Subj : Bible [1] To : Frank Masingill From : Curtis Johnson Date : Sat Oct 21 2000 08:52 pm (Folks, I'm not editing this for space for the sake of clarity. My reply begins about 4 screens from now. . .) CJ> Frank, I have read and I own _The Pursuit of the Millenium_. I CJ> highly recommend it, particularly in this time when so many CJ> are convinced that the eschatology of Revelation is about to CJ> occur. But it simply does not say what you are saying that it CJ> does. Indeed, it demonstrates that murderous pursuit of a CJ> millenium occurred many times, many centuries before "de Sade, CJ> Condorcet, Marx, Comte, et al" or a supposed "western CJ> breakdown into ideology." Despite the impression you give, CJ> the book is not concerned with the past three centuries. He CJ> does make some passing mention about how the millenial notion CJ> indirectly influenced Hitler, but since that notion was CJ> Christian, _Pursuit_ is hardly the best book to cite against CJ> Joseph--he need only argue that it shows even the indirect of CJ> influence of Christianity is harmful. FM> Well, this should prove that ownership of a book is no FM> ironclad guarantee that all who read it will agree as to it's FM> central message. CJ> It's a book which gives instance after instance after instance CJ> of murderous Christian pursuit of the millenium. FM> Case in point. You say NOTHING AT ALL about one of the most FM> central of characters who's life and work goes to the very FM> meaning of the title of Cohn's book. If you omit Jochim of FM> Flora and his intellectual children with the line that FM> stretches from that point early in the millenium to the FM> "pursuit" of hauling the perfection of the beyond through some FM> "golden age" into the world as it as a tension of FM> perfection-imperfection, all the way to Hegel, Marx and Comte FM> and the murderous ideologies following that dogged path in the FM> 20th century then I think you have missed an important FM> philosophical message and some REAL events in history. His FM> "passing mention about how the millenial notion indirectly FM> influenced Hitler [and Lenin and others I might add] is not, FM> as you would reflect it, a kind of footnote to the book - it FM> is a large part of the story itself. CJ> Joachim gets three pages, "Joachism" (i.e., *direct* influence CJ> of his writings and those writings fathered on him two or CJ> three more) in the chapter "The Emperor Frederick as Messiah," CJ> and about half a dozen mentions in the rest of the book. Six CJ> pages is also given to the anonymous `Revolutionary of the CJ> Upper Rhine,' whose _Book of a Hundred Chapters_, Cohn says, CJ> "is almost uncannily similar to the phantasies which were the CJ> core of National-Socialist ideology.' Yet Cohn does not CJ> mention Joachim at all in connection with this work. Contrast CJ> that with Frederick II (who gets the rest of that chapter), CJ> Thomas Muentzer, "The Drummer of Nickelhausen," and John of CJ> Leyden (aka Brockelson) who get half or more of a chapter CJ> each. As to Joachim's indirect influence on more modern times, CJ> which you say "is not, as you would reflect it, a kind of CJ> footnote to the book," it gets exactly one paragraph and one CJ> sentence. FM> You simply have not read the book carefully enough. The FM> symbolism of the "leader," (dux) the "three ages" and much else FM> that was laid out in Joachim were continued through the millenium FM> and, in fact, constitute the CENTER of its "pursuit." Hegel, FM> Feuerbach, In that one sentence, you seem to be conflating the mere chronological unit equaling one thousand years and the eschatological Millenium. At least that's the only way I can extract a meaning from it that doesn't contradict itself. Unless you're implying that we've been *in* the Millenium for the past seven centuries and more? Feuerbach?? I've consulted a few secondary sources, and none of them have mention of him working with a historical system such as "three ages." Indeed, they mention his aversion to any system. He basically concentrated on his (IMHO, quite accurate) insight that "God" is largely a psychological projection. In the *one paragraph in the entire book* in which Cohn discusses the influence of Joachim upon future ideologies, he mentions only the notion of three ages of history, the last leading to a Millenus. And with good reason: While the term "novus dux" may be Joachim's, the notion of a leader into the Millenium was hardly original with him. Cohn himself (pp. 30-31 in my edition): "It