Loading...As many of you know, my next trade book is tentatively titled: Expecting Armageddon: The book of Revelation and the Imminent End of the World, to be published by Simon & Schuster. I would like some help from interested lay folk in the reading public with a certain aspect of it, and would love to hear your suggestions.
First let me say that I have not begun any serious research for it yet. My plan is to get going in a hard-hitting, all-out kind of way in the early summer, depending on how quickly the book I’m working on now (the scholarly monograph on otherworldly journeys) gets written. I simply have too many things on my research-plate just now. Plus, that was the schedule I had originally planned: start on Armageddon in the summer and crunch as hard and for as long as I can and need to before getting down to writing it. Usually it takes me about a year to do the research on these things.
BUT, what I always like to do – and this is why I like to get an advanced contract on my trade books – is to think about it, well in advance of when I actually start doing the research. That way, when I can start plowing in, I know exactly where I want to start and what I anticipate the hot spots to be to go to first. My ideas always develop (and change) in the course of doing the serious reading and thinking, of course. But I never, ever want to jump in feet first without putting a lot of thought into it even before starting.
The original idea for the book was to explain why in some conservative religious circles now, and for well over a century, there has been an avid expectation that the world was going to end soon in fulfilment of biblical prophecies, especially as found in the book of Revelation. I myself was deeply committed to this view as a late-teenager and into my twenties.
I eventually came to realize that this was a complete misinterpretation of Revelation and the Bible as a whole. I also came to reflect on the fact that just about every generation of Christians since the time of Paul till today has had stalwart interpreters of the Bible who were convinced, and could prove (!), that the prophecies were all coming true in their own day and were soon to be fulfilled. The end is near. The Final Battle approaches. Armageddon is about to strike.
And so I had to ask myself: were all the millions of people thinking this in every generation demonstrably wrong, but we in our generation just happen to be right? Well, aren’t we grand?!
In any event, the book was going to trace the history of the interpretation of Revelation that took it to be a prediction of the end coming soon (in the lifetime of the interpreter), and then show how this view has been debunked by scholars of Revelation, who for a long time have known that actually that’s not what the book is about.
That strikes me as unusually interesting. And it strikes a lot of religious people as interesting. And it strikes a lot of used-to-be-religious people as interesting. But I’m not sure that it strikes *most* of the human beings in the universe as particularly interesting. Maybe marginally interesting? But not, well, really interesting.
And so then as I was thinking about it I suddenly thought back – duh – to …
To see the rest of this post, all you need do is join the blog. Won’t cost much at all, and every nickel you pay goes to charities helping those in need. You get tons for your money and you do some good for the world. So why not?
“Good Omens” on Amazon Prime is a kind of apocalyptic parody-an angel and a demon become friends and try to prevent the apocalypse form happening. It’s pretty funny. Cloud Atlas is a book about living (if one can call it that) in a world polluted by industrial waste. Kind of post apocalyptic…
Sure. Pretty easy to do, but will take a little time to compile! Titles only or would brief synopsis be helpful?
Synoptsis would be great.
George Orwell comes to mind, “1984” and “Animal Farm”. Isaac Asimov also with his law of robotics. In the age of robotics is it possible that we create robots that will have enough intelligence to see that humans are a disaster and begin to cull us from the planet? Will R2D2 wipe us out?
I believe that we are facing a catastrophe. The climate is changing even if some people say it is a Chinese hoax. We may have passed the point of no return. Mankind is twiddling their thumbs and tut tuning. There already are droughts, shortages of water, and there may be huge famines and disease. It all remains to be seen. I do know that there are too many people on the planet. They are getting the way of each other. They are even encroaching on my existence with noise and bothersome actions. There is no shortage of stupidity in West Texas.
On climate change, earlier this year I read The Great Derangement, a non-fiction book by Amitav Ghosh. Very well researched, thoughtfully written and realistically sober without at all veering into sensationalism. Might be worth a look.
The Day After, 1983. Nuclear holocaust. A made-for-tv movie.
The Day After Tomorrow, 2004. Climate disaster.
May not be in your synopsis , but I would be interested in reading about the perspective of Jews and Arabs in Israel
There are more than a few novels written about what would happen if/when some (typically rogue) nation successfully launches an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) over the US. I’ve read “One Second After by William Forschten – the genre seems to be dominated by him and a Bobby Akart, and it was an interesting (not enthralling) read. I mention this because there is a small but vocal faction of the Republican party that is convinced that EMP is a very real threat – so much so that it is actually specifically called out in their platform. Newt Gingrich is particularly vociferous and influential in this regard (which means, for me at least, we probably needn’t worry about it). Anyway, it deals with the consequences of a world within which nothing works anymore; no electricity, no heat, no automobiles (since engines are run by computers these days), no medicine, no A/C, no ……you get the picture. Humans wind up turning on each other.
I would like to read some of the influences of this subject on politicians in US such as President Reagan (Striking it is for me as in Europe religious Apocalypticism has been almost irrelevant in politics as far as I know).
The classic movie for the people of my age always has been WarGames (1983) connecting nuclear fear and Artificial Intelligence development within the context of the Cold War.
Climate change has a lot of catastrophe movies like The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
Another ground worth considering are the Apocalypses caused by the IA, a genre with films like Terminator and the recent I Am Mother (2019).
It’s not about climate change or nuclear war, but Seveneves by Neal Stephenson offers an exceptional look at how the world might react to the sudden revelation (pun intended) that the world is going to be destroyed and how we might make plans to avoid extinction. I found the first half of the novel particularly enthralling (there are two distinct halves to the book).
The movie Interstellar invokes climate change as a catalyst for impending doom.
I’ve always found the poem “Darkness” by Lord Byron to be quite moving, especially the contrast of all of humanity descending into selfish chaos with the lone, loyal dog who fends off beasts and cannibals from his master’s corpse and dies “licking the hand which answer’d not with a caress.” I believe it was written against the backdrop of a mini climate crisis in 1816 brought about by the eruption of Mount Tambora.
You mentioned the recent shift to climate change, but I am wondering how ill-equipped we are at conceptualizing the threat of a slow-moving disaster that takes place on the scale of decades when we’ve been conditioned through the ages by these apocalyptic depictions of sudden, dramatic, cataclysmic disaster.
“The Late Great Planet Earth” book and movie by Hal Lindsey and his ongoing TV show. You’ve mentioned him before but he had me convinced back int he 70s that ~1997 was going to be the end. It actually gave me pause about having children. “Doomsday Preppers” a TV show from 2011 to 2014. I saw one episode of this program and the people who called themselves “preppers” scared me more than any possible apocalypse! My favorite though would be “Interstellar”, a movie featuring Matthew McConaughy. The storyline from IMDB: “Earth’s future has been riddled by disasters, famines, and droughts. There is only one way to ensure mankind’s survival: Interstellar travel. A newly discovered wormhole in the far reaches of our solar system allows a team of astronauts to go where no man has gone before, a planet that may have the right environment to sustain human life.” Lastly, and something you alluded to in your post, certain Christians believe climate change/global warming is a hoax because according to them humans by their actions cannot bring about an apocalypse, only God can do that. They also point to Genesis 1:28 where God says to fill the earth and subdue it as proof that we don’t have to worry about what we do to the planet. Looking forward to see what others will suggest!
The single best “End Times” novel I’ve ever read is WE ALL FALL DOWN by BRIAN CALDWELL, What distinguishes it from the schlocky Left Behind stuff is that while it accepts the Christian End Times mythology it is told from the point of view of the “have nots”. The book is dark and profane and occasionally brutal without a trace of facile Christian triumphalism. This is what the “Last Days” would really be like. (Needless to say this one didn’t sell like the Left Behind series. One secondary source of entertainment is reading the Amazon reviews from the Left Behind fans who stumbled upon this book.)
https://www.amazon.com/All-Fall-Down-Brian-Caldwell/dp/0978602447/ref=sr_1_23?keywords=we+all+fall+down&qid=1573566880&s=books&sr=1-23
Well, there’s “The Population Bomb”– this book gets a lot right but the timeline is frequently criticized. For instance aquifers are being depleted but not at the rate given in the book. And there’s Malthus. Sometimes gloomy extrapolations based on current trends fail to take into consideration human adaptability and inventiveness. It seems that there is a genre of secular catastrophe with a long history. And then you have Norse mythologies in which it is assumed that the cosmos is kind of cyclic and undergoes absolute destruction followed by renewal, endlessly repeating. Is that sort of thing really apocalyptic? In fact, it looks as though a book could be written entirely on the subject of the relationships between a specific Christian form of apocalyptic thinking and all of the other forms that exist and have existed. And THAT book would probably have to be enormous, and scholarly. You could write that book, or narrow your focus to anticipations of the events in Revelations. I guess I’m saying that if I was undertaking what you are contemplating, I’d be overwhelmed at this stage. I’m so glad YOU are doing it!!
The population bomb and that whole schtick was excellently debunked by the late Julian Simon, the “Doomslayer” [sic].
Those there a pair you could use from the secular world.
I would say that one of the current end of the world scenarios is AI. Of course Human caused climate change is one as well. The terminator moves are AI based.
Still awaiting moderation?
Wasn’t it posted? I post everything I get!
Nicholas Guyatt, “Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World” (Harper Perennial, 2007).
The list is endless, but some of the most powerful end of the world scenarios I know of in Science Fiction come from Octavia Butler. In a sense, she specialized in post-apocalyptic scenarios.
Her ‘Lilith’s Brood’ trilogy is about a world devastated by nuclear war that is then colonized by a space-faring race of aliens who harvest DNA–they rescue the few survivors and partly regenerate the earth (for purposes that are only later revealed) and what follows is–interesting. Also unsettling.
More to the point, being African American, she was raised in a very religious family (Her parents were Baptists, her adult religious views were–idiosyncratic), and you can see elements of the Old and New Testament in her work.
She wrote two novels (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents) about a new religion being formed during the aftermath of a complete social breakdown in America. This new faith is based on the notion that humankind must go to the stars in order to survive, but the woman who founds it comes into conflict with her brother, the leader of a Christian megachurch. With Butler, not only are there no simple answers–there are no simple questions.
Stephen King’s The Stand I’m sure you are already familiar with, but what strikes me more and more about it is that Boulder is the Kingdom, Vegas is Gehenna, and King was very well aware of that. Man knows his bible.
You wouldn’t possibly find time to read/view everything in this rather expansive subgenre, but I have a personal fondness for Donald E. Westlake’s “Humans.” Not evailable at present, so you’d have to find a physical copy. It’s offbrand for him, since he was known primarily as a mystery writer. In a sense, it is a mystery.
