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Apocalypticism is a deeply paradoxical phenomenon. What instantly comes to mind when hearing or reading of ‘the apocalypse’ is an imagery of the world ending in unprecedented disasters and destruction: the pre-eminent expression of collective angst. The fears aroused by these scenarios of doom notwithstanding, they are also an object of fascination and frequently even yearned for, promising a solution to inherent, seemingly irremediable problems of ‘the world as we know it’. As Gershom Scholem made clear, apocalypticism is driven by a devastating critique of history and the present reality: ‘If there is anything which, in the view of these seers, history deserves, it can only be to perish’—indeed a profoundly ‘pessimistic’ outlook (Scholem 1971: 10). Yet this characterization is just as correct as it is misleading.
To begin with there is plenty of evidence for another, pronouncedly ‘optimistic’ strand within the spectrum of the notoriously ‘defeatist’ millenarianisms that is closely related to—and, in fact, has partly inspired—the modern secular idea of progress (Amanat 2000: 248–55; Moorhead 2000; Williamson 2008; Ashcraft 2011). Indeed the hope for a millennium, an age of peace and bliss, as such does by no means refer to a state beyond history but to a pending, intramundane and intrahistorical reality preceding ‘the end’. Even the (non-millenarianist) apocalypticists’ worldview, though it might be pessimistic towards history, is markedly confident in regard to the fate of humanity, or its chosen part, when this history will come to its well-deserved end: for them that will be the day of reward for their devotion and righteousness, under a new heaven and on a new earth (Isa. 65: 17; Rev. 21: 1; Q. 14: 48), in God’s company. Apocalypticism does not simply announce ‘the end’ but the completion of history, the conciliation of contradictions, and an essentially better world to come.
The overall theme of the phenomena to be dealt with on the following pages is not pessimism, therefore, but rather hope, a radical optimism, the direct product of a profound discontent with the respective present conditions. It is this radical optimism that has acted, and continues to act, as the most efficacious ferment of the major and minor transitions in the course of the intertwined histories of the Abrahamic Religions. Albeit by no means an exclusive feature of these traditions (Landes 2011; Wessinger 2011) it is here that we find perhaps the most elaborate and ubiquitous manifestations of apocalyptic thought and the apocalyptic impulse.
The modern academic study of apocalypticism has, for the largest part of its history, almost exclusively been the domain of Christian scholars. It had long led the humble existence of a rather outlandish, even suspicious, sub-discipline of biblical studies, before it finally began to attract considerable and growing attention during the second half of the last century (not least inspired by the findings of ancient manuscripts in Qumran and Nag Hammadi in the 1940s that contained hitherto unknown apocalyptic materials). As late as the beginning of the 1970s, Klaus Koch still felt compelled to call upon his colleagues to finally start paying due attention to this ‘neglected area of biblical studies’ (Koch 1972). But this reluctance continues making itself felt in other disciplines as well. A textbook example for the persistent aversion of many historians to acknowledge and examine apocalypticism as a major factor in social, political, and cultural developments is the tenacious conviction, repeated in countless publications, that the year 1000 ce had not caused any significant endtime expectations among Christians. It took more than a century until this misjudgement was corrected, and the unsurprising observation irrefutably substantiated, that the first turn of the millennium after Christ was indeed rife with apocalyptic, millenarian tension (Landes et al. 2003).
One of the milestones in the above-mentioned growth of apocalyptic studies was the great multi-disciplinary colloquium held in 1979 in Uppsala, on ‘Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean and the Near East’ (Hellholm 1983). Although its title determined no temporal restrictions to the subject area, it is significant that all the published papers were concerned with the ‘classical’ period of apocalyptic(ism) (c.200 bce–200 ce), a state of affairs maintained at the follow-up convention in Anaheim, California, in 1989 (Collins and Charlesworth 1991). Despite the thematic breadth of both conferences—the ancient Greek, Mesopotamian, and Persian worlds were well covered—it is the Israelite, early Jewish, and early Christian developments that were at the focus of their interest. Medieval, modern, and Islamic themes remain out of view, and, still more serious, attempts at systematic comparative and/or transcultural studies are virtually absent (cf. McGinn 1998: 9–10). What motivates this scholarship, then, is rather evident: it is the recognition of the significance of apocalyptic(ism) for the complex historical shift that led from the Jewish tradition through the Jesus movement to early Christianity. This preoccupation finds perhaps its most radical expression in the famous provocative dictum of Ernst Käsemann (1969) that ‘apocalyptic…was the mother of all Christian theology’.
For many of the scholars active in the field, furthermore, the problem of apocalyptic has been primarily one of literary genre and literary compositions, an approach, to be sure, that has not failed to evoke criticism. In studying these textual sources, it has frequently been demanded, one should make a clear distinction between form and content, between (textual) ‘apocalypses’ and ‘apocalypticism’ or ‘apocalyptic eschatology’, as well as apocalyptic movements (Koch 1972; Collins 1979: 3–4; Collins 1998: 2–14; McGinn 1998: 4–5, 10; cf. below). Political, sociological, psychological aspects of apocalypticism have, nonetheless, remained widely underappreciated.
While a wealth of scholarly literature concerned with early Jewish and early Christian apocalypticism(s) has been produced the number of publications devoted to the Islamic part of the field is—given the enormous significance of apocalyptic discourses and movements for its history—lamentably small. Even worse is the situation regarding the ‘minor’ Abrahamic traditions, as e.g. the Samaritan (Dexinger 1989) and Karaite (Walfish and Kizilov 2011: 491–3) ones; the numerous late antique Christian and para-Christian groups such as the Elchasaite (Jones 2004), Montanist (Daley 1991: 18–19, 34–7; Rankin 1995; Trevett 1996; Butler 2006), Donatist (Frend 1982) movements; the various Islamic currents or offshoots of mainstream Islamic traditions as the Ismāʿīliyya (Daftary 2007), Druze, Nuṣairiyya-ʿAlawiyya (Friedman 2010: 8–16, 235–8), the Bābi movement and the Bahāʾī religion (MacEoin 2009) or the Aḥmadiyya; and the modern Christian movements or traditions emerging from Christianity as the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons (Eliason 2001), the Adventist (Morgan 2001) and Rastafarian (Edmonds 2003) traditions—to name but a few. Just as none of the ‘major’ Abrahamic traditions is fully comprehensible, neither is any of these ‘minor’ ones, if the initial and often persisting apocalyptic impulses that shape them are not or not sufficiently regarded.
