The Day of Judgement

The judgement day theme in the Exeter Book is of particular relevance, being alluded to in several poems. A short didactic text will be highlighted: 'Judgement Day I', which – like the long poem 'Christ in Judgement' – is specifically focused on Christ’s Second Coming, but does not contain a narration of the events of the Apocalypse, as only some details of this traditional motif appear. In the manuscript this poem belongs to a section of homiletic texts concerning the theme of conversion in the light of the history of salvation. The aim of 'Judgement Day I' seems to be that of expressing the importance of an immediate repentance and insisting on the concept of free will, according to which everyone may choose to be saved by conforming to a Christian behavior. The audience is thus urged to take full responsibility for its good and evil deeds, playing an active part in its own salvation, as various linguistic, stylistic, thematic and structural features in the text seem to suggest. The analysis of the theme of Christ’s Second Coming in 'Judgement Day I' reveals an insistence on the hic et nunc dimension; the poem, therefore, shows a close connection with the spirit of the Benedictine revival which pervades the whole Exeter Book.

BAHA’U’LLAH AS ZOROASTRIAN SAVIOUR (1998)

Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as Zoroastrian Saviour.” Baha’i Studies Review 8 (1998): 14–33. 

https://www.academia.edu/4332699/_Baha_u_llah_as_Zoroastrian_Saviour_1998_

ABSTRACT

This paper explores theoretical tensions between modern scholarship and modern messiahship. Messiahs, typically, advance truth claims and adduce proof texts. Prophecies foretell; messiahs fulfill. But what if the proof texts are other than what they purport to be? What if a prophecy turns out not to be genuine? How might this affect the truth claim? An ideal case-study is that of Bahā’u’llāh, whose claim to multiple messiahship is unusual in the history of religions, paralleled only by the second-century world-prophet, Mānī (d. 276).

Bahā’u’llāh’s truth-claims were anchored in several apocalyptic traditions, interpreted as convergent. Bahā’u’llāh’s claim to be Shāh Bahrām Varjāvand, the Zoroastrian messiah, is a case in point. A theoretical problem arises once it is shown that Zoroastrian apocalypses that foretell the advent of Shāh Bahrām are primarily medieval texts, lamenting the Byzantine, Arab and Turkish invasions of Iran. These texts are hardly prophecies, but are cast in the form of prophecies, through use of a literary device known as “vaticinium ex eventu” (prophecy after the event). 

These prophecies are a type of inverse history, where recent history (the calamity of conquest) is recounted, followed by a scenario expressed in the future perfect tense (prophecies), which more or less narrates what should have been, in the name of what shall be. It will be shown that Bahā’u’llāh’s appeal to the Shāh Bahrām tradition circumvents this problem by radically reinterpreting the Zoroastrian prophecies themselves, thereby reinventing the figure of Shāh Bahrām.

Readers of the first printed English translation of John Calvin’s 'The Institution of Christian Religion' in 1561 would have encountered a grim eschatological scene.  Placed before God Calvin describes how there ‘shalbe a most seuere examination, that shall pearce into the most hidden thoughtes of the heart […] whiche shal compell the lurking and vnwillyng conscience to vtter al thinges that now are fallen out of remembrance’. Nonetheless, almost a century later, things could not have been more different.  Amidst the rancour and revolutionary rhetoric of 1649 the renowned casuist Isaac Ambrose had other ideas.  In his spiritual manual 'Media: The Middle Things' Ambrose extoled his puritan readers to: ‘Have a little book in thy Conscience, and write therein’.  Ambrose’s depiction was nothing short of a complete reversal of Calvin’s vision of final reckoning.  Ambrose would have his puritan readers now come prepared with documented disclosure so that as he put it in the third edition of 'Media', ‘That we might not tremble with horror of soul when the Judge of all the World shall try us; but have our evidence and assurance so ready at hand, and be so able to prove our Title to Heaven’.  In anticipation of God’s judgement Ambrose’s message was startling.  In order to prove their election the saints would no longer have an ‘vnwillyng conscience’ that merely revealed their lives at the Day of Judgement.  Now the ‘godly’ would write their own stories on earth, rather than have them read to them in heaven.

How to be counted among the saved on Doomsday? This article presents the emergence of Danish funeral works in the sixteenth century through a case study of Niels Hemmingsen’s sermon for Herluff Trolle (1565). It discusses in particular the theological function of the charitable deeds in the funeral biography for Trolle, and argues that the preacher’s motivation for presenting these deeds was more than the dynastic interests of the noble families. The frame of the emergence of the genre, as well as the particular emphasis on charitable deeds, is the expectation of Judgement Day.