“The Reign of God Has Come”: Eschatology and Empire in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
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For much of the 20th century, scholarship on Muḥammad and the beginnings of Islam has shown a reluctance to acknowledge the importance of imminent eschatology in earliest Islam. One of the main reasons for this resistance to eschatology would appear to be the undeniable importance of conquest and political expansion in early Islam: if Muḥammad and his followers believed that the world would soon come to an end, why then did they seek to conquer and rule over so much of it? Nevertheless, there is no real contradiction between the urgent eschatology revealed by the Qurʾān and other early sources on the one hand, and the determination of Muḥammad and his followers to expand their religious policy and establish an empire on the other. To the contrary, the political eschatology of the Byzantine Christians during the sixth and early seventh centuries indicates that these two beliefs went hand in hand, offering important contemporary precedent for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam.
Durant la plus grande partie du XXe siècle, les études sur Muḥammad et les débuts de l’islam ont manifesté une réticence à reconnaître l’importance de l’eschatologie imminente aux origines de l’islam. L’une des principales raisons de cette résistance à l’eschatologie serait l’importance indéniable de la conquête et de l’expansion politique au début de l’islam : si Muḥammad et les premiers convertis croyaient que le monde prendrait rapidement fin, alors pourquoi auraient-ils cherché à conquérir et à régner sur une si grande partie de celui-ci ? Néanmoins, il n’existe pas de véritable contradiction entre l’urgence de l’eschatologie révélée par le Coran et d’autres sources anciennes, d’une part, et la détermination de Muḥammad et des premiers convertis à développer leur politique religieuse et établir un nouvel empire, d’autre part. Au contraire, l’eschatologie politique des chrétiens byzantins durant le sixième siècle et le début du septième siècle indique que ces deux croyances allaient de pair, offrant un important précédent contemporain pour l’eschatologie impériale qui semble avoir alimenté la montée de l’Islam.
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2
C. Snouck Hurgronje, “Une nouvelle biographie de Mohammed”, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 15/30 (1894), p. 48-70, 149-178, 161-162.
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6
W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953, p. 62-65. Bell and Watt’s chronology of the Qurʾān owes some influence to the widely influential model devised by Nöldeke, who borrowed extensively from Weil, who in turn largely reproduces the received chronology of the Islamic tradition. Nevertheless, both Bell and Watt after him are somewhat idiosyncratic in the particular passages that they identify as the earliest. See Theodor Nöldeke and Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns, Leipzig, Dieterich, 1909-1919; Gustav Weil, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran, Bielefeld, Velhagen & Klasing, 1844; Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, p. 129-160.
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7
Ibid., p. 66.
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8
Peter van Sivers, “The Islamic Origins Debate Goes Public”, History Compass 1 (2003), ME 058, p. 1-14, 3.
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9
F.E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994, p. 152-156; F.E. Peters, Jesus and Muhammad: Parallel Tracks, Parallel Lives, New York, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 105-123, esp. p. 110-111, 113, 115, 123; Tilman Nagel, Mohammed: Leben und Legende, Munich, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2008, e.g. p. 462-463, 844, 909-910.
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10
Mahan Mirza, “Muḥammad,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Islam, ed. Emad El-Din Shahin, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 86-92, esp. 88, 91.
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11
Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims: History and Memory, Oxford, Oneworld, 2008, p. 3; Omid Safi, Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters, New York, HarperCollins, 2009, e.g. p. 33, 97-101, 115, 123; Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, New York, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p. 91-107, esp. 91.
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12
Richard Bell and W. Montgomery Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qurʾān, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1970, p. 158.
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13
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, p. 132-3; Shoemaker, “Muḥammad and the Qurʾān”, p. 1093-1094. On the portrayal of Jesus in nineteenth-century Protestant Liberalism, see e.g. William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992, II (From Jonathan Edwards to Rudolf Bultmann), p. 85-136; Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems, transl. S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1972, p. 162-184. Regarding Liberalism’s strong resistance to the idea of Jesus as an eschatological prophet, see the chapter “The Struggle against Eschatology” in Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, transl. W. Montgomery, London, Adam and Charles Black, 1910, p. 242-269.