An angel has been tasked with causing humanity to end the world. God is tired of our nonsense, wants an end to it, plenty of inhabited planets elsewhere for Him to watch. The angel finds a group of humans, and manipulates them to the end of bringing about the destruction of earth. It has to be their choice–these are the rules. But once the plot is uncovered, a demon is tasked with saving earth, because–well, here’s a quote—
//The instant I saw it there, sitting with the woman, I knew what it was. The stench of God was all over it, like dried roots, like stored apples. Laughing! And a servant.
I am not a servant. We are not servants. He Who We Serve is not our master but our lover. We act from our will, no others. Could this…thing say as much? Or any of its swooping, tending, message-bearing ilk?
And did its master really think he could sweep away this compost heap without the knowledge of He Who We Serve? We love this world! How it seethes, how it struggles, how it howls in pain, what colors there are in its agony! It is our greatest joy, the human race. We cannot see it removed, like game pieces from a table at the end of the day, simply because he’s bored.
Don’t be afraid, you wretched vermin. We will save you.//
Mainly told from the POV of the humans themselves (who are mainly exceptionally good people) but with recurrent first-person interludes from the angel, Ananayel, and the demon, X.
God gets no lines. The mystery is, perhaps, what does God really want? Even the angels don’t know.
A very popular form of apocalyptic literature these days is the zombie apocalypse. Night of the Living Dead, Zombieland, Sean of the Dead, etc. might be fruitful. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett all offer unique takes on the subject.
One apocalyptic pop culture series that I’m personally curious about is Left Behind, by Jenkins and LaHaye. I’m not so much curious about what the books say and more about how they captured so much attention. I tried reading the first and never could make it through. My impression was that it was bad theology disguised as fiction or bad fiction posing as theology. Either way, the writing was terrible, and yet the series was incredibly popular.
More attention needs to be given to this question. I’ve thought of Nelson Darby and others who propagated this still popular “pre-trip rapture” eschatology as master marketeers. As has been said, “A lot of people believe they are going to heaven; they just don’t want to have to die in order to get there.” Voila! There is an enduring answer that generation after generation never gets disconfirmed. Although from friends who read the Left Behind series I’ve heard the real heroes of the story are among the ones left behind, such that the would be macho Christians are now preferring “mid-trib” and “post-trib, pre-millinnial” versions of this eschatology.
Add Mad Max to your list of movies.
I’ve always assumed that the whole concept of heaven was to give serfdom and slaves something to look forward to without actually improving their earthly conditions.
Now, evangelicals looking forward eagerly to the end of times strikes me as euphoric joy at being part of the ‘in crowd’ and expecting grand things in the next world. It makes one feel powerful, I presume.
‘Snowpiercer’ – apocalyptic but also about how good vrs evil is always about killing the poorest in society. Blanket bombing of Uk by Germans and blanket bombing of Germany by UK targeted the poor. In ‘Snowpiercer’ the uprising of the poor is orchestrated by those in control to replace but also continue the current system. Set on a train in a frozen world.
On something different nobody talks about ‘American Evangelism’ not being christian, there is no rapture in Christianity. There are billions of Christians very few of them are American evangelical. Yet Hollywood uses their ideology to represent Christianity.
Apocalypse is also egalitarian instead of the poorest suffering everybody is, kind of like Trump and Brexit and I voted Brexit it is the middle classes & academia that are suffering not the poor if you have nothing you can’t have less. I’d look at how society was becoming more unequal or persecuting certain groups.
Not exactly nuclear, but Avengers Infinity War would be a fun one. The bad guy is basically Malthus, wants to kill half the universe and succeeds, and everything feels like a kind of Apocalypse. Also, he is the most powerful being in the universe, believes he must save the universe from overpopulation, and in the process sacrifices his daughter on the top of a mountain.
Watchmen is maybe more in line with what you are looking for. The “bad guy” is an utilitarian that blows up New York to simulate an alien threat to get the US and URSS to work together. Maybe it’s better to read the graphic novel, it has a continuous sense of impending doom on every detail, like in the watch at the start of every chapter, marking one minute closer to midnight, worrying news in the background, etc.
If I can think of something else, I will add it in another comment. I grew up a Seventh day Adventist myself, so the Apocalypse was very present all the time, and this book has me excited already ????
The movie The Book of Eli is very interesting. It is post nuclear apocalypse.
I think the Terminator series has put its mark on our culture. Linda Hamilton in T2 is fantastic in her fervour of the coming apocalypse
“The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future” by Paul Sabin (Yale University Press, 2014)
This example is not “great literature”, but I love Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’ Good Omens (now an Amazon movie) precisely because it lampoons a subject that I believe is ridiculous and not to be taken seriously (Armageddon, the rapture, etc.). Humankind has the capacity to destroy itself without any help from God. I like the direction you want to take with your new book and it sounds like it will be a great read.
Zombies. Any media will do.
Civilization under attack from the unintelligent hordes.
The Singularity.
We are truly doomed to become pets of our AI overlords, the first truly intelligent species in existence.
Communism.
The end of individually happy people.
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I guarantee it’s the best humorous take out there.
I did a book for Berkley in 2010 on how different groups have envisioned the End. I was asked to write it on a tight schedule. (I knew it was out of my field) It;s still in print and might give you a few ideas and some background on less well-known groups. I did put in footnotes and a bibliography and ranged far beyond Revelations.and Daniel, although I mentioned both, I wish I’d had longer to write it but I’d probably still be researching. There are a huge number of them and more popping up every day. Can’t wait to read your take, Sharan
If you have never seen the original Matrix (1999), I would rate this as a must-see dystopian sci-fi film.
Beyond that, there are a ton of movies, mostly on the schlocky side –
– The Book of Eli (2010) – (side note: the Bible plays a prominent part in this one!)
– I am Legend (2007) – (biological armageddon)
– The Day after Tomorrow (2004) – (climate change)
– Escape from New York (1981) – (nuclear war)
– Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) – (nuclear war)
– Forbidden Planet (1956)
I don’t know if you’re back to watching end-of-the-world movies yet, but I would suggest one more if it hasn’t already been mentioned. I think Soylent Green is a must-watch (just caught it on TV again by chance the other night). Prescient in so many ways, not the least of which is that almost everyone wears protective masks when venturing out of doors. A classic apocalyptic sci-fi film.
Thanks.
I’m sure you haven’t forgotten it, but I’ll just mention the “zombie apocalypse” genre that seems only recently to have petered out. Of course, the name of the genre itself spells out the connection.
Consider the Evangelical position of Israel, Russia (Gog and Magog) and the formation of the EU. A lot of my Christian friends believe the end is also near with all the so called players in the Middle East now. My friends believe the world will soon be destroyed and God will rebuilt it. To them worrying about climate change, social inequality, starvation ect. Is seen as counterproductive to God’s aims.
Annihilation and Ex Machina (both written/directed by Alex Garland) are amazing meditations on humanity pondering post-humanity.
One of my all-time favorite movies is Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 masterpiece Possession. It’s a largely allegorical fever-dream of a movie following a couple’s divorce as it leads to the literal end of the world. I’ve always read the couple’s relationship to be analogous to religious belief, and the story’s progress into madness and chaos is really about the societal affect of the absence of faith, but you might like it as one of the most stark examples of peak-Hollywood-horror-era religious alarmism (It also has two of the best performances ever in it).
If you do watch it, be sure to give it a second go sometime soon-after. I think you’ll like it, and it really needs more than one viewing.
Climate change…Disney’s Wall-E. It’s not subtle, it’s very much the point!
Hi Dr. Ehrman, glad to be of service! I think for non-fiction works that relate to your topic of the End Times, you need look no further than the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert. She also is the author of “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.” I think those would be a good place to start for non-fiction. As for more recent works of fiction, two works that really stand out to me that have had great popular success are Stephen King’s “The Stand” and Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake.” In both cases, bioengineering kickstarts Armageddon, if you will. In “The Stand,” a bioengineered “super flu” escapes a secret government lab and wipes out over 95% of the human population, leading to a ‘last stand’ between good and evil. And a nuclear bomb plays a big part in the ending of the book! In “Oryx and Crake,” a “mad scientist” type bioengineers ways to sterilize the current human population and create a new, “better” dominant life form on earth. Because CRISPR-cas9 is in the news so much these days (and the first human trials have begun using CRISPR to treat human diseases), you could argue these fictional scenarios of bioengineering are not far off from the present (if at all). These books, of course, are descendants of “Frankenstein” and other greats in the genre you are looking at. Hope that helps!
If you want a light-hearted take on the end, with a happy ending, remember the animated film WALL-E? Earth’s environment had become so bad humanity had to flee in spaceships. Kind of like they were RAPTURED! Of course, eventually WALL-E causes them to return to earth where they are able to once again re-cultivate a paradise (Eden?). In fact, the alien robot WALL-E encountered was deliberately named EVE after the Biblical figure, as the mate to lonely WALL-E. On a more serious note, back in 1983 the TV movie The Day After depicted nuclear holocaust here in America in a very gripping way, garnered huge number of viewers at the time, and unlike WALL-E, ended pessimistically, or at least very sadly.
Here are my suggestions.
Fiction:
When the Wind Blows (1986 film) – about a rural English couple’s attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack and maintain a sense of normality in the subsequent fallout.
Non-fiction:
An Inconvenient Truth (2006 film) – an illustrated talk on climate by Al Gore, aimed at alerting the public to an increasing “planetary emergency” due to global warming.
You have to read “A Canticle for Leibowitz” if you haven’t yet. Beyond that, the Singularity themes — tons around and I’ll see if I can compile a short list, but “Marooned in Real Time” by Vernor Vinge comes immediately to mind. Kind of a hard science “Left Behind.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime
Edit: Oh, and, Greg Bear’s “Blood Music.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel)
How about one or more films about pandemics? Is this a modern version of the end times in Revelation? Contagion, Outbreak?
Factfulness from Hans Rosling, Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think.
In Europe, this is a very popular book. I think you know it as well but in case you don’t, this is a very good book(in general as well). It is not direct related to apocalyptic thinking but it does explain the pessimism and thinking that it is going worse and worse.
The environmental Green movement is definitely apocalyptic. 12 years to live, apparently. In “non-fiction” the Population Bomb is a good book categorizing the same hysteria in the 80s. See the book The Bet, on Erlich’s famous bet against Julian Simon.
The 1959 version of the movie “On the Beach.” Very scary in that the calendar in the 1959 version shows October 1962, exactly the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of the last scenes shows a banner from a revival meeting which reads, “It’s not too late,” but of course it is.
