Apocalyptic Glossary

eschatology: belief in an end to history which resolves the problem of theodicy (i.e., the question of God's justice: why the good suffer and the evil flourish). By predicting a Last/Ultimate Judgment in which the evil will finally and publically receive their punishment and the good, their reward, eschatology provides an especially powerful and appealing answer to the problem of theodicy.

credal eschatology: saved because of faith, belonging to a given community of belief

moral eschatology: saved by way one has treated one's fellow humans

spiritual eschatology: belief that both rewards and punishment at the end of time will be experienced only on a totally spiritual plane, the physical universe having passed away. Eschatology can be used as a shorthand for this form of belief: many historians call this apocalypticism, that is a belief that the next great transformation is a cataclysmic destruction of this world, and the end of time, space, history.

apocalypticism: belief that this end is imminent (enough to change one's behavior in anticipation)

public apocalypticism: a period when apocalyptic expectations have become so widespread that they are publicly discussed and collective responses -- penitential processions, collective pilgrimages, etc. -- emerge.

apocalyptic spill-over (bavure): when a group passes from waiting -- however intensively -- to celebrating the arrival of the "Day of the Lord": induces public behavior of radical nature (antinomianism, ecstatic celebration, disorder, violence). e.g. Jewish wars of 66-70 CE, the group referred to in II Thessalonians.

apocalyptic figure: preacher/writer at the onset of an apocalyptic moment: herald, prophet, messiah, god-man; some of these figures go through the whole range of claims, depending on their success

apocalyptic herald: someone announcing the onset of the apocalyptic moment, and indicated the proper preparations (e.g. John the Baptist).

apocalyptic escort: someone whose actions coincide with the cosmic take- off, perhaps playing a role (performative utterance) in the very bringing of the endtime (my interpretation of Jesus).

apocalyptic spur: an idea which incites apocalyptic hope -- theodicy, signs and wonders, identifying Antichrist, utopian promises.apocalyptic extender: a way of increasing the buffer between now and the eschaton -- populating the period with further prophecies to be fulfilled (rumors of war, but not yet...), and pre-millennial projects.

apocalyptic hedge: a passage one puts in discussion with outsiders and in written texts which, by introducing an element of doubt or uncertainty, permits the speaker/writer to handle the eventual failure of prophecy (e.g. Gregory I telling Aethelbert that the end is near "although not in our lives"). Hedges tend, in the aftermath, to take on far more significance than they had at the time uttered; capstone historians use hedges to make their case (i.e. "Gregory I was not really apocalyptic, he thought the world would continue after he died").

apocalyptic horizon: how much time one imagines before the final consummation of history takes place; this is an acute form of temporal horizons, or the amount of time one imagines the future of the world as we know it to continue.

apocalyptic chronology: a set of calculations which triggers an apocalyptic moment; could be either of the very generation (Judas the chronographer of ca.200 C.E., Miller and 1843), or one that comes due after a long wait (6000 AM = 500 CE or 801 C.E.; 1000). See

Augustinianism: the misinterpretation/misappropriation of Augustine's writings by people who want to make precisely the point he wished to deny them (aka gefaming* Augustine). Thus

apocalyptic Augustinianism: citing Augustine in support of identifying historical events with the interpretation of Revelation as an imminent end.

chronological Augustinianism: dating the end of the world, more specifically using Augustine's 1000 years to date the end

political Augustinianism: declaring some current, or trying to establish a reformed polity as, the Heavenly Kingdom on earth (Eusebius, Charlemagne, etc)

historiographical Augustinianism: this is an inversion of the principle: here modern, "scientific" scholars end up replicating what Augustine wanted to do, even as they explicitly deny his religious agenda.

chiliasm: belief that the rewards of the saved will be enjoyed on this earth, generally a thousand years of earthly peace, prosperity, equality; the key, however, is the idea that "salvation" will come in this world. (See apocalyptic).

imperial or authoritarian chiliasm: a chiliastic scenario in which redemption comes from a monarchical figure who imposes it; imagines the ideal society as one which mirrors the heavenly hierarchy, sees the ruler as the imago Dei. Often involves some ideal of a "Last Emperor" who will rule the earth for more than a century in perfect order. The eshcatological enemy here is chaos; slavation comes from divinely imposed order. Political monotheism here means: "One God, one emperor." (E.g., Eusebius/Constantine, Alcuin/Charlemagne, Gerbert-Sylvester/Otto III, etc. From this perspective Constantine is the first "Last Emperor." Note: this chiliasm need not emerge only above the prime divider (its place of predilection); popular movements can, and often do, develop these authoritarian traits.

radical or egalitarian chiliasm: a chiliastic scenario in which redemption comes from a collective, bottom-up, thrust. Collective, acephalous manifestations of enthusiasm are seen as God's way of bringing his peace down to earth, inaugurating an age of plenty, dignified manual labor for all, fraternity (Isaiah 65). Here the eschatological enemy is hierarchy (order through injustice); the political meaning of monotheism is "No king but God." (E.g., Hussites, Diggers, Levellers, Shakers, etc.)

dissonant and consonant apocalypticism

dissonant resentment: the sense of hostility that disappointed apocalyptic believers feel towards those who did not mistakenly believe in their predictions

apocalyptic scapegoating: product of dissonant apocalypticism, assigning to some other group the responsibility for the failure of predictions.

mutational apocalyptic: the second stage of a movement -- after the failure of apocalyptic expectations, trying to deal with cognitive dissonance. In Christian terms, apostolic.

gefaming: To cite someone as supporting precisely the position he has denounced (e.g. Quodvultdeus dropping the not from Augustine's warning about identifying the Goths and the Visigoths with Gog and Magog -- see above, Apocalyptic Augustinianism). This also happens in modern historiography, largely unintended.

