Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco

This collection of 16 articles represents a selection of the papers delivered in the course of a seminar (1995-1996) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and its concluding joint symposium held at the Institute and Princeton University. Wide-ranging in scope, the volume covers messianic expectations from biblical times up to modern and contemporaneous adaptations including: diversity and variety of messianic expectations in antiquity; messianic movements at the time of the Crusades and around the fifth millennium (1240); the Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Avi in the early modern period; the philosopher Hermann Cohens’ messianism; as well as the Lubavitch movement. Also included are investigations on pagan Graeco-Roman writings and messianic strands in the medieval and baroque Christian context. The section on the modern period contains contributions dealing with the Ahmaddiyya movement in India, messianic currents in the socio-political culture of the Weimar Republic as well as certain messianic aspects in the very recent so-called Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas. The broad spectrum of analysis provides a re-evaluation of an apparently timeless phenomenon.