| Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism 2000 Edition Contributor(s): Hotson, H. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0792367871 ISBN-13: 9780792367871 Publisher: Springer OUR PRICE: $104.49 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 2001 Annotation: This book provides a uniquely detailed case study of the origins of millenarianism within the vast opera of one of its earliest and most influential Calvinist exponents: the Herborn encyclopedist Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638). The young Alsted, it emerges, looked forward not to the millennium of Apocalypse 20 but to a brief, final period of enhanced illumination described in a poorly understood central European tradition of astrological, alchemical, spiritualist, and generally occult' prophetic speculation. It was the disasters following the Bohemian Revolt of 1618 which forced Alsted to recast these expectations as the more exclusively scriptural expectation of a literal millennium; and the material for this revision was found in a protracted dispute over the millennium between senior theologians in Herborn and Heidelberg and a little-known work on the conversion of the Jews by one of the figures most probably behind the composition of the Rosicrucian manifestos. Based on study of the full range of Alsted's works, his diverse sources, and widely dispersed manuscript material, the result is the first English book on 17th-century continental millenarianism and the first monograph in any language exclusively devoted to the origins of the doctrine within mainstream Protestantism. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Christian Theology - Eschatology - Political Science | History & Theory - General - Philosophy | History & Surveys - General |
| Dewey: 236.909 |
| LCCN: 00067185 |
| Series: International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives Inte |
| Physical Information: 0.56" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.11 lbs) 230 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Christian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: l. i ALSTED, MEDE ANDTHE BIRTH OFCALVINIST MILLENARIANISM In the past thirty to forty years, the spread and influence of millenarianism within the Protestant world has been traced from the Reformation to the present day by dozens of scholarly studies. ' Medieval historians have lo- ted echoes in the modem world ofeschatological innovations deriving from 2 their period, above all those originating with Joachim of Fiore. Social and political historians, attracted especially by the function of millenarianism as a proto-revolutionary ideology, have focused on its influences at times of acute political crisis. ' Intellectual historians have also noted its role in of- I Two recent guides to this literature are Ted Daniels, M illen nia lis m: a n Int erna ti onal Bibli o g raph y (New York, 1992); John 1. Collins, Bernard McGinn and Stephen J. Stein (eds. ), Th e E ncy clo pe di a o f A p oca lyp t icis m (3 vols., New York, 1998). 2 Notably MarjorieReeves, Th e Influ en c e of Proph e c y in th e Lat er Middl e Ages: a Study in J o a chimi sm (Oxford, 1969; repr. Notre Dame, 1993); Delno C. West (ed. |