The formal conception of new heavens and a new earth occurs in Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1 (where “heaven,” singular). The idea in substance is also found in Isaiah 51:16; Matthew 19:28; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Hebrews 12:26-28. In each case the reference is eschatological, indeed the adjective “new” seems to have acquired in this and other connections a semi-technical eschatological sense. It must be remembered that the Old Testament has no single word for “universe,” and that the phrase “heaven and earth” serves to supply the deficiency. The promise of a new heavens and a new earth is therefore equivalent to a promise of world renewal.
It is a debated question how old in the history of revelation this promise is. Isaiah is the prophet with whom the idea first occurs in explicit form, and that in passages which many critics would assign to the post-exilic period (the so-called Trito-Isaiah). In general, until recently, the trend of criticism has been to represent the universalistic-cosmic type of eschatology as developed out of the particularistic-national type by a gradual process of widening of the horizon of prophecy, a view which would put the emergence of the former at a comparatively late date. More recently, however, Gressmann (Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie, 1905) and others have endeavored to show that often even prophecies belonging to the latter type embody material and employ means of expression which presuppose acquaintance with the idea of a world-catastrophe at the end. On this view the world-eschatology would have, from ancient times, existed alongside of the more narrowly confined outlook, and would be even older than the latter. These writers further assume that the cosmic eschatology was not indigenous among the Hebrews, but of oriental (Babylonian) origin, a theory which they apply not only to the more developed system of the later apocalyptic writings, but also to its preformations in the Old Testament. The cosmic eschatology is not believed to have been the distinctive property of the great ethical prophets, but rather a commonly current mythological belief to which the prophets refer without formally endorsing it.
To continue reading this Bible article, click here.
Author: International Std. Bible Encyclopedia
Keywords: New Heavens, New Earth, Age to come, Coming age, Third heaven, Kingdom age, Kingdom of God, Future earth, Paradise, New Jerusalem, Earth renewed, world to come, earth's restoration, heavenly Jerusalem, new heaven new earth, many mansions
Bible reference(s): 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Peter 3:13, Hebrews 12:26, Hebrews 2:5, Hebrews 9:23, Hosea 2:18, Isaiah 11:6, Isaiah 51:16, Isaiah 65:17, Isaiah 66:22, Matthew 19:28, Matthew 5:5, Revelation 21:1
Source: James Orr (editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 5 volume set.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.