APOCALYPSE NOW

Complete PDF, 2002

CrossCurrents, 2018

A pocalypse. In popular culture in the U.S., the term typically evokes a terrifying moment of cataclysmic destruction. While a common subject for film, television, books, and music, this broad understanding of apocalypse belies the complexity of the ways of thinking, speaking, and being that can be described as "apocalyptic." Although scholars across disciplines have mapped many of the characteristics and much of the content associated with "apocalyptic," the category's meaning remains up for debate, and it continues to be used in new ways and toward new ends. In 2017, the symposium "On the Edge of Apocalypse," sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society at Elon University, asked participants from a variety of academic disciplines to map the edges of apocalyptic, including its patterns, symbols, and rhetorics. 1 The following essays, which we situate here within the context of the study of apocalyptic, emerged as part of the symposium and demonstrate some of the elasticity within this oft-contested category. Scholarly attention to the apocalypse initially emerged within the context of the nineteenth-century scientific study of religion and in conjunction with the study of sacred texts and traditions. German scholar Gottfried Christian Friedrich L€ ucke introduced the German term "Apokalyptik," used as a noun, in an 1832 introduction to the biblical Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse of John. 2 L€ ucke's use of the term in this context points to the close connection between "apocalyptic" and writings that were eventually characterized as "apocalypses." Distinct

2006

Blackwell Bible Commentaries set out by dealing with the reception history of a text as important and serious as the Apocalypse. That makes the outcome equally important. However the final result, Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ is so apologetic it frightens me. From amongst the many problems in this book, I too must make a selection of which points to include and which to exclude for this review. I have settled on two major problems that are interrelated – namely, the tremendous effort put into detoxifying the Apocalypse, and a rather unfortunate usage of the term Wirkungsgeschichte. Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ by Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland is one of the first in the Blackwell Bible Commentaries series, which prioritises the reception history of the biblical text rather than the text in its ‘original’ setting. In the Preface to the series, the editor and the authors state that the premise is ‘that how people have interpreted, and have been influ...

Biblical commentators can have a tendency to take ancient incidents and predictions and to re-invent them, even in their most literal sense, as, now, C21st AD situations. The question is, should their “Apocalypse Now” really be seen as “Apocalypse Then”?

2014

Tyndale Bulletin, 1986

2016

This volume addresses Jewish, Christian and Muslim future visions on the end of the world, focusing on the respective allies and antagonists for each religious society. Extensive lists of murderous end-time peoples, whether for good or evil, and those who merit salvation hold variably defined roles in end-time scenarios. Spanning late Antiquity to the early modern period, the collected papers examine distinctive aspects represented by each religion’s approach as well as shared concepts.

An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation on the Basis of the holy Fathers and Saints of the Orthodox Church