Judgment Day

Another instigation to apocalypticism was an actual armed struggle that broke out in the 2nd century B.C., when the followers of Judah Maccabee revolted against a tyrannical Syrian despot, Antiochus, who was trying to eradicate Judaism from the land that the Syrians governed. To strengthen the Maccabeans' resolve, charismatic authors wove tales rich with strange visionary elements and the promise, Kirsch writes, of "a day of bloody revenge against their enemies." Only one apocalyptic tale found its way into the Hebrew Bible (the book of Daniel), but scores of others were produced throughout Judea. Those written during the decades preceding and following the life of Jesus, when the Romans tightened their rule over the rebellious province, gave new importance to the figure of the messiah, casting him not just as a mortal prince but also as a celestial savior.

So while Revelation, like many other New Testament books, contains what appear to be strongly anti-Semitic elements (including its rant against the "synagogue of Satan"), it grew directly out of a literary tradition associated with one important strain of pre-rabbinical Judaism. Indeed, the obvious Jewishness of the text is one reason that it gave pause to later Christian leaders. Where was the sweet emphasis upon love and forgiveness that comes through so strongly in the Gospels? Some scholars suggest that the core story of Revelation, minus certain superficial Christian additions, was written by someone who wasn't even a Christian.

But Revelation nonetheless was canonized as part of the New Testament, and Kirsch offers a thorough account of the intellectual and spiritual mischief that Revelation has spawned -- and also some of the good. Medieval Catholics used the book to justify the Crusades, support reform efforts and validate persecution of the Jews, while later Protestant reformers (including the same Luther who objected to Revelation) drew on its imagery to attack Catholicism and the papacy. "I do not know whether the pope himself be Antichrist or his apostle," Luther wrote, apparently without blushing.

Ironically, enthusiasm for Revelation was always stronger in western Christendom than in the eastern part of the Christian world where the text was produced. That irony proved most true, Kirsch shows, when Revelation made its way to the New World, where apocalyptic imagery was applied to practically every major development in American history, from the Puritan witch-hunt craze to the Civil War to any number of social and moral crusades in the 20th and 21st centuries. While apocalypticism has inspired progressive causes, including the civil rights vision of Martin Luther King Jr., it increasingly came to support a fundamentalist conception of a properly Christian society.

Apocalyptic notions are never scarier than when they creep into politics, as they did quite openly in the pronouncements of Ronald Reagan. "Apparently never in history have so many of the prophecies come true in such a relatively short time," the then-governor of California declared in 1968. And though Reagan learned to tone down such pronouncements as president, he never abandoned his belief in the approaching Armageddon.

If the current occupant of the White House "does not speak in the familiar vocabulary of apocalyptic fundamentalism," Kirsch writes, "it is mostly because a new and updated 'language arsenal' has been deployed in contemporary America" -- an arsenal that in this case, Kirsch explains, uses code phrases such as "intelligent design" and "culture of life." But many of the president's policies resonate powerfully with a large fundamentalist community that takes apocalyptic notions, including those that apply to Israel, with a fervent literalism. For them, and many others, the rapture draws nigh. ·

Jay Tolson is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report.