The Real History of the End of the World Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE: - Before the Common Era

  CHAPTER ONE - Nothing but Humankind and the Stars

  CHAPTER TWO - Akkadians, Babylonians, and Hittites, Oh My!

  CHAPTER THREE - Ancient Egypt

  CHAPTER FOUR - Thus Spoke Zoroaster

  CHAPTER FIVE - India

  CHAPTER SIX - The Book of Daniel

  PART TWO: - The First Five Centuries of the Common Era

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Apocalypses Everywhere

  CHAPTER EIGHT - The First Christians

  CHAPTER NINE - John of Patmos and His Revelation

  CHAPTER TEN - Chinese Millennial Movements I

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Montanism

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Augustine and the Apocalypse

  PART THREE: - The Middle Ages

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Calm between the Panics

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Prophecies of Merlin

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Setting the Clock

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Messiahs, the Antichrist, and the Apocalypse in Early Islam

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Joachim of Fiore

  PART FOUR: - All Hell Breaks Loose

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Any Minute Now

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - The Hussites and Taborites

  CHAPTER TWENTY - Savonarola and Decadent Florence

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - Nostradamus

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Sabbatai Sevi

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Russian Old Believers

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - The Fifth Monarchy

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - The Founders of Modern Science

  PART FIVE: - The Millennial Nineteenth Century

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Heaven on Earth

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - The Cherokee Ghost Dance of 1811-1812

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - The Millerites

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming

  CHAPTER THIRTY - The Mummyjums

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Chinese Millennial Movements II

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - The Doomsealers

  PART SIX: - Doomsday Just Around the Corner

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - The New Apocalyptic Age

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - Modern Mahdi

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Cargo Cults, Messiahs and the End of the World

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - The Fifth World

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - The Branch Davidians

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - The Bible Code

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - Jews, Israel, and the End of the World

  CHAPTER FORTY - Y2K

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - The Rapture

  PART SEVEN: - Still Waiting for the End

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - End-Time Scenarios

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE - The End of the End

  Glossary

  Index

  Praise for The Real History Behind the Templars

  “[An] indispensable companion to current popular works.”

  —Library Journal

  “In a series of concise, highly informative chapters, Sharan Newman sets forth the story of the Templars and everything associated with them in a logical, chronological progression. The result is a book that you’ll not only understand, but enjoy, no matter how familiar (or unfamiliar) you may be with Templar history.”

  —About.com

  “The Real History Behind the Templars is a useful resource for separating fact from fiction about this controversial medieval order. As the author of a series of medieval mystery novels and someone with an advanced degree in medieval studies Sharan Newman has the skill to take modern scholarship and package it for a popular audience.”

  —Catholic World Report

  “This smart and engaging book will make readers who are familiar with the array of pseudo-histories think twice. Newman writes simply yet eloquently. Her prose is lucid and poised and her observations succinct, which makes this tome difficult to put down. She is unafraid to examine the primary sources anew and has the talent to summarize a stack of convoluted material in a few concise sentences. But the popular historian’s real accomplishment is that she is fundamentally exact, bright and interesting.”

  —Independent Weekly of Australia

  Praise for The Real History Behind The Da Vinci Code

  “If, like Sam Cooke sang, you ‘don’t know much about history,’ Newman’s encyclopedic, A-to-Z look at the topics ranging from ‘Aprocrypha’ to ‘Wren, Christopher’ provides perspective and insight.”

  —Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

  “Witty and charming, but nonetheless rational in explanation and complete in background research, The Real History Behind The Da Vinci Code seeks not so much to refute the novel but to elucidate on the truth, and not so much to disparage the mistakes of Mr. Brown but to make readers realize that the history is bigger than any one person, popular novelists included.”

  —Business World

  “The book . . . gives the truth about topics used in Brown’s fiction . . . well written and precise, it is the work of a woman who writes what she knows.”

  —Statesman Journal (Oregon)

  “For fans of Dan Brown’s popular The Da Vinci Code, Sharan Newman’s The Real History Behind The Da Vinci Code is a must-have companion.”

