Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)
STUDIES - Zsolt K. Virágos: The American Brand of the Myth of Apocalypse
These are serious challenges, and once accepted, the authority of the quintessential authoritative text of the Middle Ages and Bible-inliterature studies in general would have to be radically revised, if not suspended. I am not prepared to join this potentially awesome debate and will leave it to the practitioners of the comparative and anthropological (and perhaps also political) study of religions and mythologies to decide the matter. In my subsequent discussion I will use the consensus view of Biblical mythology as my working assumption and will primarily focus on whether the myth of apocalypse should be understood as Ml or M2, and whether it can be seen as both. I believe that the myth of apocalypse is especially suited to such an inquiry. Apocalypse means 'revelation' and despite the word's recent misuse, it is not a synonym for 'disaster,' 'upheaval,' 'chaos,' or 'doom.' 'Apocalyptic' is the form of recorded revelation in Judaism from around 200 B.C. to A.D. 200. Apocalyptic visions grew out of actual feelings of dissatisfaction, despair and a sense of political powerlessness of the Hebrew people as a result of the growth of the great empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome, and the persecution of the early Christians (Zamora, "Apocalypse" 88). These visions were also motivated by the recognized contradiction between earlier prophetic visions of Judaic history (which had predicted the establishment of a community based on a special relationship with Yahweh) and inspired by a belief that a channel of communication between the divine and the human is now open, direct revelation of the affairs of God is possible, through dream, vision or divine itermediary —usually a prophet. It is essential to understand that at the time of its conception the myth of apocalypse was called upon to serve as M2 in satisfying a keenly felt group need of a persecuted minority: exhortation and encouragement to the suffering through the justification of tribulations at an unpromising present time through somehow projecting irresistible hope in a radically changed, better, timeless future. At the time of its genesis the myth was a timeserving device which was sufficiently transcendentalized by fixing its own truth to an 120
