Category Archives: Ariella Moshchinsky

Apocalyptic Reign in a Cultural Era

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In the second portion of Jonathan Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World, we learn a great deal about the cultural uproar of the Book of Revelation and all the events that have ultimately contributed to our understanding of apocalyptic phenomena. It is clear that many more prophets, besides John himself, have taken the Revelation into their own hands and retold the end of the world as they envisioned it. It is precisely the people and circumstances under which the Book of Revelation was read and interpreted that have so greatly shaped the timeline of our world as we know it today.

The change in Christian apocalyptic perception over time is pertinent to our understanding of the ideology that surrounds John’s text. Originally, the world was heavily centered around the Christian fundamentalists who believed that only the saints and martyrs would prevail through the Rapture and make it to the New Heaven and Earth. At this time, there was a divisive line between what qualified one’s lifestyle to be worthy of salvation and the habits that did not. Its interesting to note how clearly defined the extremities of good and evil, godly and satanic, and right and wrong were upon the early stages of this end of world speculation. Naturally, however, these realms lost sight their strict margins, as did the belief in the Book of Revelation. Some interpretations and understandings certainly spilled over and blended with each other over the course of apocalyptic history. This corresponds with the growing tendency and encouragement to read the Revelation symbolically rather than carnally.

We see early on how interpretations of the text were contorted according to societal circumstances. For example, the mosaic in the western European church initially consisted of Jesus and his twelve disciples. Once Rome imperialized under Constantine, the mosaic was re-adorned to include a throne and golden halo, as well as the city of Jerusalem, all which resonate with images depicted in the Book of Revelation. This coincides with the “apocalyptic invasion” as coined by Kirsch. And as Kirsch continues to emphasize, the popularity of the Book of Revelation and manifestations of its iconography all came about at the same time as Christianity became a formal state religion of the Roman Empire. Once again, we must not forget to question the authenticity of a text that thrives in an environment of pervasive religious and social changes.

Kirsch also comments on the cultural war that has spawned from the Book of Revelation. While the religious disparities among apocalyptic believers have greatly lessened, the social debate over this issue is still in full effect. In the beginning, the end of world discourse mainly differed among premellenialist and postmellenialist, who were both essentially Christian fundamentalists whose opinions diverged at the “when” factor of the apocalypse. The contemporary debate is far more extensive, consisting of many branches of skepticism of how the world will end or if in fact, there will be an ending at all. It is understandable that so much more disbelief is present in our society today, considering all the history of disappointments and false predictions of doomsday. After all, with all our wars and struggles, the world has indeed proven to withstand more destruction than the human mind would have thought possible. Moreover, there is far more complexity and technology present in our current world, which has triggered further doubt. Can God really be responsible for the end of a world that can revitalize life and land after the atomic bomb hits it? Though all science may point against it, the strong faith in God has been enough to sway people to believe so.

I agree that the Book of Revelation has become heavily utilized as “language arsenal” for opposing sides of the apocalyptic spectrum. Some may see this as God’s way of preserving the text in our society. On the other hand, the text may have been so ingrained into our cultural backbone, that we cannot simply filter its past admonitions out of our future plans. But if we are subconsciously holding on to these theories to sustain the Book of Revelation, then we are also summoning doomsday to us. Why else would we fight so hard to keep alive a tradition that may be the end-all of all other traditions and spur the death of life itself? Perhaps we are exactly the structural race that Kirsch depicts in the finality of his text, “the men and women who continue to wait, and have always waited, for the world to end on time”. (256)

Does the End of the World Have a History?

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The initial reading of Jonathan Kirsch’s A Hisotry of the End of the World introduces many apocalyptic notions that have grown amidst the culture and spirit of our society since antiquity. This reading paints an interesting picture of the different social practices and how various groups have responded and continue to react to the end of the world phenomenon.

In many ways, Kirsch regards the Book of Revelation and its contents as both the source and supplement to the human fear and anticipation of the end of the world. After all, anything that counters established religious ideology or proposes an interdisciplinary end to theology and universe alike is destined to have some type of grand effect on the public. While Kirsch defines the controversy over the Book of Revelation in a religious scope, he broadens his explanation for our apocalyptic hype with social and cultural realms. He renders this text as a “petri dish for the breeding of dangerous religious eccentricity”; this argument has certainly been validated by the ways in which the Book of Revelation has resonated throughout history. I myself marvel at how events and figures in history gained such prominence using the end of the world as an element of justification. Its interesting and simultaneously, unsettling, how entities such as The New World , the AIDS epidemic, and even UFO invasion can be explained by the Book of Revelation. One can certainly argue that these connections are the natural ways by which the human race deals with such an abstract and intangible issue. Rather than fearing the unimaginable, we look for past instances that fit John’s apocalyptic scenario and then use these past occurrences to gage our anticipation of the future (or lack there of, in this case). This is also seen with historical figures such as Hitler, and even more recently, Osama Bin Ladin, who have been coined the Antichrist in their period of time. Are we to believe that any cultural manifestations of opposing force represent the Antichrist and signify our impending doom? If so, then the line between imagination and reality becomes completely obliterated when culture and politics collide.

Despite my skepticism towards this historical resonance, Kirsch does present a reasonable explanation for our cultural belief in the Book of Revelation. We are the descendants of a time when only the “hearers” of the Revelation were blessed and all who undermined John’s beliefs were “corrupted by Satan” . While these notions are not as prevalent in contemporary society as they were amongst fundamentalist Christians and Jews hundreds of years back, the aftermath of these beliefs still reign among us. Certainly, belief in John’s apocalyptic revelation provided a means of survival for the religious and outlandish zealots of that era.

Perhaps when the day of judgement would come, God may have more mercy on the “hearers” and believers of this revelation. This supports Kirsch’s idea of “morale boosting propaganda” that arises from the Book of Revelation. If we were to live according to this propaganda, its almost as though we’d be in limbo forever, waiting for God’s judgement and hoping that he finds a place for us in his New Heaven and Earth. As we can see here, Dante’s Inferno and John’s Book of Revelation have overlapping elements. Both most definitely possess the same nightmarish, strange, and out of reach elements. Ironically enough, Dante was excommunicated for his ideas, while John’s were added to the holy scripture. Such a discrepancy further debunks this proposed apocalypse.

Its obvious that our society feeds off of cultural pastimes and beliefs. However, we must not forget that even traditional beliefs have been distorted over the years, and we have lost sight of true reasoning. Many do not know why they fear the end of the world, which weakens apocalyptic arguments altogether. In fact, proponents of the Book of Revelation rarely understand the imagery and symbolism of John’s vision. Here, history does not provide any meaningful groundwork since all historical examples have been proposed as theories and have no real connection to the actual scripture. One could argue that Kirsch’s History of the End of the World is really an account of religious, cultural, and political conflict than a true explanation for doomsday.