tianity, Yale University. Dr Sanneh has written extensively on Islam and
of Religious Studies at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. His pub-
1
Introduction: Apocalyptic Anxieties and
Millennial Hopes in the Salvation Religions
of the Middle East
Abbas Amanat
A thousand years I can await your boon,
Whenever you come, is a moment too soon.
Sana'i
Now that the public euphoria surrounding the turn of the century is at its
ebb, the time has come to reflect on the scholarship on the origins and
evolution of millennialism as a historical phenomenon, its multifaceted mani-
festations, and its lasting grip over the human imagination. At the turn of the
third millennium, the secularized Christian calendar of our time has reached
an almost global recognition beyond its religious origin. Appropriate to the
post-modern information society, the primary concern at the recent millennial
turn was anxiety about computers’ dating malfunction, the so-called Y
K
problem (or the Millennium Bug); an apt reminder of similar fears of chaos
and hopes for ultimate redemption in different calendaric junctures and in
diverse cultures. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, the complex
recurrence of apocalyptic and millennial paradigms is intrinsically tied to
humanity’s striving to imagine, anticipate and help bring about a tormenting
End, and through that agony a fresh Beginning.
The chapters in this volume, whether historical or exegetical in approach,
highlight the presence of apocalyptic themes in religious traditions that
originated in the Middle East, the features they have in common, as well as
their peculiarities. Further, the essays demonstrate the interaction between
these archetypal motifs and indigenous cultures in medieval and modern
times. It is primarily this shared apocalyptic legacy of salvation in Judaism,
Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam that helped shape not only the theo-
logical perspective and eschatology of these religious communities, but also
2
Imagining the End
served as a driving force behind major currents in human history from the
rise of new institutional religions to political revolutions and intellectual
movements. The purpose of this collection is to address these themes beyond
conventional understandings of millennialism. Further, it aims to evaluate
the political, cultural and social manifestations of millennialism starting in
the ancient Middle East where earliest paradigms of the apocalyptic narrative
were shaped.
The End Paradigm
Perhaps the most recognizable feature in the Middle Eastern narrative of the
final events, the End paradigm in the Zoroastrian and Jewish traditions, is
that it operates as a reverse process to the myth of the Beginning, what is
often identified as the binary of the
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