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This paper brings together insights from different research areas by on the one hand examining the Apocalypse of Abraham in its context of ancient Judaism and on the other hand looking at the fourteenth century context of its manuscript-tradition. Special attention is given to how the Apocalypse of Abraham receives Ezekiel in order to create its distinct vision of God's throne. The copyist/redactor of the manuscript in Old Church Slavonic adds six miniatures to his codex depicting essential scenes from the Apocalypse of Abraham. However, when looking at the miniature of Abraham and the angel Jaoel before God's throne, one wonders if the miniaturist knew the text of the Apocalypse of Abraham at all or if he wanted to create his own vision of God's throne thereby correcting/adding to the meaning of the Apocalypse's vison of the throne. By examining both the original and the manuscript context of the work multiple discourses are opened and new questions of transmission of ancient Jewish texts in Christian transmission arise. The paper wants to encourage further research in the field of Slavonic pseudepigrapha and its transmission which is still a neglected field of academic endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elena Dugan's book, The Apocalypse of the Birds: 1 Enoch and the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, seeks to overturn the prevailing scholarly consensus that the "Animal Apocalypse" (1 En. 85–90) is a unified work, written at the time of the Maccabean revolt or shortly thereafter. She argues that it is two works and that the second part, called by her "The Apocalypse of the Birds," was written in the latter '60s C.E. It does not describe the Maccabean revolt, but the "first Jewish revolt" against Rome and the defeat of Cestius Gallus in 66 C.E. She points out that the latter part of the "Animal Apocalypse" is not attested at Qumran, and she tries to show on literary grounds that the work has two parts. She further points to many alleged deficiencies in the "Maccabean hypothesis" and strengths in her "Roman hypothesis." This review constitutes a detailed rebuttal to Dugan's book by a representative of the "Maccabean hypothesis." It also makes a new and original case for an allusion to the "Animal Apocalypse" in Jubilees 4:19, something Dugan denies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions are the main sources of the eschatological compositions of the apocalypse. Through the combination of various symbolic elements and a prefigured narrative, apocalyptic visions offer a script that can be applied in diverse historical situations to deal with the uncertainty of the present, to justify political action and to allocate resources. In contemporary society, the high complexity and significance of the socio-natural and socio-technical operations in the domains of climate change and artificial intelligence create a fertile ground for the proliferation of apocalyptic eschatologies. The analysis shows that while the use of the apocalyptic script indeed motivates action in the present to avoid a future posited as unavoidable, it also generates strong moral and political distinctions that emphasize a unilateral projection of the future and undervalue alternative possibilities. The article concludes that apocalyptic eschatology promotes a ritualistic action in the present that evades the explanation of the complex causalities underlying climate change and artificial intelligence. The magnetism of the apocalyptic narrative lies in its ability to motivate action based on a recognizable architecture, but in doing so, it precludes alternative future options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One striking feature of apocalyptic readings of Paul—and the Protestant dogmatics that follows after such a Paulinism—is the 'widescreen' portrayal of Sin as Power. This account stresses the 'three-agent drama' of salvation and the bondage of human persons to anti-God forces. It resists moralising interpretations of human sins in favour of a starker moral cosmology. In this way, it seems to leave 'ethics' and 'freedom' in suspension. Contrast the approach of the moral theologian Oliver O'Donovan. Here, sin is a case study in the difference of perspectives between dogmatics and ethics. Dogmatics, 'making sin exceedingly sinful, quickly resorts to apocalyptic largeness of scale'. Ethics is concerned instead with 'possible' sins. It describes sin in phenomenological rather than ultimate terms—something to be avoided in the next moment of free agency. This article distils the theological commitments each intends to secure, observes what each risks, and seeks to determine what is at stake. It draws them together in a synthetic moral ontology, but also looks further, to an integrative account that can inform moral discernment. To this end, the final section observes how subsequent work in Pauline studies converges with discussions about structural sin in Catholic social thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First Enoch, a pseudepigraphical work from the Second Temple period, contains visions of the natural and supernatural world that cause the visionary, Enoch, to understand anew the beyond-human world. Written during a time of environmental devastation, 1 Enoch can be a resource for helping today's readers rewild our religious imaginations, our understanding of worship, and our relationship with nonhuman creation. This essay offers a reflection on how the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch and the author's failed attempts to reach a mountain peak helped the author better understand the unseating of humanity as the center of creation as an experience of grace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who