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This paper focuses on the conflict between a Naqshbandi-Sufi sheikh and Turkish Cypriot secularists in the middle of the twentieth century to historically trace the formations of a Muslim and secular social identity on the periphery of the Balkans-to-Bengal complex. The conflict particularly concerned a millenarian dream where the sheikh reportedly envisioned a major catastrophe would strike Cyprus and that he was tasked with leading Cypriot Muslims away to Syria. By providing a detailed historical account of this conflict, as well as of its aftermath by using contemporary ethnographic material from a Turkish Cypriot village, I show how the ‘structure of the conjuncture’ in Cyprus in mid-twentieth century produced a secular and Muslim social identity by exiling ‘the spiritual’ (manevi) to the margins of salient local political imaginaries and everyday Islamic praxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the intricate relationship between apocalyptic and millenarian narratives and populist ideologies and narratives. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, political science, and cultural studies, this research examines how apocalyptic visions of societal collapse and millenarian hopes for a utopian future intertwine and manifest within populist discourse. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary examples, including political speeches, media representations, and online communities, this study elucidates how populist leaders and movements employ apocalyptic rhetoric to galvanize support, mobilize followers, and construct collective identities. Moreover, it investigates the ways in which apocalyptic aspirations are utilized within populist narratives to promise transformative change and mobilize grassroots activism. By scrutinizing the ideological underpinnings and rhetorical strategies employed by populist actors, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersection between apocalyptic anxieties, millenarian visions, and populist politics in contemporary society. Additionally, it sheds light on the implications of these narratives for democratic governance, social cohesion, and political participation, offering insights into the dynamics of power, authority, and resistance within populist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the intricate relationship between apocalyptic and millenarian narratives and populist ideologies and narratives. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, political science, and cultural studies, this research examines how apocalyptic visions of societal collapse and millenarian hopes for a utopian future intertwine and manifest within populist discourse. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary examples, including political speeches, media representations, and online communities, this study elucidates how populist leaders and movements employ apocalyptic rhetoric to galvanize support, mobilize followers, and construct collective identities. Moreover, it investigates the ways in which apocalyptic aspirations are utilized within populist narratives to promise transformative change and mobilize grassroots activism. By scrutinizing the ideological underpinnings and rhetorical strategies employed by populist actors, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersection between apocalyptic anxieties, millenarian visions, and populist politics in contemporary society. Additionally, it sheds light on the implications of these narratives for democratic governance, social cohesion, and political participation, offering in-sights into the dynamics of power, authority, and resistance within populist movements.

An essential connection between critique and the millenarian has been proposed with particular reference to the study of Melanesian cargo cults. It is argued here that all critique is not necessarily millenarian. Rather, what is crucial for critique to have a millenarian form is for local cosmological ideas and practices to become transformed into the source of a new kind of future; a future that appears delimited by outside power relations (colonial, mission, capitalist) that now define what is possible. Often this involves altering local cosmological ideas of the outside (e.g. the dead) as the new source of future fecundity. The article considers two cases, among Fuyuge and Manus Islands peoples, where forms of critique and the millenarian have radically different outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into two notable instances of imperial solar cults during the long sixteenth century. One concerns the Mughal emperor Akbar in India, while the other revolves around the Barberini pope Urban VIII in Rome. Both cases will be examined through the lens of the longue-durée Great Tradition of Neoplatonism, taking-off from the earliest Neoplatonic sun cult as designed by Roman emperor Julian in the fourth century. Despite being centuries and worlds apart, the emergence of the Mughal and Barberini sun cults coincided with a period of rapidly expanding horizons amidst intense millenarian anxiety. Moreover, both cults were crafted by a team of avant-garde Neoplatonic intellectuals – mostly cosmologists and antiquarians – striving to bolster the imperial claims of their patrons. By exploring the intriguing Neoplatonic parallels between these two coinciding solar cults, this article advocates a truly global approach to intellectual history that transcends conventional temporal and spatial boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues that Ahmad al-Hajarî (ca. 1569–after 1640), a Morisco exile to North Africa, helped propagate and counter the imperial ideologies of the Habsburgs in the Arab-speaking world. Thanks to his intimate acquaintance with Spain in which he was raised as a Christian, and to his knowledge of Christian scripture, he could describe and explain the apocalyptic underpinnings of imperial views of the Spanish monarchy. He could also propose his own defense of the Muslim realms, especially the Ottoman Empire, to counter the Spanish and Christian pretensions to universal millenarian monarchy. He thus helped the interweaving of imperial ideologies across boundaries and extended the domain of what the late Cornell Fleischer termed a "Mediterranean Apocalypse." