“Apocalypse? No.”—The Power of Millennialism and its Transformation in Late Antique Christianity

As they gradually learned to master these challenges, millennialism was transformed into a more universal kind of historical-eschatological thought, a prime example of which can be found in Augustine’s City of God. The roots of Augustine’s eschatological thought have been traced to the work of Tyconius, a

Esra 7:26-30 states that the Messiah and the just will reign for 400 years before entering eternity. Note that for the earliest forms of Christian millennialism, no clear-cut distinction can be made between Jewish and Christian sources; see D. Frankfurter, “The Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses in Early Christianity,” in J.C. VanderKam and W. Adler (eds.), The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (Assen, 1996) 129-200.