2012, Apocalypse, and Monotheism

Who doesn't love a movie about apocalyptic disaster? It's certainly a popular theme among Americans, where 2012 dominated the box office this last weekend, and any number of other disaster movies have turned tidy profits in the past.

As with any movie "based on history," though, 2012 plays fast and loose with the facts. The biggest distortion? Apparently, it's the whole notion that the Mayans predicted the world to end in 2012. As Lane Wallace explains in The Atlantic, quoting historian Sandra Noble, "There is NOTHING in ancient Maya records that predicts the end of the world; no apocalypse, no destruction, no cosmic clashes. Nothing."

If you're interested in the subject of Mayan disaster prophecies, click the link to read more. Most important to our class, however, is the quick, historical overview of apocalyptic visions provided by Wallace. Specifically:

"Visions and prophecies have been found in writings dating as far back as 2,000 B.C., according to Kerkeslager, although not all cultures had an equal need for thunder and lightning delivery of justice. In a polytheistic culture like ancient Greece, the need for apocalyptic beliefs was less, because a multitude of warring gods could explain misfortune or disparity. You might simply be the casualty of a power struggle between Hera and Zeus.

"But as cultures became monotheistic, the disconnect between a supposedly fair and just God, and an unjust world, became harder to explain away. Hence, Kerkeslager says, apocalyptic notions in the Hebrew Book of Daniel, which was written only three years after a Greek King named Antiochus had begun a brutal repression of the Jews in Jerusalem, including turning the Jewish Temple into a shrine for Zeus. The revolt of Jewish revolutionaries, including the restoration of the temple in 165 B.C. (the same year that the Book of Daniel was written) is the basis for the Jewish holiday of Hannukah. But at the end of the Book of Daniel, the author predicts that an apocalyptic end will come to the repressive Greeks 1,290 days after their desecration of the temple. Unfortunately, as with other apocalyptic prophecies, it didn't happen. So the last line of Daniel changes the date to 1,335 days."

It's an interesting argument worth considering - is the rise of apocalyptic notions a product of the shift towards monotheism, or is that simply coincidence?