The Antichrist Legend

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 114):

Altogether Meyer seems to me to have gone much too far in his attempt to establish direct Christian influences in the Edda. He greatly underrates the primeval mythological stuff contained in these lays. Take, for instance, what is told in Völuspá (3) of the giant Ymir and of Chaos, and in Vaf-drűonismâl (21) of the creation of the universe. It is a great mistake to derive these primitive myths from a passage in Honorius, where all analogy completely breaks down. According to Honorius the body of (the first) man is formed from the several elements of the earth. From this Meyer argues that the creation myth of the Edda has been evolved by a kind of reverse process! Equally strained and wide of the mark seems Meyer's attempt to derive from Revelation the magnificent description of the five battles of the gods, with which the end of the world is introduced (Völuspá), strophes 50 et seq.). With what an effort the required number five is here obtained by the expedient of tacking on Hades and Death to the three hostile powers, the Beast, the Dragon, and the False Prophet [θηρίον, δρακών, ψευδοπροφήτης]! Nor does Meyer seem to me to establish with his vague parallelisms the identity of Súrtr (strophe 51) with the Antichrist (p. 206). To my mind primeval myths stand in the background of the descriptions of the gods, as well as in the accounts of the two monsters, the Midgard Serpent and Fenris the Wolf.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 115):

But if the influence of the Antichrist saga on the earlier Edda can be spoken of only as slight, it is otherwise with the Muspilli, and old Bavarian poem, dating from the ninth century. In this half-heathen, half-Christian work, the local coloring employed in the description of the destruction of the world is taken bodily from our tradition. This statement needs no further proof, as the parallel passages bearing on the point will be given farther on.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 115-116):

Clear traces of the Antichrist legend are also found in the literature of the Parsees extant in the Pehlevi language. Here attention is claimed especially by the Bahman Yast Apocalypse, of which a translation is contained in the Sacred Books of the East, Vol. V., 191 et seq. As far as I make out, the Bahman Yast is based on an apocalypse which was composed at the time of the overthrow of the Iránian (Persian) monarchy by the Muhammadan Arabs in the seventh century. In II. 14 et seq. Zaratustra (Zoroaster) sees a tree with seven branches, which alludes in the usual way to seven dynasties. The sixth is that of Chosroes (the Sassanides), and in the seventh is described the irruption into happy Irán of the demons with upraised spear and streaming hair. This irruption of Islám was witnessed by the author of the original Apocalypse, who after that event expects the end of the world. It is this consummation that is described under the direct influence of the Antichrist legend, as will appear from the large number of parallel passages quoted farther on.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 116):

This apocalypse appears to have undergone a revision in the time of the Crusades (see especially III. 3 et seq., when an intricate eschatological system with several Messiahs was also foisted into the text.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 116-117):

Last of all the Antichrist legend found its way to the Arab world. In Tabari's Chronicle we have an interesting excursus on the Antichrist. He is to be a king of the Jews, who rules the whole world, whose figure overtops the welkin, and whose name will be Dejjâl. He will appear at the end of time, when Gog and Magog break through the walls built up against them by Alexander the Great. On his march he will be accompanied by monsters, snakes, scorpions, dragons; he will reduce the greater part of mankind, and no one will be able to resist him in war. He will march from east to west, to the north and to the south, and his sway will last forty days. But the faithful will flee before him; and then Jesus, together with the Mahdi (the Guided) Muhammad ben Abdullah, will overthrow the Antichrist.*

*Dietrich, Abraxas 125 (Anmerkung 1), mentions an old Muhammadan tradition that Jesus is to vanquish the Antichrist (Dajjat) before the walls of Lydda.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 117):

This relation with its reminiscences both of Jewish and Christian traditions, the Bahman Yast Apocalypse, and the Jewish eschatologies above collated, all serve to illustrate in a striking manner the religious syncretism (combination, communion) that prevailed during the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries between Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, and Parsees.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 121):

Attention has already been called (p. 86) to the striking analogy between 4 Ezra and the Apocalypse which forms the basis of the Book of Clement in the account of the premonitory signs of the end; and it was further seen how individual traits reappear in Sibyl II. and in Ephr. Gr. Such parallelisms show of themselves that we have here a widely ramifying current of tradition. Our limited space prevents the reproduction of all the excerpts bearing on the point. But the various descriptions of tremendous convulsions in the realm of nature, all cast in the same grove of thought, may be compared, as they are recorded in 4 Ezra v. 1 et seq. and vi. 2l et seq., and again in pseudo-Hippotus, chaps. viii., xcvi. 26, and in Lactantius II. 16.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 121-122):

