Conceiving of the End of the World: Christian Doctrine and Nahua Perspectives in the Sermonary of Juan Bautista Viseo

Ethnohistory ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Stephanie Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
End Of The World

Abstract This article considers questions of authorship in Juan Bautista Viseo’s “Second Sermon for Advent” about “frightful, and terrible signs” of Judgment Day. Although Bautista acknowledges important contributions by Nahua scholars in the production of his Nahuatl-language sermonary, he does not plainly recognize them as coauthors. However, the text itself registers indigenous perspectives. This sermon describes several natural phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, floods, windstorms, and earthquakes, as signs of the Apocalypse. For Nahuas, these phenomena similarly foretold disaster or correlated to storied calamities of ages past. Therefore, the sermon refutes ancestral teachings on celestial signs and age-ending cataclysms, distinguishing so-called lies from doctrinal truth. Yet other passages take a heterodox step in the opposite direction, reinforcing connections between Christian and native thought on world time and portents of doom, or citing figurative “signs” of ancestral tradition that speak to the theme of divine judgment. Such passages, this article demonstrates, suggest Nahua co-authorship.

scholarly journals Christian Motives in Ch. T. Aitmatov’s Novel The Scaffold

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 194-201
Author(s):  
Ekaterina I. Shevchugova
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Motif Analysis ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Journey ◽  
Ultimate Outcome ◽  
End Of The World

In the following article, we identify the Christian motifs in the novel Plakha (The Scaffold) by Ch. T. Aitmatov, describe them and offer our interpretations. The novelty of our analysis stems from the fact that Ch. T. Aitmatov’s body of work is still underresearched, particularly the religious components of this novel. Within our study, we employ the historical-literary, comparative, and motif analysis. We summarize the worldview of Avdii Kallistratov as a system and show that his image and life journey as someone who experiences choice, solitude, fate, recognition of his predestination and mission resemble the image and earthly life of Jesus Christ. His Old Testament name, his origins, the course of his life, and the crucifixion as the ultimate outcome are all important. According to the author, the mankind has reached the critical mark; the end of the world, the Apocalypse is advancing. We conclude that The Scaffold is a literary warning about the coming end of times, which is being drawn closer by the evils of modern humans. Only the tragic and heroic feats of people like Avdii can possibly slow this process down. At the same time the Christian doctrine is not the only correct one: the second half of the novel is based on pantheistic views, demonstrating the syncretism of the author’s worldview.

The Book of Tribulations: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition'

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cook ◽  
Nu'aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
To Come

“The Book of Tribulations by Nu`aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi (d. 844) is the earliest Muslim apocalyptic work to come down to us. Its contents focus upon the cataclysmic events to happen before the end of the world, the wars against the Byzantines, and the Turks, and the Muslim civil wars. There is extensive material about the Mahdi (messianic figure), the Muslim Antichrist and the return of Jesus, as well as descriptions of Gog and Magog. Much of the material in Nu`aym today is utilized by Salafi-jihadi groups fighting in Syria and Iraq.

The Disinherited in Shakespeare’s Plays

Moreana ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (Number 173) (1) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
Peter Milward
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
English History ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World

In conjunction with the current “revisionism” of English history from a Catholic viewpoint, it is time to undertake a corresponding revision of the plays and personality of William Shakespeare. For this purpose it is not enough to rest content with the meagre historical record, but we have to go ahead in the light of recusant history with a reinterpretation of the plays, considering the extent to which they lend themselves to the Catholic viewpoint. This is not merely a matter of nostalgia for the mediaeval past, but it looks above all to the present sufferings of the “disinherited” English Catholics — in the light of the continued presence of Christ who is suffering, as Pascal famously noted, in his faithful even till the end of the world.

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

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