Eugen Weber: Apocalypses. Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial beliefs through the Ages. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 2000, 294 S. $ 16,95 ISBN 0-674-00395-0
The book is comprised of 12 chapters
including the introduction and the conclusion. It
begins with a six-page introduction (pp. 16), in which Weber outlines the history of
the notion of Apocalypse and the fascination of Jews and their Christian offspring for
"the revelation or unveiling of the world's destiny and of mankind's" (p. 2). He
lays out the guidelines of his book, which does not reflect an original research but
offers more narrative than interpretation, more description than explanation.
In the second chapter, Weber analyses
the notion of time and its divisions from Antiquity to the present time. Time or
chronology is considered a "social construct" (p. 6) and reflects realities
different from abstract measures. In both
Antiquity and modern time, precisely at mid-nineteenth century, the measurement of time by
generations, quadrennial Olympiads, memorable events, seasons, tenured priests and rulers,
monthly and astronomical cycles sheds light on the multiple, subjective and specific
function of time to particular situations. The fact that time past was not subject to
exact and objective computation is also brought out by the signification of centuries (saeculi)
as generations, periods, epochs of variable lenght and not of a hundred-year span. The
feeling that the world and time are susceptible to an end (fin de siècle) does not
then involve a century's closure. According
to Weber, the fin de siècle is related to material and social progress, which
advances side by side with the notion of decandence and obsolescence.
Chapter 3 is devoted to the study of
apocalypses and millenarianisms. More specifically, Weber discusses and compares a number
of well-known apocalyptic prophecies, such as those of John of Leiden, who had proclaimed
himself King of Zion and Messiah, of Michael Schmaus, affirming that the millennium was
imminent, and those prophets who have expected the end of the Christian era in 2000, i.e.
William Butler Yeats, the Reverend Tim La Have, or protestant ministers like Robert
Fleming in the eighteenth century, Robert Scott in the nineteenth century and the Catholic
canon Rodriguez Cristini Morondo in the twentieth century.
According to these prophets, the term "apocalypse" means disaster, cosmic
catastrophe, the end of the world. By foretelling the end of the world they attempt to
interpret political crisis, social change and material distress, and at the same time
"to console and guide, to suggest the meaning of the present and the future" (p.
31). If, then, apocalypticism is related to fear and disaster, millennialism (or
millennarianism) concerns new beginnings implying restoration and regeneration. This
cyclic meaning of millennialism leads Weber to see in the end of the world "only the
end of one world, not the end of time but of our times, not the annihilation of mankind
but the end of a way of life and its replacement by another" (p. 37).
Chapter 4 deals with imaginative
predictions of prophets, such Daniel, John of Patmos, Esdras, Montanus, Tertullian,
painting a terrifying picture of the end. Early in the third century, Origen was strongly
opposed to apocalyptists and dismissed chiliasm "as simply Jewish fables" (p.
44). The problem of anti-apocalypticists was effectively solved by St. Augustine in his
treatise City qf God. The millennium of the year 1000 has inspired much debate and
since the year 700 apocalytpticists have referred to "evident signs announcing the
early end of the world" (p. 49). Since the end did not come on time and the following
centuries furnished still more hard times and horrible events, apocalyptic thinking was
enriched and renovated.
Chapter 5 concentrates on the
revivalists and Antichrists. In the Middle Ages, Italian humanists presented the
Renaissance as a "resurrection", i.e. a renewal (renovatio) of
knowledge and of ways of thinking, that were long lost and dormant. According to those
humanists, the Renaissance was also endowed with a spiritual meaning which indicates
"the redemptive knowledge of gnosis those spiritual mysteries of the
origin and destiny of man which offered privileged access to redemption" (p.
6263). Like apocalypticism, gnosticism
was then reserved for a few elect. The most apocalyptic personage which survives from
medieval to modern times, is Antichrist, "a diabolic parody of Christ" (p. 75),
whose eschatological figure is described by Weber by means of which theological and
philosophical treatises dating from the Augustinian period to the eighteen century.
