"Be sure of this, the time is coming," says the L
ORD
, "when the plowman will catch up to the
reaper and the one who stomps the grapes will overtake the planter. Juice will run down the
slopes, it will flow down all the hillsides." (Amos 9:13)
Here the rich language depicting an agricultural cycle of immense and speedy productivity
takes on eschatological significance. Far from being mere materialism, it is considered a
heightened manifestation of God's blessing in the covenant (Lev 26:5). It's language intended
to denote covenantal paradise-like fertility. That chiliasts should adopt this kind of language
was only natural, and correct. There were other important passages with a similar message for
the receptive reader:
On both sides of the river's banks, every kind of tree will grow for food. Their leaves will not
wither nor will their fruit fail, but they will bear fruit every month, because their water source
flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing. (Ezek 47:12)
This too could denote paradise-like fertility. There is a close association between this passage
and the imagery found in the Eden description: the river, the trees for food, the life-giving
trees--all calculated to raise paradise-like expectations in the mind of the reader. Papias could,
as well, have drawn on the images that could be multiplied from such sources as the Ethiopic
Apocalypse of Enoch, which has a fructification passage that is almost certainly older than the
present text as a whole.
27
Papias's fructification logion probably also shares affinities with
2 Baruch 29:5, which I cited above:
The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousandfold, and on one vine there shall be a thousand
branches, on each branch shall produce a thousand clusters,a nd each cluster shall produce a
thousand grapes, and each grape shall produce a cor of wine. (Papias, quoted in Irenaeus,
Haer., 5.33.3)
And of course Papias claims to repeat the oral teaching of Jesus and the apostles.
Papias had assumed a chiliastic doctrine, with no concern to defend it, which could
very well indicate that during his time it was so generally accepted that it didn't occur to him
that it needed a defense. Even the Jews had similar expectations. All that would have seemed
necessary was to make clear that these millennial hopes were the church's hopes.
3.5. Justin Martyr (A.D. 100
165, see text at p. 40)
13
------------------------------------
27
J. T. Milik, ed., The Books of Enoch Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4
(collaborator M. Black; Oxford: Clarendon, 1976) 190.