Cosmic Apocalypse

In the second century, Platonist and Judeo-Christian thought were sufficiently friendly that a Greek philosopher could declare, "What is Plato but Moses speaking Greek?" Four hundred years later, a Christian emperor had ended the public teaching of subversive Platonic thought. When and how did this philosophical rupture occur? Dylan M. Burns argues that the fundamental break occurred in Rome, ca. 263, in the circle of the great mystic Plotinus, author of the Enneads. Groups of controversial Christian metaphysicians called Gnostics ("knowers") frequented his seminars, disputed his views, and then disappeared from the history of philosophy—until the 1945 discovery, at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of codices containing Gnostic literature, including versions of the books circulated by Plotinus's Christian opponents. Blending state-of-the-art Greek metaphysics and ecstatic Jewish mysticism, these texts describe techniques for entering celestial realms, participating in the angelic liturgy, confronting the transcendent God, and even becoming a divine being oneself. They also describe the revelation of an alien God to his elect, a race of "foreigners" under the protection of the patriarch Seth, whose interventions will ultimately culminate in the end of the world. Apocalypse of the Alien God proposes a radical interpretation of these long-lost apocalypses, placing them firmly in the context of Judeo-Christian authorship rather than ascribing them to a pagan offshoot of Gnosticism. According to Burns, this Sethian literature emerged along the fault lines between Judaism and Christianity, drew on traditions known to scholars from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Enochic texts, and ultimately catalyzed the rivalry of Platonism with Christianity. Plunging the reader into the culture wars and classrooms of the high Empire, Apocalypse of the Alien God offers the most concrete social and historical description available of any group of Gnostic Christians as it explores the intersections of ancient Judaism, Christianity, Hellenism, myth, and philosophy.

Apocalyptic expectations of Armageddon and a New Age have been a fixture of the American cultural landscape for centuries. With the approach of the year 2000, such millennial visions seem once again to be increasing in popularity. Stephen O'Leary sheds new light on the age-old phenomenon of the End of the Age by proposing a rhetorical explanation for the appeal of millennialism. Using examples of apocalyptic argument from ancient to modern times, O'Leary identifies the recurring patterns in apocalyptic texts and movements and shows how and why the Christian Apocalypse has been used to support a variety of political stances and programs. The book concludes with a critical review of the recent appearances of doomsday scenarios in our politics and culture, and a meditation on the significance of the Apocalypse in the nuclear age. Arguing the Apocalypse is the most thorough examination of its subject to date: a study of a neglected chapter of our religious and cultural history, a guide to the politics of Armageddon, and a map of millennial consciousness.

In late medieval and early modern Europe, textual and visual records of disaster and mass death allow us to encounter the intense emotions generated through the religious, providential and apocalyptic frameworks that provided these events with meaning. This collection brings together historians, art historians, and literary specialists in a cross-disciplinary collection shaped by new developments in the history of emotions. It offers a rich range of analytical frameworks and case studies, from the emotional language of divine providence to individual and communal experiences of disaster. Geographically wide-ranging, the collection also analyses many different sorts of media: from letters and diaries to broadsheets and paintings. Through these and other historical records, the contributors examine how communities and individuals experienced, responded to, recorded and managed the emotional dynamics and trauma created by dramatic events like massacres, floods, fires, earthquakes and plagues.

This collection of essays argues that Paul's articulation of Christ and his saving work makes use of the categories and perspectives of ancient Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. Such eschatology is concerned with the expectation that God will finally and irrevocably put an end to the present order of reality ("this age") and replace it with a new, transformed order of reality ("the age to come"). In Paul's view, God has initiated this eschatological act of cosmic rectification in the person and work of Christ. The essays included, two of them previously unpublished, investigate and illuminate various aspects of Paul's christologically focused appropriation of ancient Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, particularly in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans. The collection begins with the author's seminal essay on the two tracks of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology (forensic and cosmological) from 1989 and ends with an essay from 2016 containing the author's retrospective restatement and elaboration of his views.

Apocalypse in Astronism & Elements of Philosophy is the one-hundred and twenty-eighth instalment in the Little Blue Book Series and comprises the seventh, eighth, and ninth discourses of the Dodecadoxy, the twelfth and final disquisition of the Omnidoxy, the founding text of Astronism. Within this publication, a multitude of topics are explored with significance to the beliefs of Astronism, namely the consideration of the concept of mercy in relation to Astronism as well as the understanding of meaningfulness applied to the context of Astronism. The Little Blue Book Series was created and first published by Cometan himself as a way to simplify and commercialise the immensity of the two million word length of the Omnidoxy into smaller, more bite-size publications. A successful series from its very first published entry, the Little Blue Book Series has gone on to become a symbol of Astronist commercial literature and a way for Cometan’s words to reach readers of all ages and abilities who remain daunted by the beauty and yet the sheer extensiveness of the Omnidoxy as the longest religious text in history.

This text re-examines 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion's' popularity, investigating why it has persisted, as well as larger questions about the success of conspiracy theories even in the face of claims that they are blatantly counterfactual and irrational.

Joel M. Rothman considers the significance of cosmology in biblical and extra-biblical texts, and the role of the cosmic journey in many apocalyptic narratives. He posits that Revelation's narrative likewise takes the hearer on a virtual journey, through a cosmic story-space of great theological significance. While scholarship commonly assumes a three-tiered cosmos in Revelation, Rothman argues that Revelation's narrative operates in a four-tiered cosmos, with the hyper-heaven sitting above the sky-heaven, earth, and abyssal depths; a cosmic story-space that is recreated in the imagination of the hearers. Beginning with a methodology of visual narrative reading, Rothman then discusses the assumptions and existing conceptions regarding heaven and earth. He stresses that Revelation does not exhibit tension in its portrayal of heaven - between heaven as a site of conflict and heaven as the realm in which God truly reigns - but rather shows readers a sky-heaven characterised by archetypal conflict between powerful sky-beings and a hyper-heaven defined by full recognition of the Throne. In journeying through the sky-structure and God-space and by analysing the four cosmic layers in operation, the distinct nature of the two sky-spaces, cosmic change and the ideological import of the cosmic structure, Rothman demonstrates that the existence of the hyper-heaven - in contradistinction with the limited lived-cosmos of earth and sky-heaven - is a present guarantee of the final cosmic transformation that creates a new space for human life, exclusive of imperial draconian elements.

This volume brings together essays by specialists in different disciplines on the cultural expression of apocalypse, in particular in anglophone science fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Approaching these works from historical, philosophical, linguistic and literary perspectives, the contributors examine the relationship between secular and spiritual apocalypse, connecting the fiction and films to their historical moment. Not surprisingly, war recurs throughout this material, as a critical turning-point, fulfilment of prophecy, or prelude to a new age. In particular the essays explore the issue of whether modern apocalypse is seen as an ending or a beginning, considered under its political, ethnic and gendered aspects. Among the writers covered are H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon and such contemporary figures as Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard and Storm Constantine.