The Proto-Apocalyptic Muḥammad: The Imminence of Yahweh’s Day in the Qurʾān’s Three-Stage Eschatology

Images of war and creation, violence and non-violence in the Revelation of John 
 
 Much of the violent imagery of Revelation can be seen as inspired by the image of God as the Divine Warrior who will overcome the chaotic forces threatening creation and who will bring creation to its fulfillment. This violence is reserved for God and the exalted Jesus although the prophetic ministry of churches shares to some extent in this divine power and even in its violence (11:5-6). However, human victory is won through worship of God instead of worship of Satan and the Beast, and through prophetic witness unto death in order to bring the inhabitants of the world to repentance and so to overcome sin that destroys creation. This human victory is made possible by the “blood of Jesus” and requires that his followers persevere in the works of Jesus to the end (2:26) in order to share in the new creation of which Jesus is God’s agent from the beginning (3:14).

All over the world people look forward to a perfect future, when the forces of good will be finally victorious over the forces of evil. Once this was a radically new way of imagining the destiny of the world and of mankind. How did it originate, and what kind of world-view preceded it? In this engrossing book, the author of the classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium takes us on a journey of exploration, through the world-views of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, through the innovations of Iranian and Jewish prophets and sages, to the earliest Christian imaginings of heaven on earth. Until around 1500 B.C., it was generally believed that once the world had been set in order by the gods, it was in essence immutable. However, it was always a troubled world. By means of flood and drought, famine and plague, defeat in war, and death itself, demonic forces threatened and impaired it. Various combat myths told how a divine warrior kept the forces of chaos at bay and enabled the world to survive. Sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., the Iranian prophet Zoroaster broke from that static yet anxious world-view, reinterpreting the Iranian version of the combat myth. For Zoroaster, the world was moving, through incessant conflict, toward a conflictless state—“cosmos without chaos.” The time would come when, in a prodigious battle, the supreme god would utterly defeat the forces of chaos and their human allies and eliminate them forever, and so bring an absolutely good world into being. Cohn reveals how this vision of the future was taken over by certain Jewish groups, notably the Jesus sect, with incalculable consequences. Deeply informed yet highly readable, this magisterial book illumines a major turning-point in the history of human consciousness. It will be mandatory reading for all who appreciated The Pursuit of the Millennium .

How should one respond to scepticism? Should one seek to refute it? Or should scepticism be ignored? This chapter explores four responses to scepticism: that of ambitious, truth-directed transcendental arguments; that of modest transcendental arguments; that of the naturalist; and that of the descriptive metaphysician. It argues that descriptive metaphysics occupies an intermediate logical space between truth-directed transcendental arguments aimed at refuting the sceptic and the quietist stance of the Humean naturalist who declines to take up the sceptical challenge, but that it occupies this intermediate logical space in a very distinctive way, one that differs from that in which this middle ground has recently been claimed by advocates of modest transcendental strategies. While descriptive metaphysics is not ontologically ambitious, it does not pursue a strategy of epistemic humility. It seeks to show, rather, that the sceptic is not a genuine partner in conversation.

The Dream of the Millennium

Both the third and fifth books of the Sibylline Oracles engage with the threat and challenges of the political powers of their day, the Hellenistic and Roman respectively (Sib. Or. 3:657-714; 5:28-34, 155-161, 342-359). Both books also construe these powers as part of the reason for the arrival of God as Divine Warrior to execute judgement. In contrast to Alexandria Frisch, who argued that the Hellenistic Empire was the cause of greater Jewish critique, this article demonstrates that within the Sibylline tradition, the development in use of Jewish combat myth of the Divine Warrior across the two books actually shows the reverse. The texts from Sibylline Oracles 5 escalate the threat of the political enemy, not only depicting the Roman Empire and emperor within the cosmic drama, but as a force of chaos and agent of evil.