I haven’t given thought yet to what you ask for, but I must offer this personal observation: many of my conservative Evangelical and Catholic friends agree without reservation that because man was given dominion over the earth and the end is near, we needn’t give a fig about our environment. They will say with a straight face that all the planet’s resources are there for our near-term plundering, even if we end up with a Soylent Green style devastated environment. They think I’ve become a kooky leftist because I would rather we not cut down the entire Brazilian rain forest.
I suggest By the Bomb’s Early Light and When Time Shall be No More by the late historian Paul Boyer. The idea of the end of the world became more plausible after Hiroshima.
The first film I always think of when someone brings up nuclear threats is “The Day After” (1983). I’ve seen it as both a child and when I was older. It still affects my thinking on the horror of nuclear warfare. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any others that come close to it whether about nuclear threat or climate change.
“If you believe in Forever
Life is just a one-night stand.
If there’s a rock and roll Heaven
Well you know they got a hell of a band, band, band.”
The Righteous Brothers, single, 1973
Armageddon. The Rapture. Belief in the invisible, immaterial, immortal human soul and an eternal afterlife. These fantasies are all intertwined and have been so for nearly 2000 years. The belief that the end times are imminent retarded the advance of Western Civilization for 1500 years. It took the invention of printing, a Reformation and an Enlightenment to flush this nonsense out of European thought and open the door to modern civilization. However, the fear of non-existence, which all humans face, keeps this fantasy alive in our time and likely will continue to infect a huge number of individuals until the giant bolide wipes us all off the surface of the Earth and humanity goes the way of the dinosaurs.
The lyrics above refer to a particularly nasty mode of thought in which believers in this fantasy justify doing nothing to address important social problems (nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change, human-produced global temperature increase, ethnic cleansing, etc.). because the end is near (life is but a one-night stand). Of course, these believers are just following the teachings of John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, all of the Church Fathers, and every Christian clergyman since then who all preach the gospel of prepare because the end is near.
To the nuclear threat and climate change I would add the potential threat that artifical intelligence poses lives, ethics and many other aspects of society. At the rate at which the technology is progressing, it may become a monstrous problem relatively soon, as compared to, say, climate change. Other technologies holding apocalyptic potential include gene editing (CRISPR) and lifespan-lengthing procedures. As for post apocalyptic media, I recommend the superb Hyperion series of sci-fi novels by Dan Simmons, set in a deep future in which the Catholic Church is a major force in interplanetary and alien societies.
Right. The “Expanse” novels set in the 22nd century feature Mormonism attempting to expand to nearby stars via a gigantic generation spaceship. And the “Dune” novels contain much Arabic/Islamic texture and Latin connections (e.g. the Bene Gesserit sisterhood). See
https://baheyeldin.com/literature/arabic-and-islamic-themes-in-frank-herberts-dune.html
The one take on Revelations that no one except me has observed is its unique role as the last book in a codex when the bound book was new media. No longer was it necessary to scroll through a scroll to get to the exciting end part. With Christianity, you could open your bound bible and begin with the gospels, leaf through the epistles, or go straight to the salacious end times in the back pages. The human base urge for instant gratification found its early beginnings in bible’s last book.
For years I’ve thought that Augustine’s City of God reinterpreted Revelation in light of the new status of the church in the Roman Empire. Is that correct?
It was common by his day (or maybe starting then?) to interpret the history of the church in light of Revelation (and vice versa). But I’m not well-read yet on the history of interpretation once the empire had been Christianized.
What made me start to doubt eschatology was reading about the Anabaptists during the time of the Reformation. Some of them were convinced that State infant baptism was the Mark of the Beast. Baptism was how a person became a member of the State in those days. So you literally could not buy or sell without it as you essentially had no identity.
Post Apocalyptic movies that immediately come to mind are:
Water World starring Kevin Costner (climate disaster)
The Matrix starring Keanu Reeves (singularity/technocalypse)
The Terminator films play on the technocalypse scenario too).
I will let the more erudite blog members help you, but I just got finished with Metzger’s “Breaking the Code”…written for the general audience. I look at Revelation now in a whole different way. Anticipating your final product.
This may not be what you had in mind, but modern apocalyptic scenarios are centred on the idea of computer artificial intelligence becoming sentient and attacking humans. It really seems to have replaced religious apocalyptic ideas in the west since it feels a lot more plausible to a growing secular society than a religious apocalypse. Terminator, War Games, the Matrix. Thing I find fascinating about it is that it flips Revalation on its head — rather than the god who created everything imposing punishment, it is the god we created punishing us. And its extra terrifying because of the cold logic of AI, contrasted with the unpredictable god of the Bible, who could show mercy, or, as in Job, radomly impose punishments.
Depending on your angle, Asimov’s I, ROBOT; Stephen King’s THE STAND or THE DARK TOWER; Michael Crichton’s JURASSIC PARK are all anxious about existential consequences of technology. The Tower of Nabel is one of these stories, isn’t it? The gods worry that man with his technology, including the invention of cities and architecture, and one language can become like a god, and so they go down to scatter them and confuse their languages — that seems rather apocalyptic.
Babel 🙂
“Without warning” really scared me, it is not about climate change, but from alien invasion and asteroids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89u81khMVyc
In the 80s and nineties we were afraid of robots of the future and techonologcal wars like in terminator
from the last decade there are a lot of films about virus tha cause Zombie Apocalipse, such as “I m legend”, “resident evil”, z war, 28 days, Rec etc.
I have a question about the book of Revelation, I have heard that in papyrus 115 the number of the beast is 616, not 666. So which is it and why? Should we kill the antichrist if we find him or just let him be?
Yeah, you won’t be able to kill him. It was originally 666. If you add up the numerical equivalents of the letters in the title Caesar Nero, it adds up to 666. But the final letter in Greek can be left off resulting in 616.
thank you for your response Dr. Ehrman.
but, if p115 is earlier than other manuscripts of revelation, why is it that scholars hold to 666 and not 616 if it means the same about Nero.
Because it’s not just about the date of a manuscript. These decisions get made on numerous grounds. I’ve been planning on posting on that but got side tracked. I’ll get back to it when a couple of my other threads are completed.
fine, thank you Dr.
I hope you allow links in the comments apologies if you don’t. Anyways, so if you want someone who is saying that we should be very optimistic about the world you should read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. It talks about all the reasons we should be optimistic about the world in general and not just climate change (It does have a whole sections on climate change and nuclear weapons)
If you want to hear the argument for why the world won’t end due to climate change by someone who is not a climate denier and is scientifically accurate (at least as far as I can tell) there’s this:
http://progressandperil.com/2018/02/23/the-conquest-of-climate/
For more information on this optimistic stuff here’s a link:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-we-chill-out-about-global-warming/
If you want the negative side of things (in terms of climate change) you should read David Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, this book is about worst case scenario, it’s pretty scary.
If you just want all the unbiased facts (at least as much as anyone can be) about climate change you should read Robert Henson’s The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change, 2nd Edition. It was published this year by the American Meteorological Society (which is like how the SBL is for Biblical scholars but for Meteorologists and Climate scientists). I’m not 100% if you’re interested in this as you seem more interested in how culture deals with climate change and not necessarily the science behind it, but it does talk about culture and I found it very informative so I’ll just mention it.
Honestly I am often stuck between freaking out about climate change and not being worried about it and thinking that people are over reacting about it, it depends on the day. Anyways, I hope you enjoy doing the research for your new book, I look forward to reading it when it comes out!
Let me suggest that you start “from the other end” if you are interested in “contemporary” secular apocalyptic notions. By that I mean, start from the debunkers and work to the apocalyptics. One of the principal debunkers of the past 50 years has been Paul Simon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon Simon only dealt with “respectable” forecasts of doom. There are other, less respectable, theories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#Anti-semitic_conspiracy_theories
• The Book of Revelations, I say, emerges after 136 AD following the third Jewish /Roman conflict (woe)known as the Bar Kokhba revolt .
The following quote comes from the book of revelations followed by a quote from the Jewish Talmud. Both relate to a third woe or War.
Revelations 14:20 – The grapes were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress in a stream about 180 miles long and as high as a horse’s bridle.
The Jerusalem Talmud relates that the number of dead in Betar was enormous, that the Romans “went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils.”[52]
The Talmud entry was made about Betar, a factor in the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Bar Kokhba revolt was the third of three “Woes” or wars. The three woes are another parallel to the book of revelations.
The target audience would have been the Jewish populations and possibly the Christians, reminding them how powerful their God is.
Dating the Book of Revelations shortly after the Bar Kokhba revolt satisfies a couple of patterns seen elsewhere in the bible.
1) Books emerge shortly after a conflict or changed in power
2) Prophecies are post mortem. That is they are written after the facts. Three Wars, Vesuvius,a bloodbath etc…
• Muslim connection. The aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt saw several conflicts between the Jewish peoples and the Roman Empire from 136 AD up to 629AD after which Muslims carried on the battle with the Roman Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt#Aftermath
In short, it does not relate to a modern day Armageddon
Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is an obvious recent example; there’s a race of ice demons called the White Walkers/Others that are supposed to be a metaphor for climate change. Unfortunately this was handled extremely poorly in the TV show and the books aren’t finished yet, so I don’t know what you could do with it, but that would be a pretty major and well-known example.
It’s a bit older but I think Watchmen (the graphic novel) might be a good one for nuclear annihilation, especially as there’s a lot of religious themes about god mixed in.
Man, this is just making me realize how little I’ve been paying attention to popular fiction lately.
I’m sorry, I cannot be of any help with the coming apocalypse since I believe it’s not coming. I realize that Christianity is closely tied to the Revelation of Paul, but I see the Revelation differently, By Parable teaching we should always be ready, but there are a few other teachings we should always be aware.
One would be, no one knows the day or time, not the angles in heaven nor I, only the Father. Generation after generation best guess have only pushed the day further away. But still by Parable we should always be ready. Personally I believe in the word of God when he said he is willing to wait a thousand generations. So a thousand generations it will be.
All the nuclear holicoust
I’m sorry, I cannot be of any help with the coming apocalypse since I believe it’s not coming. I realize that Christianity is closely tied to the Revelation of Paul, but I see the Revelation differently, By Parable teaching we should always be ready, but there are a few other teachings we should always be aware.
One would be, no one knows the day or time, not the angles in heaven nor I, only the Father. Generation after generation’s best guesses have only pushed the day further away. But still by Parable we should always be ready. Personally I believe in the word of God when he said he is willing to wait a thousand generations. So a thousand generations it will be.