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the eschatological perspective of John Gill (1697–1771), focusing on his views regarding the future role of ethnic Jews in God's end-times plan. Gill, influenced by his Reformed predecessors, considered the church to be the "mystical spiritual Israel of God," comprising both Jews and Gentiles. However, as a Judeocentric interpreter of the Bible, Gill also envisioned a distinct eschatological role for ethnic Jews. He argued that the present unbelief of the Jews, whom he referred to as "his favourite people," was a continuing reality. This article explores Gill's theological framework, highlighting the spiritual reign of Christ within the church and the significant role played by the calling and restoration of ethnic Jews to the land of Canaan. First, Gill's eschatological perspective and his understanding of a latter-day glory are examined, emphasizing the visible manifestation of Christ's kingly office within the church. Gill believed that as the church returned to a baptistic model resembling the early church, this spiritual reign would be experienced. Secondly, Gill's understanding of God's relationship with ethnic Jews is discussed, focusing on their future conversion, inclusion in the church, and restoration to the land. Finally, the article explores Gill's geopolitical perspectives on the implications of the Jews' restoration, particularly in relation to the undoing of the antichrists of the East (the Ottoman Empire) and the West (the Roman Catholic Church). By delving into Gill's eschatological perspective, this article highlights the central role he assigned to ethnic Jews, suggesting a time of spiritual flourishing within the church. The analysis provides insights into Gill's theology and offers a nuanced understanding of his views on the future of the church and the significance of the Jews in God's eschatological plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title "King from the Sun"—in the sense of a deliverance royal figure that will come from the Sun—appears repeatedly within apocalyptic literature throughout varied historic periods, albeit in slightly different depictions. We shall consider for this analysis how coming "from the Sun" and "from the East" are not synonymous and how the personalities, so to speak, of these anointed kings in the sources differ from one another. The present article examines and compares the usage and significance of the title in the Sibylline Oracles (Sib. Or. 3.652-656 and Sib. Or. 13.147-171) and in other oracular texts from the Hellenistic and the Roman periods (the Oracle of the Potter, which is Egyptian and Apoc. El. (C) 2.44-46, which is not a Sib. Or. passage). This parallel is drawn not only due to the fact that we are dealing with different primary materials, but also because in each case a different referent is intended—the "King from the Sun" is a different savior in each of the texts examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparative studies, Tenrikyō's this-worldly, millenarian vision has found little resonance with Christian expectations of going to heaven after death. However, an "earthly turn" in Christian eschatology is redirecting Christian expectations away from heaven and toward bodily resurrection into an earthly Kingdom of God, providing new opportunity to revisit the potential historical and conceptual overlap between Tenrikyō's view of earthly renewal and that of Christianity—in both its first-century and contemporary "restorationist" forms. This article considers the historical origin of Tenrikyō's millenarianism against a backdrop of late-Tokugawa yonaoshi (world renewal) and Miroku-based movements. Here, the timeline for the appearance of millenarian views of yonaoshi proposed by Miura (2019) is revised to give Tenrikyō's foundress primacy as a millenarian innovator. I furthermore suggest that monotheism may have been a catalyst for millenarian yonaoshi development. Finally, I propose " yonaoshi millenarianism" as a cross-cultural, comparative category applicable to both Tenrikyō and early/restorationist Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizers of public commemorations held in early eighteenth-century New Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession characterized Philip V as a defender of the faith and queen consort Maria Luisa Gabriela de Saboya and crown prince Luis I as agents of providence. An examination of a corpus of sermons given between 1707 and 1710 reveals that orators assured novohispanos that the birth of Luis I of Spain would inaugurate a messianic age, marked by fecundity and prosperity. The queen, moreover, put the rebirth of the empire in motion before her death. As various orators suggested, her role in bringing about a sort of «Bourbon millennium» had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. In cities throughout New Spain, orators characterized the queen as the fecund vehicle of God’s providence, or the Woman of the Apocalypse, a figure associated with the Immaculate Conception. As the mother of Spain’s messiah, the queen assured the prosperous future of the empire.