reject or are put off by Revelation often point to the book's violence as the central reason. Revelation contains more violent images than any other New Testament book. Can the love of God be found in John's Apocalypse? This article explores this question in detail. We begin with a look at how to read Revelation responsibly, especially the book's vivid imagery. In large part this calls for a serious reading the book in light of its historical and literary contexts. Then we look closely at the theme of the love of the Triune God throughout Revelation. Grasping the theme of divine love sheds new light on how to understand the book's violent imagery. Overall we suggest that Revelation focuses on both divine love and divine justice, two realities that are not ultimate in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades since Frank Snowden published his seminal monograph Blacks in Antiquity, scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the ethnic and racial frameworks deployed by ancient peoples. The intersections of race, color, and ethnicity in classical literature have long been debated, but ancient Jewish texts tend to be left out of these discussions. In this article, I first analyze 1 Enoch's Animal Apocalypse against the backdrop of Hellenistic-era environmental theory to show that it displays early forms of race-making through its differentiation of colored bulls. Although leading commentaries offered by Nickelsburg and Tiller reject racial readings of the Animal Apocalypse's colored bulls, Matthew Black's commentary from the 1980s does not. I show that ancient Hellenistic conceptions of peoples' color, ethnicity, and behaviors shaped by environmental determinism support Matthew Black's framework for understanding the Animal Apocalypse's use of color, namely his equating of Chapter 89's black bull with Ham, contra Nickelsburg and Tiller. Second, I stress that the Animal Apocalypse's schema of colored bulls reflects the view that all of humanity derives from white, red, and black ancestors and that this ordering of the three colors constitutes a hierarchal sequencing of humankind, classified into three different types of people in descending order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Semeia 14 definition of apocalypse defined apocalypses as a constellation of form, temporal content, and spatial content, but temporal content (particularly eschatological features) remains the dominant lens through which the genre of apocalypse and related texts are understood. Defining apocalypses primarily in terms of eschatology, however, narrows the definition of apocalypse and dismisses some texts that reflect non-eschatological features of apocalypses. Form and spatial content are often neglected in the examination of apocalypses and "apocalyptic" texts. When we pay attention to form and spatial content, along with temporal content, new horizons open for considering what may be considered apocalypse-like. Jubilees and the Gospel of John are presented as two examples of revelatory texts that reflect the form and spatial content of apocalypses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 2021 opinion article in The New York Times, Adam Grant called the COVID-19 pandemic the 'boring apocalypse'. Indeed, while pre-pandemic imaginaries of global pandemics tended to focus on spectacular killer viruses, for many people in the Global North, the challenge of the pandemic was, if not boredom, then a sense of recurring routine. Although the pandemic also created strong affects like fear and anger, this article will look at the 'flat affects' that grew out of the sense of stasis. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the thinking of Lauren Berlant. My theoretical reflection is followed by an analysis of three British novels written during the pandemic: Sarah Moss' The Fell, Sarah Hall's Burntcoat and Clare Pollard's Delphi. I will, above all, focus on the representations of affective responses to the routines of the pandemic in the often overlooked private sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to describe a new coding and data analysis method for qualitative researchers, especially in education and health inquiry. We label this method Heroic Coding, a proposal for understanding the role of education and health personnel in apocalyptic scenarios. We propose this method as a subtype within Literature and Language Coding methods described in Saldaña's The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Heroic Coding employs, in the first cycle coding, an eclectic strategy and, in the second cycle, an elaborative strategy to refine conceptual dimensions about heroes and heroic subjectivities. This article uses a data set from empirical research in education policy enactments to illustrate Heroic Coding in action. Furthermore, we reflect on future possibilities and limitations of this coding method for qualitative research in apocalyptic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene function at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), otherwise known as the 'Doomsday Vault'. Recent explorations by scholars of security have suggested that different ways of seeing, understanding, acting in, and imagining the world are necessary to adequately respond to complex crises in the Anthropocene. The dissolution of the nature/culture divide and the existential risk from planetary threats are said to require new and creative formations of security. Buried in the Norwegian high Arctic, the heavily fortified SGSV was built in 2008 as a planetary-scale, 'deep-time organisation' that would forever secure a wide variety of plant seeds and their genetic makeup against regional or global upheavals. The article argues that his seed 'ark' materialises three Anthropocene security