All the nuclear holocaust we can dream of cannot destroy any more of humanity than twenty thousand years of ice age, or one Super Caldera which humanity has already survived. No, think of something that could only be available after one thousand forty year generations, that’s forty thousand years. Yes that is a long way off and in that time there could be several nuclear holocaust, that’s just OJT for humanity.
I attend a church that believes they will all be raptured before Armageddon, I just try not to show my disbelief over their enormous egos.
The world population in 1800 was less than a billion. 1816 was the year without a summer. Today we are at 6.5 billion, would a year without a summer be survivable. You have heard of living paycheck to paycheck, well humanity is one harvest from oblivion. But we will survive and we will rebuild and there will be a nuclear holocaust. But it will not be Armageddon.
The Disclosure requires a new heaven and a new earth, it requires a thousand year reign by the Christ and google beheaded martyrs. It will take at least forty thousand years to figure all that out.
One of my favorite memories as a kid was rhe giant ants from the 1954 classic Them!, Warner Brothers’ highest grossing film of the year with an all-star cast. Note especially the ‘biblical’ prophecy being fulfilled and ‘cited’ by a scientist sent from Washington at 1:35 in the clip below:
“We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true ― ‘And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth.’”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CugQcmapiwc&list=PLDIPT5l07s0QDnNVqCgxs5MzTvh1QiQuc&index=14
Darryl A. Armstrong talks about the ‘theological’ implications of this film, as well as the Godzilla (also closely linked to the apocalyptic ‘new world’ (עלם הבא) brought on by ‘man’s development if nuclear weapons and other films here:
http://www.reelworldtheology.com/if-these-films-could-talk-october-2018/
I am surprised you didn’t mention zombies. I’m not sure if that is the kind of thing you are going for, but it seems like, even though the notion of zombies has always been there, there has been a huge uptick since the early 2000’s: Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland, World War Z, and far too many to mention. I remember even buying the Zombie survival guide. Other spoofs included Shaun of the Dead and Juan of the Dead. There are even places you can go to train for surviving a zombie attack. Of course, this also sparked similar films and books about viruses that end humanity, like The Crazies, and Stephen King’s Cell.
My favorite books with an apocalyptic tone are King’s The Stand and his Gunslinger series.
As a side note, I am very interested in your notion of how apocalyptic thinking has influenced political thinking. And with the coming election and popularity (either good or bad) of our current president, it seems very relevant.
A great Zombie apocalypse book is “The Girl with all the Gifts”
Oh hell yes. I saw a documentary of people who seriously await the zombie apocalypse. One woman designed and built a two story house with wrap around second story porch that had a line of site (for a rifle scope) in every direction, and the stairs leading to the second story got increasingly steeper the higher you went, because “it is well known that zombies can’t climb.” They are dead serious end timers just waiting for the undead to rise up.
I’d also google project fear, term used in both Scottish Indy referendum and Brexit against apocalyptic predictions. Something that seems missing from American debate maybe because both sides are too engulfed in their own versions of it.
*Collapse*, by Jared Diamond, Bart. A great read as we chop down the last tree on our Easter Island.
I think that the most powerful expression of end-times lately has been “The Walking Dead”. Not perhaps the best quality work, but it’s influence on our culture has been incredibly pervasive. It began as a graphic novel and morphed into a high-ratings TV series. And there have been numerous spin-offs and clones in literature, movies, and TV. Even those millions who never watched the series know what it is and what its basic premise is. Something to consider.
*Energy and Civilization* by Vaclav Smil. Smil resists “the end is coming soon” theme. His theme is more how coal (and in one or two places, peat) ushered in the kingdom of god on earth that we currently enjoy. But the coming end hovers nonetheless. Every historian should read this.
Finally, Bill McKibbens’ Rolling Stone article: “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math: Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”. This article goaded me into finally switching political parties after more than thirty years. Ya don’t get much more apocalyptic than *that*, lolol. 🙂
So, having read through suggestions so far, we have not yet had a mention of the kind of event that wiped out the dinosaurs. Lots of junk floating around in the solar system. Jupiter got pummeled not so long ago and astronomers got to observe the impacts. That sort of thing might well have wiped out humanity, as well as a lot of other life on earth. And then we have the recent understanding that “habitable zones” are unstable. Stars get hotter as they age. Our main sequence star is no exception. That is not avoidable and it is a certainty that sometime in the future this planet will be uninhabitable. But that’s a rather distant future. Eco-system collapse? We tend to forget about food chains. Plus, something like 70% of the earth’s oxygen is produced by oceanic phytoplankton. These organisms are sensitive to pH, and that is changing in the direction of a more acidic environment. Rapid warming and acidification could shut down the engine providing most of the planet’s oxygen. And so on. Some sort of massive extinction event is certain, at some indefinite time in the future. But none of that really has anything to do with the specific imaginings of some Christians. When apocalyptic visions were being recorded, the authors had no clues about the workings of the natural world. I think that puts them in a different category. Modern Christians have gotten the modern, naturalistic, catastrophes all mixed up with the old prophecies. The issues now seems hopelessly muddled.
Sci Fi novel. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Post nuclear war all science and learning is dispised and a community of monks keep a record of science which they do not understand.
It would be interesting to hear your take on N.T. Wright’s (see his Gifford Lectures) views that apocalyptic views of the early twentieth century gave rise to Albert Schweitzer picture of Jesus.
Sorry one more point when reading Hans-Georg Gadamer he made an off hand comment that apocalyptic fire in the new testement (2 Peter 3:10) is Heraclius’s fire as basic element. I thought this was intresting point that could be elaberated on.
Just some ideas. Good luck on your new book.
Interesting– I haven’t read them. But I should point out that Schweitzer was picking up on views pronounced at the end of the 19th century by johannes Weiss, as, of course, knows intimately well, and must certainly have referenced
A good antidote to the notion that we are all going to Hell in a handcart (12 years to extinction, apparently) is ‘Factfulness,’ by the late Hans Rosling – also, on the same theme, ‘Enlightenment Now,’ by Stephen Pinker. Anyway, we have just hit a solar minimum, so the narrative will soon change from runaway warming to ‘we are about to enter an ice age from which there will be no escape.’ Lots of books/films on that theme to come, I suspect.
This is slightly off the wall, but you might want to look into how eschatological thought has entered into discussions of the “Fermi Paradox.”
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
I would recommend the movie 2012 ( Climate change ). Knowing with Nichols Cage Involves the book of Ezekiel and angles.
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien – a 16 year old girl who believes that she is the only survivor of nuclear war, thanks to the microclimate in her valley- until a man turns up who has survived by wearing a radiation suit, but the plot takes several very dark turns from there. Brilliantly sinister. I googled it just now and it turns out there is a film version; slightly different plot but same basic premise.
Rather different scenario, but in John Wyndham’s The Death of Grass, a virus attacks all grass species and therefore all major crop plants. Terrifying. I think there’s also something about the new mutation arising due to human mishandling of the situation.
As an aside, it’s interesting that in Norse mythology there’s a slightly different take on the end of the world. In the story of Ragnarök, usually translated as the twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung) in Wagner’s Ring Cycle) there is a final battle between the gods and the giants, and the world is destroyed by fire and then flood, but finally renewed and repopulated by two surviving humans. All of the principle gods die, so there’s a sense in which the age of the gods comes to an end and a new age of humans begins.
I remember reading a book by Stephen Jay Gould called Questioning the Millennium (referenced in an episode of the Simpsons called Lisa the Skeptic Season 9 Episode 8) that I thought was good.
The list of movies seems endless. In addition to the Rapture, the Seventh Sign stands out. Prince of Darkness (fantasy sci fi) may not be what you are looking for but it is dear to me in a cult movie sort of way.
Just on thought on the reason(s) people take Revelation literally. As much as I hate to quote Ken Ham, I think many Christians feel the same way he does. He asks if you say one part of the Bible isn’t true, why should you believe the rest? His response is that you therefore have to accept all of it. I don’t agree with that, but I understand that a lot of people feel that way (assuming they’ve thought about it deeply at all). Would you expect most people to say: OK, I accept the rest but this book is the odd one out? I think a lot of people just assume it is literally true, so the end must be coming soon. For every generation. I don’t think that is the only reason, but I think it’s a factor.
The Book of Revelation is about “all things being made new” not about the end of the world. The Har (mountain) of Megiddo is Mt Carmel. Isaiah said that the Promised One will come to Acca & Mt Carmel.
Much of the Book of Revelation is about the corruption of Islam.
The number 1260 appears repeatedly in Islamic prophecies. It also appears 7 times in Revelation & 2 times in Daniel.
More about this >>> http://prophecy-fulfilled.com/rev12.htm
For how climate change has pierced into the psyche, you may want to allude to its appearance in video games. A modern medium for a modern era. For example, in Civilization 6, they have a robust global warming mechanic driven by your civilization’s choices to use GHG producing resources, which can lead to global extinctions if you’re not careful (it’s actually *really* hard not to drive the CO2 levels on the planet through the roof and remain competitive). It’s a little “matter of fact”, but that just shows how deeply the disaster is embedded. Of course this will happen!
The point that this is indicative of a shift away from nuclear and towards climate change is a bit undercut by popular titles such as Fallout, Outer Worlds, & the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. BUT in those games the nuclear disaster is a little “tongue in cheek”, just an excuse to get into the real post-apocalypse. Contrast to Civ 6, where the disaster is essentially a foregone conclusion.
The Kraken Wakes is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Wyndham, originally published in 1953. The title is a reference to Alfred Tennyson’s sonnet The Kraken.
The book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in The War of The Worlds; in fact it describes a ‘slow onset’ apocalypse surprisingly similar to the impact of climate change.
I haven’t read apocalyptic sci fi in a while. One of my favorites from years ago is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. It is actually post-apocalypse, but you might find it interesting. I’ve read many others, but that is one of the best, in my opinion.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road
I think an ideal book for your purpose is Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world and is divided into three parts – the first is at an abbey at the edge of a desert and relates to the discovery of some quotidian paperwork by the saint revered at the abbey. The second, hundreds of years thereafter, describes how science is rediscovered. The third, hundreds of years again thereafter, returns to a fully modern, fully recovered world, that is descending, once again, into a nuclear madness. The cycle repeats…
I have found it a powerful book and one that appeals to my imagination. I think it would work well for you in the outline you have sketched.
Even if you don’t use it, read it.
Cheers,
For apocalypticism in contemporary religious movements I recommend the Center for Studies on New Religious Movements.
https://www.cesnur.org/
I love books about the apocalypse! It’s such a common theme in current literature that you will have no shortage of choices!! It’s especially popular in YA literature – although much of it is actually what is more accurately described as post-apocalyptic – what will the survivors left behind do to live and thrive in the new reality. I think that is fundamentally different from the biblical understanding of the apocalypse.