While some religious groups emphasize separation from society at large, other groups prioritize understanding and utilizing mainstream cultural expressions. The House of David, one of America’s most successful communal religious groups, drew on a wide variety of mainstream cultural influences to share the message that their founders Benjamin (1861- 1927) and Mary (1862- 1953) Purnell were the last in a long line of British millenarian prophets. Finding inspiration in popular evangelists, jazz music, and theme parks, the House of David would successfully adapt the distinctly British tradition of the Southcottian Israelitism to the needs of the American religious market, and gives us a clear example of the role innovation plays in the crowded religious marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. L. Morton (1903–1987) was a popular, pioneering historian and literary critic in the British Marxist tradition. Morton was an influential figure in the historical study of religious radicalism, millenarianism, apocalypticism, and utopianism, yet his contribution is typically overlooked today in favour of his more illustrious counterparts who emerged from the Communist Party Historians' Group from 1946–1956. This article seeks to re-establish Morton's place in this scholarly tradition, using his work The English Utopia as a starting point for understanding the important critical developments taking place in the 1950s. Focusing especially on his analysis of seventeenth-century movements, we will then see how Morton shifted from an unsentimental historical materialist approach to religious radicalism to a rethinking of heroic failures and thinkers ahead of their time. As Norman Cohn famously brought liberal criticisms of millenarianism to the fore in the 1950s onward, Morton should likewise take his place as an influential thinker in Marxist understandings of such phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mass suicides in late seventeenth-century Russia have typically been seen as desperate responses to Patriarch Nikon's liturgical reforms. Convinced of the imminent end of times ordinary men and women took their own lives rather than to succumb to the world of Antichrist. Michels argues that mass suicides can only be understood by probing into the specific religious, social, and administrative environments in which they occurred. He offers a comparative microhistory of self-immolations on both sides of the Russo-Swedish border with very different populations, one Finnish-Lutheran, the other Russian-Orthodox. Both scenarios had several features in common: apocalyptical preachers demonizing official church and religion; flight from village communities and isolation in remote locations; the preponderance of women and children; almost complete illiteracy; and a remarkable heterogeneity of motivations (ranging from enthusiastic embrace to passive obedience). The suicides occurred exclusively in peasant milieux traumatized by radical changes: the horror of the Swedish-Russian War (1656–1658); the fortification of the border (conscription, forced labor, and exorbitant taxes); church-led campaigns against paganism and traditional religious autonomies; and sudden integration into new administrative structures. Few of those who perished in the fires knew anything about Patriarch Nikon's liturgical reforms; as in the mass suicide of American cult members in Jonestown, Guyana (1978) many of the victims died involuntarily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, divided into two parts, explores the ramifications of Eaton's India in the Persianate Age for salient topics in Sikh historiography. The first part defines Eaton's arguments and expands on facets of the Persianate dispensation, drawing out relevant features of his biography and previous works. Secularity and universality as well as the approaches adopted to break from reified notions of religious community are underscored. The second part focuses on violence, militancy, and millenarianism in moments of crisis in early Sikh history. The article develops the dialectic of social levels and, in doing so, invokes Clio, the muse of historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1765, Joseph Priestley created what may be the world's first modern timeline, A Chart of Biography. This paper offers the first study of the philosophy underlying Priestley's timeline. It argues that Priestley was pushed towards representing times as lines by his views on abstract ideas and time, and there is no reason to believe that Newtonian absolutism grounds his uniform depiction of time. Further, the Chart confirms, and even advances, Priestley's views on human progress. Finally, this study shows that Priestley's conception of time as a line comprises a landmark contribution to the history of space-time parallelism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Soviet & Post-Soviet Review is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay takes as its starting point the final scene of H. I. E. Dhlomo's The Girl who Killed to Save (1935). Ostensibly an account of 'Nongqause the Liberator,' the prophet behind the Cattle Killing of 1856–1857, Dhlomo's play presents 'not merely a work of historical recovery or a reflection of increasing segregation but also an engagement with the full range of nationalist imaginings at work in the New African era' (Wenzel 83). In this regard, it is pertinent to recall that a more immediate precursor for the millenarianism presented in the play was the arrest of Nontetha Nkwekwe in 1922 and her death in the same year of its publication. Like Nongqause, Nkwenkwe was a millennialist prophet. Responding to the Spanish Influenza, Nkwekwe's prophecies eventually provoked the South African authorities to incarcerate and then institutionalize her. Given the increased attention on the influenza as a shaping influence on the modernism of 1922 and after, this essay figures Dhlomo with an expanded global modernism that engages more explicitly