The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition

Throughout Christian history, apocalyptic visions of the approaching end of time have provided a persistent and enigmatic theme for history and prophecy. Apocalyptic literature played a particularly important role in the medieval world, where legends of the Antichrist, Gog and Magog, and the Last Roman Emperor were widely circulated. Although scholars have long recognized that a body of Byzantine prophetic literature served as the source for these ideas, the Byzantine textual tradition, its sources, and the way in which it was transmitted to the West have neve been thoroughly understood. For more than fifteen years prior to his death in 1977, Paul J. Alexander devoted his energies to the clarification of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition. These studies, left uncompleted at his death, trace the development of a textual tradition that passed from Syriac through Greek to Slavonic and Latin literature. Using a combination of philological and historical detection, the author establishes the time, place, and circumstances of composition for each of the major surviving texts, identifying lost works known only through descriptions. In showing how Byzantine prophecy served as a bridge between ancient eschatological works and the medieval West, Alexander demonstrates that apocalyptic literature represents a creative source for the expression of political and religious thought in the medieval world. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective comprises a collection of essays on apocalyptic literature in the Armenian tradition. This collection is unprecedented in its subject and scope and employs a comparative approach that situates the Armenian apocalyptic tradition within a broader context. The topics in this volume include the role of apocalyptic literature and apocalypticism in the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity, apocalyptic ideology and holy war, the significance of the Book of Daniel in Armenian thought, the reception of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius in Armenian, the role of apocalyptic literature in political ideologies, and the expression of apocalypticism in the visual arts.

Throughout Christian history, apocalyptic visions of the approaching end of time have provided a persistent and enigmatic theme for history and prophecy. Apocalyptic literature played a particularly important role in the medieval world, where legends of the Antichrist, Gog and Magog, and the Last Roman Emperor were widely circulated. Although scholars have long recognized that a body of Byzantine prophetic literature served as the source for these ideas, the Byzantine textual tradition, its sources, and the way in which it was transmitted to the West have neve been thoroughly understood. For more than fifteen years prior to his death in 1977, Paul J. Alexander devoted his energies to the clarification of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition. These studies, left uncompleted at his death, trace the development of a textual tradition that passed from Syriac through Greek to Slavonic and Latin literature. Using a combination of philological and historical detection, the author establishes the time, place, and circumstances of composition for each of the major surviving texts, identifying lost works known only through descriptions. In showing how Byzantine prophecy served as a bridge between ancient eschatological works and the medieval West, Alexander demonstrates that apocalyptic literature represents a creative source for the expression of political and religious thought in the medieval world. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

From millenarists to Antichrist hunters, from the Sibyls to the Hussites, Visions of the End is a monumental compendium spanning the literature of the Christian apocalyptic tradition from the period A.D. 400 to 1500, masterfully selected and complete with a comprehensive introduction and new preface.

This work on how apocalypticism in medieval times was viewed in terms of the Western tradition, covers symbols connected with the idea of the apocalypse, Teste David cum Sibylla, papal power and significance, Joachim of Fiore, the role of Bernard of Clairvaux and other matters.

The contemporary study of Jewish apocalypticism today recognizes the wealth and diversity of ancient traditions concerned with the “unveiling” of heavenly matters‒‒understood to involve revealed wisdom, the revealed resolution of time, and revealed cosmology‒‒in marked contrast to an earlier focus on eschatology as such. The shift in focus has had a more direct impact on the study of ancient “pseudepigraphic” literature, however, than in New Testament studies, where the narrower focus on eschatological expectation remains dominant. In this Companion, an international team of scholars draws out the implications of the newest scholarship for the variety of New Testament writings. Each entry presses the boundaries of current discussion regarding the nature of apocalypticism in application to a particular New Testament author. The cumulative effect is to reveal, as never before, early Christianity, its Christology, cosmology, and eschatology, as expressions of tendencies in Second Temple Judaism.

This new addition to the Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History series explores early Christian views on apocalyptic themes.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.