But in the Antichrist legend a specially characteristic feature recurs again and again. It turns on the account of the ever-increasing hatred which will be stirred up in the world even between kith and kin, and which goes back to Micah vii. 6: "A man's enemies are the men of his own house." Thus in 4 Ezra v. 9: "And all friends shall overcome one another utterly"; and vi. 24: "And it shall happen in that time [that] friends shall overthrow friends as foes." In pseudo-Hippolytus the section describing the signs of the last days begins with a detailed account of this strife between kindred, with which compare the opening of pseudo-Ephrem, chap. i.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 122-123):

So intimately associated is this trait with the Antichrist tradition that even in quite remote authorities it affords the very first indication of the influence of the legend. Thus, as already seen, we read in the Voluspâ how "brothers will one another slay," etc. So in the Bahman Yast the unmistakable influence of our saga begins with the description (II. 30): "All men will become deceivers, great friends will become of different parties, the affection of the father will depart from the son, and that of the brother from his brother, ... and the mother will be parted and estranged from the daughter." The uprising of nation against nation, as in Matthew xxiv. 7, is also frequently described in the opening of the apocalypses, and lamentations are poured out especially on the discord, the unrighteousness, and misrule prevailing in the world. Here may be mentioned 4 Ezra; the Apocalypse of Baruch, chap. xiix. 32 et seq., and chap. lxx. (cf. xxv. 3); Lactantius, VII. 15, all of which stand in perceptible literary connection with each other.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 123):

In many apocalypses the general descriptions of the forewarnings are replaced by more definite pictures of current events. But the mention of one distinct premonitory sign constantly recurs in nearly all the sources. The end is at hand when the Roman empire perishes.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 123):

In 2 Thessalonians ii. 6, 7 we read: "And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way." With this compare 4 Ezra v. 3: "And of disorderly condition shall that region be which thou now beholdest dominant, and they shall see it desolate; but if the Most High shall grant thee to live and thou behold [these things which] after the third [hath passed away?] in disorder...." Here the allusion is to the fourth (Roman) empire which succeeds the third (Greek), and after the fall of which the end comes.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 123-124):

Irenaeus (V. 26), drawing on Daniel ii. and Revelation xvii., is able to tell us that in the last days the Roman Empire will be portioned into ten kingdoms, after which the Antichrist will appear in the character of a foreign ruler. Hippolytus (chaps. xxv. and liv.) borrows from Irenaeus, and neither of these writers has derived his knowledge of the future from a mere investigation of Daniel and Revelation.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 124):

Special consideration is next claimed by Tertullian (Apologetics, 32): "There is also a greater need for us to pray for the emperors as also for the whole state of the empire, and for Roman affairs since we know that by the provision [prosperity?] of the Roman empire the mighty power impending on the whole world and threatening the very close of the century with frightful calamities shall be delayed, and as we are loth to suffer these things, while we pray for their postponement we favor the stability of Rome." And again, ad Scapulam (2): "The Christian is hostile to no one, least of all to the emperor, to whom ... he wishes well, with the whole Roman Empire, so long as the world shall last, for so long it shall last," that is, so long as Rome endures.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 124-125):

In VII. 15 (634, 18) Lactantius writes: "The Sibyls, however, openly speak of Rome being destined to perish. Hystaspes also, who was a very ancient king of the Medes, ... predicted long before that the empire and name of Rome should be effaced from the globe." And in 16 (635, 1): "But how this shall come to pass I will explain. ... In the first place, the empire shall be parceled out, and the supreme authority being dissipated and broken up shall be lessened, ... until ten kings exist all together; ... these ... shall squander and impair and consume." VII. 25 (664, 18): "The very fact proclaims the fall and destruction to be near, except that so long as Rome is safe it seems that nothing of this need be feared. But when indeed that head of the world shall fall and the assault begin that the Sibyls speak of coming to pass, who can doubt that the end has already come? ... That is the city that has hitherto upheld all things, and we should pray and beseech the God of heaven, if indeed His decrees and mandates can be postponed, that that detested tyrant may not come sooner than we think."

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 125):

So in pseudo-Ephrem, 1: "And when the kingdom of the Romans shall begin to be consumed by the sword then the advent of the Evil One is at hand." 5: "And already is the kingdom of the Romans swept away, and the empire of the Christians is delivered unto God and the Father, and when the kingdom of the Romans shall begin to be consumed then shall come the consummation.

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