with its millenarian correspondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the temporality of dispensationalist imaginings of the apocalypse, with a particular focus on why such imaginings often have an acutely violent character. For the Brethren and for Jehovah's Witnesses, the most convincing signs of the imminent apocalypse are violent ones. By drawing on a mixture of biblical and extra‐biblical images—flames, hail, missiles—dispensationalism creates a semiotic landscape filled with natural, supernatural, and "man‐made" disaster. By analyzing different images of "violent endings" in circulation among the Brethren and Jehovah's Witnesses, this article asks two questions, namely, what are the temporal effects of such violent imaginings, and what imaginings exist on the other side of such violence, after its perpetration? I seek to answer these questions by developing a mode of inquiry I call anthropology‐as‐theology, whereby anthropological analysis deliberately surrenders to theological ideas. I suggest that, when viewed from the perspective of anthropology‐as‐theology, violent dispensationalist visions about the end of the world can provide new perspectives on permanence, which, seen through the lens of revelation, comes to be understood as both novel and eternal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Universal Peace Federation or UPF is a United Nations-affiliated NGO launched in 2005 by the late Mun Sŏn-myŏng, self-proclaimed Messiah and founder of the South Korean Unification Movement. Mun considered the UPF as the pinnacle of Unificationist political and interfaith engagement. Envisioned as a complement to and, eventually, a future replacement of the United Nations, the globally operating UPF spearheads Unificationist millenarianism. This paper first traces the formation history and genesis of the UPF as a merger of decades-long international political and interfaith activities under the banner of multiple Unificationist organisations and initiatives. Subsequently, it examines the Korea-centric millenarian purpose assigned to the UPF by Mun. It is ultimately argued that embracing globalism is not only doctrinally crucial to Unificationist millenarianism, but systemically relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kōfuku no Kagaku is a most visible new religious actor in contemporary Japan thanks to the vast publishing activities of its founder and its widespread professional use of new media. This paper examines how Kōfuku no Kagaku engages with the COVID-19 pandemic in practical and doctrinal terms. Notably, early in the pandemic, Kōfuku no Kagaku's international promotion of spiritual cures and vaccines even prompted The New York Times to feature the group in a widely circulated article in April 2020. This paper outlines these "spiritual technologies" and examines their doctrinal rationale as well as the wider doctrinal appropriation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be shown how the latter is instrumentalised to echo Kōfuku no Kagaku's millenarian agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses two polemical works by the Fifth Monarchist John Rogers to argue that Interregnum Millenarian Scriptural hermeneutics cogently draws on Scholastic as well as Reformed authorities. This article traces how in the years of 1652–3, during which England transitions from the rule of the Rump Parliament to the Nominated Assembly, Rogers adapts the questions on voluntary action and human law from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiæ to extend his defence of Congregationalism to an argument for rule by the Saints. Fifth Monarchists, by labelling all laws and forms of government that were not strictly Biblical as anti-Christian, claim to bypass the problem of how to reconcile human custom with Scriptural law. Ironically, Rogers's argument for the applicability of Deuteronomic law to all nations and at all times draws on Thomistic Aristotelianism to develops its hermeneutical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article poses a question on the real scope of the discursive religious agreement that was concluded as a result of an interaction between Christian evangelizers and peoples of Latin America. Contrary to a widespread opinion that it was not the use of a language but rather imagination which played a crucial role in evangelizing the nations of Latin America and which resulted in a cultural restructuration that blended the native heritage together with the elements introduced by the colonizers, this paper claims that the agreement, or the synthesis, was reached within a discursive thought. The conceptual frame for the research is provided by Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had over 50,000 missionaries in the field. The global organizational challenge created by this dispersal was made worse because the organs of Church governance were located the State of Utah. This situation was exacerbated by an uptick in the always latent yet also constiutiave apocalyptic anxieties central to the faith. Drawing on interviews with Mormon Missionaries who were either in the field or in training at the time, this essay thinks through the temporality of what Joel Robbins has titled 'everyday millennialism.' Tracking the ebbs and flows of eschatological worry amongst missionaries that occurred during the pandemic, this piece identifies how disruptive fears of an end-times associated with a Mormon sense of themselves as a nation-like 'peculiar people' counterintuitively drives the organizational energies of the institutional Church, reigning in that very same apocalyptic affect and ideation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Teología is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the seventeenth century, prophets have reappeared periodically among the Wa and Lahu ethnic groups of mainland Southeast Asia. Exceptionally talented, these men built on the syncretic cults of runaway soldiers, secretive Buddhist