ABSTRACT
Millenarianism or millennialism is the belief in the end of this world or age and the arrival of a New Age or New World of perfected harmony, free of tragedy, suffering, evil, and even death itself. This view of the future is to be distinguished from notions of an escape or release from this world, and an entrance into a perfected existence in a heavenly realm beyond, though these views are often intertwined and related. The earliest fully developed expressions of millenarianism in the ancient Western world are found in the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible (OT), beginning in the eighth century BCE. The early Christians expanded and developed these views, relating them to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and his one thousand year (Latin mille, “thousand”) reign before the creation of a New Heavens and New Earth (Revelation 20-22). However, we can find elements of millenarian thinking, or perhaps what might be called protomillenarianism, in ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman texts as well. In the ancient Eastern world, we also find within Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions, ideas about unfolding cycles and epochs of history, but since they never involve the permanent transformation of this world, but either an escape therefrom, or a merging into the cosmos itself, they are not properly classified as millenarian-at least not in the Western sense. This article will concentrate, accordingly, on the ancient Western world.