imaginaries: apocalypse, hope and escape. The prevalence and use of these imaginaries reveal the stability of long-held security logics and challenge the widely-held belief in the innately transformative properties of the Anthropocene concept for security. Instead, the SGSV demonstrates the difficulty in overcoming a collective mindfulness that fixes security to eternal forms even in the midst of unprecedented threats, interventions and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay forms part of the 30th Special Issue of the journal and reflects on the role of the anniversarifier and reports on way of escaping the end of Organization to which it leads. Playful, ludic and irreverent this paper poses difficulties to the abstract, which should eventually be excised from the final publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christians ancient and modern have puzzled over the violence in the book of Joshua. Origen of Alexandria interprets this text apocalyptically, to give readers a sense of their own personal moral struggle as participating in a cosmic effort. For Origen, the central act of apocalypse is the cross of Jesus Christ, conquering evil through nonviolence and making religious violence explicitly prohibited. This is a compelling exegesis still today, since by using the cross to reinterpret Joshua, Origen presents a middle path between endorsing the violence depicted and excising or ignoring it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The allegorical quartet of birds which prey upon the sheep in 1 Enoch 90.2 have been variously identified by early-modern and modern scholars, with no solution reaching consensus. This article proposes the "hobay" should be translated as "ibises" and accordingly represent an Egyptian people-group. I first advance this argument with the help of a parallel usage of terminology in the Greek Testament of Judah. I next confirm the utility of this identification with a brief survey of roughly contemporary primary sources (textual and material) which connect ibises and Egypt. Finally, with these cultural discourses in mind, I re-integrate the ibises into the Animal Apocalypse, suggesting that the recasting of a graceful national bird as a carnivorous monster is a deviously clever imperial critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a commonplace of ancient Near Eastern worldviews that temples have cosmic significance. This understanding persists and develops in the Second Temple period, with numerous texts witnessing to a widely held belief that the Jerusalem temple reflected heaven or the universe. Scholars have largely been content either to recognize a basic relationship, or to distinguish temple-in-heaven from temple-as-universe, sometimes construing the former as "apocalyptic" and the latter as "Hellenistic." Jonathan Klawans' work represents an important articulation of this distinction. This article summarizes his contribution, and critiques it on the grounds that it remains overly dichotomous and does not do full justice to the evidence. Instead, a fresh taxonomy is proposed with four key categories, each illustrated from Second Temple and biblical texts. None of these categories is discrete; rather they demarcate a spectrum or scale of ways that ancient Jewish and early Christian writers conceptualized the heaven–temple relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text of the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation has provided a template for the development of many radical, political identities over the course of many centuries. The text describes an idolatrous majority, beholden to the power of a tyrannical and pseudo-theocratic ruler. It also describes an embattled minority, who are given an 'insight' which allows them to resist the thrall of this ruler. In more recent times, these images have captured the imaginations of participants in conspiracy cultures. In particular, those who resist the use of vaccinations by public health authorities see prophetic significance in the concept of the 'mark of the beast.' For the entire history of the use of vaccination, anti-vaccination campaigners have seen prophetic significance in the topos of 'the mark of the Beast.' This article traces the themes which link the apocalyptic language used by anti-vaccination campaigners in the nineteenth century with the apocalyptic language used by anti-vaccination campaigners in the twenty-first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary research on the figure of historical Jesus, the dominant theory is that he was an apocalyptic prophet, heralding the imminent coming of the end of the present world and the coming of the eschatological kingdom of God. Beginning with the work of Albert Schweitzer, this theory is considered the most probable according to most researchers of the origins of Christianity. This article examines the assumptions of this theory to show how challenging it is to contemporary systematic theology. The first part presents the history and status of the theory in contemporary scientific research. The second part briefly presents the basic assumptions of the theory itself. Finally, the third part presents the problems that the theory raises for systematic theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how the film The Banshees of Inisherin represents and employs key sociological concepts and ideas, namely those of liminality, schismogenesis, stasis and transgression, relating to the social pathologies of contemporary civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conceptual paper, we speculate on some goals and methodologies for social inquiry responsive to a viral and potentially unthinkable world. Rather than following old methodological scripts and validated practices, we imagine fluid, responsive, and