The Antichrist Legend

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 47-48):

Retracing our steps from these Sibylline writers of the end of the twelfth and eleventh centuries, we come to a work which was written in 954 by the monk Adso at the request of Queen Gerberga. From Adso it was borrowed by Albuinus, a priest of Cologne, who embodied it in a comprehensive treatise dedicated to Archbishop Herbert. Thus it happened that the work became current under the name of Albuin, and even got printed both amongst Alcuin's and Austin's works (Migne, CI. 1289, and XL. 1130). It forms a collection of eschatological essays, in the last part of which Adso gives a Sibylline treatise on his own authority. To Zezschwitz is due the credit of having shown that the Sibyl utilized by Adso is the same that lies at the base of the document in Bede. The close agreement begins with the account of the last ruler; whence it must be inferred that the whole of the previous list of rulers, as in Bede, was not found in the common source, according to which the account of the last ruler ran thus:

Bede.

And then will arise a king by name and of steadfast mind. The same will be the steadfast king of the Romans and Greeks.

Adso.

In the time of said king, whose name will be C., king of the Roman empire....

Then follows an account of the glorious appearance of this king, and of the opulence which will prevail in his time; after which we read:

Bede.

And the king himself will have before his eyes the Scripture saying:

Adso.

He will always have before his eyes the Scripture saying:

The king of the Romans [will] claim for himself [acquire] the whole kingdom of the lands [of the Christians]; therefore will he lay waste all the islands and cities [of the heathen], and destroy all the temples of the false gods, and all the pagans will he call to baptism, and the cross of Christ [Jesus] shall be raised over all the temples.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 48-49):

During the reign of this king the Jews are to be converted, and he will vanquish the nations of Gog and Magog with their twelve or twenty-two kingdoms which had been reduced by Alexander the Great; "[and thereafter the king] will come to Jerusalem, and there laying aside his diadem [and all his royal state], he will resign before God the Father and His Son Christ Jesus the Christian kingdom. The length of the king's reign is given in Bede as one hundred and twenty-two, in Adso one hundred and twelve, and in manuscripts twelve years. That this last alone is correct, and the others nothing more than fabulous embellishments, is evident from a surprising parallelism in the Greek Apocalyptic of Daniel, which will be considered farther on: "And after him another sprung of him will reign twelve years. And he, foreseeing his death, went to Jerusalem in order to deliver his kingdom unto God.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 49):

Who is this king whose description is found in all these sources (compare above Usinger's Sibyl)? By a comparison of the various notices, especially those in Bede (the king by name, etc.) and in the account in the Sibyl of Henry IV's time of the victories of the king in question over the Ishmaelites, Gutschmid infers that it was Constans II, so that the common sources would have originated at the beginning of this emperor's reign, a conclusion which is certainly very attractive. At the same time it is to be considered that the reign and personality of Constans II by no means correspond with the description, which would accordingly have to be regarded as purely fantastic; further, that there is no mention of triumphs over the Ishmaelites in the source documents in Adso and Bede; lastly, that the quibble with the name of the king might conceivably point as well to a Constantius or Constantine. The account of the king here introduced also agrees with the fourth century, the early period of the Christian emperors, quite as well as with the seventh century.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 49-50):

On the other hand, Zezschwitz (p. 43) is fully justified in suggesting that in the concluding part of this apocalyptic tradition events are no longer passing in the Western but in the Eastern empire. At the close the prediction points to its Oriental origin, while the idea ot the last Roman emperor going to Jerusalem and there abdicating could have arisen only in times preceding the Crusades. Zezschwitz accordingly extends his investigations to the apocalyptic collection known as the Revelation of the pseudo-Methodius. In the more detailed account of the last emperor's abdication in Jerusalem he shows a direct parallel between the Sibyl of the time of Henry IV. and the pseudo-Methodius (p. 162); he also finds in the description of the appearance of Gog and Magog a parallelism between pseudo-Methodius and Adso.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 50):

On the pseudo-Methodius itself no clear idea can be formed pending a trustworthy edition of that work. The available text is found in the Montumenta Patrum Orthodoxographa, 2nd ed., Basel, 1569, Vol. I. (Greek 93, Latin 100 pp.). The Greek text, however, is according to Gutschmid (p. 152) a free re-cast dating from the twelfth century. Relatively far more valuable appears to be the editio princeps, Cologne, 1475. The editions of the Latin all derive from that of Augsburg, 1496. Some of the sections of this interesting work, and those the most important for our purpose, have been reproduced by Caspari; The Greek from the second edition of the Orthodoxographa, the Latin from two revised manuscripts.