While, furthermore, discussions about ‘apocalyptic origins’ have broadly considered possible impacts of cultural traditions from the environments of early Judaism and Christianity on the emergence of apocalyptic(ism) (Hellholm 1983; Collins and Charlesworth 1991; Cohn 2001), questions of mutual influences of apocalyptic discourses in the history of different (either Abrahamic or non-Abrahamic) traditions, apart from a limited number of studies (e.g. Cook 2002; Cook 2005a; Cook 2005b; Voß 2011; Greisiger 2014), remain largely unaddressed.
Notably since the 1990s scholars, in particular from the United States, have engaged in a large-scale paradigm-shift by creating the interdiscipline of (the as yet uninstitutionalized1) millennial studies. Besides trying to make up for the above-mentioned shortcomings of ‘classical’ apocalyptic studies, this endeavour aims at broadening the scope of research to an all-encompassing one, integrating phenomena from all kinds of religious traditions, geographical spaces, and historical periods as well as including modern secular currents, into one single approach to millennialism as a universal phenomenon. A major focus has been the sociological aspects of millennial movements, largely underexamined by previous scholarship (Robbins and Palmer 1997; Landes 2000; Landes 2011; Wessinger 2011).
Around the year 2000 the number of publications on apocalypticism and millennialism/millenarianism substantially increased, obviously an effect of the rising public interest in ‘the millennium’ and a corresponding demand for studies of the topic on the side of academic publishers. Apocalyptic and millennial studies owe a number of fundamental works to that boom, among them the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Landes (2000), and the three-volume Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, actually a handbook covering the whole field in more than forty articles, edited by John J. Collins, Bernard McGinn, and Stephen J. Stein (2000). In recent years this solid foundation for future research has been further expanded by two Oxford Handbooks, one on Eschatology (Walls 2007) and another on Millennialism (Wessinger 2011), evidence of the sustained academic interest in and growing awareness of the significance of apocalyptic and related studies.
The study of apocalypticism/millenarianism has had an impact on disciplines far beyond their own traditional boundaries. Field research among a millennial sect, conducted by a research group around social psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s, led to a full-fledged new theory when seeking to explain the surprising reaction of the sect’s members to the failure to materialize of the prophecy around which their worldview was constructed. Instead of turning their back on their leader and her predictions in disillusionment, they began a large-scale proselytizing campaign in order to convince as many others of the truth of that prophecy, thus evading the obvious refutation of their belief by reality. Since Festinger’s and his colleagues’ work the theory of cognitive dissonance that resulted from their analysis has become a much-used tool in psychological and sociological studies (Stone 2000).
The generalized approach of millennial studies has advanced the field of research considerably, while its tendency to conceive millennialism as an anthropological constant might involve the danger of levelling out parts of the field’s phenomenal diversity. In doing so it tends to blur or ignore the analytical achievements of classical apocalyptic studies. When dealing with Abrahamic apocalypticism, scholars of millennial studies at times indeed slot these all too casually into their own new analytical grid—by, for instance, declaring ‘apocalypticism’ as simply ‘synonymous with “catastrophic millennialism”’ (Wessinger 2011: 717; cf. Stein 2002: 211). Abrahamic apocalyptic scenarios, however, do not inevitably involve an imminent catastrophic disruption but frequently conceive of redemption as a process—which in this framework is categorized as ‘progressive millennialism’ regardless of the notion of millennium involved, if any (Wessinger 2011: 721). In any case, the structural, comparative approach of millennial studies, illuminating though its result may be, will certainly not render the study of historically related traditions as the Abrahamic ones, and their common features grown out of these historic relations, irrelevant.
Recent research on Abrahamic apocalypticism has been increasingly focused on its counter-propagandistic role in political opposition to the powers that be (Horsley 2004; Bockmuehl and Paget 2009; Greisiger 2014). At the same time the long disregarded role apocalypticism has played from Muhammad on and continues to play in the Islamic world has started to attract due attention to, though it remains largely underrepresented within, the field. It is here, furthermore, that the close interplay of apocalyptic and political discourses and movements—including their frequent violent excesses—in the Abrahamic traditions become most apparent (Amanat 2000; Arjomand 2002; Cook 2005c; Amanat 2009; D. Cook 2011; Filiu 2011; Landes 2011: 421–66; Shoemaker 2012: 118–96). A more comparative-systematic research on the varieties of Abrahamic apocalypticism will doubtlessly shed new light also on the proneness to political radicalism and violence so often associated with them generally and with their Islamic manifestations in particular. It may not be too audacious to predict that such a research will lead to the realization that all Abrahamic apocalypticisms have much in common in terms of their inner structures and dynamics as well as in their effects on the surrounding societies.
All in all the study of Abrahamic apocalypticism presents itself as a remarkably imbalanced field of research, and any attempt to substantially amend this state of affairs within the limits of the present essay would be condemned to failure. It may, however, give a tentative outline of a field of study yet to be established, defined, and developed.