urgent methodologies as needed responses to better show and vividly document our progression toward a possible (methodological) "apocalypse." As such a real/imaginary apocalypse enables us to (un)think what is currently thinkable, to postulate, speculate, and hesitate as we stretch to imagine inquiry and knowing in more immediate, deeply responsive, and responsible ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls have attracted increasing scholarly attention since their official publication was completed in 2009. These manuscripts, representing about thirty distinct compositions, attest to the existence of a previously unknown Jewish Aramaic scribal culture that flourished in the early Hellenistic period (ca. late fourth to mid-second centuries BCE). The Aramaic Scrolls thus have the potential to illuminate an otherwise poorly understood period of Jewish history. In this article, I discuss the various scholarly approaches to their language, literary content, and social location, with a special emphasis on trends in the secondary literature since the late 2000s. This article will also provide interested students and scholars with an overview of the major themes and concerns found throughout the Aramaic Scrolls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I aim to bring apocalypticism and radical realism into conversation, with a view to their mutual interest in prefigurative politics. On one hand, radical realists may worry that an apocalyptic approach to prefigurative politics may be marred by wishful thinking. On the other hand, radical realists can (and sometimes do) acknowledge that wishful thinking is sometimes desirable. I argue that an apocalyptic approach to prefigurative politics suggests one way of guarding against the dangers of wishful thinking, while allowing space for its potential benefits; prefigurativists have reason to pay at least some attention to what Bernard Williams calls 'The First Political Question'. I will argue for this claim with reference to the case of Omar Aziz, a Syrian activist who played a pivotal role in the construction of local councils in the aftermath of the 2011 protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spiral mobility or flow is a good metaphor for contemporary global experience. Today's life is precariously shaped by incessant cyclical movement from apocalypse to 'post-apocalypse' and from one post-apocalypse to another. There is no indication of what may be expected of the future. The future is in chaos. It appears that we are living through chaotic end times rather than experiencing mere gestures of the end times. A perpetual apocalypse seems the best way to describe the current reality. Therefore, Covid-19 seems to have been nothing but a mere reminder that we are on a sinking lifeboat. This article argues that in such an ever-wounded God's world, African Pentecostalism has to shift the gear from mission as witness to mission as withness. The withness missiology can help in the process of re-discovering the theological and missiological meaning of life in an ever-wounded world and alternative ways of intercarnating into one another for the sake of common basic good of flourishing. It concludes that God's Church is pneumatologically intended toward God's world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, images of climate catastrophe have become commonplace. However, Black visions of the confluence of the Anthropocene and the apocalypse have been largely ignored. As we argue in this article, Black social thought offers crucial resources for drawing out the implicit exclusions of dominant representations of climate breakdown and developing an alternative account of the planet's future. By reading a range of critical race theorists, from Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois to Octavia Butler and Ta-Nehisi Coates, we propose a rethinking of the climate apocalypse. The African American theoretical and cultural tradition elaborates an image of the end of the world that emphasises the non-revelatory nature of climate catastrophe, warns against associating collapse with rebirth, and articulates a mode of maroon survivalism in which the apocalypse is an event to be endured and escaped rather than fatalistically expected or infinitely delayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the warning that closes Matthew's version of the great banquet (Matt 22:1–14) indicate that the population of hell exceeds, even far exceeds, that of heaven? This article sets out the allegorizing account of a royal banquet found in Matthew. The second set of guests stands for members of the Church, warned in most serious, apocalyptic terms to produce good works which are worthy of their calling and which will be recognized at final judgment. Taken with similar parables in Matthew, that of the king's banquet invites an appropriate response rather than offers information, still less, precise information about the final state of all Christians and other human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and exacerbated many enduring social inequalities in countries throughout the world. Sociology instructors are thus likely to incorporate content related to this relationship between the pandemic and inequalities in their courses. This article explores the potential of horror films, specifically the subgenre of zombie apocalypse, as a teaching tool for critically analyzing social inequalities and the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine the usefulness of this subgenre of film, I describe and evaluate an assignment and class discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial for our Special Issue, we focus on ways to better understand the role of organizations, organizing, and the organized during social and institutional