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"Apocalyptic art History and criticism."
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Apocalypse of the Alien God
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 theEnneads. 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 Godproposes 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 Godoffers 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.
eBook
Infected Empires
Given the current moment--polarized populations, increasing climate
fears, and decline of supranational institutions in favor of a
rising tide of nationalisms-- it is easy to understand the
proliferation of apocalyptic and dystopian elements in popular
culture. Infected Empires examines one of the most popular
figures in contemporary apocalyptic film: the zombie. This
harbinger of apocalypse reveals bloody truths about the human
condition, the wounds of history, and methods of contending with
them. Infected Empires considers parallels in the zombie
genre to historical and current events on different political,
theological and philosophical levels, and proposes that the zombie
can be read as a figure of decolonization and an allegory of
resistance to oppressive structures that racialize, marginalize,
disable, and dispose of bodies. Studying films from around the
world, including Latin America, Asia, Africa, the US, and Europe,
Infected Empires presents a vision of a global zombie that
points toward a posthuman and feminist future.
eBook
Rapture Culture
Examines the readership of the contemporary best-selling series Left Behind, drawing on a qualitative study of readers. Rapture Culture asks what role an anti-worldly theory like dispensationalism plays in contemporary evangelicalism when evangelicals have gained increasing social and political power. The book argues that apocalyptic stories are a form of social relationship. They shape identity not only through agreement and a sense of belonging, but also through disagreement and dissent. The most urgent message of the rapture for readers of Left Behind is that the end of time could come soon, and therefore a decision about personal salvation is necessary. While it is true that the Left Behind series plays on readers’ fears, the primary fear is not so much a social or political fear as a personal one—a fear that the reader himself or herself might be left behind. The primary purpose of the Left Behind series is to promote evangelism. Readers feel convicted by the books of the need to tell their loved ones about Christ and to seek the conversion of others. In addition, the story of rapture and tribulation provides a lens through which readers can interpret the chaotic and sometimes disconcerting events of the world. The popularity of the Left Behind series and its diffusion into mainstream culture leads the book to conclude with the suggestion that evangelicalism is wrongly understood as a “subculture” and instead needs to be conceived as a broad and fluid part of dominant popular culture in the United States. Rapture Culture urges its readers to take seriously both the fears and the desires about social life present in the testimonies of Left Behind’s readership and to consider popular fiction reading as a complex and dynamic act of faith in American Protestantism.
eBook
Revelation and the politics of apocalyptic interpretation
John's apocalyptic revelation tends to be read either as an esoteric mystery or a breathless blueprint for the future. Missing, though, is how Revelation is the most visually stunning and politically salient text in the canon. Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation explores the ways in which Revelation, when read as the last book in the Christian Bible, is in actuality a crafted and contentious word. Senior scholars, including N.T. Wright, Richard Hays, Marianne Meye Thompson, and Stefan Alkier, reveal the intricate intertextual interplay between this apocalyptically charged book, its resonances with the Old Testament, and its political implications. In so doing, the authors show how the church today can read Revelation as both promise and critique.
eBook
Apocalyptic Sentimentalism
In contrast to the prevailing scholarly consensus that understands sentimentality to be grounded on a logic of love and sympathy,Apocalyptic Sentimentalismdemonstrates that in order for sentimentality to work as an antislavery engine, it needed to be linked to its seeming opposite-fear, especially the fear of God's wrath. Most antislavery reformers recognized that calls for love and sympathy or the representation of suffering slaves would not lead an audience to \"feel right\" or to actively oppose slavery. The threat of God's apocalyptic vengeance-and the terror that this threat inspired-functioned within the tradition of abolitionist sentimentality as a necessary goad for sympathy and love. Fear, then, was at the center of nineteenth-century sentimental strategies for inciting antislavery reform, bolstering love when love faltered, and operating as a powerful mechanism for establishing interracial sympathy. Depictions of God's apocalyptic vengeance constituted the most efficient strategy for antislavery writers to generate a sense of terror in their audience.
Focusing on a range of important antislavery figures, including David Walker, Nat Turner, Maria Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown,Apocalyptic Sentimentalismillustrates how antislavery discourse worked to redefine violence and vengeance as the ultimate expression (rather than denial) of love and sympathy. At the same time, these warnings of apocalyptic retribution enabled antislavery writers to express, albeit indirectly, fantasies of brutal violence against slaveholders. What began as a sentimental strategy quickly became an incendiary gesture, with antislavery reformers envisioning the complete annihilation of slaveholders and defenders of slavery.
eBook
The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses 200 B.C.E.-200 C.E
The first full-length analysis of the heavenly book motif in English, this study highlights a vital element of early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. Through multiple intertextual readings, it demonstrates that for the ancients heavenly writing had life or death consequences.
eBook
Gilayon and “Apocalypse”: Reconsidering an Early Jewish Concept and Genre
This paper examines various ways in which apocalyptic studies can benefit from the introduction of the term and concept of gilayon, a reconstructed Hebrew counterpart of the Judeo-Greek apocalypse. The term gilayon, which combines the meanings of “revealed book” and “book of revelation,” refers to a central image of early Jewish revealed literature and could serve to define an important corpus, the boundaries of which might well overlap with (but still differ from) what is understood by the “genre apocalypse” in modern research. Moreover, this reconstructed concept uncovers additional meanings and associations, which shed light on texts known as “apocalyptic,” and has explanatory power for many phenomena associated with them. The introduction of gilayon may modify the entire paradigm of our understanding of early Jewish mysticism and help to divert the discussion of textual genres associated with it from a phenomenological to a historical route.
Journal Article
Cormac McCarthy
This definitive assessment of Cormac McCarthy’s novels captures the interactions among the literary and mythic elements, the social dynamics of violence, and the natural world in The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, and The Road. Elegantly written and deeply engaged with previous scholarship as well as interviews with the novelist, this study provides a comprehensive introduction to McCarthy’s work while offering an insightful new analysis. Drawing on René Girard’s mimetic theory, mythography, thermodynamics, and information science, Markus Wierschem identifies a literary apocalypse at the center of McCarthy’s work, one that unveils another buried deep within the history, religion, and myths of American and Western culture.
eBook
Apocalypticism in the Homiletic Text of Pesiqta Rabbati: Catastrophic Events at the End of Time
Abstract
The rabbinic homiletic work Pesiqta Rabbati contains several apocalyptic topoi in its homilies that culminate in descriptions of divine intervention in history, total destruction followed by the messianic age at the end-of-time, and justice at the final judgment. Nevertheless, Pesiqta Rabbati does not present itself as an apocalypse, nor does it belong to the text-type \"apocalypse.\" It contains midrashic apocalypticism by interpreting scriptural passages, and relied on the existing language of apocalyptic sources to augment the midrashic statements. Previous scholarship relating to the apocalypse in Pesiqta Rabbati focused mainly on the apocalypses of 2 Baruch, Paralipomena Jeremiou, and 4 Ezra. However, 1 Enoch (Similitudes) and Ascension of Isaiah should also be considered as possible sources. The Revelation to John contains numerous suggestive parallels to Pesiqita Rabbati. The apocalyptic topics address predicaments in Israel's past history and apply these to its present and future state.
Journal Article