Apocalypticism is commonly seen as a specific variety of eschatology. The generic term eschatology, derived from the Greek eschata (sg. eschaton), ‘last things’ and logia, ‘talk’, ‘order’, is used to refer to (1) ‘last things’ at and beyond the end of the individual’s life—death, resurrection and the verdict over one’s soul at the final judgement, and to (2) collective, universal ‘last things’, catastrophes at the final stage of history, one or a sequence of decisive battles between the forces of good and evil, the resurrection of the dead, judgement, the destruction of this imperfect and its replacement by a perfect world under God’s rule. For the sake of a maximum of clarity the present chapter will make use of the differentiation between eschatological, as signifying the talk, perceptions, and doctrines about ‘last things’, and eschatic, when referring to those ‘last things’ proper.2
The closely interrelated phenomena labelled as apocalypticism, messianism, and millenarianism/millennialism in their essence all fall under the category of collective or universal eschatology. All three terms bear the unmistakable mark of one and a half centuries of western, predominantly Christian scholarship. Apocalyptic and apocalypticism are derived from the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation (apokalypsis) of St John which originally served as the prototype and ‘reference work’ for a great number of—mostly extra-canonical—Jewish and Christian writings.3 Messianism is a term derived from messias, the Graecicized form of the Aramaic meshīḥā (mashiaḥ in Hebrew), ‘anointed one’, ‘messiah’, whose Greek translation, christos, furthermore is the origin of the English Christ. Finally millenarianism and millennialism (with all their spelling variants), from the Latin mille anni, ‘a thousand years’, and the synonymous chiliasm, from the Greek chilia [chronia], ‘a thousand [years]’, all refer, again, to the Book of Revelation where there is revealed to the seer the coming of a thousand years, a millennium, of the binding of Satan and of peace and prosperity for the chosen part of humankind (Rev. 20: 1–3). Despite this Christian bias and in the (current) absence of an alternative applicable to the Abrahamic traditions as a whole and exclusively, it is reasonable to stick to the terms’ accepted usage, while defining them as precisely as possible.
First, it is advisable to distinguish between apocalyptic and apocalypticism, understanding by the latter term discourses around a set of basic assumptions about the universe and its history and future as well as social movements engaged in such discourses and (betimes) acting upon them, while using the former term when referring to literary expressions of these ideas composed and/or utilized by their proponents. Apocalyptic, as a noun, in this sense is not congruent with the (however defined) literary genre of apocalypse(s)—countless textual sources that address apocalyptic themes have little or nothing in common with ‘classical’ apocalypses (cf. e.g. Collins 1998: 264–8). The adjective apocalyptic may refer to all these aspects and therefore ought to be disambiguated in the respective context of usage. Finally, authors of apocalyptic texts (including orally transmitted ones), apocalyptists, ought to be distinguished from apocalypticists, actors in apocalyptic discourses and movements.
The systematic/comparative study of the field in the Abrahamic religions will do well to start the investigation from the analytical category of apocalypticism, in order not to mask out any manifestation in whatever sources (including non-literary ones), as well as covering all other aspects, cultural, social, psychological, etc. The very word points at a central feature all manifestations of apocalypticism share: they revolve around truths that God has revealed, often through some angelic intermediary, to an elect human recipient who, in turn, reveals these truths to an audience of believers. Hence the apocalyptist’s message claims a validity close to that of the holy scriptures held by the tradition he or she stands in. Typically apocalyptic texts are ascribed to some dignitary of the past (pseudepigraphy, ‘false ascription’), frequently the very founder of that tradition, the claim of whose authorship serves the actual apocalyptist as a pseudonymous guise and the source of authority and trustworthiness of his visions.
The content of this two-way revelation usually consists of eschatological and cosmological knowledge (in varying proportions) otherwise inaccessible to ordinary mortals (Rowland 1982; Collins 1996; Collins 1998). The two aspects are closely interconnected. While the eschatological dimension is obviously part of the spatiotemporal structure of the universe, the fact of the revelation of the world’s setup is itself conceived of as a sign of the approaching eschatic events, indeed as already a part of these events (e.g. Dan. 12: 4; 1 Cor. 13–14; Rev. 22: 10). This revealed nature of the universe, often provided to the apocalyptist in the course of a visionary journey through the heavenly spheres (Himmelfarb 1993; Collins 1996; Shoemaker 2012: 239–40, 256–7), is marked by sharp—spatial, temporal, and ethical—dualisms: it consists of two distinguished yet closely interrelated realms, the heavenly one of the divine and angelic beings and, its mirror image as it were, the mundane world inhabited by us humans. In the present aeon this universe is also the arena of a continuous struggle between the forces of good and evil, in which every human, as well as every supernatural being, is partisan of either side. In the aeon to come the good forces will prevail; it is envisioned as reserved for the chosen part of humankind, usually including the righteous individuals from earlier generations who will have been raised from the dead, whereas all others, just like their metaphysical ‘allies’, Satan and his hosts, will be subject to perdition.
Frequently apocalypticists expect that future aeon of cosmic purity and perfection to come about only after a millennium-like interim period in which earthly conditions will already reach a near-to-ideal state. The terms millenarianism and millennialism, both derived from millennium, are commonly used synonymously (Landes 2000; Wessinger 2011: 4, 22, 720). Two different available words however allow for a terminological differentiation by connecting each with a distinct notion. Millennialism may be used in the universalized sense current within millennial studies, as referring to beliefs in a breakthrough to a time profoundly better than the present. In contrast, millenarianism and millenarian may be reserved for discourses involving a millennium in the narrower sense, a penultimate period of near perfection preceding the actual end of history, as it is so particularly widespread and specified in Abrahamic traditions. This usage would then render millenarianism a sub-category of millennialism. Finally, the adjective millennial, contextual clarification provided, may be employed in connection with both categories as referring to the respective eschatic period or new age.
The proponents of millenarianism may expect the catastrophic and/or revolutionary upheaval commonly associated with ‘the apocalypse’ to initiate either the millennial interim period or, otherwise, only the new aeon at the end of days. The two types resulting from this alternative have, in Christian Protestant apocalyptic discourses since the nineteenth century, been termed premillenarianism (Second Coming, Resurrection, Final Judgement, etc. preceding the Millennium) and postmillenarianism (those events following the Millennium) (Landes 2000: 578–89; Moorhead 2000; Stein 2000; Hill 2001). Similar diverging ideas have been observed in Jewish contexts (Ravitzky 1996: 79–144; Morgenstern 2006) and may most likely be found in other Abrahamic traditions as well.
