Dajjal<\/em> is the Antichrist):<\/p>\nHudhaifa b. Usaid Ghifari reported: Allah\u2019s Messenger (may peace be upon him) came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He said: What do you discuss ? They (the Companions) said. We are discussing the Last Hour. Thereupon he said: It will not cone until you see ten signs before and (in this connection) he made a mention of the smoke, Dajjal, the beast, the rising of the sun from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary (Allah be pleased with him), the Gog and Magog, and land-slidings in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from the Yemen, and would drive people to the place of their assembly.<\/em><\/p>\n(Translated by Abdul Hamid Siddiqui).<\/p>\n
Jesus and the Judgment are both major components of the Qur\u2019an, but the Turmoil and Portents<\/em> deploy a whole apocalyptic mythology \u2013 the Antichrist, evil Jews, Gog and Magog \u2013 that looks very much as if it was borrowed from the Christian world in a later era. I do not believe most of the sayings in this section have anything to do with the historical Muhammad or his contemporaries, but rather fit the period somewhere between about 640 and 800, with the turbulent 740s and 750s an excellent candidate. Most of the borrowings would have come from the Syriac churches.<\/p>\nThese Islamic texts coincide closely with a lively genre of Christian apocalyptic writing in the two centuries or so following the Arab Conquests. Repeatedly, Christians \u2013 presumably, monks and priests \u2013 used the genre of apocalyptic to describe the times in which they lived, and offer hope to their readers and listeners. In times of political conflict and repression, apocalyptic had the virtue of allowing anonymous and deniable commentary on current events.\u00a0 <\/strong>Commonly, these works were attributed to mighty sages and prophets of old. Daniel, for instance, was well known in the canonical Old Testament as a prophetic and apocalyptic figure, and Jews and Christians appropriated his name for many later texts. Enoch and Ezra were also popular mouthpieces. As these writings are \u201cfalsely attributed\u201d or claimed, we call them pseudepigrapha.<\/p>\nIn the seventh century, a Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel built on the Biblical text to depict the End Times and the Coming of Christ. Around 800, a Greek work of the same name describes the catastrophes that Christians will encounter at the hands of the sons of Hagar, the Arab Muslims, who ally with the Jews. Worldly disasters grow worse until the final Judgment and coming of Christ. \u201cAnd with the Antichrist reigning and with the demons persecution, the Jews contriving vanities against the Christians, the great Day of the Lord draws near.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also in the seventh century, there appeared an Apocalypse of Ezra, \u201cThe Question of Ezra the Scribe while in the Desert with his disciple Karpos.\u201d This work draws on the Revelation of John and the Book of Daniel, and neatly fits Islam into the apocalyptic framework. In the chaotic conditions of the 740s, Christian apocalyptic was deployed once again to portray the Umayyad Caliphs. As I have described, Enoch was the alleged author of an Apocalypse that envisioned the last Caliph.<\/p>\n
One of the most influential and enduring of these texts was the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, which was firmly grounded in the Old Testament apocryphal scriptures. It offered a complete history of the world from the time of Adam, but it chiefly focused on conditions in the Muslim-dominated Near East around 690, which was presumably when it was written. \u201cMethodius\u201d foresaw the rise of a Greek King who would slaughter the Muslim Ishmaelites, reconquer Jerusalem, and liberate Christians, before the final Judgment.\u00a0 Reading such works, we see how they provide the context for the Islamic Turmoil and Portents. <\/em>The main difference is that the apocalyptic signs and warnings are attributed not to some Old Testament prophet, but to Muhammad himself.<\/p>\nAs I have suggested before, converted Christians, perhaps monks, were likely responsible for importing those apocalyptic traditions into Islam, so that the Turmoil and Portents<\/em> might represent their handiwork. In my view, Turmoil and Portents<\/em> represents a snapshot of Christian apocalyptic sentiment in the early-mid eighth century.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThere is now quite a sizable literature on these themes, including:<\/p>\n
Paul J. Alexander, ed., The Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition <\/em>(University of California Press, 1985).<\/p>\nLorenzo DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature <\/em>(Brill, 2005).<\/p>\nBenjamin Garstad, ed., Apocalypse \u2013 Pseudo-Methodius <\/em>(Harvard, 2012).<\/p>\nSidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque <\/em>(Princeton University Press, 2008).<\/p>\nMatthias Henze, The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel <\/em>(Mohr Siebeck, 2001).<\/p>\nRobert A Kraft, Exploring the Scripturesque<\/em> (Brill, 2009).<\/p>\nAndrew Palmer, ed., The Seventh Century in the West- Syrian Chronicles <\/em>(Liverpool University Press, 1993).<\/p>\nJohn C. Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic<\/em> (Brill, 2006).<\/p>\nZeki Saritoprak, Islam\u2019s Jesus<\/em> (University Press of Florida, 2014).<\/p>\nW. J. van Bekkum, Jan Willem Drijvers, and Alexander Cornelis Klugkist, eds., Syriac Polemics <\/em>(Peeters, 2007).<\/p>\nEmeri van Donzel and Andrea Schmidt, eds., Gog and Magog in Early Eastern Christian and Islamic Sources<\/em> (Brill, 2010).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been posting about some apocalyptic sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which are found in the collections known as the Hadith. Such sayings are numerous, and at so many points, they echo the lore found among contemporary Christians. Taken with those Christian documents, in fact, they suggest the depth of the apocalyptic fascination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2695,812,2693,1884,728,1047,2694,2840,2698],"class_list":["post-16460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philip-jenkins","tag-antichrist","tag-apocalyptic","tag-dabiq","tag-daniel","tag-enoch","tag-ezra","tag-hadith","tag-islam","tag-pseudo-methodius"],"yoast_head":"\n
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