change in response to disruption, division, and displacement. The papers in this Special Issue provide important insights into the hardships and heartache arising from social disruption, division, and displacement; in addition, they provide glimpses into potential ways of moving forward. To set the stage, we develop a framework building on extant literature that highlights several analytic approaches to understanding the consequences of eroding, or inadequate, institutions, the challenges of building anew when the status quo is destroyed, and what such novel and complex realities entail for organizational analysis. We offer a temporal view of responses to disruption, division, and displacement that draws on the papers in this Special Issue to identify and explain potential risks and challenges that arise at different points in time. To conclude, we provide a short summary of each paper, and call for a reinvigorated research agenda that goes beyond the excellent work featured here by broadening and deepening our focus on approaches to organizing that expressly address disruption, division, and displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Animal Apocalypse (1 En. 85–90) provides some of the most vivid imagery in Second Temple literature. In reference to the descent of the Watchers allegorized as stars, the narrative invokes the simile "they let out their phalluses like stallions" three times. Beyond the simile's allusion to the oracle in Ezek 23:20, the stallion phallus remains largely unexplored. Our investigation demonstrates the associations of stallions with "aggressive virility" and foreignness based on the Hebrew Bible and contemporary Hellenistic and early Jewish literature. Moreover, we show the Animal Apocalypse's innovative emphasis on the violent nature of the sexual acts, a feature absent in Gen 6 and the Book of Watchers, and argue for the episode's contextualization with other early Jewish texts in which sexual violence is present. By spotlighting the stallion-phallused stars with their foreign genitalia, the Animal Apocalypse highlights anxieties surrounding communal boundary crossing and its violent repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revelation 14:9–11 has traditionally been used as one of the most important proof-texts for the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. In this article, I argue that when analysed within the context of the whole of chapter 14, and the overall narrative flow of the following chapters (15, 16), and entire book, these verses can instead be interpreted as a figurative description of the Winepress Judgment, and more importantly of the Seven Bowl Judgments, and were likely also partially anticipated in earlier chapters (2:22; 3:10; 6:16–17; 7:2–4; 9:3–10). In this sense, I maintain that these verses should actually be seen as occurring in history rather than in eternity. This is true from the moment that the Book of Revelation utilises recapitulation and is a mosaic and picture-story of apocalyptic images and symbols which steadily move towards God's ultimate triumph over evil. Finally, I argue that these devastating judgments represent an apocalyptic reversal of the Roman arena where Christians were being mocked, tortured, and killed: in a dramatic vision at the end of the age, Christ, the faithful Witness, has returned as Judge and Lord, and together with his angels has replaced the emperor and his subordinates in the much greater stands of the cosmic arena of world history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic has dramatically flipped the script on many aspects of our lives. Segel shows through these narratives how parents negotiated entangled identities as caregivers and teachers during the pandemic. Finally, in "Nurturing the Literacy Lives of Boys of Color During COVID-19", Marisa Segel shows through her yearlong case study that when schools closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the imagined divide between home and school was fundamentally altered. [Extracted from the article]

Whereas many of the so-called Jewish Pseudepigrapha still wait for a critical edition, the Life of Adam and Eve—or the Apocalypse of Moses, as the Greek version is captioned in some manuscripts—has received more than three critical editions in recent years. While the question which manuscript or version comes closest to the original form of the story is still under debate, this article argues that the manifold manuscript tradition opens a window into an ancient discussion on Satan's, Eve's, and Adam's role in the story of their expulsion from Paradise. I will concentrate my discussion on Eve's account of the story in GLAE 15–30 and LLAE 45–60. The three texts differ in their representation of gender roles in Eve's own account of the fall. None of these versions only exonerates or denigrates Eve, nor is one with the most emancipatory potential easily identified. All three texts, however, document a constant discussion on Eve's role in Paradise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Revelation, John labels a religious teacher in Thyatira 'Jezebel', stating that she is 'teaching and beguiling [Christ's] servants to practice fornication [πορνεῦσαι] and to eat food sacrificed to idols' (Rev. 2.20). As punishment, John's Christ throws her into a bed (βάλλω αὐτὴν εἰς κλίνην, Rev. 2.22). This study examines three major trends in how scholars have translated the phrase 'βάλλω αὐτὴν εἰς κλίνην': 1) the phrase has been translated as non-sexual, but rather strictly emblematic for illness; 2) scholars have highlighted the idea that Jezebel is deserving of her punishment, often while acknowledging the irony imbedded in the combined πορν- and κλίνην imagery and 3) readings of the text as an image of sexual violence have become