Apocalypse of Zephaniah

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The Apocalypse of Zephaniah is an ancient apocryphal work attributed to the Biblical Zephaniah. In the canonical Book of Zephaniah there is a prominent amount of mystical and apocalyptic imagery, and the Apocalypse takes a similar subject to it.

The narrative consists of Zephaniah being taken to visit Heaven and to Sheol, though it is the account of his vision of Hell that is the more notable of the two. In Sheol Zephaniah witnesses two giant angels, one of which is named Eremiel, and described as the guardian of the souls. The other gives Zephaniah a scroll containing a list of all his sins, but a second scroll is presented and (the text is missing at this point). Zephaniah is judged to be innocent and is transmuted into an angel.

A Christian revision of it is probably preserved in the two dialects of Coptic. Of these the Akhmim text is the original of the Sahidic.

These texts and their translations have been edited by Steindorff, Die Apokalypse des Elias, eine unbekannte Apokalypse und Bruchstucke der Sophonias-Apokalypse (1809). As Schürer (Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1899, No. I. 4-8) has shown, these fragments belong most probably to the Zephaniah apocalypse. They give descriptions of heaven and hell, and predictions of the Antichrist. In their present form these Christianized fragments are not earlier than the 3rd century. (See Schürer, Gesch. des jüd. Volkes, iii. 271-273.)