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16
Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, p. 270; Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 11. See e.g. Leone Caetani, “The Art of War of the Arabs, and the Supposed Religious Fervour of the Arab Conquerors”, in The Expansion of the Early Islamic State, transl. Gwendolin Goldbloom, ed. Fred M. Donner, Aldershot, Ashgate (“The Formation of the Classical Islamic World”, 5), 2008, p. 1-14 (originally published in 1911); Henri Lammens, Le berceau de l’Islam: l’Arabie occidentale à la veille de l’hégire. Ier volume: Le climat-Les Bédouins, Rome, Pont. Inst. Biblici, 1914, p. 116-121, 174-177; C.H. Becker, “Der Islam als Problem”, in Islamstudien, Leipzig, Quelle und Meyer, 1924, p. 1-23; Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, London, Hutchinson & Co., 1950, p. 55-56.
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17
James Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 459-460.
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18
Crone, Meccan Trade, p. 241, 244-245; Crone, God’s Rule, p. 11. See also e.g. Watt, Muhammad at Medina, p. 146-147; Michael Cook, Muhammad, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 51.
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20
Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, p. 8, 52-82, 90, 101-111; Crone, Meccan Trade, p. 241-250; Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 6, 18; Watt, Muhammad at Medina, p. 105-117. See also e.g. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 192; Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, New York, Longman (“A History of the Near East”), 1986, p. 40-49, 53; Richard A. Gabriel, Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2007, e.g. p. xx; Chase F. Robinson, “The Rise of Islam, 600-705”, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, ed. Chase F. Robinson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, I (The Formation of the Islamic World Sixth to Eleventh Centuries), p. 173-225, 192-193; G.W. Bowersock, Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity, Waltham, Brandeis University Press (“The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures”), 2012, p. 59.
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22
Ibid., p. 18-72.
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26
Cf. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 152-153; Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 176-177.
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28
Cf. Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 360-363; Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 180.
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31
Ibid., p. 172-178.
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33
See also Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1998, p. 114-115, Here Allison notes that in fact it is not at all uncommon for religious communities to believe that the end is near and simultaneously to be concerned with long-term issues, providing some specific examples.
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34
Donner, “From Believers to Muslims”, p. 9. See also Cook, “The Beginnings of Islam”.
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35
Donner, “From Believers to Muslims”, p. 10-11. Hints in certain early Islamic apocalyptic traditions of a primitive self-identity as a sort of “new Israel” also could suggest such a community: Ofer Livne-Kafri, “Some Notes on the Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition”, Quaderni di Studi Arabi, 17 (1999), p. 71-94, 85-86.
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38
Ibid., p. 108-110.
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39
Ibid., p. xii.
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40
Ibid., p. 80-82.
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41
Ibid., p. 85.
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44
Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, p. 16, 81-82, 96-97, 125, 143-144; quotations at p. 97 and 144.
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46
Robert G. Hoyland, “Sebeos, the Jews, and the Rise of Islam”, Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations, 2 (1995), p. 89-102, 97, citing Holyland’s translation. Cf. Kor 5, 21.
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48
Transl. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qurʾān, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 208, slightly modified: Abdel Haleem has instead, “ ‘My righteous servants will inherit the earth,’ ” which disguises the connection to the biblical land of Israel. Ps. 37.29 in the NRSV reads: “The righteous shall inherit the land [אָרֶץ], and live in it forever.”
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49
See Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, p. 199-204; Robert W. Thomson and James Howard-Johnston, The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (“Translated Texts for Historians”, 31), 1999, I, p. lxviii-lxx; 102 n. 634; and II, p. 238-240; Tim W. Greenwood, “Sasanian Echoes and Apocalyptic Expectations: A Re-evaluation of the Armenian History attributed to Sebeos”, Le Muséon, 115 (2003), p. 323-397, 365.
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50
Perhaps the best example is Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 131-141; and Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 175-178.
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53
Casanova, Mohammed, p. 18; Aḥmad b. ʿAlī l-Maqrīzī, Description historique et topographique de l’Egypte, transl. Paul Casanova and U. Bouriant, Paris, E. Leroux (“Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission archéologique française au Caire”, 17), 1900, III, p. 18.
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54
Kister, “A Booth like the Booth of Moses”, p. 152; Suliman Bashear, “Muslim Apocalypses and the Hour: A Case-Study in Traditional Reinterpretation”, Israel Oriental Studies, 13 (1993), p. 75-100, 78.