Chapter 6 examines the place of God
and the role of the Apocalypse in scientific treatises and also the relationship between
science and prophecy. Weber attempts to draw
up the history of science from the sixteenth century to earlier times in light of the
links between astrology, alchemy, cryptology, and apocalyptic dreams. "Natural
magic" results from the combination of these sciences and prophetic gift.
Chapter 7 studies the Age of
Enlightenment, which dismissed Revelation "as obscurantism" (p. 99) and rejected
all kinds of religious beliefs as superstitions. The philosophers of this new age of
illumination sought to elucidate supernatural or miraculous events in the light of
rational explanations and to impose religious indifference, which opposes apocalyptic
prophecies and millennialism.
Chapter 8 deals with the study of the
Apocalypse in wordly times. More precisely, it discusses the heyday of secularism in the
nineteenth century and the banishment of superstition or "religious beliefs" by
means of science, technology, reform, and education.
Their development gave birth to materialism, rationalism, functionalism, capitalism
and liberalism. This chapter also describes the effects that these new qualities and
sociopolitical reforms had on Romantism, whose cult of terror and mysticism drank from the
more lurid passages of the Bible, as well as the millennarian expectations which called
for the end of the world, vice, misery and the spread of true religion, righteousness,
hapiness, and peace. The chapter ends with
the study of eschatological progress and the crucial role that French, Slavs and Jews have
plaved in the Second Coming.
Chapter 9 seeks to outline the
pursuits of the millennium from the twelfth century to the nineteenth. During these
periods, millenarian radicalism grew out of radical situations and eschatological
excitment run high. The eschatological millennarianism motivated secular millennarianism
involving the transposition of Biblical concepts of sacrifice and redemption. It also
inspired "the idea of a radical solution to the age-old struggle between good and
evil" (p. 158).
Chapter 10 investigates time's noblest
offspring. It is firstly devoted to eschatological considerations on the conquest of
America for God, which could easily look like a millennial mission. It also lays out
apocalyptic legacies dating from the seventeenth century to our times. In the seventeenth
century, John Cotton had calculated the Second Coming in 1655, Roger Williams, the
nonconformist Puritan clergyman, assimilated the struggle against churches to the struggle
against the Antichrist, the Massachusetts clergymen, the Mathers, who believed in
"inoculation against small-pox and in matches" (p. 170) as well as in the saints
escaping from the destruction and torment of the final conflagration. In the eighteenth
century, Jonathan Edwards foretold that the Devil would be defeated in the vear 2000; Ann
Lee preached that "the judgement of God was 'nigh at hand' and demanded withdrawal
from the world" (p. 172). In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith held that
preparations for the Second Coming should begin for Christ's millenial reign, William
Miller predicted that the Second Coming should occur sometime during the twelve months
following March 1843; Harriet Beecher Stome suggested that the Second Coming was imminent;
Charles Grandison Finney and John Nelson Darby believed that the millennial age was about
to dawn. In the twentieth century, the most significant apocalyptic legacies on the
imminent end of the world and the Second Coming were bequeathed by Agnes Osman, William
Seymour, Christabel Pankhurst, and William Jennings Bryan.
Chapter 11 explores in depth the
apocalyptic thought of the twentieth century. Weber examines the way in which expectations
of a supernatural kingdom about to dawn immediately were rationalized, spiritualized, and
ethnicized and he also attempts to justify the creation of current sophistries.
Chapter 12 summarizes the book's main
perspectives on the creation of the world, the eschatological expectations concerning its
end, and the rationalization of supernatural messages and beliefs, alike.
In his tendentious attempt to unlock
the hidden meaning of the Apocalypse and millennnial thought, Weber takes his place in a
long interpretative tradition. His profound
and witty book embraces the entire panorama of the apocalyptic visions and prophecies from
Zarathustra to the twentieth century and demonstrates clearly that belief in the
approaching end of time (fin de siècle) after a final battle between good
and evil was present in Western civilization even before the birth of Christ.
Hélène Perdicoyianni-Paléologou,
Harvard University