Imagining the End: Visions of
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Pursuit of the Millennium , Vittorio Lanternari’s comparative study, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults in
, and the
11 Introduction collection of essays,
edited by Sylvia Thrupp . More than four decades later, millennialism still is the subject of a wide and lively academic debate including and beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition and with numerous studies on millenarian currents in cultures as far and wide as Chinese, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Pre-Columbian American, indigenous African, Latin American and Pacific Islands. The ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Zoroastrian Iran and Greece have been scrutinized for comparable notions of the End, and the highly diverse manifestations of millennialism in the Judeo-Christian world from ancient Hebrew to the Judeo-Hellenistic, to the Byzantine, medieval and early modern European, to modern American also have been subjects of major studies. Moreover, study of millennial themes in pictorial art, literature, music and cinema has generated a substantial body of scholarship. Today, the study of millennialism no longer stands out, as it once probably did, as an exorbitant, even embarrassing, fascination with the implausible and insignifi- cant few on the fringes of the religious mainstream or anarchists seeking to destroy the consecrated social order. The participants in these movements are also not invariably seen as revolutionary expressions of the weak and the underprivileged. Rather, millennialism is now appreciated, as an influential current, or undercurrent, comprehensible on its own terms; modes of thought and action which, though too often skewed, suppressed or obliterated from the master narrative of any given culture, often leave recoverable traces in the subtext for today’s students to reconstruct an alternative narrative. 3 The comparative study of millennialism offers an intriguing prospect, yet it also poses insurmountable problems of epistemology and method. Questions of definition (e.g. what is millennialism versus apocalypticism?), the meaning of prophecy, and methods of textual analysis, even within an indigenous religio-cultural tradition, pose prohibiting complexities. And so does a comparative study of movements which gave historical substance to these millenarian aspirations. Any plan for putting together an extensive collection of essays on comparative millennialism has therefore been substantially modi- fied in favour of a volume with a unifying theme of reasonable originality and plausibility; a theme which is not yet fully addressed in the current literature. 4 It was assumed that the Middle Eastern origins of apocalyptic/millennial motifs as well as their intricate interplay in indigenous settings, as varied as the ancient Middle East itself and twentieth-century America, offer such a realistic approach. These complementary themes, namely the paradigmatic origins of millennialism and the cultural interplay, also prove to be more compelling because of the rich heterogeneous apocalyptic traditions found in Zoroastrianism, Islam, Africa and China. As would be expected, essays in this volume resonate methodological and
12 Imagining the End historiographic issues unique to the field. The book is organized into four parts: origins of millennialism, its formative period of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, its manifestation in the medieval and early modern periods, and its expressions in modern times. Like many studies on the origins of cultural phenomena, the volume starts in Ancient Mesopotamia. Benjamin R. Foster’s essay (Chapter ) on the notions of the End highlights a unique feature in Mesopotamian culture. Because of the deluge, a notion which later found its way into the Bible, the Mesopotamians perceived a post-apocalyptic world which had already ended in the remote past, an event which marked the beginning of the present. Nevertheless, as Foster points out, such a notion did not entirely eliminate eschatological beliefs or speculations about the future in ancient Mesopotamian writings. The question of inadequate sources and problems of interpretation appear in a number of essays, especially in those concerned with the origins of millennialism. Robert R. Wilson’s ‘The Biblical Roots of Apocalyptic’ (Chap- ter
), for example, highlights the difficulty of studying apocalyptic texts in general, while Philip G. Kreyenbroek’s ‘Millennialism and Eschatology in the Zoroastrian Tradition’ (Chapter ) raises the chronic problem of dating the Zoroastrian apocalyptics. This is also of inherent interest to John J. Collins in his essay, ‘Eschatological Dynamics and Utopian Ideals in Early Judaism’ (Chapter ) because of the related problem of Zoroastrian influence on Jewish apocalyptic tradition. 5 Collins also draws attention to the apocalyptics of the Hebrew Bible and the Qumran documents whereby the mysterious and en- coded language of the prophecies is meant to persuade the adept to discern a hidden secret behind the text, a hermeneutical problem for the students of apocalypticism not limited to early Judaism. The difficulties of interpreting apocalyptics are also noticeable in Harold W. Attridge’s ‘The Messiah and the Millennium: The Roots of Two Jewish–Christian Symbols’ (Chapter ) and