Yet apocalypticism does not necessarily involve a millennium or similar interim period. In many, perhaps even most cases apocalyptic scenarios envisage the final disruption to occur without delay: history will reach its end, the world will be consumed, the dead will be raised and brought before their judge to be cast into hell or enter the post-historic Paradise or Heaven (Moorhead 2000; Shoemaker 2012). This sub-type of apocalypticism may be termed amillenarian(ist) or go without any particular qualification. The term amillenarianism (or amillennialism) has sometimes been used in a rather narrow sense, as referring to the view held by certain Christians that the millennium had already commenced with the foundation of the church in a spiritual manner and is not to be expected as a material, future reality (Wessinger 2011: 716). The a- in amillenarianism, however, does not do more than express the absence of a millennium, and does not imply a particular line of reasoning to reach this view. The term therefore should be kept open for all apocalyptic scenarios that do not involve an intermediary period. Regarding the above-mentioned application it stands to reason to consider equating the millennium with the age of the church as a proper form of millenarianism without an a-. To differentiate this subcategory from the ‘conventional’ futurist millenarianism one may use the terms praeterist or realized millenarianism.
History, as envisioned by the apocalypticist, is marked by determinism and periodization: since eternity each and every event has been predestined in God’s master plan and the unfolding of this plan discloses its pattern, bit by bit. Jewish and Christian traditions know of four successive empires that, over the course of history, rule the world—and prevent its redemption—a figure based on certain vision narratives in the biblical Book of Daniel (Dan. 2 and 7). The author of these narratives wished to see the fourth and last empire identified with the Seleucid kingdom of Hellenistic Syria, then, c.165 bce, dominating his native Judaea, and sought to convince his audience of its imminent downfall which would make way for the messianic kingdom of the endtime. This apocalyptic pattern of ‘reading history’, however, survived the end of the Seleucids and the role of the fourth and last kingdom was inherited by the successor world power, the Roman Empire. This reinterpretation in turn was adopted by early Christians and, in the fourth century, survived another turn of the tide when that last empire became Christian. That its end would mark the end of history as a whole has remained a fundamental conviction of many Jews and Christians (as well as, occasionally, Muslims). In the absence of a ‘real’ Roman Empire different powers, as e.g. the Vatican or the European Union, have been ‘appointed’ to be its present manifestation. Besides this four-empires scheme, the course of history has frequently been divided into periods of seven (days, weeks, years, etc.), on the analogy of the creation week, most notably as comprising a succession of a total of seven millennia. The significance popularly ascribed to calendrical turns of millennia (and centennia, centuries) as in 1999/2000, and the ‘apocalyptic angst’ they arouse, has its roots in this historico-apocalyptic reckoning (Landes 1988; Irshai 2000; Cook 2002: 344–50; Landes et al. 2003; Cook 2005a: 41–6, 84–97).
Many apocalyptic scenarios involve the expectation of the appearance (or reappearance) of a human, or semi-human redeemer, a messiah who will lead the good forces in their final battle with the forces of evil, as a military commander or spiritual saviour, or both (Neusner et al. 1987; Daley 1991, s.v. Christ, second coming of; Frankel 1991; Saperstein 1992; Collins 1995; Horbury 1998; Goldish 2004; García-Arenal 2005; Tucker 2008; MacEoin 2009; Searcy 2011). Messianism, like millenarianism, is a special case of apocalypticism. The expectation of a millennium-like period and that of the coming of a messianic redeemer frequently (although not inevitably) occur together; according to the two types of millenarianism the messiah may be conceived as reigning over his eschatic empire or kingdom either in a quasi-political, or in spiritual fashion, seizing actual power at the beginning of the millennium or at its end, respectively (Ravitzky 1996; Landes 2000: 578–89; Morgenstern 2006). In any case the messiah acts as God’s direct envoy on earth which lends his reign a theocratic legitimacy unattainable by any human rule.
Established religious communities generally adopt a conservative attitude towards reality. They are looking for the source of their adherents’ spiritual welfare back in time, towards one or a chain of founding figures (Abraham/Ibrāhīm, Moses/Mūsā, Jesus/ʿĪsā, Muhammad, etc.), who are believed to have been in closer contact to the divine sphere than anyone now living would be ever worthy of being granted. Under these conditions, new revelations, the prerequisite of apocalyptic and millenarian impulses, are frequently presented as renewed deeper insights into long established truths (Matt. 5–7; Q. 2: 129–40), just as the eschatological future they project appears as the mirror image of a past Golden Age (Paradise, the reign of the kings David and Solomon, the Apostolic Age, the Rāshidūn caliphate or the caliphate as such, the moral order of the ‘Righteous Ancestors [al-Salaf al-Ṣāliḥ]’, etc.). Adherents of apocalyptic movements, despite the frequently revolutionary effects they spark off, conceive of God’s agenda for their presence as directed not simply at a global renewal but equally at a restitution of that bygone Golden Age (Sharon 1983: 19–24; Cook 2005a: 126–30, 226–9). This ‘reactionary utopianism’ has in some contexts been termed restorationism (Brooke 1994; Casey and Foster 2011) or primitivism (Bozeman 1988) and is part of the inherent dialectic of apocalypticism (Landes 2011: 26–9, s.v. Millennialism, restorative).
