The Apocalyptic Social Imaginary

chapter 19 The Apocalyptic Social Imaginary

Malise Ruthven

Apocalypse has Many Faces

Christian origins are inseparable from the apocalyptic spirit that consumed the Judeo-Hellenistic world in late antiquity, a spirit that was also present in modern totalitarian movements. Muhammad’s early mission cannot be explained without reference to the apocalyptic admonitions, the foreseen calamities, and the terror of the Day of Judgement apparent in the early suras (chapters) of the Koran. Apocalyptic rumblings also surrounded Luther’s call for reforming the Catholic Church, Sabbatai Zevi’s claim to be the Jewish messiah, the French and American Revolutions, the Babist movement that evolved into the separate faith of Bahaism during the nineteenth century—to name but a few. The Mormon Church, the most successful of the new American religions, was born in millennial frenzy that swept through the “Burnt-Over District” of upstate New York in the 1830s. More recently David Koresh, the Waco Prophet, was engaged in “unfolding” the mystery of Revelation in preparation for Christ’s second coming when the us Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms (btf) foreclosed the Apocalypse by storming the Branch Davidian compound. Apocalyptic movements are Janus-faced. On the positive side the anticipa- tion of imminent divine judgment can be translated into a message of social justice, with individual choice replacing dogmas handed down by ancestors, tribes or communities. They may appear socially inclusive, appealing espe- cially to the deprived, marginalised and dispossessed. The negative side is the demonisation of perceived enemies, the binary world of good versus evil, where the People of God—the saved remnant of humanity—see themselves in absolutist terms as the sole bearers of divine wisdom or knowledge. The utopian project of realizing paradise—when the saviour or messiah’s followers choose to enact the millennial scenario in real historical time—may be freighted with consequences as devastating as the earthquakes, fĳires, plagues and wars of apocalyptic imaginings. The Bolshevik paradise, Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, Mao Tse-Tung’s Great Leap Forward and Pol Pot’s Cambodian geno- cide are all examples of apocalyptic visions brought into the dull sublu- nary world with devastating consequences. This essay will highlight a broad range of apocalyptic preoccupations across the centuries, not just within the

Abrahamic religions, nor simply by intellectuals, but as a crucial element within popular culture and mass movements in Western history.

Scriptural Origins

Apocalypses, redemption and end of the world scenarios are universal phe- nomena that occur in traditions as varied as African shamanism and New Age cults. They are a persistent thread in the religious matrices of Western Asia that gave rise to the scriptural traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Apocalyptic narratives long precede those now canonised in Abrahamic scrip- tures. The Prophet Zarathustra (generally considered to have flourished during the sixth century bc but possibly a thousand years earlier) reformed the ancient Persian religion and taught a system of universal ethics, with rewards for the good and punishment for the wicked, using language and imagery that fĳinds many echoes in the Bible and the Koran. Like subsequent millenarian prophets he taught a version of paradise, a world of perfect harmony. Here husbands, wives and children, including the resurrected dead, would be reunited within a single community “all united in adoration of Ahura Mazda and the Holy Immortals, all at one in thought, word and deed.”1 After Zoroastrianism became the state religion of the Persian Empire the coming millennium or “making wonderful” was deferred and the prophet came to be identifĳied with the Saoshyant, the “future benefactor” or messiah, who would resurrect the dead and restore the world to rights after an era of tribulation during which the forces of evil would temporarily prevail.2 In the Hebraic tra- dition these ideas surface in the prophetic writings of Isaiah (c 740–700 bc), who in the ominous times preceding the fall of Jerusalem speaks of an age of peace when men shall “beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nei- ther shall they learn war any more.”3 The same theme appears in a more desperate, urgent guise in the Books of Daniel and Ezekiel and other apocalyptic writings, where deliverance from foreign rule is linked to the eschatologi- cal “end of days” embracing resurrection, fĳinal judgement and immortality.

1 Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 99. Abbas Amanat and Magnus Bernardsson (eds.), Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), passim. 2 Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come, 100. 3 Isaiah 2:4.