Sunday, March 05, 2017

The Always-Yet-Never-Here Apocalypse

THE ASOR BLOG: The Generative Power of The Always-Yet-Never-Here Apocalypse (Kelly J. Murphy and Justin Jeffcoat Schedtler).
The idea that the apocalypse is both always-and-never-here led us to write Apocalypses in Context: Apocalyptic Currents Through History (Fortress Press, 2016). As scholars who both teach and write on ancient apocalyptic texts and their manifestations throughout history, we wanted to explore a series of questions: What, if anything, connects ancient texts such as Daniel or Revelation to current political crises? To ecological concerns? To popular television shows, movies, and video games? How does the apocalypse stay the same, and how does it change? Our goal was to illustrate that apocalypses come in all shapes and sizes, including both the contemporary understanding of apocalypse as the end-of-the-world and the ancient notion of apocalypse as an unveiling of the world around us. Apocalypses are everywhere, from our art, climate debates, philosophies, politics, and beyond.
I noted the book when it came out last year.