JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN APOCALYPSES.
I. THE APOCALYPTIC IDEA.
The subject announced for the present series of Schweich Lectures "Jewish and Christian Apocalypses". It is a subject upon which much has been written of late years, especially by specialists for specialists. Besides this frankly specialist literature there has not been wanting a great measure of recognition of the importance, in a general way, of these Apocalypses and the state of mind which they reflect, for the_history of Early Christianity. But the Apocalypses themselves are still unfamiliar to most people, and indeed there are a good many reasons against their becoming popular in the present day. Both as wholes and in detail they are strange and foreign to our ways of thinking and writing; they need, in fact, a great deal of what is called 'Introduction' to make them comprehensible at all. Before coming, therefore, to the Apocalypses or to the circumstances that called them forth, I wish to make a few remarks on certain ideas and conceptions with which the Apocalypses are fundamentally concerned.
The Sistine Chapel is familiar to all in this travelled age. As you all know, it is the private chapel of the Popes and it was decorated by the greatest artists of the time. The Popes for whom the work was done, and the artists who did it, were all profoundly influenced by the Renaissance, by the revival of the literature, the art, the ideas of heathen Greece and Rome. Those who do not admire the Sistine Chapel as an example of Christian Art generally complain that it seems to them pagan: at least it is free from the reproach of being overmuch mediaeval. Let us consider for a moment what the scheme of decoration really is. We will not go into the Chapel as if it were a mere picture-gallery, walking about freely from point to point. We will take no looking-glasses in our hands or lie on our backs to examine the ceiling. No doubt persons attending Mass have in all ages turned their heads occasionally from side to side and looked up at the roof. Those who do so at the Sistine Chapel see on their left scenes from the Old Testament and on their right the fulfilment in theB