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61
Cyril A. Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980, p. 203-204; Paul Magdalino, “The History of the Future and Its Uses: Prophecy, Policy, and Propaganda”, in The Making of Byzantine History: Studies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol, ed. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché, Aldershot, Variorum (“Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London, Publications”, 1), 1993, p. 3-32, 4-5; Paul J. Alexander, The Oracle of Baalbek: The Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek Dress, Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies (“Dumbarton Oaks Studies”, 10), 1967, p. 118-120; Wolfram Brandes, “Anastasios ὁ δίκορος: Endzeiterwartung und Kaiserkritik”, Byzantische Zeitschrift, 90 (1997), p. 24-63, 26-32, 39-40, 53-63; Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Remembering Pain: Syriac Historiography and the Separation of the Churches”, Byzantion, 58 (1988), p. 295-308, 298-302; Oliver Nicholson, “Golden Age and End of the World: Myths of Mediterranean Life from Lactantius to Joshua the Stylite”, in The Medieval Mediterranean: Cross-Cultural Contacts, ed. Marilyn J. Chiat and Katherine L. Reyerson, St. Cloud, North Star Press of St. Cloud (“Medieval Studies at Minnesota”, 3), 1988, p. 11-18; Wolfram Brandes, “Die apokalyptische Literatur”, in Quellen zur Geschichte des frühen Byzanz (4.-9. Jahrhundert), ed. Friedhelm Winkelmann and Wolfram Brandes, Amsterdam, J.C. Gieben Verlag, 1990, p. 305-322, 308; Yuri Stoyanov, Defenders and Enemies of the True Cross: The Sasanian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614 and Byzantine Ideology of Anti-Persian Warfare, Wien, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (“Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte”, 819; “Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik”, 61), 2011, p. 55, 62.
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62
Paul Magdalino, “The Year 1000 in Byzantium”, in Byzantium in the Year 1000, ed. Paul Magdalino, Leiden, Brill (“The Medieval Mediterranean”, 45), 2003, p. 233-269, 238.
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65
Magdalino, “History of the Future”, p. 18-19; Gerrit J. Reinink, “Heraclius, the New Alexander: Apocalyptic Prophecies during the Reign of Heraclius”, in The Reign of Heraclius (610-641): Crisis and Confrontation, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H. Stolte, Leuven, Peeters, 2002, p. 81-94; Cyril Mango, “Le temps dans les commentaires byzantines de l’Apocalypse”, in Le temps chrétien de la fin de l’antiquité au Moyen Age IIIe-XIIIe siècles, Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1984, p. 431-438, 435-436.
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69
Magdalino, “History of the Future”, p. 19; Reinink, “Heraclius”, p. 83-94; Reinink, “Alexander the Great”, p. 160-161; Brandes, “Anastasios ὁ δίκορος”, p. 47-50; Wolfram Brandes, “Heraclius between Restoration and Reform: Some Remarks on Recent Research”, in The Reign of Heraclius (610-641): Crisis and Confrontation, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H. Stolte, Leuven, Peeters, 2002, p. 17-40, 35; Jan Willem Drijvers, “Heraclius and the Restitutio Crucis: Notes on Symbolism and Ideology”, in The Reign of Heraclius (610-641): Crisis and Confrontation, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H. Stolte, Leuven, Peeters, 2002, p. 176-190, 186-188; Stoyanov, Defenders and Enemies, p. 62, 66-67.
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70
Reinink, “Heraclius”, p. 83-84; Howard-Johnston, Witnesses, p. 421-422.
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72
David Olster, “Byzantine Apocalypses”, in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. John J. Collins, Bernard McGinn, and Stephen J. Stein, New York, Continuum, 1999, II, p. 48-73, 53-55.
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74
Timothy David Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 254; cf. Eusebius of Caesarea, Panygeric on Constantine 2-6, in Ivar A. Heikel, ed., Eusebius Werke, Leipzig J.C. Hinrichs (“Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte”, 7), 1902, I (Über das Leben Constantins; Constantins Rede an die heilige Versammlung; Tricennatsrede an Constantin), p. 199-212.
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79
Ibid., p. 11.