I would highly recommend “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is about how people respond when Earth is no longer habitable and the formation of new gods and religions in the future.
If nuclear war doesn’t get us and if some astronomical event (an asteroid or a burned out sun) doesn’t get us, then I would bet on a pandemic because such pandemics have almost gotten us several times such as the following:
1. The plague of Athens (typhoid fever) from 430-426 B.C.E.
2. The Black Death in 1350 C.E.
3. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death” (RV 2:11 KJV).
One might say the first death is the death of the individual, and the second death that of the species — a sort of bottomless pit, from which there is no resurrection, neither biological nor spiritual.
“So species, everyone agrees, eventually cease to exist. There is but one cloud that confuses the issue a bit: some paleontologists speak of TWO sorts of extinction — extinction pure and simple (“without issue” — what I would call “proper” extinction) and “extinction by transformation” (also called “pseudoextinction”). George Simpson, for example, has maintained that both forms of extinction take place. It is the latter form — extinction by transformation — that muddies the waters in our search for an analogy between organisms as individuals and species as individuals…. After all, no organism ceases to exist because it becomes transformed into some other creature.”
— Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 CO 5:17 KJV).
“And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (RV 7:13-14 KJV).
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is (1 JN 3:2 KJV).
Food for thought…
Well, I do not know many novels about it, but I do think that in my country, some Christian Orthodox are very high up on the fact that we will be implanted with microchips, which are actually the sign of the beast, in Revelation. Also that just the advance of science in itself is a sign of it. Also because bars on products contain the number 666. I mean in my country there was a system of cards, electronic cards for the healthcare system. – a pretty shoddy system as it breaks down often, and that is why I was against it – and they made a special exception for religious or personal conscience reasons for receiving it and being replace by a paper declaration. So it is isn t JUST in the minds of some, it actually affected government. And there this so called scenario of a third world war, where Constantinople will be reclaimed by the greeks and another Greek emperor will reign, announced by an angel, after Russia invades Turkey. Then a period of thirty years or so of peace, then the Antichrist will reign, and then the end. It is is pretty creative with all its twists and turns.
Another thing that might interest you is psychological trauma. Besser van der Kolk, The body keeps the score. In it he discusses how traumatized people, from war, childhood, or whatever, are impacted by that event so they feel in a constant doom. And a case could be made that the apostles after the death of Jesus and the first Christians lived in a such a fear of the next few days, that they generalized that feeling that projected it on the whole world, their fear systems were just up the roof. And it is usually caused by some event -like the fall of Constantinople, the communist rule in Russia, etc, after a severe traumatic event, personal, or general that these things gain force. Like you said, the cold war. Maybe there is a connection here to be made as well.
Two films in this vein that I can highly recommend are:
LAST NIGHT – In six hours’ time, the world as we know it will be gone. Written and directed by Canadian actor/filmmaker Don McKellar, the film hops between several loosely interlocked stories, exploring how different people chose to spend their last night. Stranded on the street after her car is stolen and demolished, Sandra (Sandra Oh) tries desperately to get to her husband in time so that they can commit suicide together, recruiting a depressed loner named Patrick (McKellar) to help her out. Patrick’s friend Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) decides to spend the time recruiting women to enact all the sexual fantasies he’s ever had.
TAKE SHELTER – Curtis LaForche is a man plagued by apocalyptic visions. Convinced his premonitions will soon come to pass, he begins constructing a shelter for his wife and child. His increasingly erratic behavior leads him to a shrink, where we learn he has a family history of mental illness. Thus lies the central question of Take Shelter. Is Curtis a prophet for the modern time or a mentally disturbed individual becoming lost in his delusions? A kind of subversive take on the traditional Noah story.
“On the Beach” by Nevil Shute was mentioned previously, but I am providing the synopsis, since it seems to fit perfectly. The movie starred some big names:
The war is over. Nobody won. Only the inhabitants of Australia and the men of the U.S, submarine Sawfish have escaped the nuclear destruction and radiation. Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) takes the Sawfish on a mission to see if an approaching radiation cloud has weakened, but returns with grim news: the cloud is lethal. With the days and hours dwindling, each person confronts the grim situation in his or her own way. One (Fred Astaire) realizes a lifetime Grand Prix ambition; another (Ava Gardner) reaches out for a chance at love. The final chapter of human history is coming to a close… From acclaimed director Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg) and screenwriter John Paxton (Crossfire), comes this spectacular movie landmark – a film masterpiece with a message that will resonate as long as the world has the power to self-destruct at its own fingertips. Co-starring Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson.. “The most important novel of the Atomic Age.” — Washington Post.
https://www.amazon.com/Beach-Nevil-Shute-ebook/dp/B07N6PGMHW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=%22on+the+beach%22&qid=1573740346&sr=8-1
“The most important novel of the Atomic Age.” — Washington Post.
You’ve spoken of and written about the issues of cognitive dissonance before, and Marc Sageman wrote a book called “Understanding Terror Networks”. I am NOT conflating Christianity and terrorism–except when I am. He took it from a psychological standpoint regarding who/why/how people radicalize and stay that way when joining apocalyptic terror groups. It’s been a while since I read it, but your post makes me think about that.
Also, Paula Fredriksen’s “When Christians Were Jews” speaks some on how early Christians had to mentally and emotionally dig in when X died and the end didn’t come, and when he kept reappearing and the end didn’t come, and how Caligula. . ., and how in 70. . .
Of course shouldn’t one think about the opposite end of the debate as well? Such as that little Swedish girl talking about listening to the scientists and fix the climate problem (or work on it), yet the vitriol and violence thrown against her and her message is alarming in itself.
How about Jean Raspall’s 1973 novel THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS which gets its title from Revelation 20:9. ?Supposedly Steve Bannon’s favorite book, it’s on alt-right reading lists. It’s about refugees from the non-white world invading the shores of Europe. “And they marched up over the breath of the land and surrounded the camp of the saints…”.
Just a thought. What is the appeal of apocalyptic stories? Is it that they free their characters of the inherent responsibilities of life in their pre apocalyptic worlds? Does it free them of the responsibility of civilized behavior, or does it promise they will see their antagonist receive their just rewards?
Sometimes it’s that. Thought sometimes actually the emphasis can be teh opposite: the apocalyptic world view stresses taht the material world really matters, so it matters what we do in and with the material world. Another key attraction, though, is the idea that as awful as things are now, God is still sovereign and ultimately good will triumph. Star Wars didn’t make that one up!
See my other reply!
Seen from the POV of the oppressed and powerless, the appeal of the Apocalypse is largely a matter of justice. That gets distorted when read from the POV of American Christians who are a powerful majority in a wealthy nation. For there to be justice, they have to rationalize that somehow *they* are the oppressed and outcast.
The original “Day the Earth Stood Still.” Michael Rennie (who played Peter in several sword & sandal Jesus flicks [Robe; Demetrius and the Gladiators]) the avatar ‘from above’ who works several ‘scientific’ miracles. His adopted earth name? Carpenter. Best friend/eventual believer? A young boy (future Father Knows Best perfect white family star). A mocking, disbelieving, cynic who turns in the hero (the of course not-explicitly-stated jew) (Hugh Marlowe). The first person to realize the truth of his identity? A woman (Patricia Neal). Our hero is killed by those in authority and, guess what? Is resurrected by his all-powerful, better-not-piss-him-off robot sidekick. For me, this mostly is a meditation on (a smidgen of) Thomas Hobbes’ ideal society, that run by an all powerful police force as a check on the mostly can’t help themselves to screw up human race. But perhaps apropos for you as well.
I forget to mention the movie that made us laugh in the face of impending nuclear holocaust: Dr. Strangelove!
Dr Ehrman, I would suggest Game of Thrones as it uses the “army of the dead” as a perfect analogy of an existential threat that some deny and some fervently believe in that will bring the end of the world. Also, it would be most interesting to touch on the subject of Doomsday religions of today. For example, the Jehovah’s witnesses published a verse by verse discussion of the book of Revelation and how it is currently being fulfilled by them.
There is a whole category of dystopian literature which, although it does not include “end of the world” action, is situated in a world so drastically changed (and not in a good way) as to be unrecognizable to us. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 are just some of the better-known examples. One might think of them as pre-Armageddon, though not in a religious sense.
The Wikipedia article on Dystopia cites Frank Kermode — a major literary critic and public intellectual of the second half of the 20th century — as suggesting that “the failure of religious prophecies led to a shift in HOW society apprehends this ancient mode.”
The Last Policeman trilogy by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, Countdown City, World of Trouble) is fabulous series about a cop solving a murder that looks like a suicide, all while the world awaits what is known to be a catastrophic asteroid impact that will wipe out life on earth. Suicides become quite common because of the impending disaster but the title character doggedly pursues justice even though justice comes to be seen by most as irrelevant; everyone will be dead soon enough. The reaction of society in the face of human extinction is contrasted to a man doing his job as best he can.
Also, is there room in your analysis for Freud’s concept of a death wish? Even though he holds little clinical currency, Freud made major contributions to literary concepts involving death and sex and maybe even Armageddon.
-Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1994)
-Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Fortress, 1996).
-Steve Gregg, Revelation: Four Views, A Parallel Commentary.
-Stanley Grenz, The Millennial Maze: Sorting Out Evangelical Options.
-N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3, Christian Origins and the Question of God .
-(And for illustrative material on modern American predictive craziness: Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z).
I don’t have any titles other than “Redemption Song” to suggest, but Revelation is a theme for Rastafarians that sometimes carries over into reggae music. My understanding is that they teach that the Africans are the chosen people and slavery in North America is what the Bible is really talking about when it discusses the Babylonian Captivity. The idea of the US as the “Babylon” of Revelation is an important theme and in the Apocalypse the rich, white oppressors will be cast down and the poor dark-skinned peoples will be exalted.
“and … something recent, not sure what.”
I suggest you could use the current political situation. I think you could do this in a non-political way by investigating how both sides think that the world will end if their side doesn’t win. They are both very serious, and in a way relevant to Revelations. Very interesting dichotomy there, I think.
Two things from the field of ‘non-fiction’ spring to mind. One is ‘gray goo’ – see the wikipedia link – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
The other is a chapter in Bill Bryson’s book ‘A short history of nearly everything’ about the possible eruption of a super volcano, which could plunge the world into a nuclear-style winter and see the extinction of Homo sapiens. A super volcano eruption 80,000 years ago (Lake Toba) in Indonesia nearly achieved this. More worryingly in our own time is the super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park which Bryson says is overdue for eruption and could, potentially, destroy much of western civilisation when it finally blows. I do hope that I haven’t managed to depress all my fellow Bart Ehrman-bloggers!