increasingly common. Scholars have attempted to elucidate John's original purpose in crafting the image, but there is a lacuna of research involving the effect this image has on women readers, despite the authorial intent. Additionally, readings which delve deeply into Jezebel's punishment with regard to her 'otherness' are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideal of emancipation has been traditionally grounded on the premise that human activity is not restrained by external boundaries. Thus the realisation of values such as autonomy or recognition has been facilitated by economic growth and material expansion. Yet there is mounting evidence that the human impact on natural systems at the planetary level, a novelty captured by the concept of the Anthropocene, endangers the Earth's habitability. If human development is to be limited for the sake of global sustainability, can emancipation be kept as a mobilising ideal? As opposed to alternative views such as that of degrowth, this article argues that it can. The key lies in the ability of the Anthropocene to produce planetary subjectivities. By recognising the bounded quality of human embeddedness, the possibility of a different emancipation is opened up. The latter does not give up material well-being, yet it makes sure that the latter does not endanger planetary habitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Book of Daniel is an anthology that comes to us in a variety of compositional configurations distinguished in their organization by genre and chronology. Daniel's varied compositional configurations—MT, Old Greek, Theodotion, Syriac—characterize the book as a literary exercise in divinatory wisdom that can point readers in different directions. The wisdom promoted in MT Daniel is mantic in that it is concerned with how knowledge of God's effective reality in history can be divined (apocalyptic). In other forms of Daniel, the wisdom recommended for ancient Jews is mundane in that it is concerned with how they may conduct themselves with integrity within their own communities and relative to others (wisdom). I argue that, in the case of Daniel, the meaning of this biblical book is indicated not only in its semantic content but also through the various compositional configurations given to it during antiquity. This finding is consistent with a need for the sort of textually and compositionally pluriform Bible edition articulated by James Sanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thinking with, against, and after Ernst Käsemann's appropriation of the biblical metaphor of eschatological birth pangs, this article seeks to reassess our understanding of what it means to be a theologian of the cross. It does so by way of a depiction of Paul's apostolic practice as a social and embodied—and yet cruciform—mode of epiphanic manifestation. Thinking with Käsemann, it brings to the fore the significance of this apocalyptic understanding of apostolic practice for contemporary theological reflection at the interface of biblical studies, philosophy, and ethics. Thinking against Käsemann, it demonstrates ways in which this reading of Paul enables us to address more effectively major criticisms of a theology of the cross and Pauline theology in general. Finally, thinking after Käsemann, it discusses the ways that this portrayal of Paul's practice funds resources for reconfiguring theological education 'after whiteness'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing in the 1920s and 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Franz Rosenzweig each provided rich reflections on how we are to understand and approach the Bible as God's word. They each understood Scripture as revelation, while attending closely to the substance and forms of biblical texts. This article therefore explores how their approaches to Scripture can contribute to ongoing work in apocalyptic theology. In particular, it draws out the ethic of responsibility that is inherent in their biblical hermeneutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian ethicist Nancy Duff has suggested that an apocalyptic hearing of the gospel elicits a parabolic understanding of the Christian moral life. How might the theological basis and rationale of this claim be elaborated? What is it about human life funded by the gospel of God's apocalypse in Jesus Christ that makes 'parable' an apt description of the quality of its action? And how might these notions be elaborated to enrich our understanding of responsible moral action more generally? This article explores these questions by way of a running conversation with the work of J. Louis Martyn, Christopher Morse and Paul Ricoeur. It concludes by showing the salience of these themes in relation to Bonhoeffer's later reflections upon the distinctive quality of Christian life in the wreckage of Christendom. Overall, the solid currency of a parabolic construal of the character of Christian moral action for the present pursuit of theological ethics is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that an apocalyptic interpretation of divine revelation provides the theological foundation for discerning the appropriate space for human life to thrive. This apocalyptic theological ethic is contrasted with that of end-time Christians who have supported Donald Trump as God's chosen one and who joined the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. It contrasts five features of apocalyptic thinking for both groups: (1) expectation of the end of the world, (2) ethics, (3) Christ, nation, and the first commandment (4) Christians and Jews, and (5) the cross. While the article seeks to give a fair description of the beliefs of end-time Christians, it argues that their beliefs have taken a heretical and dangerous turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an exploration of the interpretation history of Matt. 25:33-46, this article develops an apocalyptic ethics based on Christ's encountering us in the least of his brothers and sisters. Proposing the newly coined expression ' visitatio Christi ', the article offers a counterpoint to the common theological-ethical theme of imitatio Christi. First, it recalls how Jesus' eschatological parable has time and again inspired love of the neighbour in need (e.g., the works of mercy) and challenged the scope of the required option for the poor (e.g., the debate about charity and structural change). Next, the article shows how an apocalyptic ethics based in Matthew 25, which imagines our moral life as a response to the visitatio Christi, implies a transformation of attitude/perception, a reversal of roles, and finds its source in the sacramental presence of Christ in the poor. Finally, the different aspects of the argument are recapitulated drawing upon Pope Francis's use of Matthew 25. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Laudato Si', Pope Francis advances the concept of integral ecology to connect the environmental crisis with a range of social crises afflicting our societies. This concept is grounded in a theological commitment, but directed towards its political effects. Those two trajectories are represented by the encyclical's articulation of a spiritual awakening described as an ecological conversion and its repeated calls to dialogue. Francis is not unaware of the risk that a naïve engagement in dialogue could stifle serious mitigation of the crises we face. Yet, even with many dire warnings about outcomes, much of the contemporary discourse around the climate and biodiversity crisis runs the risk of underestimating the nature of the problem. Apocalyptic theology, specifically in the work of William Stringfellow, is proposed as a valuable interlocutor at this point. Stringfellow's account of the Christian life as a battle with the forces of Death allows Christians to name that which we are converted from in an ecological conversion, strengthening the grounds upon which dialogue is engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What should we make of the apocalyptic tone taken up by politicians, journalists, scientists, and activists? Some environmental thinkers such as Michael Shellenberger contend that alarming rhetoric distracts us from the technological and governance challenges presented by climate change. In the article, it is argued that retrieving a practical apocalyptic political theology from the Christian tradition can both clarify conceptual contradictions within this discourse as well as offer a practical orientation toward living within ecological endings. Amid the cascade of environmental crises we are living through, apocalyptic practices of renunciation of the world offer a guide and discipline for living in the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the apocalyptic imaginary is the notion that history has some sort of purpose, or that it provides a perspective from which we can authenticate or redeem our human activities. As such, one might reasonably expect that realists would view such apocalypticism as precisely the sort of moralisation that they urge us to be deeply suspicious of. Yet in Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times Alison McQueen argues not only that the relationship between realism and apocalyptic visions is much more complex and nuanced than we might initially suspect, by exploring how it played out in the work of canonical figures in the realist tradition, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Hans J Morgenthau, but also that, at a time when we live in the shadow of several possible global disasters, realist thought might offer us something in the way of instruction 'in living through an age of catastrophe'. While McQueen is admirably honest as to the limitations of the realist approaches in the thinkers she focuses on, this review suggests that there may be good reason to be even less enthusiastic about their prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 5 months of COVID isolation, living out of a suitcase in temporary housing, countless fractal patterns emerged. I can't say if I created these patterns by looking for them, or that I know the whole world by looking at a grain of sand. The truth of the matter is that it feels like the key for massive scale change is just in front of us, but slipping from our grasp. As we move through these days, weeks, and months, we have very little time before the difference recedes again. I address this matter of concern as a matter of method in performative grounded theory piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proper interpretations of symbols of authority are important for navigating both our cultural settings and the contours of Scripture. This paper looks at the ways the Book of Revelation contrasts images of competing authoritative kings, asking the question, who is worthy of worship, Caesar or Christ? In the African Folk-Islamic context of the Makua-Metto people of Mozambique, familiar national and traditional symbols of authority provide a framework for a robust reading of John's Apocalypse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the north India of 1920s–30s, many first-generation anticolonial communists and Left intellectuals did not see any contradiction in reliance upon religion, ethical traditions and morality in a search for vocabularies of dignity, equality, just polity and social liberation. Through select writings in Hindi of Satyabhakta (1897–85), an almost forgotten figure in histories of communism in India, this article focuses on the entanglement between religion and communism as a way of thinking about the Left