  —The Sunday Oregonian

  “Newman has arranged her discussion of the people, places, and events in The Da Vinci Code in an encyclopedic format, creating a book that is both accessible and fun to read.”

  —Library Journal

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore, 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 Sharan Newman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition/ April 2010

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


  Newman, Sharan.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18660-2

  1. End of the world—History of doctrines. 2. Prophecies—History. I. Title.

  BL503.N49 2010

  202′.309—dc22

  2009050669

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to all the Chicken Littles among us, who are sure

  that the sky will soon fall. Someday you will be right.

  And for Rebecca Hill and John Parks, who shared the load.

  Acknowledgments

  Deborah Adams, for urging me to send in the proposal for this book when I was just going to delete it.

  Erika Johnson Bayless, for telling me how to put it all together.

  Jennifer Johnson Bell, for teaching me how to make a table.

  Dr. Eddie Chan, for finding esoteric groups for me to study.

  Professor Armin Geertz, Aarhus University, Denmark, for proofing my section on the Hopi.

  Professor Susan D. Gillespie, University of Florida, for directing me to references on the Mayan calendar.

  Professor Salima Ikram, American University of Cairo, Professor Aidan Dodson, Bristol University, and Dr. Barbara Mertz for references on ancient Egyptian eschatology and making sure I didn’t spell Osiris as if he were a Roman.

  Morgan Kay, for taking time from her dissertation to check my information on Merlin.

  Steven Lavoie, of the Oakland Library, for sending me references to the Doomsealers.

  Connie L. F. Terwilliger, for suggesting the proper group to dedicate this book to.

  As always, any mistakes in this book are mine alone.

  The Beginning of the End

  It may seem strange, if not impossible, to write a history of something that hasn’t happened yet. I could point out that if I wait until it does, there will be very few readers to benefit from my work. But it makes more sense to explain that this is really a history of how people all over the world and through time have thought about the end of the world and how they have dealt with the concept.

  Very few people have actually believed that the whole world will end. But almost every culture has some belief or folk myth that tells how the gods or God renew an earth that has become morally corrupt. It seems that people everywhere have looked around at the chaos caused by nature or humanity and at some point just have thrown up their hands, too overwhelmed with the problem to see a way to fix it.

  But how could the world be fixed? Some cultures see time as cyclical; nothing ends, but now and then a new cycle begins. In many cases the birth of the cycle is painful and most of the corrupt world is lost in the transition. In other traditions time is linear. Western society, under the influence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, tends to view history as moving along a straight track from beginning to end. Whether the start was the Garden of Eden or the Big Bang doesn’t matter. The direction is the same.

  When I began work on this book, I didn’t think I would find much on the end in cultures with cyclical viewpoints. I was mistaken. Just as I could find few traditions that the world would end completely in linear societies, I discovered there were groups within Chinese, Hindu, and other societies with cyclical worldviews that shared endtime ideas that were much the same as the Western picture of the Apocalypse.

  Which brings me to the tricky topic of terminology. There are several words and phrases used by people who study the end times (end times is one). Some of them are just different ways of saying the same thing. Some are technical terms, like eschatology, an academic term for study of the idea of the end times. Still others have picked up new meanings over the years. For my purposes, Apocalypse means everything ending with a bang: war, fire, flood, etc. Even though it means the same thing as Revelation, too many people see them as different. I will use Revelation to refer to the book of the New Testament attributed to John of Patmos, although sometimes that is also called the Apocalypse. Okay?

  Millennium is the happy time during which the saved or the elect will live in peace before the final grand reckoning. Some Christians think that Jesus will return at the beginning of the Millennium, some think it won’t be until the end. This return of Jesus is expressed in many ways: Second Coming, Second Advent, Parousia (my favorite).

  I will try to explain these terms as they appear in the text but, just in case, there is also a short glossary at the end of the book. It’s for my benefit, too, because there are some words I have to look up every time I run across them.