Wow, this thread really struck a chord. Apocalyptic influences are everywhere. I just came across a reference that I never would have suspected.
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival “wrote ‘Bad Moon Rising’ after watching The Devil and Daniel Webster. Inspired by a scene in the film involving a hurricane, Fogerty claims the song is about ‘the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us’ (Wikipedia).
Hate to say it, but he may have been prophetic about global warming and hurricanes:
I see a bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today
Don’t go ’round tonight
It’s bound to take your life
There’s a bad moon on the rise
I hear hurricanes a-blowing
I know the end is coming soon
I fear rivers over flowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruin …
I hope you got your things together
I hope you are quite prepared to die
Look’s like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye …
Ah, great song. But didn’t know what inspired it. Thanks,
Well, Ray Bradbury’s “The Last Night of the World” from 1951.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a14340/ray-bradbury-last-night-of-the-world-0251/
[First part]
“What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?”
“What would I do; you mean, seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“I don’t know — I hadn’t thought. She turned the handle of the silver coffeepot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers.
He poured some coffee. In the background, the two small girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air.
“Well, better start thinking about it,” he said.
[Last part]
He heard her get up and go out into the back of the house, and then he heard the soft shuffling of a swinging door. A moment later she was back. “I left the water running in the kitchen,” she said. “I turned the faucet off.”
Something about this was so funny that he had to laugh.
She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was so funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.
“Good night,” he said, after a moment.
“Good night,” she said, adding softly, “dear…”
Dr. Ehrman,
Do you think that Paul would have been surprised that Jesus still hasn’t returned or do you think he would be just as motivated as ever to continue preaching the gospel?
Maybe both!
Lars von Trier’s 2011 film, Melancholia, presents a vivid depiction of several characters’ psychological responses to the imminent destruction of the world – not by nuclear holocaust or climate change but by collision with a rogue planet – which appears to me to be a manifestation of the state of depression destroying one of the main characters.
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A parody of movies like the Omen, it is a wonderful romp about an angel and a devil who has to work together to avert the Apocalypse. Highly recommended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seventh_Sign
The Seventh Sign. All around the world, strange things are happenings that seem to point to the Apocalypse coming up. At each of these locations, a mysterious stranger has opened a sealed envelope. A woman has to unravel what is going on or the end of the world will happen. Apocalyptic drama horror movie. I liked it.
The Apple (1980), if you can sit through its entirety, identifies the threats as pollution, autocracy, commercialism, immorality, and disco.
OOOPS! Forgot about “Soylent Green,” a dystopian flick based on a book which I’ve not read (“Make Room! Make Room!”), and “The Midnight Sun,” (Rod Serling) season 3, episode 10 from the original Twilight Zone TV series.
I will certainly consider this prompt to try and offer some suggestions as I’m sure that I’ve encountered some relevant books/movies the years. But outside of the climate crisis, the area where I see this “the end is near” concept manifesting itself most in modern scientific/political debate is the conversation about artificial intelligence. I think there could be some fascinating research to be done there on secular end times sentiment. A.I. conversations seem to go from Siri to the Terminator in a span that could fit in a single Tweet.
Just finished reading Bill McKibben’s “Falter,” which not only looks at the catastrophic changes climate change could bring but also gene editing and the development of artificial intelligence, a “threefer” in terms of Armageddon.
Coming back a bit late, but there’s the decay of the hypothetically false vacuum, which would destroy the universe, literally before we could know it.
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4136
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4137
Comics aside, this is actually a real-ish concept:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/vacuum-decay-ultimate-catastrophe
I was born into the cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Escaped when I was 40. If you leave, or are disfellowshipped by them, you lose your whole family and friends, through shunning. They have a website now. JW-dot-org. Anything on that website is extremely Apocalyptic. You may want to check it out? They believe all Scripture is inspired and has typical and anti typical fulfillment. Like Revelation.
Many of the highest-grossing films in the history of cinema have “world apocalypse” as one of its themes. Usually the heroes must prevent some sort of end-of-the-world scenario dreamed up by an antagonist, but these films wouldn’t be so popular if there weren’t a part of us that found end-of-the-world ideas to be exciting and strangely compelling.
In particular, the recent Avengers films “Infinity War” and “Endgame” are explicitly apocalyptic, with the antagonist Thanos being a sort of anti-YHWH figure (doling out judgment to every being in the Universe, starting over with a new Garden of Eden, etc.) Thanos wins in “Infinity War”, leading to a “Left Behind” style scenario where half of humanity disappears suddenly. (His victory is retroactively undone in “Endgame”.) These were the highest-grossing films of 2018 and 2019.
But a good chunk of all movie blockbusters share this theme. Whether we think of planet-destroying Death Stars in Star Wars films, the-dead-shall-rise apocalypses of Us and zombie films, or the man and varied world-destroying threats in Transformers and superhero films, the themes of biblical Armageddon (as popularly understood) loom large.
Formerly one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the idea of Armageddon and the impending end was a constant feature, usually with dates someone came up with using math and some interesting interpretations of scripture, so I’m fond of the topic.
Music has its share of songs about The Big End. Leaving aside the nihilistic Doom metal bands, I remember Barry McGuire singing his apocalyptic Eve of Destruction when Vietnam was a candidate for world-ending button-pushing. Weird Al Yankovic has Christmas at Ground Zero. Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” was another Vietnam-era tune connecting the war to Satan (naturally). Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes sang about Psalms of Aftermath wherein God just angrily ends everything in judgment. Johnny Cash sang “When the Man Comes Around” about the final trumpet. In fact, im not sure who sang more about the end of the world – metal artists or country artists during their Gospel phases.
Movie-wise I’ve watched too many zombie apocalypse flicks to count. I enjoyed the recent movie Melancholia which had a surreal take on the end. The Day After (living in Kansas City this one’s a fave) and its from sibling Threads looked at nuclear war without blinking. Waterworld. Stephen King’s The Stand. The Australian film These Final Hours about a meteor strike.
Japanese horror films have dabbled in the world ending from technology (Kairo Pulse) and both the Ringu cursed video and Ju-On’s warning that a grudge can spread to the whole world gradualy.
Like I was saying, I’m fond of the topic.
I’ve long noticed a certain pattern in End of the World thinking:
1) The universe/God is angry at humans for living happily. By doing so, they are sinning.
2) As a result of our sin, the world will soon come to an end.
3) If we go through extreme measures, living unhappily, we can please the universe and avert the disaster.
This applies to climate change, overpopulation, God ending the world, etc.
There must be a deep-seated reason for this in human evolution. Probably the bottlenecking of population when humanity was nearly wiped out. (And our belief in comebacks against all odds, leading us to gamble and cheer for underdogs.)
The old Protestant view- still held by Seventh Day Adventists- that the Popes are Antichrist is very interesting.
The Beast 666 is the number of a man.
That ‘man of Sin’ etc.
‘ He that stands in the place of God calling himself God’
One of the Popes titles ‘Vicarious Vilae Dei’ can be translated numerogically as 666.
Go to google and type in ‘Pope Anti-Christ’ and you’ll be astounded with the thousands of entries!
In Revelation we also read: That man of Sin who resudes in the City of seven hills (Rome) and the women drunk on the blood of the Saints’
and The beast robed in purple and scarlet. Bishops, Cardinals etc.
‘Woman” is often regarded ir translated as “ Church”
Very very interesting.
Ian Paisley – the firebrand Irish Protestant actually interupted the Pope at a rally shouting out “ The Pope is the Anti-Christ!” It used to be a widely held view for hundreds of years beginning with The Reformation and as stated above is still the current view held by Seventh Day Adventists.
Growing up with an Irish (Belfast) Protestant mother I heard this view daily!
“On the Beach” by Nevil Shute is a novel about a post-nuclear war world where the Northern Hemisphere has been destroyed and a deadly fallout cloud is slowly heading south. Takes place in Australia and involves ordinary folks continuing to live their lives under a cloud, so to speak. I read it as a teenager in the 1960’s and found it quite moving.
Great film as well!
What if the book of revelations isnt about doomsday at all? What if the end of days isnt anihilation but the end of one epoch and the beginning of a new age? I dont believe it describes the coming of a utopia or a religious dystopia. Its something quite different.
Could be I suppose. How would you know? An analogous situation: do you think the Left Behind series is not describing an actual event but something like a change of government or the unexpected rise of some country to international power?
In the category of execrable movies, Damnation Alley might be worth consideration as its disaster is close to global warming (nuclear war has somehow jarred the earth from its current orbit). It has the most absurd and incomprehensible happy ending one could imagine. It is based on a good novel of the same name by Roger Zelazny which actually anticipated the movie Escape to New York, featuring a cynical outlaw forced on a mission to deliver medicine over very dangerous territory. As in the film, the protagonist in the end demonstrates his unchanged contempt for civilization. Not Zelazny’s greatest novel (that may be “Lord of Light”) but certainly better than that crappy movie.
You may be familiar with Zelazny’s long story “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” in which the protagonist reads said Bible book to a bunch of Martians in order to give them hope, since humans have managed to go forward after absorbing a work of such utter hopelessness!
Sorry to enter the conversation so late. Given your background, you must be familiar with the evangelical film A Thief in the Night. Timothy Beal talked about it at our church recently and showed some clips. I understand it was quite an underground hit back in the 70’s.
Oh boy am I. Saw it roughly a thousand times.
I hope you will make the connection as to how “New World Order” people co-opted the book of Revelations in order to prove conspiracy theories? Books by Pat Robertson, “The New Millennium”, “The New World Order”, “The Secret Kingdom”, now collected in one book called, The Collected Works. I’m looking forward to this book!
Proverbs 17:24
Like you, I’m a boomer raised to expect Armageddon any day now. I’ve studied Revelation since childhood.
During Fall 2013 I enjoyed an independent intensive on Revelation with Professor L. Michael White at UT Austin. I read John Collins, Elaine Pagels, David Barr, G.K. Beale, A.Y. Collins, L.L. Thompson and Josephine M. Ford.
Except for Ford (1995) the consensus was that Revelation was written by one author in one place. I’d never read anything like her astonishing account.
To return to your request for help — we might agree that the “literal” interpretation of Revelation is the main issue. Catholics only whispered about it, because they’d build a Church in the present.
Luther, Calvin and Zwingli gave us commentaries on all books of the Bible — except for Revelation! This made Revelation fair-game, and tacitly allowed everybody after Luther to invent their own interpretations. Most of the results were some style of Armageddon fanaticism.
