The Apocalypse of Empire. Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam

268 Pages·2018·3.55 MB·English

by  Stephen J. Shoemaker

The Apocalypse of Empire
DIVINATIONS: REREADING LATE ANCIENT RELIGION
Series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
THE APOCALYPSE
OF EMPIRE
Imperial Eschatology
in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
Stephen J. Shoemaker
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press

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Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in-P ublication Data
Names: Shoemaker, Stephen J., 1968– author.
Title: The apocalypse of empire : imperial eschatology in late
antiquity and early Islam / Stephen J. Shoemaker.
Other titles: Divinations.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of
Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Divinations: rereading late
ancient religion
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059431 | ISBN 9780812250404
(hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Eschatology in literature—History and
criticism. | Apocalyptic literature—History and criticism. |
Islamic eschatology in literature—History and criticism. |
Islamic eschatology. | Eschatology—History of doctrines—
Early church, ca. 30–600. | Eschatology, Greco-Roman. |
Eschatology in rabbinical literature—History and criticism. |
Eschatology, Jewish. | Imperialism—Religious aspects—Islam. |
Imperialism—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Imperialism—
Religious aspects—Judaism.
Classification: LCC BL501 .S56 2018 | DDC 202/.309—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059431
For Elizabeth A. Clark
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Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Apocalypse Against Empire or Apocalypse Through
Empire?: The Shifting Politics of the Apocalyptic Imagination 11
Chapter 2. The Rise of Imperial Apocalypticism in
Late Antiquity: Christian Rome and the Kingdom of God 38
Chapter 3. Awaiting the End of the World in Early Byzantium:
Shifting Imperial Fortunes and Firm Eschatological Faith 64
Chapter 4. Armilos and Kay Bahrām: Imperial Eschatology in
Late Ancient Judaism and Zoroastrianism 90
Chapter 5. “The Reign of God Has Come”:
Eschatology and Community in Early Islam 116
Chapter 6. From Jerusalem to Constantinople:
Imperial Eschatology and the Rise of Islam 146
Conclusion 180
Notes 185
Bibliography 221
Index 249
Acknowledgments 257
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Introduction
In many respects, this book follows as a natural successor to my previous
study, The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginnings
of Islam, and it proceeds from the same methodological principles that guided
this earlier work. These are, in brief, that the emergence of Islam must be
situated within the broader religious context of the late ancient Near East and
likewise that it must be investigated using the same historical- critical methods
and perspectives that have guided the study of early Judaism, Christianity, and
other religions for well over a century now. In the present volume, I further
develop in particular the idea that earliest Islam was a movement driven by
urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest— or liberation— of
the biblical Holy Land. Yet the primary inspiration for this book came largely
through giving lectures at various universities based on the research that I had
done for Death of a Prophet. In a number of different contexts, I was gener-
ously invited to present my understanding of Muhammad as an eschatological
prophet, whose early followers believed that the end of the world would arrive
very soon. On occasion, some members of the audience would express skep-
ticism that this could even be possible, since Muhammad and his followers
were clearly determined to conquer and rule so much of the world that was
then known to them. How is it conceivable, they asked, that the early Believ-
ers would strive so vigorously to expand their dominion in the world if, at the
same time, they believed that the present world would soon come to an end?
When I tried to explain that in the late ancient Near East, ideas of imperial
conquest and eschatological expectation often went hand in hand, my answer
often met with only more skepticism. It became clear that I needed to write
another book that could fill this lacuna in our understanding of both early
Islam and late ancient apocalypticism.
Other colleagues asked, more constructively, if, in light of the evidence
for imminent eschatological expectation within earliest Islam, it would be
possible to situate this belief within a broader cultural context of apocalyptic
2 Introduction
anticipation, as is the case, for instance, with earliest Christianity. My re-
sponse, at the time, was that while there had been a lot of work on Christian
eschatological expectations as a reaction to the Islamic conquest, the apoca-
lypticism of the sixth and early seventh centuries was much less explored,
particularly in relation to the development of early Islam. Nevertheless, as I
increasingly came to discover, there is ample evidence of eschatological ex-
pectation on the eve of Islam, not only from late ancient Christianity but
from contemporary Judaism and Zoroastrianism as well. This was yet another
lacuna in our understanding of early Islam’s “sectarian milieu” that needed
significant attention. My interest in this particular aspect of late ancient reli-
gion was further piqued when I was asked to contribute an article, eventually
titled “The Afterlife of the Apocalypse of John in Byzantine Apocalyptic
Literature and Commentary,” to the 2013 Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Sym-
posium, “The New Testament in Byzantium,” now published in The New
Testament in Byzantium.1 Inasmuch as the two earliest and most important
Byzantine commentaries on the Apocalypse of John are from the sixth cen-
tury, I began to look even more closely at apocalypticism in this era. There I
found, as readers will discover, a relatively well-k nown body of evidence indi-
cating that this was a time of heightened eschatological expectation in both
the Byzantine Empire and elsewhere in the late ancient Near East. Yet per-
haps the most significant outcome of this endeavor was my enlightening dis-
covery of the Tiburtine Sibyl, a text that was previously unknown to me (and
many of my colleagues as well). This early Byzantine vision of imperial escha-
tology and the Last Roman Emperor’s ultimate triumph is crucial for under-
standing the fusion of apocalypticism and imperialism that characterizes so
much late ancient thinking about the eschaton.
There is still one more topic that this study engages, and it has less to do
with the rise of Islam than with the history of apocalypticism in Judaism and
Christianity more generally. In scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early
Judaism and Christianity, one meets not infrequently with assertions that the
apocalyptic genre is somehow in its very nature decidedly anti-i mperial.
Thus, for instance, one finds titles such as that of Anathea Portier-Y oung’s
excellent study of early apocalyptic literature, Apocalypse Against Empire: The-
ories of Resistance in Early Judaism. Even more so, it would seem, anthropo-
logical and sociological perspectives on “millenarian” movements (as these
disciplines commonly designate apocalyptic groups) regularly presume that
apocalypticism is somehow inherently anti-i mperial. While I certainly have
no wish to dispute that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently shows a