Perhaps the most fundamental appeal that apocalypticism exerts on humans is that it presents them with a solution to the perpetual dilemma of theodicy, the question of how there can be one god, being both essentially benevolent and omnipotent, and still allowing for misery, repression, terror—in short: evil—to prevail in his creation. The apocalypticist has an impressively simple answer to this agonizing question: the seeming contradiction is not to be solved under present conditions, in a synchronical manner, but only in a diachronical perspective, where there will come a time when God will act (anew) as the almighty and gracious lord of the universe, when he will extirpate the forces of evil from the world and grant those chosen by virtue of their faith and righteousness a life of peace and abundance (Cohn 2001; Amanat and Bernhardsson 2002: 2; Landes 2011: 8, 12).
There is plenty of evidence from throughout the Abrahamic traditions for the decisive role apocalyptic expectations have played in movements, upheavals, and revolutions most historians are used to analysing in political terms. From the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (Schäfer 2003) through the ʿAbbāsid, Fāṭimid and Almohad Revolutions (Sharon 1983; Halm 1996; Arjomand 2002; García-Arenal 2005) to Savonarola (Weinstein 2011) and the Münster Rebellion (Williams 2000: 553–88): hopes for imminent salvation and revolutionary programmes frequently appear in indissoluble amalgams (Cohn 1970).
This political dimension, it has been argued, does not come by mere coincidence. Apocalypticism was long, largely under a Marxist paradigm, discussed as the expression of an awakening political consciousness, a proto-revolutionary reaction to real political and economic contradictions (Hobsbawm 1959; Hill 1972). More recently the model of relative deprivation has been applied to explain the socio-political and psychological dynamic of apocalypticism, arguing that actors in such movements feel that their access to economic and/or symbolic capital falls short of what they justifiably expect, and they therefore are inclined to resort to millennial hopes (Cook 1995: 35–46). On closer inspection, however, apocalyptic movements, while frequently finding adherents predominantly among the lower social strata, seem just as often to appeal to middle and upper class groups, indeed may be triggered by an experience of success and triumph, rather than decline and deprivation (Cook 1995; Ravitzky 1996; 2000; Horsley 2010).
Another factor in the dynamic of apocalyptic movements that has only recently found scholarly attention is the functioning of communicational processes, in particular of the rhetoric of apocalyptic argument and persuasion (O’Leary 1994). Belief in revelations about the true nature and imminent overturn of reality thus fades into the background and apocalyptic rhetoric turns out to be a means to communicate radical criticism of the present reality, a criticism that nevertheless tends to turn into the readiness to perceive one’s present as the time of denouement, the separation of good and evil, when it is going to become clear, once and for all, who stands on the ‘right side’ of the divinely wrought great correction.
The dynamic of any apocalyptic discourse or movement is further informed by the interaction of the eager, dissident, revolutionary agitators or activists with their antagonists, the vindicators of the present order and opponents of any premature imminent expectation or attempts at (radical) reviews of the accepted tradition and authorities, let alone revolutionary actions—in the metaphorical typology of Richard Landes the conflict between apocalyptic ‘roosters’ and ‘owls’ (Landes 2011: 40–52). In fact apocalyptic traditions themselves often carry with them strong rejections of any attempt to know the date and time of the eschatic events’ commencement (Matt. 24: 36; b. Sanh 97b; Q. 7: 187). Not only are ordinary humans prohibited from such prescience, they are also warned against all too readily putting their faith in self-proclaimed heralds of the imminent redemption (Matt. 7: 15–16, y. Taʿan 4: 5, 68d).
Many Abrahamic apocalyptic traditions, especially those involving the expectation of a messiah, envision the forces of evil in the eschatic struggle to be led by a counter-messianic figure, known, among other manifestations, as the Antichrist to Christians, as Armilos (Armilus) to Jews (from the early Middle Ages on), and as the Dajjāl to Muslims. Virtually all narratives about this anti-messiah depict him as a great seducer who, underhandedly enabled by Satan himself, makes the masses believe him to be the actual redeemer, thus rising to world leadership, whereupon he shows his true demonic face, starts a massive persecution of the resisting faithful, and finally is being confronted, vanquished, and killed by the true messiah. Defaming one’s enemy as the anti-messiah or his henchmen has been a powerful propaganda weapon in countless religious conflicts to this day. In the context of apocalyptic movements it has been readily utilized by both ‘roosters’ and ‘owls’ (McGinn 2000; Brandes and Schmieder 2010; Delgado and Leppin 2011).
In fact, like any other discourses, apocalyptic ones are in their whole readily utilizable by quite different, even opposing factions: those dissatisfied with the socio-economic or political conditions they live in, or experiencing an incomplete process of emancipation or takeover, may draw on apocalyptic rhetoric or action in order to claim and achieve advancement of their cause through critique or overthrow of the prevailing order, the demise of which they see as God’s firm resolution. Those on the other hand who are in control of this order frequently refer to apocalyptic arguments, warning their subjects or ‘flock’ of the menace of heresy, their possible loss of divine favour, the seizure of power by a satanic pseudo-messiah, and the horrors of the eschatic cataclysms. Conservatives at times even draw on apocalyptic scenarios projecting the imminent victory of their own cause, as the only one in accordance with God’s will.
Once the apocalypticists enter apocalyptic time, a phenomenon occurring in great variety (Baumgarten 2000; Landes 2011, esp. 29–36), they experience reality in a radically different way: accepted interpretations of the world are no longer valid; established religious and secular authorities have become irrelevant; persisting, even aggravating evils are seen as but the ‘birth pangs of redemption’; violence, including that committed by the awakened themselves, as part of the great concluding battle of the forces of good and evil, in which the former will soon prevail. A frequent consequence of this (anticipatory) experience of a radically different reality is a revolutionary attitude towards traditional conceptions and practices of holy or ceremonial law like the Torah or the Sharīʿa. This antinomianism or hypernomianism may assume different shapes, from moderate reforms to radical, anarchic overthrow of any legal limitation to the free development of the divinely inspired members of the eschatic community (Scholem 1971: 78–141; Scholem 1973; Dunn 1990; Landes 2000, s.v.; Amanat and Bernhardsson 2002: 4–10; Wright 2005; Daftary 2007, s.v. ibāḥa; MacEoin 2009: 214–18, 645–57; Wolfson 2009: 161–99).