  At times it seemed to me as if everyone who had ever picked up a quill or pen or stylus had written about the end of the world. Everywhere I looked, someone was either predicting the end or at least describing the events that would precede it. But, after a while I began to see that almost all of the movements fell into categories, although the categories often overlapped. For instance, there were those who were interested in predicting the end as a mathematical exercise, using primarily the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation. This includes Isaac Newton and William Miller. The difference between the two is mainly that Miller felt he should warn people. Newton seemed to think everyone was on his own.

  Most of the millennial movements, as distinct from individual date-setters, are tied to a belief that only a few people can be saved from the coming destruction. I thought that this was just a Christian phenomenon but then found it in non-monotheistic societies, like the Chinese Yellow Turbans and the Hopi. So perhaps the belief in an imminent end coupled with the salvation of the elect believers is either very ancient or universal common sense. It’s difficult for people to imagine their own end, even if everything else goes up in a cataclysm. There are hard-nosed scientists, who know that one day the sun will use up its fuel, who still hypothesize that humanity will figure out a way to colonize another planet before that happens.

  Therefore I have selected representative groups and influential writers or leaders of apocalyptic or millennial movements, such as people who believed their leader to be the Messiah, or a prophet, who would build a heaven on earth or give them a free pass to the real heaven; those who thought that the thousand years of happiness would start if they helped it along with military force; and those who thought that we were at the end of the thousand years and braced themselves in various ways to survive the horrors of the final battles and breakdown of society before the final judgment.

  The reader may be surprised to know how many mainstream religions today began as millennial movements that later adapted their dogma to living in a world that didn’t end when expected.

  I also included some people and groups that fascinate me. Although most of them did not leave lasting memorials or establish religions that still exist, they reflect the myriad ways that humans have interpreted their own times as apocalyptic. It is also intriguing to consider why most people muddle on through good times and bad without ever assuming that the end is upon them while a small but intense segment of society feels compelled to fix the time and prepare for it, sometimes in terribly destructive ways.

  However, this is not a book of sociology or psychology. I looked at a number of theoretical studies on the reasons behind millennial movements, charismatic leaders, and doomsday cults. I would always find exceptions to the conclusions. So as a historian, I’ve simply tried to record, as accurately as possible, how humankind has anticipated the end of the world in various ways.

  Here and there in this work, I mention the upcoming prediction that the world will end on the winter solstice of 2012. I did some work on the ideas that the poles will flip, or that there will be catastrophic solar flares, or that a galactic alignment will occur that will signal some great upheaval. I haven’t found a clear explanation for what. None of these things seems to be of serious concern.

  For instance, the magnetic poles wander about all the time within a certain radius, never far from the geographic pole.a But they don’t move together. The North Pole is moving toward Siberia at ab
out fifty kilometers a year. The South Pole is heading northwest at about five kilometers. I have been assured that they will not end up making snow in Ethiopia.b I love the idea of independent poles, each setting out on its own adventure. What is even more amazing is that the movement of the magnetic poles has been known since the 1600s. It’s only recently that the fact has been dragged out to join the list of scary things that might happen in 2012. Now, some people say that the poles aren’t just going to wobble; they’ll reverse, so south will be north and north will be south. Birds won’t know where to migrate; planes won’t be able to navigate. It does seem that north and south trade places every so often. But there’s a lot of debate about when, where, and how long it would take, never mind what the effects might be. It’s not high on my list of worries.

  Solar flares can be a problem with power plants and other technology, and scientists are saying we may have a lot of them around 2012, but the last round was just a few years ago and the world didn’t end then. But there’s no point in trying to refute each of these 2012 end-of-world theories individually because there’s always a new one coming up. However, I do make a point of giving the background on the Maya, the Hopi, and Nostradamus, whose supposed prophecies tend to be cited most often. I heard the other day that the Mother Shipton, invented by a journalist in the eighteenth century, had predicted the end in 2012. I hadn’t even considered writing about her since she, like the Greek tradition of the Sibyl, is basically a franchise. There never was a Mother Shipton. Publishers just hired writers to put together new prophecies every few years in her name.