was therefore not surprising that, as soon as Christianity joined forces with the Empire, Christian Sybyllines (i.e, the forgery of the Roman prophetic book) should greet the Emperor Constantine as the messianic king. After Contstantine's death the Sybillines continued to attach an eschatological significance to the figure of the Roman Emperor. Thanks to them, in the imagination of Christians for more than a thousand years the figure of the warrior-Christ was doubled by another, that of the Emperor of the Last Days." FM> Marx, Comte, et all used this symbolism that was cemented in the FM> "enlightenment" and the thread continues right on down to Moscow as FM> the "third Rome" and nazism's "third Reich." Joachim gave us the And where in Marx or in the Enlightenment is the notion of a one, single Supreme Leader that is the only route for mankind into a Millenium? Moscow's Third Rome notion was hardly Millenial, but rather an authority-bolstering claim. (Czarist Russia did not claim to be the Millenium.) I'm mildly skeptical even about Cohn's claim about Nazism. There were, after all, two previous Reichs (Holy Roman Empire, and the Kaiser), so it was entirely arithmetical for them to regard themselves as the third. Even the famous "thousand years" is a nice round number for empire pretensions. Yes, there are resonances, but resonances don't necessarily imply direct (or even indirect) descent. Maybe so, but there will have to be more than bare assertions within one paragraph of a book to prove them. FM> modern model of the spirit-filled intellectual who "knows the wave FM> of the future" and can lead his people into that marvelous utopia. FM> If you argue AGAINST these dynamics it is because, I suppose, that FM> you, like Bob Eyer, consider the murderous gangs for whom a Europe, FM> deprived of the canons of western thought by this intellectual FM> positivism and the social circumstances of the early 20th century, FM> accepted as leaders. Frank, that last sentence doesn't make grammatical sense. Just what the heck are me and Bob supposed to consider the "murderous gangs" supposed to be???? And you're treating Europe as a single entity. WW2 and NATO made it pretty clear that much of Europe did not accept those "murderous gangs" as leaders. As if previous to the 18th century European countries didn't have "murderous gangs . . . accepted as leaders"! FM> In fact, this shuttle away from reality was so pronounced in FM> the early part of the century that people were SHOCKED that such a FM> thing as WW I could come at ALL. Read the history books written It had been preceded by several crises that had come close to the brink while the alliances in place. There had been an incredible amount of jingoism beforehand (I have a ca. 1910 Belgian schoolbook, and it was amazing what what was being inculcated in this small neutral country). France had been explicitly and publicly been vowing "revanche." The real surprise was that a general European war would last for so long: it had "proven" that it would be economically impossible. FM> around the turn of the century. You will see that there was FM> tremendous BELIEF that the era spoken of by the Old Testament FM> metastatic thinkers (beating swords into plowshares and reliance on FM> treaties of perpetual peace) had arrived and was dependable as FM> political thought. Actually the treaty of perpetual peace between FM> Argentina and Chile of 1903 was cited as proof of this and the FM> Christ of the Andes erected to celebrate it. It DID have an amazing FM> success (together with the presence of the Andes in itself). No wars between them since. FM> It really doesn't matter whether you succeed in making this FM> 80 year old man look like a dunce. I don't expect that MY search FM> for the truth of existence or openness to the partnership of God and FM> Man that I see as the continuing journey of Man will become some FM> "doctrine" to be pitted against another one. Physics will probably FM> continue to change its outlook just as it did from Newton to the FM> 19th and 20th centuries and NONE of this will make the Mosaic, FM> Platonic and Christian revelations as differentiations of clarity in FM> philosophy obsolete because it is Man as he REALLY is, in tension FM> toward the transcendent, that is truly open to science. All that because I was pointing out that the book was not quite as advertised to Joseph Voigt? --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: America's favorite whine - it's your fault! (1:261/1000) .