Themes like the problem of theodicy and its apocalyptic solution, the unfolding of God’s plan in history and its anticipated completion, may frequently be approached as mere areas of scribal erudition and ‘theoretical’ contemplation. Above all, however, it is the sense of urgency that triggers the original impulse of any apocalyptic discourse or movement, the imminent expectation of a shift from the corrupt present aeon to a perfect future one. The readiness to accept and welcome all kinds of radical changes (considered a restoration of original purity or not) that arises from this expectancy acts as a catalyst of actual changes in religious, sociocultural, and political history. All apocalyptic literature, however much revision and redaction it might have undergone, originates in this impulse and, as a by-product as it were, is only later given its textual form: ‘Writing is generally an owl’s medium, a retrospective act, almost inherently hostile to apocalyptic discourse’ (Landes 2011: 47).
Once a group of believers has entered apocalyptic time, even a ‘failed prophecy’ of the impending eschatic consummation, however obvious its non-materialization, may not dissuade them from their faith. In many cases it is for them more feasible to resort to adaptive strategies that allow for maintaining this state of consciousness than to return to ‘normal time’ (Stone 2000). The believers may thus establish an ideology of (partly) realized redemption and institutionalize a charismatic leadership and/or hierocracy to govern the community of the chosen and administer the salvific divine gifts among them. Since, however, this realized redemption, the source of authority and communal order, retains a provisional state and its full realization remains yet to be accomplished, institutions and authority, however developed and refined in the course of time, never reach a state of indisputability but may be, and frequently are, subject to opposition in the name of another, new, apocalyptic impulse, arising from the conviction that the anticipated concluding phase of the redemptive process is to begin now, at last. At this point the dynamic cycle of Apocalyptic movements and religious traditions rooted in them may start anew. Through this process many, if not all, Abrahamic religions, as well as the bulk of their subdenominations, have emerged, been formed, and evolved.
The prehistory of Abrahamic apocalypticism lies in a religious current of ancient Israel and early Judaism known as prophecy. Divination techniques were a widespread feature of the ancient Near Eastern cultures and the practitioners of these techniques, employed by either a temple or the royal court, soon formed a class of religious professionals. These prophets were acting as mouthpieces of the respective god or goddess, uttering the divine messages in human language. The more firmly this practice was established and institutionalized the stronger grew the actual power of prophets within the society: speaking in the name of a deity—usually in favour of the king and ruling class—they reached a position that also enabled them to justifiably criticize existing political and social conditions (Nissinen et al. 2003). In the ancient Israelite society this common phenomenon assumed a peculiar shape when, through the crucial period of the Judaean upper class’s Babylonian exile (587–538/16 bce) and subsequent re-establishment and reorganization in Eretz Israel, the Jewish religion evolved. In this process the prophets (Hebr. neviʾim) played a decisive role: they called upon their audience to act in accordance with (what they perceived as) the will of God in order to maintain the covenant between him and his chosen people, and warned of the impending withdrawal of the divine favour in times of human misconduct. After the catastrophe of 587 bce, they announced the ‘Day of the Lord’, the recovery of God’s grace, the renewal of the covenant, to become manifest in the return from exile, the reconstruction of the Temple, the destruction of Israel’s enemies, and the formation of a society in harmony with the Torah of God, shaped by righteousness, social justice, and graciousness. It is with this propaganda that the prophets at one and the same stroke reinforced strict monotheism, ‘solved’ the problem of theodicy emerging with it, and set the tone for apocalyptic eschatology: wickedness is to be eradicated soon and the chosen ones are to experience unhindered outpouring of the divine grace in the near future (Koch 1983; Cook 1995; Collins 2000; Cohn 2001: 141–62; Gnuse 2011: 244–6).
During the Second Temple period (516 bce–70 ce) the conviction gained prevalence among the Jews that prophecy had been the privilege of a bygone age and God would not speak to his people through select individuals anymore. Now the reappearance of prophets was to be expected only on the eve of and during the messianic age (S. L. Cook 2011). New prophecies thus would meet with public approval only if they either were credibly presented as rediscovered ones from earlier ages (pseudepigraphy) or if the audience was or could be convinced that the last days had actually arrived. It was exactly this latter idea that took root with those who joined the movement centred around the messiah Jesus of Nazareth (Rowland 2010), one of the most momentous apocalyptic movements in the history of the Abrahamic religions.
Throughout this history the potentially destabilizing eschatological claim implied in any proclamation of a renewed prophecy met suspicion and resistance on the side of the conservative elites, frequently leading to suppression, persecution, and hush-up, as in the second century Phrygian Christian-millenarianist movement known as Montanism (Rankin 1995; Trevett 1996; Butler 2006), in the Shabbatean, Jewish messianic movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Scholem 1973; Liebes 1993: 92–113; Idel 1998: 183–211; Goldish 2004), or the successive Sheykhī, Bābī, and Bahāʾī movements of mid-nineteenth-century Persia (Sharon 2004; MacEoin 2009), to randomly pick but these three examples.
As is well known, the concept of prophethood is of central significance for Islam: Already the early followers of Muhammad put their faith in him as the (last) prophet (nabī) and messenger, or apostle (rasūl), of God. These concepts are part of the movement’s inheritance from the religious environment, dominated as it was by Jewish, Christian, and closely related traditions (Donner 2010: 27–34, passim), against which it asserted itself by the very claim of renewed prophecy. The widespread apocalyptic expectancy and fluid religious situation among the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula at the time is further indicated by the number of contenders for the dignity of prophethood and political opponents of Muhammad his followers had to cope with—essentially a struggle for divinely appointed leadership of the eschatic congregation of the awakened (Donner 2010: 97–106; Shoemaker 2012).
