The early myths, legends and traditions which can be traced differ profoundly from the canonical history, and the gap is wider than that between the latter and the subsequent apocalyptical and pseudepigraphical literature.
Apocalyptical elements disclose themselves in the prophetical books of Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, while in Isaiah xxiv.
Their writers were students of ancient prophecy and apocalyptical tradition, and, though they might recast and reinterpret them, they could not regard them as their own inventions.
For while 1-8 was most probably a Jewish apocalyptical fragment and strongly particularistic, 9-17 is clearly universalist in character and is probably from the hand of our author.
This is not the place to notice the course of Jewish literary activity in Palestine or Alexandria, whether along the more rigid lines of Pharisaic legalism (the development of the canonical " priestly " law), or the popular and less scholastic phases, which recall the earlier apocalyptical tendencies of the Old Testament and were cultivated alike by early Jewish and Christian writers.