing debates: does "apocalypticism" even exist as a category?
00:07:42 – Genre in action: the case of Fourth Ezra
00:09:11 – Daniel's statue and the idea of "total history"
00:15:52 – A Persian parallel: the Zoroastrian Bahman Yasht
00:17:47 – Prophecy after the fact (Daniel 11 and vaticinium ex eventu)
00:20:06 – The end isn't the end: resurrection and the afterlife as innovation
00:22:58 – Mythic frameworks: the combat myth (Baal, Yam, and Daniel 7)
00:30:05 – The Watchers as allegory for cultural disruption
00:33:04 – Dualism, Zoroastrian influence, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
00:36:32 – The Visions of Amram and the Melchizedek/Melchiresha figures
00:38:20 – Ascending to heaven: the evolving picture of the afterlife
00:41:51 – Millenarianism and the restoration of Israel
00:43:22 – The Similitudes of Enoch, the Son of Man, and Christian transmission
00:52:06 – Q&A: Was "apocalypse" a category ancient readers recognized?
00:54:47 – Q&A: Reading Daniel through a trauma-informed lens
00:57:12 – Q&A: Thoughts on Michael Heiser's divine council/watcher work
00:59:37 – Q&A: "The time is fulfilled" — Mark, Daniel, and apocalyptic timelines
01:02:31 – The Jewish–Christian "parting of the ways" reconsidered
01:05:31 – Geopolitical fault lines: Persia, Greece, Rome, and apocalyptic literature
01:09:03 – Closing thoughts