in India, and the problems and possibilities of such imaginings. Steeped in a north Indian Hindi literary print public sphere, such figures illuminated a distinctly Hindu and Indian path towards communism, making it more relatable to a Hindi–Hindu audience. The article draws attention to Satyabhakta's layered engagements with utopian political desires, which, in envisaging an egalitarian future, wove Hindu faith-based ethical morality, apocalyptic predictions and notions of a romantic Ram Rajya, with decolonisation, anti-capitalism and aesthetic communist visions of equality. Even while precarious and problematic, such imaginations underline hidden plural histories of communism and, at the same time, trouble atheist, secular communists as well as the proponents of Hindutva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers how 'apocalyptic discourse' functions within Matthew's Gospel. Of the four gospels, Matthew has been called the most 'apocalyptic' in nature but most of the discussion of this literary feature has been limited to chapters 24-25. However, the violent scenes in Matthew 2 along with 24-25 form an inclusio for the whole of Matthew's Gospel and provide a basis for relating other apocalyptic discourses. This study maintains that Matthew is a bios with elements of apocalyptic discourse woven throughout it. This paper offers a theological interpretation of Matthew that integrates the concepts of apocalyptic warfare and a three-tiered symbolic universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apocalypticism is a powerful brew of eschatological belief and political imagination that is extremely persuasive. This article addresses the intersections between apocalyptic rhetoric and the technical communication of risk, disease outbreak, and disaster preparedness by analyzing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's zombie apocalypse preparedness campaign. Specifically, I argue that the framing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's campaign relies on and extends problematic iterations of apocalypticism and undermines the educational objectives of disaster preparedness and response. I conclude with suggestions for how technical communicators designing public awareness and outreach campaigns can use existential risk rhetoric for engagement without succumbing to the pernicious side effects of apocalypticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We often hear that the 'end of the world' is approaching – but whose world, exactly, is expected to end? Over the last several decades, a popular and influential literature has emerged, in International Relations (IR), social sciences, and in popular culture, on subjects such as 'human extinction', 'global catastrophic risks', and eco-apocalypse. Written by scientists, political scientists, and journalists for wide public audiences,1 this genre diagnoses what it considers the most serious global threats and offers strategies to protect the future of 'humanity'. This article will critically engage this genre to two ends: first, we aim to show that the present apocalyptic narratives embed a series of problematic assumptions which reveal that they are motivated not by a general concern with futures but rather with the task of securing white futures. Second, we seek to highlight how visions drawn from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) futurisms reimagine more just and vibrant futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognised that the growing awareness that we are living in the Anthropocene – an unstable geological epoch in which humans and their actions are catalysing catastrophic environmental change – is troubling humanity's understanding and perception of temporality and the ways in which we come to terms with socio-ecological change. This article begins by arguing in favour of posthumanism as an approach to this problem, one in which the prefix 'post' does not come as an apocalyptic warning, but rather signals a new way of thinking, an encouragement to move beyond a humanist perspective and to abandon a social discourse and a worldview fundamentally centred on the human. The article then explores how the impending environmental catastrophe can be productively reimagined through graphic narratives, arguing that popular culture in general, and comics in particular, emerge as productive sites for geographers to interrogate and develop posthuman methodologies and narratives. Developing our analysis around two comics in particular – Here and Mad Max: Fury Road – we show how graphic narrative can help us to move beyond the nature–society divide that is rendered anachronistic by the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have argued that geologic proposals for the Anthropocene are entangled with collective imaginaries and geopolitical anxieties. In this article, we analyze three prominent tropes of American apocalyptic films (the "Great Deluge," the "Nuclear Catacalysm," and "the Population Bomb") and map them onto existing geological proposals for the Anthropocene. In staging this encounter, we illustrate how impending ecological disasters in American popular imagination temporally displace the apocalypse into the present or the future. These imaginings of apocalypse evade specific culpability when they imagine a universal human frailty, enacting a darkly ironic reversal of historical and ongoing apocalyptic realities. Drawing on insights from ecocriticism, political geography, postcolonial, decolonial and critical race studies, we argue that the global crisis heralded by the Anthropocene reveals deep-seated fears of racialized others taking over the planet and the decline of white civilization, and we suggest alternative openings for other futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]