Imagining the End: Visions of

‘Secret Societies’  Reconsidered: Perspectives on the

Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia 

(Armonk, NY,



).

Lamin Sanneh

 is D. Willis James Professor of  Missions and World Chris-

tianity, Yale University. Dr Sanneh has written extensively on Islam and

Christianity in Africa including 

The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics: A Religious and

Historical Study of Islam in Senegambia (c. 



–



) (Lanham, MD, 



)

and 

Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The

African Dimension

 (London, 



).

Stephen J. Stein

 is Professor of  American Religious History, Department

of  Religious Studies at the University of  Indiana, Bloomington. His pub-

lications include 

Alternative American Religions

 (New York, 



) and 

The

Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers

(New Haven, CT, 



).

Robert R. Wilson

 is Hoober Professor of  Religious Studies, Yale University.

An expert of  the Hebrew Bible, Dr Wilson is the author of  

Prophecy and

Society in Ancient Israel

 (Philadelphia, 



) and 

Sociological Approaches to the

Old Testament

 (Philadelphia, 



).

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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

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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