The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam

by Stephen J. Shoemaker

In The Apocalypse of Empire, Stephen J. Shoemaker argues that earliest Islam was a movement driven by urgent eschatological belief that focused on the conquest, or liberation, of the biblical Holy Land and situates this belief within a broader cultural environment of apocalyptic anticipation. Shoemaker looks to the Qur'an's fervent representation of the imminent end of the world and the importance Muhammad and his earliest followers placed on imperial expansion. Offering important contemporary context for the imperial eschatology that seems to have fueled the rise of Islam, he surveys the political eschatologies of early Byzantine Christianity, Judaism, and Sasanian Zoroastrianism at the advent of Islam and argues that they often relate imperial ambition to beliefs about the end of the world. Moreover, he contends, formative Islam's embrace of this broader religious trend of Mediterranean late antiquity provides invaluable evidence for understanding the beginnings of the religion at a time when sources are generally scarce and often highly problematic.

Scholarship on apocalyptic literature in early Judaism and Christianity frequently maintains that the genre is decidedly anti-imperial in its very nature. While it may be that early Jewish apocalyptic literature frequently displays this tendency, Shoemaker demonstrates that this quality is not characteristic of apocalypticism at all times and in all places. In the late antique Mediterranean as in the European Middle Ages, apocalypticism was regularly associated with ideas of imperial expansion and triumph, which expected the culmination of history to arrive through the universal dominion of a divinely chosen world empire. This imperial apocalypticism not only affords an invaluable backdrop for understanding the rise of Islam but also reveals an important transition within the history of Western doctrine during late antiquity.

Genres: Islam, Religion, History

272 pages, Hardcover

Published November 9, 2018

About the author

Stephen Shoemaker (Ph.D. ’97, Duke University) is a specialist on the history of Christianity and the beginnings of Islam. His primary interests lie in the ancient and early medieval Christian traditions, and more specifically in early Byzantine and Near Eastern Christianity. His research focuses on early devotion to the Virgin Mary, Christian apocryphal literature, and Islamic origins.

Prof. Shoemaker is the author of The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginnings of Islam (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), a study of the “historical Muhammad” that focuses on traditions about the end of his life. He has also published numerous studies on early Christian traditions about Mary (especially in apocrypha), including The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press, 2002), a study of the earliest traditions of the end of Mary’s life that combines archaeological, liturgical, and literary evidence. This volume also includes critical translations of many of the earliest narratives of Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, made from Ethiopic, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Greek.

Prof. Shoemaker has recently published a translation of the earliest Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor (Yale University Press, 2012), a pivotal if overlooked late ancient text that survives only in a Georgian translation. Currently he is finishing a book on the beginnings of Christian devotion to Mary and completing the translation of several eighth-century Christian martyrdoms from the early Islamic Near East. In addition, he is preparing a new critical edition of the early Syriac Dormition narratives.

Prof. Shoemaker has been awarded research fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Reviews

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a most interesting exploration of apocalyptic thinking, showing tht in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theology and practice apocalyptic notions can be both anti-empire and pro-empire. In this study the focus is on those dimensions of the conversation, focusing on late antiquity -- Byzantium, Jewish/Zoroastrian expressions, and Islam.

He discusses a number of important apocalyptic visions that served to undergird Byzantine political theology, including the legend of the Last Emperor so that the Empire would last until the coming Christ when the emperor would hand over sovereignty to Jesus. Regarding Isalm, Shoemaker demonstrates that Muhammad and early Islamic had an eschatological vision, even if not always apocalyptic in nature. This vision that the end was near served to give their effort at expansion urgency. Part of that effort involved Jerusalem and the belief that the Temple would be the fulcrum of such a vision. This leads to an interesting discussion of the Dome of the Rock and its purpose.

[Shahin Azad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and well-organized book with academic standards. However, the main thesis is not really new as the author acknowledges himself, neither really correct. The author has a misunderstanding of the concept of the end of time in the Bible and in the Quran, which is very common among other scholars.
The whole claim of secular researchers against the Gospel and the Quran, that they claim, it is the fault of Jesus of Muhammad, is that they promised the end of time is near, but it was not, and it did not come.
This is actually not the mistake of Jesus nor Muhammad; it is in fact misunderstanding the concept of time in the Bible and the Quran by most people. In both books, the time starts by the beginning of revelation and ends by the end of revelation. Therefore, Jesus promises that the end is near, and the Quran claims it has arrived because the Quran claims to be the last revelation. This is correct and consistent with the claim of Muhammad to be the receiver of the last book of God. Muhammad was actually the promised Messiah, but actually, he was the return of Jesus, too, and missing this point has caused confusion to the whole world about the end of time. That is because usually Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists deny reincarnation. The end of time in the Bible and the Quran is not the end of history and it is not in the future, it has already come.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure I know enough to properly evaluate all Shoemaker’s claims, but this is pretty good, and a fascinating way of looking at apocalyptic as a tool of empire and domination.