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83
Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, p. 24-28; cf. Harald Suermann, Die geschichtstheologische Reaktion auf die einfallenden Muslime in der edessenischen Apokalyptik des 7. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang (“Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe XXIII, Theologie”, 256), 1985, p. 159-161, which similarly argues for a date between 644 and 674. Although some specialists on Syriac literature have more recently favored a date towards the end of the seventh century, I continue to find Alexander’s dating more persuasive on the basis of the textual tradition of the Apocalypse. Both Sebastian Brock and Gerrit Reinink (and following them, Robert Hoyland) suggest that Ps.-Methodius’ forecast that the Muslims will rule for ten weeks of years (X, 6; XIII, 2) means that 70 years must have elapsed: e.g. Sebastian P. Brock, “Syriac Views of Emergent Islam”, in Studies on the First Century of Islam, ed. G.H.A. Juynboll, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, p. 9-21, 199-203, 19; Andrew Palmer, The Seventh Century in West-Syrian Chronicles, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (“Translated Texts for Historians”, 15), 1993, p. 225; Gerrit J. Reinink, “Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam”, in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, ed. Averil Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad, Princeton, Darwin Press, 1992, p. 149-187, 150, 178-184; Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Princeton, Darwin Press (“Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam”, 13), 1997, p. 264, n. 17. Counting from 622, this gives 692, and so they assume that the author must have been writing just before 692. Nevertheless, all that we know is that the author is writing sometime before the prophesied interval has elapsed, since, as is clear, the prophecy was not fulfilled. There is no reason, as I see it, to assume that the text was written just before the deadline would expire. It is just as reasonable to imagine that the text was written in 660 but had predicted that the tables would turn in a few more decades. But there are far more serious problems with this argument. Only a single manuscript reads “ten” weeks of years: all of the other witnesses read instead “seven” weeks of years, which would place the anticipated turn of events in 671, following the same principles. This would seem to rule out the possibility of the Apocalypse’s composition after 670. No clear reason is given for adopting the unique reading of this single manuscript (which was long the only known Syriac manuscript), and in fact Brock, in his translation of the final sections of Ps.-Methodius, translates “seven” weeks of years, noting “ten” as a variant from this single manuscript: Palmer, Seventh Century, p. 230, 236. Hoyland proposes that the “substitution” of seven weeks instead of ten “is easily explained as the preference for a more charismatic number and symmetry with the seventh millennium” (Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 264 n. 17). Yet, such charisma and symmetry seem just likely to have influenced the original author’s decision as that of an interpolator, and after all, seventy (ten weeks) is a pretty charismatic and symmetrical number in its own right. To the contrary then, it seems more likely to me that “ten” has been substituted here by someone not long after the text’s composition but after the 49th year had passed, in order to extend the deadline. This single Syriac manuscript quite possibly reflects changes of this sort in its earliest antecedent. And it certainly makes more sense to suppose that this one manuscript reflects a change made to the original text, rather than assuming that the other Syriac manuscripts and both the Greek and Latin translations (which also have seven weeks of years) have deviated from the original. Alexander recognized this even before the Syriac manuscripts reading seven weeks had been discovered, and it is not at all clear to me why these other scholars have ignored his compelling reasoning, particularly in light of this new evidence: Paul J. Alexander, “Medieval Apocalypses as Historical Sources”, American Historical Review, 73 (1968), p. 997-1018, 1001; Alexander, Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 52-53. Brock and Reinink additionally point to eschatological fervor, the threat of apostasy, and tax increases as motives for the Apocalypse’s composition. Yet eschatological fervor and the threat of apostasy seem just as relevant to the middle of the seventh century as the end, and the suggestion of a response to ʿAbd al-Malik’s tax increases, while not impossible, is highly speculative.
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85
Paul J. Alexander, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs: The Legend of the Last Emperor”, Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 2 (1971), p. 47-68, 67 n. 35; John Wortley, “The Literature of Catastrophe”, Byzantine Studies/Études byzantines, 4 (1977), p. 1-17, 16-17; Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, New York, Columbia University Press (“Records of Civilization, sources and studies”), 1979, p. 44; id., “Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages”, in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Susan F. Wemple, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1985, p. 7-35, 26-27; Bernard McGinn, “Oracular Transformations: The “Sibylla Tiburtina” in the Middle Ages”, in Sibille e linguaggi oracolari: mito, storia, tradizione: atti del convegno, Macerata-Norcia, settembre 1994, ed. Ileana Chirassi Colombo and Tullio Seppilli, Pisa, Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 1998, p. 603-644, 607, 609, 613. More recently, composition of this legend early in the reign of Constans II (641-668) has been proposed by Gian Luca Potestà, “The Vaticinium of Constans: Genesis and Original Purposes of the Legend of the Last World Emperor”, Millennium-Jahrbuch, 8 (2011), p. 271-290. Some specialists on Syriac and the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius seem to have looked past the Tiburtine Sibyl, without affording it any consideration: presumably, they have decided that it is derivative and not of any particular importance. See e.g. Gerrit J. Reinink, “Die syrischen Wurzeln der mittelalterlichen Legende vom römischen Endkaiser”, in Non Nova, Sed Nova: Mélanges de civilisation médiévale dédiés à Willem Noomen, ed. Martin Gosman and Jaap van Os, Groningen, Bouma’s Boekhuis (“Mediaevalia Groningana”, 5), 1984, p. 195-209; Gerrit J. Reinink, “Pseudo-Methodius und die Legende vom römischen Endkaiser”, in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed. W. Verbeke, D. Verhelst, and A. Welkenhuysen, Leuven, Leuven University Press (“Mediaevalia Iovaniensia. Series 1, Studia”, 15), 1988, p. 82-111, esp. 82-83; Reinink, “Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History “, esp. p. 153-155, 165-178; Suermann, Die geschichtstheologische Reaktion, p. 208; Harald Suermann, “Der byzantinische Endkaiser bei Pseudo-Methodius”, Oriens Christianus, 71 (1987), p. 140-155, esp. 144-145.