Prophecy, historically preceding the emergence of apocalypticism, thus became—whether in the form of applying scriptural predictions to the respective present, circulating new pseudepigraphal prophecies, or of active public prophesying—an essential element and distinctive mark of apocalyptic discourses and movements.
Abrahamic apocalypticism in its earliest forms developed, as we have seen, during the exilic and early post-exilic periods within a multi-religious environment of Mesopotamian and, after the collapse of the Babylonian empire (539 bc), Persian (Zoroastrian) traditions. The question as to how much influence on the development of early Abrahamic apocalypticism may be attributed to these traditions (or, it should be added, the other way round) might never satisfactorily be answered, beyond generalizations such as: it is highly unlikely that neighbouring religious communities would not have shared a good deal of their respective concepts about the world and its future prospects. At any rate it is important to note that Abrahamic apocalypticism was not created ex nihilo but originated in a religiously diverse and sophisticated cultural environment (Clifford 2000; Hultgård 2000; Cohn 2001; Foster 2002; Kreyenbroek 2002; Gnuse 2011).
The political realization of the redemptive scenario the prophets had pictured, the return from exile to the Promised Land and the rebuilding of the Temple, failed to engender the utopian society of righteousness, justice, and the renewed covenant with God. In the eyes of many living in Second Temple Judaea their age was not only lacking the spirit of prophecy, the divine presence itself was absent from the newly erected Temple, along with the Ark of the Covenant and other essentials from King Solomon’s shrine of old. As this perception of absence led to a localization of his abode in heaven, God’s eschatic return, suspended to the (near) future, became a scenario of dramatic change, an irruption of the transcendent into this world. Furthermore, in the political realm the perceived deficiency of the present became manifest in another absence: that of the kings from the Davidic dynasty (Barker 1991: 133–77).
Thus, the return of the Glory of God to his earthly sanctuary to reside among his chosen people again and the coming of an anointed ruler from the descendants of King David became closely related eschatological motifs expressing the Jewish hopes for a restoration of their onetime statehood in covenant and communion with God, yet a restoration that would transcend any previous historical reality in material splendour and spiritual majesty. The Second Temple period evolved into a heyday of apocalypticism: pious Jewish sectarians communicated this message in vision narratives and prophecies, allegedly of heroes from Israel’s glorious past, like the Babylonian Jewish courtier Daniel (Dan. 7–12), the primeval progenitor Enoch (Charlesworth 1983: 5–90), the prophets Ezekiel and Zephaniah (ibid.: 487–95, 497–516), Ezra the scribe (ibid.: 517–59), etc.
The expectation of the messiah (or, at times, of two or more messiahs) to establish his eschatic kingdom went rampant among lower and upper strata of the post-exilic Jewish society (Neusner et al. 1987; VanderKam 2000), from the Qumran sect (Collins 1995; Martínez 2000) to the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Announcing the ‘kingdom of God’—as approaching and as in some sense having already arrived, predicting the destruction of the Herodian temple and its replacement by a new and perfect one (Matt. 24: 1–2, 26: 61; Mark 13: 1–2, 14: 58; Luke 21: 5–6; John 2: 19–20), and at his entry into Jerusalem being welcomed by the crowd as the ‘Son of David…who comes in the name of the Lord’ (Matt. 21: 9; Mark 11: 9; Luke 19: 38; John 12: 13), Jesus clearly was seen by his adherents as the awaited messiah who would reign in the eschatic age of divine grace, universal peace, and bliss. With his death on the cross (which caused a grave cognitive dissonance among them) they began preaching with renewed fervour that he had undoubtedly been the redeemer and had been taken up into heaven only to return at any moment in glory to complete the divine revolution. The more the Second Coming was delayed the further their speculations about Jesus’s messianic ministry in past, present, and future, their ideas about the conditions of God’s grace and the nature of his covenant, diverged from the traditional Jewish mindset. With Paul of Tarsus’ mission among the Gentiles, although clearly meant to accomplish the old prophetic promise of a conversion of all mankind to faith in the God of Israel, mediated through his christos, the movement eventually turned into an entirely new religion (Dunn 1999; Allison 2000; de Boer 2000; Horbury 1998; Horsley 2000; Dunn 2006; Fredriksen 2010).
Jewish apocalyptic traditions were absorbed into the religious worlds of ancient Christian groups and much of the respective literature has survived only thanks to their being translated or adapted into and transmitted through eastern Christian languages and literatures (Charlesworth 1983; VanderKam and Adler 1996). Rabbinic Judaism largely ignored or depreciated apocalyptic traditions which had caused such a grave break-away and moreover, in the course of the two great uprisings against Roman domination, had proven to be a potentially deadly peril to the sheer survival of the Jewish community: the famous Jewish War (66–73 ce), that culminated in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the revolt led by the aspirant for the messianic office, Shimʿon bar Kokhba (132–5 ce), in the wake of which Jews were banned from Jerusalem and the city destroyed and replaced by a pagan Roman garrison town. But also the Christian doctrines, in particular Roman-Byzantine orthodoxy, when it acquired, in the fourth century, the status of the official imperial religion, demanded an adjustment to the political realities irreconcilable with the apocalypticists’ notorious recalcitrance. Had many early Christian millenarianists combined Jewish apocalyptic hopes for a restoration of the people, statehood, and cultic centre of Israel with Christian expectations of Christ’s return and rise to world power (Heid 1993), the church fathers now tended to downplay the material, political, and collective dimension of the inherited apocalyptic outlook in favour of the spiritual, transcendental, and individual (Daley 1991).
