ABSTRACT
The seventh century was a period of transformative crisis in the Roman Empire. The success of the Zoroastrian Sassanid Persians and the rise of the Islamic Arabs caused many Romans to question the prevailing wisdom that the empire was chosen by God, or at least question the role of catastrophic defeat in God's divine plan. This chapter examines how many seventh-century authors used apocalyptic discourse to transform Roman and Christian identity in the face of defeat. Indeed, even in the territories that had fallen to the Muslims, we have evidence that some writers sought to ensure their fellow Christians that their status as God's chosen people remained intact. Defeat was not evidence of God's abandonment, on the contrary, as had occurred often in the Roman past, it served as a test and was temporary.
