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

immediate needs and ideology of a persecuted people in order to maintain faith during a period of harsh political, social, and religious sanctions. Although the myth incorporates notions which appear to be fuzzy and confused, the soothing formula as a self-authenticating and projective construct offering delayed gratification proved and has proved vital and enduring throughout more than two millenia of history to various groups and communities during periods of oppression, affliction, and persecution. The myth and its many reinterpreted mutations have withstood the erosions of time, and were capable of influencing a wide spectrum of authors, cultures, and schools of thought as diverse as Milton, the socio-political views of the English Romantic poets, the Marxist ideology of a happy future, or fascist totalitarianism complete with a Third Reich ideology (via Joachim of Fiore) and a Final Solution (Zamora, "Apocalypse" 91, Kermode 101, Dowling 118). To cite obvious American examples, the destining ideology of New England Puritanism may serve as a case in point. Or consider the ease with which the African American community appropriated the myth of apocalypse to be used as a psychological safety valve during and since slavery times. Testamental apocalypse emphasizes future events and exhorts men to endure their present suffering with the assurance of a blessed future life. Since the given historical situation of the Hebrew people made the special community with Yahweh less and less realizable, only a radical change or break in history would be enough to rectify present conditions. The present age of suffering and persecution will have to end abruptly and through transcendental miracle: a prospective providential rescue. Hence the mythic innovation of the apocalyptists to see the future as breaking into the present, through a dramatic intrusion of the divine (the direct intervention of God), instead of gradually arising from it. Thus, although this radical reinterpretation of time, history, and the future developed from the Judaic prophetic tradition, it is useful to regard the apocalyptisfs conception of the 122