Scholars have often noted YHWH's apparent absence from Song of Songs. At best, he appears under name Yah in difficult and morphologically frozen term ... in Song 8:6. In this article, I go beyond ... to suggest that plays role of YHWH in Song. Using Calvert Watkins's work on inherited formulae, I argue that Song 8:6b-7a draws on Northwest Semitic to identify with YHWH, victorious divine warrior. As part of this argument, I identify three inherited formulae in Hebrew Bible, Baal Cycle, and later Christian and Jewish literature: Leviathan, fleeing twisting serpent, rebuke Sea, and as Death. Within Song, phrase as Death connects this passage with Baal Cycle, while references to ... and ... evoke scenes of mythic from rest of Hebrew Bible. This interpretation, I argue, also has mythic resonances in adjuration refrain in Song 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4 and phrase sick with love in Song 2:5 and 5:8.(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)...For is as strong as Death, jealousy harsh as Sheol.Its flashes are flashes of fire, flame of Yah.Many waters cannot quench love, neither can rivers drown it.1 (Song 8:6b-7a)The Song of Songs does not explicitly refer to God of Israel under name YHWH or any other epithet. The noun ... in Song 8:6 may contain shortened form of Tetragrammaton, but scholars debate interpretation of this difficult term.2 In this article, I go beyond ... to suggest that YHWH is present in Song in form of love. Drawing on Calvert Watkins's work on inherited formulae, I argue that Song 8:6b-7a utilizes language and imagery from Northwest Semitic to identify with YHWH as victorious divine warrior. As part of this argument, I identify three inherited formulae in Hebrew Bible, Baal Cycle, and later Christian and Jewish literature: Leviathan, fleeing twisting serpent, rebuke Sea, and as Death. Within Song, phrase as Death connects this passage with Baal Cycle, while references to ... and ... evoke scenes of mythic from rest of Hebrew Bible. By way of conclusion, I demonstrate importance of this reading for interpreting adjuration refrain in Song 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4 and phrase sick with love in Song 2:5 and 5:8.I. THE NORTHWEST SEMITIC COMBAT MYTHAs many commentators have noted, Song 8:6b-7a employs rich array of cosmic language to highlight power of (...). In these verses, is set against death (...), Sheol (...), mighty waters (...), and rivers (...), and likened to fire (...) and flame (...). Most commentators, however, downplay mythic significance of these verses, preferring to treat them as theological or philosophical statement about nature of love. Othmar Keel, for example, claims that the statement about being as strong as death cannot have mythical sense in context of Song, but to large degree it owes its strength and intensity to several myths about struggle between powers of life or and those of death. Meanwhile, J. Cheryl Exum calls these verses a succinct credo on subject of love.3 Yet all of these terms and concepts are part of crosscultural tradition of myths, as will be shown now.Many of myths from ancient Near East focus on divine combat. In Enuma Elish, Marduk defeats Ti'amat (the Deep) and her serpentine allies; in Baal Cycle, Baal challenges Yamm (Sea) and Mot (Death) for kingship of gods; and in several passages in Hebrew Bible, YHWH battles variety of aqueous foes, including Yam (Sea), Tehom (the Deep), and Leviathan.4 Traditionally, scholars have explained similarities between these myths in terms of narrative typology and cultural contact. The Enuma Elish, Baal Cycle, and passages from Hebrew Bible are all versions of single combat myth archetype. …

The origin of the interpretation of Song of Songs as a description of God’s relationship with God’s beloved community has been a persistent question in the work’s history of interpretation. Earlier scholarship has provided a number of possible solutions to this problem, none of them conclusive. This article offers another possible answer: the language and imagery of the Northwest Semitic combat myth in Song 8:6-7, which identifies love with Yhwh as the victorious divine warrior, triggers the work’s interpretation as a divine love song. This argument receives support from some of the earliest allusions to Song of Songs in Revelation, which interpret Song of Songs in the context of apocalyptic discourse that likewise draws heavily on the combat myth.

Religious symbols are primarily significant because they draw people into relationships. Drawing on actor-network theory the paper demonstrates that symbols are hybrids of beliefs, cognitive interpretations, ritual performances and relational networks. The significance of symbols is located in this middle ground, as they mediate between thought and action, as well as between interpretative meaning and relational practice. Aesthetic experiences and ritual performance are interwoven with cognitive meaning and representation to generate the impact of religious symbols. This understanding of symbols is illustrated through an ethnographic account of a Pagan ritual involving the deity Baphomet. One of the participants describes this ritual succinctly: ‘Baphomet is a recreation of the Witches’ sabbat, an invocation of archetypal Witchcraft. It's R-rated, it contains adult themes, nudity and sex references.’ Through ritual experiences, religious symbols change the way people feel about themselves, the world and the people around them.

The two paradigms of eikonic soteriology assume two distinct christological titles and functions. While the eikonic soteriology of re-creation envisions Christ as a Demiurge, the eikonic soteriology of liberation portrays him as a Warrior. This chapter focuses on Divine Warrior Christology and its corresponding soteriology, which in its own way represents a theorization of considerable complexity. Pseudo-Hippolytus, Origen, and Pseudo-Chrysostom (In sanctum Pascha) instill new elements in this story and create a narrative of much more philosophical intricacy. The pattern of the combat myth, instituting the paschal Eucharist as a divine banquet with its own special rituals, reappears in Origen's Peri Pascha. The chapter explores the feature of a deep connection between the divine combat and the institution of rituals following the conflict. The combat and victory elements create an institution narrative which includes the Last Supper for the paschal Eucharist envisioned as a sacred festival and banquet.Keywords: divine combat; divine warrior Christology; eikonic soteriology

This paper considers the place and the role of AI in the pursuit of the common good. The notion of the common good has a long and venerable history in social philosophy, but this notion, so it is argued, becomes problematic with the imminent advent of Artificial General Intelligence. Should AI be regarded as being in the service of the common good of humanity, or should the definition of the social common rather be enlarged to include non-human entities in general, and AI’s, which in the future may include human level and superhuman level AI’s, in particular? The paper aims to clarify the questions and the concepts involved by interpreting Bruno Latour’s proposal for a politics of nature with specific reference to the challenge posed by the imminent advent of human level artificial general intelligence (AGI). The recent suggestion by eminent AI researcher, Stuart Russell, that the pursuit of AI should be re-oriented towards AI that remain in the service of the human good, will be used as a critical interlocutor of Latour’s model. The paper concludes with the suggestion that the challenge will be to steer a middle ground between two unacceptable extremes. On the one hand the extreme of a “truth politics” that assumes there is a pure human nature and definite human interests that must be protected against AI should be avoided. On the other hand, the alternative extreme of a naked “power politics” must also be avoided because there is a very real possibility that super AI may emerge victorious out of such a power struggle.