When Did the Legend of the Last Emperor Originate? A New Look at the Textual Relationship between the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius and the Tiburtine Sibyl

Abstract

The legend of the Last Emperor was influential in medieval and early modern apocalyptic literature, and yet its origins are uncertain. Was it first developed in the late seventh-century Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, or in a lost fourth-century version of the Tiburtine Sibyl? Scholars have long been divided on this question, and yet the answer has implications for the understanding of the development of Christian apocalypticism, as well as the degree to which Islam was influenced by Christian eschatological beliefs. This article marshals a variety of evidence to prove the origin of the Last Emperor legend in Pseudo-Methodius in the seventh century. It argues that details of the description of the Last Emperor show a distinctive development from Syriac literary themes, and that the Last Emperor in the Tiburtine Sibyl is an early eleventh-century interpolation based on the ideas popularized by the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, likely having passed through a Byzantine Greek intermediary.