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Apocalyptic ideas and expectations during the early modern period |
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Written by Michael R. Walker
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Monday, 10 May 2010 17:19 |
"...apocalyptic ideas and expectations during the early modern period exercised the European social imagination quite literally from Moscow to Mexico City, from Scotland to the Yemen. They would shape the world in profound and enduring ways.
"The early modern period was not the first time that the apocalypse penetrated the Western intellect and redefined it. That had happened once before during the Intertestamental years (c. 150 BCE–200 CE). In antiquity apocalyptic expectations permanently transformed the religious landscape and, eventually, the political landscape as well. Between 1500 and 1800 they created modernity. During that second great encounter with the apocalypse, such expectations played a central role in the emergence of secular culture—arguably the signal achievement of the postmedieval West. There exists no small irony here. A deeply religious set of ideas proved instrumental in enabling people to see their world through prisms other than those provided by religion. Secular categories, initially, arose less from the rejection of religion than through the dynamics and tensions within religion itself."
Arthur H. Williamson. Apocalypse then: prophecy and the making of the modern world. London: Praeger, 2008, pp. 1-2.
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