Dr. Ford, however, offers a unique perspective. The first 3 chapters of Revelation, and part of the final chapter, were written much later than chapters 4 through 20. While no two consecutive pages of the NT lack the words “Jesus” or “Christ” or some combination, Revelation contains entire chapters that lack the words “Jesus” and “Christ”. That’s the first clue.
To sum up quickly: Dr. Ford suggests that the book of Revelation originally belonged to the earliest followers of John the Baptist — it was originally *his* Revelation about the “Lamb.” Moreover, the main inspiration wasn’t from Daniel, as most authorities agree — but from Ezekiel. Ford showed how images between Revelation and Ezekiel match like fraternal twins.
Josephine Massyngberde Ford is the most original theorist about Revelation that I ever read. I heartily recommend her Anchor commentary (1995).
Yes indeed, it was very controversial. She was an interesting person. Taught at Notre Dame and rode her horse to school. (I met her when interviewing for a positoin there, in 1988)
,,, we gentiles seemed were clever to transform the old jewish stories into some very literal and in my mind oversimplifised understanding of a complex spiritual realm. I’m fully aware that there were many jewish take on those old stories, some took them very letteral, some took it spiritual and symbolic, and some took it as both. Perhaps we didn’t had proper “tools” /”training” or Insight into this language, this ,,,,,,,,,,realm which they used for themself.
The original tradition, where our society’s basic religious thought came from were ,,,,,,,,and is not distance of using spiritual interpretation on the soul, and it’s journey. I wounder if some of those jewish communities practicing a more symbolic view of the religion would (perhaps John were a jew who knew those symbols and language,,,), would have interpreted the visions, the experiences, the names, the churches, the places etc as emblems of forces within us self, and Amargeddon is a battle between inner forces.
Why should we be foreign to such perception, considering the litteral religous traditions who were absent of all kind of metaphysics which according to Quantum phisics has to do with a transcendent realm “beyond” what is perceptible to the senses,. This very term may very well be related to “mysticism,” which is based on the word “mystery,” implying something hidden. Perhas this is what “revelation” is all about,,,revelation of something which is perhas basic but hidden.
So,,,,,,,,, implying that this might be a conflict within,,,,,,,,,is perhaps as bad or as good as any other attemts to understand those strange visjons.
Kjell TIdslevold
I’d suggest part of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy: The Year of the Flood is explicitly apocalyptic (the Adam of the trilogy’s name is no accident) – and the book even has hymns!
This is a personal experience…perhaps not as important as a book or movie, but one that has haunted me since it happened. In 1978, I was working alongside a Russian Glaciologist having been helicoptered onto the summit (8787 ft) of Mt. Garibaldi on the Coastal Mountain Range in B.C. Canada. We had made our way down the glacier in a whiteout blizzard and slept the night in a shack, which was built to house scientists working on the “moisture content of glaciers”. The next morning, 2 of us were relegated to digging a hole into the snow “until we hit ice”. The ice was the frozen melt-off from the previous year’s summer. In this way, scientists knew how much snow had fallen since the past year. The hole we dug was about 10 feet deep, with steps to get back up. Upon hitting the ice, the Russian Glaciologist joined us in the hole and proceeded to open his tool kit full of test-tubes, a Bunsen burner and other things. After making 3 readings, his expression appeared quite distraught, and he stared into space for a long time. Then, he turned to me, and in a heavy Russian Accent said: “Vee ar f__d.”
Later he explained to us that he had seen a serious decline in the moisture content of the snow many years in a row and there was no denying any more that our world was getting warmer. 1978 – To me, this was like a prophecy in retrospect. You can use this Dr Ehrman if you like.
Yes, many of us think vee ar….. Thanks.
Planet of the apes would be good. Not only is it a nuclear holocaust but humanity lives on to suffer for it’s folly in a world where Darwin has been undone. Very Biblical.
Would be interesting to see you interact with the literature on apocalyptic cults: Heaven’s Gate, the classic book “When Prophecy Fails” by Leon F, the late messianic figure of Rabbi Schneerson, the 7th Day Adventists, and the list goes on.
Yup, it’s my next book, currently called “Expecting Armageddon.”
Professor Ehrman,
You’ve already cited Jan Bremmer, Rise and Fall of Afterlife, ch. 4, Resurrection from Zoroaster to Late Antiquity (Rutledge, 2002), on the topic of Judaism and the ancient Persian Resurrection.
The Avestan hymns of praise to various deities, the Yashts, supports the claim that Resurrection doctrine surely dates within the time of the Achaemenids (ca. 500 BC).
This was the time when the Persian Empire closely interacted with Judaism to liberate the Jewish Aristocracy from Babylon and to support the rebuilding of the Temple.
Before this period there were no “Pharisees” who believed in “angels” (ACTS 23:6-8) as the “Farsees” Persia had long believed.
Although the internal dynamics of Judaism could indeed spur the invention of Satan as God’s Enemy — the prior dualism of Ahura Mazda (God with angels) versus Ahriman (Devil with demons) can be traced centuries earlier than 200 BCE — and such dualism seems to be the basis for a doctrine of Resurrection.
Would you please include further discussion about the Zarathustran Yashts?
I”m afraid I’m not an expert. But many of those who are say that it is not at *all* clear that they doctrine surely dates to ca 500 BCE. Note, for one thing the dates of the actual *manuscripts* we have and the lack of anything like corroborating evidence from material that *can* be dated to the time. (E.g., contemporary reports — the way we date other things with late ms attestation) As to angels, those go way back in the Hebrew tradition, long befoer there *was* a Persia.
All points well taken.
I certainly agree that our *textual* evidence for Zarathustra documents are scant. The only copies we have of the Avesta, the Yashts, the Gathas as so on, are all later than 500 CE.
Yet there was a time when our only copy of the Old Testament was the Masoretic text, correct? Archeological finds keep coming.
Some experts argue for dates before 500 BCE. Contemporary reports do outline a Dualist Religion in Persia, with two gods: a Good one and an Evil one. The dualism all by itself suggests a heaven and a hell.
Regarding demons and angels, we also find them in large number in Assyriology. Before Assyria was Babylon with its province, Chaldea, from which Abraham migrated.
The Hebrew language is a variant of the older Semitic languages in old Babylon and Assyria. So it seems that both the Hebrew Religion *and* the Persian Religion may owe a debt to Assyria with regard to mythic traditions.
Remember Harold Camping’s prediction of the end on May 21, 2011? At that time, a friend of mine imagined a “The end is nigh!” poster updated through the centuries with the many corrections to the expected date.
https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/253/2013/05/End-of-the-world-poster.jpg
Ha. That’s a good one. Not sure if you’ve seen the documentary about Camping: “Apocalypse Later” (!)
I hadn’t heard about that one. Thanks for the tip. For anyone else interested, here’s the Amazon Prime link to that documentary:
https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Later-Harold-Camping-World/dp/B00K2PLJ4Y
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, in a light-hearted way? On The Beach, which is about survivors of a nuclear war?
Yup, and yup. I’m thinking seriously about using On the Beach, both novel and 1959 movie. Both *terrific*. I have the more recent mini-series but haven’t seen it yet.
The Happy Place TV series with Ted Danson and Kristen Bell.
Fantastic. (But called The Good Place.) Just finished season 4 last week!
I’d suggest the film mother! (exclamation point included in title). It’s a Darren Aronofsky movie starring Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence, and it’s sort of an 80 minute allegory where Armageddon occurs over the course of a couple days within their household. Interesting to say the least…
(1) James Gaius Watt Secretary of the Interior from 1981 to 1983.
In a congressional appearance after his 83-to-12 Senate confirmation, Watt, a religious fundamentalist, sent buzzes through Capitol Hill hallways with his answer to a philosophical question about his views on preserving natural resources for future generations.
“I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns,” the tall, angular westerner said, Watt later explained that he didn’t know when the Millenium might be: “It’s been 2,000 years since the last coming of Christ and it might be another 2,000 before the second coming.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/06/30/the-watt-controversy/d591699b-3bc2-46d2-9059-fb5d2513c3da/
(2)CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION CALLS REAGAN’S YEAR OF THE BIBLE’ ILLEAGAL
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/25/us/civil-liberties-union-calls-reagan-s-year-of-the-bible-illeagal.html
President Reagan’s proclamation of 1983 as ”The Year of the Bible” illegally recognizes Christianity as the official religion of the United States and gives it ”God’s imprimatur,” according to arguments made in Federal District Court by a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
(3)A blog, ,The beginnings of the new age, https://thecosmicreligion.com/2017/06/
I included a story about my father in Italy, who was told the end of the world was coming April 10, 1910. Based upon Halley’s Comet in 1910 led to widespread panic.
Thanks!
Dr. Ehrman,
I would like to know your thoughts about some of the apparently prescient content of Revelation 9:17-19):
“Now the horses and riders in my vision looked like this: The riders had breastplates the colors of fire, sapphire, and sulfur. The heads of the horses were like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths proceeded fire, smoke, and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that proceeded from their mouths. For the power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails…” (Revelation 9:17-19)
No such troops existed in the Classical period. In fact, gunpowder weapons did not exist until the Middle Ages in the Levant, and gunpowder-armed horsemen (e.g. Dragoons, Cuirassiers, etc.) did not exist in Europe or the Middle East until the Renaissance period at the earliest. There’s also the description of a mass army of horsemen, with colour of blue, red and yellow ( like Napoleonic troops)
How could a 1st century writer, and 4th century existing texts, have predicted events, gunpowder (smoke, fire and sulphur – Napoleonic battlefields reek of sulphur) or military units that would not exist for at least another 1,000 – 1,500 years???
The text from Revelation 9 dates to the 1st century, and is found in the existing copies of the 4th cent. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus Codices, so it is in no way some type of modern interpolation. Sulphur, fire and smoke is what dominated the musket and cannon battlefields of the 15th – 19th centuries, and these battlefields were covered and smoke an reek of sulphur. As a historical reenactor of the period and employee at historic sites, I know first hand how the smell of sulphur dominates when using thousands of black powder weapons.
Furthermore, the only times in history where there was enormous global conflict with massive battles of mostly horsemen armed with and firing gunpowder weapons (e.g. Dragoos, Cuirassiers, etc.) while on horseback, is in the 15th-18th centuries, but especially the Napoleonic Wars – the largest global military conflict before WW1. Many of the battles of the Napoleonic period, like the Battle of Borodino, involved huge numbers of these mounted, gun-firing cavalry, and in the amounts of literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of them where they were the dominant unit (the Battle of Borodino between Napoleonic France and Imperial Russia involved over 300,000 troops in a single battle).