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87
Cyril Mango, “Deux études sur Byzance et la Perse sassanide: II. Héraclius, Šahrvaraz et la Vraie Croix”, Travaux et mémoires, 9 (1985), p. 105-118, 117; Magdalino, “History of the Future”, p. 19.
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88
Magdalino, “History of the Future”, p. 19; see also Reinink, “Alexander the Great”, p. 160.
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89
E.A. Wallis Budge, The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, Cambridge, The University Press, 1889, p. 275 (Syr) & 158 (Eng, slightly modified). See also Gerrit J. Reinink, “Die Entstehung der syrischen Alexanderlegende als politisch-religiöse Propagandaschrift für Heraklios’ Kirchenpolitik”, in After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History Offered to Professor Albert van Roey for his Seventieth Birthday, ed. C. Laga, J.A. Munitiz and L. van Rompay, Leuven, Departement Oriëtalistik-Peeters (“Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta”, 18), 1985, p. 263-281, esp. 268-279; Reinink, “Heraclius”, p. 84-86; Reinink, “Alexander the Great”, p. 158-161.
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98
Ibid., p. 51-54.
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101
Ibid., p. 65.
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104
F.E. Peters, Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 172-173; Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Déroche, “Juifs et Chrétiens dans l’Orient du VIIe siècle”, Travaux et mémoires, 11 (1991), p. 17-273, 26-28; Wilken, Land Called Holy, p. 212-213; Averil Cameron, “The Jews in Seventh-Century Palestine”, Scripta Classica Israelica, 13 (1994), p. 75-93, 80; Averil Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews: Some Recent Work on Early Byzantium”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 20 (1996), p. 249-274, 254-255; Hagith Sivan, “From Byzantine to Persian Jerusalem: Jewish Perspectives and Jewish/Christian Polemics”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, (2000), p. 277-306, 291-292.
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105
Yosef Yahalom, “ ‘Al Toqpan shel Yetsirot Sifrut ke-Maqorle-Berur She’elot Historiyot”, Cathedra, 11 (1979), p. 125-133 (in Hebrew), p. 130-132; transl. in van Bekkum, “Jewish Messianic Expectations”, p. 108.
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106
Cited in Stemberger, “Jerusalem in the Early Seventh Century”, p. 268; see additional references there.
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107
Cited in van Bekkum, “Jewish Messianic Expectations”, p. 110; see additional references there.
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108
Bernard Lewis, “An Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 13 (1950), p. 308-338; Patricia Crone and M.A. Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 4-5; Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 308-312.
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115
Ibid., p. 106.
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116
Marmorstein, “Les signes du Messie”, p. 177-180 ; cf. Reeves, Trajectories, p. 113, n. 36; Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 318.
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117
Ibid., p. 318.
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118
Grossman, “Jerusalem in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature”, p. 298.
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“The Reign of God Has Come”: Eschatology and Empire in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
In: ArabicaSearch for other papers by Stephen J. Shoemaker in
Current site
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For much of the 20th century, scholarship on Muḥammad and the beginnings of Islam has shown a reluctance to acknowledge the importance of imminent eschatology in earliest Islam. One of the main reasons for this resistance to eschatology would appear to be the undeniable importance of conquest and political expansion in early Islam: if Muḥammad and his followers believed that the world would soon come to an end, why then did they seek to conquer and rule over so much of it? Nevertheless, there is no real contradiction between the urgent eschatology revealed by the Qurʾān and other early sources on the one hand, and the determination of Muḥammad and his followers to expand their religious policy and establish an empire on the other. To the contrary, the political eschatology of the Byzantine Christians during the sixth and early seventh centuries indicates that these two beliefs went hand in hand, offering important contemporary precedent for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
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