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36 Firth 1973: 34. 37 Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (orig. published in 1966) 1973: 114–115. 35 chapter one 20 and Thomas Luckmann, and here it is supplemented with Nils G. 3 Relevant Scholarly Literature I refer here to what I consider to be the most central theoretical contributions to the study of millenarism in Judaism and Christianity. The theories of Gershom Scholem, Rafael Zwi J. Werblowsky, Yonina Talmon and Norman Cohn have acquired (more or less) classic status within the field.

Chapter six provides a concluding discussion where the results of this inquiry are summarized in brief. The goal of this book is to explore, and even to suggest possible interconnections between the complex, multifaceted experiences related 34 chapter one to Jerusalem as an apocalyptic representation culminating in the belief in a better tomorrow. In order to identify and trace these apocalyptic representations, I turn to history, but not to history alone, to explain how these representations work, how they should be identified and how the representations end.

In its most basic sense it refers to a span of a thousand years. But in the years near the turn of the calendar millennium this mundane fact began to carry more symbolic freight. [. ] . . 68 When, however, we use the word to describe such visions of future as mentioned above, we also run into problems. Scholars dealing with millenarian issues do not always agree on their uses of the definitions either. In this study, I use the word ‘millenarian’ to describe the envisioned future of the world in wide terms, applying it in a general way.