in Said Amir Arjomand’s ‘Messianism, Millennialism and Revolution in Early Islamic History’ (Chapter ). The heterogeneous and allusive symbolism of the Book of Revelation, Attridge notes, assigned to the Christian sectarians a mission of salvation in the imminent apocalyptic conflict with the evil. The tone and content of the early verses of the Qur'an, on the other hand, as well as other evidence in early Islamic sources addressed by Arjomand, present an apocalyptic perspective essentially at variance with the conventional exposition of Islamic origins. These and similar exegetical and historiographical issues raised in other essays in this collection lead us to two essential points: first, that the study of millennialism, as contributions to this book show, has developed certain tools and techniques to recover from the text, and ‘between the lines’ so to speak, the suspect evidence usually not discernible in conventional methods of source
13 Introduction criticism. Yet unearthing what is buried in the text, especially what is generally considered as embarrassing or dangerous by the religious authorities, no matter how skilfully done, still leaves much room for divergence. Inevitably, the textual ambiguities persuaded students of millennialism to offer a multiplicity of at times contesting interpretations. Shahzad Bashir’s ‘Deciphering the Cosmos from Creation to Apocalypse: The Hurufiyya Movement and Medieval Islamic Esotericism’ (Chapter ); which focuses on the Hurufis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, portrays a movement that sought alternative means to understand the secrets of the text, particularly through cabalistic preoccupation with letters of the Qur'an. This was an attempt to go beyond the established norms of interpretation by adopting a hermeneutical approach. In contrast, in his historiographical essay, ‘Medieval Europe: Religious Enthusiasm and Social Change in the “Millennial Generation”’ (Chapter ), R. I. Moore provides an in-depth text analysis of the historical setting around the year
in Europe raising questions concerning its very significance in stimulating the popular imagination in medieval Europe. 6 Juan R. I. Cole in his ‘Millennialism in Modern Iranian History’ (Chapter ), detects certain recurring features in the Iranian messianic tradition and underlines the need to comprehend their apocalyptic rhetoric. Similarly, David Ownby, in his ‘Is There a Chinese Millenarian Tradition? An Analysis of Recent Western Studies of the Taiping Rebellion’ (Chapter ), makes a compelling case for the continuity of the indigenous Chinese apocalyptics and its own hermeneutics. 7 By contrast, Lamin Sanneh’s essay, ‘Comparative Millennialism in Africa: Continuities and Variations on the Canon’ (Chapter ), demonstrates that a community of interpretation could come about from a remarkable fusion of Islamic and Christian apocalyptic motifs. Millennial hermeneutics, as Bernard McGinn’s study (Chapter ) of
Catholic apocalypticism shows, persist even when this-worldly apocalypticism has been officially refuted by the Church. Undercurrents are still at work engendering visions which may have been influenced by the contemporary millennialism of the Reformation, yet essentially they convey a non-radical message supportive of the Catholic Church. The same conservative trends may also be observed in various manifestations of American millennialism. When tolerated as an article of faith, the repository of millennial rhetoric is wide open to its free-reining practitioners not only in the millennial theology of Jonathan Edwards and other speculative theologians, but more expressedly in Puritan movements of the nineteenth century, as shown by Stephen J. Stein’s ‘American Millennial Visions: Towards Construction of a New Archi- tectonic of American Apocalypticism’ (Chapter ). As Stein demonstrates, there is a consistent effort to play out America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ as an exceptional millennial reality of the New Jerusalem in the open frontiers of 14 Imagining the End the new continent. The same millennial rationale, however, finds a different articulation when a black slave prophet finds in the message of Christian apocalyptic a vision of insurgency. Richard Brodhead’s ‘Millennium, Prophecy and the Energies of Social Transformation: The Case of Nat Turner’ (Chapter ) offers a striking example of apocalyptic leadership. It is distinct not only from the Puritans and from the theologians of the Great Awakening, but also from evangelical prophets of the past two centuries ranging from the Millerites of the mid-nineteenth century to the Branch Davidians of the late twentieth as depicted in Paul Boyer’s ‘The Middle East in Modern American Popular Prophetic Belief ’ (Chapter ). In the post-Cold War era, as Boyer shows, the apocalyptic rhetoric of the American evangelicals saw a new binary in the struggle between menacing Islam and the righteous Judeo-Christian forces. It is perhaps stating the obvious to note that despite their wide range and diversity in approach, all essays in this volume were presented on a theme which, though admittedly ambiguous, was intrinsically specific enough to suggest to all contributors a set of interconnected ideas and actions. For the same reason no attempt has been made here to define clearly the often used terms such as apocalypticism, millennialism (or millenarianism). For a collec- tion of essays, arriving at unanimity in terminology may prove cumbersome if not impossible. 