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[John Reece]

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 50-51):

In Gutschmid's opinion (p. 152) nearly all of the materials are lacking in the original Greek text, on which all attempts have hitherto been made to assign a more accurate date to the document. Such is especially the long section giving a detailed account of some siege of Byzantium. Zezschwitz, who has taken great pains to determine the date of this document, points to the blockade of Byzantium, which took place in 715 and the following years, and to the three rulers whose names occur in this connection ― Philippicus Bardanes, Leo the Isaurian, and Constantine V. (Copronymus). It seems to me that these indications are correct, and I may here point to the interesting parallel passage in the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel (117, 2 et seq.)

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 51):

The ruler here described as the liberator and the restorer of peace is Leo the Isaurian. No doubt he reigns according to the Greek text thirty-six, but according to the Slavonic translation thirty-two years, like the Leo of the pseudo-Methodius in the revised text. Farther back (117, 55) occurs the passage: "And the great Philip with eighteen tongues and they shall be gathered together in the Seven Hills and prepare for war." Here we have Philippicus Bardanes, while a perfect parallel passage occurs in 117, 61: "Then shall the ox bellow, and the arid kill lament."

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

This post repeated to correct misspelled word in the last clause

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 51):

The ruler here described as the liberator and the restorer of peace is Leo the Isaurian. No doubt he reigns according to the Greek text thirty-six, but according to the Slavonic translation thirty-two years, like the Leo of the pseudo-Methodius in the revised text. Farther back (117, 55) occurs the passage: "And the great Philip with eighteen tongues and they shall be gathered together in the Seven Hills and prepare for war." Here we have Philippicus Bardanes, while a perfect parallel passage occurs in 117, 61: "Then shall the ox bellow, and the arid hill lament."

To be continued...

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 51-52):

There is, however, a discrepancy. The successor to Leo is described in the Apocalypse of Daniel as the last emperor who lays aside his crown in Jerusalem, whereas in the pseudo-Methodus this ruler (Constantine V.) is very unfavourably judged. The passage in Daniel may, however, possibly be older than the corresponding passage foisted into pseudo-Methodius; for the expectation of a good emperor as successor to Leo could only have arisen before the reign of the hated Constantine.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 52):

We thus obtain a standpoint for fixing the age of the pseudoMethodius through the discovery that a document dating from the eighth century had already been interpolated into this work. Gutschmid also thinks that it was certainly composed before the overthrow of the Ommiades, which is again confirmed by the existence of manuscripts of the Latin translation as old as the eighth and ninth centuries. Gutschmid goes even so far as to assert with some confidence that the work was composed between the years 676-678.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 52):

Considering the hopeless confusion of the textual tradition as embodied in this Methodius, it may seem somewhat risky to venture any further opinion on its contents. Nevertheless to me it seems safe to conclude that the Latin and Greek texts in the Orthodoxographa belong to two totally different streams of tradition, so that wherever these two witnesses agree they stand on tolerably safe ground. All the pieces excluded by Gutschmid, on the strength of his better manuscripts, are also shown by a like collation to be interpolation now in the Latin, now in the Greek.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 52-54):

*

*"Qui et Armaeleus dictus." This gloss, which is not found in the Greek text, is here introduced because it confirms the identification of the Jewish Antichrist Armillus, Armilaos, with Romulus.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 54):

Now the relationship with the already described sources stands thus. Adso and Bede with their source coincide only in one point with Methodius (see below), but are only more remotely connected with No. 7, while Usinger's Sibyl shows a closer relation to No. 7, and Adso in the first part of his work with Nos. 4 and 7. Adso, however, has here nothing of the further development of the Methodius saga, according to which the crown laid aside in Jerusalem is to be borne heavenwards with the cross.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 54):

These remarks enable us to advance a conjecture regarding the apocalyptic sources which lie far beyond the Methodius itself. This work is not, as was still supposed by Zezschwitz (p. 50), the last link of the chain bearing on the subject. Even Gutschmid has already noticed that Adso, Bede, [and Usinger] lead us back to an earlier document, which, as he thinks, dates from the time of Constans II. (642=668). In the common source of Adso and Bede the above-mentioned expansion of the statement regarding the deposition of the crown is not yet found, though already occurring in Usinger.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 54-55):

Zezschwitz himself retraces his steps, and conjectures that the historical foundation of the apocalyptic expectations of Methodius is to be sought in the reign of the emperor Heraclius. During his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, Heraclius is supposed, in accordance with the saga, to have been arrested by an angel at the city gate, and to have laid aside both crown and purple before entering Jerusalem (p. 58). He is supposed to have summoned to his aid against the Saracens the nations of Gog and Magog, whom Alexander the Great had shut up within the Caspian gates (p. 61). The Heraclius saga would thus be the starting-point of that apocalyptic tradition, with which view Gutschmid agrees. But it may well be asked whether its origin may not be traced still further back.

To be continued...