sects, and Christian missionaries and became leaders of millenarian movements. Typically, in the Wa language, such leaders are said to be very strong and blessed, or full of grace (bwan). The prophets might be understood as reincarnations of mythical 'men of prowess' or as the representatives of the peripheral situation. However, both interpretations fundamentally misread the semantics of grace in Wa and neighbouring languages: a kind of cunning and strength that is so radical that it cannot be measured or mediated. Grace, here, is neither a 'mediative concept' (as Pitt-Rivers suggested), nor is it the consequence of Christian conversion. Instead, grace is the incommensurability that emerges at the margin of a world that is being measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the development of the idea of Supreme Peace (taiping 太平) in premodern Chinese philosophies of history. It is shown that while Daoists identified it with the pristine unity of humans and nature, Han Confucians equated Supreme Peace with the harmonious social system under the rule of one of the first Chinese emperors or Confucius. In the latter case, the notion of taiping was reduced to a descriptive category, which was then employed by historiography but ridiculed in the critical thought of Wang Chong. With Huainanzi and the Xiang’er commentary to Laozi, the Daoists started to argue that it is possible to restore the Supreme Peace under new historical conditions. This was systematically developed in the Scripture of Supreme Peace (Taipingjing), which offered a detailed depiction of the future era of equality and freedom. However, after this radicalization, the idea of taiping was utilized by imperial propaganda and disappeared from the dominant philosophical discourse. An exception to this rule was Li Gou (1009–1059), who envisaged Supreme Peace as an ideal socio-economic system resulting from endowing peasants with land and money. A similar vision was expressed by Gong Zizhen (1792–1841), for whom Supreme Peace had to entail land equalization and the reduction of social inequalities. Similarly to Taipingjing, however, Gong Zizhen described taiping as the culmination point of the increase of human knowledge. With such an approach, the premodern Chinese views of Supreme Peace became noticeably close to Western progressivism, and therefore inspired the utopian project of Kang Youwei.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous unorthodox Christian religious communities sprang up in many parts of the vast Brazilian interior. Their worldview basis was the belief that the present life takes place in times of cosmic and social crisis. Waiting for the day of the Last Judgement was associated with attempts to establish a just social order, consistent with Christian norms and values. These communities were led by charismatic leaders, perceived by their participants as incarnations of saints. In this article, we ask about the circumstances and reasons for this religious and social revival, and we consider them in the perspective of the meeting of European culture with the cultures of the New World, understood as the process of creating a new, common symbolic universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I seek to highlight some works of Latin American literature, characterized by the incorporation of themes from the biblical tradition, through the phenomena of intertextuality and rewriting. I will consider, especially, the structure and theme of the apocalyptic genre as an imaginative source of millenarianism, a trend so present in the ideological conceptions of the conquerors and evangelizers of America, which set the standard for literary production from the time of Christopher Columbus to the present, shaping a scenario of catastrophes and promises as a sign of a culture marked by the end of the Old World and the beginning of a New.

Amidst the politically-charged climate of seventeenth-century England, a small, but influential makeshift group of Baptist divines developed an eschatological system that both encouraged their congregations to greater holiness and threatened the very existence of the proto-denomination. Even as most of the nascent group of dissenting congregations known as Baptists sought acceptance by the more mainstream dissent, those divines who accepted this particular form of millenarianism garnered unwanted attention from the authorities as they pressed remarkably close to the line of radical dissidence. Three of those Baptist divines—Vavasor Powell, Hanserd Knollys, and Benjamin Keach—provide helpful insights both into the range of millenarianism adopted by this group of Baptists and into the legitimacy of the charges of radicalism. This article examines the published works of these three ministers, comparing their visions for the eschatological future and analyzing the charges of radicalism placed against them by their contemporaries.

There are serious arguments in favor of the fact that the significance of millenarianist-type eschatologies for the history of the Church (and in particular for the history of Christian dogmas) is more extensive than we are usually tempted to believe. Today it is acknowledged (with significant frequency) that the millenarianist exegeses were majority until the 3rd-4th centuries AD, partly regaining an audience starting with the first decades of the 16th century, with the emergence of the first communities affiliated with the radical tendencies of the Reformation. Given these circumstances, our study aims to explore some of the elements of continuity and/or disparity between ancient and modern acceptations of millenarianist thought, with an emphasis on the theological basis of the eschatological interpretations and visions under discussion. Therefore, our approach will be a predominantly analytical one, in an attempt to make available to the specialized reader a few reference points that can be used and developed later on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]