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Cargando... El Anticristo (1994)por Bernard McGinn
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This accessible, well-documented history of the development of the story of Antichrist was surprisingly unexciting. Although a work would have to be much larger to treat exhaustively of the topic, McGinn's is nearly as comprehensive as its scale permits. He proceeds at a steady pace from pre-Christian antiquity through the late twentieth century, and by the end, he proposes that he and the reader should be tired of the topic. (280) Theologian McGinn dismisses mythicists like me as a "lunatic fringe" for being skeptical of the evidence for a "historical Jesus." (34) But his fractious consensus of "New Testament scholars" is even less persuasive than the because-we-say-so of traditional clergy. And, although he is himself evidently a Christian (of the non-Fundamentalist sort, he is quite clear), he seems not to have faith in any sort of antichrist himself, nor to think that an incarnation of the Lie could be a constructive idea for modern believers. Writing in the early 1990s, the author may have anticipated a market for Antichrist related to the approach of the year 2000, but he certainly couldn't have foreseen the Obama Antichrist rumor and 'net meme that would arise later. Reading his account of the traditional ingredients of Antichrist legend, it is possible to see, for example, deep synergy between the Antichrist allegations and the charge of crypto-Islam aimed at the 44th US President. Another bizarre potential correlation is for born-again Christian George W. Bush to be the "Last Emperor" who is supposed to precede the reign of Antichrist. (The early medieval trope of the Last Emperor is typically absent from the Dispensationalist neo-Millenialism common to today's Christianist chiliasts, though.) One signficant element missing from McGinn's treatment--in its modern phase at least--is the appearance of professed antichrists, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jack Parsons. While it could be tempting to excuse such an oversight by disqualifying such figures as lying outside of the spectrum of Christian belief, the book does actually include treatments of Jewish and Muslim Antichrist parallels, as well as a discussion of Jung's secular psychological theory of Antichrist. Overall, the book is useful for readers wanting to get a historical handle on the Antichrist concept and its evolution. McGinn claims that Antichrist belief has become marginal and unoriginal in modern times, but he admits that there's no way to be sure of the extent to which it formerly penetrated popular consciousness. And I would add that not all our current elites are as erudite as Professor McGinn, so his admission that Fundamentalist Evangelicals are "a limited, if powerful, segment" of Christianity should give the socially-reflective reader pause regarding just how irrelevant the anticipation of Antichrist may be. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
A lo largo de la historia, los finales de siglo y especialmente de milenio han tendido a aumentar la preocupacion de los humanos por el fin del mundo y el papel que un agente malvado pueda desempenar en su llegada. En esta completa y orportuna investigacion, Bernard McGinn rastrea el concepto de Anticristo desde sus origenes judeocristianos hasta nuestros dias, alertandonos acerca de la violencia latente que suele acompanar a la creencia literal. Formulada sobre la base de una combinacion de mito, historia y leyenda, la idea del Anticristo ha estado siempre al servicio de la necesidad humana de comprender la persistencia del mal en el mundo. Pero, a su vez, y a causa de su caracter absoluto como cosmovision, ha sido fuente y origen de grandes catastrofes, especialmente en forma de persecucion a las demas religiones. Para explicar este complejo fenomeno, McGinn recorre las huellas de la leyenda, desde el cristianismo primitivo hasta su mas amplia difusion en la baja Edad Media y el siglo XVI, yanaliza su evolucion a lo largo de los siglos, examinando como ha obsesionado a la imaginacion popular tanto en forma de individuos Neron, Napoleon o Sadam Hussein como de grupos judios, herejes, musulmanes, considerados todos ellos como graves amenazas sociales. El resultado es la historia definitiva de los origenes, significado y proposito de todas estas leyendas, un relato fascinante sobre nuestra obsesion por el mal y, al mismo tiempo, una advertencia para el futuro con respecto a nuestras actitudes hacia ese tipo de ideas. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)236Religions Christian doctrinal theology Eschatology; Death; JudgmentClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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So, this book tracks Christianity's changing views on the Antichrist, from Jewish pre-Christ apocalyptic writings to the present day. It's a sprawling history with a narrow focus, and I just am not familiar enough with Catholic history to get as much out of the book as I could have. Great swaths of the book felt very much like reading those stretches of The Name of the Rose dealing with different sects of the Catholic church, and all the names start to blur together and I'm straining to get anything meaningful out of it at all.
Which is not to say I didn't get anything out of it. It's easy to get mired in the mythos and worldview of your own time. Seeing how the ever-evolving understanding of evil, Antichrist, and end times both shaped and was shaped by the events and forces of history was good perspective on how we got to now.
A good reminder on why I set the goal of reading more books from my religion shelf in the first place. ( )