8 In addition, the complicated texts pregnant with ambiguous symbolism and metaphors allow for a certain degree of interpretive flexibility which makes the study of millennialism a fascinating, and frustrating, exercise. The textual enigmas have persuaded philologists, biblical, Zoroastrian and Islamic scholars to try to reconcile, or gloss over, inherent ambiguities and paradoxes in favour of an authoritative exegesis which would ‘make sense’. Through this unavoidable, though often uninspiring, exercise the exclusive exegetical approach generally circumvents the hermeneutical subtleties, but also the historical context. The circumstances leading to the emergence of a given apocalyptic trend and its evolving course, if ever explored, arose because they were intended to provide additional clues to buttress the authoritative version rather than problematize it. The case in point is the modern Islamic Qur'anic scholarship which solely relies on the ‘authoritative’ narrative at the expense of the apocalyptic message of the early Meccan
s. 9 Second, when the socio-historical context of apocalypticism is addressed, increasingly in recent decades by social historians or by anthropologists and sociologists of religion, the focus is shifted from doctrinal expressions, namely what millenarians had said, to socio-economic factors conducive to the shaping of the movements and their evolving course. In contrast to philological and textual preoccupations, the objective here is to sift selectively through the ideas and aspirations of the claimants and their community of believers as a source for unravelling social hierarchies, political and anti-colonial grievances, 15 Introduction and economic disadvantages. Revolutionary movements with millenarian colouring, however, were often treated as typical of all millenarian movements, as a mode of social protest anticipating modern ideological and anti-imperialist currents of later times. Both the textual scrutiny and socio-historical approach, however, seldom tried to study these currents in their totality or dealt with them in their own terms, though often they did pay homage to the idea. Most notably, the social–psychological interpretation of apocalypticism relied on the theories of relative deprivation and the trauma of sudden transition in order to address the complexity of the apocalyptic phenomenon. The theory of relative deprivation, as discussed by Wilson in this volume, offers the very perception of social, political and cultural depravity, whether real or perceived, as the prime motive for apocalyptic syndrome. 10 A corollary to this theory of apocalypticism is that of disaster and swift socio-economic displacements: the collapse of empires, as in the Zoroastrian apocalypticism of Iran; the rupture of a closely-knit social fabric, as in the experience of the Babylonian diaspora; the disrupting effects of the rapid industrial and technological revolutions, as in Europe of the nineteenth century; the intrusion of an alien culture or imposition of a colonial socio-economic regime, as in Latin America, Africa and the Islamic world. 11 Not denying the triggering effect of such factors, and their implications for the social composition and doctrinal formulation of these movements, still neither of the two theories takes sufficient account of the hermeneutical legacy, or legacies, on which millennial discourses were articulated. The experience of sharing the mysteries of the text and the signs of the End, expounding a certain rhetorical discourse, and taking part in a scripted course of action, are dimensions of a millennial rationale, what is at the heart of O’Leary’s ‘community of interpretation’. 12 Through memory or text, an apocalyptic experience retrieves an esoteric temporality, articulates its own rationale, and engenders a sense of adherence more compelling for the believers than any ulterior motive. Frequent recurrence of apocalyptic ex- pressions within certain cultural settings – Judeo-Hellenistic, Perso-Shi'ite, American Protestant and Latin American Catholic, to name a few – may best be understood if the pivotal role of apocalyptic hermeneutics is seriously taken into account. 13 Apocalyptic Dynamics in the Contemporary Context It is not an exaggeration to suggest that millenarianism in its varied manifesta- tions, whether progressive or regressive, allegorical or fundamentalist, has been an important vehicle for social protest and revolutionary fervour. In modern times, it has been observed, secularized millennialism also fuelled 16 Imagining the End revolutionary aspirants and rendered subtle undertones to ideologies as diverse as the Philosophy of Progress, the American and the French Revolutions, scientific positivism in the nineteenth century, Marxism and its various manifestations, and even fascism and Nazism. More recently, a variety of popular science-fiction and pseudo-scientific theories, and, more substantially, the environmental debates and critiques of technomania may be seen as examples of latent millennialism of our times. In most cases, it is true, the millennial paradigm remains a subtle undertone to secular ideologies not always acknowledged by those who pronounced or enacted it. Nearly all revolutionary visionaries of modern times, most notably Karl Marx, enter- tained utopian visions brimming with millennial aspirations of one form or another. Even more so, apocalyptic images and topoi influenced those artists, writers and futurists who, by invoking millennial fears and hopes, challenged the norms of their own time, and searched for alternatives. As has often been noted, the first conscious passing of the
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