The above-noted tendency within Second Temple Judaism towards radically transcendentalizing the conceptions of God and his abode, together with the traditional apocalyptists’ cosmological speculations, gave rise to a mystical movement whose adherents strove to approach the godhead on its heavenly chariot-throne (Merkava) by ascending through its outer halls (Hekhalot), the spheres in between earth and heaven (Mach 2000). Thus these adepts abandoned the apocalyptic timeline and realized, as it were, the eschatic bliss of God’s presence in the here and now through meditation and visions. Similarly close connections between mystic practices and apocalyptic discourses occur time and again in the history of the Abrahamic religions, from the ‘ecstatic (or prophetic) Kabbalah’ of Abraham Abulafia (1240–after 1291) and the Kabbalistic school of Isaac Luria (1534–72) and Hayim Vital (1543–1620) (Idel 1998; Dan 2002: 121–7, 203–12) through Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202) and the Joachite movement (Reeves 1993), to the recurrent impacts Sufi traditions and orders had on mahdist, messianic movements (García-Arenal 2005; Searcy 2011). If apocalypticism is ‘a social mysticism’ (Landes 2011: 13), mysticism may well be described as an individualist, ahistorical, presentist apocalypticism.
A widespread apocalyptic expectancy, similar to the one during the late Second Temple and early post-Temple periods, took hold of large parts of the population in the Near Eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire and their surroundings during the first decades of the seventh century. Under the onslaught of the Sasanid-Persian armies (602–28) the fourth empire had begun to totter, which could not but raise messianic expectations among Jews and Christians. Some Jews even took messianic action, fought alongside the Persians against the Byzantines, and subsequently instituted a short-lived semi-autonomous regime in Jerusalem and attempted to re-establish the cultic centre on the Temple Mount (Donner 2010: 15–16; Greisiger 2014).
It was in the same period of renewed apocalyptic agitation that a new religious movement emerged among the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, initiated and led by the prophet Muhammad (c.570–632), which was to evolve into Islam and was—like any novel impulse in the history of the Abrahamic religions—pronouncedly apocalyptic: the Quran abounds in warnings of the approaching eschatic events, referred to as ‘The Hour (al-sāʿa)’, that would be accompanied by cosmic disasters and lead to the day when the earth would be profoundly transformed into or replaced by a new and refined one, all living creatures and angels would be destroyed, and instantly the dead would be resurrected—narratives enriched by numerous motifs from Jewish and Christian apocalyptic traditions, most notably the return of Jesus as a redeemer (Arjomand 2002: 112). With ‘The Hour’ at hand Muhammad’s ministry was, in his and his followers’ view, not to create a new religion but to restore the pure original faith of Abraham/Ibrāhīm to save as many people from damnation at the Final Judgement as possible. Initially not demanding that Jews and Christians abandon their respective faiths but striving to integrate them into an eschatic community of believers in the renewed truth underlying all three traditions (Cook 2005b; Donner 2010: 68–74; Shoemaker 2012: 118–218), the movement adopted an inclusivist attitude familiar to Jewish and Christian apocalyptic discourses and movements as well (cf. the above remarks on Paul).
The three successive civil wars (fitan, sg. Fitna; 656–61, 680–92, 744–50), themselves seen by many contemporaries as symptoms of the approaching end, ‘signs of The Hour’, are the context of the earliest appearances of the (primarily Shīʿite) concept of the Mahdī, the ‘rightly guided’ redeemer and restorer of the pure religion and just societal order, as well as similar, less commonly accepted redeemer figures (the Qaḥṭānī and Sufyānī), and gave birth to the two major Islamic traditions known as the Sunni and Shīʿī as well as to the first, Umayyad, dynasty of caliphs (661–750) (Arjomand 2002; D. Cook 2011). The interplay of apocalypticism and political developments is rarely as discernible in earlier periods but a comparison with more recent cases may demonstrate that this connection certainly is the rule, rather than the exception (Collins, McGinn, and Stein 2000: Vols. II and III; Wessinger 2011). Ex eventu prophecies, created after the event they purported to predict, during the early Islamic period frequently served as a media of political propaganda, providing a precedent for the analytical approach of apocalypticism as rhetoric (O’Leary 1994).
The apocalyptic outlooks of numerous contemporary religious currents throughout the Abrahamic worlds mostly escape the general and even the greater part of the academic public in ‘the west’. In fact most of the groups and movements usually labelled religiously radical or fundamentalist, like the spectrum of jihadist groups (from the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda to the Islamic State/IS(IS)) (Cook 2005c; Landes 2011: 421–66), the Christian Evangelical and Charismatic movements (Boyer 1992; Kaplan 1997; Newport and Gribben 2006; Gribben 2011), or the Israeli Jewish settler movement (Ravitzky 1996: 79–144; Ravitzky 2000), see themselves as actors in an apocalyptic drama, either unfolding in our present or to be unleashed in the near future.
Besides the currently ever growing influence of these radical ‘fringe’ groups and their gradually blending into the respective sociocultural and religious ‘mainstreams’, what lends significance to the study of apocalypticism is its deep roots in the Abrahamic traditions at large, deep enough that they reach the very origins of these traditions and run along their entire history.
Writing the history of apocalypticism in the Abrahamic Religions would be tantamount to giving an account of their origins, inherent dynamics, their divergent and convergent developments, interrelations and conflicts, spanning a period of several millennia. The historical, integral, and systematic study of this vast field, just as much as it is a promising undertaking, remains largely a desideratum of the comparative study of religions.
1 An exception was the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, founded by Richard Landes in 1996 and defunct since 2003 (Landes 2011: xviii–xix; <http://www.mille.org>).
2 The term seems to have come into use only recently, particularly in the works of German theologians; see e.g. Herms 2003: 147; Härle 1995: 605 n. 8; Wolter 2009: 12 n. 8 (relating these terms to similar ones, such as pneumatic/pneumatological and ontic/ontological).
Bernard McGinn has proposed an equivalent distinction of eschatology and apocalypticism as the one ‘between viewing the events of one’s own time in the light of the End of history and seeing them as the last events themselves’ (McGinn 1998: 4). To solely term presentist eschatology as apocalypticism, however, would inappropriately exclude countless cases of futurist views of the eschatic events from the field of apocalyptic thought.