For a first century Christian writer to depict troops, technology and even events that are incredibly most accurate in all of history only to the Napoleonic period, and mentioning troops and a leader with the name “Apollyon” most similar to those of Imperial France, is a very large ‘coincidence’.
The Napoleonic Wars were really the first world war, spanning the European empires across the globe, including North America (the War of 1812 between British North America/Canada and the USA was an extension of it). ‘Napoleone’ (a name of very obscure or unknown origins in Corsica or Italy) was himself widely considered by much of Europe to be a literal “antichrist” at the time, especially during his campaigns in Orthodox Russia and Catholic Spain. The result of this war, happening right during the massive societal shift during the enlightenment, French Revolution and onset of the Industrial Revolution, also determined much of the global order of the modern industrial world and banking system (e.g. the rise of the British Empire, industrialization, the role of rich banking families like the Rothschilds in backing the victorious British war effort, etc.).
I am just curious about your thoughts on these seemingly prescient passages in Revelation 9.
Hal Lindsay famously argued they were seeing 20th century attack helicopters. (!) But no, this is not a prediction of future warfare, not even gunpowder. These are standard apocalyptic images for the ancient world. If you want to read up on the imagery of Revelation, I’d suggest lookin at the work of Craig Keener.
Well, that was a silly comparison by Lindsay, but the descriptions match most closely the warfare of Europe between the 15th-19th centuries, especially the Napoleonic era.
Where else, in any ancient texts, are mounted troops described as spewing fire, smoke and sulphur (brimstone)? Not any Greek or Roman sources. Certainly no Greek or Roman army was composed of mostly cavalry (nor troops in red, blue and yellow), let alone only cavalry and spewing such things.
Even if there is another ancient text describing such troops (I’m aware of none), there was no such thing actually existing in the classical period. Nothing even remotely resembling this would exist for nearly 1,500 years.
I’d suggest you read a bunch of Jewish apocalyptic texts.
Are there any Jewish apocalyptic texts mentioning specifically an army completely of mounted troops spewing a combination of “fire, smoke and sulphur”, and such a thing resulting in huge numbers of casualties? The Napoleonic battlefield (and of 16th-19th cent. battles in general) was covered completely with not just smoke (this is why they worse such bright coloured uniforms), but also the stench of sulphur from all the black powder weaponry. In the Napoleonic Wars, something like 10% of the entire European population died, and the battles each consisted in the order of over 500,000 men, dominated by musket or pistol armed cavalry, with most dying from musket and cannon fire.
As for mythological contexts, like the chimaeras or other figures mentioned by Keener, there’s nothing about them spewing sulphur in combination with fire and smoke, and certainly not mounted human troops seeming to spew sulphur, fire and smoke.
Also, what are your views on the coincidental etymological similarity between “Apollyon” (“destroyer”) and “Napoleon” (who most of Europe at the time, including the Papacy, literally thought was an antichrist)? The extremely rare Corsican/Italian name of “Napoleone” is still of unknown origins.
I think you will find coincidences wherever you look for them.
In other words, even if there are other texts showing such apocalyptic imagery exactly the same as this (do you have an example?), the fact remains there was only one historical period with actual armies and units very closely resembling this, and it was over 1,500 years after these texts were written.
Fire of course was a common weapon in antiquity, and smoke. You’ll see a lot of both when your army sets a village on fire. I’m not familiar with the use of sulfur itself as a weapon.
I’ve read Keener’s take on Revelation 9:12-21 in “Revelation: The NIV Application Commentary”, p.270. He alludes to Parthians, whose armies were composed of horse archers and “bounded” at the Euphrates. But there’s no records of these troops ever wearing breatsplates, red, blue and yellow uniforms, nor their horses armoured to look like “heads of lions”. Even Keener admits the passage isn’t solely influenced by Parthians or mythology, but describes in part a future human army of some sort. It doesn’t match any units or armies in the classical period.
Most importantly, the Parthians’ mounted troops did not use or spew “fire, smoke and sulphur” as if “out of their mouths” (like a musket or pistol), and certainly not in combination like that, or with sulphur and smoke covering a battlefield. Even when using flaming arrows, it would not be during a pitched battle, or use sulphur which was rarely used anywhere in combat at all in the ancient world. When it was, it was used rarely by Roman infantry with siege engines when sacking a city, not spewed by an army of completely soldiers on horseback (which no Roman army consisted of).
Haven’t read all the threads–just too many–but “Book of Eli” has to be favored. Just so full of irony and contradiction, and with an underlying assumption too characteristic of our fundamentalists which probably caused the apocalypse in the first place and now is expected to bring us back. Also a bit of an indictment of our poor level of education here in the U.S. (As much as I agree with Malthus–and Keynes did too–that’d be too much to tackle and detract from what you could do with “Eli.”) Say something about how, as a culture, we’re reduced to super-hero hopes, so desperate and deprived are we in our understanding. Really hope you can do this book. (I had J Dwight Pentecost’s “Things to Come” at Moody.) There is just SO MUCH potential here, every which way.
“This is a very important story, the important story”
Opening phrase to this 2 minute long video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XANTPC3jE8M “Rebuilding a Better World – Global Premiere 19 September 2020″.
So it was uploaded yesterday, with commentary/footage of the major apocalyptic themes facing us.
Bart, you wrote ” I’m increasingly interested in the modern manifestations in the secular realm of the notion that “The End is Near” as it has been manifest in various forms of culture.”
I hope you find space in your book to also mention the best solution currently known to mankind to these challenges – and not just document the exegesis of Christian contributions to inaction and indifference to human suffering.
I personally find it intellectually satisfying to read research on the whys and hows the modern world is the way it is, but even more rewarding to think about solutions to the problems humanity faces, and in this regard the video is an introduction to a complex, multidisciplinary, knowledge-based plan to “leave no one behind, not even the most vulnerable”.
Let’s hope we don’t have to wait for future historians to regard it, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the two most important documents of the 20th and 21st century.
Will discussing different eschatological views in this book? Primarily Preterism which explains the soon return of the Lord and the tribulation actually took place in AD 70? Adherents of this views are NT Wright, and Gary Demar, among others. This seems to be the only plausible possible view that makes sense of the text, yet with still a lot of hermeneutical gymnastics.
I haven’t decided. Another plausible answer is that the predictions simply have not and will not come true, e.g.
End Times hysteria has plagued me for many many years along with many others and still does in one way or another. I think this would be by far the most important book you would ever write or at least among the top few if you ask me!
Countless Christians till this day debate on who the AntiChrist is, from those who say its going to be the Pope from the Vatican, to the AntiChrist being a Muslim (the strongest proponents of this theory are Walid Shoebat and Joel Richardson) and according to others a Jewish person believed by Jews to be the Messiah. Muslims are also plagued with End Times hysteria too.
Also there is talk of the vaccine being the Mark of the Beast. Are there other examples in history that you can point out such end times hysteria and fears? Are there other moments in history where people felt the coming of the AntiChrist and his One World Government is imminent? Have you ever seen the Thief in the Night movie series?
1. Oh yes. Credit card chis! 2. Every decade since about the year 30. 3. Only a million times (when I was an evangelical). Need to rewatch it for my book.
Professor it would be fantastic if you could rewatch the Thief in the Night movie series and use loaded content from those movies and use them in the book!!! I’m getting insanely excited already!!
Oh wow so the credit card chip was seen as the Mark of the Beast at one point and that sparked end times hysteria and fear?! Details details! I wan to learn more about this!
Still is thought that way. So is the vaccination shot — imprinting the mark of the beast in the body.
Not sure if you recall any of the characters from the Thief In the Night series, but if you do, what are your thoughts on the character Patty Myers played by Patty Dunning? I think discussing her in some ways in the book would be a treat and a plus.
The only actor I know about is the liberal minister. I never really knew much about Patty Dunning (or followed her career)
What are your thoughts on preterism? Also it would be great if you could touch upon the Left Behind movie series as well as the Thief In the Night movie series (I highly highly recommend the later especially). Have you thought of discussing competing theories regarding the identity of the AntiChrist among Christians? One such theory has in my opinion at least significantly contributed to Islamaphobia i.e. the AntiChrist is going to be a Muslim theory, which also been extensively debunked by a bible prophecy writer Chris White (you can find the book in the link below in case if you are interested).
https://www.amazon.com/Chris-White/e/B00F9EGXFI?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1620532234&sr=8-1
Basic view: preterism is an intelligent attempt to makes sense that it didn’t happen. Yup, I”ve heard lots of the views about AntiChrist….
Basic view: preterism is an intelligent attempt to makes sense that it didn’t happen. Yup, I”ve heard lots of the views about AntiChrist….
Do you think preterism is a historically defensible position? I mean what is the earliest understanding of Christian eschatology in our possession today? Was the Second Coming originally believed to have been a metaphorical event? Dr. Kenneth Gentry Jr. believes that all the events in the Book of Revelation was fulfilled in the 1st century AD and that there will be a bodily coming of Jesus but much later into the future. I’m not sure if you know of him.
I’d say that’s a theological view, not a historical one. The author of John was not predicting specific events that were to transpire in history over time.
What was the earliest understanding of the Christians regarding the prophecies of the Book of Revelation? Was is futuristic or preteristic or somewhere in between?
We don’t have a record of what the earliest Christians said about it, but the preterist view was much later, when expected events didn’t transpire. My guess is that the original readers took it pretty much the way the author meant it, as a description of the destructoin of Rome that was not meant as a literal account of what would happen.
How credible is the Book of Revelation in terms of its authorship? Is it a by product of another ancient forgery such as 2 Peter would be? Also when do you think the author of the Book of Revelation wrote this book?
No it’s different. 2 Peter claims and tries to demonstrate that it was written by the disciple Simon Peter. Revelation does claim to be written by someone named John. But it was a common name and this JOhn does not claim or even hint at being a disciple, or the author of the fourth Gosepel, or anyone else in particular. He’s just someone named John. That appears actually to have been the unknown author’s name.
When do you believe the book of revelation was written? Like how many years prior to the Roman sacking of Jersusalem.
Centuries before. It appears to have been written around 95 CE.
When do you think your book on Armageddon will come out?
Hopefully before the world ends. At this point I’m thinking either the end of 2022 or spring 2023.
How would you repond to a Christian who would argue that the Book of Revelation has fulfilled prophecies and give examples from world history and contemporary history as examples to back it up?
I’d say that readers have maintained that since the third century, and over the centuries there have been different events that allegedly fulfilled the same prophecies — just as many are Now Coming True in our Own Day (as they were 30 years ago and 60 years ago and 90 years ago etc.)