The
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,
Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary
Religious Movements
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
sura
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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