Imagining the End: Visions of

Stephen J. Stein



Millennium, Prophecy and the Energies of  Social Transformation:

The Case of  Nat Turner



Richard H. Brodhead



Comparative Millennialism in Africa: Continuities and Variations

on the Canon



Lamin Sanneh



Is There a Chinese Millenarian Tradition? An Analysis of  Recent

Western Studies of  the Taiping Rebellion



David Ownby



Millennialism in Modern Iranian History



Juan R. I. Cole



The Middle East in Modern American Popular Prophetic Belief



Paul Boyer

Notes



Select Bibliography



Index



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vii

Preface

The papers in this volume were first presented to a year-long faculty and

graduate seminar at Yale University in 



. Approaching millennialism from

both textual and historical perspectives, the contributors to this volume

discussed the origins and the evolution of  apocalyptic and millennial ideas

and movements in the four major religious traditions of  Middle Eastern

origin: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam over a long span of

time from the ancient Middle East to medieval and early modern Europe and

from the pre-modern Islamic era to modern times. The six papers on the

modern and contemporary periods examined American, African, Chinese and

Iranian millennialism.

Contributors to this collection are also remarkable because they represent

the state of  scholarship in their related fields and together they present a rare

comparative approach to the study of  millennialism.  Like any comparable

collection, however, there are major regions and periods which are not add-

ressed, even those trends which are within the domain of  Western religions,

most notably Latin American, Byzantine, Russian, Eastern European, and

medieval and modern Jewish, and millennialism in Eastern religions. Moreover,

Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism and indigenous millennial beliefs of  the Pacific,

pre-Colombian America and native American, and Africa were also deemed

outside the concern of  this volume. Likewise, apocalyptic and millennial

expressions in arts and literature can be the subject of  another volume.

The editors would like to thank the Mellon Foundation for a Mellon-

Sawyer Seminar grant to the Council on Middle East Studies at the Yale

Center for International and Area Studies for the organization of  the seminar,

the post-doctoral fellowship and other activities in what came to be known as

the Millennialism Project. Our thanks are also due to the Director, Gustav

Ranis, and the staff  of  the Center (especially Haynie Wheeler) for their sincere

support. Members of  the Millennialism Project’s steering committee: Carlos

Eire, Patricia Pessar and Jonathan Spence also offered their insight and

assistance. In addition to the contributors to this volume, a large number of

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viii

Imagining the End

colleagues and scholars from Yale and other institutions presented papers or

served as commentators in various sessions of  the seminar. They include

Jean-Christophe Agnew, Wendell Bell, Gerhard Bowering, Jon Butler, Mary

Carpenter, Ann Ping Chin, Christina Crosby, Ahmad Dallal, John Demos,

Louis Dupre, Carlos Eire, Jamal Elias, Steven Fraade, Paul Freedman, Laura

Green, William Hallo, Paul D. Hanson, Robert Harms, Stanley Insler, Paul

M. Kennedy, Ben Kiernan, Richard Landes, George Lindbeck, Wayne Meeks,

Frederick Paxton, Patricia Pessar, Stuart Schwartz, Jonathan Spence, Frank

M. Turner, Paul Vanderwood and Jace Weaver. The two Mellon-Sawyer post-

doctoral residents, Mahnaz Moazami and Shahzad Bashir, also supervised the

pedagogical progress of  the seminar and conducted workshops on pertinent

apocalyptic texts. Barbara Papacoda provided critical administrative support.

We would like also to thank all the faculty, students, and other occasional

visitors who participated in the often lively sessions and made the seminar

more enriching and memorable.

The editors would also like to acknowledge the Kempf  Memorial Fund,

administered through the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, and

the Frederick Hilles Publication Fund, at the Whitney Humanities Center,

Yale University for generous funding towards preparation and publication of

this volume.