genealogical interpretations: taking account of a process whereby any text concerning apocalypticism is a (later) product of a dynamic in which its composition represents a stage in the process of domestication and institutionalization. To see it as a late coalescence of a particular narrative enables us to reconstruct the process whereby it developed; to take it as a starting point and complete the process of domestication is capstone.

immanence vs. imminence: the former refers to the belief that God's kingdom is realized within oneself and between oneself and others; it offers a means of achieving salvation within the continuing saeculum. The latter refers to the sense that the end of the saeculum is about to occur (i.e. chiliasm).

messianism: belief that a chosen individual will bring about the chiliastic period

millennialism: belief that the end will come at the completion of the current period of 1000 years by whatever calendar (annus mundi, anno domini, annus ab urbe condita: 5000 AM, 6000 AM, 1000 AD); by extension, millennialism represents "date-based" apocalyptic expectation and can derive from some widely accepted date which is the culmination of several generations of anticipation (1260 AD, 1300, 1500, 1666).

prime divider: that division between elites and commoners which marks the fundamental fissure of almost all pre-modern civilizations (based on the sociological historical work of scholars like Ernst Gellner, John Hall, John Kautsky, Patricia Crone). This division, enforced by privilege (legal disparities), occupation (manual labor for those below), wealth and access to power (elite monopolies on weapon-bearing and literacy), creates two radically different cultures, in which aristocrats are more likely to identify with other aristocrats than with their own commoners. In apocalyptic matters, the prime divider plays a key role: 1) many eschatological visions forsee the demise of the prime divider and therefore has immense appeal to those who find themselves below it (e.g., "the meek shall inherit the land"); 2) most of our documentation comes from those above the prime divider and, where not profoundly hostile to apocalyptic thought, tends to reflect a different, less politically radical eschatology.

royal jelly: the various liturgical, rhetorical, and even architectural techniques whereby a monarch is convinced that he is an imperial messiah, chosen by God to bring Christianity to his -- indeed the whole world's -- people. e.g. Constantine, Theodosius, Clovis?, Charlemagne, Otto III, Frederick I, II. The imperial chapel at Aachen is an alchemical structure for creating royal jelly.

saeculum (also secular time, secular power): religiously defined as the fallen world in which the success of injustice necessitates an answer to theodicy; sociologically defined as the world of the coercial membrane.

teleological/capstone interpretations (aka: tombstone, wet-blanket, naive): interpretations of the text which systematically underplay apocalyptic activity. This is based on the principle that (religious) texts are naturally not apocalyptic (their telos is sub specie aeternitatis), and only the explicit mention of apocalypticism can be taken as evidence for its presence. Thus, rather than consider the possibility that a text is the product of a (more or less) advanced stage in an apocalyptic process (ie explore its apocalyptic genealogy), teleological historians assist the process of de-apocalypticism of which their very text represent an early phase. The term has broader application to all forms of historiographical analysis which take the end product as the purpose of the founders, which do not envisage "unintended consequences" (functionalism). In the specific context of apocalyptic analysis, embedded within such a teleological interpretations is a projection back into the period of the fact -- unknown to the actors at the time -- that the end did not come.

naive historiography: "It could be anything. Without explicit proof, you cannot affirm an apocalyptic reading." Thus, when Orosius cries out about the difficulty with which he overcame his sense of the disastrous nature of his age, the historian of Christian roosters sees a man struggling against being overwhelmed by apocalyptic time; the naive historian claims: not necessarily; he could be worried about non-eschatological disaster, just concerned for social stability, like the pagans.

capstone: an aggressive use of teleological analysis to deny even the proposal of genealogical analyses (e.g., the rhetoric of "not a shred of evidence"; the year 1000 "like any other", the return to a non-apocalyptic Jesus). If teleological analysis refuses to look behind the curtain of retrospective narratives, capstone analysis tends to resist efforts to investigate what happens below the elite membrane. Discussions of what commoners, or peasants, or laymen, or "lower clergy" thought are dismissed, given the lack of evidence, as hopelessly conjectural; in the process, such interpretations reinforce the (occasionally admitted) reluctance of the texts to discuss such matters (e.g. the Bacaudae).

capstone rhetoric: topoi -- "not a shred" "pure conjecture" "insignificant number" "there is no reason to believe that..."

capstone maneuvers:

denial: sweeping embarrassing texts into the dustbin by denying or obscuring their presence (e.g., Halphen excluding the annalistic entry "mille anni a nativitate Christi" from his edition because it was mistakenly attributed to the year 968 [Annales angevines]; Lot denying that Glaber's most explicitly chiliastic text about the year 1000 existed).

literalness: forbidding any interpretation or "reading between the lines" to explore apocalyptic allusions in a text; dismissing as evidence any text that does not make explicit reference to an eschatological belief.

minimalism: evidence of apocalyptic belief that survives its own disappointment, is given a neutral status in the weighing of evidence, thus eclipsed by the extensive number of passages that rewrite the mistake (e.g. Marcus Borg claiming that the few explicitly apocalyptic passages attributed to Jesus are "thin threads" upon which to hang an interpretation that puts apocalyptic expectation at the core of Jesus' message.

textual communities: communities bound together as the result of the reading of a text; can have high levels of illiteracy; often the text serves as a (n egalitarian) law/ethical code; see Brian Stock's Implications of Literacy where he introduces the term, calls such communities "laboratories of social change" and uses the concept to analyze the popular heresies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

literate communities: textual communities that define themselves through the written exegesis of the text; high literacy rates (e.g., clerical religious orders, Jews).